Trouble for Lucia E-Book

E.F. Benson

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Lucia is now rich, happily married, and Mayor of Tilling – but the village gossip is in full swing and Lucia’s arch-rival Miss Elizabeth Mapp is out for revenge. Their epic collisions rock their small society and provide the narrative engines for Benson’s gloriously farcical masterpieces. Will Lucia fall at the final hurdle? Delightfully witty and shamelessly entertaining, this is a fitting finale to the series – E.F. Benson’s ‘au reservoir’!

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER I

Lucia Pillson, the Mayor-Elect of Tilling and her husband Georgie were talking together one October afternoon in the garden-room at Mallards. The debate demanded the exercise of their keenest faculties. Viz:

Should Lucia, when next month she entered on the supreme Municipal Office, continue to go down to the High Street every morning after breakfast with her market-basket, and make her personal purchases at the shops of the baker, the grocer, the butcher and wherever else the needs of the day’s catering directed? There were pros and cons to be considered, and Lucia had been putting the case for both sides with the tedious lucidity of opposing counsel addressing the Court. It might be confidently expected that, when she had finished exploring the entire territory, she would be fully competent to express the verdict of the jury and the sentence of the judge. In anticipation of the numerous speeches she would soon be called upon to make as Mayor, she was cultivating, whenever she remembered to do so, a finished oratorical style, and a pedantic Oxford voice.

“I must be very careful, Georgie,” she said. “Thoroughly democratic as you know I am in the truest sense of the word, I shall be entrusted, on the ninth of November next, with the duty of upholding the dignity and tradition of my high office. I’m not sure that I ought to go popping in and out of shops, as I have hitherto done, carrying my market-basket and bustling about just like anybody else. Let me put a somewhat similar case to you. Supposing you saw a newly-appointed Lord Chancellor trotting round the streets of Westminster in shorts, for the sake of exercise. What would you feel about it? What would your reactions be?”

“I hope you’re not thinking of putting on shorts, are you?” asked Georgie, hoping to introduce a lighter tone.

“Certainly not,” said Lucia. “A parallel case only. And then there’s this. It would be intolerable to my democratic principles that, if I went into the grocer’s to make some small purchase, other customers already there should stand aside in order that I might be served first. That would never do. Never!”

Georgie surveyed with an absent air the pretty piece of needlework on which he was engaged. He was embroidering the Borough arms of Tilling in coloured silks on the back of the white kid gloves which Lucia would wear at the inaugural ceremony, and he was not quite sure that he had placed the device exactly in the middle.

“How tar’some,” he said. “Well, it will have to do. I daresay it will stretch right. About the Lord Chancellor in shorts. I don’t think I should mind. It would depend a little on what sort of knees he had. As for other customers standing aside because you were the Mayor, I don’t think you need be afraid of that for a moment. Most unlikely.”

Lucia became violently interested in her gloves.

“My dear, they look too smart for anything,” she said. “Beautiful work, Georgie. Lovely. They remind me of the jewelled gloves you see in primitive Italian pictures on the hands of kneeling Popes and adoring Bishops.”

“Do you think the arms are quite in the middle?” he asked.

“It looks perfect. Shall I try it on?”

Lucia displayed the back of her gloved hand, leaning her forehead elegantly against the finger-tips.

“Yes, that seems all right,” said Georgie. “Give it me back. It’s not quite finished. About the other thing. It would be rather marked if you suddenly stopped doing your marketing yourself, as you’ve done it every day for the last two years or so. Except Sundays. Some people might say that you were swanky because you were Mayor. Elizabeth would.”

“Possibly. But I should be puzzled, dear, to name off-hand anything that mattered less to me than what Elizabeth Mapp-Flint said, poor woman. Give me your opinion, not hers.”

“You might drop the marketing by degrees, if you felt it was undignified,” said Georgie yawning. “Shop every day this week, and only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week–”

“No, dear,” interrupted Lucia. “That would be hedging, and I never hedge. One thing or the other.”

“A hedge may save you from falling into a ditch,” said Georgie brilliantly.

“Georgino,how epigrammatic! What does it mean exactly? What ditch?”

“Any ditch,” said Georgie. “Just making a mistake and not being judicious. Tilling is a mass of pitfalls.”

“I don’t mind about pitfalls so long as my conscience assures me that I am guided by right principles. I must set an example in my private as well as my public life. If I decide to go on with my daily marketing I shall certainly make a point of buying very cheap, simple provisions. Cabbages and turnips, for instance, not asparagus.”

“We’ve got plenty of that in the garden when it comes in,” said Georgie.

”–plaice, not soles. Apples,” went on Lucia, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Plain living in private–everybody will hear me buying cheap vegetables–Splendour, those lovely gloves, in public. And high thinking in both.”

“That would sound well in your inaugural speech,” said Georgie.

“I hope it will. What I want to do in our dear Tilling is to elevate the tone, to make it a real centre of intellectual and artistic activity. That must go on simultaneously with social reforms and the well-being of the poorer classes. All the slums must be cleared away. There must be an end to overcrowding. Pasteurisation of milk, Georgie; a strict censorship of the films; benches in sunny corners. Of course, it will cost money. I should like to see the rates go up by leaps and bounds.”

“That won’t make you very popular,” said Georgie.

“I should welcome any unpopularity that such reforms might earn for me. The decorative side of life, too. Flower boxes in the windows of the humblest dwellings. Cheap concerts of first-rate music. The revival of ancient customs, like beating the bounds. I must find out just what that is.”

“The town-council went in procession round the boundaries of the parish,” said Georgie, “and the Mayor was bumped on the boundary stones. Hadn’t we better stick to the question of whether you go marketing or not?”

Lucia did not like the idea of being bumped on boundary stones...

“Quite right, dear. I lose myself in my dreams. We were talking about the example we must set in plain living. I wish it to be known that I do my catering with economy. To be heard ordering neck of mutton at the butcher’s.”

“I won’t eat neck of mutton in order to be an example to anybody,” said Georgie. “And, personally, whatever you settle to do, I won’t give up the morning shopping. Besides, one learns all the news then. Why, it would be worse than not having the wireless! I should be lost without it. So would you.”

Lucia tried to picture herself bereft of that eager daily interchange of gossip, when her Tilling circle of friends bustled up and down the High Street carrying their market-baskets and bumping into each other in the narrow doorways of shops. Rain or fine, with umbrellas and goloshes or with sunshades and the thinnest blouses, it was the bracing hour that whetted the appetite for the complications of life. The idea of missing it was unthinkable, and without the slightest difficulty she ascribed exalted motives and a high sense of duty to its continuance.

“You are right, dear,” she said. “Thank you for your guidance! More than ever now in my new position, it will be incumbent on me to know what Tilling is thinking and feeling. My finger must be on its pulse. That book I was reading the other day, which impressed me so enormously–what on earth was it? A biography.”

“Catherine the Great?” asked Georgie. Lucia had dipped into it lately, but the suggestion was intended to be humorous.

“Yes: I shall forget my own name next. She always had her finger on the pulse of her people: that I maintain was the real source of her greatness. She used to disguise herself, you remember, as a peasant woman–moujik, isn’t it?–and let herself out of the back-door of the Winter Palace, and sat in the bars and cafés or wherever they drink vodka and tea–samovars–and hear what the common people were saying, astonishing her Ministers with her knowledge.”

Georgie felt fearfully bored with her and this preposterous rubbish. Lucia did not care two straws what “the common people” were saying. She, in this hour of shopping in the High Street, wanted to know what fresh mischief Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was hatching, and what Major Benjy Mapp-Flint was at, and whether Diva Plaistow’s Irish terrier had got mange, and if Irene Coles had obtained the sanction of the Town Surveying Department to paint a fresco on the front of her house of a nude Venus rising from the sea, and if Susan Wyse had really sat down on her budgerigar, squashing it quite flat. Instead of which she gassed about the duty of the Mayor Elect of Tilling to have her finger on the pulse of the place, like Catherine the Great. Such nonsense was best met with a touch of sarcasm.

“That will be a new experience, dear,” he said. “Fancy your disguising yourself as a gypsy-woman and stealing out through the back-door, and sitting in the bars of public-houses. I do call that thorough.”

“Ah, you take me too literally, Georgie,” she said. “Only a loose analogy. In some respects I should be sorry to behave like that marvellous woman. But what a splendid notion to listen to all that the moujiks said when their tongues were unloosed with vodka. In vino veritas.”

“Not always,” said Georgie. “For instance, Major Benjy was sitting boozing in the club this afternoon. The wind was too high for him to go out and play golf, so he spent his time in port...Putting out in a gale, you see, or stopping in port. Quite a lot of port.”

Georgie waited for his wife to applaud this pretty play upon words, but she was thinking about herself and Catherine the Great.

“Well, wine wasn’t making him truthful, but just the opposite,” he went on. “Telling the most awful whoppers about the tigers he’d shot and his huge success with women when he was younger.”

“Poor Elizabeth,” said Lucia in an unsympathetic voice.

“He grew quite dreadful,” said Georgie, “talking about his bachelor days of freedom. And he had the insolence to dig me in the ribs and whisper ‘We know all about that, old boy, don’t we? Ha ha. What?’”

“Georgie, how impertinent,” cried Lucia. “Why, it’s comparing Elizabeth with me!”

“And me with him,” suggested Georgie.

“Altogether most unpleasant. Any more news?”

“Yes; I saw Diva for a moment. Paddy’s not got mange. Only a little eczema. And she’s quite determined to start her tea-shop. She asked me if I thought you would perform the opening ceremony and drink the first cup of tea. I said I thought you certainly would. Such éclatfor her if you went in your robes! I don’t suppose there would be a muffin left in the place.”

Lucia’s brow clouded, but it made her happy to be on Mayoral subjects again.

“Georgie, I wish you hadn’t encouraged her to hope that I would,” she said. “I should be delighted to give Diva such a magnificent send-off as that, but I must be very careful. Supposing next day somebody opens a new boot-shop I shall have made a precedent and shall have to wear the first pair of shoes. Or a hat-shop. If I open one, I must open all, for I will not show any sort of favouritism. I will gladly, ever so gladly, go and drink the first cup of tea at Diva’s, as Mrs. Pillson, but not officially. I must be officially incognita.”

“She’ll be disappointed,” said Georgie.

“Poor Diva, I fear so. As for robes, quite impossible. The Mayor never appears in robes except when attended by the whole Corporation. I can hardly request my Aldermen and Councillors to have tea with Diva in state. Of course it’s most enterprising of her, but I can’t believe her little tea-room will resemble the goldmine she anticipates.”

“I don’t think she’s doing it just to make money,” said Georgie, “though, of course she wouldn’t mind that.”

“What then? Think of the expense of cups and saucers and tables and tea-spoons. The trouble, too. She told me she meant to serve the teas herself.”

“It’s just that she’ll enjoy so much,” said Georgie, “popping in and out and talking to her customers. She’s got a raving passion for talking to anybody, and she finds it such silent work living alone. She’ll have constant conversation if her tea-room catches on.”

“Well, you may be right,” said Lucia. “Oh, and there’s another thing. My Mayoral banquet. I lay awake half last night–perhaps not quite so much–thinking about it, and I don’t see how you can come to it.”

“That’s sickening,” said Georgie. “Why not?”

“It’s very difficult. If I ask you, it will certainly set a precedent–”

“You think too much about precedents,” interrupted Georgie. “Nobody will care.”

“But listen. The banquet is entirely official. I shall ask the Mayors of neighbouring boroughs, the Bishop, the Lord Lieutenant, the Vicar, who is my Chaplain, my Aldermen and Councillors, and Justices of the Peace. You, dear, have no official position. We are, so to speak, like Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.”

“You said that before,” said Georgie, “and I looked it up. When she opened Parliament he drove with her to Westminster and sat beside her on a throne. A throne–”

“I wonder if that is so. Some of those lives of the Queen are very inaccurate. At that rate, the wife of the Lord Chancellor ought to sit on a corner of the Woolsack. Besides, where are you to be placed? You can’t sit next me. The Lord Lieutenant must be on my right and the Bishop on my left–”

“If they come,” observed Georgie.

“Naturally they won’t sit there if they don’t. After them come the Mayors, Aldermen and Councillors. You would have to sit below them all, and that would be intolerable to me.”

“I shouldn’t mind where I sat,” said Georgie.

“I should love you to be there, Georgie,” she said. “But in what capacity? It’s all official, I repeat. Think of tradition.”

“But there isn’t any tradition. No woman has ever been Mayor of Tilling before: you’ve often told me that. However, don’t let us argue about it. I expect Tilling will think it very odd if I’m not there. I shall go up to London that day, and then you can tell them I’ve been called away.”

“That would never do,” cried Lucia. “Tilling would think it much odder if you weren’t here on my great day.”

“Having dinner alone at Mallards,” said Georgie bitterly. “The neck of mutton you spoke of.”

He rose.

“Time for my bath,” he said. “And I shan’t talk about it or think about it any more. I leave it to you.”

Georgie went upstairs, feeling much vexed. He undressed and put on his blue silk dressing-gown, and peppered his bath with a liberal allowance of verbena salts. He submerged himself in the fragrant liquid, and concentrated his mind on the subject he had resolved not to think about any more. Just now Lucia seemed able to apply her mind to nothing except herself and the duties or dignities of her coming office.

“‘Egalo-megalo-mayoralo-mania’, I call it,” Georgie said to himself in a withering whisper. “Catherine the Great! Delirium! She thinks the whole town is as wildly excited about her being Mayor as she is herself. Whereas it’s a matter of supreme indifference to them...All except Elizabeth, who trembles with rage and jealousy whenever she sees Lucia...But she always did that...Bother! I’ve dropped my soap and it slips away like an eel...All very tar’some. Lucia can’t talk about anything else...Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, there’s nothing but that..Mayoral complex...It’s a crashing bore, that’s what it is...Everlastingly reminding me that I’ve no official position...Hullo, who’s that? No, you can’t come in, whoever you are.”

A volley of raps had sounded at the door of the bathroom. Then Lucia’s voice:

“No, I don’t want to come in,” she said. “But, eureka,Georgie. Ho trovato: ho ben trovato!”

“What have you found?” called Georgie, sitting up in his bath.

“It. Me. My banquet. You and my banquet. I’ll tell you at dinner. Be quick.”

“Probably she’ll let me hand the cheese,” thought Georgie, still feeling morose. “I’m in no hurry to hear that.”

He padded back to his bedroom in his dressing-gown and green morocco slippers. A parcel had arrived for him while he was at his bath, and Foljambe, the parlour-maid valet had put it on his pink bed-quilt.

“It must be my new dinner suit,” he said to himself. “And with all this worry I’d quite forgotten about it.”

He cut the string and there it was: jacket and waistcoat and trousers of ruby-coloured velvet, with synthetic-onyx buttons, quite superb. It was Lucia’s birthday present to him; he was to order just what dinner-suit he liked, and the bill was to be sent to her. She knew nothing more, except that he had told her that it would be something quite out of the common and that Tilling would be astonished. He was thrilled with its audacious beauty.

“Now let me think,” he meditated. “One of my pleated shirts, and a black butterfly tie, and my garnet solitaire. And my pink vest. Nobody will see it, but I shall know it’s there. And red socks. Or daren’t I?”

He swiftly invested himself in this striking creation. It fitted beautifully in front, and he rang the bell for Foljambe to see if it was equally satisfactory behind. Her masterful knock sounded on the door, and he said come in.

Foljambe gave a shrill ejaculation.

“Lor!” she said. “Something fancy-dress, sir?”

“Not at all,” said Georgie. “My new evening suit. Isn’t it smart, Foljambe? Does it fit all right at the back?”

“Seems to,” said Foljambe, pulling his sleeve. “Stand a bit straighter, sir. Yes, quite a good fit. Nearly gave me one.”

“Don’t you like it?” asked Georgie anxiously.

“Well, a bit of a shock, sir. I hope you won’t spill things on it, for it would be a rare job to get anything sticky out of the velvet, and you do throw your food about sometimes. But it is pretty now I begin to take it in.”

Georgie went into his sitting-room next door, where there was a big mirror over the fireplace, and turned on all the electric lights. He got up on a chair, so that he could get a more comprehensive view of himself, and revolved slowly in the brilliant light. He was so absorbed in his Narcissism that he did not hear Lucia come out of her bedroom. The door was ajar, and she peeped in. She gave a strangled scream at the sight of a large man in a glaring red suit standing on a chair with his back to her. It was unusual. Georgie whisked round at her cry.

“Look!” he said. “Your delicious present. There it was when I came from my bath. Isn’t it lovely?”

Lucia recovered from her shock.

“Positively Venetian, Georgie,” she said. “Real Titian.”

“I think it’s adorable,” said Georgie, getting down. “Won’t Tilling be excited? Thank you a thousand times.”

“And a thousand congratulations, Georgino,” she said. “Oh, and my discovery! I am a genius, dear. There’ll be a high table across the room at my banquet with two tables joining it at the corners going down the room. Me, of course, in the centre of the high table. We shall sit only on one side of these tables. And you can sit all by yourself exactly opposite me. Facing me. No official position, neither above or below the others. Just the Mayor’s husband close to her materially, but officially in the air, so to speak.”

From below came the merry sound of little bells that announced dinner. Grosvenor, the other parlour-maid, was playing quite a sweet tune on them to-night, which showed she was pleased with life. When she was cross she made a snappy jangled discord.

“That solves everything!” said Georgie. “Brilliant. How clever of you! I didfeel a little hurt at the thought of not being there. Listen: Grosvenor’s happy, too. We’re all pleased.”

He offered her his beautiful velvet arm, and they went downstairs.

“And my garnet solitaire,” he said. “Doesn’t it go well with my clothes? I must tuck my napkin in securely. It would be frightful if I spilt anything. I am glad about the banquet.”

“So am I, dear. It would have been horrid not to have had you there. But I had to reconcile the feelings of private life with the etiquette of public life. We must expect problems of the sort to arise while I’m Mayor–”

“Such good fish,” said Georgie, trying to divert her from the eternal subject.

Quite useless.

“Excellent, isn’t it,” said Lucia. “In the time of Queen Elizabeth, Georgie, the Mayor of Tilling was charged with supplying fish for the Court. A train of pack-mules was despatched to London twice a week. What a wonderful thing if I could get that custom restored! Such an impetus to the fishermen here.”

“The Court must have been rather partial to putrid fish,” said Georgie. “I shouldn’t care to eat a whiting that had been carried on a mule to London in hot weather, or in cold, for that matter.”

“Ah, I should not mean to go back to the mules,” said Lucia, “though how picturesque to see them loaded at the river-bank, and starting on their Royal errand. One would use the railway. I wonder if it could be managed. The Royal Fish Express.”

“Do you propose a special train full of soles and lobsters twice a week for Buckingham Palace or Royal Lodge?” he asked.

“A refrigerating van would be sufficient. I daresay if I searched in the archives I should find that Tilling had the monopoly of supplying the Royal table, and that the right has never been revoked. If so, I should think a petition to the King: ‘Your Majesty’s loyal subjects of Tilling humbly pray that this privilege be restored to them’. Or perhaps some preliminary enquiries from the Directors of the Southern Railway first. Such prestige. And a steady demand would be a wonderful thing for the fishing industry.”

“It’s got enough demand already,” said Georgie. “There isn’t too much fish for us here as it is.”

“Georgie! Where’s your political economy? Demand invariably leads to supply. There would be more fishing-smacks built, more men would follow the sea. Unemployment would diminish. Think of Yarmouth and its immense trade. How I should like to capture some of it for our Tilling! I mustn’t lose sight of that among all the schemes I ponder over so constantly...But I’ve had a busy day: let us relax a little and make music in the garden-room.”

She rose, and her voice assumed a careless lightness.

“I saw to-day,” she said, “in one of my old bound-up volumes of duets, an arrangement for four hands of Glazonov’s ‘Bacchanal’. It looked rather attractive. We might run through it.”

Georgie had seen it, too, a week ago, and though most of Lucia’s music was familiar, he felt sure they had never tried this. He had had a bad cold in the head, and, not being up to their usual walk for a day or two, he had played over the bass part several times while Lucia was out taking her exercise: some day it might come in useful. Then this very afternoon, busy in the garden, he had heard a long-continued soft-pedalled tinkle, and rightly conjectured that Lucia was stealing a march on him in the treble part...Out they went to the garden-room, and Lucia found the ‘Bacchanal’. His new suit made him feel very kindly disposed.

“You must take the treble, then,” he said. “I could never read that.”

“How lazy of you, dear,” she said, instantly sitting down. “Well, I’ll try if you insist, but you mustn’t scold me if I make a mess of it.”

It went beautifully. Odd trains of thought coursed through the heads of both. “Why is she such a hypocrite?” he wondered. “She was practising it half the afternoon.”...Simultaneously Lucia was saying to herself, “Georgie can’t be reading it. He must have tried it before.” At the end were mutual congratulations: each thought that the other had read it wonderfully well. Then bed-time. She kissed her hand to him as she closed her bedroom door, and Georgie made a few revolutions in front of his mirror before divesting himself of the new suit. By a touching transference of emotions, Lucia had vivid dreams of heaving seas of ruby-coloured velvet, and Georgie of the new Cunard liner, Queen Mary,running aground in the river on a monstrous shoal of whiting and lobsters.

There was an early autumnal frost in the night, though not severe enough to blacken the superb dahlias in Lucia’s garden and soon melting. The lawn was covered with pearly moisture when she and Georgie met at breakfast, and the red roofs of Tilling gleamed bright in the morning sun. Lucia had already engaged a shorthand and typewriting secretary to get used to her duties before the heavy mayoral correspondence began to pour in, but to-day the post brought nothing but a few circulars at once committed to the waste-paper basket. But it would not do to leave Mrs. Simpson completely idle, so, before setting out for the morning marketing, Lucia dictated invitations to Mrs. Bartlett and the Padre, to Susan and Mr. Wyse, to Elizabeth Mapp-Flint and Major Benjy for dinner and Bridge the following night. She would write in the invocations and signatures when she returned, and she apologized in each letter for the stress of work which had prevented her from writing with her own hand throughout.

“Georgie, I shall have to learn typing myself,” she said as they started. “I can easily imagine some municipal crisis which would swamp Mrs. Simpson, quick worker though she is. Or isn’t there a machine called the dictaphone?...How deliciously warm the sun is! When we get back I shall make a water-colour sketch of my dahlias in the giardino segreto.Any night might see them blackened, and I should deplore not having a record of them. Ecco,there’s Irene beckoning to us from her window. Something about the fresco, I expect.”

Irene Coles bounced out into the street.

“Lucia, beloved one,” she cried. “It’s too cruel! That lousy Town Surveying Department refuses to sanction my fresco-design of Venus rising from the sea. Come into my studio and look at my sketch of it, which they have sent back to me. Goths and Vandals and Mrs. Grundys to a man and woman!”

The sketch was very striking. A nude, well-nourished, putty-coloured female, mottled with green shadows, was balanced on an oyster shell, while a prizefighter, representing the wind and sprawling across the sky, propelled her with puffed cheeks up a river towards a red-roofed town on the shore which presented Tilling with pre-Raphaelite fidelity.

“Dear me! Quite Botticellian!” said Lucia.

“What?” screamed Irene. “Darling, how can you compare my great deep-bosomed Venus, fit to be the mother of heroes, with Botticelli’s anæmic flapper? What’ll the next generation in Tilling be like when my Venus gets ashore?”

“Yes. Quite. So vigorous! So allegorical!” said Lucia. “But, dear Irene, do you want everybody to be reminded of that whenever they go up and down the street?”

“Why not? What can be nobler than Motherhood?” asked Irene.

“Nothing! Nothing!” Lucia assured her. “For a maternity home–”

Irene picked up her sketch and tore it across.

“I know what I shall do,” she said. “I shall turn my wondrous Hellenic goddess into a Victorian mother. I shall dress her in a tartan shawl and skirt and a bonnet with a bow underneath her chin and button-boots and a parasol. I shall give my lusty South Wind a frock-coat and trousers and a top-hat, and send the design back to that foul-minded Department asking if I have now removed all objectionable features. Georgie, when next you come to see me, you won’t need to blush.”

“I haven’t blushed once!” said Georgie indignantly. “How can you tell such fibs?”

“Dear Irene is so full of vitality,” said Lucia as they regained the street. “Such ozone! She always makes me feel as if I was out in a high wind, and I wonder if my hair is coming down. But so easily managed with a little tact–Ah! There’s Diva at her window. We might pop in on her for a minute, and I’ll break it to her about a State-opening for her tea-rooms...Take care, Georgie! There’s Susan’s Royce plunging down on us.”

Mrs. Wyse’s huge car, turning into the High Street, drew up directly between them and Diva’s house. She let down the window and put her large round face where the window had been. As usual, she had on her ponderous fur-coat, but on her head was a quite new hat, to the side of which, like a cockade, was attached a trophy of bright blue, green and yellow plumage, evidently the wings, tail and breast of a small bird.

“Can I give you a lift, dear?” she said in a mournful voice. “I’m going shopping in the High Street. You, too, of course, Mr. Georgie, if you don’t mind sitting in front.”

“Many thanks, dear Susan,” said Lucia, “but hardly worth while, as we are in the High Street already.”

Susan nodded sadly to them, put up the window, and signalled to her chauffeur to proceed. Ten yards brought her to the grocer’s, and the car stopped again.

“Georgie, it was the remains of the budgerigar tacked to her hat,” said Lucia in a thrilled whisper as they crossed the street. “Yes, Diva: we’ll pop in for a minute.”

“Wearing it,” said Diva in her telegraphic manner as she opened the front-door to them. “In her hat.”

“Then is it true, Diva?” asked Lucia. “Did she sit down on her budgerigar?”

“Definitely. I was having tea with her. Cage open. Budgerigar flitting about the room. A messy bird. Then Susan suddenly said ‘Tweet, tweet. Where’s my blue Birdie?’ Not a sign of it. ‘It’ll be all right,’ said Susan. ‘In the piano or somewhere.’ So we finished tea. Susan got up and there was blue Birdie. Dead and as flat as a pancake. We came away at once.”

“Very tactful,” said Georgie. “But the head wasn’t on her hat, I’m pretty sure.”

“Having it stuffed, I expect. To be added later between the wings. And what about those new clothes, Mr. Georgie?”

“How on earth did you hear that?” said Georgie in great astonishment. How news travelled in Tilling! Only last night, dining at home, he had worn the ruby-coloured velvet for the first time, and now, quite early next morning, Diva had heard about it. Really things were known in Tilling almost before they happened.

“My Janet was posting a letter, ten p.m.,” said Diva. “Foljambe was posting a letter. They chatted. And are they really red?”

“You’ll see before long,” said Georgie, pleased to know that interest in his suit was blazing already. “Just wait and see.”

All this conversation had taken place on Diva’s doorstep.

“Come in for a minute,” she said. “I want to consult you about my parlour, when I make it into a tea-room. Shall take away those two big tables, and put in six little ones, for four at each. Then there’s the small room at the back full of things I could never quite throw away. Bird-cages. Broken coal-scuttles. Old towel-horses. I shall clear them out now, as there’s no rummage-sale coming on. Put that big cupboard there against the wall, and a couple of card tables. People might like a rubber after their tea if it’s raining. Me always ready to make a fourth if wanted. Won’t that be cosy?”

“Very cosy indeed,” said Lucia. “But may you provide facilities for gambling in a public place, without risking a police-raid?”

“Don’t see why not,” said Diva. “I may provide chess or draughts, and what’s to prevent people gambling at them? Why not cards? And you will come in your robes, won’t you, on Mayoring day, to inaugurate my tea-rooms?”

“My dear, quite impossible,” said Lucia firmly. “As I told Georgie, I should have to be attended by my Aldermen and Councillors, as if it was some great public occasion. But I’ll come as Mrs. Pillson, and everyone will say that the Mayor performed the opening ceremony. But, officially, I must be incognita.”

“Well, that’s something,” said Diva. “And may I put up some posters to say that Mrs. Pillson will open it?”

“There can be no possible objection to that,” said Lucia with alacrity. “That will not invalidate my incognita. Just some big lettering at the top ‘Ye Olde Tea-House’, and, if you think my name will help, big letters again for ‘Mrs. Pillson’ or ‘Mrs. Pillson of Mallards’. Quite. Any other news? I know that your Paddy hasn’t got mange.”

“Nothing, I think. Oh yes, Elizabeth was in here just now, and asked me who was to be your Mayoress?”

“My Mayoress?” asked Lucia. “Aren’t I both?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Diva. “But she says she’s sure all Mayors have Mayoresses.”

“Poor Elizabeth: she always gets things muddled. Oh, Diva, will you–No nothing: I’m muddled, too. Goodbye, dear. All too cosy for words. A month to-day, then, for the opening. Georgie, remind me to put that down.”

Lucia and her husband passed on up the street.

“Such an escape!” she said. “I was on the point of asking Diva to dine and play bridge to-morrow, quite forgetting that I’d asked the Bartletts and the Wyses and the Mapp-Flints. You know, our custom of always asking husbands and wives together is rather Victorian. It dates us. I shall make innovations when the first terrific weeks of office are over. If we always ask couples, single people like Diva get left out.”

“So shall I if the others do it, too,” remarked Georgie. “Look, we’ve nearly caught up Susan. She’s going into the post-office.”

As Susan, a few yards ahead, stepped ponderously out of the Royce, her head brushed against the side of the door, and a wing from the cockade of bright feathers, insecurely fastened, fluttered down on to the pavement. She did not perceive her loss, and went in to the office. Georgie picked up the plume.

“Better put it back on the seat inside,” whispered Lucia. “Not tactful to give it her in public. She’ll see it when she gets in.”

“She may sit down on it again,” whispered Georgie.

“Oh, the far seat: that’ll do. She can’t miss it.”

He placed it carefully in the car, and they walked on.

“It’s always a joy to devise those little unseen kindnesses,” said Lucia. “Poulterer’s first, Georgie. If all my guests accept for to-morrow, I had better bespeak two brace of partridges.”

“Delicious,” said Georgie, “but how about the plain living? Oh I see: that’ll be after you become Mayor...Good morning, Padre.”

The Reverend Kenneth Bartlett stepped out of a shop in front. He always talked a mixture of faulty Scots and spurious Elizabethan English. It had been a playful diversion at first, but now it had become a habit, and unless carried away by the conversation he seldom spoke the current tongue.

“Guid morrow, richt worshipful leddy,” he said. “Well met, indeed, for there’s a sair curiosity abroad, and ’tis you who can still it. Who’s the happy wumman whom ye’ll hae for your Mayoress?”

“That’s the second time I’ve been asked that this morning,” said Lucia. “I’ve had no official information that I must have one.”

“A’weel. It’s early days yet. A month still before you need her. But ye mun have one: Mayor and Mayoress, ’tis the law o’ the land. I was thinking–”

He dropped his voice to a whisper.

“There’s that helpmate of mine,” he said. “Not that there’s been any colloquy betune us. She just passed the remark this morning: ‘I wonder who Mistress Pillson will select for her Mayoress,’ and I said I dinna ken and left it there.”

“Very wise,” said Lucia encouragingly.

The Padre’s language grew almost Anglicized.

“But it put an idea into my head, that my Evie might be willing to help you in any way she could. She’d keep you in touch with all Church matters which I know you have at heart, and Sunday Schools and all that. Mind. I don’t promise that she’d consent, but I think ’tis likely, though I wouldn’t encourage false hopes. All confidential, of course; and I must be stepping.”

He looked furtively round as if engaged in some dark conspiracy and stepped.

“Georgie, I wonder if there can be any truth in it,” said Lucia. “Of course, nothing would induce me to have poor dear little Evie as Mayoress. I would as soon have a mouse. Oh, there’s Major Benjy: he’ll be asking me next who my Mayoress is to be. Quick, into the poulterer’s.”

They hurried into the shop. Mr. Rice gave her a low bow. “Good-morning, your worship–” he began.

“No, not yet, Mr. Rice,” said Lucia. “Not for a month yet. Partridges. I shall very likely want two brace of partridges to-morrow evening.”

“I’ve got some prime young birds, your worsh–ma’am,” said Mr. Rice.

“Very well. Please earmark four birds for me. I will let you know the first thing to-morrow morning, if I require them.”

“Earmarked they are, ma’am,” said Mr. Rice enthusiastically.

Lucia peeped cautiously out. Major Benjy had evidently seen them taking cover, and was regarding electric heaters in the shop next door with an absent eye. He saw her look out and made a military salute.

“Good-morning,” he said cordially. “Lovely day isn’t it? October’s my favourite month. Chill October, what? I was wondering, Mrs. Pillson, as I strolled along, if you had yet selected the fortunate lady who will have the honour of being your Mayoress.”

“Good morning, Major. Oddly enough somebody else asked me that very thing a moment ago.”

“Ha! I bet five to one I know who that was. I had a word or two with the Padre just now, and the subject came on the tapis,as they say in France. I fancy he’s got some notion that that good little wife of his–but that would be too ridiculous–”

“I’ve settled nothing yet,” said Lucia. “So overwhelmed with work lately. Certainly it shall receive my attention. Elizabeth quite well? That’s good.”

She hurried away with Georgie.

“The question of the Mayoress is in the air like influenza, Georgie,” she said. “I must ring up the Town Hall as soon as I get in, and find out if I must have one. I see no necessity. There’s Susan Wyse beckoning again.”

Susan let down the window of her car.

“Just going home again,” she said. “Shall I give you a lift up the hill?”

“No, a thousand thanks,” said Lucia. “It’s only a hundred yards.”

Susan shook her head sadly.

“Don’t overdo it, dear,” she said. “As we get on in life we must be careful about hills.”

“This Mayoress business is worrying me, Georgie,” said Lucia when Susan had driven off. “If it’s all too true, and I must have one, who on earth shall I get? Everyone I can think of seems so totally unfit for it. I believe, do you know, that it must have been in Major Benjy’s mind to recommend me to ask Elizabeth.”

“Impossible!” said Georgie. “I might as well recommend you to ask Foljambe.”

CHAPTER II

Lucia found on her return to Mallards that Mrs. Simpson had got through the laborious task of typing three identical dinner invitations for next day to Mrs. Wyse, Mrs. Bartlett and Mrs. Mapp-Flint with husbands. She filled up in autograph “Dearest Susan, Evie and Elizabeth” and was affectionately theirs. Rack her brains as she would she could think of no further task for her secretary, so Mrs. Simpson took these letters to deliver them by hand, thus saving time and postage. “And could you be here at nine-thirty to-morrow morning,” said Lucia, “instead of ten in case there is a stress of work? Things turn up so suddenly, and it would never do to fall into arrears.”

Lucia looked at her engagement book. Its fair white pages satisfied her that there were none at present.

“I shall be glad of a few days’ quiet, dear,” she said to Georgie. “I shall have a holiday of painting and music and reading. When once the rush begins there will be little time for such pursuits. Yet I know there was something very urgent that required my attention. Ah, yes! I must find out for certain whether I must have a Mayoress. And I must get a telephone extension into the garden-room, to save running in and out of the house for calls.”

Lucia went in and rang up the clerk at the Town Hall. Yes: he was quite sure that every Mayor had a Mayoress, whom the Mayor invited to fill the post. She turned to Georgie with a corrugated brow.

“Yes, it is so,” she said. “I shall have to find some capable obliging woman with whom I can work harmoniously. But who?”

The metallic clang of the flap of the letter-box on the front door caused her to look out of the window. There was Diva going quickly away with her scudding, birdlike walk. Lucia opened the note she had left, and read it. Though Diva was telegraphic in conversation, her epistolary style was flowing.

DEAREST LUCIA,

I felt quite shy of speaking to you about it to-day, for writing is always the best, don’t you think, when it’s difficult to find the right words or to get them out when you have, so this is to tell you that I am quite at your disposal, and shall [Note: Line missing in scanned copy] much longer in Tilling than you, dear, that perhaps I can be of some use in all your entertainments and other functions. Not that I would askyou to choose me as your Mayoress, for I shouldn’t think of such a thing. So pushing! So I just want to say that I am quite at your service, as you may feel rather diffident about asking me, for it would be awkward for me to refuse, being such an old friend, if I didn’t feel like it. But I should positively enjoy helping you, quite apart from my duty as a friend.