‘And what do you seriously think they’ll all think?’ he asked. ‘I’m terribly nervous as you may imagine. It would be good of you if you’d pop in to-morrow morning, and walk down with me. I simply couldn’t pass underneath the garden-room window, with Elizabeth looking out, alone.’
‘Ten forty-five, Georgie,’ she said. ‘What an improvement!’
The afternoon and evening dragged after she was gone. It was pleasant to see his bibelots again, but he missed Lucia’s companionship. Intimate as they had been for many years, they had never before had each other’s undivided company for so long. A book, and a little conversation with Foljambe made dinner tolerable, but after that she went home to her Cadman, and he was alone. He polished up the naughty snuff-box, he worked at his petit point shepherdess. He had stripped her nakeder than Eve, and replaced her green robe with pink, and now instead of looking like a stick of asparagus she really might have been a young lady who, for reasons of her own, preferred to tend her sheep with nothing on; but he wanted to show her to somebody and he could hardly discuss her with his cook. Or a topic of interest occurred to him, but there was no one to share it with, and he played beautifully on his piano, but nobody congratulated him. It was dreary work to be alone, though no doubt he would get used to it again, and dreary to go up to bed with no chattering on the stairs. Often he used to linger with Lucia at her bedroom door, finishing their talk, and even go in with her by express invitation. To-night he climbed up the stairs alone, and heard his cook snoring.
Lucia duly appeared next morning, and they set off under the guns of the garden-room window. Elizabeth was there as usual, and after fixing on them for a moment her opera-glass which she used for important objects at a distance, she gave a squeal that caused Benjy to drop the Financial Post which recorded the ruinous fall of two shillings in Siriami.
‘Mr Georgie’s got a beard,’ she cried, and hurried to get her hat and basket and follow them down to the High Street. Diva, looking out of her window, was the next to see him, and without the hint Elizabeth had had of observing his exit from his own house quite failed to recognize him at first. She had to go through an addition sum in circumstantial evidence before she arrived at his identity: he was with Lucia, he was of his own height and build, the rest of his face was the same and he had on the well-known little cape with the fur collar. QED. She whistled to Pat, she seized her basket, and taking a header into the street ran straight into Elizabeth who was sprinting down from Mallards.
‘He’s come out. Mr Georgie. A beard,’ she said.
Elizabeth was out of breath with her swift progress.
‘Oh yes, dear,’ she panted. ‘Didn’t you know? Fancy! Where have they gone?’
‘Couldn’t see. Soon find them. Come on.’
Elizabeth, chagrined at not being able to announce the news to Diva, instantly determined to take the opposite line, and not show the slightest interest in this prodigious transformation.
‘But why this excitement, dear?’ she said. ‘I cannot think of anything that matters less. Why shouldn’t Mr Georgie have a beard? If you had one now –’
A Sinaitic trumpet-blast from Susan’s Royce made them both leap on to the pavement, as if playing Tom Tiddler’s ground.
‘But don’t you remember –’ began Diva almost before alighting – ‘there, we’re safe – don’t you remember the man with a white beard whom I saw in Lucia’s car? Must be the same man. You said it was Mr Montagu Norman first and then Lucia’s gardener disguised. The one we watched for, you at your window and me in Church Square.’
‘Grammar, dear Diva. “I” not “me”,’ interrupted Elizabeth to gain time, while she plied her brain with crucial questions. For if Diva was right, and the man in Lucia’s car had been Georgie (white beard), he must have been driving back to Mallards Cottage in Lucia’s car from somewhere. Could he have been living at Grebe all the time while he pretended (or Lucia pretended for him) to have been at home too ill to see anybody? But if so, why, on some days, had his house appeared to be inhabited, and on some days completely deserted? Certainly Georgie (auburn beard) had come out of it this morning with Lucia. Had they been staying with each other alternately? Had they been living in sin? … Poor shallow Diva had not the slightest perception of these deep and probably grievous matters. Her feather-pated mind could get no further than the colour of beards. Before Diva could frame an adequate reply to this paltry grammatical point a positive eruption of thrills occurred. Lucia and Georgie came out of the post-office, Paddy engaged in a dog-fight, and the Padre and Evie Bartlett emerged from the side-street opposite, and, as if shot from a catapult, projected themselves across the road just in front of Susan’s motor.
‘Oh, dear me, they’ll be run over!’ cried Diva. ‘PADDY! And there are Mr Georgie and Lucia. What a lot of things are happening this morning!’
‘Diva, you’re a little overwrought,’ said Elizabeth with kindly serenity. ‘What with white beards and brown beards and motor-accidents … Oh, voilà! There’s Susan actually got out of her car, and she’s almost running across the road to speak to Mr Georgie, and quaint Irene in shorts. What a fuss! For goodness’ sake let’s be dignified and go on with our shopping. The whole thing has been staged by Lucia, and I won’t be a super.’
‘But I must go and say I’m glad he’s better,’ said Diva.
‘Certainement, dear, if you happen to think he’s been ill. I believe it’s all a hoax.’
But she spoke to the empty air for Diva had thumped Paddy in the ribs with her market-basket and was whizzing away to the group on the pavement where Georgie was receiving general congratulations on his recovery and his striking appearance. The verdict was most flattering, and long after his friends had gazed their fill he continued to walk up and down the High Street and pop into shops where he wanted nothing, in order that his epiphany which he had been so nervous about, and which he found purely enjoyable, might be manifest to all. For a long time Elizabeth, determined to take no part in a show which she was convinced was run by Lucia, succeeded in avoiding him, but at last he ran her to earth in the greengrocer’s. She examined the quality of the spinach till her back ached, and then she had to turn round and face him.
‘Lovely morning, isn’t it, Mr Georgie,’ she said. ‘So pleased to see you about again. Sixpennyworth of spinach, please, Mr Twistevant. Looks so good!’ and she hurried out of the shop, still unconscious of his beard.
‘Tarsome woman,’ thought Georgie. ‘If there is a fly anywhere about she is sure to put it in somebody’s ointment’ … But there had been so much ointment on the subject that he really didn’t much mind about Elizabeth’s fly.
4
Elizabeth Mapp-Flint had schemes for her husband and meant to realize them. As a bachelor, with an inclination to booze and a very limited income, inhabiting that small house next to Mallards, it was up to him, if he chose, to spend the still robust energies of his fifty-five years in playing golf all day and getting slightly squiffy in the evening. But his marriage had given him a new status: he was master, though certainly not mistress, of the best house in Tilling; he was, through her, a person of position, and it was only right that he should have a share in municipal government. The elections to the Town Council were coming on shortly, and she had made up her mind, and his for him, that he must stand. The fact that, if elected, he would make it his business to get something done about Susan Wyse’s motor causing a congestion of traffic every morning in the High Street was not really a leading motive. Elizabeth craved for the local dignity which his election would give not only to him but her, and if poor Lucia (always pushing herself forward) happened to turn pea-green with envy, that would be her misfortune and not Elizabeth’s fault. As yet the programme which he should present to the electors was only being thought out, but municipal economy (Major Mapp-Flint and Economy) with reduction of rates would be the ticket.
The night of Lucia’s birthday-party was succeeded by a day of pelting rain, and, no golf being possible, Elizabeth,
having sent her cook (she had a mackintosh) to do the marketing for her, came out to the garden-room after breakfast for a chat. She always knocked at the door, opening it a chink and saying, ‘May I come in, Benjy-boy?’ in order to remind him of her nobility in giving it him. To-day a rather gruff voice answered her, for economy had certainly not been the ticket at Lucia’s party, and there had been a frightful profusion of viands and wine: really a very vulgar display, and Benjy had eaten enormously and drunk far more wine than was positively necessary for the quenching of thirst. There had been a little argument as they drove home, for he had insisted that there were fifty-one candles round the cake and that it had been a remarkably jolly evening: she said that there were only fifty candles, and that it was a very mistaken sort of hospitality which gave guests so much more than they wanted to eat or should want to drink. His lack of appetite at breakfast might prove that he had had enough to eat the night before to last him some hours yet, but his extraordinary consumption of tea could not be explained on the same analogy. But Elizabeth thought she had made sufficient comment on that at breakfast (or tea as far as he was concerned) and when she came in this morning for a chat, she had no intention of rubbing it in. The accusation, however, that he had not been able to count correctly up to fifty or fifty-one, still rankled in his mind, for it certainly implied a faintly camouflaged connection with sherry, champagne, port and brandy.
‘Such a pity, dear,’ she said brightly, ‘that it’s so wet. A round of golf would have done you all the good in the world. Blown the cobwebs away.’
To Benjy’s disgruntled humour, this seemed an allusion to the old subject, and he went straight to the point.
‘There were fifty-one candles,’ he said.
‘Cinquante, Benjy,’ she answered firmly. ‘She is fifty. She said so. So there must have been fifty.’
‘Fifty-one. Candles I mean. But what I’ve been thinking over is that you’ve been thinking, if you follow me, that I couldn’t count. Very unjust. Perhaps you’ll say I saw a hundred next. Seeing double, eh? And why should a round of golf do me all the good in the world to-day? Not more good than any other day, unless you want me to get pneumonia.’
Elizabeth sat down on the seat in the window as suddenly as if she had been violently hit behind the knees, and put her handkerchief up to her eyes to conceal the fact that there was not a vestige of a tear there. As he was facing towards the fire he did not perceive this manoeuvre and thought she had only gone to the window to make her usual morning observations. He continued to brood over the Financial Post, which contained the news that Siriami had been weak and Southern Prefs remarkably strong. These items were about equally depressing.
Elizabeth was doubtful as to what to do next. In the course of their married life, there had been occasional squalls, and she had tried sarcasm and vituperation with but small success. Benjy-boy had answered her back or sulked, and she was left with a sense of imperfect mastery. This policy of being hurt was a new one, and since the first signal had not been noticed she hoisted a second one and sniffed.
‘Got a bit of a cold?’ he asked pacifically.
No answer, and he turned round.
‘Why, what’s wrong?’ he said.
‘And there’s a jolie chose to ask,’ said Elizabeth with strangled shrillness. ‘You tell me I want you to catch pneumonia, and then ask what’s wrong. You wound me deeply.’
‘Well, I got annoyed with your nagging at me that I couldn’t count. You implied I was squiffy just because I had a jolly good dinner. And there were fifty-one candles.’
‘It doesn’t matter if there were fifty-one million,’ cried Elizabeth. ‘What matters is that you spoke to me very cruelly. I planned to make you so happy, Benjy, by giving up my best room to you and all sorts of things, and all the reward I get is to be told one day that I ought to have let Lucia lead me by the nose and almost the next that I hoped you would die of pneumonia.’
He came across to the window.
‘Well, I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘You’re sarcastic, too, at times and say monstrously disagreeable things to me.’
‘Oh, that’s a wicked lie,’ said Elizabeth violently. ‘Never have I spoken disagreeably to you. Jamais! Firmly sometimes, but always for your good. Toujours! Never another thought in my head but your true happiness.’
Benjy was rather alarmed: hysterics seemed imminent.
‘Yes, girlie, I know that,’ he said soothingly. ‘Nothing the matter? Nothing wrong?’
She opened her mouth once or twice like a gasping fish, and recovered her self-control.
‘Nothing, dear, that I can tell you yet,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me. But never say I want you to get pneumonia again. It hurt me cruelly. There! All over! Look, there’s Mr Georgie coming out in this pelting rain. Do you know, I like his beard, though I couldn’t tell him so, except for that odd sort of sheen on it, like the colours on cold boiled beef. But I dare say that’ll pass off. Oh, let’s put up the window and ask him how many candles there were … Good morning, Mr Georgie. What a lovely, no, disgusting morning, but what a lovely evening yesterday! Do you happen to know for certain how many candles there were on Lucia’s beautiful cake?’
‘Yes, fifty-one,’ said Georgie, ‘though she’s only fifty. She put an extra one, so that she may get used to being fifty-one before she is.’
‘What a pretty idea! So like her,’ said Elizabeth, and shut the window again.
Benjy with great tact pretended not to have heard, for he had no wish to bring back those hysterical symptoms. A sensational surmise as to the cause of them had dimly occurred to him, but surely it was impossible. So tranquillity being restored, they sat together ‘ever so cosily’, said Elizabeth, by the fire (which meant that she appropriated his hip-bath chair and got nearly all the heat) and began plotting out the campaign for the coming municipal elections.
‘Better just get quietly to work, love,’ said she, ‘and not say much about it at first, for Lucia’s sadly capable of standing, too, if she knows you are.’
‘I’m afraid I told her last night,’ said Benjy.
‘Oh, what a blabbing boy! Well, it can’t be helped now. Let’s hope it’ll put no jealous ambitions into her head. Now, l’Économie is the right slogan for you. Anything more reckless than the way the Corporation has been spending money I can’t conceive. Just as if Tilling was Eldorado. Think of pulling down all those pretty little slums by the railway and building new houses! Fearfully expensive, and spoiling the town: taking all its quaintness away.’
‘And then there’s that new road they’re making that skirts the town,’ said Benjy, ‘to relieve the congestion in the High Street.’
‘Just so,’ chimed in Elizabeth. ‘They’d relieve it much more effectually if they didn’t allow Susan to park her car, positively across the street, wherever she pleases, and as long as she pleases. It’s throwing money about like that which sends up the rates by leaps and bounds; why, they’re nearly double of what they were when I inherited Mallards from sweet Aunt Caroline. And nothing to show for it except a road that nobody wants and some ugly new houses instead of those picturesque old cottages. They may be a little damp, perhaps, but, after all, there was a dreadful patch of damp in my bedroom last year, and I didn’t ask the Town Council to rebuild Mallards at the public expense. And I’m told all those new houses have got a bathroom in which the tenants will probably keep poultry. Then, they say, there are the unemployed. Rubbish, Benjy! There’s plenty of work for everybody, only those lazy fellows prefer the dole and idleness. We’ve got to pinch and squeeze so that the so-called poor may live in the lap of luxury. If I didn’t get a good let for Mallards every year we shouldn’t be able to live in it at all, and you may take that from me. Economy! That’s the ticket! Talk to them like that and you’ll head the poll.’
A brilliant notion struck Benjy as he listened to this impassioned speech. Though he liked the idea of holding public office and of the dignity it conferred, he knew that his golf would be muc
h curtailed by his canvassing, and, if he was elected, by his duties. Moreover, he could not talk in that vivid and vitriolic manner …
He jumped up.
‘Upon my word, Liz, I wish you’d stand instead of me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the gift of the gab; you can put things clearly and forcibly, and you’ve got it all at your fingers’ ends. Besides, you’re the owner of Mallards, and these rates and taxes press harder on you than on me. What do you say to that?’
The idea had never occurred to her before: she wondered why. How she would enjoy paying calls on all the numerous householders who felt the burden of increasing rates, and securing their votes for her programme of economy! She saw herself triumphantly heading the poll. She saw herself sitting in the Council Room, the only woman present, with sheaves of statistics to confute this spendthrift policy. Eloquence, compliments, processions to church on certain official occasions, a status, a doctorial-looking gown, position, power. All these enticements beckoned her, and from on high, she seemed to look down on poor Lucia as if at the bottom of a disused well, fifty years old, playing duets with Georgie, and gabbling away about all the Aristophanes she read and the callisthenics she practised, and the principles of psychic bidding, and the advice she gave her broker, while Councillor Mapp-Flint was as busy with the interests of the Borough. A lesson for the self-styled Queen of Tilling.
‘Really, dear,’ she said, ‘I hardly know what to say. Such a new idea to me, for all this was the future I planned for you, and how I’ve lain awake at night thinking of it. I must adjust my mind to such a revolution of our plans. But there is something in what you suggest. That house-to-house canvassing: perhaps a woman is more suited to that than a man. A cup of tea, you know, with the mother and a peep at baby. It’s true again that as owner of Mallards, I have a solider stake in property than you. Dear me, yes, I begin to see your point of view. Sound, as a man’s always is. Then again what you call the gift of the gab – such a rude expression – perhaps forcible words do come more easily to me, and they’ll be needful indeed when it comes to fighting the spendthrifts. But first you would have to promise to help me, for you know how I shall depend on you. I hope my health will stand the strain, and I’ll gladly work myself to the bone in such a cause. Better to wear oneself out than rust in the scabbard.’