Queen Lucia | Page 4

dilapidated to be of the
slightest service in keeping out wind or wet or undesired callers. She
had therefore caused to be constructed an even older one made from the
oak-planks of a dismantled barn, and had it studded with large iron
nails of antique pattern made by the village blacksmith. He had

arranged some of them to look as if they spelled A.D. 1603. Over the
door hung an inn-sign, and into the space where once the sign had
swung was now inserted a lantern, in which was ensconced, well
hidden from view by its patinated glass sides, an electric light. This was
one of the necessary concessions to modern convenience, for no lamp
nurtured on oil would pierce those genuinely opaque panes, and
illuminate the path to the gate. Better to have an electric light than
cause your guests to plunge into Perdita's border. By the side of this
fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When
first Mrs Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an
extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted his feet
firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the
servants' passage and eventually gave tongue (if the athlete continued
pulling) with vibrations so sonorous that the white-wash from the
ceiling fell down in flakes. She had therefore made another concession
to the frailty of the present generation and the inconveniences of having
whitewash falling into salads and puddings on their way to the dining
room, and now at the back of the mermaid's tail was a potent little bone
button, coloured black and practically invisible, and thus the bell-pull
had been converted into an electric bell-push. In this way visitors could
make their advent known without violent exertion, the mermaid lost no
visible whit of her Elizabethan virginity, and the spirit of Shakespeare
wandering in his garden would not notice any anachronism. He could
not in fact, for there was none to notice.
Though Mrs Lucas's parents had bestowed the name of Emmeline on
her, it was not to be wondered at that she was always known among the
more intimate of her subjects as Lucia, pronounced, of course, in the
Italian mode--La Lucia, the wife of Lucas; and it was as "Lucia mia"
that her husband hailed her as he met her at the door of The Hurst.
He had been watching for her arrival from the panes of the parlour
while he meditated upon one of the little prose poems which formed so
delectable a contribution to the culture of Riseholme, for though, as had
been hinted, he had in practical life a firm grasp of the obvious, there
were windows in his soul which looked out onto vague and ethereal
prospects which so far from being obvious were only dimly intelligible.

In form these odes were cast in the loose rhythms of Walt Whitman,
but their smooth suavity and their contents bore no resemblance
whatever to the productions of that barbaric bard, whose works were
quite unknown in Riseholme. Already a couple of volumes of these
prose-poems had been published, not of course in the hard
business-like establishment of London, but at "Ye Sign of ye Daffodil,"
on the village green, where type was set up by hand, and very little, but
that of the best, was printed. The press had only been recently started at
Mr Lucas's expense, but it had put forth a reprint of Shakespeare's
sonnets already, as well as his own poems. They were printed in blunt
type on thick yellowish paper, the edges of which seemed as if they had
been cut by the forefinger of an impatient reader, so ragged and
irregular were they, and they were bound in vellum, the titles of these
two slim flowers of poetry, "Flotsam" and "Jetsam," were printed in
black letter type and the covers were further adorned with a sort of
embossed seal and with antique looking tapes so that you could tie it all
up with two bows when you had finished with Mr Lucas's "Flotsam"
for the time being, and turned to untie the "Jetsam."
Today the prose-poem of "Loneliness" had not been getting on very
well, and Philip Lucas was glad to hear the click of the garden-gate,
which showed that his loneliness was over for the present, and looking
up he saw his wife's figure waveringly presented to his eyes through the
twisted and knotty glass of the parlour window, which had taken so
long to collect, but which now completely replaced the plain,
commonplace unrefracting stuff which was there before. He jumped up
with an alacrity remarkable in so solid and well-furnished a person, and
had thrown open the nail-studded front-door before Lucia had traversed
the