TROUBLE FOR LUCIA
PART 10
CHAPTER X
Though Tilling remained the same at heart, Olga's brief visit had considerably changed the decorative aspect of its leading citizenesses. The use of powder on the face on very hot days when prominent features were apt to turn crimson, or on very cold ones, when prominent features were apt to turn mauve, had always been accepted, but that they should embellish themselves with rouge and lipstick and arched eyebrows was a revolution indeed. They had always considered such aids to loveliness as typical of women who shamelessly advertised their desire to capture the admiration of males, and that was still far from their intentions. But Diva found that arched eyebrows carefully drawn where there were none before gave her a look of high-bred surprise: Elizabeth that the rose-mantled cheeks she now saw in her looking-glass made her feel (not only appear) ten years younger: Susan that her corrugated hair made her look like a French marquise. Irene, who had been spending a fortnight of lionization in London, was amazed at the change when she returned, and expressed her opinion of it, by appearing in the High Street with the tip of her nose covered with green billiard-chalk.
She at once got to work on the portrait which Lucia had commissioned. She had amplified Lucia's biographical suggestion, and it represented her in full Mayoral robes and chain and a three-cornered hat playing the piano in the garden-room. Departmental boxes were piled in the background, a pack of cards and a paint-box lay on the lid of the piano, and her bicycle leaned against it.
"Symbols, beloved," said the artist, "indicating your marvellous many-sidedness. I know you don't ride your bicycle in the garden-room, nor play cards on your piano, nor wear your robes when you're at your music, but I group your completeness round you. Ah! Hold that expression of indulgent disdain for the follies of the world for a moment. Think of the Tilling hags and their rouge."
"Like that?" asked Lucia, curling her upper lip.
"No, not at all like that. Try another. Be proud and calm. Think of spending an evening with your Duchess--darling, why are you such a snob?--or just think of yourself with all your faults and splendours. Perfect!"
Irene stepped back from her easel.
"And I've got it!" she cried. "There's not a living artist and very few dead ones who could have seized that so unerringly. How monstrous that my work should be hated just because I am a woman!"
"But your picture was the picture of the year," said Lucia, "and all the critics cracked it up."
"Yes, but I felt the undercurrent of hostility. Men are such self-centred brutes. Wait till I publish my memoirs."
"But aren't you rather young for that?"
"No, I'm twenty-five, and by that age everyone has experienced all that matters, or anyhow has imagined it. Oh, tell me the truth about what all the painted hags are whispering. Georgie and Olga Bracely being alone here. What happened really? Did you arrange it all for them? How perfect of you! Nobody but you would be so modern and open-minded. And Tilling's respect for Georgie has gone up enormously."
Lucia stared at her a moment, assimilating this monstrous suggestion, then sprang to her feet with a gasp of horror.
"Oh, the poisonous tongues!" she cried. "Oh, the asps. And besides--"
She stopped. She found herself entangled in the web she herself had woven, and never had any spider known to natural history so completely encircled itself. She had told Tilling that she was going to dine and sleep at Poppy's Castle, and had shewn everybody those elegant photographs as tacit evidence that she had done so. Tilling therefore, had concluded that Olga and Georgie had spent the night alone at Mallards, and here was Irene intolerably commending her for her open-mindedness not only in condoning but in promoting this assignation. The fair fame, the unsullied morality of herself and Georgie, not to mention Olga, was at stake, and (oh, how it hurt!) she would be forced to give the utmost publicity to the fact that she had come back to Tilling the same evening. That would be a frightful loss of prestige, but there was no choice. She laughed scornfully.
"Foolish of me to have been indignant for a single moment at such an idea!" she said. "I never heard such rubbish. I found poor Poppy very unwell, so I just had tea with her, cheered her up and took some photographs and came home at once. Tilling is really beyond words!"
"Darling, what a disappointment!" said Irene. "It would have been so colossal of you. And what a comedown for poor Georgie. Just an old maid again."
The news was very soon known, and Tilling felt that Lucia and Georgie had let them down. Everything had been so exciting and ducal and compromising, and there was really nothing left of it. Elizabeth and Diva lost no time in discussing it in Diva's tea-room next morning when marketing was done, and were severe.
"The deceitfulness of it is what disgusts me most," said the Mayoress. "Far worse than the snobbishness. Worship let it be widely known that she was staying the night with Poppy, and then she skulks back, doesn't appear at all next morning to make us think that she was still away--"
"And shows us all those photographs," chimed in Diva, "as a sort of . . . what's the word?"
"Can't say, dear," said Elizabeth, regarding her rose-leaf cheeks with high approval in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece.
"Affidavit, that's it, as testifying that she had stayed with Poppy. Never told us she hadn't."
"My simple brain can't follow her conjuring tricks," said Elizabeth, "and I should be sorry if it could. But I'm only too thankful she did come back. It will be a great relief to the Padre, I expect, to be told that. I wonder, if you insist on knowing what I think, whether Mr. Georgie somehow decoyed that lovely creature to Tilling, telling her that Lucia was here. That's only my guess, and if so we must try to forgive him, for if anything is certain in this bad business, it is that he's madly in love with her. I know myself how a man looks--"
Diva gave a great gasp, but her eyebrows could not express any higher degree of astonishment.
"Oh, Elizabeth!" she cried. "Was a man ever madly in love with you? Who was it? Do tell me!"
"There are things one can't speak of even to an old friend like you," said Elizabeth. "Yes, he's madly in love with her, and I think Worship knows it. Did you notice her demonstrations of affection to sweet Olga? She was making the best of it, I believe; putting on a brazen--no, let us say a brave face. How worn and anxious she looked the other night when we were all so gay. That pitiful little minuet! I'm sorry for her. When she married Mr. Georgie, she thought life would be so safe and comfortable. A sad awakening, poor thing . . . Oh, another bit of news. Quaint Irene tells me she is doing a portrait of Worship. Quite marvellous, she says, and it will be ready for our summer exhibition. After that Lucia means to present it to the Borough, and have it hung in the Town Hall. And Irene's Academy picture of Benjy and me will be back in time for our exhibition, too. Interesting to compare them."
Lucia bore her loss of prestige with characteristic gallantry. Indeed, she seemed to be quite unconscious that she had lost any, and continued to let her album of snapshots remain open on the piano at the Sheffield Castle page, and airily talked about the Florentine mirror which just did not come into the photograph of Poppy's bedroom. Occasionally a tiresome moment occurred, as when Elizabeth, being dummy at a Bridge-party in the garden-room, pored over the Castle page, and came back to her place, saying,
"So clever of you, Worship, to take so many pretty photographs in so short a time."
Lucia was not the least disconcerted.
"They were all very short exposures, dear," she said. "I will explain that to you sometime."
Everybody thought that a very fit retort, for now the Poppy-crisis was no longer recent, and it was not the custom of Tilling to keep such incidents alive too long: it was not generous or kind, and besides, they grew stale. But Lucia paid her back in her own coin, for next day, when playing Bridge at the Mapp-Flints, she looked long and earnestly at Benjy's tiger-whip, which now hung in its old place among bead-aprons and Malayan creases.
"Is that the one he broke at his interesting lecture, dear Elizabeth," she asked, "or the one he lost at Diva's tea-rooms?"
Evie continued to squeak in a disconcerting manner during the whole of the next hand, and the Poppy-crisis (for the present) was suffered to lapse.
The annual Art Exhibition moved into the foreground of current excitements, and the Tilling artists sent in their contributions: Lucia her study of dahlias, entitled "Belli fiori ", and a sketch of the courtyard of Sheffield Castle, which she had weeded for purposes of Art. She called it "From Memory", though it was really from her photograph, and, without specifying the Castle, she added the motto
"The splendour falls on Castle walls."
Elizabeth sent in "A misty morning on the Marsh". She was fond of misty mornings, because the climatic conditions absolutely prohibited defined draughtsmanship. Georgie (without any notion of challenging her) contributed "A sunny morning on the Marsh", with sheep and dykes and clumps of ragwort very clearly delineated: Mr. Wyse, one of his usual still-life studies of a silver tankard, a glass half-full of (probably) Capri wine, and a spray of nasturtiums: Diva another piece of still life, in pastel, of two buns and a tartlet (probably sardine) on a plate. This was perhaps an invasion of Mr. Wyse's right to reproduce still life, but Diva had to be in the kitchen so much, waiting for kettles to boil and buns to rise, that she had very little leisure for landscape. Susan Wyse sent a mystical picture of a budgerigar with a halo above its head, and rays of orange light emanating from the primary feathers of its spread wings: "Lost Awhile" was the touching title. But in spite of these gems, the exhibition was really Irene's show. She had been elected an honorary member of the hanging committee, and at their meetings she showed that she fully appreciated this fact.
"My birth of Venus," she stated, "must be hung quite by itself at one end of the room, with all the studies I made for it below. They are of vast interest. Opposite it, also by itself, must be my picture of Lucia. There were no studies for that; it was an inspiration, but none of your potty little pictures must be near it. Hang them where you like--oh, darling Lucia, you don't mind your dahlias and your Castle walls being quite out of range, do you? But those are my terms, and if you don't like them, I shall withdraw my pictures. And the walls behind them must be painted duck's egg green. Take it or leave it. Now I can't bother about settling about the rest, so I shall go away. Let me know what you decide."
There was no choice. To reject the picture of the year and that which Irene promised them should be the picture of next year was inconceivable. The end walls of the studio where the exhibition was held were painted duck's egg green, a hydrangea and some ferns were placed beneath each, and in front of them a row of chairs. Lucia, as Mayor, opened the show and made an inaugural speech, tracing the history of pictorial Art from earliest times, and, coming down to the present, alluded to the pictures of all her friends, the poetical studies of the marsh, the loving fidelity of the still life exhibits, the spiritual uplift of the budgerigar. "Of the two great works of Miss Coles," she concluded, "which will make our exhibition so ever-memorable, I need not speak. One has already acquired world-wide fame, and I hope it will not be thought egotistic of me if I confidently prophesy that the other will also. I am violating no secrets if I say that it will remain in Tilling in some conspicuous and public place, the cherished possession for ever of our historic town."
She bowed, she smiled, she accepted a special copy of the catalogue, which Georgie had decorated with a blue riband, and, very tactfully, instead of looking at the picture of herself, sat down with him in front of that of Elizabeth and Benjy, audibly pointing out its beauties to him.
"Wonderful brush-work," she said, waving her catalogue as if it was a paintbrush. "Such life and movement! The waves. Venus's button boots. Quite Dutch. But how Irene has developed since then! Presently we will look at the picture of me with this fresh in our minds."
Elizabeth and Benjy were compelled, by the force of Lucia's polite example, to sit in front of her picture, and they talked quietly behind their catalogues.
"Can't make head or tail of it," murmured Benjy. "I never saw such a jumble."
"A little puzzling at first," said Elizabeth, "but I'm beginning to grasp it. Seated at her piano you see, to show how divinely she plays. Scarlet robe and chain, to show she's Mayor. Cards littered about for her Bridge. Rather unkind. Bicycle leaning against the piano. Her paint-box because she's such a great artist. A pity the whole thing looks like a jumble-sale, with Worship as auctioneer. And such a sad falling off as a work of Art. I'm afraid success has gone to Irene's head."
"Time we looked at our own picture," said Benjy. "Fancy this daub in the Town Hall, if that's what she meant by some conspicuous and public place."
"It hasn't got there yet," whispered Elizabeth. "As a Councillor, I shall have something to say to that."
They crossed over to the other side of the room, passing Lucia and Georgie on the way, as if in some figure of the Lancers. Evie and the Padre were standing close in front of the Venus and Evie burst into a series of shrill squeaks.
"Oh, dear me! Did you ever, Kenneth!" she said. "Poor Elizabeth. What a face and so like!"
"Well indeed!" said Kenneth. "Surely the puir oyster-shell canna' bear that weight, and down she'll go and get a ducking. An' the Major up in the clouds wi' his wee bottle . . . Eh, and here's Mistress Mapp-Flint herself and her guid man. A proud day for ye. Come along wifie."
Irene had not been at the opening, but now she entered in her shorts and scarlet jersey. Her eye fell on the hydrangea below the Venus.
"Take that foul thing away," she screamed. "It kills my picture. What, another of them under my Lucia! Throw them into the street, somebody. By whose orders were they put there? Where's the hanging Committee? I summon the hanging Committee."
The offending vegetables were borne away by Georgie and the Padre, and Irene, having cooled down, joined Benjy and Elizabeth by the Venus. She looked from it to them and from them to it.
"My God, how I've improved since I did that!" she said. "I think I must repaint some of it, and put more character into your faces."
"Don't touch it, dear," said Elizabeth nervously. "It's perfect as it is. Genius."
"I know that," said Irene, "but a few touches would make it more scathing. There's rouge on your cheeks now, Mapp, and that would give your face a hungry impropriety. I'll see to that this afternoon when the exhibition closes for the day."
"But not while it's on view, quaint one," argued Elizabeth. "The Committee accepted it as it was. Most irregular."
"They'll like it far better when I've touched it up," said Irene. "You'll see;" and she joined Lucia and Georgie.
"Darling, it's not unworthy of you, is it?" she asked. "And how noble you are to give it to the Borough for the Town Hall. It must hang just above the Mayor's chair. That's the only place for it."
"There'll be no difficulty about that," said Lucia.
She announced her gift to the Town Council at their next meeting, coupled with the artist's desire that it should be hung on the wall behind the Mayor's chair. Subdued respectful applause followed her gracious speech and an uncomfortable silence, for most of her Councillors had already viewed the work of Art with feelings of bewildered stupefaction. Then she was formally thanked for her generous intention and the Town-Clerk intimated that before the Borough accepted any gift, a small committee was always appointed to inspect it. Apart from Elizabeth, who said she would be honoured to serve on it, some diffidence was shown; several Councillors explained that they had no knowledge of the pictorial art, but eventually two of them said they would do their best.
This Committee met next morning at the exhibition, and sat in depressed silence in front of the picture. Then Elizabeth sighed wistfully and said "Tut, tut" and the two others looked to her for a lead. She continued to gaze at the picture.
"Me to say something, gentlemen?" she asked, suddenly conscious of their scrutiny. "Well, if you insist. I trust you will disagree with what I feel I'm bound to say, for otherwise I fear a very painful duty lies in front of us. So generous of our beloved Mayor, and so like her, isn't it? But I don't see how it is possible for us to recommend the Council to accept her gift. I wouldn't for the world set up my opinion against yours, but that's what I feel. Most distressing for me, you will well understand, being so intimate a friend of hers, but private affection cannot rank against public responsibility." A slight murmur of sympathy followed this speech, and the committee found that they were of one mind in being conscientiously unable to recommend the Council to accept the Mayor's gift.
"Very sad," said Elizabeth, shaking her head. "Our proceedings, I take it, are confidential until we communicate them officially to the Council."
When her colleagues had gone, the Mayoress strolled round the gallery. A misty morning on the marsh really looked very well: its vague pearly opalescence seemed to emphasize the faulty drawing in Georgie's sunny morning on the marsh and Diva's tartlets. Detaching herself from it, she went to the Venus, and a horrified exclamation burst from her. Quaint Irene had carried out her awful threat, had tinged her cheeks with unnatural colour, and had outlined her mouth with a thin line of vermilion, giving it a coyly beckoning expression. So gross a parody of her face and indeed of her character could not be permitted to remain there: something must be done, and, leaving the gallery in great agitation, she went straight to Mallards, for no one but Lucia had the smallest influence with that quaint and venomous young person.
The Mayor had snatched a short respite from her incessant work, and was engaged on a picture of some fine holly-hocks in her garden. She was feeling very buoyant, for the Poppy-crisis seemed to be quite over, and she knew that she had guessed correctly the purport of her Mayoress's desire to see her on urgent business. Invisible to mortal eye, there was a brazier of coals of fire on the lawn beside her, which she would presently pour on to the Mayoress's head.
"Good morning, dear Elizabeth," she said. "I've just snatched half an hour while good Mrs. Simpson is typing some letters for me. Susan and Mr. Wyse have implored me to do another little flower-study for our esposizione, to fill up the vacant place by my dahlias. I shall call it 'Jubilant July'. As you know, I am always at your disposal. What good wind blows you here?"
"Lovely of you to spare the time," said Elizabeth. "I've just been to the esposizione, and I felt it was my duty to see you at once. Quaint Irene has done something too monstrous. She's altered my face; she's given it a most disgusting expression. The picture can't be allowed to remain there in its present condition. I wondered if you with your great influence--"
Lucia half-closed her eyes, and regarded her sketch with intolerable complacency.
"Yes: that curious picture of Irene's," she said at length. "What a Puck-like genius! I went with her to our gallery a couple of hours ago, to see what she had done to the Venus: she was so eager to know what I thought about her little alterations."
"An outrage, an abomination!" cried Elizabeth.
"I should not put it quite as strongly as that," said Lucia, returning to her holly-hocks and putting in a vein on one of the leaves with exquisite delicacy. "But I told her that I could not approve of those new touches. They introduced, to my mind, a note of farce into her satire, which was out of place, though amusing in itself. She agreed with me after a little argument into which I need not go. She will remove them again during the lunch hour."
"Oh thank you, dear," said Elizabeth effusively. "I always say what a true friend you are. I was terribly upset."
"Nothing at all," said Lucia sucking her paint-brush. "Quite easy."
Elizabeth turned her undivided attention to the holly-hocks.
"What a lovely sketch!" she said. "How it will enrich our exhibition. Thank you, dear, again. I won't keep you from your work any longer. How you find time for all you do is a constant amazement to me."
She ambled swiftly away. It would have been awkward if, at such a genial moment, Lucia had asked whether the artistic committee appointed by the Council had inspected Irene's other masterpiece yet.
The holiday months of August and September were at hand, when the ladies of Tilling were accustomed to let their houses and move into smaller houses themselves at a cheaper rent than what they received. Diva, for instance, having let her own house, was accustomed to move into Irene's, who took a remote cottage on the marsh, where she could pursue her art and paint nude studies of herself in a looking-glass. But this year Diva refused to quit ye olde tea-house, when, with the town full of visitors, she would be doing so roaring a business; the Wyses decided not to go to Italy to stay with the Contessa, since international relations were so strained, and Lucia felt it her duty as Mayor, to remain in Tilling. The only letting done, in fact, was by the Padre, who left his curate in charge, while he and Evie took a prolonged holiday in bonnie Scotland, and let the Vicarage to the Mapp-Flints who had a most exciting tenant. This was a Miss Susan Leg, who, so Tilling was thrilled to learn from an interview she gave to a London paper, was none other than the world-wide novelist, Rudolph da Vinci. Miss Leg (so she stated in this piece of self-revelation) never took a holiday. "I shall not rest," she finely observed, "till the shadows of life's eventide close round me," and she went on to explain that she would be studying, in view of a future book, this little centre of provincial English life. "I am well aware," said Miss Leg, "that my readers expect of me an aristocratic setting for my romances, but I intend to prove to them that life is as full of human interest in any simple, humble country village as in Belgravia and the country-houses of the nobility."
Lucia read this interview aloud to Georgie. It seemed to suggest possibilities. She veiled these in her usual manner.
"Rudolph da Vinci," she said musingly. "I have heard her name now I come to think of it. She seems to expect us all to be yokels and bumpkins. I fancy she will have to change her views a little. No doubt she will get some introduction to me, and I shall certainly ask her to tea. If she is as uppish and superior as she appears to be, that would be enough. We don't want best-sellers to write up our cultured vivid life here. So cheap and vulgarising; not in accordance with our traditions."
There was nothing, Georgie knew, that would fill Lucia with deeper pride than that traditions should be violated and life vulgarised, and even while she uttered these high sentiments a vision rose in her mind of Rudolph da Vinci writing a best-seller, with the scene laid in Tilling, and with herself, quite undisguised, as head of its social and municipal activities.
"Yet one must not prejudge her," she went on, as this vision grew brighter. "I must order a book of hers and read it, before I pass judgment on her work. And we may find her a very pleasant sort of woman. Perhaps I had better call on her, Georgie, for I should not like her to think that I slighted her, and then I will ask her to dine with us, très intime, just you and she and I. I should be sorry if her first impressions of Tilling were not worthy of us. Diva, for instance, it would be misleading if she saw Diva with those extraordinary eyebrows, bringing up teas from the kitchen, purple in the face, and thought her representative of our social life. Or if Elizabeth with her rouged cheeks asked her to dine at the Parsonage, and Benjy told his tiger-stories. Yes, I will call on her as soon as she arrives, and get hold of her. I will take her to our Art Exhibition, allow her to sign the Mayor's book as a distinguished visitor, and make her free of my house without ceremony. We will show her our real, inner life. Perhaps she plays Bridge: I will ascertain that when I call. I might almost meet her at the station, if I can find out when she arrives. Or it might be better if you met her at the station as representing me, and I would call on her at Grebe half an hour afterwards. That would be more regular."
"Elizabeth told me that she arrives by the three-twenty-five to-day," said Georgie. "And she has hired a motor and is meeting her."
It did not require so keen a nose as Lucia's to scent rivalry, but she gave no hint of that.
"Very proper," she said. "Elizabeth no doubt will drive her to Grebe, and show her tenant the house."
Lucia bicycled to Grebe about tea-time, but found that Miss Leg had driven into the town, accompanied by the Mayoress, to have tea. She left her official card, as Mayor of Tilling, and went straight to the Vicarage. But Elizabeth was also out, and Lucia at once divined that she had taken Miss Leg to have tea at Diva's. She longed to follow and open operations at once, but decided to let the Mayoral card do its work. On her way home she bought a copy of the 25th edition of the novelist's Kind Hearts and Coronets, and dipped into it. It was very sumptuous. On the first page there was a Marchioness who had promised to open a village bazaar and was just setting off to do so, when a telephone message arrived that a Royal Princess would like to visit her that afternoon. "Tell her Royal Highness," said that kind-hearted woman, "that I have a long-standing engagement, and cannot disappoint my people. I will hurry back as soon as the function is over. . . ." Lucia pictured herself coming back rather late to entertain Miss Leg at lunch--Georgie would be there to receive her--because it was her day for reading to the inmates of the workhouse. She would return with a copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets in her hand, explaining that the dear old bodies implored her to finish the chapter. The idea of Miss Leg writing a best-seller about Tilling became stupefyingly sweet.
Georgie came in, bringing the evening post.
"A letter from Olga," he said, "and she's written to me too, so it's sure to be the same. She wants us to go to Riseholme to-morrow for two days, as she's got music. A string quartette coming down."
Lucia read her letter.
"Yes, most kind of her," she said. "But how can I get away? Ah, she anticipates that, and says that if I'm too busy she will understand. And it would look so marked if I went away directly after Miss Leg had arrived."
"That's for you to judge," he said. "If you think she matters, I expect you're right, because Elizabeth's getting a pretty firm hold. I've been introduced to her: Elizabeth brought her in to tea at Diva's."
"I imagined that had happened," said Lucia. "What about her?"
"A funny little round red thing, rather like Diva. Swanky. She's brought a butler and a footman, she told us, and her new Daimler will get down late to-night. And she asked if any of the nobility had got country seats near Tilling--"
"Did you tell her that I dined and slept--that Duchess Poppy asked me to dine and sleep at the Castle?" interrupted Lucia.
"No," said Georgie. "I thought of it, but then I judged it was wiser not to bring it up again. She ate a whole lot of buns, and she was very gracious to Diva, (which Diva didn't like much) and told her she would order her chef--her very words--to send her a recipe for cream wafers. Elizabeth's toadying her like anything. She said 'Oh, how kind, Miss Leg. You are lucky, dear Diva.' And they were going on to see the church afterwards, and Leg's dining with the Mapp-Flints tomorrow."
Lucia reviewed this rather sinister intelligence.
"I hate to disappoint dear Olga," she said, "but I think I had better stop here. What about you?"
"Of course I shall go," said Georgie.
Georgie had to leave for Riseholme next morning without a maid, for in view of the entertainment that might be going on at Mallards, Lucia could not spare either Foljambe or Grosvenor. She spent a long time at the garden-room window that afternoon, and told her cook to have a good tea ready to be served at a moment's notice, for Miss Leg would surely return her call to-day. Presently a large car came bouncing up the street: from its size Lucia thought at first that it was Susan's, but there was a man in livery sitting next the chauffeur, and at once she guessed. The car stopped at Mallards, and from behind her curtain Lucia could see that Elizabeth and another woman were inside. A podgy little hand was thrust out of the window, holding a card, which the man-servant thrust into the letter box. He rang the bell, but before it was answered he mounted again, and the car drove on. A hundred pages of stream-of-consciousness fiction could not have explained the situation more exhaustively to Lucia than her own flash of insight. Elizabeth had evidently told the novelist that it would be quite sufficient to leave a card on the Mayor and have done with her. What followed at the Parsonage that evening when Miss Leg dined with the Mapp-Flints bore out the accuracy of Lucia's intuition.
"A very plain simple dinner, dear Miss Leg," said Elizabeth as they sat down. "Just pot luck, as I warned you, so I hope you've got a country appetite."
"I know I have, Liz," said Benjy heartily. "A round of golf makes me as hungry as I used to be after a day's tiger shooting in the jungle."
"Those are trophies of yours at Grebe, then," said Miss Leg. "I consider tiger-shooting a manly pursuit. That's what I mean by sport, taking your life in your hand instead of sitting in an arm chair and firing into flocks of hand-reared pheasants. That kind of 'sportsman' doesn't even load his own gun, I believe. Butchers and poulterers; that's what I called them in one of my books."
"Withering! scathing!" cried Elizabeth. "And how well-deserved! Benjy gave such a wonderful lecture here the other day about his hair-breath escapes. You could have heard a pin drop."
"Ah, that's an old story now," said Benjy. "My shikarri days are over. And there's not a man in Tilling who's even seen a tiger except through the bars at the Zoo. Georgie Pillson, for instance--"
"Whom I presented to you at tea yesterday, Miss Leg," put in Elizabeth. "Husband of our dear Mayor. Pointed beard. Sketches quite prettily, and does exquisite needlework. My wicked Benjy once dubbed him Miss Milliner Michael-Angelo."
"And that was very withering too," said Miss Leg, eating lumps of expensive middle-cut salmon with a country appetite.
"Well, well, not very kind, I'm afraid, but I like a man to be a man," said Benjy. "I'll take a bit more fish, Liz. A nice fresh-run fish. And what are you going to give us next?"
"Just a brace of grouse," said Elizabeth.
"Ah, yes. A few old friends with Scotch moors haven't quite forgotten me yet, Miss Leg. Dear old General!"
"Your Miss Milliner has gone away, Benjy," said Elizabeth. "Staying with Miss Olga Bracely. Probably you know her, Miss Leg. The prima donna. Such a fascinating woman."
"Alone? Without his wife?" asked Miss Leg. "I do not approve of that. A wife's duty, Mayor or not, is to be always with her husband and vice versa. If she can't leave her home, she ought to insist on his stopping with her."
"Dear Lucia is a little slack in these ways," said Elizabeth regretfully. "But she gives us to understand that they're all old friends."
"The older the better," said Miss Leg epigrammatically, and they all laughed very much.
"Tell me more about your Lucia," she ordered, when their mirth subsided.
"I don't fancy you would find very much in common with her," said Elizabeth thoughtfully. "Rather prone we think, to plot and intrigue in a way we regret. And a little superior at times."
"It seems to have gone to her head to be Mayor," put in Benjy. "She'd have made a sad mess of things without you to steady her, Liz."
"I do my best," sighed Elizabeth, "though it's uphill work sometimes. I am her Mayoress and a Councillor, Miss Leg, and she does need assistance and support. Oh, her dear, funny little ways! She's got a curious delusion that she can play the piano, and she gives us a treat sometimes, and one doesn't know which way to look. And not long ago--how you'll scream, Miss Leg, she told us all, several times over, that she was going to stay with the Duchess of Sheffield, and when she came back she showed us quantities of photographs of the Castle to prove she had been there--"
"I went to a Charity Concert of the Duchess's in her mansion in Grosvenor Square not long ago," said Miss Leg. "Five-guinea seats. Does she live near here?"
"No, many miles away. There's the cream of it. It turned out that Worship only went to tea. A three hours' drive each way to get a cup of tea! So odd. I almost suspect that she was never asked at all really; some mistake. And she always alludes to her as Poppy; whether she calls her that to her face is another question."
"Evidently a snob," said Miss Leg. "If there's one thing I hate it's snobbishness."
"Oh, you mustn't call her a snob," cried Elizabeth. "I should be so vexed with myself if I had conveyed that impression."
"And is that a family house of her husband's where I left my card to-day?" asked Miss Leg.
Elizabeth sighed.
"Oh, what a tragic question!" she said. "No, they're quite parvenus in Tilling; that beautiful house--such a garden--belonged to my family. I couldn't afford to live there, and I had to sell it. Lucia gave me a pitiful price for it, but beggars can't be choosers. A cruel moment!"
"What a shame," said Miss Leg. "All the old homes of England are going to upstarts and interlopers. I hope you never set foot in it."
"It's a struggle to do so," said Elizabeth, "but I feel that both as Mayoress and as a friend of Lucia, I must be neighbourly. Neither officially nor socially must I fail to stand by her."
They made plans for next day. Elizabeth was very sarcastic and amusing about the morning shopping of her friends.
"Such fun!" she said. "Quite a feature of life here, you must not miss it. You'll see Diva bolting in and out of shops like a rabbit, Benjy says, when a ferret's after it, and Susan Wyse perhaps on a tricycle, and Lucia and quaint Irene Coles who painted the picture of the year, which is in our exhibition here; you must see that. Then we could pop in at the Town Hall, and I would show you our ancient charters and our wonderful Elizabethan plate. And would you honour us by signing your name in the Mayor's book for distinguished visitors?"
"Certainly, very glad," said Miss Leg, "though I don't often give my autograph."
"Oh, that is kind. I would be ready for you at ten--not too early?--and take you round. Must you really be going? Benjy, see if Miss Leg's beautiful Daimler is here. Au reservoir!"
"O what?" asked Miss Leg.
"Some of the dear folk here say 'au reservoir' instead of 'au revoir'," explained Elizabeth.
"Why do they do that?" asked Miss Leg.
Lucia, as she dined alone, had been thinking over the hostilities which she felt were imminent. She was quite determined to annex Miss Leg with a view to being the central figure in her next best-seller, but Elizabeth was determined to annex her too, and Lucia was aware that she and her Mayoress could not run in harness over this job; the feat was impossible. Her pride forbade her to get hold of Miss Leg through Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, somehow or other, must be detached. She sat long that night meditating in the garden-room, and when next morning the Mayoress rang her up as usual at breakfast time, she went to the telephone ready for anything.
"Good morning, dear Worship," said that cooing voice. "What a beautiful day."
"Lovely!" said Lucia.
"Nothing I can do for you, dear?"
"Nothing, thanks," said Lucia, and waited.
"I'm taking Miss Leg--"
"Who?" asked Lucia.
"Susan Leg: Rudolph da Vinci: my tenant," explained Elizabeth.
"Oh, yes. She left a card on me yesterday, Foljambe told me. So kind. I hope she will enjoy her visit."
"I'm taking her to the Town Hall this morning. So would you be a very sweet Worship and tell the Serjeant to get out the Corporation plate, which she would like to see. We shall be there by half-past ten, so if it is ready by a quarter past there'll be no delay. And though she seldom gives her autograph, she's promised to sign her name in Worship's book."
Lucia gave a happy sigh. She had not dared to hope for such a rash move.
"My dear, how very awkward," she said. "You see, the Corporation plate is always on view to the public on Tuesdays at three p.m.--or it may be two p.m.; you had better make certain--and it is such a business to get it out. One cannot do that for any casual visitor. And the privilege of signing the Mayor's book is reserved for really distinguished strangers, whose visit it is an honour to record. Olga, for instance."
"But, dear Worship," said Elizabeth. "I've already promised to show her the plate."
"Nothing simpler. At two p.m. or three p.m., whichever it is, on Tuesday afternoon."
"And the Mayor's book: I've asked her to sign it."
Lucia laughed gaily.
"Start a Mayoress's book, dear," she said. "You can get anybody you like to sign that."
Lucia remained a moment in thought after ringing off. Then she rang up the Town Hall.
"Is that the Serjeant?" she said. "The Mayor speaking. Serjeant, do not get out the Corporation plate or produce my visitors' book without direct orders from me. At present I have given none. What a lovely morning."
Lucia gave Mrs. Simpson a holiday, as there was nothing for her to do, and went down to the High Street for her marketing. Her mind resembled a modern army attended by an air force and all appliances. It was ready to scout and skirmish, to lay an ambush, to defend or to attack an enemy with explosives from its aircraft or poison gas (which would be only a reprisal, for she was certain it had been used against her). Diva was watching at her window, evidently waiting for her, and threw it open.
"Have you seen her?" she asked.
There was only one "her" just now.
"Only her hand," said Lucia. "She put it out of her motor--a podgy sort of hand--yesterday afternoon. She left a card on me, or rather her footman popped it into my letterbox, without asking if I was in. Elizabeth was with her. They drove on."
"Well, I do call that rude," said Diva, warmly. "High and lofty, that's what she is. She told me her chef would send me a recipe for cream-wafers. I tried it. Muck. I gave one to Paddy, and he was sick. And she rang me up just now to go to tea with her this afternoon. Did she think I was going out to Grebe, just when I was busiest, to eat more muck? Not I. She dined at Elizabeth's last night, and Janet heard from Elizabeth's parlour-maid what they had. Tomato soup, middle-cut of Salmon sent over from Hornbridge, a brace of grouse from Rice's, Melba peaches, but only bottled with custard instead of cream, and tinned caviare. And Elizabeth called it pot-luck! I never had such luck there, pot or unpot. Elizabeth's meaning to run her, that's what it is. Let 'em run! I'll come out with you and do my shopping. Just see how Paddy is, but I think he's got rid of it. Cream-wafers, indeed! Wait a sec."
While Lucia waited a sec., Susan's Wyse's Royce, with her husband and herself inside, hooted its ponderous way into the High Street. As it drew up at the fishmonger's, Lucia's eagle eye spied Elizabeth and a round, fat little woman, of whose identity there could be no doubt, walking towards it. Mr. Wyse had got out and Elizabeth clearly introduced him to her companion. He stood hatless, as was his polite habit when he talked to ladies under God's blue sky, or even in the rain, and then led her towards the open door of the Royce, where Elizabeth was chatting to Susan.
Lucia strolled towards them, but the moment Elizabeth saw her, she wheeled round without smile or greeting, and, detaching Miss Leg, moved away up the street to where Irene in her usual shorts and scarlet pullover, had just set up her easel at the edge of the pavement.
"Good morning, dear Susan," called Lucia. "Oh, Mr. Wyse, pray put your hat on; such a hot sun. Who was that odd little woman with my Mayoress, who spoke to you just now?"
"I think your Mayoress said Miss Leg," observed Mr. Wyse. "And she told my Susan that if she asked Miss Leg to dine to-night she would probably accept. Did you ask her, dear? If so, we must order more fish."
"Certainly I didn't," said Susan. "Who is this Leg? Why should Elizabeth foist her friends on me? Most unheard of."
"Leg? Leg?" said Lucia vaguely. "Ah, of course. Elizabeth's tenant. The novelist. Does she not call herself Rudolph da Vinci?"
"A very self-satisfied little woman, whatever she calls herself," said Susan with unusual severity, "and she's not going to dine with me. She can dine with Elizabeth."
Diva had trundled up and overheard this.
"She did. Last night," she said. "All most sumptuous and grand. But fancy her leaving a card on Lucia without even asking whether she was at home! So rude."
"Did she indeed?" asked Mr. Wyse in a shocked voice. "We are not accustomed to such want of manners in Tilling. You were very right, Susan, not to ask her to dine. Your intuition served you well."
"I thought it strange," said Lucia, "but I daresay she's a very decent, homely little woman, when left to herself. Elizabeth was with her, when she honoured me with her card."
"That accounts for it," interrupted Diva and Susan simultaneously.
"--and Elizabeth rang me up at breakfast and asked to give orders that the Corporation plate should be ready for her little friend's inspection this morning at 10.30. And the Mayor's book for her to sign."
"Well, I never!" said Diva. "And the church-bells ringing, I suppose. And the Town Band playing the Italian National Anthem for Rudolph da Vinci. What did you say?"
"Very polite regrets."
Irene's voice from a few yards away, loud and emphatic, broke in on their conversation.
"No, Mapp!" she cried. "I will not come to the Exhibition to show you and your friend--I didn't catch her name--my pictures. And I can't bear being looked over when I'm sketching. Trot along."
There seemed nothing else for them to do, and Lucia walked on to Irene.
"Did you hear?" asked Irene. "I sent Mapp and her friend about their business. Who is the little guy?"
"A Miss Leg, I am told," said Lucia. "She writes novels under some foreign name. Elizabeth's tenant: she seems to have taken her up with great warmth."
"Poor wretch. Mapp-kissed, like raisins. But the most exciting news, beloved. The directors of the Carlton Gallery in Bond Street have asked me if I will let them have my Venus for their autumn exhibition. Also an enquiry from an American collector, if it's for sale. I'm asking a thumping price for it. But I shall show it at the Carlton first, and I shall certainly put back Mapp's rouge and her cocotte smile. May I come up presently to Mallards?"
"Do dear. I have a little leisure this morning."
Lucia passed on with that ever-recurring sense of regret that Irene had not painted her on the oyster-shell and Georgie in the clouds, and, having finished her shopping, strolled home by the Town Hall. The Serjeant was standing on the steps, looking a little flushed.
"The Mayoress and a friend have just been here, your Worship," he said. "She told me to get out the Corporation plate and your Worship's book. I said I couldn't without direct orders from you. She was a bit threatening."
"You did quite right, Serjeant," said Lucia very graciously. "The same reply always, please."
Meantime Elizabeth and Miss Leg, having been thwarted at the Town Hall, passed on to the Exhibition where Elizabeth demanded free admittance for her as a distinguished visitor. But the door-keeper was as firm as the Serjeant had been, and Elizabeth produced a sixpence and six coppers. They went first to look at the Venus, and Elizabeth had a most disagreeable surprise, for the eminent novelist highly disapproved of it.
"An irreverent parody of that great Italian picture by Botticello," she said. "And look at that old hag on the oyster shell and that boozy navvy in a top-hat. Most shocking! I am astonished that you allowed it to be exhibited. And by that rude unsexed girl in shorts? Her manners and her painting are on a par."
After this pronouncement Elizabeth did not feel equal to disclosing that she was the hag and Benjy the navvy, but she was pleased that Miss Leg was so severe on the art of the rude girl in shorts, and took her to the portrait of Lucia.
"There's another picture of Miss Coles's," she said, "which is much worse that the other. Look: it reminds me of an auctioneer at a jumble sale. Bicycle, piano, old packs of cards, paint-box--"
Miss Leg burst into loud cries of pleasure and admiration.
"A magnificent work!" she said. "That's something to look at. Glorious colour, wonderful composition. And what an interesting face. Who is it?"
"Our Mayor: our dear Lucia whom we chatted about last night," said Elizabeth.
"Your chat misled me. That woman has great character. Please ask her to meet me, and the artist too. She has real talent in spite of her other picture. I could dine with you this evening: just a plain little meal as we had last night. I never mind what I eat. Or tea. Tea would suit me as well."
Agitated thoughts darted through the Mayoress's mind. She was still desperately anxious to retain her proprietary rights over Miss Leg, but another plain little meal could not be managed. Moreover it could not be expected that even the most exalted Christian should forgive, to the extent of asking Lucia to dinner, her monstrous rudeness about the Corporation plate and the Mayor's book, and it would take a very good Christian to forgive Irene. Tea was as far as she could go, and there was always the hope that they would refuse.
"Alas, Benjy and I are both engaged to-night," she said. "But I'll ask them to tea as soon as I get home."
They strayed round the rest of the gallery: the misty morning on the marsh, Elizabeth thought, looked very full of poetry.
"The usual little local daubs," observed Miss Leg, walking by it without a glance. "But the hollyhocks are charming, and so are the dahlias. By Miss Coles, too, I suppose."
Elizabeth simply could not bear that she should know who the artist was.
"She does exquisite flower-studies," she said.
Irene was in the garden-room with Lucia when Elizabeth's call came through.
"Just been to the Exhibition, dear Worship, with Miss Leg. She's so anxious to know you and quaint Irene. Would you pop in for a cup of tea this afternoon? She will be there."
"So kind!" said Lucia. "I must consult my engagement book."
She covered the receiver with her hand, and thought intensely for a moment.
"Irene," she whispered. "Elizabeth asks us both to go to tea with her and meet Miss Leg. I think I won't. I don't want to get at her via Elizabeth. What about you?"
"I don't want to get at Leg via anybody" said Irene.
Lucia uncovered the receiver.
"Alas!" she said. "As I feared I am engaged. And Irene is with me and regrets she can't come either. Such a pity. Goodbye."
"Why my regrets?" asked Irene. "And what's it all about?"
Lucia sighed. "All very tiresome," she said, "but Elizabeth forces me, in mere self-defence, to descend to little schemings and intrigues. How it bores me!"
"Darling, it's the breath of your life!" said Irene, "and you do it so beautifully!"
In the course of that day and the next Miss Leg found that she was not penetrating far into the life of Tilling. She attended shopping parade next morning by herself. Diva and the Wyses were talking together, but gave her no more than cold polite smiles, and when she had passed, Irene joined them and there was laughter. Further on Lucia, whom she recognised from Irene's portrait was walking with a tall man with a Vandyck beard, whom she guessed to be the truant husband returned. Elizabeth was approaching, all smiles; surely they would have a few words together, and she would introduce them, but Lucia and the tall man instantly crossed the road. It was all very odd: Lucia and Irene would not come to tea at the Mapp-Flints, and the Wyses had not asked her to dinner, and Diva had refused to go to tea at Grebe, and Elizabeth had not produced the Corporation plate and the Mayor's book. She began to wonder whether the Mapp-Flints were not some species of pariah whom nobody would know. This was a dreadful thought; perhaps she had got into wrong hands, and, while they clutched her, Tilling held aloof. She remembered quite a large percentage of Elizabeth's disparaging remarks about Lucia at the plain little meal, and of Benjy's comments on Georgie, and now they assumed a different aspect. Were they prompted by malice and jealousy and impotence to climb into Tilling society? "I've not got any copy at present," thought Miss Leg. "I must do something. Perhaps Mrs. Mapp-Flint has had a past, though it doesn't look likely."
It was a very hot day, and Georgie and Lucia settled to go bicycling after tea. The garden-room, till then, was the coolest place and after lunch they played the piano and sat in the window overlooking the street. He had had two lovely days at Riseholme, and enlarged on them with more enthusiasm than tact.
"Olga was too wonderful," he said. "Singing divinely and inspiring everybody. She enjoys herself simply by giving enjoyment to other people. A concert both evenings at seven, with the Spanish quartette and a few songs by Olga. Just an hour and a half and then a delicious supper in the garden, with everybody in Riseholme asked, and no Duchesses and things at all. Just for Riseholme: that's so like her: she doesn't know what the word 'snob' means. And I had the room I had before, with a bathroom next door, and my breakfast on the balcony. And none of those plots and intrigues we used to be always embroiled in. It was a change."
A certain stoniness had come into Lucia's face, which Georgie, fired with his subject, did not perceive.
"And she asked down a lot of the supers from Covent Garden," he went on, "and put them up at the Ambermere Arms. And her kindness to all her old friends: dull old me, for instance. She's taken a villa at Le Touquet now, and she's asked me there for a week." I shall cross from Seaport, and there are some wonderful anti-sick tablets--"
"Did dearest Olga happen to mention if she was expecting me as well?" asked Lucia in a perfectly calm voice.
Georgie descended, like an aeroplane with engine-trouble, from these sunlit spaces. He made a bumpy landing.
"I can't remember her doing so," he said.
"Not a thing you would be likely to forget," said Lucia. "Your wonderful memory."
"I daresay she doesn't want to bother you with invitations," said Georgie artfully. "You see, you did rub it in a good deal how difficult it was for you to get away, and how you had to bring tin boxes full of municipal papers with you."
Lucia's face brightened.
"Very likely that is it," she said.
"And you promised to spend Saturday till Monday with her a few weeks ago," continued Georgie, "and then left on Sunday because of your Council meeting, and then you couldn't leave Tilling the other day because of Miss Leg. Olga's beginning to realize, don't you think, how busy you are--What's the matter?"
Lucia had sprung to her feet.
"Leg's motor coming up the street," she said. "Georgie, stand at the door, and, if I waggle my thumb at you, fly into the house and tell Grosvenor I'm at home. If I turn it down--those Roman gladiators--still fly, but tell her I'm out. It all depends on whether Elizabeth is with her. I'll explain afterwards."
Lucia slid behind the window-curtain, and Georgie stood at the door, ready to fly. There came a violent waggling of his wife's thumb, and he sped into the house. He came flying back again, and Lucia motioned him to the piano, on the music-stand of which she had already placed a familiar Mozart duet, "Quick! Top of the page," she said. "Uno, due, tre. Pom. Perfect!"
They played half a dozen brilliant bars, and Grosvenor opened the door and said, "Miss Leg". Lucia took no notice but continued playing, till Grosvenor said "Miss Leg!" much louder, and then, with a musical exclamation of surprise, she turned and rose from her seat.
"Ah, Miss Leg, so pleased!" she said, drawling frightfully. "How-de-do? Have you met Miss Leg, Georgie? Ah, yes, I think you saw her at Diva's one afternoon. Georgie, tell somebody that Miss Leg--you will, won't you--will stop to tea . . . My little garden-room, which you may have noticed from outside. I'm told that they call it the Star Chamber--"
Miss Leg looked up at the ceiling, as if expecting to see the hosts of heaven depicted there.
"Indeed. Why do they call it that?" she asked.
Lucia had, of course, just invented that name for the garden-room herself. She waved her hand at the pile of Departmental tin boxes.
"Secrets of municipal business," she said lightly. "The Cabal, you know: Arlington, Bolingbroke . . . Shall we go out into the garden, until tea is ready? A tiny little plot, but so dear to me, the red brick walls, the modest little house."
"You bought it quite lately from Mrs. Mapp-Flint, I understand," said Miss Leg.
Clever Lucia at once guessed that Elizabeth had given her version of that.
"Yes, poor thing," she said. "I was so glad to be able to get her out of her difficulties. It used to belong to an aunt of hers by marriage. What a state it was in! The garden a jungle of weeds, but I am reclaiming it. And here's my little secret garden: when I am here and the door is shut, I am not to be disturbed by anybody. Busy folk, like you and me, you with your marvellous creative work, and me with my life so full of interruptions, must have some inviolable sanctuary, must we not? . . . Some rather fine hollyhocks."
"Charming!" said Miss Leg, who was disposed to hate Lucia with her loftiness and her Star Chamber, but still thought she might be the Key to Tilling. "I have a veritable grove of them at my little cottage in the country. There was a beautiful study of hollyhocks at your little exhibition. By Miss Coles, I think Mrs. Mapp-Flint said."
Lucia laughed gaily.
"Oh, my sweet, muddle-headed Mayoress!" she cried. "Georgie, did you hear? Elizabeth told Miss Leg that my picture of hollyhocks was by Irene. So like her. Tea ready?"
Harmony ripened. Miss Leg expressed her great admiration for Irene's portrait of Lucia, and her withering scorn for the Venus, and promised to pay another visit to study the features of the two principal figures: she had been so disgusted with the picture that one glance was enough. Before she had eaten her second bun, Lucia had rung up the Serjeant at the Town Hall, and asked him to get out the Corporation plate and the Mayor's book, for she would be bringing round a distinguished visitor very shortly: and before Miss Leg had admired the plate and signed the book ("Susan Leg" and below, "Rudolph da Vinci"), she had engaged herself to dine at Mallards next day. "Just a few friends," said Lucia, "who would be so much honoured to meet you." She did not ask Elizabeth and Benjy, for Miss Leg had seen so much of them lately, but, for fear they should feel neglected, she begged them to come in afterwards for a cup of coffee and a chat. Elizabeth interpreted this as an insult rather than an invitation, and she and Benjy had coffee and a vivacious chat by themselves.
The party was very gay, and a quantity of little anecdotes were told about the absentees. At the end of most of them Lucia cried out:
"Ah, you mustn't be so ill-natured about them," and sometimes she told another. It was close on midnight when the gathering broke up, and they were all bidden to dine with Miss Leg the next night.
"Such a pleasant evening, may I say 'Lucia?'" said she on the doorstep, as she put up her round red face for the Mayor to deal with as she liked.
"Indeed do, dear Susan," she said. "But I think you must be Susanna. Will you? We have one dear Susan already."
They kissed.
To be continued
