Lucia Victrix (40 page)

‘Getting on nicely, ma'am,' she said.

‘Oh, so glad! I was almost afraid you were ill, too, as his sitting-room blinds were down.'

‘Indeed, ma'am,' said Foljambe, getting even more flintily petrified.

‘And will you tell him I shall ring him up soon to see if he'd like me to look in?'

‘Yes, ma'am,' said Foljambe.

Elizabeth watched her go along the street, and noticed she did not turn up in the direction of Mallards Cottage, but kept straight on. Very mysterious: where could she be going? Elizabeth thought of following her, but her attention was diverted by seeing Diva pop out of the hairdresser's establishment in that scarlet beret and frock which made her look so like a round pillar-box. She had taken the plunge at last after tortures of indecision, and had had her hair cropped quite close. The right and scathing thing to do, thought Elizabeth, was to seem not to notice any change in her appearance.

‘Such a lovely morning, isn't it, dear Diva, for January,' she said. ‘
Si doux
. Any news?'

Diva felt there was enough news on her own head to satisfy anybody for one morning, and she wheeled so that Elizabeth should get a back view of it, where the change was most remarkable. ‘I've heard none,' she said. ‘Oh, there's Major Benjy. Going to catch the tram, I suppose.'

It was Elizabeth's turn to wheel. There had been a coolness this morning, for he had come down very late to breakfast, and had ordered fresh tea and bacon with a grumpy air. She would punish him by being unaware of him … Then that wouldn't do, because gossipy Diva would tell everybody they had had a quarrel, and back she wheeled again.

‘Quick, Benjy-boy,' she called out to him, ‘or you'll miss the tram. Play beautifully, darling. All those lovely mashies.'

Lucia's motor drew up close to them opposite the post-office. She had a telegraph form in her hand, and dropped it as she got out. It bowed and fluttered in the breeze, and fell at Elizabeth's feet. Her glance at it, as she picked it up, revealing the cryptic sentence: ‘Buy five hundred Siriami shares,' was involuntary or nearly so.

‘Here you are, dear,' she said. ‘
En route
to see poor Mr Georgie?'

Lucia's eye fell on Diva's cropped head.

‘Dear Diva, I like it immensely!' she said. ‘Ten years younger.'

Elizabeth remained profoundly unconscious.

‘Well, I must be trotting,' she said. ‘Such a lot of commissions for my Benjy. So like a man, bless him, to go off and play golf, leaving wifie to do all his jobs. Such a scolding I shall get if I forget any.'

She plunged into the grocer's, and for the next half-hour, the ladies of Tilling, popping in and out of shops, kept meeting on doorsteps with small collision of their baskets, and hurried glances at their contents. Susan Wyse alone did not take part in this ladies' chain, but remained in the Royce, and butcher and baker and greengrocer and fishmonger had to come out and take her orders through the window. Elizabeth felt bitterly about this, for, in view of the traffic, which would otherwise have become congested, tradesmen ran out of their shops, leaving other customers to wait, so that Susan's Royce might not be delayed. Elizabeth had addressed a formal complaint about it to the Town Council, and that conscientious body sent a reliable timekeeper in plain clothes down to the High Street on three consecutive mornings, to ascertain how long, on the average, Mrs Wyse's car stopped at each shop. As the period worked out at a trifle over twenty seconds they took the view that as the road was made for vehicular traffic, she was making a legitimate use of it. She could hardly be expected to send the Royce to the parking place by the Town Hall each time she stopped, for it would not nearly have got there by the time she was ready for it again. The rest of the ladies, not being so busy as Elizabeth, did not mind these delays, for Susan made such sumptuous orders that it gave you an appetite to hear them: she had been known, even when she and Algernon had been quite alone, to command a hen lobster, a pheasant, and a
pâté de foie gras
…

Elizabeth soon finished her shopping (Benjy-boy had only asked her to order him some shaving-soap), and just as she reached her door, she was astonished to see Diva coming
rapidly towards her house from the direction of Mallards Cottage, thirty yards away, and making signs to her. After the severity with which she had ignored the Eton crop, it was clear that Diva must have something to say which overscored her natural resentment.

‘The most extraordinary thing,' panted Diva as she got close, ‘Mr Georgie's blinds –'

‘Oh, is his sitting-room blind still down?' asked Elizabeth. ‘I saw that an hour ago, but forgot to tell you. Is that all, dear?'

‘Nowhere near,' said Diva. ‘
All
his blinds are down. Perhaps you saw that too, but I don't believe you did.'

Elizabeth was far too violently interested to pretend she had, and the two hurried up the street and contemplated the front of Mallards Cottage. It was true. The blinds of his dining-room, of the small room by the door, of Georgie's bedroom, of the cook's bedroom, were all drawn.

‘And there's no smoke coming out of the chimneys,' said Diva in an awed whisper. ‘Can he be dead?'

‘Do not rush to such dreadful conclusions,' said Elizabeth. ‘Come back to Mallards and let's talk it over.'

But the more they talked, the less they could construct any theory to fit the facts. Lucia had been very cheerful, Foljambe had said that Georgie was going on nicely, and even the two most ingenious women in Tilling could not reconcile this with the darkened and fireless house, unless he was suffering from some ailment which had to be nursed in a cold, dark room. Finally, when it was close on lunch-time, and it was obvious that Elizabeth was not going to press Diva to stay, they made their thoughtful way to the front door, still completely baffled. Till now, so absorbed had they been in the mystery, Diva had quite forgotten Elizabeth's unconsciousness of her cropped head. Now it occurred to her again.

‘I've had my hair cut short this morning,' she said. ‘Didn't you notice it?'

‘Yes, dear, to be quite frank, since we are such old friends, I did,' said Elizabeth. ‘But I thought it far kinder to say nothing about it. Far!'

‘Ho!' said Diva, turning as red as her beret, and she trundled down the hill.

Benjy came back very sleepy after his golf, and in a foul temper, for the Padre, who always played with him morning and afternoon on Monday, to recuperate after the stress of Sunday, had taken two half-crowns off him, and he was intending to punish him by not going to church next Sunday. In this morose mood he took only the faintest interest in what might or might not have happened to Georgie. Diva's theory seemed to have something to be said for it, though it was odd that if he was dead, there should not have been definite news by now. Presently Elizabeth gave him a little butterfly kiss on his forehead, to show she forgave him for his unpunctuality at breakfast, and left him in the garden-room to have a good snooze. Before his good snooze he had a good swig at a flask which he kept in a locked drawer of his business-table.

Diva's theory was blown into smithereens next day, for Elizabeth from her bedroom window observed Foljambe letting herself into Mallards Cottage at eight o'clock, and a short stroll before breakfast showed her that blinds were up and chimneys smoking, and the windows of Georgie's sitting-room opened for an airing. Though the mystery of yesterday had not been cleared up, normal routine had been resumed, and Georgie could not be dead.

After his sad lapse yesterday Benjy was punctual for breakfast this morning. Half-past eight was not his best time, for during his bachelor days he had been accustomed to get down about ten o'clock, to shout ‘
Quai-hai
' to show he was ready for his food, and to masticate it morosely in solitude. Now all was changed: sometimes he got as far as ‘
Quai
', but Elizabeth stopped her ears and said ‘There is a bell, darling,' in her most acid voice. And concerning half-past eight she was adamant: she had all her household duties to attend to, and then after she had minutely inspected the larder, she had her marketing to do. Unlike him she was quite at her best and brightest (which was saying a good deal) at this hour, and she hailed his punctual advent to-day with extreme cordiality to show him how pleased she was with him.

‘Nice hot cup of tea for my Benjy, she said, ‘and dear me, what a disappointment – no, not disappointment: that wouldn't be kind – but what a surprise for poor Diva. Blinds up, chimneys smoking at Mr Georgie's, and there was she yesterday suggesting he was dead. Such a pessimist! I shan't be able to resist teasing her about it.'

Benjy had entrenched himself behind the morning paper, propping it up against the teapot and the maidenhair fern which stood in the centre of the table, and merely grunted. Elizabeth, feeling terribly girlish, made a scratching noise against it, and then looked over the top.

‘Peep-o!' she said brightly. ‘Oh, what a sleepy face! Turn to the City news, love, and see if you can find something called Siriami.'

A pause.

‘Yes: West African mine,' he said. ‘Got any, Liz? Shares moved sharply up yesterday: gained three shillings. Oh, there's a note about them. Excellent report received from the mine.'

‘Dear me! how lovely for the shareholders, I wish I was one,' said Elizabeth with singular bitterness as she multiplied Lucia's five hundred shares by three and divided them by twenty. ‘And what about my War Loan?'

‘Down half a point.'

‘That's what comes of being patriotic,' said Elizabeth, and went to see her cook. She had meant to have a roast pheasant for dinner this evening, but in consequence of this drop in her capital, decided on a rabbit. It seemed most unfair that Lucia should have made all that money (fifteen hundred shillings minus commission) by just scribbling a telegram, and dropping it in the High Street. Memories of a golden evening at Monte Carlo came back to her, when she and Benjy returned to their
pension
after a daring hour in the Casino with five hundred francs between them and in such a state of reckless elation that he had an absinthe and she a vermouth before dinner. They had resolved never to tempt fortune again, but next afternoon, Elizabeth having decided to sit in the garden and be lazy while he went for a walk, they ran into each other at the Casino, and an even happier result followed and there was more absinthe
and vermouth. With these opulent recollections in her mind she bethought herself, as she set off with her market-basket for her shopping, of some little savings she had earmarked for the expenses of a rainy day, illness or repair to the roof of Mallards. It was almost a pity to keep them lying idle, when it was so easy to add to them …

Diva trundled swiftly towards her with Paddy, her great bouncing Irish terrier, bursting with news, but Elizabeth got the first word.

‘All your gloomy anticipations about Mr Georgie quite gone phut, dear,' she said. ‘Chimneys smoking, blinds up –'

‘Oh, Lord, yes,' said Diva. ‘I've been up to have a look already. You needn't have got so excited about it. And just fancy! Lucia bought some mining shares only yesterday, and she seems to have made hundreds and hundreds of pounds. She's telegraphing now to buy some more. What did she say the mine was? Syrian Army, I think.'

Elizabeth made a little cooing noise, expressive of compassionate amusement.

‘I should think you probably mean Siriami,
n'est ce pas
?' she said. ‘Siriami is a very famous gold mine somewhere in West Africa.
Mon vieux
was reading to me something about it in the paper this morning. But surely, dear, hundreds and hundreds of pounds is an exaggeration?'

‘Well, quite a lot, for she told me so herself,' said Diva. ‘I declare it made my mouth water. I've almost made up my mind to buy some myself with a little money I've got lying idle. Just a few.'

‘I wouldn't if I were you, dear,' said Elizabeth earnestly. ‘Gambling is such an insidious temptation. Benjy and I learned that at Monte Carlo.'

‘Well, you made something, didn't you?' asked Diva.

‘Yes, but I should always discourage anyone who might not be strong-minded enough to stop.'

‘I'd back the strength of my mind against yours any day,' said Diva.

A personal and psychological discussion might have ensued, but Lucia at that moment came out of the post-office. She held in her hand a copy of the
Financial Post
.

‘And have you bought some more Siriami?' asked Diva with a sort of vicarious greed.

Lucia's eyes wore a concentrated though far-away expression as if she was absorbed in some train of transcendent reasoning. She gave a little start as Diva spoke, and recalled herself to the High Street.

‘Yes: I've bought another little parcel of shares,' she said. ‘I heard from my broker this morning, and he agrees with me that they'll go higher. I find his judgment is usually pretty sound.'

‘Diva's told me what a stroke of luck you've had,' said Elizabeth.

Lucia smiled complacently.

‘No, dear Elizabeth, not luck,' she said. ‘A little studying of the world-situation, a little inductive reasoning. The price of gold, you know: I should be much surprised if the price of gold didn't go higher yet. Of course I may be wrong.'

‘I think you must be,' said Diva. ‘There are always twenty shillings to the pound, aren't there?'

Lucia was not quite clear what was the answer to that. Her broker's letter, quite approving of a further purchase on the strength of the favourable news from the mine, had contained something about the price of gold, which evidently she had not grasped.

‘Too intricate to explain, dear Diva,' she said indulgently. ‘But I should be very sorry to advise you to follow my example. There is a risk. But I must be off and get back to Georgie.'