TROUBLE FOR LUCIA

PART 7

CHAPTER VII

Lucia had failed to convince the Directors of the Southern Railway that the Royal Fish Train was a practicable scheme. "Should Their Majesties" so ran the final communication "express Their Royal wish to be supplied with fish from Tilling, the Directors would see that the delivery was made with all expedition, but in their opinion the ordinary resources of the line will suffice to meet Their requirements, of which at present no intimation has been received."

"A sad want of enterprise, Georgie," said the Mayor as she read this discouraging reply. ''A failure to think municipally and to see the distinction of bringing an Elizabethan custom up to date. I shall not put the scheme before my Council at all." Lucia dropped this unenterprising ultimatum into the waste paper basket. The afternoon post had just arrived and the two letters which it brought for her followed the ultimatum.

"My syllabus for a series of lectures at the Literary Institute is not making a good start," she said. "I asked Mr. Desmond McCarthy to talk to us about the less known novelists of the time of William IV, but he has declined. Nor can Mr. Noel Coward speak on the technique of the modern stage on any of the five nights I offered him. I am surprised that they should not have welcomed the opportunity to get more widely known."

"Tar'some of them," said Georgie sympathetically, "such a chance for them."

Lucia gave him a sharp glance, then mused for a while in silence over her scheme. Fresh ideas began to flood her mind so copiously that she could scarcely scribble them down fast enough to keep up with them.

"I think I will lecture on the Shakespearian drama myself," she said. "That should be the inaugural lecture, say April the fifteenth. I don't seem to have any engagement that night, and you will take the chair for me . . . Georgie, we might act a short scene together, without dresses or scenery to illustrate the simplicity of the Elizabethan stage. Really, on reflection I think my first series of lectures had much better be given by local speakers. The Padre would address us one night on Free Will or the Origin of Evil. Irene on the technique of fresco painting. Diva on catering for the masses. Then I ought to ask Elizabeth to lecture on something, though I'm sure I don't know on what subject she has any ideas of the slightest value. Ah! Instead, Major Benjy on tiger-shooting. Then a musical evening: the art of Beethoven, with examples. That would make six lectures; six would be enough. I think it would be expected of me to give the last as well as the first. Admission, a shilling, or five shillings for the series. Official, I think, under the patronage of the Mayor."

"No," said Georgie, going back to one of the earlier topics. "I won't act any Shakespearian scene with you to illustrate Elizabethan simplicity. And if you ask me I don't believe people will pay a shilling to hear the Padre lecture on Free-Will. They can hear that sort of thing every Sunday morning for nothing but the offertory."

"I will consider that," said Lucia, not listening and beginning to draw up a schedule of the discourses. "And if you won't do a scene with me, I might do the sleep-walking from Macbeth by myself. But you must help me with the Beethoven evening. Extracts from the Fifth Symphony for four hands on the piano. That glorious work contains, as I have always maintained, the Key to the Master's soul. We must practise hard, and get our extracts by heart."

Georgie felt the sensation, that was now becoming odiously familiar, of being hunted and harried. Life for him was losing that quality of leisure, which gave one time to feel busy and ready to take so thrilled an interest in the minute happenings of the day. Lucia was poisoning that eager fount by this infusion of mayoral duties and responsibilities, and tedious schemes for educational lectures and lighting of the streets. True, the old pellucid spring gushed out sometimes: who, for instance, but she could have made Tilling bicycle-crazy, or have convinced Susan that Blue Birdie had gone to a higher sphere? That was her real métier, to render the trivialities of life intense for others. But how her schemes for the good of Tilling bored him!

Lucia finished sketching out her schedule, and began gabbling again.

"Yes, Georgie, the dates seem to work out all right," she said, "though Mrs. Simpson must check them for me. April the fifteenth: my inaugural lecture on Shakespeare: April the twenty-second: the Padre on Free-Will which I am convinced will attract all serious people, for it is a most interesting subject, and I don't think any final explanation of it has yet been given; April the twenty-ninth, Irene on the technique of fresco painting: May the sixth: Diva on tea-shops. I expect I shall have to write it for her. May the thirteenth: Major Benjy on tigers: May the twentieth: Beethoven, me again . . . I should like to see these little centres of enlightenment established everywhere in England, and I count it a privilege to be able, in my position, to set an example. The B.B.C., I don't deny, is doing good work, but lectures delivered viva voce are so much more vivid. Personal magnetism. I shall always entertain the lecturer and a few friends to a plain supper-party here afterwards, and we can continue the discussion in the garden-room. I shall ask some distinguished expert on the subject to come down and stay the night after each lecture: the Bishop when the Padre lectures on Free-Will: Mr. Gielgud when I speak about Shakespearian technique: Sir Henry Wood when we have our Beethoven night: and perhaps the Manager of Messrs. Lyons after Diva's discourse. I shall send my Town Council complimentary seats in the first row for the inaugural lecture. How does that strike you for a rough sketch? You know how I value your judgment, and it is most important to get the initial steps right."

Georgie was standing by her table, suppressing a yawn as he glanced at the schedule, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket for his gun-metal match-box with the turquoise latch. As he scooped for it, there dropped out the silver top of Major Benjy's riding whip, which he always kept on his person. It fell noiselessly on the piece of damp sponge which Mrs. Simpson always preferred to use for moistening postage-stamps, rather than the less genteel human tongue. Simultaneously the telephone-bell rang, and Lucia jumped up.

"That incessant summons!" she said. "A perfect slavery. I think I must take my name off the exchange, and give my number to just a few friends . . . Yes, yes, I am the Mayor of Tilling. Irene, is it? . . . My dear how colossal! I don't suppose anybody in Tilling has ever had a picture in the Royal Academy before. Is that the amended version of your fresco, Venus with no clothes on coming to Tilling? I'm sure this one is far nicer. How I wish I had seen it before you sent it in, but when the Academy closes you must show it at our picture-exhibition here. Oh, I've put you down to give a lecture in my Mayoral course of Culture on the technique of painting in fresco. And you're going up to London for varnishing day? Do take care. So many pictures have been ruined by being varnished too much."

She rang off.

"Accepted, is it?" said Georgie in great excitement. "There'll be wigs on the green if it's exhibited here. I believe I told you about it, but you were wrestling with the Royal Fish Express. Elizabeth, unmistakable, in a shawl and bonnet and striped skirt and button-boots, standing on an oyster-shell, and being blown into Tilling by Benjy in a top-hat among the clouds."

"Dear me, that sounds rather dangerously topical," said Lucia. "But it's time to dress. The Mapp-Flints are dining, aren't they? What a coincidence!"

They had a most harmonious dinner, with never a mention of bicycles. Benjy readily consented to read a paper on tiger-shooting on May 13.

"Ah, what a joy," said Lucia. "I will book it. And some properties perhaps, to give vividness. The riding-whip with which you hit the tiger in the face. Oh, how stupid of me. I had forgotten about its mysterious disappearance which was never cleared up. Pass me the sugar, Georgie."

There was a momentary pause, and Lucia grew very red in the face as she buried her orange in sugar. But that was soon over, and presently the Mayor and Mayoress went out to the garden-room with interlaced waists and arms. Lucia had told Georgie not to stop too long in the dining-room and Benjy made the most of his time and drank a prodigious quantity of a sound but inexpensive port. Elizabeth had eaten a dried fig for dessert, and a minute but adamantine fig-seed had lodged itself at the base of one of her beautiful teeth. She knew she would not have a tranquil moment till she had evicted it, and she needed only a few seconds unobserved.

"Dear Worship," she said. "Give me a treat, and let your hands just stray over the piano. Haven't heard you play for ever so long."

Lucia never needed pressing and opened the lid of the instrument.

"I'm terribly rusty, I'm afraid," she said, "for I get no time for practising nowadays. Beethoven, dear, or a morsel of precious Mozart; whichever you like."

"Oh, prettioth Mothart, pleath," mumbled Elizabeth, who had effaced herself behind Lucia's business table. A moment sufficed, and her eye, as she turned round towards the piano again and drank in precious Mozart, fell on Mrs. Simpson's piece of damp sponge. Something small and bright, long-lost and familiar, gleamed there. Hesitation would have been mere weakness (besides, it belonged to her husband). She reached out a stealthy hand, and put it inside her bead-bag.

It was barely eleven when the party broke up, for Elizabeth was totally unable to concentrate on cards when her bag contained the lock, if not the key to the unsolved mystery, and she insisted that dear Worship looked very tired. But both she and Benjy were very tired before they had framed and been forced to reject all the hypotheses which could account for the reappearance in so fantastic a place of this fragment of the riding-whip. If the relic had come to light in one of Diva's jam-puffs, the quality of the mystery would have been less baffling, for at least it would have been found on the premises where it was lost, but how it had got to Lucia's table was as inexplicable as the doctrine of Freewill. They went over the ground five or six times.

"Lucia wasn't even present when it vanished," said Elizabeth as the clock struck midnight. "Often, as you know, I think Worship is not quite as above-board as I should wish a colleague to be, but here I do not suspect her."

Benjy poured himself out some whisky. Finding that Elizabeth was far too absorbed in speculation to notice anything that was going on round her, he hastily drank it, and poured out some more.

"Pillson then," he suggested.

"No; I rang him up that night from Diva's, as he was going to his bath," said she, "and he denied knowing anything about it. He's fairly truthful--far more truthful than Worship anyhow--as far as I've observed."

"Diva then," said Benjy, quietly strengthening his drink.

"But I searched and I searched, and she had not been out of my sight for five minutes. And where's the rest of it? One could understand the valuable silver cap disappearing--though I don't say for a moment that Diva would have stolen it--but it's just that part that has reappeared."

"All mos' mysterious," said Benjy. "But wo'll you do next, Liz? There's the cruksh. Wo'll you do next?"

Benjy had not observed that the Mayoress was trembling slightly, like a motor-bicycle before it starts. Otherwise he would not have been so surprised when she sprang up with a loud crow of triumph.

"I have it," she cried. "Eureka! as Worship so often says when she's thought of nothing at all. Don't say a word to anybody, Benjy, about the silver cap, but have a fresh cane put into it, and use it as a property (isn't that the word?) at your tiger-talk, just as if it had never been lost. That'll be a bit of puzzle-work for guilty persons, whoever they may be. And it may lead to something in the way of discovery. The thief may turn pale or red or betray himself in some way . . . What a time of night!"

Puzzle-work began next morning.

"I can't make out what's happened to it," said Georgie, in a state of fuss, as he came down very late to breakfast, "and Foljambe can't either."

Lucia gave an annoyed glance at the clock. It was five minutes to ten; Georgie was getting lazier and lazier in the morning. She gave the special peal of silvery laughter in which mirth played a minor part.

"Good afternoon, caro," she said sarcastically. "Quite rested? Capital!"

Georgie did not like her tone.

"No, I'm rather tired still," he said. "I shall have a nap after breakfast."

Lucia abandoned her banter, as he did not seem to appreciate it.

"Well, I've finished," she said. "Poor Worship has got to go and dictate to Mrs. Simpson. And what was it you and Foljambe couldn't find?"

"The silver top to Benjy's riding-whip. I was sure it was in my yesterday's waistcoat pocket, but it isn't, and Foljambe and I have been through all my suits. Nowhere."

"Georgie, how very queer," she said. "When did you see it last?"

"Some time yesterday," he said, opening a letter. A bill.

"It'll turn up. Things do," said Lucia.

He was still rather vexed with her.

"They seem to be better at vanishing," he said. "There was Blue Birdie--"

He opened the second of his letters, and the thought of riding-whip and Blue Birdie alike were totally expunged from his brain.

"My dear," he cried. "You'd never guess. Olga Bracely. She's back from her world-tour."

Lucia pretended to recall distant memories. She actually had the most vivid recollection of Olga Bracely, and, not less, of Georgie's unbounded admiration of her in his bachelor days. She wished the world-tour had been longer.

"Olga Bracely?" she said vaguely. "Ah, yes. Prima donna. Charming voice; some notes lovely. So she's got back. How nice!"

"--and she's going to sing at Covent Garden next month," continued Georgie, deep in her letter. "They're producing Cortese's opera, Lucrezia, on May the twentieth. Oh, she'll give us seats in her box. It's a gala performance. Isn't that too lovely? And she wants us to come and stay with her at Riseholme."

"Indeed, most kind of her," said Lucia. "The dear thing! But she doesn't realize how difficult it is for me to get away from Tilling while I am Mayor."

"I don't suppose she has the slightest idea that you are Mayor," said Georgie, beginning to read the letter over again.

"Ah, I forgot," said Lucia. "She has been on a world tour, you told me. And as for going up to hear Lucrezia--though it's very kind of her--I think we must get out of it. Cortese brought it down to Riseholme, I remember, as soon as he had finished it, and dear Olga begged me to come and hear her sing the great scene--I think she called it--and, oh, that cacophonous evening! Ah! Eureka! Did you not say the date was May the twentieth? How providential! That's the very evening we have fixed for my lecture on Beethoven. Olga will understand how impossible it is to cancel that."

"But that's quite easily altered," said Georgie. "You made out just the roughest schedule, and Benjy's tiger-slaying is the only date fixed. And think of hearing the gala performance in London! Lucrezia's had the hugest success in America and Australia. And in Berlin and Paris."

Lucia's decisive mind wavered. She saw herself sitting in a prominent box at Covent Garden, with all her seed-pearls and her Mayoral badge. Reporters would be eager to know who she was, and she would be careful to tell the box-attendant, so that they could find out without difficulty. And at Tilling, what réclame to have gone up to London on the prima donna's invitation to hear this performance of the world-famous Lucrezia. She might give an interview to the Hampshire Argus about it when she got back.

"Of course we must go," continued Georgie. "But she wants to know at once."

Still Lucia hesitated. It would be almost as magnificent to tell Tilling that she had refused Olga's invitation, except for the mortifying fact that Tilling would probably not believe her. And if she refused, what would Georgie do? Would he leave her to lecture on Beethoven all by herself, or would he loyally stand by her, and do his part in the four-handed pianoforte arrangement of the Fifth Symphony? He furnished the answer to that unspoken question.

"I'm sorry if you find it impossible to go," he said quite firmly, "but I shall go anyhow. You can play bits of the Moonlight by yourself. You've often said it was another key to Beethoven's soul."

It suddenly struck Lucia that Georgie seemed not to care two hoots whether she went or not. Her sensitive ear could not detect the smallest regret in his voice, and the prospect of his going alone was strangely distasteful. She did not fear any temperamental disturbance; Georgie's passions were not volcanic, but there was glitter and glamour in opera houses and prima donnas which might upset him if he was unchaperoned.

"I'll try to manage it somehow, dear, for your sake," she said, "for I know how disappointed you would be if I didn't join you in Olga's welcome to London. Dear me; I've been keeping Mrs. Simpson waiting a terrible time. Shall I take Olga's letter and dictate a grateful acceptance from both of us?"

"Don't bother," said Georgie. "I'll do it. You're much too busy. And as for that bit of Benjy's riding-whip, I daresay it will turn up."

The prospectus of the Mayoral series of cultural lectures at the Literary Institute was re-cast, for the other lecturers, wildly excited at the prospect, found every night equally convenient. Mrs. Simpson was supplied with packets of tickets, and books of receipts and counterfoils for those who sent a shilling for a single lecture or five shillings for the whole course. She arrived now at half-past nine o'clock so as to be ready for the Mayor's dictation of official correspondence at ten, and had always got through this additional work by that time. Complimentary tickets in the front row were sent to Town Councillors for Lucia's inaugural lecture, with the request that they should be returned if the recipient found himself unable to attend. Apart from these, the sale was very sluggish. Mr. John Gielgud could not attend the lecture on Shakespearian technique, and previous engagements prevented the Bishop and Sir Henry Wood from listening to the Padre on Free Will and Lucia on Beethoven. But luckily the Hampshire Argus had already announced that they had received invitations.

"Charming letters from them all, Georgie," said Lucia, tearing them up, "and their evident disappointment at not being able to come really touches me. And I don't regret, far from it, that apparently we shall not have very large audiences. A small audience is more intime; the personal touch is more quickly established. And now for my sleep-walking scene in the first lecture. I should like to discuss that with you. I shall give that with Elizabethan realism."

"Not pyjamas?" asked Georgie, in an awestruck voice.

"Certainly not: it would be a gross anachronism. But I shall have all the lights in the room extinguished. Night."

"Then they won't see you," said Georgie. "You would lose the personal touch."

Lucia puzzled over this problem.

"Ah! I have it!" she said. "An electric torch."

"Wouldn't that be an anachronism, too?" interrupted Georgie.

"Rather a pedantic criticism, Georgie," said Lucia.

"An electric torch: and as soon as the room is plunged in darkness, I shall turn it on to my face. I shall advance slowly, only my face visible suspended in the air, to the edge of the platform. Eyes open I think: I believe sleep-walkers often have their eyes open. Very wide, something like this, and unseeing. Filled with an expression of internal soul-horror. Have you half an hour to spare? Put the lights out, dear: I have my electric torch. Now."

As the day for the inaugural lecture drew near and the bookings continued unsatisfactory except from the intime point of view, Lucia showered complimentary tickets right and left. Grosvenor and Foljambe received them and Diva's Janet. In fact, those who had purchased tickets felt defrauded, since so many were to be had without even asking for them. This discontent reached Lucia's ears, and in an ecstasy of fair-mindedness she paid Mrs. Simpson the sum of one shilling for each complimentary ticket she had sent out. But even that did not silence the carpings of Elizabeth.

"What it really comes to, Diva," she said, "is that Worship is paying everybody to attend her lecture."

"Nothing of the kind," said Diva. "She is taking seats for her lecture, and giving them to her friends."

"Much the same thing," said Elizabeth, "but we won't argue. Of course she'll take the same number for Benjy's lecture and yours and all the others."

"Don't see why, if, as you say, she's only paying people to go to hers. Major Benjy can pay people to go to his."

Elizabeth softened at the thought of the puzzle that would rack the brains of Tilling when Benjy lectured.

"The dear boy is quite excited about it," she said. "He's going to have his tiger skins hung up behind the platform to give local jungle-colour. He's copied out his lecture twice already and is thinking of having it typed. I daresay Worship would allow Mrs. Simpson to do it for nothing to fill up her time a little. He read it to me: most dramatic. How I shuddered when he told how he had hit the man-slayer across the nose while he seized his rifle. Such a pity he can't whack that very tiger-skin with the riding-whip he used then. He's never quite got over its loss."

Elizabeth eyed Diva narrowly and thought she looked very uncomfortable, as if she knew something about that loss. But she replied in the most spirited manner.

"Wouldn't be very wise of him," she said. "Might take a lot more of the fur off. Might hurt the dead tiger more than he hurt the live one."

"Very droll," said Elizabeth. "But as the riding-whip vanished so mysteriously in your house, there's the end of it."

Thanks to Lucia's prudent distribution of complimentary tickets, the room was very well filled at the inaugural lecture. Georgie for a week past had been threatened with a nervous collapse at the thought of taking the chair, but he had staved this off by patent medicines, physical exercises and breakfast in bed. Wearing his ruby-coloured dinner suit, he told the audience in a firm and audible voice that any introductory words from him were quite unnecessary, as they all knew the lecturer so well. He then revealed the astonishing fact that she was their beloved Mayor of Tilling, the woman whom he had the honour to call wife. She would now address them on the Technique of the Shakespearian Stage.

Lucia first gave them a brief and lucid definition of Drama as the audible and visible presentation of situations of human woe or weal, based on and developing from those dynamic individual forces which evoke the psychological clashes of temperament that give rise to action. This action (drama) being strictly dependent on the underlying motives which prompt it and on emotional stresses might be roughly summed up as Plot. It was important that her audience should grasp that quite clearly. She went on to say that anything that distracts attention from Plot or from the psychology of which it is the logical outcome, hinders rather than helps Drama, and therefore the modern craze for elaborate decorations and embellishments must be ruthlessly condemned. It was otherwise in Shakespeare's day. There was hardly any scenery for the setting of his masterpieces, and she ventured to put forward a theory which had hitherto escaped the acumen of more erudite Shakespearian scholars than she. Shakespeare was a staunch upholder of this simplicity and had unmistakably shewn that in Midsummer Night's Dream. In that glorious masterpiece a play was chosen for the marriage festival at Athens, and the setting of it clearly proved Shakespeare's conviction that the less distraction of scenery there was on the stage, the better for Drama. The moon appeared in this play within a play. Modern decor would have provided a luminous disk moving slowly across the sky by some mechanical device. Not so Shakespeare. A man came on with a lantern, and told them that his lantern was the moon and he the man in the moon. There he was static and undistracting. Again the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe were separated by a wall. Modern decor would have furnished a convincing edifice covered with climbing roses. Not so Shakespeare. A man came out of the wings and said "I am the wall." The lovers required a chink to talk through. The wall held up his hand and parted his fingers. Thus, in the guise of a jest the Master poured scorn on elaborate scenery.

"I will now," said Lucia, "without dress or scenery of any sort, give you an illustration of the technique of the Shakespearian Stage. Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene."

Foljambe, previously instructed, was sitting by the switch-board, and on a sign from Georgie, plunged the hall in darkness. Everybody thought that a fuse had gone. That fear was dispelled because Lucia, fumbling in the dark, could not find her electric torch, and Georgie called out "Turn them on again, Foljambe." Lucia found her torch and once more the lights went out. Then the face of the Mayor sprang into vivid illumination, suspended against the blackness, and her open, sleep-walking eyes gleamed with soul-horror in the focused light. A difficult moment came when she made the pantomimic washing of her hands for the beam went wobbling about all over the place and once fell full on Georgie's face, which much embarrassed him. He deftly took the torch from her and duly controlled its direction. At the end of the speech Foljambe restored the lights, and Lucia went on with her lecture.

Owing to the absence of distinguished strangers she did not give a supper-party afterwards, at which her subject could be further discussed and illuminated, but she was in a state of high elation herself as she and Georgie partook of a plain supper alone.

"From the first moment," she said, waving a sandwich, "I knew that I was in touch with my audience and held them in my hand. A delicious sensation of power and expansion, Georgie; it is no use my trying to describe it to you, for you have to experience it to understand it. I regret that the Hampshire Argus cannot have a verbatim report in its issue this week. Mr. McConnell--how he enjoyed it--told me that it went to press to-night. I said I quite understood, and should not think of asking him to hold it up. I gave him the full typescript for next week, and promised to let him have a close-up photograph of Lady Macbeth; just my face with the background blacked out. He thanked me most warmly. And I thought, didn't you, that I did the sleep-walking scene at the right moment, just after I had been speaking of Shakespearian simplicity. A little earlier than I had meant, but I suddenly felt that it came there. I knew it came there."

"The very place for it," said Georgie, vividly recalling her catechism after the Mayoral banquet.

"And that little contretemps about the light going out before I had found my torch--"

"That wasn't my fault," said he. "You told me to signal to Foljambe, when you said 'sleep walking scene.' That was my cue."

"My dear, of course it wasn't your fault," said Lucia warmly. "You were punctuality itself. I was only thinking how fortunate that was. The audience knew what was coming, and that made the suspense greater. The rows of upturned faces, Georgie; the suspense; I could see the strain in their eyes. And in the speech, I think I got, didn't I, that veiled timbre in my voice suggestive of the unconscious physical mechanism, sinking to a strangled whisper at 'Out, damned spot!' That, I expect, was not quite original, for I now remember when I was quite a child being taken to see Ellen Terry in the part and she veiled her voice like that. A sub-conscious impression coming to the surface."

She rose.

"You must tell me more of what you thought to-morrow, dear," she said, "for I must go to bed. The emotional strain has quite worn me out, though it was well worth while. Mere mental or physical exertion--"

"I feel very tired too," said Georgie.

He followed Lucia upstairs, waiting while she practised the Lady Macbeth face in front of the mirror on the landing.

Benjy's lecture took place a week later. There was a palm tree beside his reading desk and his three tiger-skins hung on the wall behind. "Very effective, Georgie," said Lucia, as they took their seats in the middle of the front row. "Quite the Shakespearian tradition. It brings the jungle to us, the heat of the Indian noon-day, the buzz of insects. I feel quite stifled." . . . He marched on to the platform, carrying a rifle, and wearing a pith helmet and saluted the audience. He described himself as a plain old campaigner, who had seen a good deal of shikarri in his time, and read them a series of exciting adventures. Then (what a climax!) he took up from his desk a cane riding-whip with a silver top and pointed to the third of the skins.

"And that old villain," he said, "nearly prevented my having the honour to speak to you to-night. I had just sat down to a bit of tiffin, putting my rifle aside, when he was on me."

He whisked round and gave the head of the tiger-skin a terrific whack.

"I slashed at him, just like that, with my riding-whip which I had in my hand, and that gave me the half-second I needed to snatch up my rifle. I fired point-blank at his heart, and he rolled over dead. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what saved my life. It may interest you to see it, though it is familiar to some of you. I will pass it round."

He bowed to the applause and drank some whisky and a little soda. Lucia took the riding-whip from him, and passed it to Georgie, Georgie passed it to Diva. They all carefully examined the silver-top, and the initials B. F. were engraved on it. There could be no doubt of its genuineness and they all became very still and thoughtful, forbearing to look at each other.

There was loud applause at the end of the lecture, and after making rather a long speech, thanking the lecturer, Lucia turned to Diva.

"Come to lunch to-morrow," she whispered. "Just us three. I am utterly puzzled . . . Ah, Major Benjy, marvellous! What a treat! I have never been so thrilled. Dear Elizabeth, how proud you must be of him. He ought to have that lecture printed, not a word, not a syllable altered, and read it to the Royal Zoological Society. They would make him an honorary member at once."

Next day at a secret session in the garden-room Georgie and Diva contributed their personal share in the strange history of the relic (Paddy's being taken for granted, as no other supposition would fit the facts of the case) and thus the movements of the silver cap were accounted for up to the moment of its disappearance from Georgie's possession.

"I always kept it in my waistcoat pocket," he concluded, "and one morning it couldn't be found anywhere. You remember that, don't you, Lucia?"

A look of intense concentration dwelt in Lucia's eyes: Georgie did not expect much from that, because it so often led to nothing at all. Then she spoke in that veiled voice which had become rather common with her since the sleep-walking scene.

"Yes, yes," she murmured. "It comes back to me. And the evening before Elizabeth and Benjy had dined with us. Did it drop out of your pocket, do you think, Georgie? . . . She and I came into the garden-room after dinner, and . . . and she asked me to play to her, which is unusual. I am always unconscious of all else when I am playing . . ."

Lucia dropped the veiled voice which was hard to keep up and became very distinct.

"She sat all by herself at my table here," she continued. "What if she found it on the floor or somewhere? I seem to sense her doing that. And she had something on her mind when we played Bridge. She couldn't attend at all, and she suggested stopping before eleven, because she said I looked so tired, though I was never fresher. Certainly we never saw the silver cap again till last night."

"Well that is ingenious," said Diva, "and then I suppose they had another cane fitted to it, and Benjy said it was the real one. I do call that deceitful. How can we serve them out? Let's all think."

They all thought. Lucia sat with her head on one side contemplating the ceiling, as was her wont when listening to music. Then she supplied the music, too, and laughed in the silvery ascending scale of an octave and a half.

"Amichi," she said. "If you will leave it to me, I think I can arrange something that will puzzle Elizabeth. She and her accomplice have thought fit to try to puzzle us. I will contrive to puzzle them."

Diva glanced at the clock.

"How scrumptious!" she said. "Do be quick and tell us, because I must get back to help Janet."

"Not quite complete yet," answered Lucia. "A few finishing touches. But trust me."

Diva trundled away down the hill at top-speed. A party of clerical tourists were spending a day of pilgrimage in Tilling, and after being shewn round the church by the Padre were to refresh themselves at 'ye olde Tea-House.' The Padre would have his tea provided gratis as was customary with Couriers. She paused for a moment outside her house to admire the sign which quaint Irene had painted for her. There was nothing nude about it. Queen Anne in full regalia was having tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and decorum reigned. Diva plunged down the kitchen-stairs, and peeped into the garden where the tulips were now in flower. She wondered which tulip it was.

As often happened in Tilling, affairs of sensational interest overlapped. Georgie woke next morning to find Foljambe bringing in his early morning tea with the Daily Mirror.

"A picture this morning, sir, that'll make you jump," she said. "Lor', what'll happen?"

Off she went to fill his bath, and Georgie, still rather sleepy, began to look through the paper. On the third page was an article on the Royal Academy Exhibition, of which the Private View was to be held today.

"The Picture of the Year," said our Art Editor, "is already determined. For daring realism, for withering satire of the so-called Victorian age, for savage caricature of the simpering, guileless prettiness of such early Italian artists as Botticelli, Miss Irene Coles's--" Georgie read no more but turned to the centre-page of pictures. There it was. Simultaneously there came a rap on his door, and Grosvenor's hand, delicately inserted, in case he had got up, held a copy of the Times.

"Her Worship thought you might like to see the picture-page of the Times," she said. "And could you spare her the Daily Mirror, if it's got it in."

The transfer was effected. There again was Elizabeth on her oyster-shell being wafted by Benjy up the river to the quay at Tilling, and our Art Editor gave his most serious attention to this arresting piece. He was not sure whether it was justifiable to parody a noble work of art in order to ridicule an age, which, in spite of its fantastic prudery, was distinguished for achievement and progress. But no one could question the vigour, the daring, the exuberant vitality of this amazing canvas. Technically--

Georgie bounded out of bed. Thoughtful and suggestive though this criticism was, it was also lengthy, and the need for discussion with Lucia as to the reactions of Tilling was more immediate, especially since she had a committee-meeting at ten. He omitted to have his bath at all, and nearly forgot about his toupée. She was already at breakfast when he got down, with the Daily Mirror propped up against the tea-pot in front of her, and seemed to continue aloud what she must have been saying to herself.

"--and in my position, I must--good morning, Georgie--be extremely careful. She is my Mayoress, and therefore, through me, has an official position, which I am bound to uphold if it is brought into ridicule. I should equally resent any ruthless caricature of the Padre, as he is my chaplain. Of course you've seen the picture itself, Georgie, which, alas, I never did, and it's hard to form a reasoned judgment from a reduced reproduction. Is it really like poor Elizabeth?"

"The image," said Georgie. "You could tell it a hundred miles off. It's the image of Benjy, too, But that thing in his hand, which looks so like the neck of a bottle is really the top of his umbrella."

"No! I thought it was a bottle," said Lucia. "I'm glad of that. The other would have been a sad lack of taste."

"Oh, it's all a lack of taste," said Georgie, "though I don't quite feel the sadness. On the other hand it's being hailed as a masterpiece. That'll sweeten it for them a bit."

Lucia held the paper up to get a longer focus, and Georgie got his tea.

"A wonderful pose," she said. "Really, there's something majestic and dominant about Elizabeth, which distinctly flatters her. And look at Benjy with his cheeks puffed out, as when he's declared three no trumps, and knows he can't get them. A boisterous wind evidently, such as often comes roaring up the river. Waves tipped with foam. A slight want of perspective, I should have said, about the houses of Tilling . . . One can't tell how Elizabeth will take it--"

"I should have thought one could make a good guess," said Georgie.

"But it's something, as you say, to have inspired a masterpiece."

"Yes, but Irene's real object was to be thoroughly nasty. The critics seem to have found in the picture a lot she didn't intend to put there."

"Ah, but who can tell about the artist's mind?" asked Lucia, with a sudden attack of high-brow. "Did Messer Leonardo really see in the face of La Gioconda all that our wonderful Walter Pater found there? Does not the artist work in a sort of trance?"

"No; Irene wasn't in a trance at all," insisted Georgie. "Anything but. And as for your feeling that because Elizabeth is Mayoress you ought to resent it, that's thoroughly inconsistent with your theory that Art's got nothing to do with Life. But I'll go down to the High Street soon, and see what the general feeling is. You'll be late, dear, if you don't go off to your meeting at once. In fact, you're late already."

Lucia mounted her bicycle in a great hurry and set off for the Town Hall. With every stroke of her pedals she felt growing pangs of jealousy of Elizabeth. Why, oh why, had not Irene painted her, the Mayor, the first woman who had ever been Mayor of Tilling, being wafted up the river, with Georgie blowing on her from the clouds?

Such a picture would have had a far greater historical interest, and she would not have resented the grossest caricature of herself if only she could have been the paramount figure in the Picture of the Year. The town in the background would be widely recognised as Tilling, and Lucia imagined the eager comments of the crowd swarming round the masterpiece . . . "Why that's Tilling! We spent a week there this summer. Just like! . . ." "And who can that woman be? Clearly a portrait" . . . "Oh, that's the Mayor, Lucia Pillson: she was pointed out to me. Lives in a lovely family house called Mallards" . . . "And the man in the clouds with the Vandyck beard and the red dinner-suit (what a colour!) must be her husband . . ."

"What fame!" thought Lucia with aching regret. "What illimitable, immortal réclame. What publicity to be stared at all day by excited crowds!" At this moment the Private View would be going on, and Duchesses and Archbishops and Cabinet Ministers would soon be jostling to get a view of her, instead of Elizabeth and Benjy! "I must instantly commission Irene to paint my portrait," she said to herself as she dismounted at the steps of the Town Hall. "A picture that tells a story I think. A sort of biography. In my robes by the front door at Mallards with my hand on my bicycle. . . ."

She gave but scant attention to the proceedings at her Committee, and mounting again rang the bell all the way down the hill into the High Street on a secret errand to the haberdashery shop. By a curious coincidence she met Major Benjy on the threshold. He was carrying the reconstructed riding-whip and was in high elation.

"Good morning, your Worship," he said. "Just come to have my riding-whip repaired. I gave my old man-eater such a swipe at my lecture two nights ago, that I cracked it, by Jove."

"Oh Major, what a pity!" said Lucia. "But it was almost worth breaking it, wasn't it? You produced such a dramatic sensation."

"And there's another sensation this morning," chuckled Benjy. "Have you seen the notice of the Royal Academy in the Times?"

Lucia still considered that the proper public line to take was her sense of the insult to her Mayoress, though certainly Benjy seemed very cheerful.

"I have," she said indignantly. "Oh, Major Benjy, it is monstrous! I was horrified: I should not have thought it of Irene. And the Daily Mirror, too--"

"No, really?" interrupted Benjy. "I must get it."

"Such a wanton insult to dear Elizabeth," continued Lucia, "and, of course, to you up in the clouds. Horrified! I shall write to Elizabeth as soon as I get home to convey my sympathy and indignation."

"Don't you bother!" cried Benjy. "Liz hasn't been so bucked up with anything for years. After all, to be the principal feature in the Picture of the Year is a privilege that doesn't fall to everybody. Such a leg up for our obscure little Tilling, too. We're going up to town next week to see it. Why, here's Liz herself."

Elizabeth kissed her hand to Lucia from the other side of the street, and, waiting till Susan went ponderously by, tripped across, and kissed her (Lucia's) face.

"What a red-letter day, dear!" she cried. "Quaint Irene suddenly becoming so world-wide, and your humble little Mayoress almost equally so. Benjy, it's in the Daily Telegraph, too. You'd better get a copy of every morning paper. Pop in, and tell them to mend your riding-whip, while I send a telegram of congratulation to Irene.--I should think Burlington House, London, would find her now--and meet me at the paper-shop. And do persuade Irene, Worship, to let us have the picture for our exhibition here, when the Academy's over, unless the Chantrey Bequest buys it straight away."

Benjy went into the haberdasher's to get the riding-whip repaired. This meeting with him just here made Lucia's errand much simpler. She followed him into the shop and became completely absorbed in umbrellas till he went out again. Then, with an eye on the door, she spoke to the shopman in a confidential tone.

"I want you," she said, "to make me an exact copy of Major Mapp-Flint's pretty riding-whip. Silver top with the same initials on it. Quite private, you understand: it's a little surprise for a friend. And send it, please, to me at Mallards House, as soon as it's ready."

Lucia mounted her bicycle and rode thoughtfully homewards. Since Elizabeth and Benjy both took this gross insult to her Mayoress as the highest possible compliment, and longed to have quaint Irene's libel on them exhibited here, there was no need that she should make herself indignant or unhappy for their sakes. Indeed, she understood their elation, and her regret that Irene had not caricatured her instead of Elizabeth grew very bitter: she would have borne it with a magnanimity fully equal to their's. It was a slight consolation to know that the replica of the riding-whip was in hand.

She went out into the garden-room where patient Mrs. Simpson was waiting for her. There were invitations to be sent out for an afternoon party next week to view the beauties of Lucia's spring-garden, for which she wanted to rouse the envious admiration of her friends, and the list must be written out. Then there was a letter to Irene of warm congratulation to be typed. Then the Committee of the Museum, of which the Mayor was Chairman was to meet on Friday, and she gave Mrs. Simpson the key of the tin-box labelled "Museum".

"Just look in it, Mrs. Simpson," she said, "and see if there are any papers I ought to glance through. A mountain of work, I fear, to-day."

Grosvenor appeared.

"Could you see Mrs. Wyse for a moment?" she asked.

Lucia knitted her brows, and consulted her engagement-book.

"Yes, just for ten minutes," she said. "Ask her to come out here."

Grosvenor went back into the house to fetch Susan, and simultaneously Mrs. Simpson gave a shriek of horror.

"The corpse of a blue parakeet," she cried, "and an awful smell."

Lucia sprang from her seat. She plucked Blue Birdie, exhaling disinfectant and decay, from the Museum box, and scudding across the room thrust it into the fire. She poked and battered it down among the glowing embers, and even as she wrought she cursed herself for not having told Mrs. Simpson to leave it where it was and lock the Museum box again, but it was too late for that. In that swift journey to cremation Blue Birdie had dropped a plume or two, and from the fire came a vivid smell of burned feathers. But she was just in time and had resumed her seat and taken up her pen as Susan came ponderously up the steps into the garden-room.

"Good morning, dear," said Lucia. "At my eternal tasks as usual, but charmed to see you."

She rose in welcome, and to her horror saw a long blue tail-feather (slightly tinged with red) on the carpet. She planted her foot upon it.

"Good morning," said Susan. "What a horrid smell of burned feathers."

Lucia sniffed, still standing firm.

"I do smell something," she said. "Gas, surely. I thought I smelt it the other day. I must send for my town-surveyor. Do you not smell gas, Mrs. Simpson?"

Lucia focused on her secretary the full power of her gimlet-eye.

"Certainly, gas," said that loyal woman, locking the Museum box.

"Most disagreeable," said Lucia, advancing on Susan. "Let us go into the garden and have our little talk there. I know what you've come about: Irene's picture. The Picture of the Year, they say. Elizabeth is famous at last, and is skipping for joy. I am so pleased for her sake."

"I should certainly have said burned feathers," repeated Susan.

Dire speculations flitted through Lucia's mind: would Susan's vague but retentive brain begin to grope after a connection between burned feathers and her vanished bird? A concentration of force and volubility was required, and taking another step forward on to another blue feather, she broke into a gabble of topics as she launched Susan, like a huge liner, down the slip of the garden-room stairs.

"No, Susan, gas," she said. "And have you seen the reproduction of Irene's picture in the Times? Mrs. Simpson, would you kindly bring the Times into the garden. You must stroll across the lawn and have a peep at my daffodils in my giardino segreto. Never have I had such a show. Those lovely lines 'dancing with the daffodils'. How true! I saw you in the High Street this morning, dear, on your tricycle. And such wallflowers; they will be in fullest bloom for my party next week, to which you and Mr. Wyse must come. And Benjy in the clouds; so like, but Georgie says it isn't a bottle, but his umbrella. Tell me exactly what you think of it all. So important that I should know what Tilling feels."

Unable to withstand such a cataract of subjects, Susan could hardly say 'burned feathers' again. She showed a tendency to drift towards the garden-room on their return, but Lucia, like a powerful tug, edged her away from that dangerous shoal and towed her out to the front door of Mallards, where she cast her adrift to propel her tricycle under her own steam. Then returning to the garden-room, she found that the admirable Mrs. Simpson had picked up a few more feathers, which she had laid on Lucia's blotting-pad.

Lucia threw them into the fire and swept up some half-burned fragments from the hearth.

"The smell of gas seems quite gone, Mrs. Simpson," she said. "No need, I think, to send for my town-surveyor. It is such a pleasure to work with anyone who understands me as well as you . . . Yes, the list for my garden-party."

The replica of the riding-whip was delivered, and looked identical. Lucia's disposition of it was singular. After she had retired for the night, she tied it safely up among the foliage of the Clematis Montana which grew thickly up to the sill of her bedroom window. The silver top soon grew tarnished in this exposure, spiders spun threads about it, moisture dulled its varnished shaft, and it became a weathered object. "About ripe," said Lucia to herself one morning, and rang up Elizabeth and Benjy, inviting them to tea at ye olde tea-house next day, with Bridge to follow. They had just returned from their visit to London to see the Picture of the Year, and accepted with pleasure.

Before starting for Diva's, Lucia took her umbrella up to her bedroom, and subsequently carried it to the tea-room, arriving there ten minutes before the others. Diva was busy in the kitchen, and she looked into the card-room. Yes: there was the heavy cupboard with claw feet standing in the corner; perfect. Her manœuvres then comprised opening her umbrella and furling it again; and hearing Diva's firm foot on the kitchen stairs she came softly back into the tea-room.

"Diva, what a delicious smell!" she said. "Oh, I want eighteen-penny teas. I came a few minutes early to tell you."

"Reckoned on that," said Diva. "The smell is waffles. I've been practising. Going to make waffles at my lecture, as an illustration, if I can do them over a spirit-lamp. Hand them round to the front row. Good advertisement. Here are the others."

The waffles were a greater success than Diva had anticipated, and the compliments hardly made up for the consumption. Then they adjourned to the card-room, and Lucia, leaning her umbrella against the wall let it slip behind the big cupboard.

"So clumsy!" she said, "but never mind it now. We shall have to move the cupboard afterwards. Cut? You and I, Georgie. Families. Happy families."

It was chatty Bridge at first, rich in agreeable conversation.

"We only got back from London yesterday," said Elizabeth, dealing. "Such a rush, but we went to the Academy three times; one no trump."

"Two spades," said Georgie. "What did you think of the Picture?"

"Such a crowd round it! We had to scriggle in."

"And I'm blest if I don't believe that they recognised Liz," put in Major Benjy. "A couple of women looked at her and then at the picture and back again, and whispered together, by Jove."

"I'm sure they recognised me at our second visit," said Elizabeth. "The crowd was thicker than ever, and we got quite wedged in. Such glances and whisperings all round. Most entertaining, wasn't it, Benjy?"

Lucia tried to cork up her bitterness, but failed.

"I am glad you enjoyed it so much, dear," she said. "How I envy you your superb self-confidence. I should find such publicity quite insupportable. I should have scriggled out again at whatever cost."

"Dear Worship, I don't think you would if you ever found yourself in such a position," said Elizabeth. "You would face it. So brave!"

"If we're playing Bridge, two spades was what I said. Ever so long ago," announced Georgie.

"Oh, Mr. Georgie; apologies," said Elizabeth. "I'm such a chatterbox. What do you bid, Benjy? Don't be so slow."

"Two no trumps," said Benjy. "We made our third visit during lunch-time, when there were fewer people--"

"Three spades," said Lucia. "All I meant, dear Elizabeth, was that it is sufficient for me to tackle my little bit of public service, quietly and humbly and obscurely--"

"So like you, dear," retorted Elizabeth, "and I double three spades. That'll be a nice little bit for you to tackle quietly."

Lucia made no reply, but the pleasant atmosphere was now charged with perilous stuff, for on the one side the Mayor was writhing with envy at the recognition of Elizabeth from the crowds round the Picture of the Year, while the Mayoress was writhing with exasperation at Lucia's pitiful assertion that she shunned publicity.

Lucia won the doubled contract and the game.

"So there's my little bit, Georgie," she said, "and you played it very carefully, though of course it was a sitter. I ought to have redoubled: forgive me."

"Benjy, your finesse was idiotic," said Elizabeth, palpably wincing. "If you had played your ace, they'd have been two down. Probably more.''

"And what about your doubling?" asked Benjy. "And what about your original no-trump?"

"Thoroughly justified, both of them," said Elizabeth, "if you hadn't finessed. Cut to me, please, Worship."

"But you've just dealt, dear," cooed Lucia.

"Haw, Haw. Well tried, Liz," said Benjy.

Elizabeth looked so deadly at Benjy's gentle fun that at the end of the hand Lucia loaded her with compliments.

"Beautifully played, dear!" she said. "Did you notice, Georgie, how Elizabeth kept putting the lead with you? Masterly!"

Elizabeth was not to be appeased with that sort of blarney.

"Thank you, dear," she said. "I'm sorry, Benjy: I ought to have put the lead with Worship, and taken another trick."

Diva came in as they were finishing the last rubber.

"Quite a lot of teas," she said. "But they all come in so late now. Hungrier, I suppose. Saves them supper. No more waffles for shilling teas. Not if I know it. Too popular."

Lucia had won from the whole table, and with an indifferent air she swept silver and copper into her bag without troubling to count it.

"I must be off," she said. "I have pages of Borough expenditure to look through. Oh, my umbrella! I nearly forgot it."

''Dear Worship,'' asked Elizabeth. "Do tell me what that means! Either you forget a thing, or you don't."

"I let it slip behind your big cupboard, Diva," said Lucia, not taking the slightest notice of her Mayoress. "Catch hold of that end, Georgie, and we'll run it out from the wall."

"Permit me," said Benjy, taking Lucia's end. "Now then, with a heave-ho, as they say in the sister service. One, two, three."

He gave a tremendous tug. The cupboard, not so heavy as it looked, glided away from the wall with an interior rattle of crockery.

"Oh, my things!" cried Diva. "Do be careful."

"Here's your umbrella," said Georgie. "Covered with dust . . . Why, what's this? Major Benjy's riding whip, isn't it? Lost here ages ago. Well, that is queer!"

Diva simply snatched it from Georgie.

"But it is!" she cried. "Initials, everything. Must have lain here all this time. But at your lecture the other day Major--"

Lucia instantly interrupted her.

"What a fortunate discovery!" she said. "How glad you will be, Major, to get your precious relic back. Why it's half-past seven! Good night everybody."

She and Georgie let themselves out into the street.

"But you must tell me," said he, as they walked briskly up the hill. "I shall die if you don't tell me. How did you do it?"

"I? What do you mean?" asked the aggravating woman.

"You're too tarsome," said Georgie crossly. "And it isn't fair. Diva told you how she buried the silver cap, and I told you how I dug it up, and you tell us nothing. Very miserly!"

Lucia was startled at the ill-humour in his voice.

"My dear, I was only teasing you--" she began.

"Well it doesn't amuse me to be teased," he snapped at her. "You're like Elizabeth sometimes."

"Georgie, what a monstrous thing to say to me! Of course, I'll tell you, and Diva, too. Ring her up and ask her to pop in after dinner."

She paused with her hand on the door of Mallards. "But never hint to the poor Mapp-Flints," she said, "as Diva did just now, that the riding-whip Benjy used at his lecture couldn't have been the real one. They knew that quite well, and they knew we know it. Much more excruciating for them not to rub it in."