[1]

Miss Mapp

Table of Contents

• PREFACE 4


• CHAPTER I 5


• CHAPTER II 31


• CHAPTER III 65


• CHAPTER IV 93


• CHAPTER V 113


• CHAPTER VI 139


• CHAPTER VII 162


• CHAPTER VIII 187


• CHAPTER IX 208


• CHAPTER X 229


• CHAPTER XI 250


• CHAPTER XII 275


• EPILOGUE 285

[3]

MISS MAPP
By E. F. Benson,

Author of “Queen Lucia.” “Dodo Wonders.” &c.

McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.,
TORONTO

[4]

PREFACE

I lingered at the window of the garden-room from which Miss Mapp so
often and so ominously looked forth. To the left was the front of her
house, straight ahead the steep cobbled way, with a glimpse of the High
Street at the end, to the right the crooked chimney and the church.

The street was populous with passengers, but search as I might, I could
see none who ever so remotely resembled the objects of her vigilance.

E. F. Benson.

Lamb House, Rye.

Printed in Great Britain.

[5]

CHAPTER I

Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage
of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of
high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but
these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of
mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence
with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming
little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest
suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.

She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very
convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a
strategical point of high value. This garden-room, solid and spacious,
was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight
down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into
the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front door the road
turned sharply, so that as she looked out from this projecting window,
her own house was at right angles on her left, the street in question
plunged steeply downwards in front of her,[6]
and to her right she commanded an uninterrupted view of its further
course which terminated in the disused graveyard surrounding the big
Norman church. Anything of interest about the church, however, could be
gleaned from a guide-book, and Miss Mapp did not occupy herself much
with such coldly venerable topics. Far more to her mind was the fact
that between the church and her strategic window was the cottage in
which her gardener lived, and she could thus see, when not otherwise
engaged, whether he went home before twelve, or failed to get back to
her garden again by one, for he had to cross the street in front of her
very eyes. Similarly she could observe whether any of his abandoned
family ever came out from her garden door weighted with suspicious
baskets, which might contain smuggled vegetables. Only yesterday morning
she had hurried forth with a dangerous smile to intercept a laden
urchin, with inquiries as to what was in “that nice basket.”
On that occasion that nice basket had proved to contain a strawberry net
which was being sent for repair to the gardener’s wife; so there
was nothing more to be done except verify its return. This she did from
a side window of the garden-room which commanded the strawberry beds;
she could sit quite close to that, for it was screened by the
large-leaved branches of a fig-tree and she could spy unseen.

Otherwise this road to the right leading up to the church was of no
great importance (except on Sunday morning, when she could get a
practically complete list of those who attended Divine Service), for no
one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To
the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic
window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might
be, and were, made.[7] She could, from behind a curtain negligently
half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye
on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or
made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations
with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank
march across the few steps of garden and steal into the house,
noiselessly ascend the stairs, and catch the offender red-handed at this
public dalliance. But all such domestic espionage to right and left was
flavourless and insipid compared to the tremendous discoveries which
daily and hourly awaited the trained observer of the street that lay
directly in front of her window.

There was little that concerned the social movements of Tilling that
could not be proved, or at least reasonably conjectured, from Miss
Mapp’s eyrie. Just below her house on the left stood Major
Flint’s residence, of Georgian red brick like her own, and
opposite was that of Captain Puffin. They were both bachelors, though
Major Flint was generally supposed to have been the hero of some
amazingly amorous adventures in early life, and always turned the
subject with great abruptness when anything connected with duelling was
mentioned. It was not, therefore, unreasonable to infer that he had had
experiences of a bloody sort, and colour was added to this romantic
conjecture by the fact that in damp, rheumatic weather his left arm was
very stiff, and he had been known to say that his wound troubled him.
What wound that was no one exactly knew (it might have been anything
from a vaccination mark to a sabre-cut), for having said that his wound
troubled him, he would invariably add: “Pshaw! that’s enough
about an old campaigner”; and though he might subsequently talk of
nothing else except the old[8]
campaigner, he drew a veil over his old campaigns. That he had seen
service in India was, indeed, probable by his referring to lunch as
tiffin, and calling to his parlour-maid with the ejaculation of
“Qui-hi.” As her name was Sarah, this was clearly a
reminiscence of days in bungalows. When not in a rage, his manner to his
own sex was bluff and hearty; but whether in a rage or not, his manner
to the fairies, or lovely women, was gallant and pompous in the extreme.
He certainly had a lock of hair in a small gold specimen case on his
watch-chain, and had been seen to kiss it when, rather carelessly, he
thought that he was unobserved.

Miss Mapp’s eye, as she took her seat in her window on this sunny
July morning, lingered for a moment on the Major’s house, before
she proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back
page of her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young
women dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes
which Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust herself to. Neither the
Major nor Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time
that the first signals of animation might be expected. Indeed, at this
moment, she quite distinctly heard that muffled roar which to her
experienced ear was easily interpreted to be “Qui-hi!”

“So the Major has just come down to breakfast,” she
mechanically inferred, “and it’s close on ten o’clock.
Let me see: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday—Porridge morning.”

Her penetrating glance shifted to the house exactly opposite to that in
which it was porridge morning, and even as she looked a hand was thrust
out of a small upper window and deposited a sponge on the sill. Then
from[9]
the inside the lower sash was thrust firmly down, so as to prevent the
sponge from blowing away and falling into the street. Captain Puffin, it
was therefore clear, was a little later than the Major that morning. But
he always shaved and brushed his teeth before his bath, so that there
was but a few minutes between them.

General manœuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering
life from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the
town with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping
purchases, the exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to
the golf links, and other first steps in the duties and diversions of
the day, did not get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp
had ample time to skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste
meditations about the occupants of these two houses, before she need
really make herself alert to miss nothing. Of the two, Major Flint,
without doubt, was the more attractive to the feminine sense; for years
Miss Mapp had tried to cajole him into marrying her, and had not nearly
finished yet. With his record of adventure, with the romantic reek of
India (and camphor) in the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall
and surged like a rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant
manner, with his loud pshawings and sniffs at “nonsense and
balderdash,” his thumpings on the table to emphasize an argument,
with his wound and his prodigious swipes at golf, his intolerance of any
who believed in ghosts, microbes or vegetarianism, there was something
dashing and risky about him; you felt that you were in the presence of
some hot coal straight from the furnace of creation. Captain Puffin, on
the other hand, was of clay so different that he could hardly be
considered to be made of clay at all.[10]
He was lame and short and meagre, with strings of peaceful beads and
Papuan aprons in his hall instead of wild tiger-skins, and had a jerky,
inattentive manner and a high pitched voice. Yet to Miss Mapp’s
mind there was something behind his unimpressiveness that had a
mysterious quality—all the more so, because nothing of it appeared
on the surface. Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his
sniffings, the least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the
table, great hulking kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure
that Captain Puffin did not hold a joker which would some time come to
light. The idea of being Mrs. Puffin was not so attractive as the other,
but she occasionally gave it her remote consideration.

Yet there was mystery about them both, in spite of the fact that most of
their movements were so amply accounted for. As a rule, they played golf
together in the morning, reposed in the afternoon, as could easily be
verified by anyone standing on a still day in the road between their
houses and listening to the loud and rhythmical breathings that fanned
the tranquil air, certainly went out to tea-parties afterwards and
played bridge till dinner-time; or if no such entertainment was
proffered them, occupied arm-chairs at the country club, or laboriously
amassed a hundred at billiards. Though tea-parties were profuse, dining
out was very rare at Tilling; Patience or a jig-saw puzzle occupied the
hour or two that intervened between domestic supper and bed-time; but
again and again, Miss Mapp had seen lights burning in the sitting-room
of those two neighbours at an hour when such lights as were still in
evidence at Tilling were strictly confined to bedrooms, and should,
indeed, have been extinguished there. And only last week, being [11]
plucked from slumber by some unaccountable indigestion (for which she
blamed a small green apple), she had seen at no less than twelve-thirty
in the morning the lights in Captain Puffin’s sitting-room still
shining through the blind. This had excited her so much that at risk of
toppling into the street, she had craned her neck from her window, and
observed a similar illumination in the house of Major Flint. They were
not together then, for in that case any prudent householder (and God
knew that they both of them scraped and saved enough, or, if He
didn’t know, Miss Mapp did) would have quenched his own lights, if
he were talking to his friend in his friend’s house. The next
night, the pangs of indigestion having completely vanished, she set her
alarum clock at the same timeless hour, and had observed exactly the
same phenomenon. Such late hours, of course, amply accounted for these
late breakfasts; but why, so Miss Mapp pithily asked herself, why these
late hours? Of course they both kept summer-time, whereas most of
Tilling utterly refused (except when going by train) to alter their
watches because Mr. Lloyd George told them to; but even allowing for
that … then she perceived that summer-time made it later than
ever for its adherents, so that was no excuse.

Miss Mapp had a mind that was incapable of believing the improbable, and
the current explanation of these late hours was very improbable, indeed.
Major Flint often told the world in general that he was revising his
diaries, and that the only uninterrupted time which he could find in
this pleasant whirl of life at Tilling was when he was alone in the
evening. Captain Puffin, on his part, confessed to a student’s
curiosity about the ancient history of Tilling, with regard to which he
was preparing a monograph. He could talk, when permitted, by the [12]
hour about the reclamation from the sea of the marsh land south of the
town, and about the old Roman road which was built on a raised causeway,
of which traces remained; but it argued, so thought Miss Mapp, an
unprecedented egoism on the part of Major Flint, and an equally
unprecedented love of antiquities on the part of Captain Puffin, that
they should prosecute their studies (with gas at the present price) till
such hours. No; Miss Mapp knew better than that, but she had not made up
her mind exactly what it was that she knew. She mentally rejected the
idea that egoism (even in these days of diaries and autobiographies) and
antiquities accounted for so much study, with the same healthy
intolerance with which a vigorous stomach rejects unwholesome food, and
did not allow herself to be insidiously poisoned by its retention. But
as she took up her light aluminium opera-glasses to make sure whether it
was Isabel Poppit or not who was now stepping with that high, prancing
tread into the stationer’s in the High Street, she exclaimed to
herself, for the three hundred and sixty-fifth time after breakfast:
“It’s very baffling”; for it was precisely a year
to-day since she had first seen those mysterious midnight squares of
illuminated blind. “Baffling,” in fact, was a word that
constantly made short appearances in Miss Mapp’s vocabulary,
though its retention for a whole year over one subject was
unprecedented. But never yet had “baffled” sullied her wells
of pure undefiled English.

Movement had begun; Mrs. Plaistow, carrying her wicker basket, came
round the corner by the church, in the direction of Miss Mapp’s
window, and as there was a temporary coolness between them (following
violent heat) with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue,
which a forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow, having [13]
definitely promised it to Miss Mapp … but Miss Mapp’s
large-mindedness scorned to recall the sordid details of this paltry
appropriation. The heat had quite subsided, and Miss Mapp was, for her
part, quite prepared to let the coolness regain the normal temperature
of cordiality the moment that Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted.
Outwardly and publicly friendly relationships had been resumed, and as
the coolness had lasted six weeks or so, it was probable that the
worsted had already been incorporated into the ornamental border of Mrs.
Plaistow’s jumper or winter scarf, and a proper expression of
regret would have to do instead. So the nearer Mrs. Plaistow approached,
the more invisible she became to Miss Mapp’s eye, and when she was
within saluting distance had vanished altogether. Simultaneously Miss
Poppit came out of the stationer’s in the High Street.

Mrs. Plaistow turned the corner below Miss Mapp’s window, and went
bobbing along down the steep hill. She walked with the motion of those
mechanical dolls sold in the street, which have three legs set as spokes
to a circle, so that their feet emerge from their dress with Dutch and
rigid regularity, and her figure had a certain squat rotundity that
suited her gait. She distinctly looked into Captain Puffin’s
dining-room window as she passed, and with the misplaced juvenility so
characteristic of her waggled her plump little hand at it. At the corner
beyond Major Flint’s house she hesitated a moment, and turned off
down the entry into the side street where Mr. Wyse lived. The dentist
lived there, too, and as Mr. Wyse was away on the continent of Europe,
Mrs. Plaistow was almost certain to be visiting the other. Rapidly Miss
Mapp remembered that at Mrs. Bartlett’s bridge party yesterday
Mrs. Plaistow had selected soft chocolates for[14]
consumption instead of those stuffed with nougat or almonds. That
furnished additional evidence for the dentist, for generally you could
not get a nougat chocolate at all if Godiva Plaistow had been in the
room for more than a minute or two… As she crossed the narrow
cobbled roadway, with the grass growing luxuriantly between the rounded
pebbles, she stumbled and recovered herself with a swift little forward
run, and the circular feet twinkled with the rapidity of those of a
thrush scudding over the lawn.

By this time Isabel Poppit had advanced as far as the fish shop three
doors below the turning down which Mrs. Plaistow had vanished. Her
prancing progress paused there for a moment, and she waited with one
knee highly elevated, like a statue of a curveting horse, before she
finally decided to pass on. But she passed no further than the fruit
shop next door, and took the three steps that elevated it from the
street in a single prance, with her Roman nose high in the air.
Presently she emerged, but with no obvious rotundity like that of a
melon projecting from her basket, so that Miss Mapp could see exactly
what she had purchased, and went back to the fish shop again. Surely she
would not put fish on the top of fruit, and even as Miss Mapp’s
lucid intelligence rejected this supposition, the true solution struck
her. “Ice,” she said to herself, and, sure enough,
projecting from the top of Miss Poppit’s basket when she came out
was an angular peak, wrapped up in paper already wet.

Miss Poppit came up the street and Miss Mapp put up her illustrated
paper again, with the revolting picture of the Brighton sea-nymphs
turned towards the window. Peeping out behind it, she observed that Miss
Poppit’s[15]
basket was apparently oozing with bright venous blood, and felt certain
that she had bought red currants. That, coupled with the ice, made
conjecture complete. She had bought red currants slightly damaged (or
they would not have oozed so speedily), in order to make that iced
red-currant fool of which she had so freely partaken at Miss
Mapp’s last bridge party. That was a very scurvy trick, for iced
red-currant fool was an invention of Miss Mapp’s, who, when it was
praised, said that she inherited the recipe from her grandmother. But
Miss Poppit had evidently entered the lists against Grandmamma Mapp, and
she had as evidently guessed that quite inferior fruit—fruit that
was distinctly “off,” was undetectable when severely iced.
Miss Mapp could only hope that the fruit in the basket now bobbing past
her window was so much “off” that it had begun to ferment.
Fermented red-currant fool was nasty to the taste, and, if persevered
in, disastrous in its effects. General unpopularity might be needed to
teach Miss Poppit not to trespass on Grandmamma Mapp’s preserves.

Isabel Poppit lived with a flashy and condescending mother just round
the corner beyond the gardener’s cottage, and opposite the west
end of the church. They were comparatively new inhabitants of Tilling,
having settled here only two or three years ago, and Tilling had not yet
quite ceased to regard them as rather suspicious characters. Suspicion
smouldered, though it blazed no longer. They were certainly rich, and
Miss Mapp suspected them of being profiteers. They kept a butler, of
whom they were both in considerable awe, who used almost to shrug his
shoulders when Mrs. Poppit gave him an order: they kept a motor-car to
which Mrs. Poppit[16]
was apt to allude more frequently than would have been natural if she
had always been accustomed to one, and they went to Switzerland for a
month every winter and to Scotland “for the
shooting-season,” as Mrs. Poppit terribly remarked, every summer.
This all looked very black, and though Isabel conformed to the manners
of Tilling in doing household shopping every morning with her wicker
basket, and buying damaged fruit for fool, and in dressing in the
original home-made manner indicated by good breeding and narrow incomes,
Miss Mapp was sadly afraid that these habits were not the outcome of
chaste and instinctive simplicity, but of the ambition to be received by
the old families of Tilling as one of them. But what did a true
Tillingite want with a butler and a motor-car? And if these were not
sufficient to cast grave doubts on the sincerity of the inhabitants of
“Ye Smalle House,” there was still very vivid in Miss
Mapp’s mind that dreadful moment, undimmed by the years that had
passed over it, when Mrs. Poppit broke the silence at an altogether too
sumptuous lunch by asking Mrs. Plaistow if she did not find the
super-tax a grievous burden on “our little incomes.”
… Miss Mapp had drawn in her breath sharply, as if in pain, and
after a few gasps turned the conversation… Worst of all, perhaps,
because more recent, was the fact that Mrs. Poppit had just received the
dignity of the M.B.E., or Member of the Order of the British Empire, and
put it on her cards too, as if to keep the scandal alive. Her services
in connection with the Tilling hospital had been entirely confined to
putting her motor-car at its disposal when she did not want it herself,
and not a single member of the Tilling Working Club, which had knitted
its fingers to the bone and made enough seven-tailed bandages to reach
to the[17]
moon, had been offered a similar decoration. If anyone had she would
have known what to do: a stinging letter to the Prime Minister saying
that she worked not with hope of distinction, but from pure patriotism,
would have certainly been Miss Mapp’s rejoinder. She actually
drafted the letter, when Mrs. Poppit’s name appeared, and
diligently waded through column after column of subsequent lists, to
make sure that she, the originator of the Tilling Working Club, had not
been the victim of a similar insult.

Mrs. Poppit was a climber: that was what she was, and Miss Mapp was
obliged to confess that very nimble she had been. The butler and the
motor-car (so frequently at the disposal of Mrs. Poppit’s friends)
and the incessant lunches and teas had done their work; she had fed
rather than starved Tilling into submission, and Miss Mapp felt that she
alone upheld the dignity of the old families. She was positively the
only old family (and a solitary spinster at that) who had not
surrendered to the Poppits. Naturally she did not carry her staunchness
to the extent, so to speak, of a hunger-strike, for that would be
singular conduct, only worthy of suffragettes, and she partook of the
Poppits’ hospitality to the fullest extent possible, but (here her
principles came in) she never returned the hospitality of the Member of
the British Empire, though she occasionally asked Isabel to her house,
and abused her soundly on all possible occasions…

This spiteful retrospect passed swiftly and smoothly through Miss
Mapp’s mind, and did not in the least take off from the acuteness
with which she observed the tide in the affairs of Tilling which, after
the ebb of the night, was now flowing again, nor did it, a few minutes
after Isabel’s disappearance round the corner, prevent her from
hearing the faint tinkle of the telephone in her own house.[18]
At that she started to her feet, but paused again at the door. She had
shrewd suspicions about her servants with regard to the telephone: she
was convinced (though at present she had not been able to get any
evidence on the point) that both her cook and her parlourmaid used it
for their own base purposes at her expense, and that their friends
habitually employed it for conversation with them. And perhaps—who
knows?—her housemaid was the worst of the lot, for she affected an
almost incredible stupidity with regard to the instrument, and pretended
not to be able either to speak through it or to understand its
cacklings. All that might very well be assumed in order to divert
suspicion, so Miss Mapp paused by the door to let any of these
delinquents get deep in conversation with her friend: a soft and
stealthy advance towards the room called the morning-room (a small
apartment opening out of the hall, and used chiefly for the bestowal of
hats and cloaks and umbrellas) would then enable her to catch one of
them red-mouthed, or at any rate to overhear fragments of conversation
which would supply equally direct evidence.

She had got no further than the garden-door into her house when Withers,
her parlourmaid, came out. Miss Mapp thereupon began to smile and hum a
tune. Then the smile widened and the tune stopped.

“Yes, Withers?” she said. “Were you looking for
me?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Withers. “Miss Poppit has just rung
you up——”

Miss Mapp looked much surprised.

“And to think that the telephone should have rung without my
hearing it,” she said. “I must be growing deaf, Withers, in
my old age. What does Miss Poppit want?”

[19]
“She hopes you will be able to go to tea this afternoon and play
bridge. She expects that a few friends may look in at a quarter to
four.”

A flood of lurid light poured into Miss Mapp’s mind. To expect
that a few friends may look in was the orthodox way of announcing a
regular party to which she had not been asked, and Miss Mapp knew as if
by a special revelation that if she went, she would find that she made
the eighth to complete two tables of bridge. When the butler opened the
door, he would undoubtedly have in his hand a half sheet of paper on
which were written the names of the expected friends, and if the
caller’s name was not on that list, he would tell her with brazen
impudence that neither Mrs. Poppit nor Miss Poppit were at home, while,
before the baffled visitor had turned her back, he would admit another
caller who duly appeared on his reference paper… So then the
Poppits were giving a bridge-party to which she had only been bidden at
the last moment, clearly to take the place of some expected friend who
had developed influenza, lost an aunt or been obliged to go to London:
here, too, was the explanation of why (as she had overheard yesterday)
Major Flint and Captain Puffin were only intending to play one round of
golf to-day, and to come back by the 2.20 train. And why seek any
further for the explanation of the lump of ice and the red currants
(probably damaged) which she had observed Isabel purchase? And anyone
could see (at least Miss Mapp could) why she had gone to the
stationer’s in the High Street just before. Packs of cards.

Who the expected friend was who had disappointed Mrs. Poppit could be
thought out later: at present, as Miss Mapp smiled at Withers and hummed
her tune again, she had to settle whether she was going to be
delighted[20]
to accept, or obliged to decline. The argument in favour of being
obliged to decline was obvious: Mrs. Poppit deserved to be “served
out” for not including her among the original guests, and if she
declined it was quite probable that at this late hour her hostess might
not be able to get anyone else, and so one of her tables would be
completely spoiled. In favour of accepting was the fact that she would
get a rubber of bridge and a good tea, and would be able to say
something disagreeable about the red-currant fool, which would serve
Miss Poppit out for attempting to crib her ancestral dishes…

A bright, a joyous, a diabolical idea struck her, and she went herself
to the telephone, and genteelly wiped the place where Withers had
probably breathed on it.

“So kind of you, Isabel,” she said, “but I am very
busy to-day, and you didn’t give me much notice, did you? So
I’ll try to look in if I can, shall I? I might be able to squeeze
it in.”

There was a pause, and Miss Mapp knew that she had put Isabel in a hole.
If she successfully tried to get somebody else, Miss Mapp might find she
could squeeze it in, and there would be nine. If she failed to get
someone else, and Miss Mapp couldn’t squeeze it in, then there
would be seven… Isabel wouldn’t have a tranquil moment all
day.

“Ah, do squeeze it in,” she said in those horrid wheedling
tones which for some reason Major Flint found so attractive. That was
one of the weak points about him, and there were many, many others. But
that was among those which Miss Mapp found it difficult to condone.

“If I possibly can,” said Miss Mapp. “But at this late
hour—Good-bye, dear, or only au reservoir, we hope.”

She heard Isabel’s polite laugh at this nearly new and[21]
delicious Malaprop before she rang off. Isabel collected malaprops and
wrote them out in a note book. If you reversed the note-book and began
at the other end, you would find the collection of Spoonerisms, which
were very amusing, too.

Tea, followed by a bridge-party, was, in summer, the chief manifestation
of the spirit of hospitality in Tilling. Mrs. Poppit, it is true, had
attempted to do something in the way of dinner-parties, but though she
was at liberty to give as many dinner-parties as she pleased, nobody
else had followed her ostentatious example. Dinner-parties entailed a
higher scale of living; Miss Mapp, for one, had accurately counted the
cost of having three hungry people to dinner, and found that one such
dinner-party was not nearly compensated for, in the way of expense, by
being invited to three subsequent dinner-parties by your guests.
Voluptuous teas were the rule, after which you really wanted no more
than little bits of things, a cup of soup, a slice of cold tart, or a
dished-up piece of fish and some toasted cheese. Then, after the
excitement of bridge (and bridge was very exciting in Tilling), a
jig-saw puzzle or Patience cooled your brain and composed your nerves.
In winter, however, with its scarcity of daylight, Tilling commonly gave
evening bridge-parties, and asked the requisite number of friends to
drop in after dinner, though everybody knew that everybody else had only
partaken of bits of things. Probably the ruinous price of coal had
something to do with these evening bridge-parties, for the fire that
warmed your room when you were alone would warm all your guests as well,
and then, when your hospitality was returned, you could let your
sitting-room fire go out. But though Miss Mapp was already planning
something in[22]
connection with winter bridge, winter was a long way off yet…

Before Miss Mapp got back to her window in the garden-room Mrs.
Poppit’s great offensive motor-car, which she always alluded to as
“the Royce,” had come round the corner and, stopping
opposite Major Flint’s house, was entirely extinguishing all
survey of the street beyond. It was clear enough then that she had sent
the Royce to take the two out to the golf-links, so that they should
have time to play their round and catch the 2.20 back to Tilling again,
so as to be in good time for the bridge-party. Even as she looked, Major
Flint came out of his house on one side of the Royce and Captain Puffin
on the other. The Royce obstructed their view of each other, and
simultaneously each of them shouted across to the house of the other.
Captain Puffin emitted a loud “Coo-ee, Major,” (an
Australian ejaculation, learned on his voyages), while Major Flint
bellowed “Qui-hi, Captain,” which, all the world knew, was
of Oriental origin. The noise each of them made prevented him from
hearing the other, and presently one in a fuming hurry to start ran
round in front of the car at the precise moment that the other ran round
behind it, and they both banged loudly on each other’s knockers.
These knocks were not so precisely simultaneous as the shouts had been,
and this led to mutual discovery, hailed with peals of falsetto laughter
on the part of Captain Puffin and the more manly guffaws of the
Major… After that the Royce lumbered down the grass-grown cobbles
of the street, and after a great deal of reversing managed to turn the
corner.

Miss Mapp set off with her basket to do her shopping. She carried in it
the weekly books, which she would leave, with payment but not without
argument, at the tradesmen’s[23]
shops. There was an item for suet which she intended to resist to the
last breath in her body, though her butcher would probably surrender
long before that. There was an item for eggs at the dairy which she
might have to pay, though it was a monstrous overcharge. She had made up
her mind about the laundry, she intended to pay that bill with an icy
countenance and say “Good morning for ever,” or words to
that effect, unless the proprietor instantly produced the—the
article of clothing which had been lost in the wash (like King
John’s treasures), or refunded an ample sum for the replacing of
it. All these quarrelsome errands were meat and drink to Miss Mapp:
Tuesday morning, the day on which she paid and disputed her weekly
bills, was as enjoyable as Sunday mornings when, sitting close under the
pulpit, she noted the glaring inconsistencies and grammatical errors in
the discourse. After the bills were paid and business was done, there
was pleasure to follow, for there was a fitting-on at the
dress-maker’s, the fitting-on of a tea-gown, to be worn at
winter-evening bridge-parties, which, unless Miss Mapp was sadly
mistaken, would astound and agonize by its magnificence all who set eyes
on it. She had found the description of it, as worn by Mrs. Titus W.
Trout, in an American fashion paper; it was of what was described as
kingfisher blue, and had lumps and wedges of lace round the edge of the
skirt, and orange chiffon round the neck. As she set off with her basket
full of tradesmen’s books, she pictured to herself with watering
mouth the fury, the jealousy, the madness of envy which it would raise
in all properly-constituted breasts.

In spite of her malignant curiosity and her cancerous suspicions about
all her friends, in spite, too, of her restless activities, Miss Mapp
was not, as might have been expected,[24]
a lady of lean and emaciated appearance. She was tall and portly, with
plump hands, a broad, benignant face and dimpled, well-nourished cheeks.
An acute observer might have detected a danger warning in the sidelong
glances of her rather bulgy eyes, and in a certain tightness at the
corners of her expansive mouth, which boded ill for any who came within
snapping distance, but to a more superficial view she was a rollicking,
good-natured figure of a woman. Her mode of address, too, bore out this
misleading impression: nothing, for instance, could have been more
genial just now than her telephone voice to Isabel Poppit, or her smile
to Withers, even while she so strongly suspected her of using the
telephone for her own base purposes, and as she passed along the High
Street, she showered little smiles and bows on acquaintances and
friends. She markedly drew back her lips in speaking, being in no way
ashamed of her long white teeth, and wore a practically perpetual smile
when there was the least chance of being under observation. Though at
sermon time on Sunday, as has been already remarked, she greedily noted
the weaknesses and errors of which those twenty minutes was so
rewardingly full, she sat all the time with down-dropped eyes and a
pretty sacred smile on her lips, and now, when she spied on the other
side of the street the figure of the vicar, she tripped slantingly
across the road to him, as if by the move of a knight at chess, looking
everywhere else, and only perceiving him with glad surprise at the very
last moment. He was a great frequenter of tea parties and except in Lent
an assiduous player of bridge, for a clergyman’s duties, so he
very properly held, were not confined to visiting the poor and exhorting
the sinner. He should be a man of the world, and enter into the
pleasures of his prosperous parishioners, as well as[25]
into the trials of the troubled. Being an accomplished card-player he
entered not only into their pleasures but their pockets, and there was
no lady of Tilling who was not pleased to have Mr. Bartlett for a
partner. His winnings, so he said, he gave annually to charitable
objects, though whether the charities he selected began at home was a
point on which Miss Mapp had quite made up her mind. “Not a penny
of that will the poor ever see,” was the gist of her reflections
when on disastrous days she paid him seven-and-ninepence. She always
called him “Padre,” and had never actually caught him
looking over his adversaries' hands.

“Good morning, Padre,” she said as soon as she perceived
him. “What a lovely day! The white butterflies were enjoying
themselves so in the sunshine in my garden. And the swallows!”

Miss Mapp, as every reader will have perceived, wanted to know whether
he was playing bridge this afternoon at the Poppits. Major Flint and
Captain Puffin certainly were, and it might be taken for granted that
Godiva Plaistow was. With the Poppits and herself that made six…

Mr. Bartlett was humorously archaic in speech. He interlarded archaisms
with Highland expressions, and his face was knobby, like a chest of
drawers.

“Ha, good morrow, fair dame,” he said. “And prithee,
art not thou even as ye white butterflies?”

“Oh, Mr. Bartlett,” said the fair dame with a provocative
glance. “Naughty! Comparing me to a delicious butterfly!”

“Nay, prithee, why naughty?” said he. “Yea, indeed,
it’s a day to make ye little fowles rejoice! Ha! I perceive you
are on the errands of the guid wife Martha.” And he pointed to the
basket.

[26]
“Yes; Tuesday morning,” said Miss Mapp. “I pay all my
household books on Tuesday. Poor but honest, dear Padre. What a rush
life is to-day! I hardly know which way to turn. Little duties in all
directions! And you; you’re always busy! Such a busy bee!”

“Busy B? Busy Bartlett, quo’ she! Yes, I’m a busy B
to-day, Mistress Mapp. Sermon all morning: choir practice at three, a
baptism at six. No time for a walk to-day, let alone a bit turn at the
gowf.”

Miss Mapp saw her opening, and made a busy bee line for it.

“Oh, but you should get regular exercise, Padre,” said she.
“You take no care of yourself. After the choir practice now, and
before the baptism, you could have a brisk walk. To please me!”

“Yes. I had meant to get a breath of air then,” said he.
“But ye guid Dame Poppit has insisted that I take a wee hand at
the cartes with them, the wifey and I. Prithee, shall we meet
there?”

(“That makes seven without me,” thought Miss Mapp in
parenthesis.) Aloud she said:

“If I can squeeze it in, Padre. I have promised dear Isabel to do
my best.”

“Well, and a lassie can do no mair,” said he. “Au
reservoir then.”

Miss Mapp was partly pleased, partly annoyed by the agility with which
the Padre brought out her own particular joke. It was she who had
brought it down to Tilling, and she felt she had an option on it at the
end of every interview, if she meant (as she had done on this occasion)
to bring it out. On the other hand it was gratifying to see how popular
it had become. She had heard it last month when on a visit to a friend
at that sweet and refined[27] village called Riseholme. It was rather
looked down on there, as not being sufficiently intellectual. But within
a week of Miss Mapp’s return, Tilling rang with it, and she let it
be understood that she was the original humorist.

Godiva Plaistow came whizzing along the pavement, a short, stout,
breathless body who might, so thought Miss Mapp, have acted up to the
full and fell associations of her Christian name without exciting the
smallest curiosity on the part of the lewd. (Miss Mapp had much the same
sort of figure, but her height, so she was perfectly satisfied to
imagine, converted corpulence into majesty.) The swift alternation of
those Dutch-looking feet gave the impression that Mrs. Plaistow was
going at a prodigious speed, but they could stop revolving without any
warning, and then she stood still. Just when a collision with Miss Mapp
seemed imminent, she came to a dead halt.

It was as well to be quite certain that she was going to the Poppits,
and Miss Mapp forgave and forgot about the worsted until she had found
out. She could never quite manage the indelicacy of saying
“Godiva,” whatever Mrs. Plaistow’s figure and age
might happen to be, but always addressed her as “Diva,” very
affectionately, whenever they were on speaking terms.

“What a lovely morning, Diva darling,” she said; and
noticing that Mr. Bartlett was well out of earshot, “The white
butterflies were enjoying themselves so in the sunshine in my garden.
And the swallows.”

Godiva was telegraphic in speech.

“Lucky birds,” she said. “No teeth. Beaks.”

Miss Mapp remembered her disappearance round the dentist’s corner
half an hour ago, and her own firm inference on the problem.

[28]
“Toothache, darling?” she said. “So sorry.”

“Wisdom,” said Godiva. “Out at one o’clock. Gas.
Ready for bridge this afternoon. Playing? Poppits.”

“If I can squeeze it in, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “Such
a hustle to-day.”

Diva put her hand to her face as “wisdom” gave her an awful
twinge. Of course she did not believe in the “hustle,” but
her pangs prevented her from caring much.

“Meet you then,” she said. “Shall be all comfortable
then. Au——”

This was more than could be borne, and Miss Mapp hastily interrupted.

“Au reservoir, Diva dear,” she said with extreme acerbity,
and Diva’s feet began swiftly revolving again.

The problem about the bridge-party thus seemed to be solved. The two
Poppits, the two Bartletts, the Major and the Captain with Diva darling
and herself made eight, and Miss Mapp with a sudden recrudescence of
indignation against Isabel with regard to the red-currant fool and the
belated invitation, made up her mind that she would not be able to
squeeze it in, thus leaving the party one short. Even apart from the
red-currant fool it served the Poppits right for not asking her
originally, but only when, as seemed now perfectly clear, somebody else
had disappointed them. But just as she emerged from the butcher’s
shop, having gained a complete victory in the matter of that suet,
without expending the last breath in her body or anything like it, the
whole of the seemingly solid structure came toppling to the ground. For
on emerging, flushed with triumph, leaving the baffled butcher to try
his tricks on somebody else if he chose but not on Miss Mapp, she ran
straight into the Disgrace of Tilling and her sex, the suffragette,
post-impressionist artist (who painted[29]
from the nude, both male and female), the socialist and the Germanophil,
all incarnate in one frame. In spite of these execrable antecedents, it
was quite in vain that Miss Mapp had tried to poison the collective mind
of Tilling against this Creature. If she hated anybody, and she
undoubtedly did, she hated Irene Coles. The bitterest part of it all was
that if Miss Coles was amused at anybody, and she undoubtedly was, she
was amused at Miss Mapp.

Miss Coles was strolling along in the attire to which Tilling generally
had got accustomed, but Miss Mapp never. She had an old wide-awake hat
jammed down on her head, a tall collar and stock, a large loose coat,
knickerbockers and grey stockings. In her mouth was a cigarette, in her
hand she swung the orthodox wicker-basket. She had certainly been to the
other fishmonger’s at the end of the High Street, for a lobster,
revived perhaps after a sojourn on the ice, by this warm sun, which the
butterflies and the swallows had been rejoicing in, was climbing with
claws and waving legs over the edge of it.

Irene removed her cigarette from her mouth and did something in the
gutter which is usually associated with the floor of third-class smoking
carriages. Then her handsome, boyish face, more boyish because her hair
was closely clipped, broke into a broad grin.

“Hullo, Mapp!” she said. “Been giving the tradesmen
what for on Tuesday morning?”

Miss Mapp found it extremely difficult to bear this obviously insolent
form of address without a spasm of rage. Irene called her Mapp because
she chose to, and Mapp (more bitterness) felt it wiser not to provoke
Coles. She had a dreadful, humorous tongue, an indecent disregard of
public or private opinion, and her gift of mimicry was[30]
as appalling as her opinion about the Germans. Sometimes Miss Mapp
alluded to her as “quaint Irene,” but that was as far as she
got in the way of reprisals.

“Oh, you sweet thing!” she said. “Treasure!”

Irene, in some ghastly way, seemed to take note of this. Why men like
Captain Puffin and Major Flint found Irene “fetching” and
“killing” was more than Miss Mapp could understand, or
wanted to understand.

Quaint Irene looked down at her basket.

“Why, there’s my lunch going over the top like those beastly
British Tommies,” she said, “Get back, love.”

Miss Mapp could not quite determine whether “love” was a
sarcastic echo of “Treasure.” It seemed probable.

“Oh, what a dear little lobster,” she said. “Look at
his sweet claws.”

“I shall do more than look at them soon,” said Irene, poking
it into her basket again. “Come and have tiffin, qui-hi,
I’ve got to look after myself to-day.”

“What has happened to your devoted Lucy?” asked Miss Mapp.
Irene lived in a very queer way with one gigantic maid, who, but for her
sex, might have been in the Guards.

“Ill. I suspect scarlet-fever,” said Irene. “Very
infectious, isn’t it? I was up nursing her all last night.”

Miss Mapp recoiled. She did not share Major Flint’s robust views
about microbes.

“But I hope, dear, you’ve thoroughly
disinfected——”

“Oh, yes. Soap and water,” said Irene. “By the way,
are you Poppiting this afternoon?”

“If I can squeeze it in,” said Miss Mapp.

“We’ll meet again, then. Oh——”

“Au reservoir,” said Miss Mapp instantly.

[31]
“No; not that silly old chestnut!” said Irene. “I
wasn’t going to say that. I was only going to say: ‘Oh, do
come to tiffin.’ You and me and the lobster. Then you and me. But
it’s a bore about Lucy. I was painting her. Fine figure, gorgeous
legs. You wouldn’t like to sit for me till she’s well
again?”

Miss Mapp gave a little squeal and bolted into her dressmaker’s.
She always felt battered after a conversation with Irene, and needed
kingfisher blue to restore her.

CHAPTER II

There is not in all England a town so blatantly picturesque as Tilling,
nor one, for the lover of level marsh land, of tall reedy dykes, of
enormous sunsets and rims of blue sea on the horizon, with so fortunate
an environment. The hill on which it is built rises steeply from the
level land, and, crowned by the great grave church so conveniently close
to Miss Mapp’s residence, positively consists of quaint corners,
rough-cast and timber cottages, and mellow Georgian fronts. Corners and
quaintnesses, gems, glimpses and bits are an obsession to the artist,
and in consequence, during the summer months, not only did the majority
of its inhabitants turn out into the cobbled ways with sketching-blocks,
canvases and paintboxes, but every morning brought into the town
charabancs from neighbouring places loaded with passengers, many of whom
joined the artistic residents, and you would have thought (until an
inspection of their productions convinced you of the contrary) that some
tremendous outburst of Art was rivalling the Italian Renaissance. For
those who were capable of tackling straight lines and the intricacies of
perspective there were the steep[32]
cobbled streets of charming and irregular architecture, while for those
who rightly felt themselves colourists rather than architectural
draughtsmen, there was the view from the top of the hill over the
marshes. There, but for one straight line to mark the horizon (and that
could easily be misty) there were no petty conventionalities in the way
of perspective, and the eager practitioner could almost instantly plunge
into vivid greens and celestial blues, or, at sunset, into pinks and
chromes and rose-madder.

Tourists who had no pictorial gifts would pick their way among the
sketchers, and search the shops for cracked china and bits of brass. Few
if any of them left without purchasing one of the famous Tilling
money-boxes, made in the shape of a pottery pig, who bore on his back
that remarkable legend of his authenticity which ran:

Miss Mapp had a long shelf full of these in every colour to adorn her
dining-room. The one which completed her collection, of a pleasant
magenta colour, had only just been acquired. She called them “My
sweet rainbow of piggies,” and often when she came down to
breakfast, especially if Withers was in the room, she said: “Good
morning, quaint little piggies.” When Withers had left the room
she counted them.

The corner where the street took a turn towards the church, just below
the window of her garden-room, was easily the most popular stance for
sketchers. You were bewildered and bowled over by “bits.”
For the most accomplished of all there was that rarely attempted feat,
the view of the[33]
steep downward street, which, in spite of all the efforts of the artist,
insisted, in the sketch, on going up hill instead. Then, next in
difficulty, was the street after it had turned, running by the
gardener’s cottage up to the churchyard and the church. This, in
spite of its difficulty, was a very favourite subject, for it included,
on the right of the street, just beyond Miss Mapp’s garden wall,
the famous crooked chimney, which was continually copied from every
point of view. The expert artist would draw it rather more crooked than
it really was, in order that there might be no question that he had not
drawn it crooked by accident. This sketch was usually negotiated from
the three steps in front of Miss Mapp’s front door. Opposite the
church-and-chimney-artists would sit others, drawing the front door
itself (difficult), and moistening their pencils at their cherry lips,
while a little further down the street was another battalion hard at
work at the gabled front of the garden-room and its picturesque bow. It
was a favourite occupation of Miss Mapp’s, when there was a decent
gathering of artists outside, to pull a table right into the window of
the garden-room, in full view of them, and, quite unconscious of their
presence, to arrange flowers there with a smiling and pensive
countenance. She had other little playful public pastimes: she would get
her kitten from the house, and induce it to sit on the table while she
diverted it with the tassel of the blind, and she would kiss it on its
sweet little sooty head, or she would write letters in the window, or
play Patience there, and then suddenly become aware that there was no
end of ladies and gentlemen looking at her. Sometimes she would come out
of the house, if the steps were very full, with her own sketching
paraphernalia in her hands and say, ever so coyly: “May I scriggle
through?” or ask[34]
the squatters on her own steps if they could find a little corner for
her. That was so interesting for them: they would remember afterwards
that just while they were engaged on their sketches, the lady of that
beautiful house at the corner, who had been playing with her kitten in
the window, came out to sketch too. She addressed gracious and yet
humble remarks to them: “I see you are painting my sweet little
home. May I look? Oh, what a lovely little sketch!” Once, on a
never-to-be-forgotten day, she observed one of them take a camera from
his pocket and rapidly focus her as she stood on the top step. She
turned full-faced and smiling to the camera just in time to catch the
click of the shutter, but then it was too late to hide her face, and
perhaps the picture might appear in the Graphic or the Sketch, or
among the posturing nymphs of a neighbouring watering-place…

This afternoon she was content to “scriggle” through the
sketchers, and humming a little tune, she passed up to the churchyard.
(“Scriggle” was one of her own words, highly popular; it
connoted squeezing and wriggling.) There she carefully concealed herself
under the boughs of the weeping ash tree directly opposite the famous
south porch of the church. She had already drawn in the lines of this
south porch on her sketching-block, transferring them there by means of
a tracing from a photograph, so that formed a very promising beginning
to her sketch. But she was nicely placed not only with regard to her
sketch, for, by peeping through the pretty foliage of the tree, she
could command the front door of Mrs. Poppit’s (M.B.E.) house.

Miss Mapp’s plans for the bridge-party had, of course, been
completely upset by the encounter with Irene in the High Street. Up till
that moment she had imagined that,[35]
with the two ladies of the house and the Bartletts and the Major and the
Captain and Godiva and herself, two complete tables of bridge would be
formed, and she had, therefore, determined that she would not be able to
squeeze the party into her numerous engagements, thereby spoiling the
second table. But now everything was changed: there were eight without
her, and unless, at a quarter to four, she saw reason to suppose, by
noting the arrivals at the house, that three bridge tables were in
contemplation, she had made up her mind to “squeeze it in,”
so that there would be nine gamblers, and Isabel or her mother, if they
had any sense of hospitality to their guests, would be compelled to sit
out for ever and ever. Miss Mapp had been urgently invited: sweet Isabel
had made a great point of her squeezing it in, and if sweet Isabel, in
order to be certain of a company of eight, had asked quaint Irene as
well, it would serve her right. An additional reason, besides this piece
of good-nature in managing to squeeze it in, for the sake of sweet
Isabel, lay in the fact that she would be able to take some red-currant
fool, and after one spoonful exclaim “Delicious,” and leave
the rest uneaten.

The white butterflies and the swallows were still enjoying themselves in
the sunshine, and so, too, were the gnats, about whose pleasure,
especially when they settled on her face, Miss Mapp did not care so
much. But soon she quite ceased to regard them, for, before the quaint
little gilded boys on each side of the clock above the north porch had
hammered out the three-quarters after three on their bells, visitors
began to arrive at the Poppits” door, and Miss Mapp was very
active looking through the boughs of the weeping ash and sitting down
again to smile and ponder over her sketch with her head a little on one
side, if anybody approached. One by one the expected guests[36]
presented themselves and were admitted: Major Flint and Captain Puffin,
the Padre and his wife, darling Diva with her head muffled in a
“cloud,” and finally Irene, still dressed as she had been in
the morning, and probably reeking with scarlet-fever. With the two
Poppits these made eight players, so as soon as Irene had gone in, Miss
Mapp hastily put her sketching things away, and holding her
admirably-accurate drawing with its wash of sky not quite dry, in her
hand, hurried to the door, for it would never do to arrive after the two
tables had started, since in that case it would be she who would have to
sit out.

Boon opened the door to her three staccato little knocks, and sulkily
consulted his list. She duly appeared on it and was admitted. Having
banged the door behind her he crushed the list up in his hand and threw
it into the fireplace: all those whose presence was desired had arrived,
and Boon would turn his bovine eye on any subsequent caller, and say
that his mistress was out.

“And may I put my sketching things down here, please, Boon,”
said Miss Mapp ingratiatingly. “And will no one touch my drawing?
It’s a little wet still. The church porch.”

Boon made a grunting noise like the Tilling pig, and slouched away in
front of her down the passage leading to the garden, sniffing. There
they were, with the two bridge-tables set out in a shady corner of the
lawn, and a buffet vulgarly heaped with all sorts of dainty confections
which made Miss Mapp’s mouth water, obliging her to swallow
rapidly once or twice before she could manage a wide, dry smile: Isabel
advanced.

“De-do, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “Such a rush! But
managed to squeeze it in, as you wouldn’t let me off.”

“Oh, that was nice of you, Miss Mapp,” said Isabel.
[37]

A wild and awful surmise seized Miss Mapp.

“And your dear mother?” she said. “Where is Mrs.
Poppit?”

“Mamma had to go to town this morning. She won’t be back
till close on dinner-time.”

Miss Mapp’s smile closed up like a furled umbrella. The trap had
snapped behind her: it was impossible now to scriggle away. She had
completed, instead of spoiling, the second table.

“So we’re just eight,” said Isabel, poking at her, so
to speak, through the wires. “Shall we have a rubber first and
then some tea? Or tea first. What says everybody?”

Restless and hungry murmurs, like those heard at the sea-lions’
enclosure in the Zoological Gardens when feeding-time approaches, seemed
to indicate tea first, and with gallant greetings from the Major, and
archaistic welcomes from the Padre, Miss Mapp headed the general
drifting movement towards the buffet. There may have been tea there, but
there was certainly iced coffee and Lager beer and large jugs with dew
on the outside and vegetables floating in a bubbling liquid in the
inside, and it was all so vulgar and opulent that with one accord
everyone set to work in earnest, in order that the garden should present
a less gross and greedy appearance. But there was no sign at present of
the red-currant fool, which was baffling…

“And have you had a good game of golf, Major?" asked Miss Mapp,
making the best of these miserable circumstances. “Such a lovely
day! The white butterflies were enjoying——”

She became aware that Diva and the Padre, who had already heard about
the white butterflies, were in her immediate neighbourhood, and broke
off.

[38]
“Which of you beat? Or should I say ‘won!’” she
asked.

Major Flint’s long moustache was dripping with Lager beer, and he
made a dexterous, sucking movement.

“Well, the Army and the Navy had it out,” he said.
“And for once Britain’s Navy was not invincible, eh,
Puffin?”

Captain Puffin limped away pretending not to hear, and took his heaped
plate and brimming glass in the direction of Irene.

“But I’m sure Captain Puffin played quite beautifully
too,” said Miss Mapp in the vain attempt to detain him. She liked
to collect all the men round her, and then scold them for not talking to
the other ladies.

“Well, a game’s a game,” said the Major. “It
gets through the hours, Miss Mapp. Yes: we finished at the fourteenth
hole, and hurried back to more congenial society. And what have you done
to-day? Fairy-errands, I’ll be bound. Titania! Ha!”

Suet errands and errands about a missing article of underclothing were
really the most important things that Miss Mapp had done to-day, now
that her bridge-party scheme had so miscarried, but naturally she would
not allude to these.

“A little gardening,” she said. “A little sketching. A
little singing. Not time to change my frock and put on something less
shabby. But I wouldn’t have kept sweet Isabel’s bridge-party
waiting for anything, and so I came straight from my painting here.
Padre, I’ve been trying to draw the lovely south porch. But so
difficult! I shall give up trying to draw, and just enjoy myself with
looking. And there’s your dear Evie! How de do, Evie love?”

[39]
Godiva Plaistow had taken off her cloud for purposes of mastication, but
wound it tightly round her head again as soon as she had eaten as much
as she could manage. This had to be done on one side of her mouth, or
with the front teeth in the nibbling manner of a rabbit. Everybody, of
course, by now knew that she had had a wisdom tooth out at one p.m. with
gas, and she could allude to it without explanation.

“Dreamed I was playing bridge,” she said, “and had a
hand of aces. As I played the first it went off in my hand. All over.
Blood. Hope it’ll come true. Bar the blood.”

Miss Mapp found herself soon afterwards partnered with Major Flint and
opposed by Irene and the Padre. They had hardly begun to consider their
first hands when Boon staggered out into the garden under the weight of
a large wooden bucket, packed with ice, that surrounded an interior
cylinder.

“Red currant fool at last,” thought Miss Mapp, adding aloud:
“O poor little me, is it, to declare? Shall I say ‘no
trumps?’”

“Mustn’t consult your partner, Mapp,” said Irene,
puffing the end of her cigarette out of its holder. Irene was painfully
literal.

“I don’t, darling,” said Miss Mapp, beginning to fizz
a little. “No trumps. Not a trump. Not any sort of trump. There!
What are we playing for, by the way?”

“Bob a hundred,” said the Padre, forgetting to be either
Scotch or archaic.

“Oh, gambler! You want the poor-box to be the rich box,
Padre,” said Miss Mapp, surveying her magnificent hand with the
greatest satisfaction. If it had not contained so many court-cards, she
would have proposed playing for sixpence, not a shilling a hundred.

[40]
All semblance of manners was invariably thrown to the winds by the
ladies of Tilling when once bridge began; primeval hatred took their
place. The winners of any hand were exasperatingly condescending to the
losers, and the losers correspondingly bitter and tremulous. Miss Mapp
failed to get her contract, as her partner’s contribution to
success consisted of more twos and threes than were ever seen together
before, and when quaint Irene at the end said, “Bad luck,
Mapp,” Miss Mapp’s hands trembled so much with passion that
she with difficulty marked the score. But she could command her voice
sufficiently to say, “Lovely of you to be sympathetic,
dear.” Irene in answer gave a short, hoarse laugh and dealed.

By this time Boon had deposited at the left hand of each player a cup
containing a red creamy fluid, on the surface of which bubbles
intermittently appeared. Isabel, at this moment being dummy, had
strolled across from the other table to see that everybody was
comfortable and provided with sustenance in times of stress, and here
was clearly the proper opportunity for Miss Mapp to take a spoonful of
this attempt at red-currant fool, and with a wry face, hastily (but not
too hastily) smothered in smiles, to push the revolting compound away
from her. But the one spoonful that she took was so delicious and
exhilarating, that she was positively unable to be good for Isabel.
Instead, she drank her cup to the dregs in an absent manner, while
considering how many trumps were out. The red-currant fool made a
similarly agreeable impression on Major Flint.

“’Pon my word,” he said. “That’s amazingly
good. Cooling on a hot day like this. Full of champagne.”

Miss Mapp, seeing that it was so popular, had, of course, to claim it
again as a family invention.

[41]
“No, dear Major,” she said. “There’s no
champagne in it. It’s my Grandmamma Mapp’s famous
red-currant fool, with little additions perhaps by me. No champagne:
yolk of egg and a little cream. Dear Isabel has got it very nearly
right.”

The Padre had promised to take more tricks in diamonds than he had the
slightest chance of doing. His mental worry communicated itself to his
voice.

“And why should there be nary a wee drappie o’ champagne in
it?” he said, “though your Grandmamma Mapp did invent it.
Weel, let’s see your hand, partner. Eh, that’s a sair
sight.”

“And there’ll be a sair wee score agin us when ye’re
through with the playin’ o’ it,” said Irene, in tones
that could not be acquitted of a mocking intent. “Why the
hell—hallelujah did you go on when I didn’t support
you?”

Even that one glass of red-currant fool, though there was no champagne
in it, had produced, together with the certainty that her opponent had
overbidden his hand, a pleasant exhilaration in Miss Mapp; but yolk of
egg, as everybody knew, was a strong stimulant. Suddenly the name
red-currant fool seemed very amusing to her.

“Red-currant fool!” she said. “What a quaint,
old-fashioned name! I shall invent some others. I shall tell my cook to
make some gooseberry-idiot, or strawberry-donkey… My play, I
think. A ducky little ace of spades.”

“Haw! haw! gooseberry idiot!” said her partner.
“Capital! You won’t beat that in a hurry! And a two of
spades on the top of it.”

“You wouldn’t expect to find a two of spades at the bottom
of it,” said the Padre with singular acidity.

[42]
The Major was quick to resent this kind of comment from a man, cloth or
no cloth.

“Well, by your leave, Bartlett, by your leave, I repeat,” he
said, “I shall expect to find twos of spades precisely where I
please, and when I want your criticism——”

Miss Mapp hastily intervened.

“And after my wee ace, a little king-piece,” she said.
“And if my partner doesn’t play the queen to it! Delicious!
And I play just one more… Yes … lovely, partner puts wee
trumpy on it! I’m not surprised; it takes more than that to
surprise me; and then Padre’s got another spade, I ken
fine!”

“Hoots!” said the Padre with temperate disgust.

The hand proceeded for a round or two in silence, during which, by winks
and gestures to Boon, the Major got hold of another cupful of
red-currant fool. There was already a heavy penalty of tricks against
Miss Mapp’s opponents, and after a moment’s refreshment, the
Major led a club, of which, at this period, Miss Mapp seemed to have
none. She felt happier than she had been ever since, trying to spoil
Isabel’s second table, she had only succeeded in completing it.

“Little trumpy again,” she said, putting it on with the
lightness of one of the white butterflies and turning the trick.
“Useful little trumpy——”

She broke off suddenly from the chant of victory which ladies of Tilling
were accustomed to indulge in during cross-roughs, for she discovered in
her hand another more than useless little clubby… The silence
that succeeded became tense in quality. Miss Mapp knew she had revoked
and squeezed her brains to think how she could possibly dispose of the
card, while there was a certain calmness about the Padre, which but too
clearly indicated[43]
that he was quite content to wait for the inevitable disclosure. This
came at the last trick, and though Miss Mapp made one forlorn attempt to
thrust the horrible little clubby underneath the other cards and gather
them up, the Padre pounced on it.

“What ho, fair lady!” he said, now completely restored.
“Methinks thou art forsworn! Let me have a keek at the last trick
but three! Verily I wis that thou didst trump ye club aforetime. I said
so; there it is. Eh, that’s bonny for us, partner!”

Miss Mapp, of course, denied it all, and a ruthless reconstruction of
the tricks took place. The Major, still busy with red-currant fool, was
the last to grasp the disaster, and then instantly deplored the
unsportsmanlike greed of his adversaries.

“Well, I should have thought in a friendly game like
this——” he said. “Of course, you’re within
your right, Bartlett: might is right, hey? but upon my word, a pound of
flesh, you know… Can’t think what made you do it,
partner.”

“You never asked me if I had any more clubs,” said Miss Mapp
shrilly, giving up for the moment the contention that she had not
revoked. “I always ask if my partner has no more of a suit, and I
always maintain that a revoke is more the partner’s fault than the
player’s. Of course, if our adversaries claim
it——”

“Naturally we do, Mapp,” said Irene. “You were down on
me sharp enough the other day.”

Miss Mapp wrinkled her face up into the sweetest and extremest smile of
which her mobile features were capable.

“Darling, you won’t mind my telling you that just at this
moment you are being dummy,” she said, “and so you
mustn’t speak a single word. Otherwise there is no[44]
revoke, even if there was at all, which I consider far from proved
yet.”

There was no further proof possible beyond the clear and final evidence
of the cards, and since everybody, including Miss Mapp herself, was
perfectly well aware that she had revoked, their opponents merely marked
up the penalty and the game proceeded. Miss Mapp, of course, following
the rule of correct behaviour after revoking, stiffened into a state of
offended dignity, and was extremely polite and distant with partner and
adversaries alike. This demeanour became even more majestic when in the
next hand the Major led out of turn. The moment he had done it, Miss
Mapp hurriedly threw a random card out of her hand on to the table, in
the hope that Irene, by some strange aberration, would think she had led
first.

“Wait a second,” said she. “I call a lead. Give me a
trump, please.”

Suddenly the awful expression as of some outraged empress faded from
Miss Mapp’s face, and she gave a little shriek of laughter which
sounded like a squeaking slate pencil.

“Haven’t got one, dear,” she said. “Now may I
have your permission to lead what I think best? Thank you.”

There now existed between the four players that state of violent
animosity which was the usual atmosphere towards the end of a rubber.
But it would have been a capital mistake to suppose that they were not
all enjoying themselves immensely. Emotion is the salt of life, and here
was no end of salt. Everyone was overbidding his hand, and the penalty
tricks were a glorious cause of vituperation, scarcely veiled, between
the partners who had failed to make good, and caused epidemics of
condescending sympathy from the adversaries which produced[45]
a passion in the losers far keener than their fury at having lost. What
made the concluding stages of this contest the more exciting was that an
evening breeze suddenly arising just as a deal was ended, made the cards
rise in the air like a covey of partridges. They were recaptured, and
all the hands were found to be complete with the exception of Miss
Mapp’s, which had a card missing. This, an ace of hearts, was
discovered by the Padre, face upwards, in a bed of mignonette, and he
was vehement in claiming a fresh deal, on the grounds that the card was
exposed. Miss Mapp could not speak at all in answer to this preposterous
claim: she could only smile at him, and proceed to declare trumps as if
nothing had happened… The Major alone failed to come up to the
full measure of these enjoyments, for though all the rest of them were
as angry with him as they were with each other, he remained in a most
indecorous state of good-humour, drinking thirstily of the red-currant
fool, and when he was dummy, quite failing to mind whether Miss Mapp got
her contract or not. Captain Puffin, at the other table, seemed to be
behaving with the same impropriety, for the sound of his shrill,
falsetto laugh was as regular as his visits to the bucket of red-currant
fool. What if there was champagne in it after all, so Miss Mapp luridly
conjectured! What if this unseemly good-humour was due to incipient
intoxication? She took a little more of that delicious decoction
herself.

It was unanimously determined, when the two rubbers came to an end
almost simultaneously, that, as everything was so pleasant and
agreeable, there should be no fresh sorting of the players. Besides, the
second table was only playing stakes of sixpence a hundred, and it would
be very awkward and unsettling that anyone should play these[46]
moderate points in one rubber and those high ones the next. But at this
point Miss Mapp’s table was obliged to endure a pause, for the
Padre had to hurry away just before six to administer the rite of
baptism in the church which was so conveniently close. The Major
afforded a good deal of amusement, as soon as he was out of hearing, by
hoping that he would not baptize the child the Knave of Hearts if it was
a boy, or, if a girl, the Queen of Spades; but in order to spare the
susceptibilities of Mrs. Bartlett, this admirable joke was not
communicated to the next table, but enjoyed privately. The author of it,
however, made a note in his mind to tell it to Captain Puffin, in the
hopes that it would cause him to forget his ruinous half-crown defeat at
golf this morning. Quite as agreeable was the arrival of a fresh supply
of red-currant fool, and as this had been heralded a few minutes before
by a loud pop from the butler’s pantry, which looked on to the
lawn, Miss Mapp began to waver in her belief that there was no champagne
in it, particularly as it would not have suited the theory by which she
accounted for the Major’s unwonted good-humour, and her suggestion
that the pop they had all heard so clearly was the opening of a bottle
of stone ginger-beer was not delivered with conviction. To make sure,
however, she took one more sip of the new supply, and, irradiated with
smiles, made a great concession.

“I believe I was wrong,” she said. “There is something
in it beyond yolk of egg and cream. Oh, there’s Boon; he will tell
us.”

She made a seductive face at Boon, and beckoned to him.

“Boon, will you think it very inquisitive of me,” she asked
archly, “if I ask you whether you have put a teeny drop of
champagne into this delicious red-currant fool?”

[47]
“A bottle and a half, Miss,” said Boon morosely, “and
half a pint of old brandy. Will you have some more, Miss?”

Miss Mapp curbed her indignation at this vulgar squandering of precious
liquids, so characteristic of Poppits. She gave a shrill little laugh.

“Oh, no, thank you, Boon!” she said. “I mustn’t
have any more. Delicious, though.”

Major Flint let Boon fill up his cup while he was not looking.

“And we owe this to your grandmother, Miss Mapp?” he asked
gallantly. “That’s a second debt.”

Miss Mapp acknowledged this polite subtlety with a reservation.

“But not the champagne in it, Major,” she said.
“Grandmamma Nap——”

The Major beat his thigh in ecstasy.

“Ha! That’s a good Spoonerism for Miss Isabel’s
book,” he said. “Miss Isabel, we’ve got a
new——”

Miss Mapp was very much puzzled at this slight confusion in her speech,
for her utterance was usually remarkably distinct. There might be some
little joke made at her expense on the effect of Grandmamma Mapp’s
invention if this lovely Spoonerism was published. But if she who had
only just tasted the red-currant fool tripped in her speech, how amply
were Major Flint’s good nature and Captain Puffin’s
incessant laugh accounted for. She herself felt very good-natured, too.
How pleasant it all was!

“Oh, naughty!” she said to the Major. “Pray, hush!
you’re disturbing them at their rubber. And here’s the Padre
back again!”

The new rubber had only just begun (indeed, it was[48]
lucky that they cut their cards without any delay) when Mrs. Poppit
appeared on her return from her expedition to London. Miss Mapp begged
her to take her hand, and instantly began playing.

“It would really be a kindness to me, Mrs. Poppit,” she
said; “(No diamonds at all, partner?) but of course, if you
won’t—— You’ve been missing such a lovely party.
So much enjoyment!”

Suddenly she saw that Mrs. Poppit was wearing on her ample breast a
small piece of riband with a little cross attached to it. Her entire
stock of good-humour vanished, and she smiled her widest.

“We needn’t ask what took you to London,” she said.
“Congratulations! How was the dear King?”

This rubber was soon over, and even as they were adding up the score,
there arose a shrill outcry from the next table, where Mrs. Plaistow, as
usual, had made the tale of her winnings sixpence in excess of what
anybody else considered was due to her. The sound of that was so
familiar that nobody looked up or asked what was going on.

“Darling Diva and her bawbees, Padre,” said Miss Mapp in an
aside. “So modest in her demands. Oh, she’s stopped!
Somebody has given her sixpence. Not another rubber? Well, perhaps it is
rather late, and I must say good-night to my flowers before they close
up for the night. All those shillings mine? Fancy!”

Miss Mapp was seething with excitement, curiosity and rage, as with
Major Flint on one side of her and Captain Puffin on the other, she was
escorted home. The excitement was due to her winnings, the rage to Mrs.
Poppit’s Order, the curiosity to the clue she believed she had
found to those inexplicable lights that burned so late in the houses of
her companions. Certainly it seemed that[49]
Major Flint was trying not to step on the joints of the paving-stones,
and succeeding very imperfectly, while Captain Puffin, on her left, was
walking very unevenly on the cobbles. Even making due allowance for the
difficulty of walking evenly there at any time, Miss Mapp could not help
thinking that a teetotaller would have made a better job of it than
that. Both gentlemen talked at once, very agreeably but rather
carefully, Major Flint promising himself a studious evening over some
very interesting entries in his Indian Diary, while Captain Puffin
anticipated the speedy solution of that problem about the Roman road
which had puzzled him so long. As they said their “Au
reservoirs” to her on her doorstep, they took off their hats more
often than politeness really demanded.

Once in her house Miss Mapp postponed her good-nights to her sweet
flowers, and hurried with the utmost speed of which she was capable to
her garden-room, in order to see what her companions were doing. They
were standing in the middle of the street, and Major Flint, with
gesticulating forefinger, was being very impressive over
something…

Interesting as was Miss Mapp’s walk home, and painful as was the
light which it had conceivably thrown on the problem that had baffled
her for so long, she might have been even more acutely disgusted had she
lingered on with the rest of the bridge-party in Mrs. Poppit’s
garden, so revolting was the sycophantic loyalty of the newly-decorated
Member of the British Empire… She described minutely her arrival
at the Palace, her momentary nervousness as she entered the Throne-room,
the instantaneousness with which that all vanished when she came face to
face with her Sovereign.

[50]
“I assure you, he gave the most gracious smile,” she said,
“just as if we had known each other all our lives, and I felt at
home at once. And he said a few words to me—such a beautiful voice
he has. Dear Isabel, I wish you had been there to hear it, and
then——”

“Oh, Mamma, what did he say?” asked Isabel, to the great
relief of Mrs. Plaistow and the Bartletts, for while they were bursting
with eagerness to know with the utmost detail all that had taken place,
the correct attitude in Tilling was profound indifference to anybody of
whatever degree who did not live at Tilling, and to anything that did
not happen there. In particular, any manifestation of interest in kings
or other distinguished people was held to be a very miserable
failing… So they all pretended to look about them, and take no
notice of what Mrs. Poppit was saying, and you might have heard a pin
drop. Diva silently and hastily unwound her cloud from over her ears,
risking catching cold in the hole where her tooth had been, so terrified
was she of missing a single syllable.

“Well, it was very gratifying,” said Mrs. Poppit; “he
whispered to some gentleman standing near him, who I think was the Lord
Chamberlain, and then told me how interested he had been in the good
work of the Tilling hospital, and how especially glad he was to be
able—and just then he began to pin my Order on—to be able to
recognize it. Now I call that wonderful to know all about the Tilling
hospital! And such neat, quick fingers he has: I am sure it would take
me double the time to make a safety-pin hold, and then he gave me
another smile, and passed me on, so to speak, to the Queen, who stood
next him, and who had been listening to all he had said.”

[51]
“And did she speak to you too?” asked Diva, quite unable to
maintain the right indifference.

“Indeed she did: she said, ‘So pleased,’ and what she
put into those two words I’m sure I can never convey to you. I
could hear how sincere they were: it was no set form of words, as if she
meant nothing by it. She was pleased: she was just as interested in
what I had done for the Tilling hospital as the King was. And the crowds
outside: they lined the Mall for at least fifty yards. I was bowing and
smiling on this side and that till I felt quite dizzy.”

“And was the Prince of Wales there?” asked Diva, beginning
to wind her head up again. She did not care about the crowds.

“No, he wasn’t there,” said Mrs. Poppit, determined to
have no embroidery in her story, however much other people, especially
Miss Mapp, decorated remarkable incidents till you hardly recognized
them. “He wasn’t there. I daresay something had unexpectedly
detained him, though I shouldn’t wonder if before long we all saw
him. For I noticed in the evening paper which I was reading on the way
down here, after I had seen the King, that he was going to stay with
Lord Ardingly for this very next week-end. And what’s the station
for Ardingly Park if it isn’t Tilling? Though it’s quite a
private visit, I feel convinced that the right and proper thing for me
to do is to be at the station, or, at any rate, just outside, with my
Order on. I shall not claim acquaintance with him, or anything of that
kind,” said Mrs. Poppit, fingering her Order; “but after my
reception to-day at the Palace, nothing can be more likely than that His
Majesty might mention—quite casually, of course—to the
Prince that he had just given a decoration to Mrs. Poppit of[52]
Tilling. And it would make me feel very awkward to think that that had
happened, and I was not somewhere about to make my curtsy.”

“Oh, Mamma, may I stand by you, or behind you?” asked
Isabel, completely dazzled by the splendour of this prospect and
prancing about the lawn…

This was quite awful: it was as bad as, if not worse than, the
historically disastrous remark about super-tax, and a general rigidity,
as of some partial cataleptic seizure, froze Mrs. Poppit’s guests,
rendering them, like incomplete Marconi installations, capable of
receiving, but not of transmitting. They received these impressions,
they also continued (mechanically) to receive more chocolates and
sandwiches, and such refreshments as remained on the buffet; but no one
could intervene and stop Mrs. Poppit from exposing herself further. One
reason for this, of course, as already indicated, was that they all
longed for her to expose herself as much as she possibly could, for if
there was a quality—and, indeed, there were many—on which
Tilling prided itself, it was on its immunity from snobbishness: there
were, no doubt, in the great world with which Tilling concerned itself
so little kings and queens and dukes and Members of the Order of the
British Empire; but every Tillingite knew that he or she (particularly
she) was just as good as any of them, and indeed better, being more
fortunate than they in living in Tilling… And if there was a
process in the world which Tilling detested, it was being patronized,
and there was this woman telling them all what she felt it right and
proper for her, as Mrs. Poppit of Tilling (M.B.E.), to do, when the Heir
Apparent should pass through the town on Saturday. The rest of them,
Mrs. Poppit implied, might do what they liked, for they did not[53]
matter; but she—she must put on her Order and make her curtsy. And
Isabel, by her expressed desire to stand beside, or even behind, her
mother for this degrading moment had showed of what stock she came.

Mrs. Poppit had nothing more to say on this subject; indeed, as Diva
reflected, there was really nothing more that could be said, unless she
suggested that they should all bow and curtsy to her for the future, and
their hostess proceeded, as they all took their leave, to hope that they
had enjoyed the bridge-party which she had been unavoidably prevented
from attending.

“But my absence made it possible to include Miss Mapp,” she
said. “I should not have liked poor Miss Mapp to feel left out; I
am always glad to give Miss Mapp pleasure. I hope she won her rubber;
she does not like losing. Will no one have a little more red-currant
fool? Boon has made it very tolerably to-day. A Scotch recipe of my
great-grandmother’s.”

Diva gave a little cackle of laughter as she enfolded herself in her
cloud again. She had heard Miss Mapp’s ironical inquiry as to how
the dear King was, and had thought at the time that it was probably a
pity that Miss Mapp had said that.

Though abhorrence of snobbery and immunity from any taint of it was so
fine a characteristic of public social life at Tilling, the expected
passage of this distinguished visitor through the town on Saturday next
became very speedily known, and before the wicker-baskets of the ladies
in their morning marketings next day were half full, there was no
quarter which the news had failed to reach. Major Flint had it from Mrs.
Plaistow, as he went down to the eleven-twenty tram out to the
golf-links,[54]
and though he had not much time to spare (for his work last night on his
old diaries had caused him to breakfast unusually late that morning to
the accompaniment of a dismal headache from over-application), he had
stopped to converse with Miss Mapp immediately afterwards, with one eye
on the time, for naturally he could not fire off that sort of news
point-blank at her, as if it was a matter of any interest or importance.

“Good morning, dear lady,” he said. “By Jove! what a
picture of health and freshness you are!”

Miss Mapp cast one glance at her basket to see that the paper quite
concealed that article of clothing which the perfidious laundry had
found. (Probably the laundry knew where it was all the time,
and—in a figurative sense, of course—was “trying it
on.”)

“Early to bed and early to rise, Major,” she said. “I
saw my sweet flowers open their eyes this morning! Such a beautiful
dew!”

“Well, my diaries kept me up late last night,” he said.
“When all you fascinating ladies have withdrawn is the only time
at which I can bring myself to sit down to them.”

“Let me recommend six to eight in the morning, Major,” said
Miss Mapp earnestly. “Such a freshness of brain then.”

That seemed to be a cul-de-sac in the way of leading up to the important
subject, and the Major tried another turning.

“Good, well-fought game of bridge we had yesterday,” he
said. “Just met Mrs. Plaistow; she stopped on for a chat after we
had gone.”

“Dear Diva; she loves a good gossip,” said Miss Mapp
effusively. “Such an interest she has in other
people’s[55]
affairs. So human and sympathetic. I’m sure our dear hostess told
her all about her adventures at the Palace.”

There was only seven minutes left before the tram started, and though
this was not a perfect opening, it would have to do. Besides, the Major
saw Mrs. Plaistow coming energetically along the High Street with
whirling feet.

“Yes, and we haven’t finished with—ha—royalty
yet,” he said, getting the odious word out with difficulty.
“The Prince of Wales will be passing through the town on Saturday,
on his way to Ardingly Park, where he is spending the Sunday.”

Miss Mapp was not betrayed into the smallest expression of interest.

“That will be nice for him,” she said. “He will catch
a glimpse of our beautiful Tilling.”

“So he will! Well, I’m off for my game of golf. Perhaps the
Navy will be a bit more efficient to-day.”

“I’m sure you will both play perfectly!” said Miss
Mapp.

Diva had “popped” into the grocer’s. She always popped
everywhere just now; she popped across to see a friend, and she popped
home again; she popped into church on Sunday, and occasionally popped up
to town, and Miss Mapp was beginning to feel that somebody ought to let
her know, directly or by insinuation, that she popped too much. So,
thinking that an opportunity might present itself now, Miss Mapp read
the news-board outside the stationer’s till Diva popped out of the
grocer’s again. The headlines of news, even the largest of them,
hardly reached her brain, because it entirely absorbed in another
subject. Of course, the first thing was to find out by what
train…

Diva trundled swiftly across the street.

“Good morning, Elizabeth,” she said. “You left
the[56]
party too early yesterday. Missed a lot. How the King smiled! How the
Queen said ‘So pleased.’”

“Our dear hostess would like that,” said Miss Mapp
pensively. “She would be so pleased, too. She and the Queen would
both be pleased. Quite a pair of them.”

“By the way, on Saturday next——” began Diva.

“I know, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “Major Flint told me.
It seemed quite to interest him. Now I must pop into the
stationer’s——”

Diva was really very obtuse.

“I’m popping in there, too,” she said. “Want a
time-table of the trains.”

Wild horses would not have dragged from Miss Mapp that this was
precisely what she wanted.

“I only wanted a little ruled paper,” she said. “Why,
here’s dear Evie popping out just as we pop in! Good morning,
sweet Evie. Lovely day again.”

Mrs. Bartlett thrust something into her basket which very much resembled
a railway time-table. She spoke in a low, quick voice, as if afraid of
being overheard, and was otherwise rather like a mouse. When she was
excited she squeaked.

“So good for the harvest,” she said. “Such an
important thing to have a good harvest. I hope next Saturday will be
fine; it would be a pity if he had a wet day. We were wondering, Kenneth
and I, what would be the proper thing to do, if he came over for
service—oh, here is Kenneth!”

She stopped abruptly, as if afraid that she had betrayed too much
interest in next Saturday and Sunday. Kenneth would manage it much
better.

“Ha! lady fair,” he exclaimed. “Having a bit crack
with wee wifey? Any news this bright morning?”

[57]
“No, dear Padre,” said Miss Mapp, showing her gums.
“At least, I’ve heard nothing of any interest. I can only
give you the news of my garden. Such lovely new roses in bloom to-day,
bless them!”

Mrs. Plaistow had popped into the stationer’s, so this perjury was
undetected.

The Padre was noted for his diplomacy. Just now he wanted to convey the
impression that nothing which could happen next Saturday or Sunday could
be of the smallest interest to him; whereas he had spent an almost
sleepless night in wondering whether it would, in certain circumstances,
be proper to make a bow at the beginning of his sermon and another at
the end; whether he ought to meet the visitor at the west door; whether
the mayor ought to be told, and whether there ought to be special
psalms…

“Well, lady fair,” he said. “Gossip will have it that
ye Prince of Wales is staying at Ardingly for the Sunday; indeed, he
will, I suppose, pass through Tilling on Saturday
afternoon——”

Miss Mapp put her forefinger to her forehead, as if trying to recollect
something.

“Yes, now somebody did tell me that,” she said. "Major
Flint, I believe. But when you asked for news I thought you meant
something that really interested me. Yes, Padre?”

“Aweel, if he comes to service on Sunday——?”

“Dear Padre, I’m sure he’ll hear a very good sermon.
Oh, I see what you mean! Whether you ought to have any special hymn?
Don’t ask poor little me! Mrs. Poppit, I’m sure, would tell
you. She knows all about courts and etiquette.”

Diva popped out of the stationer’s at this moment.

[58]
“Sold out,” she announced. “Everybody wanted
time-tables this morning. Evie got the last. Have to go to the
station.”

“I’ll walk with you, Diva, dear,” said Miss Mapp.
“There’s a parcel that—— Good-bye, dear Evie, au
reservoir.”

She kissed her hand to Mrs. Bartlett, leaving a smile behind it, as it
fluttered away from her face, for the Padre.

Miss Mapp was so impenetrably wrapped in thought as she worked among her
sweet flowers that afternoon, that she merely stared at a
“love-in-a-mist,” which she had absently rooted up instead
of a piece of groundsel, without any bleeding of the heart for one of
her sweet flowers. There were two trains by which He might
arrive—one at 4.15, which would get him to Ardingly for tea, the
other at 6.45. She was quite determined to see him, but more inflexible
than that resolve was the Euclidean postulate that no one in Tilling
should think that she had taken any deliberate step to do so. For the
present she had disarmed suspicion by the blankness of her indifference
as to what might happen on Saturday or Sunday; but she herself strongly
suspected that everybody else, in spite of the public attitude of
Tilling to such subjects, was determined to see him too. How to see and
not be seen was the question which engrossed her, and though she might
possibly happen to be at that sharp corner outside the station where
every motor had to go slow, on the arrival of the 4.15, it would never
do to risk being seen there again precisely at 6.45. Mrs. Poppit,
shameless in her snobbery, would no doubt be at the station with her
Order on at both these hours, if the arrival did not take place by the
first train, and Isabel would be prancing by or behind her, and, in
fact, dreadful though[59]
it was to contemplate, all Tilling, she reluctantly believed, would be
hanging about… Then an idea struck her, so glorious, that she put
the uprooted love-in-a-mist in the weed-basket, instead of planting it
again, and went quickly indoors, up to the attics, and from there
popped—really popped, so tight was the fit—through a
trap-door on to the roof. Yes: the station was plainly visible, and if
the 4.15 was the favoured train, there would certainly be a motor from
Ardingly Park waiting there in good time for its arrival. From the
house-roof she could ascertain that, and she would then have time to
trip down the hill and get to her coal merchant’s at that sharp
corner outside the station, and ask, rather peremptorily, when the coke
for her central heating might be expected. It was due now, and though it
would be unfortunate if it arrived before Saturday, it was quite easy to
smile away her peremptory manner, and say that Withers had not told her.
Miss Mapp hated prevarication, but a major force sometimes came
along… But if no motors from Ardingly Park were in waiting for
the 4.15 (as spied from her house-roof), she need not risk being seen in
the neighbourhood of the station, but would again make observations some
few minutes before the 6.45 was due. There was positively no other train
by which He could come…

The next day or two saw no traceable developments in the situation, but
Miss Mapp’s trained sense told her that there was underground work
of some kind going on: she seemed to hear faint hollow taps and muffled
knockings, and, so to speak, the silence of some unusual pregnancy. Up
and down the High Street she observed short whispered conversations
going on between her friends, which broke off on her approach. This only confirmed
her view that these secret colloquies were connected with Saturday[60]
afternoon, for it was not to be expected that, after her freezing
reception of the news, any projected snobbishness should be confided to
her, and though she would have liked to know what Diva and Irene and
darling Evie were meaning to do, the fact that they none of them told
her, showed that they were aware that she, at any rate, was utterly
indifferent to and above that sort of thing. She suspected, too, that
Major Flint had fallen victim to this unTilling-like mania, for on
Friday afternoon, when passing his door, which happened to be standing
open, she quite distinctly saw him in front of his glass in the hall
(standing on the head of one of the tigers to secure a better view of
himself), trying on a silk top-hat. Her own errand at this moment was to
the draper’s, where she bought a quantity of pretty pale blue
braid, for a little domestic dress-making which was in arrears, and some
riband of the same tint. At this clever and unusual hour for shopping,
the High Street was naturally empty, and after a little hesitation and
many anxious glances to right and left, she plunged into the toy-shop
and bought a pleasant little Union Jack with a short stick attached to
it. She told Mr. Dabnet very distinctly that it was a present for her
nephew, and concealed it inside her parasol, where it lay quite flat and
made no perceptible bulge…

At four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, she remembered that the
damp had come in through her bedroom ceiling in a storm last winter, and
told Withers she was going to have a look to see if any tiles were
loose. In order to ascertain this for certain, she took up through the
trap door a pair of binocular glasses, through which it was also easy to
identify anybody who might be in the open yard outside the station. Even
as she looked, Mrs. Poppit and Isabel crossed the yard into the
waiting-room and[61]
ticket-office. It was a little surprising that there were not more
friends in the station-yard, but at the moment she heard a loud Qui-hi
in the street below, and cautiously peering over the parapet, she got an
admirable view of the Major in a frock-coat and tall hat. A
“Coo-ee” answered him, and Captain Puffin, in a new suit
(Miss Mapp was certain of it) and a Panama hat, joined him. They went
down the street and turned the corner… Across the opening to the
High Street there shot the figure of darling Diva.

While waiting for them to appear again in the station-yard, Miss Mapp
looked to see what vehicles were standing there. It was already ten
minutes past four, and the Ardingly motors must have been there by this
time, if there was anything “doing” by the 4.15. But
positively the only vehicle there was an open trolly laden with a piano
in a sack. Apart from knowing all about that piano, for Mrs. Poppit had
talked about little else than her new upright Bluthner before her visit
to Buckingham Palace, a moment’s reflection convinced Miss Mapp
that this was a very unlikely mode of conveyance for any guest…
She watched for a few moments more, but as no other friends appeared in
the station-yard, she concluded that they were hanging about the street
somewhere, poor things, and decided not to make inquiries about her coke
just yet.

She had tea while she arranged flowers, in the very front of the window
in her garden-room, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing many of
the baffled loyalists trudging home. There was no need to do more than
smile and tap the window and kiss her hand: they all knew that she had
been busy with her flowers, and that she knew what they had been busy
about… Out again they all came towards half-past six, and when
she had watched the last[62]
of them down the hill, she hurried back to the roof again, to make a
final inspection of the loose tiles through her binoculars. Brief but
exciting was that inspection, for opposite the entrance to the station
was drawn up a motor. So clear was the air and so serviceable her
binoculars that she could distinguish the vulgar coronet on the panels,
and as she looked Mrs. Poppit and Isabel hurried across the
station-yard. It was then but the work of a moment to slip on the
dust-cloak trimmed with blue braid, adjust the hat with the blue riband,
and take up the parasol with its furled Union Jack inside it. The stick
of the flag was uppermost; she could whip it out in a moment.

Miss Mapp had calculated her appearance to a nicety. Just as she got to
the sharp corner opposite the station, where all cars slowed down and
her coal-merchant’s office was situated, the train drew up. By the
gates into the yard were standing the Major in his top-hat, the Captain
in his Panama, Irene in a civilized skirt; Diva in a brand-new walking
dress, and the Padre and wee wifey. They were all looking in the
direction of the station, and Miss Mapp stepped into the
coal-merchant’s unobserved. Oddly enough the coke had been sent
three days before, and there was no need for peremptoriness.

“So good of you, Mr. Wootten!” she said; “and why
is everyone standing about this afternoon?”

Mr. Wootten explained the reason of this, and Miss Mapp, grasping her
parasol, went out again as the car left the station. There were too many
dear friends about, she decided, to use the Union Jack, and having seen
what she wanted to she determined to slip quietly away again. Already
the Major’s hat was in his hand, and he was bowing low, so too
were Captain Puffin and the Padre, while Irene,[63]
Diva and Evie were making little ducking movements… Miss Mapp was
determined, when it came to her turn, to show them, as she happened to
be on the spot, what a proper curtsy was.

The car came opposite her, and she curtsied so low that recovery was
impossible, and she sat down in the road. Her parasol flew out of her
hand and out of her parasol flew the Union Jack. She saw a young man
looking out of the window, dressed in khaki, grinning broadly, but not,
so she thought, graciously, and it suddenly struck her that there was
something, beside her own part in the affair, which was not as it should
be. As he put his head in again there was loud laughter from the inside
of the car.

Mr. Wootten helped her up and the entire assembly of her friends crowded
round her, hoping she was not hurt.

“No, dear Major, dear Padre, not at all, thanks,” she said.
“So stupid: my ancle turned. Oh, yes, the Union Jack I bought for
my nephew, it’s his birthday to-morrow. Thank you. I just came to
see about my coke: of course I thought the Prince had arrived when you
all went down to meet the 4.15. Fancy my running straight into it all!
How well he looked.”

This was all rather lame, and Miss Mapp hailed Mrs. Poppit’s
appearance from the station as a welcome diversion… Mrs. Poppit
was looking vexed.

“I hope you saw him well, Mrs. Poppit,” said Miss Mapp,
“after meeting two trains, and taking all that trouble.”

“Saw who?” said Mrs. Poppit with a deplorable lack both of
manner and grammar. “Why”—light seemed to break on her
odious countenance. “Why, you don’t think that was the
Prince, do you, Miss Mapp? He arrived here at one, so the station-master
has just told me, and has been playing golf all afternoon.”

[64]
The Major looked at the Captain, and the Captain at the Major. It was
months and months since they had missed their Saturday afternoon’s
golf.

“It was the Prince of Wales who looked out of that
car-window,” said Miss Mapp firmly. “Such a pleasant smile.
I should know it anywhere.”

“The young man who got into the car at the station was no more the
Prince of Wales than you are,” said Mrs. Poppit shrilly. “I
was close to him as he came out: I curtsied to him before I saw.”

Miss Mapp instantly changed her attack: she could hardly hold her smile
on to her face for rage.

“How very awkward for you,” she said. “What a laugh
they will all have over it this evening! Delicious!”

Mrs. Poppit’s face suddenly took on an expression of the tenderest
solicitude.

“I hope, Miss Mapp, you didn’t jar yourself when you sat
down in the road just now,” she said.

“Not at all, thank you so much,” said Miss Mapp, hearing her
heart beat in her throat… If she had had a naval fifteen-inch gun
handy, and had known how to fire it, she would, with a sense of duty
accomplished, have discharged it point-blank at the Order of the Member
of the British Empire, and at anybody else who might be within
range…

Sunday, of course, with all the opportunities of that day, still
remained, and the seats of the auxiliary choir, which were
advantageously situated, had never been so full, but as it was all no
use, the Major and Captain Puffin left during the sermon to catch the
12.20 tram out to the links. On this delightful day it was but natural
that the pleasant walk there across the marsh was very popular,[65]
and golfers that afternoon had a very trying and nervous time, for the
ladies of Tilling kept bobbing up from behind sand-dunes and bunkers,
as, regardless of the players, they executed swift flank marches in all
directions. Miss Mapp returned exhausted about tea-time to hear from
Withers that the Prince had spent an hour or more rambling about the
town, and had stopped quite five minutes at the corner by the
garden-room. He had actually sat down on Miss Mapp’s steps and
smoked a cigarette. She wondered if the end of the cigarette was there
still: it was hateful to have cigarette-ends defiling the steps to her
front-door, and often before now, when sketchers were numerous, she had
sent her housemaid out to remove these untidy relics. She searched for
it, but was obliged to come to the reluctant conclusion that there was
nothing to remove…

CHAPTER III

Diva was sitting at the open drawing-room window of her house in the
High Street, cutting with a pair of sharp nail scissors into the old
chintz curtains which her maid had told her no longer “paid for
the mending.” So, since they refused to pay for their mending any
more, she was preparing to make them pay, pretty smartly too, in other
ways. The pattern was of little bunches of pink roses peeping out
through trellis work, and it was these which she had just begun to cut
out. Though Tilling was noted for the ingenuity with which its more
fashionable ladies devised novel and quaint effects in their dress in an
economical manner, Diva felt sure, ransack her memory though she might,
that nobody had thought of this before.

The hot weather had continued late into September and[66]
showed no signs of breaking yet, and it would be agreeable to her and
acutely painful to others that just at the end of the summer she should
appear in a perfectly new costume, before the days of jumpers and heavy
skirts and large woollen scarves came in. She was preparing, therefore,
to take the light white jacket which she wore over her blouse, and cover
the broad collar and cuffs of it with these pretty roses. The belt of
the skirt would be similarly decorated, and so would the edge of it, if
there were enough clean ones. The jacket and skirt had already gone to
the dyer’s, and would be back in a day or two, white no longer,
but of a rich purple hue, and by that time she would have hundreds of
these little pink roses ready to be tacked on. Perhaps a piece of the
chintz, trellis and all, could be sewn over the belt, but she was
determined to have single little bunches of roses peppered all over the
collar and cuffs of the jacket and, if possible, round the edge of the
skirt. She had already tried the effect, and was of the opinion that
nobody could possibly guess what the origin of these roses was. When
carefully sewn on they looked as if they were a design in the stuff.

She let the circumcised roses fall on to the window-seat, and from time
to time, when they grew numerous, swept them into a cardboard box.
Though she worked with zealous diligence, she had an eye to the
movements in the street outside, for it was shopping-hour, and there
were many observations to be made. She had not anything like Miss
Mapp’s genius for conjecture, but her memory was appallingly good,
and this was the third morning running on which Elizabeth had gone into
the grocer’s. It was odd to go to your grocer’s every day
like that; groceries twice a week was sufficient for most people. From
here on the floor above the street she could easily[67]
look into Elizabeth’s basket, and she certainly was carrying
nothing away with her from the grocer’s, for the only thing there
was a small bottle done up in white paper with sealing wax, which, Diva
had no need to be told, certainly came from the chemist’s, and was
no doubt connected with too many plums.

Miss Mapp crossed the street to the pavement below Diva’s house,
and precisely as she reached it, Diva’s maid opened the door into
the drawing-room, bringing in the second post, or rather not bringing in
the second post, but the announcement that there wasn’t any second
post. This opening of the door caused a draught, and the bunches of
roses which littered the window-seat rose brightly in the air. Diva
managed to beat most of them down again, but two fluttered out of the
window. Precisely then, and at no other time, Miss Mapp looked up, and
one settled on her face, the other fell into her basket. Her trained
faculties were all on the alert, and she thrust them both inside her
glove for future consideration, without stopping to examine them just
then. She only knew that they were little pink roses, and that they had
fluttered out of Diva’s window…

She paused on the pavement, and remembered that Diva had not yet
expressed regret about the worsted, and that she still
“popped” as much as ever. Thus Diva deserved a punishment of
some sort, and happily, at that very moment she thought of a subject on
which she might be able to make her uncomfortable. The street was full,
and it would be pretty to call up to her, instead of ringing her bell,
in order to save trouble to poor overworked Janet. (Diva only kept two
servants, though of course poverty was no crime.)

“Diva darling!” she cooed.

[68]
Diva’s head looked out like a cuckoo in a clock preparing to chime
the hour.

“Hullo!” she said. “Want me?”

“May I pop up for a moment, dear?” said Miss Mapp.
“That’s to say if you’re not very busy.”

“Pop away,” said Diva. She was quite aware that Miss Mapp
said “pop” in crude inverted commas, so to speak, for
purposes of mockery, and so she said it herself more than ever.
“I’ll tell my maid to pop down and open the door.”

While this was being done, Diva bundled her chintz curtains together and
stored them and the roses she had cut out into her work-cupboard, for
secrecy was an essential to the construction of these decorations. But
in order to appear naturally employed, she pulled out the woollen scarf
she was knitting for the autumn and winter, forgetting for the moment
that the rose-madder stripe at the end on which she was now engaged was
made of that fatal worsted which Miss Mapp considered to have been
feloniously appropriated. That was the sort of thing Miss Mapp never
forgot. Even among her sweet flowers. Her eye fell on it the moment she
entered the room, and she tucked the two chintz roses more securely into
her glove.

“I thought I would just pop across from the grocer’s,”
she said. “What a pretty scarf, dear! That’s a lovely shade
of rose-madder. Where can I have seen something like it before?”

This was clearly ironical, and had best be answered by irony. Diva was
no coward.

“Couldn’t say, I’m sure,” she said.

Miss Mapp appeared to recollect, and smiled as far back as her
wisdom-teeth. (Diva couldn’t do that.)

“I have it,” she said. “It was the wool I ordered
at[69]
Heynes’s, and then he sold it you, and I couldn’t get any
more.”

“So it was,” said Diva. “Upset you a bit. There was
the wool in the shop. I bought it.”

“Yes, dear; I see you did. But that wasn’t what I popped in
about. This coal-strike, you know.”

“Got a cellar full,” said Diva.

“Diva, you’ve not been hoarding, have you?” asked Miss
Mapp with great anxiety. “They can take away every atom of coal
you’ve got, if so, and fine you I don’t know what for every
hundredweight of it.”

“Pooh!” said Diva, rather forcing the indifference of this
rude interjection.

“Yes, love, pooh by all means, if you like poohing!” said
Miss Mapp. “But I should have felt very unfriendly if one morning
I found you were fined—found you were fined—quite a play
upon words—and I hadn’t warned you.”

Diva felt a little less poohish.

“But how much do they allow you to have?” she asked.

“Oh, quite a little: enough to go on with. But I daresay they
won’t discover you. I just took the trouble to come and warn
you.”

Diva did remember something about hoarding; there had surely been
dreadful exposures of prudent housekeepers in the papers which were very
uncomfortable reading.

“But all these orders were only for the period of the war,”
she said.

“No doubt you’re right, dear,” said Miss Mapp
brightly. “I’m sure I hope you are. Only if the coal strike
comes on, I think you’ll find that the regulations against
hoarding are quite as severe as they ever were. Food hoarding, too.
Twemlow—such a civil man—tells me that he thinks we shall
have plenty of food, or anyhow sufficient for[70]
everybody for quite a long time, provided that there’s no
hoarding. Not been hoarding food, too, dear Diva? You naughty thing: I
believe that great cupboard is full of sardines and biscuits and
bovril.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Diva indignantly. “You
shall see for yourself”—and then she suddenly remembered
that the cupboard was full of chintz curtains and little bunches of pink
roses, neatly cut out of them, and a pair of nail scissors.

There was a perfectly perceptible pause, during which Miss Mapp noticed
that there were no curtains over the window. There certainly used to be,
and they matched with the chintz cover of the window seat, which was
decorated with little bunches of pink roses peeping through trellis.
This was in the nature of a bonus: she had not up till then connected
the chintz curtains with the little things that had fluttered down upon
her and were now safe in her glove; her only real object in this call
had been to instil a general uneasiness into Diva’s mind about the
coal strike and the danger of being well provided with fuel. That she
humbly hoped that she had accomplished. She got up.

“Must be going,” she said. “Such a lovely little chat!
But what has happened to your pretty curtains?”

“Gone to the wash,” said Diva firmly.

“Liar,” thought Miss Mapp, as she tripped downstairs.
“Diva would have sent the cover of the window-seat too, if that
was the case. Liar,” she thought again as she kissed her hand to
Diva, who was looking gloomily out of the window.

As soon as Miss Mapp had gained her garden-room, she examined the
mysterious treasures in her left-hand glove.[71]
Without the smallest doubt Diva had taken down her curtains (and high
time too, for they were sadly shabby), and was cutting the roses out of
them. But what on earth was she doing that for? For what garish purpose
could she want to use bunches of roses cut out of chintz curtains?

Miss Mapp had put the two specimens of which she had providentially
become possessed in her lap, and they looked very pretty against the
navy-blue of her skirt. Diva was very ingenious: she used up all sorts
of odds and ends in a way that did credit to her undoubtedly
parsimonious qualities. She could trim a hat with a tooth-brush and a
banana in such a way that it looked quite Parisian till you firmly
analysed its component parts, and most of her ingenuity was devoted to
dress: the more was the pity that she had such a roundabout figure that
her waistband always reminded you of the equator…

“Eureka!” said Miss Mapp aloud, and, though the telephone
bell was ringing, and the postulant might be one of the servants’
friends ringing them up at an hour when their mistress was usually in
the High Street, she glided swiftly to the large cupboard underneath the
stairs which was full of the things which no right-minded person could
bear to throw away: broken basket-chairs, pieces of brown paper,
cardboard boxes without lids, and cardboard lids without boxes, old bags
with holes in them, keys without locks and locks without keys and worn
chintz covers. There was one—it had once adorned the sofa in the
garden-room—covered with red poppies (very easy to cut out), and
Miss Mapp dragged it dustily from its corner, setting in motion a
perfect cascade of cardboard lids and some door-handles.

[72]
Withers had answered the telephone, and came to announce that Twemlow
the grocer regretted he had only two large tins of corned beef,
but——

“Then say I will have the tongue as well, Withers,” said
Miss Mapp. “Just a tongue—and then I shall want you and Mary
to do some cutting out for me.”

The three went to work with feverish energy, for Diva had got a start,
and by four o’clock that afternoon there were enough poppies cut
out to furnish, when in seed, a whole street of opium dens. The dress
selected for decoration was, apart from a few mildew-spots, the colour
of ripe corn, which was superbly appropriate for September.
“Poppies in the corn,” said Miss Mapp over and over to
herself, remembering some sweet verses she had once read by Bernard Shaw
or Clement Shorter or somebody like that about a garden of sleep
somewhere in Norfolk…

“No one can work as neatly as you, Withers,” she said gaily,
“and I shall ask you to do the most difficult part. I want you to
sew my lovely poppies over the collar and facings of the jacket, just
spacing them a little and making a dainty irregularity. And then
Mary—won’t you, Mary?—will do the same with the
waistband while I put a border of them round the skirt, and my dear old
dress will look quite new and lovely. I shall be at home to nobody,
Withers, this afternoon, even if the Prince of Wales came and sat on my
doorstep again. We’ll all work together in the garden, shall we,
and you and Mary must scold me if you think I’m not working hard
enough. It will be delicious in the garden.”

Thanks to this pleasant plan, there was not much opportunity for Withers
and Mary to be idle…

Just about the time that this harmonious party began[73]
their work, a far from harmonious couple were being just as industrious
in the grand spacious bunker in front of the tee to the last hole on the
golf links. It was a beautiful bunker, consisting of a great slope of
loose, steep sand against the face of the hill, and solidly shored up
with timber. The Navy had been in better form to-day, and after a
decisive victory over the Army in the morning and an indemnity of
half-a-crown, its match in the afternoon, with just the last hole to
play, was all square. So Captain Puffin, having the honour, hit a low,
nervous drive that tapped loudly at the timbered wall of the bunker, and
cuddled down below it, well protected from any future assault.

“Phew! That about settles it,” said Major Flint
boisterously. “Bad place to top a ball! Give me the hole?”

This insolent question needed no answer, and Major Flint drove, skying
the ball to a prodigious height. But it had to come to earth sometime,
and it fell like Lucifer, son of the morning, in the middle of the same
bunker… So the Army played three more, and, sweating profusely,
got out. Then it was the Navy’s turn, and the Navy had to lie on
its keel above the boards of the bunker, in order to reach its ball at
all, and missed it twice.

“Better give it up, old chap,” said Major Flint.
“Unplayable.”

“Then see me play it,” said Captain Puffin, with a chewing
motion of his jaws.

“We shall miss the tram,” said the Major, and, with the
intention of giving annoyance, he sat down in the bunker with his back
to Captain Puffin, and lit a cigarette. At his third attempt nothing
happened; at the fourth the ball flew against the boards, rebounded
briskly again[74]
into the bunker, trickled down the steep, sandy slope and hit the
Major’s boot.

“Hit you, I think,” said Captain Puffin. “Ha! So
it’s my hole, Major!”

Major Flint had a short fit of aphasia. He opened and shut his mouth and
foamed. Then he took a half-crown from his pocket.

“Give that to the Captain,” he said to his caddie, and
without looking round, walked away in the direction of the tram. He had
not gone a hundred yards when the whistle sounded, and it puffed away
homewards with ever-increasing velocity.

Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few
tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable
to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back
to the Club-house to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at
golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two,
no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the Club-house, one after the
other, each unconscious of the other’s presence. Summoning his
last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told
that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There
was lemonade and stone ginger-beer… You might as well have
offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would
instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no
effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might
with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His
forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that
Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched[75]
from his locker a large flask full of the required elixir, and proceeded
to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major’s
rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any
sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation.

Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had
penetrated half-way down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be
proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more)
and wouldn’t have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink.
He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his
throat—it wanted more than that to clear it—and capitulated.

“Upon my word, Puffin, I’m ashamed of myself
for—ha!—for not taking my defeat better,” he said.
“A man’s no business to let a game ruffle him.”

Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh.

“Oh, that’s all right, Major,” he said. “I know
it’s awfully hard to lose like a gentleman.”

He let this sink in, then added:

“Have a drink, old chap?”

Major Flint flew to his feet.

“Well, thank ye, thank ye,” he said. “Now
where’s that soda water you offered me just now?” he shouted
to the steward.

The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way
remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that
they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be
no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than
most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.

Major Flint in his eagerness had put most of his[76]
moustache into the life-giving tumbler, and dried it on his
handkerchief.

“After all, it was a most amusing incident,” he said.
“There was I with my back turned, waiting for you to give it up,
when your bl—wretched little ball hit my foot. I must remember
that. I’ll serve you with the same spoon some day, at least I
would if I thought it sportsmanlike. Well, well, enough said.
Astonishing good whisky, that of yours.”

Captain Puffin helped himself to rather more than half of what now
remained in the flask.

“Help yourself, Major,” he said.

“Well, thank ye, I don’t mind if I do,” he said,
reversing the flask over the tumbler. “There’s a good tramp
in front of us now that the last tram has gone. Tram and tramp! Upon my
word, I’ve half a mind to telephone for a taxi.”

This, of course, was a direct hint. Puffin ought clearly to pay for a
taxi, having won two half-crowns to-day. This casual drink did not
constitute the usual drink stood by the winner, and paid for with cash
over the counter. A drink (or two) from a flask was not the same
thing… Puffin naturally saw it in another light. He had paid for
the whisky which Major Flint had drunk (or owed for it) in his
wine-merchant’s bill. That was money just as much as a florin
pushed across the counter. But he was so excessively pleased with
himself over the adroitness with which he had claimed the last hole,
that he quite overstepped the bounds of his habitual parsimony.

“Well, you trot along to the telephone and order a taxi,” he
said, “and I’ll pay for it.”

“Done with you,” said the other.

Their comradeship was now on its most felicitous level[77]
again, and they sat on the bench outside the club-house till the arrival
of their unusual conveyance.

“Lunching at the Poppits’ to-morrow?” asked Major
Flint.

“Yes. Meet you there? Good. Bridge afterwards, suppose.”

“Sure to be. Wish there was a chance of more red-currant fool.
That was a decent tipple, all but the red-currants. If I had had all the
old brandy that was served for my ration in one glass, and all the
champagne in another, I should have been better content.”

Captain Puffin was a great cynic in his own misogynistic way.

“Camouflage for the fair sex,” he said. “A woman will
lick up half a bottle of brandy if it’s called plum-pudding, and
ask for more, whereas if you offered her a small brandy and soda, she
would think you were insulting her.”

“Bless them, the funny little fairies,” said the Major.

“Well, what I tell you is true, Major,” said Puffin.
“There’s old Mapp. Teetotaller she calls herself, but she
played a bo’sun’s part in that red-currant fool. Bit rosy, I
thought her, as we escorted her home.”

“So she was,” said the Major. “So she was. Said
good-bye to us on her doorstep as if she thought she was a perfect Venus
Ana—Ana something.”

“Anno Domini,” giggled Puffin.

“Well, well, we all get long in the tooth in time,” said
Major Flint charitably. “Fine figure of a woman, though.”

“Eh?” said Puffin archly.

“Now none of your sailor-talk ashore, Captain,” said the
Major, in high good humour. “I’m not a marrying man any more
than you are. Better if I had been perhaps,[78]
more years ago than I care to think about. Dear me, my wound’s
going to trouble me to-night.”

“What do you do for it, Major?” asked Puffin.

“Do for it? Think of old times a bit over my diaries.”

“Going to let the world have a look at them some day?” asked
Puffin.

“No, sir, I am not,” said Major Flint. “Perhaps a
hundred years hence—the date I have named in my will for their
publication—someone may think them not so uninteresting. But all
this toasting and buttering and grilling and frying your friends, and
serving them up hot for all the old cats at a tea-table to mew
over—Pah!”

Puffin was silent a moment in appreciation of these noble sentiments.

“But you put in a lot of work over them,” he said at length.
“Often when I’m going up to bed, I see the light still
burning in your sitting-room window.”

“And if it comes to that,” rejoined the Major,
“I’m sure I’ve often dozed off when I’m in bed
and woken again, and pulled up my blind, and what not, and there’s
your light still burning. Powerful long roads those old Romans must have
made, Captain.”

The ice was not broken, but it was cracking in all directions under this
unexampled thaw. The two had clearly indicated a mutual suspicion of
each other’s industrious habits after dinner… They had
never got quite so far as this before: some quarrel had congealed the
surface again. But now, with a desperate disagreement just behind them,
and the unusual luxury of a taxi just in front, the vernal airs
continued blowing in the most springlike manner.

“Yes, that’s true enough,” said Puffin. “Long
roads they were, and dry roads at that, and if I stuck to them[79]
from after my supper every evening till midnight or more, should be
smothered in dust.”

“Unless you washed the dust down just once in a while,” said
Major Flint.

“Just so. Brain-work’s an exhausting process; requires a
little stimulant now and again,” said Puffin. “I sit in my
chair, you understand, and perhaps doze for a bit after my supper, and
then I’ll get my maps out, and have them handy beside me. And
then, if there’s something interesting the evening paper, perhaps
I’ll have a look at it, and bless me, if by that time it
isn’t already half-past ten or eleven, and it seems useless to
tackle archæology then. And I just—just while away the time
till I’m sleepy. But there seems to be a sort of legend among the
ladies here, that I’m a great student of local topography and
Roman roads, and all sorts of truck, and I find it better to leave it at
that. Tiresome to go into long explanations. In fact,” added
Puffin in a burst of confidence, “the study I’ve done on
Roman roads these last six months wouldn’t cover a threepenny
piece.”

Major Flint gave a loud, choking guffaw and beat his fat leg.

“Well, if that’s not the best joke I’ve heard for many
a long day,” he said. “There I’ve been in the house
opposite you these last two years, seeing your light burning late night
after night, and thinking to myself, ‘There’s my friend
Puffin still at it! Fine thing to be an enthusiastic archæologist
like that. That makes short work of a lonely evening for him if
he’s so buried in his books or his maps—Mapps, ha!
ha!—that he doesn’t seem to notice whether it’s twelve
o’clock or one or two, maybe!’ And all the time you’ve
been sitting snoozing and boozing in your chair, with your glass handy
to wash the dust down.”

[80]
Puffin added his falsetto cackle to this merriment.

“And, often I’ve thought to myself,” he said,
“‘There’s my friend the Major in his study opposite,
with all his diaries round him, making a note here, and copying an
extract there, and conferring with the Viceroy one day, and reprimanding
the Maharajah of Bom-be-boo another. He’s spending the evening on
India’s coral strand, he is, having tiffin and shooting tigers and
Gawd knows what—’”

The Major’s laughter boomed out again.

“And I never kept a diary in my life!” he cried. “Why
there’s enough cream in this situation to make a dishful of
meringues. You and I, you know, the students of Tilling! The
serious-minded students who do a hard day’s work when all the
pretty ladies have gone to bed. Often and often has old—I mean has
that fine woman, Miss Mapp, told me that I work too hard at night!
Recommended me to get earlier to bed, and do my work between six and
eight in the morning! Six and eight in the morning! That’s a queer
time of day to recommend an old campaigner to be awake at! Often
she’s talked to you, too, I bet my hat, about sitting up late and
exhausting the nervous faculties.”

Major Flint choked and laughed and inhaled tobacco smoke till he got
purple in the face.

“And you sitting up one side of the street,” he gasped,
“pretending to be interested in Roman roads, and me on the other
pulling a long face over my diaries, and neither of us with a Roman road
or a diary to our names. Let’s have an end to such unsociable
arrangements, old friend; you bring your Roman roads and the bottle to
lay the dust over to me one night, and I’ll bring my diaries and
my peg over to you the next. Never drink alone—one of my maxims in
life—if you can find someone to drink with you. And[81] there were you within a few yards of me
all the time sitting by your old solitary self, and there was I sitting
by my old solitary self, and we each thought the other a serious-minded
old buffer, busy on his life-work. I’m blessed if I heard of two
such pompous old frauds as you and I, Captain! What a sight of hypocrisy
there is in the world, to be sure! No offence—mind: I’m as
bad as you, and you’re as bad as me, and we’re both as bad
as each other. But no more solitary confinement of an evening for
Benjamin Flint, as long as you’re agreeable.”

The advent of the taxi was announced, and arm in arm they limped down
the steep path together to the road. A little way off to the left was
the great bunker which, primarily, was the cause of their present amity.
As they drove by it, the Major waggled his red hand at it.

“Au reservoir,” he said. “Back again soon!”

It was late that night when Miss Mapp felt that she was physically
incapable of tacking on a single poppy more to the edge of her skirt,
and went to the window of the garden-room where she had been working, to
close it. She glanced up at the top story of her own house, and saw that
the lights in the servants’ rooms were out: she glanced to the
right and concluded that her gardener had gone to bed: finally, she
glanced down the street and saw with a pang of pleasure that the windows
of the Major’s house showed no sign of midnight labour. This was
intensely gratifying: it indicated that her influence was at work in
him, for in response to her wish, so often and so tactfully urged on
him, that he would go to bed earlier and not work so hard at night, here
was the darkened window, and she dismissed as unworthy the suspicion
which had been aroused by the red-currant fool. The window of his
bedroom was dark[82]
too: he must have already put out his light, and Miss Mapp made haste
over her little tidyings so that she might not be found a transgressor
to her own precepts. But there was a light in Captain Puffin’s
house: he had a less impressionable nature than the Major and was in so
many ways far inferior. And did he really find Roman roads so
wonderfully exhilarating? Miss Mapp sincerely hoped that he did, and
that it was nothing else of less pure and innocent allurement that kept
him up… As she closed the window very gently, it did just seem to
her that there had been something equally baffling in Major
Flint’s egoistical vigils over his diaries; that she had wondered
whether there was not something else (she had hardly formulated what)
which kept his lights burning so late. But she would now cross
him—dear man—and his late habits, out of the list of riddles
about Tilling which awaited solution. Whatever it had been (diaries or
what not) that used to keep him up, he had broken the habit now, whereas
Captain Puffin had not. She took her poppy-bordered skirt over her arm,
and smiled her thankful way to bed. She could allow herself to wonder
with a little more definiteness, now that the Major’s lights were
out and he was abed, what it could be which rendered Captain Puffin so
oblivious to the passage of time, when he was investigating Roman roads.
How glad she was that the Major was not with him… “Benjamin
Flint!” she said to herself as, having put her window open, she
trod softly (so as not to disturb the slumberer next door) across her
room on her fat white feet to her big white bed. “Good-night,
Major Benjy,” she whispered, as she put her light out.

It was not to be supposed that Diva would act on Miss Mapp’s
alarming hints that morning as to the fate of coal-hoarders,[83] and give, say, a ton of fuel to the
hospital at once, in lieu of her usual smaller Christmas contribution,
without making further inquiries in the proper quarters as to the legal
liabilities of having, so she ascertained, three tons in her cellar, and
as soon as her visitor had left her this morning, she popped out to see
Mr. Wootten, her coal-merchant. She returned in a state of fury, for
there were no regulations whatever in existence with regard to the
amount of coal that any householder might choose to amass, and Mr.
Wootten complimented her on her prudence in having got in a reasonable
supply, for he thought it quite probable that, if the coal strike took
place, there would be some difficulty in month’s time from now in
replenishing cellars. “But we’ve had a good supply all the
summer,” added agreeable Mr. Wootten, “and all my customers
have got their cellars well stocked.”

Diva rapidly recollected that the perfidious Elizabeth was among them.

“O but, Mr. Wootten,” she said, “Miss Mapp
popped—dropped in to see me just now. Told me she had hardly got
any.”

Mr. Wootten turned up his ledger. It was not etiquette to disclose the
affairs of one client to another, but if there was a cantankerous
customer, one who was never satisfied with prices and quality, that
client was Miss Mapp… He allowed a broad grin to overspread his
agreeable face.

“Well, ma’am, if in a month’s time I’m short of
coal, there are friends of yours in Tilling who can let you have
plenty,” he permitted himself to say…

It was idle to attempt to cut out bunches of roses while her hand was so
feverish, and she trundled up and down the High Street to cool off. Had
she not been so prudent as to make inquiries, as likely as not she would
have sent a ton[84]
of coal that very day to the hospital, so strongly had Elizabeth’s
perfidious warning inflamed her imagination as to the fate of hoarders,
and all the time Elizabeth’s own cellars were glutted, though she
had asserted that she was almost fuelless. Why, she must have in her
possession more coal than Diva herself, since Mr. Wootten had clearly
implied that it was Elizabeth who could be borrowed from! And all
because of a wretched piece of rose-madder worsted…

By degrees she calmed down, for it was no use attempting to plan revenge
with a brain at fever-heat. She must be calm and icily ingenious. As the
cooling-process went on she began to wonder whether it was worsted alone
that had prompted her friend’s diabolical suggestion. It seemed
more likely that another motive (one strangely Elizabethan) was the
cause of it. Elizabeth might be taken for certain as being a
coal-hoarder herself, and it was ever so like her to divert suspicion by
pretending her cellar was next to empty. She had been equally severe on
any who might happen to be hoarding food, in case transport was
disarranged and supplies fell short, and with a sudden flare of
authentic intuition, Diva’s mind blazed with the conjecture that
Elizabeth was hoarding food as well.

Luck ever attends the bold and constructive thinker: the apple, for
instance, fell from the tree precisely when Newton’s mind was
groping after the law of gravity, and as Diva stepped into her
grocer’s to begin her morning’s shopping (for she had been
occupied with roses ever since breakfast) the attendant was at the
telephone at the back of the shop. He spoke in a lucid telephone-voice.

“We’ve only two of the big tins of corned beef,” he
said; and there was a pause, during which, to a psychic, Diva’s
ears might have seemed to grow as pointed with attention[85]
as a satyr’s. But she could only hear little hollow quacks from
the other end.

“Tongue as well. Very good. I’ll send them up at
once,” he added, and came forward into the shop.

“Good morning,” said Diva. Her voice was tremulous with
anxiety and investigation. “Got any big tins of corned beef? The
ones that contain six pounds.”

“Very sorry, ma’am. We’ve only got two, and
they’ve just been ordered.”

“A small pot of ginger then, please,” said Diva recklessly.
“Will you send it round immediately?”

“Yes, ma’am. The boy’s just going out.”

That was luck. Diva hurried into the street, and was absorbed by the
headlines of the news outside the stationer’s. This was a
favourite place for observation, for you appeared to be quite taken up
by the topics of the day, and kept an oblique eye on the true object of
your scrutiny… She had not got to wait long, for almost
immediately the grocer’s boy came out of the shop with a heavy
basket on his arm, delivered the small pot of ginger at her own door,
and proceeded along the street. He was, unfortunately, a popular and a
conversational youth, who had a great deal to say to his friends, and
the period of waiting to see if he would turn up the steep street that
led to Miss Mapp’s house was very protracted. At the corner he
deliberately put down the basket altogether and lit a cigarette, and
never had Diva so acutely deplored the spread of the tobacco-habit among
the juvenile population.

Having refreshed himself he turned up the steep street.

He passed the fishmonger’s and the fruiterer’s; he did not
take the turn down to the dentist’s and Mr. Wyse’s. He had
no errand to the Major’s house or to the Captain’s. Then, oh
then, he rang the bell at Miss Mapp’s back door.[86] All the time
Diva had been following him, keeping her head well down so as to avert
the possibility of observation from the window of the garden-room, and
walking so slowly that the motion of her feet seemed not circular at
all… Then the bell was answered, and he delivered into
Withers’ hands one, two tins of corned beef and a round ox-tongue.
He put the basket on his head and came down the street again, shrilly
whistling. If Diva had had any reasonably small change in her pocket,
she would assuredly have given him some small share in it. Lacking this,
she trundled home with all speed, and began cutting out roses with swift
and certain strokes of the nail-scissors.

Now she had already
noticed that Elizabeth had paid visits to the grocer’s on three
consecutive days (three consecutive days: think of it!), and given that
her purchases on other occasions had been on the same substantial scale
as to-day, it became a matter of thrilling interest as to where she kept
these stores. She could not keep them in the coal cellar, for that was
already bursting with coal, and Diva, who had assisted her (the base
one) in making a prodigious quantity of jam that year from her
well-stocked garden, was aware that the kitchen cupboards were like to
be as replete as the coal-cellar, before those hoardings of dead oxen
began. Then there was the big cupboard under the stairs, but that could
scarcely be the site of this prodigious cache, for it was full of
cardboard and curtains and carpets and all the rubbishy accumulations
which Elizabeth could not bear to part with. Then she had large
cupboards in her bedroom and spare rooms full to overflowing of mouldy
clothes, but there was positively not another cupboard in the house that
Diva knew of, and she crushed her temples in her hands in the attempt to
locate the hiding-place of the hoard.

[87]
Diva suddenly jumped up with a happy squeal of discovery, and in her
excitement snapped her scissors with so random a stroke that she
completely cut in half the bunch of roses that she was engaged on. There
was another cupboard, the best and biggest of all and the most secret
and the most discreet. It lay embedded in the wall of the garden-room,
cloaked and concealed behind the shelves of a false book-case, which
contained no more than the simulacra of books, just books with titles
that had never yet appeared on any honest book. There were twelve
volumes of “The Beauties of Nature,” a shelf full of
“Elegant Extracts,” there were volumes simply called
“Poems,” there were “Commentaries,” there were
“Travels” and “Astronomy” and the lowest and
tallest shelf was full of “Music.” A card-table habitually
stood in front of this false repository of learning, and it was only last
week that Diva, prying casually round the room while Elizabeth had gone
to take off her gardening-gloves, had noticed a modest catch let into
the wood-work. Without doubt, then, the book-case was the door of the
cupboard, and with a stroke of intuition, too sure to be called a guess,
Diva was aware that she had correctly inferred the storage of this
nefarious hoard. It only remained to verify her conclusion, and, if
possible, expose it with every circumstance of public ignominy. She was
in no hurry: she could bide her time, aware that, in all probability,
every day that passed would see an addition to its damning contents.
Some day, when she was playing bridge and the card-table had been moved
out, in some rubber when she herself was dummy and Elizabeth greedily
playing the hand, she would secretly and accidentally press the catch
which her acute vision had so providentially revealed to her…

She attacked her chintz curtains again with her appetite[88]
for the pink roses agreeably whetted. Another hour’s work would
give her sufficient bunches for her purpose, and unless the dyer was as
perfidious as Elizabeth, her now purple jacket and skirt would arrive
that afternoon. Two days’ hard work would be sufficient for so
accomplished a needlewoman as herself to make these original
decorations.

In the meantime, for Diva was never idle, and was chiefly occupied with
dress, she got out a certain American fashion paper. There was in it the
description of a tea-gown worn by Mrs. Titus W. Trout which she believed
was within her dressmaking capacity. She would attempt it, anyhow, and
if it proved to be beyond her, she could entrust the more difficult
parts to that little dressmaker whom Elizabeth employed, and who was
certainly very capable. But the costume was of so daring and splendid a
nature that she feared to take anyone into her confidence about it, lest
some hint or gossip—for Tilling was a gossipy place—might
leak out. Kingfisher blue! It made her mouth water to dwell on the
sumptuous syllables!

Miss Mapp was so feverishly occupied all next morning with the
application of poppies to the corn-coloured skirt that she paid very
little attention to the opening gambits of the day, either as regards
the world in general, or, more particularly, Major Benjy. After his
early retirement last night he was probably up with the lark this
morning, and when between half-past ten and eleven his sonorous
“Qui-hi!” sounded through her open window, the shock she
experienced interrupted for a moment her floral industry. It was
certainly very odd that, having gone to bed at so respectable an hour
last night, he should be calling for his porridge only now, but with an
impulse of unusual optimism, she figured him as having been at work on
his diaries[89]
before breakfast, and in that absorbing occupation having forgotten how
late it was growing. That, no doubt, was the explanation, though it
would be nice to know for certain, if the information positively forced
itself on her notice… As she worked, (framing her lips with
elaborate motions to the syllables) she dumbly practised the phrase
“Major Benjy.” Sometimes in moments of gallantry he called
her “Miss Elizabeth,” and she meant, when she had got
accustomed to it by practice, to say “Major Benjy” to him by
accident, and he would, no doubt, beg her to make a habit of that
friendly slip of the tongue… “Tongue” led to a new
train of thought, and presently she paused in her work, and pulling the
card-table away from the deceptive book-case, she pressed the concealed
catch of the door, and peeped in.

There was still room for further small precautions against starvation
owing to the impending coal-strike, and she took stock of her
provisions. Even if the strike lasted quite a long time, there would now
be no immediate lack of the necessaries of life, for the cupboard
glistened with tinned meats, and the flour-merchant had sent a very
sensible sack. This with considerable exertion she transferred to a high
shelf in the cupboard, instead of allowing it to remain standing on the
floor, for Withers had informed her of an unpleasant rumour about a
mouse, which Mary had observed, lost in thought in front of the
cupboard. “So mousie shall only find tins on the floor now,”
thought Miss Mapp. “Mousie shall try his teeth on tins.”
… There was tea and coffee in abundance, jars of jam filled the
kitchen shelves, and if this morning she laid in a moderate supply of
dried fruits, there was no reason to face the future with anything but
fortitude. She would see about that now, for, busy though she was, she
could not miss the[90]
shopping-parade. Would Diva, she wondered, be at her window, snipping
roses out of chintz curtains? The careful, thrifty soul. Perhaps this
time to-morrow, Diva, looking out of her window, would see that somebody
else had been quicker about being thrifty than she. That would be fun!

The Major’s dining-room window was open, and as Miss Mapp passed
it, she could not help hearing loud, angry remarks about eggs coming
from inside. That made it clear that he was still at breakfast, and that
if he had been working at his diaries in the fresh morning hours and
forgetting the time, early rising, in spite of his early retirement last
night, could not be supposed to suit his Oriental temper. But a change
of habits was invariably known to be upsetting, and Miss Mapp was
hopeful that in a day or two he would feel quite a different man.
Further down the street was quaint Irene lounging at the door of her new
studio (a converted coach-house), smoking a cigarette and dressed like a
jockey.

“Hullo, Mapp,” she said. “Come and have a look round
my new studio. You haven’t seen it yet. I shall give a
house-warming next week. Bridge-party!”

Miss Mapp tried to steel herself for the hundredth time to appear quite
unconscious that she was being addressed when Irene said
“Mapp” in that odious manner. But she never could summon up
sufficient nerve to be rude to so awful a mimic…

“Good morning, dear one,” she said sycophantically.
“Shall I peep in for a moment?”

The decoration of the studio was even more appalling than might have
been expected. There was a German stove in the corner made of pink
porcelain, the rafters and roof were painted scarlet, the walls were of
magenta[91]
distemper and the floor was blue. In the corner was a very large
orange-coloured screen. The walls were hung with specimens of
Irene’s art, there was a stout female with no clothes on at all,
whom it was impossible not to recognize as being Lucy; there were
studies of fat legs and ample bosoms, and on the easel was a picture,
evidently in process of completion, which represented a man. From this
Miss Mapp instantly averted her eyes.

“Eve,” said Irene, pointing to Lucy.

Miss Mapp naturally guessed that the gentleman who was almost in the
same costume was Adam, and turned completely away from him.

“And what a lovely idea to have a blue floor, dear,” she
said. “How original you are. And that pretty scarlet ceiling. But
don’t you find when you’re painting that all these bright
colours disturb you?”

“Not a bit: they stimulate your sense of colour.”

Miss Mapp moved towards the screen.

“What a delicious big screen,” she said.

“Yes, but don’t go behind it, Mapp,” said Irene,
“or you’ll see my model undressing.”

Miss Mapp retreated from it precipitately, as from a wasp’s nest,
and examined some of the studies on the wall, for it was more than
probable from the unfinished picture on the easel that Adam lurked
behind the delicious screen. Terrible though it all was, she was
conscious of an unbridled curiosity to know who Adam was. It was
dreadful to think that there could be any man in Tilling so depraved as
to stand to be looked at with so little on…

Irene strolled round the walls with her.

“Studies of Lucy,” she said.

“I see, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “How clever! Legs and
things! But when you have your bridge-party,[92]
won’t you perhaps cover some of them up, or turn them to the wall?
We should all be looking at your pictures instead of attending to our
cards. And if you were thinking of asking the Padre, you
know…”

They were approaching the corner of the room where the screen stood,
when a movement there as if Adam had hit it with his elbow made Miss
Mapp turn round. The screen fell flat on the ground and within a yard of
her stood Mr. Hopkins, the proprietor of the fish-shop just up the
street. Often and often had Miss Mapp had pleasant little conversations
with him, with a view to bringing down the price of flounders. He had
little bathing-drawers on…

“Hullo, Hopkins, are you ready?” said Irene. “You know
Miss Mapp, don’t you?”

Miss Mapp had not imagined that Time and Eternity combined could hold so
embarrassing a moment. She did not know where to look, but wherever she
looked, it should not be at Hopkins. But (wherever she looked) she could
not be unaware that Hopkins raised his large bare arm and touched the
place where his cap would have been, if he had had one.

“Good-morning, Hopkins,” she said. “Well, Irene
darling, I must be trotting, and leave you to your——”
she hardly knew what to call it—“to your work.”

She tripped from the room, which seemed to be entirely full of unclothed
limbs, and redder than one of Mr. Hopkins’s boiled lobsters
hurried down the street. She felt that she could never face him again,
but would be obliged to go to the establishment in the High Street where
Irene dealt, when it was fish she wanted from a fish-shop… Her
head was in a whirl at the brazenness of mankind, especially womankind.
How had Irene started the overtures[93]
that led to this? Had she just said to Hopkins one morning: “Will
you come to my studio and take off all your clothes?” If Irene had
not been such a wonderful mimic, she would certainly have felt it her
duty to go straight to the Padre, and, pulling down her veil, confide to
him the whole sad story. But as that was out of the question, she went
into Twenlow’s and ordered four pounds of dried apricots.

CHAPTER IV

The dyer, as Diva had feared, proved perfidious, and it was not till the
next morning that her maid brought her the parcel containing the coat
and skirt of the projected costume. Diva had already done her marketing,
so that she might have no other calls on her time to interfere with the
tacking on of the bunches of pink roses, and she hoped to have the dress
finished in time for Elizabeth’s afternoon bridge-party next day,
an invitation to which had just reached her. She had also settled to
have a cold lunch to-day, so that her cook as well as her parlourmaid
could devote themselves to the job.

She herself had taken the jacket for decoration, and was just tacking
the first rose on to the collar, when she looked out of the window, and
what she saw caused her needle to fall from her nerveless hand. Tripping
along the opposite pavement was Elizabeth. She had on a dress, the
material of which, after a moment’s gaze, Diva identified: it was
that corn-coloured coat and skirt which she had worn so much last
spring. But the collar, the cuffs, the waistband and the hem of the
skirt were covered with staring red poppies. Next moment, she called to
remembrance the chintz that had once covered Elizabeth’s sofa in
the garden-room.

[94]
Diva wasted no time, but rang the bell. She had to make certain.

“Janet,” she said, “go straight out into the High
Street, and walk close behind Miss Mapp. Look very carefully at her
dress; see if the poppies on it are of chintz.”

Janet’s face fell.

“Why, ma’am, she’s never gone and——”
she began.

“Quick!” said Diva in a strangled voice.

Diva watched from her window. Janet went out, looked this way and that,
spied the quarry, and skimmed up the High Street on feet that twinkled
as fast as her mistress’s. She came back much out of breath with
speed and indignation.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “They’re chintz
sure enough. Tacked on, too, just as you were meaning to do. Oh,
ma’am——”

Janet quite appreciated the magnitude of the calamity and her voice
failed.

“What are we to do, ma’am?” she added.

Diva did not reply for a moment, but sat with eyes closed in profound
and concentrated thought. It required no reflection to decide how
impossible it was to appear herself to-morrow in a dress which seemed to
ape the costume which all Tilling had seen Elizabeth wearing to-day, and
at first it looked as if there was nothing to be done with all those
laboriously acquired bunches of rosebuds; for it was clearly out of the
question to use them as the decoration for any costume, and idle to
think of sewing them back into the snipped and gashed curtains. She
looked at the purple skirt and coat that hungered for their flowers, and
then she looked at Janet. Janet was a short, roundabout person; it was
ill-naturedly supposed that she had much the same figure as her
mistress…

[95]
Then the light broke, dazzling and diabolical, and Diva bounced to her
feet, blinded by its splendour.

“My coat and skirt are yours, Janet,” she said. “Get
with the work both of you. Bustle. Cover it with roses. Have it finished
to-night. Wear it to-morrow. Wear it always.”

She gave a loud cackle of laughter and threaded her needle.

“Lor, ma’am!” said Janet, admiringly.
“That’s a teaser! And thank you, ma’am!”

“It was roses, roses all the way.” Diva had quite
miscalculated the number required, and there were sufficient not only to
cover collar, cuffs and border of the skirt with them but to make
another line of them six inches above the hem. Original and gorgeous as
the dress would be, it was yet a sort of parody of Elizabeth’s
costume which was attracting so much interest and attention as she
popped in and out of shops to-day. To-morrow that would be worn by
Janet, and Janet (or Diva was much mistaken) should encourage her
friends to get permission to use up old bits of chintz. Very likely
chintz decoration would become quite a vogue among the servant maids of
Tilling… How Elizabeth had got hold of the idea mattered nothing,
but anyhow she would be surfeited with the idea before Diva had finished
with her. It was possible, of course (anything was possible), that it
had occurred to her independently, but Diva was loath to give so
innocent an ancestry to her adoption of it. It was far more sensible to
take for granted that she had got wind of Diva’s invention by some
odious, underhand piece of spying. What that might be must be
investigated (and probably determined) later, but at present the
business of Janet’s roses eclipsed every other interest.

Miss Mapp’s shopping that morning was unusually[96]
prolonged, for it was important that every woman in Tilling should see
the poppies on the corn-coloured ground, and know that she had worn that
dress before Diva appeared in some mean adaptation of it. Though the
total cost of her entire purchases hardly amounted to a shilling, she
went in and out of an amazing number of shops, and made a prodigious
series of inquiries into the price of commodities that ranged from
motor-cars to sealing-wax, and often entered a shop twice because
(wreathed in smiling apologies for her stupidity) she had forgotten what
she was told the first time. By twelve o’clock she was satisfied
that practically everybody, with one exception, had seen her, and that
her costume had aroused a deep sense of jealousy and angry admiration.
So cunning was the handiwork of herself, Withers and Mary that she felt
fairly sure that no one had the slightest notion of how this decoration
of poppies was accomplished, for Evie had run round her in small
mouse-like circles, murmuring to herself: “Very effective idea; is
it woven into the cloth, Elizabeth? Dear me, I wonder where I could get
some like it,” and Mrs. Poppit had followed her all up the street,
with eyes glued to the hem of her skirt, and a completely puzzled face:
“but then,” so thought Elizabeth sweetly “even members
of the Order of the British Empire can’t have everything their own
way.” As for the Major, he had simply come to a dead stop when he
bounced out of his house as she passed, and said something very gallant
and appropriate. Even the absence of that one inhabitant of Tilling,
dear Diva, did not strike a jarring note in this pæan of triumph,
for Miss Mapp was quite satisfied that Diva was busy indoors, working
her fingers to the bone over the application of bunches of roses, and,
as usual, she was perfectly correct in her conjecture. But dear[97]
Diva would have to see the new frock to-morrow afternoon, at the latest,
when she came to the bridge-party. Perhaps she would then, for the first
time, be wearing the roses herself, and everybody would very pleasantly
pity her. This was so rapturous a thought, that when Miss Mapp, after
her prolonged shopping and with her almost empty basket, passed Mr.
Hopkins standing outside his shop on her return home again, she gave him
her usual smile, though without meeting his eye, and tried to forget how
much of him she had seen yesterday. Perhaps she might speak to him
to-morrow and gradually resume ordinary relations, for the prices at the
other fish shop were as high as the quality of the fish was low…
She told herself that there was nothing actually immoral in the human
skin, however embarrassing it was.

Miss Mapp had experienced a cruel disappointment last night, though the
triumph of this morning had done something to soothe it, for Major
Benjy’s window had certainly been lit up to a very late hour, and
so it was clear that he had not been able, twice in succession, to tear
himself away from his diaries, or whatever else detained him, and go to
bed at a proper time. Captain Puffin, however, had not sat up late;
indeed he must have gone to bed quite unusually early, for his window
was dark by half-past nine. To-night, again the position was reversed,
and it seemed that Major Benjy was “good” and Captain Puffin
was “bad.” On the whole, then, there was cause for
thankfulness, and as she added a tin of biscuits and two jars of bovril
to her prudent stores, she found herself a conscious sceptic about those
Roman roads. Diaries (perhaps) were a little different, for egoism was a
more potent force than archæology, and for her part she now[98]
definitely believed that Roman roads spelt some form of drink. She was
sorry to believe it, but it was her duty to believe something of the
kind, and she really did not know what else to believe. She did not go
so far as mentally to accuse him of drunkenness, but considering the way
he absorbed red-currant fool, it was clear that he was no foe to alcohol
and probably watered the Roman roads with it. With her vivid imagination
she pictured him——

Miss Mapp recalled herself from this melancholy reflection and put up
her hand just in time to save a bottle of bovril which she had put on
the top shelf in front of the sack of flour from tumbling to the ground.
With the latest additions she had made to her larder, it required
considerable ingenuity to fit all the tins and packages in, and for a
while she diverted her mind from Captain Puffin’s drinking to her
own eating. But by careful packing and balancing she managed to stow
everything away with sufficient economy of space to allow her to shut
the door, and then put the card-table in place again. It was then late,
and with a fond look at her sweet flowers sleeping in the moonlight, she
went to bed. Captain Puffin’s sitting-room was still alight, and
even as she deplored this, his shadow in profile crossed the blind.
Shadows were queer things—she could make a beautiful shadow-rabbit
on the wall by a dexterous interlacement of fingers and thumbs—and
certainly this shadow, in the momentary glance she had of it, appeared
to have a large moustache. She could make nothing whatever out of that,
except to suppose that just as fingers and thumbs became a rabbit, so
his nose became a moustache, for he could not have grown one since he
came back from golf…

She was out early for her shopping next morning, for[99]
there were some delicacies to be purchased for her bridge-party, more
particularly some little chocolate cakes she had lately discovered which
looked very small and innocent, were in reality of so cloying and
substantial a nature, that the partaker thereof would probably not feel
capable of making any serious inroads into other provisions. Naturally
she was much on the alert to-day, for it was more than possible that
Diva’s dress was finished and in evidence. What colour it would be
she did not know, but a large quantity of rosebuds would, even at a
distance, make identification easy. Diva was certainly not at her window
this morning, so it seemed more than probable that they would soon meet.

Far away, just crossing the High Street at the further end, she caught
sight of a bright patch of purple, very much of the required shape.
There was surely a pink border round the skirt and a pink panel on the
collar, and just as surely Mrs. Bartlett, recognizable for her gliding
mouse-like walk, was moving in its fascinating wake. Then the purple
patch vanished into a shop, and Miss Mapp, all smiles and poppies, went
with her basket up the street. Presently she encountered Evie, who, also
all smiles, seemed to have some communication to make, but only got as
far as “Have you seen”—when she gave a little squeal
of laughter, quite inexplicable, and glided into some dark entry. A
minute afterwards, the purple patch suddenly appeared from a shop and
almost collided with her. It was not Diva at all, but Diva’s
Janet.

The shock was so indescribably severe that Miss Mapp’s smile was
frozen, so to speak, as by some sudden congealment on to her face, and
did not thaw off it till she had reached the sharp turn at the end of
the street, where she leaned heavily on the railing and breathed through
her[100]
nose. A light autumnal mist overlay the miles of marsh, but the sun was
already drinking it up, promising the Tillingites another golden day.
The tidal river was at the flood, and the bright water lapped the bases
of the turf-covered banks that kept it within its course. Beyond that
was the tram-station towards which presently Major Benjy and Captain
Puffin would be hurrying to catch the tram that would take them out to
the golf links. The straight road across the marsh was visible, and the
railway bridge. All these things were pitilessly unchanged, and Miss
Mapp noted them blankly, until rage began to restore the numbed current
of her mental processes.

If the records of history contained any similar instance of such
treachery and low cunning as was involved in this plot of Diva’s
to dress Janet in the rosebud chintz, Miss Mapp would have liked to be
told clearly and distinctly what it was. She could trace the workings of
Diva’s base mind with absolute accuracy, and if all the archangels
in the hierarchy of heaven had assured her that Diva had originally
intended the rosebuds for Janet, she would have scorned them for their
clumsy perjury. Diva had designed and executed that dress for herself,
and just because Miss Mapp’s ingenuity (inspired by the two
rosebuds that had fluttered out of the window) had forestalled her, she
had taken this fiendish revenge. It was impossible to pervade the High
Street covered with chintz poppies when a parlourmaid was being equally
pervasive in chintz rosebuds, and what was to be done with this frock
executed with such mirth and malice by Withers, Mary and herself she had
no idea. She might just as well give it Withers, for she could no longer
wear it herself, or tear the poppies from the hem and bestrew the High
Street with them…[101]
Miss Mapp’s face froze into immobility again, for here, trundling
swiftly towards her, was Diva herself.

Diva appeared not to see her till she got quite close.

“Morning, Elizabeth,” she said. “Seen my Janet
anywhere?”

“No,” said Miss Mapp.

Janet (no doubt according to instructions received) popped out of a
shop, and came towards her mistress.

“Here she is,” said Diva. “All right, Janet. You go
home. I’ll see to the other things.”

“It’s a lovely day,” said Miss Mapp, beginning to lash
her tail. “So bright.”

“Yes. Pretty trimming of poppies,” said Diva.
“Janet’s got rosebuds.”

This was too much.

“Diva, I didn’t think it of you,” said Miss Mapp in a
shaking voice. “You saw my new frock yesterday, and you were
filled with malice and envy, Diva, just because I had thought of using
flowers off an old chintz as well as you, and came out first with it.
You had meant to wear that purple frock yourself—though I must say
it fits Janet perfectly—and just because I was first in the field
you did this. You gave Janet that frock, so that I should be dressed in
the same style as your parlourmaid, and you’ve got a black heart,
Diva!”

“That’s nonsense,” said Diva firmly.
“Heart’s as red as anybody’s, and talking of black
hearts doesn’t become you, Elizabeth. You knew I was cutting out
roses from my curtains——”

Miss Mapp laughed shrilly.

“Well, if I happen to notice that you’ve taken your chintz
curtains down,” she said with an awful distinctness that showed
the wisdom-teeth of which Diva had got[102]
three at the most, “and pink bunches of roses come flying out of
your window into the High Street, even my poor wits, small as they are,
are equal to drawing the conclusion that you are cutting roses out of
curtains. Your well-known fondness for dress did the rest. With your
permission, Diva, I intend to draw exactly what conclusions I please on
every occasion, including this one.”

“Ho! That’s how you got the idea then,” said Diva.
“I knew you had cribbed it from me.”

“Cribbed?” asked Miss Mapp, in ironical ignorance of what so
vulgar and slangy an expression meant.

“Cribbed means taking what isn’t yours,” said Diva.
“Even then, if you had only acted in a straightforward
manner——”

Miss Mapp, shaken as with palsy, regretted that she had let slip, out of
pure childlike joy, in irony, the manner in which she had obtained the
poppy-notion, but in a quarrel regrets are useless, and she went on
again.

“And would you very kindly explain how or when I have acted in a
manner that was not straightforward,” she asked with laborious
politeness. “Or do I understand that a monopoly of cutting up
chintz curtains for personal adornment has been bestowed on you by Act
of Parliament?”

“You knew I was meaning to make a frock with chintz roses on
it,” said Diva. “You stole my idea. Worked night and day to
be first. Just like you. Mean behaviour.”

“It was meaner to give that frock to Janet,” said Miss Mapp.

“You can give yours to Withers,” snapped Diva.

“Much obliged, Mrs. Plaistow,” said Miss Mapp.

Diva had been watching Janet’s retreating figure, and[103]
feeling that though revenge was sweet, revenge was also strangely
expensive, for she had sacrificed one of the most strikingly successful
frocks she had ever made on that smoking altar. Now her revenge was
gratified, and deeply she regretted the frock. Miss Mapp’s heart
was similarly wrung by torture: revenge too had been hers (general
revenge on Diva for existing), but this dreadful counter-stroke had made
it quite impossible for her to enjoy the use of this frock any more, for
she could not habit herself like a housemaid. Each, in fact, had, as
matters at present stood, completely wrecked the other, like two express
trains meeting in top-speed collision, and, since the quarrel had
clearly risen to its utmost height, there was no farther joy of battle
to be anticipated, but only the melancholy task of counting the corpses.
So they paused, breathing very quickly and trembling, while both sought
for some way out. Besides Miss Mapp had a bridge-party this afternoon,
and if they parted now in this extreme state of tension, Diva might
conceivably not come, thereby robbing herself of her bridge and spoiling
her hostess’s table. Naturally any permanent quarrel was not
contemplated by either of them, for if quarrels were permanent in
Tilling, nobody would be on speaking terms any more with anyone else in
a day or two, and (hardly less disastrous) there could be no fresh
quarrels with anybody, since you could not quarrel without words. There
might be songs without words, as Mendelssohn had proved, but not rows
without words. By what formula could this deadly antagonism be bridged
without delay?

Diva gazed out over the marsh. She wanted desperately to regain her
rosebud-frock, and she knew that Elizabeth was starving for further
wearing of her poppies. Perhaps the wide, serene plain below inspired
her with a hatred of[104]
littleness. There would be no loss of dignity in making a proposal that
her enemy, she felt sure, would accept: it merely showed a Christian
spirit, and set an example to Elizabeth, to make the first move. Janet
she did not consider.

“If you are in a fit state to listen to reason, Elizabeth,”
she began.

Miss Mapp heaved a sigh of relief. Diva had thought of something. She
swallowed the insult at a gulp.

“Yes, dear,” she said.

“Got an idea. Take away Janet’s frock, and wear it myself.
Then you can wear yours. Too pretty for parlour-maids. Eh?”

A heavenly brightness spread over Miss Mapp’s face.

“Oh, how wonderful of you to have thought of that, Diva,”
she said. “But how shall we explain it all to everybody?”

Diva clung to her rights. Though clearly Christian, she was human.

“Say I thought of tacking chintz on and told you,” she said.

“Yes, darling,” said Elizabeth. “That’s
beautiful, I agree. But poor Janet!”

“I’ll give her some other old thing,” said Diva.
“Good sort, Janet. Wants me to win.”

“And about her having been seen wearing it?”

“Say she hasn’t ever worn it. Say they’re mad,”
said Diva.

Miss Mapp felt it better to tear herself away before she began
distilling all sorts of acidities that welled up in her fruitful mind.
She could, for instance, easily have agreed that nothing was more
probable than that Janet had been mistaken for her mistress…

[105]
“Au reservoir then, dear,” she said tenderly. “See you
at about four? And will you wear your pretty rosebud frock?”

This was agreed to, and Diva went home to take it away from Janet.

The reconciliation of course was strictly confined to matters relating
to chintz and did not include such extraneous subjects as coal-strike or
food-hoarding, and even in the first glowing moments of restored
friendliness, Diva began wondering whether she would have the
opportunity that afternoon of testing the truth of her conjecture about
the cupboard in the garden-room. Cudgel her brains as she might she
could think of no other cache that could contain the immense amount of
provisions that Elizabeth had probably accumulated, and she was all on
fire to get to practical grips with the problem. As far as tins of
corned beef and tongues went, Elizabeth might possibly have buried them
in her garden in the manner of a dog, but it was not likely that a
hoarder would limit herself to things in tins. No: there was a cupboard
somewhere ready to burst with strong supporting foods…

Diva intentionally arrived a full quarter of an hour on the hither side
of punctuality, and was taken by Withers out into the garden-room, where
tea was laid, and two card-tables were in readiness. She was, of course,
the first of the guests, and the moment Withers withdrew to tell her
mistress that she had come, Diva stealthily glided to the cupboard, from
in front of which the bridge-table had been removed, feeling the shrill
joy of some romantic treasure hunter. She found the catch, she pressed
it, she pulled open the door and the whole of the damning profusion of
provisions burst upon her[106]
delighted eyes. Shelf after shelf was crowded with eatables; there were
tins of corned beef and tongues (that she knew already), there was a
sack of flour, there were tubes of Bath Oliver biscuits, bottles of
bovril, the yield of a thousand condensed Swiss cows, jars of
prunes… All these were in the front row, flush with the door, and
who knew to what depth the cupboard extended? Even as she feasted her
eyes on this incredible store, some package on the top shelf wavered and
toppled, and she had only just time to shut the door again, in order to
prevent it falling out on to the floor. But this displacement prevented
the door from wholly closing, and push and shove as Diva might, she
could not get the catch to click home, and the only result of her energy
and efforts was to give rise to a muffled explosion from within, just
precisely as if something made of cardboard had burst. That mental image
was so vivid that to her fevered imagination it seemed to be real. This
was followed by certain faint taps from within against “Elegant
Extracts” and “Astronomy.”

Diva grew very red in the face, and said “Drat it” under her
breath. She did not dare open the door again in order to push things
back, for fear of an uncontrollable stream of “things”
pouring out. Some nicely balanced equilibrium had clearly been upset in
those capacious shelves, and it was impossible to tell, without looking,
how deep and how extensive the disturbance was. And in order to look,
she had to open the bookcase again… Luckily the pressure against
the door was not sufficiently heavy to cause it to swing wide, so the
best she could do was to leave it just ajar with temporary quiescence
inside. Simultaneously she heard Miss Mapp’s step, and had no more
than time to trundle at the utmost speed of her[107]
whirling feet across to the window, where she stood looking out, and
appeared quite unconscious of her hostess’s entry.

“Diva darling, how sweet of you to come so early!” she said.
“A little cosy chat before the others arrive.”

Diva turned round, much startled.

“Hullo!” she said. “Didn’t hear you. Got
Janet’s frock you see.”

(“What makes Diva’s face so red?” thought Miss Mapp.)

“So I see, darling,” she said. “Lovely rose-garden.
How well it suits you, dear! Did Janet mind?”

“No. Promised her a new frock at Christmas.”

“That will be nice for Janet,” said Elizabeth
enthusiastically. “Shall we pop into the garden, dear, till my
guests come?”

Diva was glad to pop into the garden and get away from the immediate
vicinity of the cupboard, for though she had planned and looked forward
to the exposure of Elizabeth’s hoarding, she had not meant it to
come, as it now probably would, in crashes of tins and bursting of
bovril bottles. Again she had intended to have opened that door quite
casually and innocently while she was being dummy, so that everyone
could see how accidental the exposure was, and to have gone poking about
the cupboard in Elizabeth’s absence was a shade too professional,
so to speak, for the usual detective work of Tilling. But the fuse was
set now. Sooner or later the explosion must come. She wondered as they
went out to commune with Elizabeth’s sweet flowers till the other
guests arrived how great a torrent would be let loose. She did not
repent her exploration—far from it—but her pleasurable
anticipations were strongly diluted with suspense.

Miss Mapp had found such difficulty in getting eight players together
to-day, that she had transgressed her[108]
principles and asked Mrs. Poppit as well as Isabel, and they, with Diva,
the two Bartletts, and the Major and the Captain, formed the party. The
moment Mrs. Poppit appeared, Elizabeth hated her more than ever, for she
put up her glasses, and began to give her patronizing advice about her
garden, which she had not been allowed to see before.

“You have quite a pretty little piece of garden, Miss Mapp,”
she said, “though, to be sure, I fancied from what you said that
it was more extensive. Dear me, your roses do not seem to be doing very
well. Probably they are old plants and want renewing. You must send your
gardener round—you keep a gardener?—and I will let you have
a dozen vigorous young bushes.”

Miss Mapp licked her dry lips. She kept a kind of gardener: two days a
week.

“Too good of you,” she said, “but that rose-bed is
quite sacred, dear Mrs. Poppit. Not all the vigorous young bushes in the
world would tempt me. It’s my ‘Friendship’s
Border:’ some dear friend gave me each of my rose-trees.”

Mrs. Poppit transferred her gaze to the wistaria that grew over the
steps up to the garden-room. Some of the dear friends she thought must
be centenarians.

“Your wistaria wants pruning sadly,” she said. “Your
gardener does not understand wistarias. That corner there was made, I
may say, for fuchsias. You should get a dozen choice fuchsias.”

Miss Mapp laughed.

“Oh, you must excuse me,” she said with a glance at Mrs.
Poppit’s brocaded silk. “I can’t bear fuchsias. They
always remind me of over-dressed women. Ah, there’s Mr. Bartlett.
How de do, Padre. And dear Evie!”

[109]
Dear Evie appeared fascinated by Diva’s dress.

“Such beautiful rosebuds,” she murmured, “and what
lovely shade of purple. And Elizabeth’s poppies too, quite a pair
of you. But surely this morning, Diva, didn’t I see your good
Janet in just such another dress, and I thought at the time how odd it
was that——”

“If you saw Janet this morning,” said Diva quite firmly,
“you saw her in her print dress.”

“And here’s Major Benjy,” said Miss Mapp, who had made
her slip about his Christian name yesterday, and had been duly entreated
to continue slipping. “And Captain Puffin. Well, that is nice!
Shall we go into my little garden shed, dear Mrs. Poppit, and have our
tea?”

Major Flint was still a little lame, for his golf to-day had been of the
nature of gardening, and he hobbled up the steps behind the ladies, with
that little cock-sparrow sailor following him and telling the Padre how
badly and yet how successfully he himself had played.

“Pleasantest room in Tilling, I always say, Miss Elizabeth,”
said he, diverting his mind from a mere game to the fairies.

“My dear little room,” said Miss Mapp, knowing that it was
much larger than anything in Mrs. Poppit’s house. “So
tiny!”

“Oh, not a bad-sized little room,” said Mrs. Poppit
encouragingly. “Much the same proportions, on a very small scale,
as the throne-room at Buckingham Palace.”

“That beautiful throne-room!” exclaimed Miss Mapp. “A
cup of tea, dear Mrs. Poppit? None of that naughty red-currant fool, I
am afraid. And a little chocolate-cake?”

These substantial chocolate cakes soon did their fell work of producing
the sense of surfeit, and presently[110]
Elizabeth’s guests dropped off gorged from the tea-table. Diva
fortunately remembered their consistency in time, and nearly cleared a
plate of jumbles instead, which the hostess had hoped would form a
pleasant accompaniment to her dessert at her supper this evening, and
was still crashingly engaged on them when the general drifting movement
towards the two bridge-tables set in. Mrs. Poppit, with her glasses up,
followed by Isabel, was employed in making a tour of the room, in case,
as Miss Mapp had already determined, she never saw it again, examining
the quality of the carpet, the curtains, the chair-backs with the air of
a doubtful purchaser.

“And quite a quantity of books, I see,” she announced as she
came opposite the fatal cupboard. “Look, Isabel, what a quantity
of books. There is something strange about them, though; I do not
believe they are real.”

She put out her hand and pulled at the back of one of the volumes of
“Elegant Extracts.” The door swung open, and from behind it
came a noise of rattling, bumping and clattering. Something soft and
heavy thumped on to the floor, and a cloud of floury dust arose. A
bottle of bovril embedded itself quietly there without damage, and a tin
of Bath Oliver biscuits beat a fierce tattoo on one of corned beef.
Innumerable dried apricots from the burst package flew about like
shrapnel, and tapped at the tins. A jar of prunes, breaking its fall on
the flour, rolled merrily out into the middle of the floor.

The din was succeeded by complete silence. The Padre had said
“What ho, i’ fegs?” during the tumult, but his voice
had been drowned by the rattling of the dried apricots. The Member of
the Order of the British Empire stepped free of the provisions that
bumped round her, and examined them through her glasses. Diva
crammed[111]
the last jumble into her mouth and disposed of it with the utmost
rapidity. The birthday of her life had come, as Miss Rossetti said.

“Dear Elizabeth!” she exclaimed. “What a disaster! All
your little stores in case of the coal strike. Let me help to pick them
up. I do not think anything is broken. Isn’t that lucky?”

Evie hurried to the spot.

“Such a quantity of good things,” she said rapidly under her
breath. “Tinned meats and bovril and prunes, and ever so many
apricots. Let me pick them all up, and with a little dusting…
Why, what a big cupboard, and such a quantity of good things.”

Miss Mapp had certainly struck a streak of embarrassments. What with
naked Mr. Hopkins, and Janet’s frock and this unveiling of her
hoard, life seemed at the moment really to consist of nothing else than
beastly situations. How on earth that catch of the door had come undone,
she had no idea, but much as she would have liked to suspect foul play
from somebody, she was bound to conclude that Mrs. Poppit with her
prying hands had accidentally pressed it. It was like Diva, of course,
to break the silence with odious allusions to hoarding, and bitterly she
wished that she had not started the topic the other day, but had been
content to lay in her stores without so pointedly affirming that she was
doing nothing of the kind. But this was no time for vain laments, and
restraining a natural impulse to scratch and beat Mrs. Poppit, she
exhibited an admirable inventiveness and composure. Though she knew it
would deceive nobody, everybody had to pretend he was deceived.

“Oh, my poor little Christmas presents for your needy
parishioners, Padre,” she said. “You’ve seen
them[112]
before you were meant to, and you must forget all about them. And so
little harm done, just an apricot or two. Withers will pick them all up,
so let us get to our bridge.”

Withers entered the room at this moment to clear away tea, and Miss Mapp
explained it all over again.

“All our little Christmas presents have come tumbling out,
Withers,” she said. “Will you put as many as you can back in
the cupboard and take the rest indoors? Don’t tread on the
apricots.”

It was difficult to avoid doing this, as the apricots were everywhere,
and their colour on the brown carpet was wonderfully protective. Miss
Mapp herself had already stepped on two, and their adhesive stickiness
was hard to get rid of. In fact, for the next few minutes the
coal-shovel was in strong request for their removal from the soles of
shoes, and the fender was littered with their squashed remains…
The party generally was distinctly thoughtful as it sorted itself out
into two tables, for every single member of it was trying to assimilate
the amazing proposition that Miss Mapp had, half-way through September,
loaded her cupboard with Christmas presents on a scale that staggered
belief. The feat required thought: it required a faith so childlike as
to verge on the imbecile. Conversation during deals had an awkward
tendency towards discussion of the coal strike. As often as it drifted
there the subject was changed very abruptly, just as if there was some
occult reason for not speaking of so natural a topic. It concerned
everybody, but it was rightly felt to concern Miss Mapp the
most…

[113]

CHAPTER V

It was the Major’s turn to entertain his friend, and by half-past
nine, on a certain squally October evening, he and Puffin were seated by
the fire in the diary-room, while the rain volleyed at the windows and
occasional puffs of stinging smoke were driven down the chimney by the
gale that squealed and buffeted round the house. Puffin, by way of
keeping up the comedy of Roman roads, had brought a map of the district
across from his house, but the more essential part of his equipment for
this studious evening was a bottle of whisky. Originally the host had
provided whisky for himself and his guest at these pleasant chats, but
there were undeniable objections to this plan, because the guest always
proved unusually thirsty, which tempted his host to keep pace with him,
while if they both drank at their own expense, the causes of economy and
abstemiousness had a better chance. Also, while the Major took his
drinks short and strong in a small tumbler, Puffin enriched his with
lemons and sugar in a large one, so that nobody could really tell if
equality as well as fraternity was realized. But if each brought his own
bottle…

It had been a trying day, and the Major was very lame. A drenching storm
had come up during their golf, while they were far from the club-house,
and Puffin, being three up, had very naturally refused to accede to his
opponent’s suggestion to call the match off. He was perfectly
willing to be paid his half-crown and go home, but Major Flint,
remembering that Puffin’s game usually went to pieces if it
rained, had rejected this proposal with[114]
the scorn that it deserved. There had been other disagreeable incidents
as well. His driver, slippery from rain, had flown out of the
Major’s hands on the twelfth tee, and had “shot like a
streamer of the northern morn,” and landed in a pool of brackish
water left by an unusually high tide. The ball had gone into another
pool nearer the tee. The ground was greasy with moisture, and three
holes further on Puffin had fallen flat on his face instead of lashing
his fifth shot home on to the green, as he had intended. They had given
each other stimies, and each had holed his opponent’s ball by
mistake; they had wrangled over the correct procedure if you lay in a
rabbit-scrape or on the tram lines; the Major had lost a new ball; there
was a mushroom on one of the greens between Puffin’s ball and the
hole… All these untoward incidents had come crowding in together,
and from the Major’s point of view, the worst of them all had been
the collective incident that Puffin, so far from being put off by the
rain, had, in spite of mushroom and falling down, played with a
steadiness of which he was usually quite incapable. Consequently Major
Flint was lame and his wound troubled him, while Puffin, in spite of his
obvious reasons for complacency, was growing irritated with his
companion’s ill-temper, and was half blinded by wood-smoke.

He wiped his streaming eyes.

“You should get your chimney swept,” he observed.

Major Flint had put his handkerchief over his face to keep the
wood-smoke out of his eyes. He blew it off with a loud, indignant puff.

“Oh! Ah! Indeed!” he said.

Puffin was rather taken aback by the violence of these interjections;
they dripped with angry sarcasm.

“Oh, well! No offence,” he said.

[115]
“A man,” said the Major impersonally, “makes an
offensive remark, and says ‘No offence.’ If your own
fireside suits you better than mine, Captain Puffin, all I can say is
that you’re at liberty to enjoy it!”

This was all rather irregular: they had indulged in a good stiff breeze
this afternoon, and it was too early to ruffle the calm again. Puffin
plucked and proffered an olive-branch.

“There’s your handkerchief,” he said, picking it up.
“Now let’s have one of our comfortable talks. Hot glass of
grog and a chat over the fire: that’s the best thing after such a
wetting as we got this afternoon. I’ll take a slice of lemon, if
you’ll be so good as to give it me, and a lump of sugar.”

The Major got up and limped to his cupboard. It struck him precisely at
that moment that Puffin scored considerably over lemons and sugar,
because he was supplied with them gratis every other night; whereas he
himself, when Puffin’s guest, took nothing off his host but hot
water. He determined to ask for some biscuits, anyhow, to-morrow…

“I hardly know whether there’s a lemon left,” he
grumbled. “I must lay in a store of lemons. As for
sugar——”

Puffin chose to disregard this suggestion.

“Amusing incident the other day,” he said brightly,
“when Miss Mapp’s cupboard door flew open. The old lady
didn’t like it. Don’t suppose the poor of the parish will
see much of that corned beef.”

The Major became dignified.

“Pardon me,” he said. “When an esteemed friend like
Miss Elizabeth tells me that certain provisions are destined for the
poor of the parish, I take it that her[116]
statement is correct. I expect others of my friends, while they are in
my presence, to do the same. I have the honour to give you a lemon,
Captain Puffin, and a slice of sugar. I should say a lump of sugar. Pray
make yourself comfortable.”

This dignified and lofty mood was often one of the after-effects of an
unsuccessful game of golf. It generally yielded quite quickly to a
little stimulant. Puffin filled his glass from the bottle and the
kettle, while his friend put his handkerchief again over his face.

“Well, I shall just have my grog before I turn in,” he
observed, according to custom. “Aren’t you going to join me,
Major?”

“Presently, sir,” said the Major.

Puffin knocked out the consumed cinders in his pipe against the edge of
the fender. Major Flint apparently was waiting for this, for he withdrew
his handkerchief and closely watched the process. A minute piece of ash
fell from Puffin’s pipe on to the hearthrug, and he jumped to his
feet and removed it very carefully with the shovel.

“I have your permission, I hope?” he said witheringly.

“Certainly, certainly,” said Puffin. “Now get your
glass, Major. You’ll feel better in a minute or two.”

Major Flint would have liked to have kept up this magnificent attitude,
but the smell of Puffin’s steaming glass beat dignity down, and
after glaring at him, he limped back to the cupboard for his whisky
bottle. He gave a lamentable cry when he beheld it.

“But I got that bottle in only the day before yesterday,” he
shouted, “and there’s hardly a drink left in it.”

“Well, you did yourself pretty well last night,” said
Puffin. “Those small glasses of yours, if frequently filled up,
empty a bottle quicker than you seem to realize.”

[117]
Motives of policy prevented the Major from receiving this with the
resentment that was proper to it, and his face cleared. He would get
quits over these incessant lemons and lumps of sugar.

“Well, you’ll have to let me borrow from you
to-night,” he said genially, as he poured the rest of the contents
of his bottle into the glass. “Ah, that’s more the ticket! A
glass of whisky a day keeps the doctor away.”

The prospect of sponging on Puffin was most exhilarating, and he put his
large slippered feet on to the fender.

“Yes, indeed, that was a highly amusing incident about Miss
Mapp’s cupboard,” he said. “And wasn’t Mrs.
Plaistow down on her like a knife about it? Our fair friends, you know,
have a pretty sharp eye for each other’s little failings.
They’ve no sooner finished one squabble than they begin another,
the pert little fairies. They can’t sit and enjoy themselves like
two old cronies I could tell you of, and feel at peace with all the
world.”

He finished his glass at a gulp, and seemed much surprised to find it
empty.

“I’ll be borrowing a drop from you, old friend,” he
said.

“Help yourself, Major,” said Puffin, with a keen eye as to
how much he took.

“Very obliging of you. I feel as if I caught a bit of a chill this
afternoon. My wound.”

“Be careful not to inflame it,” said Puffin.

“Thank ye for the warning. It’s this beastly climate that
touches it up. A winter in England adds years on to a man’s life
unless he takes care of himself. Take care of yourself, old boy. Have
some more sugar.”

Before long the Major’s hand was moving slowly and instinctively
towards Puffin’s whisky bottle again.

[118]
“I reckon that big glass of yours, Puffin,” he said,
“holds between three and a half times to four times what my little
tumbler holds. Between three and a half and four I should reckon. I may
be wrong.”

“Reckoning the water in, I daresay you’re not far out,
Major,” said he. “And according to my estimate you mix your
drink somewhere about three and a half times to four stronger than I mix
mine.”

“Oh, come, come!” said the Major.

“Three and a half to four times, I should say,” repeated
Puffin. “You won’t find I’m far out.”

He replenished his big tumbler, and instead of putting the bottle back
on the table, absently deposited it on the floor on the far side of his
chair. This second tumbler usually marked the most convivial period of
the evening, for the first would have healed whatever unhappy discords
had marred the harmony of the day, and, those being disposed of, they
very contentedly talked through their hats about past prowesses, and
took a rosy view of the youth and energy which still beat in their
vigorous pulses. They would begin, perhaps, by extolling each other:
Puffin, when informed that his friend would be fifty-four next birthday,
flatly refused (without offence) to believe it, and, indeed, he was
quite right in so doing, because the Major was in reality fifty-six. In
turn, Major Flint would say that his friend had the figure of a boy of
twenty, which caused Puffin presently to feel a little cramped and to
wander negligently in front of the big looking-glass between the
windows, and find this compliment much easier to swallow than the
Major’s age. For the next half-hour they would chiefly talk about
themselves in a pleasant glow of self-satisfaction. Major Flint, looking
at the various implements and trophies that[119]
adorned the room, would suggest putting a sporting challenge in the
Times.

“’Pon my word, Puffin,” he would say,
“I’ve half a mind to do it. Retired Major of His
Majesty’s Forces—the King, God bless him!” (and he
took a substantial sip); “‘Retired Major, aged fifty-four,
challenges any gentleman of fifty years or over.’”

“Forty,” said Puffin sycophantically, as he thought over
what he would say about himself when the old man had finished.

“Well, we’ll halve it, we’ll say forty-five, to please
you, Puffin—let’s see, where had I got
to?—‘Retired Major challenges any gentleman of forty-five
years or over to—to a shooting match in the morning, followed by
half a dozen rounds with four-ounce gloves, a game of golf, eighteen
holes, in the afternoon, and a billiard match of two hundred up after
tea.’ Ha! ha! I shouldn’t feel much anxiety as to the
result.”

“My confounded leg!” said Puffin. “But I know a
retired captain from His Majesty’s merchant service—the
King, God bless him!—aged fifty——”

“Ho! ho! Fifty, indeed!” said the Major, thinking to himself
that a dried-up little man like Puffin might be as old as an Egyptian
mummy. Who can tell the age of a kipper?…

“Not a day less, Major. ‘Retired Captain, aged fifty,
who’ll take on all comers of forty-two and over, at a
steeplechase, round of golf, billiard match, hopping match, gymnastic
competition, swinging Indian clubs——’ No objection,
gentlemen? Then carried nem. con.”

This gaseous mood, athletic, amatory or otherwise (the amatory ones were
the worst), usually faded slowly, like the light from the setting sun or
an exhausted coal[120]
in the grate, about the end of Puffin’s second tumbler, and the
gentlemen after that were usually somnolent, but occasionally laid the
foundation for some disagreement next day, which they were too sleepy to
go into now. Major Flint by this time would have had some five small
glasses of whisky (equivalent, as he bitterly observed, to one in
pre-war days), and as he measured his next with extreme care and a
slightly jerky movement, would announce it as being his night-cap,
though you would have thought he had plenty of night-caps on already.
Puffin correspondingly took a thimbleful more (the thimble apparently
belonging to some housewife of Anak), and after another half-hour of
sudden single snores and startings awake again, of pipes frequently lit
and immediately going out, the guest, still perfectly capable of
coherent speech and voluntary motion in the required direction, would
stumble across the dark cobbles to his house, and doors would be very
carefully closed for fear of attracting the attention of the lady who at
this period of the evening was usually known as “Old Mappy.”
The two were perfectly well aware of the sympathetic interest that Old
Mappy took in all that concerned them, and that she had an eye on their
evening séances was evidenced by the frequency with which the
corner of her blind in the window of the garden-room was raised between,
say, half-past nine and eleven at night. They had often watched with
giggles the pencil of light that escaped, obscured at the lower end by
the outline of Old Mappy’s head, and occasionally drank to the
“Guardian Angel.” Guardian Angel, in answer to direct
inquiries, had been told by Major Benjy during the last month that he
worked at his diaries on three nights in the week and went to bed early
on the others, to the vast improvement of his mental grasp.

[121]
“And on Sunday night, dear Major Benjy?” asked Old Mappy in
the character of Guardian Angel.

“I don’t think you knew my beloved, my revered mother, Miss
Elizabeth,” said Major Benjy. “I spend Sunday evening
as—— Well, well.”

The very next Sunday evening Guardian Angel had heard the sound of
singing. She could not catch the words, and only fragments of the tune,
which reminded her of “The roseate morn hath passed away.”
Brimming with emotion, she sang it softly to herself as she undressed,
and blamed herself very much for ever having thought that dear Major
Benjy—— She peeped out of her window when she had
extinguished her light, but fortunately the singing had ceased.

To-night, however, the epoch of Puffin’s second big tumbler was
not accompanied by harmonious developments. Major Benjy was determined
to make the most of this unique opportunity of drinking his
friend’s whisky, and whether Puffin put the bottle on the further
side of him, or under his chair, or under the table, he came padding
round in his slippers and standing near the ambush while he tried to
interest his friend in tales of love or tiger-shooting so as to distract
his attention. When he mistakenly thought he had done so, he hastily
refilled his glass, taking unusually stiff doses for fear of not getting
another opportunity, and altogether omitting to ask Puffin’s leave
for these maraudings. When this had happened four or five times, Puffin,
acting on the instinct of the polar bear who eats her babies for fear
that anybody else should get them, surreptitiously poured the rest of
his bottle into his glass, and filled it up to the top with hot water,
making a mixture of extraordinary power.

[122]
Soon after this Major Flint came rambling round the table again. He was
not sure whether Puffin had put the bottle by his chair or behind the
coal-scuttle, and was quite ignorant of the fact that wherever it was,
it was empty. Amorous reminiscences to-night had been the accompaniment
to Puffin’s second tumbler.

“Devilish fine woman she was,” he said, “and that was
the last that Benjamin Flint ever saw of her. She went up to the hills
next morning——”

“But the last you saw of her just now was on the deck of the P.
and O. at Bombay,” objected Puffin. “Or did she go up to the
hills on the deck of the P. and O.? Wonderful line!”

“No, sir,” said Benjamin Flint, “that was Helen, la
belle Hélène. It was la belle Hélène whom
I saw off at the Apollo Bunder. I don’t know if I told
you—— By Gad, I’ve kicked the bottle over. No idea you’d
put it there. Hope the cork’s in.”

“No harm if it isn’t,” said Puffin, beginning on his
third most fiery glass. The strength of it rather astonished him.

“You don’t mean to say it’s empty?” asked Major
Flint. “Why just now there was close on a quarter of a bottle
left.”

“As much as that?” asked Puffin. “Glad to hear
it.”

“Not a drop less. You don’t mean to say—— Well, if you
can drink that and can say hippopotamus afterwards, I should put that
among your challenges, to men of four hundred and two: I should say
forty-two. It’s a fine thing to have a strong head, though if I
drank what you’ve got in your glass, I should be tipsy,
sir.”

Puffin laughed in his irritating falsetto manner.

“Good thing that it’s in my glass then, and not your
glass,” he said. “And lemme tell you, Major, in case
you[123]
don’t know it, that when I’ve drunk every drop of this and
sucked the lemon, you’ll have had far more out of my bottle this
evening than I have. My usual twice and—and my usual night-cap, as
you say, is what’s my ration, and I’ve had no more than my
ration. Eight Bells.”

“And a pretty good ration you’ve got there,” said the
baffled Major. “Without your usual twice.”

Puffin was beginning to be aware of that as he swallowed the fiery
mixture, but nothing in the world would now have prevented his drinking
every single drop of it. It was clear to him, among so much that was dim
owing to the wood-smoke, that the Major would miss a good many drives
to-morrow morning.

“And whose whisky is it?” he said, gulping down the fiery
stuff.

“I know whose it’s going to be,” said the other.

“And I know whose it is now,” retorted Puffin, “and I
know whose whisky it is that’s filled you up ti’ as a drum.
Tight as a drum,” he repeated very carefully.

Major Flint was conscious of an unusual activity of brain, and, when he
spoke, of a sort of congestion and entanglement of words. It pleased him
to think that he had drunk so much of somebody’s else whisky, but
he felt that he ought to be angry.

“That’s a very unmentionable sor’ of thing to
say,” he remarked. “An’ if it wasn’t for the
sacred claims of hospitality, I’d make you explain just what you
mean by that, and make you eat your words. Pologize, in fact.”

Puffin finished his glass at a gulp, and rose to his feet.

“Pologies be blowed,” he said. “Hittopopamus!”

“And were you addressing that to me?” asked Major Flint with
deadly calm.

“Of course, I was. Hippot—— same animal as
before.[124]
Pleasant old boy. And as for the lemon you lent me, well, I don’t
want it any more. Have a suck at it, ole fellow! I don’t want it
any more.”

The Major turned purple in the face, made a course for the door like a
knight’s move at chess (a long step in one direction and a short
one at right angles to the first) and opened it. The door thus served as
an aperture from the room and a support to himself. He spoke no word of
any sort or kind: his silence spoke for him in a far more dignified
manner than he could have managed for himself.

Captain Puffin stood for a moment wreathed in smiles, and fingering the
slice of lemon, which he had meant playfully to throw at his friend. But
his smile faded, and by some sort of telepathic perception he realized
how much more decorous it was to say (or, better, to indicate)
good-night in a dignified manner than to throw lemons about. He walked
in dots and dashes like a Morse code out of the room, bestowing a naval
salute on the Major as he passed. The latter returned it with a military
salute and a suppressed hiccup. Not a word passed.

Then Captain Puffin found his hat and coat without much difficulty, and
marched out of the house, slamming the door behind him with a bang that
echoed down the street and made Miss Mapp dream about a thunderstorm. He
let himself into his own house, and bent down before his expired fire,
which he tried to blow into life again. This was unsuccessful, and he
breathed in a quantity of wood-ash.

He sat down by his table and began to think things out. He told himself
that he was not drunk at all, but that he had taken an unusual quantity
of whisky, which seemed to produce much the same effect as intoxication.
Allowing for that, he was conscious that he was extremely angry[125]
about something, and had a firm idea that the Major was very angry too.

“But woz’it all been about?” he vainly asked himself.
“Woz’it all been about?”

He was roused from his puzzling over this unanswerable conundrum by the
clink of the flap in his letter-box. Either this was the first post in
the morning, in which case it was much later than he thought, and
wonderfully dark still, or it was the last post at night, in which case
it was much earlier than he thought. But, whichever it was, a letter had
been slipped into his box, and he brought it in. The gum on the envelope
was still wet, which saved trouble in opening it. Inside was a half
sheet containing but a few words. This curt epistle ran as follows:

Puffin felt as calm as a tropic night, and as courageous as a captain.
Somewhere below his courage and his calm was an appalling sense of
misgiving. That he successfully stifled.

“Very proper,” he said aloud. “Qui’ proper.
Insults. Blood. Seconds won’t have to wait a second. Better get a
good sleep.”

He went up to his room, fell on to his bed and instantly began to snore.

It was still dark when he awoke, but the square of his window was
visible against the blackness, and he concluded that though it was not
morning yet, it was getting[126]
on for morning, which seemed a pity. As he turned over on to his side
his hand came in contact with his coat, instead of a sheet, and he
became aware that he had all his clothes on. Then, as with a crash of
cymbals and the beating of a drum in his brain, the events of the
evening before leaped into reality and significance. In a few hours now
arrangements would have been made for a deadly encounter. His anger was
gone, his whisky was gone, and in particular his courage was gone. He
expressed all this compendiously by moaning “Oh, God!”

He struggled to a sitting position, and lit a match at which he kindled
his candle. He looked for his watch beside it, but it was not there.
What could have happened—then he remembered that it was in its
accustomed place in his waistcoat pocket. A consultation of it followed
by holding it to his ear only revealed the fact that it had stopped at
half-past five. With the lucidity that was growing brighter in his
brain, he concluded that this stoppage was due to the fact that he had
not wound it up… It was after half-past five then, but how much
later only the Lords of Time knew—Time which bordered so closely
on Eternity.

He felt that he had no use whatever for Eternity but that he must not
waste Time. Just now, that was far more precious.

From somewhere in the Cosmic Consciousness
there came to him a thought, namely, that the first train to London
started at half-past six in the morning. It was a slow train, but it got
there, and in any case it went away from Tilling. He did not trouble to
consider how that thought came to him: the important point was that it
had come. Coupled with that was the knowledge that it was[127]
now an undiscoverable number of minutes after half-past five.

There was a Gladstone bag under his bed. He had brought it back from the
Club-house only yesterday, after that game of golf which had been so
full of disturbances and wet stockings, but which now wore the
shimmering security of peaceful, tranquil days long past. How little, so
he thought to himself, as he began swiftly storing shirts, ties, collars
and other useful things into his bag, had he appreciated the sweet
amenities of life, its pleasant conversations and companionships, its
topped drives, and mushrooms and incalculable incidents. Now they wore a
glamour and a preciousness that was bound up with life itself. He
starved for more of them, not knowing while they were his how sweet they
were.

The house was not yet astir, when ten minutes later he came downstairs
with his bag. He left on his sitting-room table, where it would catch
the eye of his housemaid, a sheet of paper on which he wrote
“Called away” (he shuddered as he traced the words).
“Forward no letters. Will communicate…” (Somehow the
telegraphic form seemed best to suit the urgency of the situation.) Then
very quietly he let himself out of his house.

He could not help casting an apprehensive glance at the windows of his
quondam friend and prospective murderer. To his horror he observed that
there was a light behind the blind of the Major’s bedroom, and
pictured him writing to his seconds—he wondered who the
“seconds” were going to be—or polishing up his
pistols. All the rumours and hints of the Major’s duels and
affairs of honour, which he had rather scorned before, not wholly
believing them, poured like a red torrent into his mind, and he found
that now he believed them with a passionate sincerity. Why[128]
had he ever attempted (and with such small success) to call this
fire-eater a hippopotamus?

The gale of the night before had abated, and thick chilly rain was
falling from a sullen sky as he tiptoed down the hill. Once round the
corner and out of sight of the duellist’s house, he broke into a
limping run, which was accelerated by the sound of an engine-whistle
from the station. It was mental suspense of the most agonizing kind not
to know how long it was after his watch had stopped that he had awoke,
and the sound of that whistle, followed by several short puffs of steam,
might prove to be the six-thirty bearing away to London, on business or
pleasure, its secure and careless pilgrims. Splashing through puddles,
lopsidedly weighted by his bag, with his mackintosh flapping against his
legs, he gained the sanctuary of the waiting-room and booking-office,
which was lighted by a dim expiring lamp, and scrutinized the face of
the murky clock…

With a sob of relief he saw that he was in time. He was, indeed, in
exceptionally good time, for he had a quarter of an hour to wait. An
anxious internal debate followed as to whether or not he should take a
return ticket. Optimism, that is to say, the hope that he would return
to Tilling in peace and safety before the six months for which the
ticket was available inclined him to the larger expense, but in these
disquieting circumstances, it was difficult to be optimistic and he
purchased a first-class single, for on such a morning, and on such a
journey, he must get what comfort he could from looking-glasses, padded
seats and coloured photographs of places of interest on the line. He
formed no vision at all of the future: that was a dark well into which
it was dangerous to peer. There was no bright speck in its unplumbable
depths: unless Major Flint died suddenly[129]
without revealing the challenge he had sent last night, and the
promptitude with which its recipient had disappeared rather than face
his pistol, he could not frame any grouping of events which would make
it possible for him to come back to Tilling again, for he would either
have to fight (and this he was quite determined not to do) or be pointed
at by the finger of scorn as the man who had refused to do so, and this
was nearly as unthinkable as the other. Bitterly he blamed himself for
having made a friend (and worse than that, an enemy) of one so obsolete
and old-fashioned as to bring duelling into modern life… As far
as he could be glad of anything he was glad that he had taken a single,
not a return ticket.

He turned his eyes away from the blackness of the future and let his
mind dwell on the hardly less murky past. Then, throwing up his hands,
he buried his face in them with a hollow groan. By some miserable
forgetfulness he had left the challenge on his chimney-piece, where his
housemaid would undoubtedly find and read it. That would explain his
absence far better than the telegraphic instructions he had left on his
table. There was no time to go back for it now, even if he could have
faced the risk of being seen by the Major, and in an hour or two the
whole story, via Withers, Janet, etc., would be all over Tilling.

It was no use then thinking of the future nor of the past, and in order
to anchor himself to the world at all and preserve his sanity he had to
confine himself to the present. The minutes, long though each tarried,
were slipping away and provided his train was punctual, the passage of
five more of these laggards would see him safe. The news-boy took down
the shutters of his stall, a porter quenched the expiring lamp, and
Puffin began to listen for the rumble of the approaching train. It
stayed three minutes here: if[130]
up to time it would be in before a couple more minutes had passed.

There came from the station-yard outside the sound of heavy footsteps
running. Some early traveller like himself was afraid of missing the
train. The door burst open, and, streaming with rain and panting for
breath, Major Flint stood at the entry. Puffin looked wildly round to
see whether he could escape, still perhaps unobserved, on to the
platform, but it was too late, for their eyes met.

In that instant of abject terror, two things struck Puffin. One was that
the Major looked at the open door behind him as if meditating retreat,
the second that he carried a Gladstone bag. Simultaneously Major Flint
spoke, if indeed that reverberating thunder of scornful indignation can
be called speech.

“Ha! I guessed right then,” he roared. “I guessed,
sir, that you might be meditating flight, and I—in fact, I came
down to see whether you were running away. I was right. You are a
coward, Captain Puffin! But relieve your mind, sir. Major Flint will not
demean himself to fight with a coward.”

Puffin gave one long sigh of relief, and then, standing in front of his
own Gladstone bag, in order to conceal it, burst into a cackling laugh.

“Indeed!” he said. “And why, Major, was it necessary
for you to pack a Gladstone bag in order to stop me from running away?
I’ll tell you what has happened. You were running away, and you
know it. I guessed you would. I came to stop you, you, you quaking
runaway. Your wound troubled you, hey? Didn’t want another,
hey?”

There was an awful pause, broken by the entry from behind the Major of
the outside porter, panting under the weight of a large portmanteau.

[131]
“You had to take your portmanteau, too,” observed Puffin
witheringly, “in order to stop me. That’s a curious way of
stopping me. You’re a coward, sir! But go home. You’re safe
enough. This will be a fine story for tea-parties.”

Puffin turned from him in scorn, still concealing his own bag.
Unfortunately the flap of his coat caught it, precariously perched on
the bench, and it bumped to the ground.

“What’s that?” said Major Flint.

They stared at each other for a moment and then simultaneously burst
into peals of laughter. The train rumbled slowly into the station, but
neither took the least notice of it, and only shook their heads and
broke out again when the station-master urged them to take their seats.
The only thing that had power to restore Captain Puffin to gravity was
the difficulty of getting the money for his ticket refunded, while the
departure of the train with his portmanteau in it did the same for the
Major.

The events of that night and morning, as may easily be imagined, soon
supplied Tilling with one of the most remarkable conundrums that had
ever been forced upon its notice. Puffin’s housemaid, during his
absence at the station, found and read not only the notice intended for
her eyes, but the challenge which he had left on the chimney-piece. She
conceived it to be her duty to take it down to Mrs. Gashly, his cook,
and while they were putting the bloodiest construction on these
inscriptions, their conference was interrupted by the return of Captain
Puffin in the highest spirits, who, after a vain search for the
challenge, was quite content, as its purport was no longer fraught with
danger and death, to suppose that he had[132]
torn it up. Mrs. Gashly, therefore, after preparing breakfast at this
unusually early hour, went across to the back door of the Major’s
house, with the challenge in her hand, to borrow a nutmeg grater, and
gleaned the information that Mrs. Dominic’s employer (for master
he could not be called) had gone off in a great hurry to the station
early that morning with a Gladstone bag and a portmanteau, the latter of
which had been seen no more, though the Major had returned. So Mrs.
Gashly produced the challenge, and having watched Miss Mapp off to the
High Street at half-past ten, Dominic and Gashly went together to her
house, to see if Withers could supply anything of importance, or, if
not, a nutmeg grater. They were forced to be content with the grater,
but pored over the challenge with Withers, and she having an errand to
Diva’s house, told Janet, who without further ceremony bounded
upstairs to tell her mistress. Hardly had Diva heard, than she plunged
into the High Street, and, with suitable additions, told Miss Mapp,
Evie, Irene and the Padre under promise in each case, of the strictest
secrecy. Ten minutes later Irene had asked the defenceless Mr. Hopkins,
who was being Adam again, what he knew about it, and Evie, with her
mouse-like gait that looked so rapid and was so deliberate, had the
mortification of seeing Miss Mapp outdistance her and be admitted into
the Poppits’ house, just as she came in view of the front-door.
She rightly conjectured that, after the affair of the store-cupboard in
the garden-room, there could be nothing of lesser importance than
“the duel” which could take that lady through those abhorred
portals. Finally, at ten minutes past eleven, Major Flint and Captain
Puffin were seen by one or two fortunate people (the morning having
cleared up) walking together to the tram, and, without exception,
everybody knew[133]
that they were on their way to fight their duel in some remote hollow of
the sand-dunes.

Miss Mapp had gone straight home from her visit to the Poppits just
about eleven, and stationed herself in the window where she could keep
an eye on the houses of the duellists. In her anxiety to outstrip Evie
and be the first to tell the Poppits, she had not waited to hear that
they had both come back and knew only of the challenge and that they had
gone to the station. She had already formed a glorious idea of her own
as to what the history of the duel (past or future) was, and intoxicated
with emotion had retired from the wordy fray to think about it, and, as
already mentioned, to keep an eye on the two houses just below. Then
there appeared in sight the Padre, walking swiftly up the hill, and she
had barely time under cover of the curtain to regain the table where her
sweet chrysanthemums were pining for water when Withers announced him.
He wore a furrowed brow and quite forgot to speak either Scotch or
Elizabethan English. A few rapid words made it clear that they both had
heard the main outlines.

“A terrible situation,” said the Padre. “Duelling is
direct contravention of all Christian principles, and, I believe, of the
civil law. The discharge of a pistol, in unskilful hands, may lead to
deplorable results. And Major Flint, so one has heard, is an experienced
duellist… That, of course, makes it even more dangerous.”

It was at this identical moment that Major Flint came out of his house
and qui-hied cheerily to Puffin. Miss Mapp and the Padre, deep in these
bloody possibilities, neither saw nor heard them. They passed together
down the road and into the High Street, unconscious that their very look
and action was being more commented on than the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Inside the garden-room[134]
Miss Mapp sighed, and bent her eyes on her chrysanthemums.

“Quite terrible!” she said. “And in our peaceful,
tranquil Tilling!”

“Perhaps the duel has already taken place, and—and
they’ve missed,” said the Padre. “They were both seen
to return to their houses early this morning.”

“By whom?” asked Miss Mapp jealously. She had not heard
that.

“By Hopkins,” said he. “Hopkins saw them both
return.”

“I shouldn’t trust that man too much,” said Miss Mapp.
“Hopkins may not be telling the truth. I have no great opinion of
his moral standard.”

“Why is that?”

This was no time to discuss the nudity of Hopkins and Miss Mapp put the
question aside.

“That does not matter now, dear Padre,” she said. “I
only wish I thought the duel had taken place without accident. But Major
Benjy’s—I mean Major Flint’s—portmanteau has not
come back to his house. Of that I’m sure. What if they have sent
it away to some place where they are unknown, full of pistols and
things?”

“Possible—terribly possible,” said the Padre. “I
wish I could see my duty clear. I should not hesitate to—well, to
do the best I could to induce them to abandon this murderous project.
And what do you imagine was the root of the quarrel?”

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure,” said Miss Mapp. She
bent her head over the chrysanthemums.

“Your distracting sex,” said he with a moment’s
gallantry, “is usually the cause of quarrel. I’ve noticed
that they both seemed to admire Miss Irene very much.”

[135]
Miss Mapp raised her head and spoke with great animation.

“Dear, quaint Irene, I’m sure, has nothing whatever to do
with it,” she said with perfect truth. “Nothing
whatever!”

There was no mistaking the sincerity of this, and the Padre, Tillingite
to the marrow, instantly concluded that Miss Mapp knew what (or who) was
the cause of all this unique disturbance. And as she bent her head again
over the chrysanthemums, and quite distinctly grew brick-red in the
face, he felt that delicacy prevented his inquiring any further.

“What are you going to do, dear Padre?” she asked in a low
voice, choking with emotion. “Whatever you decide will be wise and
Christian. Oh, these violent men! Such babies, too!”

The Padre was bursting with curiosity, but since his delicacy forbade
him to ask any of the questions which effervesced like sherbet round his
tongue, he propounded another plan.

“I think my duty is to go straight to the Major,” he said,
“who seems to be the principal in the affair, and tell him that I
know all—and guess the rest,” he added.

“Nothing that I have said,” declared Miss Mapp in great
confusion, “must have anything to do with your guesses. Promise me
that, Padre.”

This intimate and fruitful conversation was interrupted by the sound of
two pairs of steps just outside, and before Withers had had time to say
“Mrs. Plaistow,” Diva burst in.

“They have both taken the 11.20 tram,” she said, and sank
into the nearest chair.

“Together?” asked Miss Mapp, feeling a sudden chill[136]
of disappointment at the thought of a duel with pistols trailing off
into one with golf clubs.

“Yes, but that’s a blind,” panted Diva. “They
were talking and laughing together. Sheer blind! Duel among the
sand-dunes!”

“Padre, it is your duty to stop it,” said Miss Mapp faintly.

“But if the pistols are in a portmanteau——” he
began.

“What portmanteau?” screamed Diva, who hadn’t heard
about that.

“Darling, I’ll tell you presently,” said Miss Mapp.
“That was only a guess of mine, Padre. But there’s no time
to lose.”

“But there’s no tram to catch,” said the Padre.
“It has gone by this time.”

“A taxi then, Padre! Oh, lose no time!”

“Are you coming with me?” he said in a low voice.
“Your presence——”

“Better not,” she said. “It might—— Better
not,” she repeated.

He skipped down the steps and was observed running down the street.

“What about the portmanteau?” asked the greedy Diva.

It was with strong misgivings that the Padre started on his Christian
errand, and had not the sense of adventure spiced it, he would probably
have returned to his sermon instead, which was Christian, too. To begin
with, there was the ruinous expense of taking a taxi out to the
golf-links, but by no other means could he hope to arrive in time to
avert an encounter that might be fatal. It must be said to his credit
that, though this was an errand[137]
distinctly due to his position as the spiritual head of Tilling, he
rejected, as soon as it occurred to him, the idea of charging the hire
of the taxi to Church Expenses, and as he whirled along the flat road
across the marsh, the thing that chiefly buoyed up his drooping spirits
and annealed his courage was the romantic nature of his mission. He no
longer, thanks to what Miss Mapp had so clearly refrained from saying,
had the slightest doubt that she, in some manner that scarcely needed
conjecture, was the cause of the duel he was attempting to avert. For
years it had been a matter of unwearied and confidential discussion as
to whether and when she would marry either Major Flint or Captain
Puffin, and it was superfluous to look for any other explanation. It was
true that she, in popular parlance, was “getting on,” but
so, too, and at exactly the same rate, were the representatives of the
United Services, and the sooner that two out of the three of them
“got on” permanently, the better. No doubt some crisis had
arisen, and inflamed with love… He intended to confide all this
to his wife on his return.

On his return! The unspoken words made his heart sink. What if he never
did return? For he was about to place himself in a position of no common
danger. His plan was to drive past the club-house, and then on foot,
after discharging the taxi, to strike directly into the line of tumbled
sand-dunes which, remote and undisturbed and full of large convenient
hollows, stretched along the coast above the flat beach. Any of those
hollows, he knew, might prove to contain the duellists in the very act
of firing, and over the rim of each he had to pop his unprotected head.
He (if in time) would have to separate the combatants, and who knew
whether, in their very natural chagrin at being interrupted, they might
not turn[138]
their combined pistols on him first, and settle with each other
afterwards? One murder the more made little difference to desperate men.
Other shocks, less deadly but extremely unnerving, might await him. He
might be too late, and pop his head over the edge of one of these
craters, only to discover it full of bleeding if not mangled bodies. Or
there might be only one mangled body, and the other, unmangled, would
pursue him through the sand-dunes and offer him life at the price of
silence. That, he painfully reflected, would be a very difficult
decision to make. Luckily, Captain Puffin (if he proved to be the
survivor) was lame…

With drawn face and agonized prayers on his lips, he began a systematic
search of the sand-dunes. Often his nerve nearly failed him, and he
would sink panting among the prickly bents before he dared to peer into
the hollow up the sides of which he had climbed. His ears shuddered at
the anticipation of hearing from near at hand the report of pistols, and
once a back-fire from a motor passing along the road caused him to leap
high in the air. The sides of these dunes were steep, and his shoes got
so full of sand, that from time to time, in spite of the urgency of his
errand, he was forced to pause in order to empty them out. He stumbled
in rabbit holes, he caught his foot and once his trousers in strands of
barbed wire, the remnant of coast defences in the Great War, he crashed
among potsherds and abandoned kettles; but with a thoroughness that did
equal credit to his wind and his Christian spirit, he searched a mile of
perilous dunes from end to end, and peered into every important hollow.
Two hours later, jaded and torn and streaming with perspiration, he
came, in the vicinity of the club-house, to the end of his fruitless
search.

[139]
He staggered round the corner of it and came in view of the eighteenth
green. Two figures were occupying it, and one of these was in the act of
putting. He missed. Then he saw who the figures were: it was Captain
Puffin who had just missed his putt, it was Major Flint who now
expressed elated sympathy.

“Bad luck, old boy,” he said. “Well, a jolly good
match and we halve it. Why, there’s the Padre. Been for a walk?
Join us in a round this afternoon, Padre! Blow your sermon!”

CHAPTER VI

The same delightful prospect at the end of the High Street, over the
marsh, which had witnessed not so long ago the final encounter in the
Wars of the Roses and the subsequent armistice, was, of course, found to
be peculiarly attractive that morning to those who knew (and who did
not?) that the combatants had left by the 11.20 steam-tram to fight
among the sand-dunes, and that the intrepid Padre had rushed after them
in a taxi. The Padre’s taxi had returned empty, and the driver
seemed to know nothing whatever about anything, so the only thing for
everybody to do was to put off lunch and wait for the arrival of the
next tram, which occurred at 1.37. In consequence, all the doors in
Tilling flew open like those of cuckoo clocks at ten minutes before that
hour, and this pleasant promenade was full of those who so keenly
admired autumn tints.

From here the progress of the tram across the plain was in full view;
so, too, was the shed-like station across the river, which was the
terminus of the line, and expectation, when the two-waggoned little
train approached the end of[140]
its journey, was so tense that it was almost disagreeable. A couple of
hours had elapsed since, like the fishers who sailed away into the West
and were seen no more till the corpses lay out on the shining sand, the
three had left for the sand-dunes, and a couple of hours, so reasoned
the Cosmic Consciousness of Tilling, gave ample time for a duel to be
fought, if the Padre was not in time to stop it, and for him to stop it
if he was. No surgical assistance, as far as was known, had been
summoned, but the reason for that might easily be that a surgeon’s
skill was no longer, alas! of any avail for one, if not both, of the
combatants. But if such was the case, it was nice to hope that the Padre
had been in time to supply spiritual aid to anyone whom first-aid and
probes were powerless to succour.

The variety of dénouements which the approaching tram, that had
now cut off steam, was capable of providing was positively bewildering.
They whirled through Miss Mapp’s head like the autumn leaves which
she admired so much, and she tried in vain to catch them all, and, when
caught, to tick them off on her fingers. Each, moreover, furnished
diverse and legitimate conclusions. For instance (taking the thumb)

• I. If nobody of the slightest importance arrived by the tram, that might
  be because
  
  
  
  
  • (a) Nothing had happened, and they were all playing golf.
  
  
  • (b) The worst had happened, and, as the Padre had feared, the
    duellists had first shot him and then each other.
  
  
  • (c) The next worst had happened, and the Padre was arranging for the
    reverent removal of the corpse [141]
    of
    
    
    
    
    • (i) Major Benjy, or
    
    
    • (ii) Captain Puffin, or those of
    
    
    • (iii) Both.

Miss Mapp let go of her thumb and lightly touched her forefinger.

• II. The Padre might arrive alone.

In that case anything or nothing might have happened to either or both
of the others, and the various contingencies hanging on this arrival
were so numerous that there was not time to sort them out.

• III. The Padre might arrive with two limping figures whom he assisted.

Here it must not be forgotten that Captain Puffin always limped, and the
Major occasionally. Miss Mapp did not forget it.

• IV. The Padre might arrive with a stretcher. Query—Whose?


• V. The Padre might arrive with two stretchers.


• VI. Three stretchers might arrive from the shining sands, at the town
  where the women were weeping and wringing their hands.

In that case Miss Mapp saw herself busily employed in strengthening poor
Evie, who now was running about like a mouse from group to group picking
up crumbs of Cosmic Consciousness.

Miss Mapp had got as far as sixthly, though she was aware she had not
exhausted the possibilities, when the tram stopped. She furtively took
out from her pocket (she had focussed them before she put them in) the
opera-glasses through which she had watched the station-yard on a day
which had been very much less exciting than this. After one glance she
put them back again, feeling vexed and disappointed with herself, for
the[142]
dénouement which they had so unerringly disclosed was one that
had not entered her mind at all. In that moment she had seen that out of
the tram there stepped three figures and no stretcher. One figure, it is
true, limped, but in a manner so natural, that she scorned to draw any
deductions from that halting gait. They proceeded, side by side, across
the bridge over the river towards the town.

It is no use denying that the Cosmic Consciousness of the ladies of
Tilling was aware of a disagreeable anti-climax to so many hopes and
fears. It had, of course, hoped for the best, but it had not expected
that the best would be quite as bad as this. The best, to put it
frankly, would have been a bandaged arm, or something of that kind.
There was still room for the more hardened optimist to hope that
something of some sort had occurred, or that something of some sort had
been averted, and that the whole affair was not, in the delicious new
slang phrase of the Padre’s, which was spreading like wildfire
through Tilling, a “wash-out.” Pistols might have been
innocuously discharged for all that was known to the contrary. But it
looked bad.

Miss Mapp was the first to recover from the blow, and took Diva’s
podgy hand.

“Diva, darling,” she said, “I feel so deeply thankful.
What a wonderful and beautiful end to all our anxiety!”

There was a subconscious regret with regard to the anxiety. The anxiety
was, so to speak, a dear and beloved departed… And Diva did not
feel so sure that the end was so beautiful and wonderful. Her
grandfather, Miss Mapp had reason to know, had been a butcher, and
probably some inherited indifference to slaughter lurked in her tainted
blood.

[143]
“There’s the portmanteau still,” she said hopefully.
“Pistols in the portmanteau. Your idea, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, dear,” said Elizabeth; “but thank God I must
have been very wrong about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me
that he brought it up from the station to Major Benjy’s house half
an hour ago. Fancy your not knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful
man, for he attends the Padre’s confirmation class. If there had
been pistols in it, Major Benjy and Captain Puffin would have gone away
too. I am quite happy about that now. It went away and it has come back.
That’s all about the portmanteau.”

She paused a moment.

“But what does it contain, then?” she said quickly, more as
if she was thinking aloud than talking to Diva. “Why did Major
Benjy pack it and send it to the station this morning? Where has it come
back from? Why did it go there?”

She felt that she was saying too much, and pressed her hand to her head.

“Has all this happened this morning?” she said. “What
a full morning, dear! Lovely autumn leaves! I shall go home and have my
lunch and rest. Au reservoir, Diva.”

Miss Mapp’s eternal reservoirs had begun to get on Diva’s
nerves, and as she lingered here a moment more a great idea occurred to
her, which temporarily banished the disappointment about the duellists.
Elizabeth, as all the world knew, had accumulated a great reservoir of
provisions in the false book-case in her garden-room, and Diva
determined that, if she could think of a neat phrase, the very next time
Elizabeth said au reservoir to her, she would work in an allusion to
Elizabeth’s own reservoir[144]
of corned beef, tongue, flour, bovril, dried apricots and condensed
milk. She would have to frame some stinging rejoinder which would
“escape her” when next Elizabeth used that stale old phrase:
it would have to be short, swift and spontaneous, and therefore required
careful thought. It would be good to bring “pop” into it
also. “Your reservoir in the garden-room hasn’t gone
‘pop’ again, I hope, darling?” was the first draft
that occurred to her, but that was not sufficiently condensed.
“Pop goes the reservoir,” on the analogy of the weasel, was
better. And, better than either, was there not some sort of corn called
pop-corn, which Americans ate?… “Have you any pop-corn in
your reservoir?” That would be a nasty one…

But it all required thinking over, and the sight of the Padre and the
duellists crossing the field below, as she still lingered on this
escarpment of the hill, brought the duel back to her mind. It would have
been considered inquisitive even at Tilling to put direct questions to
the combatants, and (still hoping for the best) ask them point-blank
“Who won?” or something of that sort; but until she arrived
at some sort of information, the excruciating pangs of curiosity that
must be endured could be likened only to some acute toothache of the
mind with no dentist to stop or remove the source of the trouble.
Elizabeth had already succumbed to these pangs of surmise and
excitement, and had frankly gone home to rest, and her absence, the fact
that for the next hour or two she could not, except by some
extraordinary feat on the telephone, get hold of anything which would
throw light on the whole prodigious situation, inflamed Diva’s
brain to the highest pitch of inventiveness. She knew that she was
Elizabeth’s inferior in point of reconstructive imagination,[145]
and the present moment, while the other was recuperating her energies
for fresh assaults on the unknown, was Diva’s opportunity. The one
person who might be presumed to know more than anybody else was the
Padre, but while he was with the duellists, it was as impossible to ask
him what had happened as to ask the duellists who had won. She must,
while Miss Mapp rested, get hold of the Padre without the duellists.

Even as Athene sprang full grown and panoplied from the brain of Zeus,
so from Diva’s brain there sprang her plan complete. She even
resisted the temptation to go on admiring autumn tints, in order to see
how the interesting trio “looked” when, as they must
presently do, they passed close to where she stood, and hurried home,
pausing only to purchase, pay for, and carry away with her from the
provision shop a large and expensively-dressed crab, a dainty of which
the Padre was inordinately fond. Ruinous as this was, there was a note
of triumph in her voice when, on arrival, she called loudly for Janet,
and told her to lay another place at the luncheon table. Then putting a
strong constraint on herself, she waited three minutes by her watch, in
order to give the Padre time to get home, and then rang him up and
reminded him that he had promised to lunch with her that day. It was no
use asking him to lunch in such a way that he might refuse: she employed
without remorse this pitiless force majeure.

The engagement was short and brisk. He pleaded that not even now could
he remember even having been asked (which was not surprising), and said
that he and wee wifie had begun lunch. On which Diva unmasked her last
gun, and told him that she had ordered a crab on purpose. That silenced
further argument, and he said that he and[146]
wee wifie would be round in a jiffy, and rang off. She did not
particularly want wee wifie, but there was enough crab.

Diva felt that she had never laid out four shillings to better purpose,
when, a quarter of an hour later, the Padre gave her the full account of
his fruitless search among the sand-dunes, so deeply impressive was his
sense of being buoyed up to that incredibly fatiguing and perilous
excursion by some Power outside himself. It never even occurred to her
to think that it was an elaborate practical joke on the part of the
Power outside himself, to spur him on to such immense exertions to no
purpose at all. He had only got as far as this over his interrupted
lunch with wee wifie, and though she, too, was in agonized suspense as
to what happened next, she bore the repetition with great equanimity,
only making small mouse-like noises of impatience which nobody heard. He
was quite forgetting to speak either Scotch or Elizabethan English, so
obvious was the absorption of his hearers, without these added aids to
command attention.

“And then I came round the corner of the club-house,” he
said, “and there were Captain Puffin and the Major finishing their
match on the eighteenth hole.”

“Then there’s been no duel at all,” said Diva,
scraping the shell of the crab.

“I feel sure of it. There wouldn’t have been time for a duel
and a round of golf, in addition to the impossibility of playing golf
immediately after a duel. No nerves could stand it. Besides, I asked one
of their caddies. They had come straight from the tram to the
club-house, and from the club-house to the first tee. They had not been
alone for a moment.”

“Wash-out,” said Diva, wondering whether this had been worth
four shillings, so tame was the conclusion.

[147]
Mrs. Bartlett gave a little squeak which was her preliminary to speech.

“But I do not see why there may not be a duel yet, Kenneth,”
she said. “Because they did not fight this morning—excellent
crab, dear Diva, so good of you to ask us—there’s no reason
why there shouldn’t be a duel this afternoon. O dear me, and cold
beef as well: I shall be quite stuffed. Depend upon it a man
doesn’t take the trouble to write a challenge and all that, unless
he means business.”

The Padre held up his hand. He felt that he was gradually growing to be
the hero of the whole affair. He had certainly looked over the edge of
numberless hollows in the sand-dunes with vivid anticipations of having
a bullet whizz by him on each separate occasion. It behoved him to take
a sublime line.

“My dear,” he said, “business is hardly a word to
apply to murder. That within the last twenty-four hours there was the
intention of fighting a duel, I don’t deny. But something has
decidedly happened which has averted that deplorable calamity. Peace and
reconciliation is the result of it, and I have never seen two men so
unaffectedly friendly.”

Diva got up and whirled round the table to get the port for the Padre,
so pleased was she at a fresh idea coming to her while still dear
Elizabeth was resting. She attributed it to the crab.

“We’ve all been on a false scent,” she said.
“Peace and reconciliation happened before they went out to the
sand-dunes at all. It happened at the station. They met at the station,
you know. It is proved that Major Flint went there. Major wouldn’t
send portmanteau off alone. And it’s proved that Captain Puffin
went there[148]
too, because the note which his housemaid found on the table before she
saw the challenge from the Major, which was on the chimney-piece, said
that he had been called away very suddenly. No: they both went to catch
the early train in order to go away before they could be stopped, and
kill each other. But why didn’t they go? What happened?
Don’t suppose the outside porter showed them how wicked they were,
confirmation-class or no confirmation-class. Stumps me. Almost wish
Elizabeth was here. She’s good at guessing.”

The Padre’s eye brightened. Reaction after the perils of the
morning, crab and port combined to make a man of him.

“Eh, ’tis a bonny wee drappie of port whatever, Mistress
Plaistow,” he said. “And I dinna ken that ye’re far
wrang in jaloosing that Mistress Mapp might have a wee bitty word to say
aboot it a’, ’gin she had the mind.”

“She was wrong about the portmanteau,” said Diva.
“Confessed she was wrong.”

“Hoots! I’m not mindin’ the bit pochmantie,”
said the Padre.

“What else does she know?” asked Diva feverishly.

There was no doubt that the Padre had the fullest attention of the two
ladies again, and there was no need to talk Scotch any more.

“Begin at the beginning,” he said. “What do we suppose
was the cause of the quarrel?”

“Anything,” said Diva. “Golf, tiger-skins,
coal-strike, summer-time.”

He shook his head.

“I grant you words may pass on such subjects,” he said.
“We feel keenly, I know, about summer-time in Tilling, though we
shall all be reconciled over that next[149]
Sunday, when real time, God’s time, as I am venturing to call it
in my sermon, comes in again.”

Diva had to bite her tongue to prevent herself bolting off on this new
scent. After all, she had invested in crab to learn about duelling, not
about summer-time.

“Well?” she said.

“We may have had words on that subject,” said the Padre,
booming as if he was in the pulpit already, “but we should, I
hope, none of us go so far as to catch the earliest train with pistols,
in defence of our conviction about summer-time. No, Mrs. Plaistow, if
you are right, and there is something to be said for your view, in
thinking that they both went to such lengths as to be in time for the
early train, in order to fight a duel undisturbed, you must look for a
more solid cause than that.”

Diva vainly racked her brains to think of anything more worthy of the
highest pitches of emotion than this. If it had been she and Miss Mapp
who had been embroiled, hoarding and dress would have occurred to her.
But as it was, no one in his senses could dream that the Captain and the
Major were sartorial rivals, unless they had quarrelled over the
question as to which of them wore the snuffiest old clothes.

“Give it up,” she said. “What did they quarrel
about?”

“Passion!” said the Padre, in those full, deep tones in
which next Sunday he would allude to God’s time. “I do not
mean anger, but the flame that exalts man to heaven or—or does
exactly the opposite!”

“But whomever for?” asked Diva, quite thrown off her
bearings. Such a thing had never occurred to her, for, as far as she was
aware, passion, except in the sense of[150]
temper, did not exist in Tilling. Tilling was far too respectable.

The Padre considered this a moment.

“I am betraying no confidence,” he said, “because no
one has confided in me. But there certainly is a lady in this
town—I do not allude to Miss Irene—who has long enjoyed the
Major’s particular esteem. May not some deprecating
remark——”

Wee wifie gave a much louder squeal than usual.

“He means poor Elizabeth,” she said in a high, tremulous
voice. “Fancy, Kenneth!”

Diva, a few seconds before, had seen no reason why the Padre should
drink the rest of her port, and was now in the act of drinking some of
that unusual beverage herself. She tried to swallow it, but it was too
late, and next moment all the openings in her face were fountains of
that delicious wine. She choked and she gurgled, until the last drop had
left her windpipe—under the persuasion of pattings on the back
from the others—and then she gave herself up to loud, hoarse
laughter, through which there shrilled the staccato squeaks of wee
wifie. Nothing, even if you are being laughed at yourself, is so
infectious as prolonged laughter, and the Padre felt himself forced to
join it. When one of them got a little better, a relapse ensued by
reason of infection from the others, and it was not till exhaustion set
in, that this triple volcano became quiescent again.

“Only fancy!” said Evie faintly. “How did such an idea
get into your head, Kenneth?”

His voice shook as he answered.

“Well, we were all a little worked up this morning,” he
said. “The idea—really, I don’t know what we have all
been laughing at——”

[151]
“I do,” said Diva. “Go on. About the
idea——”

A feminine, a diabolical inspiration flared within wee wifie’s
mind.

“Elizabeth suggested it herself,” she squealed.

Naturally Diva could not help remembering that she had found Miss Mapp
and the Padre in earnest conversation together when she forced her way
in that morning with the news that the duellists had left by the 11.20
tram. Nobody could be expected to have so short a memory as to have
forgotten that. Just now she forgave Elizabeth for anything she had
ever done. That might have to be reconsidered afterwards, but at present
it was valid enough.

“Did she suggest it?” she asked.

The Padre behaved like a man, and lied like Ananias.

“Most emphatically she did not,” he said.

The disappointment would have been severe, had the two ladies believed
this confident assertion, and Diva pictured a delightful interview with
Elizabeth, in which she would suddenly tell her the wild surmise the
Padre had made with regard to the cause of the duel, and see how she
looked then. Just see how she looked then: that was
all—self-consciousness and guilt would fly their colours…

Miss Mapp had been tempted when she went home that morning, after
enjoying the autumn tints, to ask Diva to lunch with her, but remembered
in time that she had told her cook to broach one of the tins of
corned-beef which no human wizard could coax into the store-cupboard
again, if he shut the door after it. Diva would have been sure to say
something acid and allusive, to remark on its excellence being happily
not wasted on the poor[152]
people in the hospital, or, if she had not said anything at all about
it, her silence as she ate a great deal would have had a sharp flavour.
But Miss Mapp would have liked, especially when she went to take her
rest afterwards on the big sofa in the garden-room, to have had somebody
to talk to, for her brain seethed with conjectures as to what had
happened, was happening and would happen, and discussion was the best
method of simplifying a problem, of narrowing it down to the limits of
probability, whereas when she was alone now with her own imaginings, the
most fantastic of them seemed plausible. She had, however, handed a
glorious suggestion to the Padre, the one, that is, which concerned the
cause of the duel, and it had been highly satisfactory to observe the
sympathy and respect with which he had imbibed it. She had, too, been so
discreet about it; she had not come within measurable distance of
asserting that the challenge had been in any way connected with her. She
had only been very emphatic on the point of its not being connected with
poor dear Irene, and then occupied herself with her sweet flowers. That
had been sufficient, and she felt in her bones and marrow that he
inferred what she had meant him to infer…

The vulture of surmise ceased to peck at her for a few moments as she
considered this, and followed up a thread of gold… Though the
Padre would surely be discreet, she hoped that he would “let
slip” to dear Evie in the course of the vivid conversation they
would be sure to have over lunch, that he had a good guess as to the
cause which had led to that savage challenge. Upon which dear Evie would
be certain to ply him with direct squeaks and questions, and when she
“got hot” (as in animal, vegetable and mineral) his
reticence would lead her to[153]
make a good guess too. She might be incredulous, but there the idea
would be in her mind, while if she felt that these stirring days were no
time for scepticism, she could hardly fail to be interested and touched.
Before long (how soon Miss Mapp was happily not aware) she would
“pop in” to see Diva, or Diva would “pop in” to
see her, and, Evie observing a discretion similar to that of the Padre
and herself, would soon enable dear Diva to make a good guess too. After
that, all would be well, for dear Diva (“such a gossiping
darling”) would undoubtedly tell everybody in Tilling, under vows
of secrecy (so that she should have the pleasure of telling everybody
herself) just what her good guess was. Thus, very presently, all Tilling
would know exactly that which Miss Mapp had not said to the dear Padre,
namely, that the duel which had been fought (or which hadn’t been
fought) was “all about” her. And the best of it was, that
though everybody knew, it would still be a great and beautiful secret,
reposing inviolably in every breast or chest, as the case might be. She
had no anxiety about anybody asking direct questions of the duellists,
for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no
delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy’s
presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that
subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if
closely questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be
highly inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But,
as it was, nothing could be nicer: the whole of the rest of Tilling,
under promise of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises
of secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there would be
no harm done…

After this excursion into Elysian fields, poor Miss Mapp[154]
had to get back to her vulture again, and the hour’s rest that she
had felt was due to herself as the heroine of a duel became a period of
extraordinary cerebral activity. Puzzle as she might, she could make
nothing whatever of the portmanteau and the excursion to the early
train, and she got up long before her hour was over, since she found
that the more she thought, the more invincible were the objections to
any conclusion that she drowningly grasped at. Whatever attack she made
on this mystery, the garrison failed to march out and surrender but kept
their flag flying, and her conjectures were woefully blasted by the
forces of the most elementary reasons. But as the agony of suspense, if
no fresh topic of interest intervened, would be frankly unendurable, she
determined to concentrate no more on it, but rather to commit it to the
ice-house or safe of her subconscious mind, from which at will, when she
felt refreshed and reinvigorated, she could unlock it and examine it
again. The whole problem was more superlatively baffling than any that
she could remember having encountered in all these inquisitive years,
just as the subject of it was more majestic than any, for it concerned
not hoarding, nor visits of the Prince of Wales, nor poppy-trimmed
gowns, but life and death and firing of deadly pistols. And should love
be added to this august list? Certainly not by her, though Tilling might
do what it liked. In fact Tilling always did.

She walked across to the bow-window from which she had conducted so many
exciting and successful investigations. But to-day the view seemed as
stale and unprofitable as the world appeared to Hamlet, even though Mrs.
Poppit at that moment went waddling down the street and disappeared
round the corner where the dentist and Mr. Wyse lived. With a sense of
fatigue Miss Mapp[155]
recalled the fact that she had seen the housemaid cleaning Mr.
Wyse’s windows yesterday—(“Children dear, was it
yesterday?”)—and had noted her industry, and drawn from it
the irresistible conclusion that Mr. Wyse was probably expected home. He
usually came back about mid-October, and let slip allusions to his
enjoyable visits in Scotland and his villeggiatura (so he was pleased
to express it) with his sister the Contessa di Faraglione at Capri. That
Contessa Faraglione was rather a mythical personage to Miss Mapp’s
mind: she was certainly not in a mediæval copy of
“Who’s Who?” which was the only accessible handbook in
matters relating to noble and notable personages, and though Miss Mapp
would not have taken an oath that she did not exist, she saw no strong
reason for supposing that she did. Certainly she had never been to
Tilling, which was strange as her brother lived there, and there was
nothing but her brother’s allusions to certify her. About Mrs.
Poppit now: had she gone to see Mr. Wyse or had she gone to the dentist?
One or other it must be, for apart from them that particular street
contained nobody who counted, and at the bottom it simply conducted you
out into the uneventful country. Mrs. Poppit was all dressed up, and she
would never walk in the country in such a costume. It would do either
for Mr. Wyse or the dentist, for she was the sort of woman who would
like to appear grand in the dentist’s chair, so that he might be
shy of hurting such a fine lady. Then again, Mrs. Poppit had wonderful
teeth, almost too good to be true, and before now she had asked who
lived at that pretty little house just round the corner, as if to show
that she didn’t know where the dentist lived! Or had she found out
by some underhand means that Mr. Wyse had come back, and had gone to
call on him and give him[156]
the first news of the duel, and talk to him about Scotland? Very likely
they had neither of them been to Scotland at all: they conspired to say
that they had been to Scotland and stayed at shooting-lodges
(keepers’ lodges more likely) in order to impress Tilling with
their magnificence…

Miss Mapp sat down on the central-heating pipes in her window, and fell
into one of her reconstructive musings. Partly, if Mr. Wyse was back, it
was well just to run over his record; partly she wanted to divert her
mind from the two houses just below, that of Major Benjy on the one side
and that of Captain Puffin on the other, which contained the key to the
great, insoluble mystery, from conjecture as to which she wanted to
obtain relief. Mr. Wyse, anyhow, would serve as a mild opiate, for she
had never lost an angry interest in him. Though he was for eight months
of the year, or thereabouts, in Tilling, he was never, for a single
hour, of Tilling. He did not exactly invest himself with an air of
condescension and superiority—Miss Mapp did him that
justice—but he made other people invest him with it, so that it
came to the same thing: he was invested. He did not drag the fact of his
sister being the Contessa Faraglione into conversation, but if talk
turned on sisters, and he was asked about his, he confessed to her
nobility. The same phenomenon appeared when the innocent county of
Hampshire was mentioned, for it turned out that he knew the county well,
being one of the Wyses of Whitchurch. You couldn’t say he talked
about it, but he made other people talk about it… He was quite
impervious to satire on such points, for when, goaded to madness, Miss
Mapp had once said that she was one of the Mapps of Maidstone, he had
merely bowed and said: “A very old family, I believe,”
and[157]
when the conversation branched off on to old families he had rather
pointedly said “we” to Miss Mapp. So poor Miss Mapp was
sorry she had been satirical… But for some reason, Tilling never
ceased to play up to Mr. Wyse, and there was not a tea-party or a
bridge-party given during the whole period of his residence there to
which he was not invited. Hostesses always started with him, sending him
round a note with “To await answer,” written in the top
left-hand corner, since he had clearly stated that he considered the
telephone an undignified instrument only fit to be used for household
purposes, and had installed his in the kitchen, in the manner of the
Wyses of Whitchurch. That alone, apart from Mr. Wyse’s
old-fashioned notions on the subject, made telephoning impossible, for
your summons was usually answered by his cook, who instantly began
scolding the butcher irrespective and disrespectful of whom you were.
When her mistake was made known to her, she never apologized, but
grudgingly said she would call Mr. Figgis, who was Mr. Wyse’s
valet. Mr. Figgis always took a long time in coming, and when he came he
sneezed or did something disagreeable and said: "Yes, yes; what is
it?” in a very testy manner. After explanations he would consent
to tell his master, which took another long time, and even then Mr. Wyse
did not come himself, and usually refused the proffered invitation. Miss
Mapp had tried the expedient of sending Withers to the telephone when
she wanted to get at Mr. Wyse, but this had not succeeded, for Withers
and Mr. Wyse’s cook quarrelled so violently before they got to
business that Mr. Figgis had to calm the cook and Withers to complain to
Miss Mapp… This, in brief, was the general reason why Tilling
sent notes to Mr. Wyse. As for chatting through the telephone, which was
the main[158]
use of telephones, the thing was quite out of the question.

Miss Mapp revived a little as she made this piercing analysis of Mr.
Wyse, and the warmth of the central heating pipes, on this baffling day
of autumn tints, was comforting… No one could say that Mr. Wyse
was not punctilious in matters of social etiquette, for though he
refused three-quarters of the invitations which were showered on him, he
invariably returned the compliment by an autograph note hoping that he
might have the pleasure of entertaining you at lunch on Thursday next,
for he always gave a small luncheon-party on Thursday. These invitations
were couched in Chesterfield-terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a
mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence,
and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of
your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of
Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance
encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you
might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope… These
polite expressions were traced in a neat upright hand on paper which,
when he had just come back from Italy, often bore a coronet on the top
with “Villa Faraglione, Capri” printed on the right-hand top
corner and “Amelia” (the name of his putative sister) in
sprawling gilt on the left, the whole being lightly erased. Of course he
was quite right to filch a few sheets, but it threw rather a lurid light
on his character that they should be such grand ones.

Last year only, in a fit of passion at Mr. Wyse having refused six
invitations running on the plea of other engagements, Miss Mapp had
headed a movement, the object[159]
of which was that Tilling should not accept any of Mr. Wyse’s
invitations unless he accepted its. This had met with theoretical
sympathy; the Bartletts, Diva, Irene, the Poppits had all
agreed—rather absently—that it would be a very proper thing
to do, but the very next Thursday they had all, including the
originator, met on Mr. Wyse’s doorstep for a luncheon-party, and
the movement then and there collapsed. Though they all protested and
rebelled against such a notion, the horrid fact remained that everybody
basked in Mr. Wyse’s effulgence whenever it was disposed to shed
itself on them. Much as they distrusted the information they dragged out
of him, they adored hearing about the Villa Faraglione, and dressed
themselves in their very best clothes to do so. Then again there was the
quality of the lunch itself: often there was caviare, and it was
impossible (though the interrogator who asked whether it came from
Twemlow’s feared the worst) not to be mildly excited to know, when
Mr. Wyse referred the question to Figgis, that the caviare had arrived
from Odessa that morning. The haunch of roe-deer came from Perthshire;
the wine, on the subject of which the Major could not be silent, and
which often made him extremely talkative, was from “my
brother-in-law’s vineyard.” And Mr. Wyse would taste it with
the air of a connoisseur and say: “Not quite as good as last year:
I must tell the Cont—— I mean my sister.”

Again when Mr. Wyse did condescend to honour a tea-party or a
bridge-party, Tilling writhed under the consciousness that their general
deportment was quite different from that which they ordinarily practised
among themselves. There was never any squabbling at Mr. Wyse’s
table, and such squabbling as took place at the other tables[160]
was conducted in low hissings and whispers, so that Mr. Wyse should not
hear. Diva never haggled over her gains or losses when he was there, the
Padre never talked Scotch or Elizabethan English. Evie never squeaked
like a mouse, no shrill recriminations or stately sarcasms took place
between partners, and if there happened to be a little disagreement
about the rules, Mr. Wyse’s decision, though he was not a better
player than any of them, was accepted without a murmur. At intervals for
refreshment, in the same way, Diva no longer filled her mouth and both
hands with nougat-chocolate; there was no scrambling or jostling, but
the ladies were waited on by the gentlemen, who then refreshed
themselves. And yet Mr. Wyse in no way asserted himself, or reduced them
all to politeness by talking about the polished manners of Italians; it
was Tilling itself which chose to behave in this unusual manner in his
presence. Sometimes Diva might forget herself for a moment, and address
something withering to her partner, but the partner never replied in
suitable terms, and Diva became honey-mouthed again. It was, indeed, if
Mr. Wyse had appeared at two or three parties, rather a relief not to
find him at the next, and breathe freely in less rarefied air. But
whether he came or not he always returned the invitation by one to a
Thursday luncheon-party, and thus the high circles of Tilling met every
week at his house.

Miss Mapp came to the end of this brief retrospect, and determined, when
once it was proved that Mr. Wyse had arrived, to ask him to tea on
Tuesday. That would mean lunch with him on Thursday, and it was
unnecessary to ask anybody else unless Mr. Wyse accepted. If he refused,
there would be no tea-party… But, after the events of the last
twenty-four hours, there was no vividness in[161]
these plans and reminiscences, and her eye turned to the profile of the
Colonel’s house.

“The portmanteau,” she said to herself… No: she must
take her mind off that subject. She would go for a walk, not into the
High Street, but into the quiet level country, away from the turmoil of
passion (in the Padre’s sense) and quarrels (in her own), where
she could cool her curiosity and her soul with contemplation of the
swallows and the white butterflies (if they had not all been killed by
the touch of frost last night) and the autumn tints of which there were
none whatever in the treeless marsh… Decidedly the shortest way
out of the town was that which led past Mr. Wyse’s house. But
before leaving the garden-room she practised several faces at the
looking-glass opposite the door, which should suitably express, if she
met anybody to whom the cause of the challenge was likely to have
spread, the bewildering emotion which the unwilling cause of it must
feel. There must be a wistful wonder, there must be a certain pride,
there must be the remains of romantic excitement, and there must be deep
womanly anxiety. The carriage of the head “did” the pride,
the wide-open eyes “did” the wistful wonder and the romance,
the deep womanly anxiety lurked in the tremulous smile, and a violent
rubbing of the cheeks produced the colour of excitement. In answer to
any impertinent questions, if she encountered such, she meant to give an
absent answer, as if she had not understood. Thus equipped she set
forth.

It was rather disappointing to meet nobody, but as she passed Mr.
Wyse’s bow-window she adjusted the chrysanthemums she wore, and
she had a good sight of his profile and the back of Mrs. Poppit’s
head. They appeared deep in conversation, and Miss Mapp felt that the
tiresome[162]
woman was probably giving him a very incomplete account of what had
happened. She returned late for tea, and broke off her apologies to
Withers for being such a trouble because she saw a note on the hall
table. There was a coronet on the back of the envelope, and it was
addressed in the neat, punctilious hand which so well expressed its
writer. Villa Faraglione, Capri, a coronet and Amelia all lightly
crossed out headed the page, and she read:

Had not Withers been present, who might have misconstrued her action,
Miss Mapp would have kissed the note; failing that, she forgave Mrs.
Poppit for being an M.B.E.

“The dear woman!” she said. “She has heard, and has
told him.”

Of course she need not ask Mr. Wyse to tea now…

CHAPTER VII

A white frost on three nights running and a terrible blackening of
dahlias, whose reputation was quite gone by morning, would probably have
convinced the[163]
ladies of Tilling that it was time to put summer clothing in camphor and
winter clothing in the back-yard to get aired, even if the Padre had not
preached that remarkable sermon on Sunday. It was so remarkable that
Miss Mapp quite forgot to note grammatical lapses and listened
entranced.

The text was, “He made summer and winter,” and after
repeating the words very impressively, so that there might be no mistake
about the origin of the seasons, the Padre began to talk about something
quite different—namely, the unhappy divisions which exist in
Christian communities. That did not deceive Miss Mapp for a moment: she
saw precisely what he was getting at over his oratorical fences. He got
at it…

Ever since Summer-time had been inaugurated a few years before, it had
been one of the chronic dissensions of Tilling. Miss Mapp, Diva and the
Padre flatly refused to recognize it, except when they were going by
train or tram, when principle must necessarily go to the wall, or they
would never have succeeded in getting anywhere, while Miss Mapp, with
the halo of martyrdom round her head, had once arrived at a Summer-time
party an hour late, in order to bear witness to the truth, and, in
consequence, had got only dregs of tea and the last faint strawberry.
But the Major and Captain Puffin used the tram so often, that they had
fallen into the degrading habit of dislocating their clocks and watches
on the first of May, and dislocating them again in the autumn, when they
were forced into uniformity with properly-minded people. Irene was
flippant on the subject, and said that any old time would do for her.
The Poppits followed convention, and Mrs. Poppit, in naming the hour for
a party to the stalwarts, wrote “4.30 (your 3.30).” The
King,[164]
after all, had invited her to be decorated at a particular hour,
summer-time, and what was good enough for the King was good enough for
Mrs. Poppit.

The sermon was quite uncompromising. There was summer and winter, by
Divine ordinance, but there was nothing said about summer-time and
winter-time. There was but one Time, and even as Life only stained the
white radiance of eternity, as the gifted but, alas! infidel poet
remarked, so, too, did Time. But ephemeral as Time was, noon in the
Bible clearly meant twelve o’clock, and not one o’clock:
towards even, meant towards even, and not the middle of a broiling
afternoon. The sixth hour similarly was the Roman way of saying twelve.
Winter-time, in fact, was God’s time, and though there was nothing
wicked (far from it) in adopting strange measures, yet the simple, the
childlike, clung to the sacred tradition, which they had received from
their fathers and forefathers at their mother’s knee. Then
followed a long and eloquent passage, which recapitulated the opening
about unhappy divisions, and contained several phrases, regarding the
lengths to which such divisions might go, which were strikingly
applicable to duelling. The peroration recapitulated the recapitulation,
in case anyone had missed it, and the coda, the close itself, in the
full noon of the winter sun, was full of joy at the healing of all such
unhappy divisions. And now… The rain rattling against the windows
drowned the Doxology.

The doctrine was so much to her mind that Miss Mapp gave a shilling to
the offertory instead of her usual sixpence, to be devoted to the
organist and choir fund. The Padre, it is true, had changed the hour of
services to suit the heresy of the majority, and this for a moment made
her hand falter. But the hope, after this convincing[165]
sermon, that next year morning service would be at the hour falsely
called twelve decided her not to withdraw this handsome contribution.

Frosts and dead dahlias and sermons then were together overwhelmingly
convincing, and when Miss Mapp went out on Monday morning to do her
shopping, she wore a tweed skirt and jacket, and round her neck a long
woollen scarf to mark the end of the summer. Mrs. Poppit, alone in her
disgusting ostentation, had seemed to think two days ago that it was
cold enough for furs, and she presented a truly ridiculous aspect in an
enormous sable coat, under the weight of which she could hardly stagger,
and stood rooted to the spot when she stepped out of the Royce. Brisk
walking and large woollen scarves saved the others from feeling the cold
and from being unable to move, and this morning the High Street was
dazzling with the shifting play of bright colours. There was quite a
group of scarves at the corner, where Miss Mapp’s street debouched
into the High Street: Irene was there (for it was probably too cold for
Mr. Hopkins that morning), looking quainter than ever in corduroys and
mauve stockings with an immense orange scarf bordered with pink. Diva
was there, wound up in so delicious a combination of rose-madder and
Cambridge blue, that Miss Mapp, remembering the history of the
rose-madder, had to remind herself how many things there were in the
world more important than worsted. Evie was there in vivid green with a
purple border, the Padre had a knitted magenta waistcoat, and Mrs.
Poppit that great sable coat which almost prevented movement. They were
all talking together in a very animated manner when first Miss Mapp came
in sight, and if, on her approach, conversation seemed to wither, they
all wore, besides their[166]
scarves, very broad, pleasant smiles. Miss Mapp had a smile, too, as
good as anybody’s.

“Good morning, all you dear things,” she said. “How
lovely you all look—just like a bed of delicious flowers! Such
nice colours! My poor dahlias are all dead.”

Quaint Irene uttered a hoarse laugh, and, swinging her basket, went
quickly away. She often did abrupt things like that. Miss Mapp turned to
the Padre.

“Dear Padre, what a delicious sermon!” she said. “So
glad you preached it! Such a warning against all sorts of
divisions!”

The Padre had to compose his face before he responded to these
compliments.

“I’m reecht glad, fair lady,” he replied, “that
my bit discourse was to your mind. Come, wee wifie, we must be
stepping.”

Quite suddenly all the group, with the exception of Mrs. Poppit, melted
away. Wee wifie gave a loud squeal, as if to say something, but her
husband led her firmly off, while Diva, with rapidly revolving feet,
sped like an arrow up the centre of the High Street.

“Such a lovely morning!” said Miss Mapp to Mrs. Poppit, when
there was no one else to talk to. “And everyone looks so pleased
and happy, and all in such a hurry, busy as bees, to do their little
businesses. Yes.”

Mrs. Poppit began to move quietly away with the deliberate,
tortoise-like progression necessitated by the fur coat. It struck Miss
Mapp that she, too, had intended to take part in the general breaking up
of the group, but had merely been unable to get under way as fast as the
others.

“Such a lovely fur coat,” said Miss Mapp sycophantically.
“Such beautiful long fur! And what is the news this morning? Has a
little bird been whispering anything?”

[167]
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Poppit very decidedly, and having now
sufficient way on to turn, she went up the street down which Miss Mapp
had just come. The latter was thus left all alone with her shopping
basket and her scarf.

With the unerring divination which was the natural fruit of so many
years of ceaseless conjecture, she instantly suspected the worst. All
that busy conversation which her appearance had interrupted, all those
smiles which her presence had seemed but to render broader and more
hilarious, certainly concerned her. They could not still have been
talking about that fatal explosion from the cupboard in the garden-room,
because the duel had completely silenced the last echoes of that, and
she instantly put her finger on the spot. Somebody had been gossiping
(and how she hated gossip); somebody had given voice to what she had
been so studiously careful not to say. Until that moment, when she had
seen the rapid breaking up of the group of her friends all radiant with
merriment, she had longed to be aware that somebody had given voice to
it, and that everybody (under seal of secrecy) knew the unique
queenliness of her position, the overwhelmingly interesting rôle
that the violent passions of men had cast her for. She had not believed
in the truth of it herself, when that irresistible seizure of coquetry
took possession of her as she bent over her sweet chrysanthemums; but
the Padre’s respectful reception of it had caused her to hope that
everybody else might believe in it. The character of the smiles,
however, that wreathed the faces of her friends did not quite seem to
give fruition to that hope. There were smiles and smiles, respectful
smiles, sympathetic smiles, envious and admiring smiles, but there were
also smiles of hilarious and mocking[168]
incredulity. She concluded that she had to deal with the latter variety.

“Something,” thought Miss Mapp, as she stood quite alone in
the High Street, with Mrs. Poppit labouring up the hill, and Diva
already a rose-madder speck in the distance, “has got to be
done,” and it only remained to settle what. Fury with the dear
Padre for having hinted precisely what she meant, intended and designed
that he should hint, was perhaps the paramount emotion in her mind; fury
with everybody else for not respectfully believing what she did not
believe herself made an important pendant.

“What am I to do?” said Miss Mapp aloud, and had to explain
to Mr. Hopkins, who had all his clothes on, that she had not spoken to
him. Then she caught sight again of Mrs. Poppit’s sable coat
hardly further off than it had been when first this thunderclap of an
intuition deafened her, and still reeling from the shock, she remembered
that it was almost certainly Mrs. Poppit who was the cause of Mr. Wyse
writing her that exquisitely delicate note with regard to Thursday. It
was a herculean task, no doubt, to plug up all the fountains of talk in
Tilling which were spouting so merrily at her expense, but a beginning
must be made before she could arrive at the end. A short scurry of
nimble steps brought her up to the sables.

“Dear Mrs. Poppit,” she said, “if you are walking by
my little house, would you give me two minutes’ talk? And—so
stupid of me to forget just now—will you come in after dinner on
Wednesday for a little rubber? The days are closing in now; one wants to
make the most of the daylight, and I think it is time to begin our
pleasant little winter evenings.”

This was a bribe, and Mrs. Poppit instantly pocketed[169]
it, with the effect that two minutes later she was in the garden-room,
and had deposited her sable coat on the sofa (“Quite shook the
room with the weight of it,” said Miss Mapp to herself while she
arranged her plan).

She stood looking out of the window for a moment, writhing with
humiliation at having to be suppliant to the Member of the British
Empire. She tried to remember Mrs. Poppit’s Christian name, and
was even prepared to use that, but this crowning ignominy was saved her,
as she could not recollect it.

“Such an annoying thing has happened,” she said, though the
words seemed to blister her lips. “And you, dear Mrs. Poppit, as a
woman of the world, can advise me what to do. The fact is that somehow
or other, and I can’t think how, people are saying that the duel
last week, which was so happily averted, had something to do with poor
little me. So absurd! But you know what gossips we have in our dear
little Tilling.”

Mrs. Poppit turned on her a fallen and disappointed face.

“But hadn’t it?” she said. “Why, when they were
all laughing about it just now” (“I was right, then,”
thought Miss Mapp, “and what a tactless woman!”), “I
said I believed it. And I told Mr. Wyse.”

Miss Mapp cursed herself for her frankness. But she could obliterate
that again, and not lose a rare (goodness knew how rare!) believer.

“I am in such a difficult position,” she said. “I
think I ought to let it be understood that there is no truth whatever in
such an idea, however much truth there may be. And did dear Mr. Wyse
believe—in fact, I know he must have, for he wrote me, oh, such a
delicate, understanding note. He, at any rate, takes no notice of all
that is being said and hinted.”

[170]
Miss Mapp was momentarily conscious that she meant precisely the
opposite of this. Dear Mr. Wyse did take notice, most respectful
notice, of all that was being said and hinted, thank goodness! But a
glance at Mrs. Poppit’s fat and interested face showed her that
the verbal discrepancy had gone unnoticed, and that the luscious flavour
of romance drowned the perception of anything else. She drew a
handkerchief out, and buried her thoughtful eyes in it a moment, rubbing
them with a stealthy motion, which Mrs. Poppit did not perceive, though
Diva would have.

“My lips are sealed,” she continued, opening them very wide,
“and I can say nothing, except that I want this rumour to be
contradicted. I daresay those who started it thought it was true, but,
true or false, I must say nothing. I have always led a very quiet life
in my little house, with my sweet flowers for my companions, and if
there is one thing more than another that I dislike, it is that my
private affairs should be made matters of public interest. I do no harm
to anybody, I wish everybody well, and nothing—nothing will induce
me to open my lips upon this subject. I will not,” cried Miss
Mapp, ”say a word to defend or justify myself. What is true will
prevail. It comes in the Bible.”

Mrs. Poppit was too much interested in what she said to mind where it
came from.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Contradict, dear, the rumour that I have had anything to do with
the terrible thing which might have happened last week. Say on my
authority that it is so. I tremble to think”—here she
trembled very much—“what might happen if the report reached
Major Benjy’s ears, and he found out who had started it. We
must[171]
have no more duels in Tilling. I thought I should never survive that
morning.”

“I will go and tell Mr. Wyse instantly—dear,” said
Mrs. Poppit.

That would never do. True believers were so scarce that it was wicked to
think of unsettling their faith.

“Poor Mr. Wyse!” said Miss Mapp with a magnanimous smile.
“Do not think, dear, of troubling him with these little trumpery
affairs. He will not take part in these little tittle-tattles. But if
you could let dear Diva and quaint Irene and sweet Evie and the good
Padre know that I laugh at all such nonsense——”

“But they laugh at it, too,” said Mrs. Poppit.

That would have been baffling for anyone who allowed herself to be
baffled, but that was not Miss Mapp’s way.

“Oh, that bitter laughter!” she said. “It hurt me to
hear it. It was envious laughter, dear, scoffing, bitter laughter. I
heard! I cannot bear that the dear things should feel like that. Tell
them that I say how silly they are to believe anything of the sort.
Trust me, I am right about it. I wash my hands of such nonsense.”

She made a vivid dumb-show of this, and after drying them on an
imaginary towel, let a sunny smile peep out the eyes which she had
rubbed.

“All gone!” she said; “and we will have a dear little
party on Wednesday to show we are all friends again. And we meet for
lunch at dear Mr. Wyse’s the next day? Yes? He will get tired of
poor little me if he sees me two days running, so I shall not ask him. I
will just try to get two tables together, and nobody shall contradict
dear Diva, however many shillings she says she has won. I would sooner
pay them all myself than have any more of our unhappy divisions. You
will have[172]
talked to them all before Wednesday, will you not, dear?”

As there were only four to talk to, Mrs. Poppit thought that she could
manage it, and spent a most interesting afternoon. For two years now she
had tried to unfreeze Miss Mapp, who, when all was said and done, was
the centre of the Tilling circle, and who, if any attempt was made to
shove her out towards the circumference, always gravitated back again.
And now, on these important errands she was Miss Mapp’s accredited
ambassador, and all the terrible business of the opening of the
store-cupboard and her decoration as M.B.E. was quite forgiven and
forgotten. There would be so much walking to be done from house to
house, that it was impossible to wear her sable coat unless she had the
Royce to take her about…

The effect of her communications would have surprised anybody who did
not know Tilling. A less subtle society, when assured from a first-hand,
authoritative source that a report which it had entirely refused to
believe was false, would have prided itself on its perspicacity, and
said that it had laughed at such an idea, as soon as ever it heard it,
as being palpably (look at Miss Mapp!) untrue. Not so Tilling. The very
fact that, by the mouth of her ambassador, she so uncompromisingly
denied it, was precisely why Tilling began to wonder if there was not
something in it, and from wondering if there was not something in it,
surged to the conclusion that there certainly was. Diva, for instance,
the moment she was told that Elizabeth (for Mrs. Poppit remembered her
Christian name perfectly) utterly and scornfully denied the truth of the
report, became intensely thoughtful.

“Say there’s nothing in it?” she observed.
“Can’t understand that.”

[173]
At that moment Diva’s telephone bell rang, and she hurried out and
in.

“Party at Elizabeth’s on Wednesday,” she said.
“She saw me laughing. Why ask me?”

Mrs. Poppit was full of her sacred mission.

“To show how little she minds your laughing,” she suggested.

“As if it wasn’t true, then. Seems like that. Wants us to
think it’s not true.”

“She was very earnest about it,” said the ambassador.

Diva got up, and tripped over the outlying skirts of Mrs. Poppit’s
fur coat as she went to ring the bell.

“Sorry,” she said. “Take it off and have a chat.
Tea’s coming. Muffins!”

“Oh, no, thanks!” said Mrs. Poppit. “I’ve so
many calls to make.”

“What? Similar calls?” asked Diva. “Wait ten minutes.
Tea, Janet. Quickly.”

She whirled round the room once or twice, all corrugated with
perplexity, beginning telegraphic sentences, and not finishing them:
“Says it’s not true—laughs at notion of—And Mr.
Wyse believes—The Padre believed. After all, the
Major—Little cock-sparrow Captain Puffin—Or t’other
way round, do you think?—No other explanation, you
know—Might have been blood——”

She buried her teeth in a muffin.

“Believe there’s something in it,” she summed up.

She observed her guest had neither tea nor muffin.

“Help yourself,” she said. “Want to worry this
out.”

“Elizabeth absolutely denies it,” said Mrs. Poppit.
“Her eyes were full of——”

“Oh, anything,” said Diva. “Rubbed them. Or pepper if
it was at lunch. That’s no evidence.”

[174]
“But her solemn assertion——” began Mrs. Poppit,
thinking that she was being a complete failure as an ambassador. She was
carrying no conviction at all.

“Saccharine!” observed Diva, handing her a small phial.
“Haven’t got more than enough sugar for myself. I expect
Elizabeth’s got plenty—well, never mind that. Don’t
you see? If it wasn’t true she would try to convince us that it
was. Seemed absurd on the face of it. But if she tries to convince us
that it isn’t true—well, something in it.”

There was the gist of the matter, and Mrs. Poppit proceeding next to the
Padre’s house, found more muffins and incredulity. Nobody seemed
to believe Elizabeth’s assertion that there was “nothing in
it.” Evie ran round the room with excited squeaks, the Padre
nodded his head, in confirmation of the opinion which, when he first
delivered it, had been received with mocking incredulity over the crab.
Quaint Irene, intent on Mr. Hopkins’s left knee in the absence of
the model, said, “Good old Mapp: better late than never.”
Utter incredulity, in fact, was the ambassador’s welcome …
and all the incredulous were going to Elizabeth’s party on
Wednesday.

Mrs. Poppit had sent the Royce home for the last of her calls, and
staggered up the hill past Elizabeth’s house. Oddly enough, just
as she passed the garden-room, the window was thrown up.

“Cup of tea, dear Susan?” said Elizabeth. She had found an
old note of Mrs. Poppit’s among the waste paper for the firing of
the kitchen oven fully signed.

“Just two minutes’ talk, Elizabeth,” she promptly
responded.

The news that nobody in Tilling believed her left Miss[175]
Mapp more than calm, on the bright side of calm, that is to say. She had
a few indulgent phrases that tripped readily off her tongue for the dear
things who hated to be deprived of their gossip, but Susan certainly did
not receive the impression that this playful magnanimity was attained
with an effort. Elizabeth did not seem really to mind: she was very gay.
Then, skilfully changing the subject, she mourned over her dead dahlias.

Though Tilling with all its perspicacity could not have known it, the
intuitive reader will certainly have perceived that Miss Mapp’s
party for Wednesday night had, so to speak, further irons in its fire.
It had originally been a bribe to Susan Poppit, in order to induce her
to spread broadcast that that ridiculous rumour (whoever had launched
it) had been promptly denied by the person whom it most immediately
concerned. It served a second purpose in showing that Miss Mapp was too
high above the mire of scandal, however interesting, to know or care who
might happen to be wallowing in it, and for this reason she asked
everybody who had done so. Such loftiness of soul had earned her an
amazing bonus, for it had induced those who sat in the seat of the
scoffers before to come hastily off, and join the thin but unwavering
ranks of the true believers, who up till then had consisted only of
Susan and Mr. Wyse. Frankly, so blest a conclusion had never occurred to
Miss Mapp: it was one of those unexpected rewards that fall like ripe
plums into the lap of the upright. By denying a rumour she had got
everybody to believe it, and when on Wednesday morning she went out to
get the chocolate cakes which were so useful in allaying the appetites
of guests, she encountered no broken conversations and gleeful smiles,
but sidelong glances of respectful envy.

[176] But what Tilling did not and could not know was that this, the
first of the autumn after-dinner bridge-parties, was destined to look on
the famous teagown of kingfisher-blue, as designed for Mrs. Trout. No
doubt other ladies would have hurried up their new gowns, or at least
have camouflaged their old ones, in honour of the annual inauguration of
evening bridge, but Miss Mapp had no misgivings about being outshone.
And once again here she felt that luck waited on merit, for though when
she dressed that evening she found she had not anticipated that
artificial light would cast a somewhat pale (though not ghastly)
reflection from the vibrant blue on to her features, similar in effect
to (but not so marked as) the light that shines on the faces of those
who lean over the burning brandy and raisins of
“snapdragon,” this interesting pallor seemed very aptly to
bear witness to all that she had gone through. She did not look
ill—she was satisfied as to that—she looked gorgeous and a
little wan.

The bridge tables were not set out in the garden-room, which entailed a
scurry over damp gravel on a black, windy night, but in the little
square parlour above her dining-room, where Withers, in the intervals of
admitting her guests, was laying out plates of sandwiches and the
chocolate cakes, reinforced when the interval for refreshments came with
hot soup, whisky and syphons, and a jug of “cup” prepared
according to an ancestral and economical recipe, which Miss Mapp had
taken a great deal of trouble about. A single bottle of white wine, with
suitable additions of ginger, nutmeg, herbs and soda-water, was the
mother of a gallon of a drink that seemed aflame with fiery and probably
spirituous ingredients. Guests were very careful how they partook of it,
so stimulating it seemed.

[177]
Miss Mapp was reading a book on gardening upside down (she had taken it
up rather hurriedly) when the Poppits arrived, and sprang to her feet
with a pretty cry at being so unexpectedly but delightfully disturbed.

“Susan! Isabel!” she said. “Lovely of you to have
come! I was reading about flowers, making plans for next year.”

She saw the four eyes riveted to her dress. Susan looked quite shabby in
comparison, and Isabel did not look anything at all.

“My dear, too lovely!” said Mrs. Poppit slowly.

Miss Mapp looked brightly about, as if wondering what was too lovely: at
last she guessed.

“Oh, my new frock?” she said. “Do you like it, dear?
How sweet of you. It’s just a little nothing that I talked over
with that nice Miss Greele in the High Street. We put our heads
together, and invented something quite cheap and simple. And
here’s Evie and the dear Padre. So kind of you to look in.”

Four more eyes were riveted on it.

“Enticed you out just once, Padre,” went on Miss Mapp.
“So sweet of you to spare an evening. And here’s Major Benjy
and Captain Puffin. Well, that is nice!”

This was really tremendous of Miss Mapp. Here was she meeting without
embarrassment or awkwardness the two, who if the duel had not been
averted, would have risked their very lives over some dispute concerning
her. Everybody else, naturally, was rather taken aback for the moment at
this situation, so deeply dyed in the dramatic. Should either of the
gladiators have heard that it was the Padre who undoubtedly had spread
the rumour concerning their hostess, Mrs. Poppit was afraid that even
his cloth might not protect him. But no such deplorable calamity
occurred,[178]
and only four more eyes were riveted to the kingfisher-blue.

“Upon my word,” said the Major, “I never saw anything
more beautiful than that gown, Miss Elizabeth. Straight from Paris, eh?
Paris in every line of it.”

“Oh, Major Benjy,” said Elizabeth. “You’re all
making fun of me and my simple little frock. I’m getting quite
shy. Just a bit of old stuff that I had. But so nice of you to like it.
I wonder where Diva is. We shall have to scold her for being late.
Ah—she shan’t be scolded. Diva, darl——”

The endearing word froze on Miss Mapp’s lips and she turned deadly
white. In the doorway, in equal fury and dismay, stood Diva, dressed in
precisely the same staggeringly lovely costume as her hostess. Had Diva
and Miss Greele put their heads together too? Had Diva got a bit of old
stuff …?

Miss Mapp pulled herself together first and moistened her dry lips.

“So sweet of you to look in, dear,” she said. “Shall
we cut?”

Naturally the malice of cards decreed that Miss Mapp and Diva should sit
next each other as adversaries at the same table, and the combined
effect of two lots of kingfisher-blue was blinding. Complete silence on
every subject connected, however remotely, with dress was, of course,
the only line for correct diplomacy to pursue, but then Major Benjy was
not diplomatic, only gallant.

“Never saw such stunning gowns, eh, Padre?” he said.
“Dear me, they are very much alike too, aren’t they? Pair of
exquisite sisters.”

[179]
It would be hard to say which of the two found this speech the more
provocative of rage, for while Diva was four years younger than Miss
Mapp, Miss Mapp was four inches taller than Diva. She cut the cards to
her sister with a hand that trembled so much that she had to do it
again, and Diva could scarcely deal.

Mr. Wyse frankly confessed the next day when, at one o’clock,
Elizabeth found herself the first arrival at his house, that he had been
very self-indulgent.

“I have given myself a treat, dear Miss Mapp,” he said.
“I have asked three entrancing ladies to share my humble meal with
me, and have provided—is it not shocking of me?—nobody else
to meet them. Your pardon, dear lady, for my greediness.”

Now this was admirably done. Elizabeth knew very well why two out of the
three men in Tilling had not been asked (very gratifying, that reason
was), and with the true refinement of which Mr. Wyse was so amply
possessed, where he was taking all the blame on himself, and putting it
so prettily. She bestowed her widest smile on him.

“Oh, Mr. Wyse,” she said. “We shall all quarrel over
you.”

Not until Miss Mapp had spoken did she perceive how subtle her words
were. They seemed to bracket herself and Mr. Wyse together: all the men
(two out of the three, at any rate) had been quarrelling over her, and
now there seemed a very fair prospect of three of the women quarreling
over Mr. Wyse…

Without being in the least effeminate, Mr. Wyse this morning looked
rather like a modern Troubadour. He had a velveteen coat on, a soft,
fluffy, mushy tie which looked[180]
as if made of Shirley poppies, very neat knickerbockers, brown stockings
with blobs, like the fruit of plane trees, dependent from elaborate
“tops,” and shoes with a cascade of leather frilling
covering the laces. He might almost equally well be about to play golf
over putting-holes on the lawn as the guitar. He made a gesture of
polished, polite dissent, not contradicting, yet hardly accepting this
tribute, remitting it perhaps, just as the King when he enters the City
of London touches the sword of the Lord Mayor and tells him to keep
it…

“So pleasant to be in Tilling again,” he said. “We
shall have a cosy, busy winter, I hope. You, I know, Miss Mapp, are
always busy.”

“The day is never long enough for me,” said Elizabeth
enthusiastically. “What with my household duties in the morning,
and my garden, and our pleasant little gatherings, it is always bed-time
too soon. I want to read a great deal this winter, too.”

Diva (at the sight of whom Elizabeth had to make a strong effort of
self-control) here came in, together with Mrs. Poppit, and the party was
complete. Elizabeth would have been willing to bet that, in spite of the
warmness of the morning, Susan would have on her sable coat, and though,
technically, she would have lost, she more than won morally, for Mr.
Wyse’s repeated speeches about his greediness were hardly out of
his mouth when she discovered that she had left her handkerchief in the
pocket of her sable coat, which she had put over the back of a
conspicuous chair in the hall. Figgis, however, came in at the moment to
say that lunch was ready, and she delayed them all very much by a long,
ineffectual search for it, during which Figgis, with a visible effort,
held up the sable coat, so that it was displayed to the utmost
advantage.[181]
And then, only fancy, Susan discovered that it was in her sable muff all
the time!

All three ladies were on tenterhooks of anxiety as to who was to be
placed on Mr. Wyse’s right, who on his left, and who would be
given only the place between two other women. But his tact was equal to
anything.

“Miss Mapp,” he said, “will you honour me by taking
the head of my table and be hostess for me? Only I must have that vase
of flowers removed, Figgis; I can look at my flowers when Miss Mapp is
not here. Now, what have we got for breakfast—lunch, I should
say?”

The macaroni which Mr. Wyse had brought back with him from Naples
naturally led on to Italian subjects, and the general scepticism about
the Contessa di Faraglione had a staggering blow dealt it.

“My sister,” began Mr. Wyse (and by a swift sucking motion,
Diva drew into her mouth several serpents of dependent macaroni in order
to be able to listen better without this agitating distraction),
“my sister, I hope, will come to England this winter, and spend
several weeks with me.” (Sensation.)

“And the Count?” asked Diva, having swallowed the serpents.

“I fear not; Cecco—Francesco, you know—is a great
stay-at-home. Amelia is looking forward very much to seeing Tilling. I
shall insist on her making a long stay here, before she visits our
relations at Whitchurch.”

Elizabeth found herself reserving judgment. She would believe in the
Contessa Faraglione—no one more firmly—when she saw her, and
had reasonable proofs of her identity.

[182]
“Delightful!” she said, abandoning with regret the fruitless
pursuit with a fork of the few last serpents that writhed on her plate.
“What an addition to our society! We shall all do our best to
spoil her, Mr. Wyse. When do you expect her?”

“Early in December. You must be very kind to her, dear ladies. She
is an insatiable bridge-player. She has heard much of the great players
she will meet here.”

That decided Mrs. Poppit. She would join the correspondence class
conducted by “Little Slam,” in “Cosy Corner.”
Little Slam, for the sum of two guineas, payable in advance, engaged to
make first-class players of anyone with normal intelligence.
Diva’s mind flew off to the subject of dress, and the thought of
the awful tragedy concerning the tea-gown of kingfisher-blue, combined
with the endive salad, gave a wry twist to her mouth for a moment.

“I, as you know,” continued Mr. Wyse, “am no hand at
bridge.”

“Oh, Mr. Wyse, you play beautifully,” interpolated
Elizabeth.

“Too flattering of you, Miss Mapp. But Amelia and Cecco do not
agree with you. I am never allowed to play when I am at the Villa
Faraglione, unless a table cannot be made up without me. But I shall
look forward to seeing many well-contested games.”

The quails and the figs had come from Capri, and Miss Mapp, greedily
devouring each in turn, was so much incensed by the information that she
had elicited about them, that, though she joined in the general
Lobgesang, she was tempted to inquire whether the ice had not been
brought from the South Pole by some Antarctic expedition. Her mind was
not, like poor Diva’s, taken up with[183]
obstinate questionings about the kingfisher-blue tea-gown, for she had
already determined what she was going to do about it. Naturally it was
impossible to contemplate fresh encounters like that of last night, but
another gown, crimson-lake, the colour of Mrs. Trout’s toilet for
the second evening of the Duke of Hampshire’s visit, as Vogue
informed her, had completely annihilated Newport with its splendour. She
had already consulted Miss Greele about it, who said that if the
kingfisher-blue was bleached first the dye of crimson-lake would be
brilliant and pure… The thought of that, and the fact that Miss
Greele’s lips were professionally sealed, made her able to take
Diva’s arm as they strolled about the garden afterwards. The way
in which both Diva and Susan had made up to Mr. Wyse during lunch was
really very shocking, though it did not surprise Miss Mapp, but she
supposed their heads had been turned by the prospect of playing bridge
with a countess. Luckily she expected nothing better of either of them,
so their conduct was in no way a blow or a disappointment to her.

This companionship with Diva was rather prolonged, for the adhesive
Susan, staggering about in her sables, clung close to their host and
simulated a clumsy interest in chrysanthemums; and whatever the other
two did, manœuvred herself into a strong position between them and
Mr. Wyse, from which, operating on interior lines, she could cut off
either assailant. More depressing yet (and throwing a sad new light on
his character), Mr. Wyse seemed to appreciate rather than resent the
appropriation of himself, and instead of making a sortie through the
beleaguering sables, would beg Diva and Elizabeth, who were so fond of
fuchsias and knew about them so well, to put their heads together over
an afflicted bed of these[184]
flowers in quite another part of the garden, and tell him what was the
best treatment for their anæmic condition. Pleasant and proper
though it was to each of them that Mr. Wyse should pay so little
attention to the other, it was bitter as the endive salad to both that
he should tolerate, if not enjoy, the companionship which the
forwardness of Susan forced on him, and while they absently stared at
the fuchsias, the fire kindled, and Elizabeth spake with her tongue.

“How very plain poor Susan looks to-day,” she said.
“Such a colour, though to be sure I attribute that more to what
she ate and drank than to anything else. Crimson. Oh, those poor
fuchsias! I think I should throw them away.”

The common antagonism, Diva felt, had drawn her and Elizabeth into the
most cordial of understandings. For the moment she felt nothing but
enthusiastic sympathy with Elizabeth, in spite of her kingfisher-blue
gown… What on earth, in parenthesis, was she to do with hers? She
could not give it to Janet: it was impossible to contemplate the idea of
Janet walking about the High Street in a tea-gown of kingfisher-blue
just in order to thwart Elizabeth…

“Mr. Wyse seems taken with her,” said Diva. “How he
can! Rather a snob. M.B.E. She’s always popping in here. Saw her
yesterday going round the corner of the street.”

“What time, dear?” asked Elizabeth, nosing the scent.

“Middle of the morning.”

“And I saw her in the afternoon,” said Elizabeth.
“That great lumbering Rolls-Royce went tacking and skidding round
the corner below my garden-room.”

[185]
“Was she in it?” asked Diva.

This appeared rather a slur on Elizabeth’s reliability in
observation.

“No, darling, she was sitting on the top,” she said, taking
the edge off the sarcasm, in case Diva had not intended to be critical,
by a little laugh. Diva drew the conclusion that Elizabeth had actually
seen her inside.

“Think it’s serious?” she said. “Think
he’ll marry her?”

The idea of course, repellent and odious as it was, had occurred to
Elizabeth, so she instantly denied it.

“Oh, you busy little match-maker,” she said brightly.
“Such an idea never entered my head. You shouldn’t make such
fun of dear Susan. Come, dear, I can’t look at fuchsias any more.
I must be getting home and must say good-bye—au reservoir,
rather—to Mr. Wyse, if Susan will allow me to get a word in
edgeways.”

Susan seemed delighted to let Miss Mapp get this particular word in
edgewise, and after a little speech from Mr. Wyse, in which he said that
he would not dream of allowing them to go yet, and immediately
afterwards shook hands warmly with them both, hoping that the reservoir
would be a very small one, the two were forced to leave the artful Susan
in possession of the field…

It all looked rather black. Miss Mapp’s vivid imagination
altogether failed to picture what Tilling would be like if Susan
succeeded in becoming Mrs. Wyse and the sister-in-law of a countess, and
she sat down in her garden-room and closed her eyes for a moment, in
order to concentrate her power of figuring the situation. What dreadful
people these climbers were! How swiftly they swarmed up the[186]
social ladder with their Rolls-Royces and their red-currant fool, and
their sables! A few weeks ago she herself had never asked Susan into her
house, while the very first time she came she unloosed the sluices of
the store-cupboard, and now, owing to the necessity of getting her aid
in stopping that mischievous rumour, which she herself had been so
careful to set on foot, regarding the cause of the duel, Miss Mapp had
been positively obliged to flatter and to “Susan” her. And
if Diva’s awful surmise proved to be well-founded, Susan would be
in a position to patronize them all, and talk about counts and
countesses with the same air of unconcern as Mr. Wyse. She would be
bidden to the Villa Faraglione, she would play bridge with Cecco and
Amelia, she would visit the Wyses of Whitchurch…

What was to be done? She might head another movement to put Mr. Wyse in
his proper place; this, if successful, would have the agreeable result
of pulling down Susan a rung or two should she carry out her design. But
the failure of the last attempt and Mr. Wyse’s eminence did not
argue well for any further manœuvre of the kind. Or should she
poison Mr. Wyse’s mind with regard to Susan?… Or was she
herself causelessly agitated?

Or——

Curiosity rushed like a devastating tornado across Miss Mapp’s
mind, rooting up all other growths, buffeting her with the necessity of
knowing what the two whom she had been forced to leave in the garden
were doing now, and snatching up her opera-glasses she glided upstairs,
and let herself out through the trap-door on to the roof. She did not
remember if it was possible to see Mr. Wyse’s garden or any part
of it from that watch-tower, but there was a chance…

[187]
Not a glimpse of it was visible. It lay quite hidden behind the
red-brick wall which bounded it, and not a chrysanthemum or a fuchsia
could she see. But her blood froze as, without putting the glasses down,
she ran her eye over such part of the house-wall as rose above the
obstruction. In his drawing-room window on the first floor were seated
two figures. Susan had taken her sables off: it was as if she intended
remaining there for ever, or at least for tea…

CHAPTER VIII

The hippopotamus quarrel over their whisky between Major Flint and
Captain Puffin, which culminated in the challenge and all the shining
sequel, had had the excellent effect of making the united services more
united than ever. They both knew that, had they not severally run away
from the encounter, and, so providentially, met at the station, very
serious consequences might have ensued. Had not both but only one of
them been averse from taking or risking life, the other would surely
have remained in Tilling, and spread disastrous reports about the
bravery of the refugee; while if neither of them had had scruples on the
sacredness of human existence there might have been one if not two
corpses lying on the shining sands. Naturally the fact that they both
had taken the very earliest opportunity of averting an encounter by
flight, made it improbable that any future quarrel would be proceeded
with to violent extremes, but it was much safer to run no risks, and not
let verbal disagreements rise to hippopotamus-pitch again. Consequently
when[188]
there was any real danger of such savagery as was implied in sending
challenges, they hastened, by mutual concessions, to climb down from
these perilous places, where loss of balance might possibly occur. For
which of them could be absolutely certain that next time the other of
them might not be more courageous?…

They were coming up from the tram-station one November evening, both
fizzing and fuming a good deal, and the Major was extremely lame, lamer
than Puffin. The rattle of the tram had made argument impossible during
the transit from the links, but they had both in this enforced silence
thought of several smart repartees, supposing that the other made the
requisite remarks to call them out, and on arrival at the Tilling
station they went on at precisely the same point at which they had
broken off on starting from the station by the links.

“Well, I hope I can take a beating in as English a spirit as
anybody,” said the Major.

This was lucky for Captain Puffin: he had thought it likely that he
would say just that, and had got a stinger for him.

“And it worries you to find that your hopes are doomed to
disappointment,” he swiftly said.

Major Flint stepped in a puddle which cooled his foot but not his
temper.

“Most offensive remark,” he said. “I wasn’t
called Sporting Benjy in the regiment for nothing. But never mind that.
A worm-cast——”

“It wasn’t a worm-cast,” said Puffin. “It was
sheep’s dung!”

Luck had veered here: the Major had felt sure that Puffin would
reiterate that utterly untrue contention.

“I can’t pretend to be such a specialist as you in
those[189]
matters,” he said, “but you must allow me sufficient power
of observation to know a worm-cast when I see it. It was a worm-cast,
sir, a cast of a worm, and you had no right to remove it. If you will do
me the favour to consult the rules of golf——?”

“Oh, I grant you that you are more a specialist in the rules of
golf, Major, than in the practice of it,” said Puffin brightly.

Suddenly it struck Sporting Benjy that the red signals of danger danced
before his eyes, and though the odious Puffin had scored twice to his
once, he called up all his powers of self-control, for if his friend was
anything like as exasperated as himself, the breeze of disagreement
might develop into a hurricane. At the moment he was passing through a
swing-gate which led to a short cut back to the town, but before he
could take hold of himself he had slammed it back in his fury, hitting
Puffin, who was following him, on the knee. Then he remembered he was a
sporting Christian gentleman, and no duellist.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, my dear fellow,” he said,
with the utmost solicitude. “Uncommonly stupid of me. The gate
flew out of my hand. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Puffin had just come to the same conclusion as Major Flint: magnanimity
was better than early trains, and ever so much better than bullets.
Indeed there was no comparison…

“Not hurt a bit, thank you, Major,” he said, wincing with
the shrewdness of the blow, silently cursing his friend for what he felt
sure was no accident, and limping with both legs. “It didn’t
touch me. Ha! What a brilliant sunset. The town looks amazingly
picturesque.”

[190]
“It does indeed,” said the Major. “Fine subject for
Miss Mapp.”

Puffin shuffled alongside.

“There’s still a lot of talk going on in the town,” he
said, “about that duel of ours. Those fairies of yours are all
agog to know what it was about. I am sure they all think that there was
a lady in the case. Just like the vanity of the sex. If two men have a
quarrel, they think it must be because of their silly faces.”

Ordinarily the Major’s gallantry would have resented this view,
but the reconciliation with Puffin was too recent to risk just at
present.

“Poor little devils,” he said. “It makes an excitement
for them. I wonder who they think it is. It would puzzle me to name a
woman in Tilling worth catching an early train for.”

“There are several who’d be surprised to hear you say that,
Major,” said Puffin archly.

“Well, well,” said the other, strutting and swelling, and
walking without a sign of lameness…

They had come to where their houses stood opposite each other on the
steep cobbled street, fronted at its top end by Miss Mapp’s
garden-room. She happened to be standing in the window, and the Major
made a great flourish of his cap, and laid his hand on his heart.

“And there’s one of them,” said Puffin, as Miss Mapp
acknowledged these florid salutations with a wave of her hand, and
tripped away from the window.

“Poking your fun at me,” said the Major. “Perhaps she
was the cause of our quarrel, hey? Well, I’ll step across, shall
I, about half-past nine, and bring my diaries with me?”

“I’ll expect you. You’ll find me at my Roman
roads.”

[191]
The humour of this joke never staled, and they parted with hoots and
guffaws of laughter.

It must not be supposed that duelling, puzzles over the portmanteau, or
the machinations of Susan had put out of Miss Mapp’s head her
amiable interest in the hour at which Major Benjy went to bed. For some
time she had been content to believe, on direct information from him,
that he went to bed early and worked at his diaries on alternate
evenings, but maturer consideration had led her to wonder whether he was
being quite as truthful as a gallant soldier should be. For though (on
alternate evenings) his house would be quite dark by half-past nine, it
was not for twelve hours or more afterwards that he could be heard
qui-hi-ing for his breakfast, and unless he was in some incipient stage
of sleeping-sickness, such hours provided more than ample slumber for a
growing child, and might be considered excessive for a middle-aged man.
She had a mass of evidence to show that on the other set of alternate
nights his diaries (which must, in parenthesis, be of extraordinary
fullness) occupied him into the small hours, and to go to bed at
half-past nine on one night and after one o’clock on the next
implied a complicated kind of regularity which cried aloud for
elucidation. If he had only breakfasted early on the mornings after he
had gone to bed early, she might have allowed herself to be weakly
credulous, but he never qui-hied earlier than half-past nine, and she
could not but think that to believe blindly in such habits would be a
triumph not for faith but for foolishness. “People,” said
Miss Mapp to herself, as her attention refused to concentrate on the
evening paper, “don’t do it. I never heard of a similar
case.”

She had been spending the evening alone, and even the[192]
conviction that her cold apple tart had suffered diminution by at least
a slice, since she had so much enjoyed it hot at lunch, failed to occupy
her mind for long, for this matter had presented itself with a
clamouring insistence that drowned all other voices. She had tried,
when, at the conclusion of her supper, she had gone back to the
garden-room, to immerse herself in a book, in an evening paper, in the
portmanteau problem, in a jig-saw puzzle, and in Patience, but none of
these supplied the stimulus to lead her mind away from Major
Benjy’s evenings, or the narcotic to dull her unslumbering desire
to solve a problem that was rapidly becoming one of the greater
mysteries.

Her radiator made a seat in the window agreeably warm, and a chink in
the curtains gave her a view of the Major’s lighted window. Even
as she looked, the illumination was extinguished. She had expected this,
as he had been at his diaries late—quite naughtily late—the
evening before, so this would be a night of infant slumber for twelve
hours or so.

Even as she looked, a chink of light came from his front door, which
immediately enlarged itself into a full oblong. Then it went completely
out. “He has opened the door, and has put out the
hall-light,” whispered Miss Mapp to herself… “He has
gone out and shut the door… (Perhaps he is going to post a
letter.) … He has gone into Captain Puffin’s house without
knocking. So he is expected.”

Miss Mapp did not at once guess that she held in her hand the key to the
mystery. It was certainly Major Benjy’s night for going to bed
early… Then a fierce illumination beat on her brain. Had she not,
so providentially, actually observed the Major cross the road,[193]
unmistakable in the lamplight, and had she only looked out of her window
after the light in his was quenched, she would surely have told herself
that good Major Benjy had gone to bed. But good Major Benjy, on ocular
evidence, she now knew to have done nothing of the kind: he had gone
across to see Captain Puffin… He was not good.

She grasped the situation in its hideous entirety. She had been deceived
and hoodwinked. Major Benjy never went to bed early at all: on alternate
nights he went and sat with Captain Puffin. And Captain Puffin, she
could not but tell herself, sat up on the other set of alternate nights
with the Major, for it had not escaped her observation that when the
Major seemed to be sitting up, the Captain seemed to have gone to bed.
Instantly, with strong conviction, she suspected orgies. It remained to
be seen (and she would remain to see it) to what hour these orgies were
kept up.

About eleven o’clock a little mist had begun to form in the
street, obscuring the complete clarity of her view, but through it there
still shone the light from behind Captain Puffin’s red blind, and
the mist was not so thick as to be able wholly to obscure the figure of
Major Flint when he should pass below the gas lamp again into his house.
But no such figure passed. Did he then work at his diaries every
evening? And what price, to put it vulgarly, Roman roads?

Every moment her sense of being deceived grew blacker, and every moment
her curiosity as to what they were doing became more unbearable. After a
spasm of tactical thought she glided back into her house from the
garden-room, and, taking an envelope in her hand, so that she might, if
detected, say that she was going down to the letter-box at the corner to
catch the early post, she[194]
unbolted her door and let herself out. She crossed the street and
tip-toed along the pavement to where the red light from Captain
Puffin’s window shone like a blurred danger-signal through the
mist.

From inside came a loud duet of familiar voices: sometimes they spoke
singly, sometimes together. But she could not catch the words: they
sounded blurred and indistinct, and she told herself that she was very
glad that she could not hear what they said, for that would have seemed
like eaves-dropping. The voices sounded angry. Was there another duel
pending? And what was it about this time?

Quite suddenly, from so close at hand that she positively leaped off the
pavement into the middle of the road, the door was thrown open and the
duet, louder than ever, streamed out into the street. Major Benjy
bounced out on to the threshold, and stumbled down the two steps that
led from the door.

“Tell you it was a worm-cast,” he bellowed. “Think I
don’t know a worm-cast when I see a worm-cast?”

Suddenly his tone changed: this was getting too near a quarrel.

“Well, good-night, old fellow,” he said. “Jolly
evening.”

He turned and saw, veiled and indistinct in the mist, the female figure
in the roadway. Undying coquetry, as Mr. Stevenson so finely remarked,
awoke, for the topic preceding the worm-cast had been “the
sex.”

“Bless me,” he crowed, “if there isn’t an
unprotected lady all ’lone here in the dark, and lost in the fog.
’Llow me to ’scort you home, madam. Lemme introduce myself
and friend—Major Flint, that’s me, and my friend Captain
Puffin.”

[195]
He put up his hand and whispered an aside to Miss Mapp:
“Revolutionized the theory of navigation.”

Major Benjy was certainly rather gay and rather indistinct, but his
polite gallantry could not fail to be attractive. It was naughty of him
to have said that he went to bed early on alternate nights, but
really… Still, it might be better to slip away unrecognized, and,
thinking it would be nice to scriggle by him and disappear in the mist,
she made a tactical error in her scriggling, for she scriggled full into
the light that streamed from the open door where Captain Puffin was
standing.

He gave a shrill laugh.

“Why, it’s Miss Mapp,” he said in his high falsetto.
“Blow me, if it isn’t our mutual friend Miss Mapp. What a
’strordinary coincidence.”

Miss Mapp put on her most winning smile. To be dignified and at the same
time pleasant was the proper way to deal with this situation. Gentlemen
often had a glass of grog when they thought the ladies had gone
upstairs. That was how, for the moment, she summed things up.

“Good evening,” she said. “I was just going down to
the pillar-box to post a letter,” and she exhibited her envelope.
But it dropped out of her hand, and the Major picked it up for her.

“I’ll post it for you,” he said very pleasantly.
“Save you the trouble. Insist on it. Why, there’s no stamp
on it! Why, there’s no address on it! I say, Puffie, here’s
a letter with no address on it. Forgotten the address, Miss Mapp? Think
they’ll remember it at the post office? Well, that’s one of
the mos’ comic things I ever came across. An, an anonymous letter,
eh?”

The night air began to have a most unfortunate effect[196]
on Puffin. When he came out it would have been quite unfair to have
described him as drunk. He was no more than gay and ready to go to bed.
Now he became portentously solemn, as the cold mist began to do its
deadly work.

“A letter,” he said impressively, “without an address
is an uncommonly dangerous thing. Hic! Can’t tell into whose hands
it may fall. I would sooner go ’bout with a loaded pistol than
with a letter without any address. Send it to the bank for safety. Send
for the police. Follow my advice and send for the p’lice.
Police!”

Miss Mapp’s penetrating mind instantly perceived that that
dreadful Captain Puffin was drunk, and she promised herself that Tilling
should ring with the tale of his excesses to-morrow. But Major Benjy,
whom, if she mistook not, Captain Puffin had been trying, with perhaps
some small success, to lead astray, was a gallant gentleman still, and
she conceived the brilliant but madly mistaken idea of throwing herself
on his protection.

“Major Benjy,” she said, “I will ask you to take me
home. Captain Puffin has had too much to drink——”

“Woz that?” asked Captain Puffin, with an air of great
interest.

Miss Mapp abandoned dignity and pleasantness, and lost her temper.

“I said you were drunk,” she said with great distinctness.
“Major Benjy, will you——”

Captain Puffin came carefully down the two steps from the door on to the
pavement.

“Look here,” he said, “this all needs
’splanation. You say I’m drunk, do you? Well, I say
you’re drunk, going out like this in mill’ of the night to
post letter with no ’dress on it. Shamed of yourself,
mill’aged woman going[197]
out in the mill’ of the night in the mill’ of Tilling. Very
shocking thing. What do you say, Major?”

Major Benjy drew himself up to his full height, and put on his hat in
order to take it off to Miss Mapp.

“My fren’ Cap’n Puffin,” he said, “is a
man of strictly ’stemious habits. Boys together. Very serious
thing to call a man of my fren’s character drunk. If you call him
drunk, why shouldn’t he call you drunk? Can’t take away
man’s character like that.”

“Abso——” began Captain Puffin. Then he stopped
and pulled himself together.

“Absolooly,” he said without a hitch.

“Tilling shall hear of this to-morrow,” said Miss Mapp,
shivering with rage and sea-mist.

Captain Puffin came a step closer.

“Now I’ll tell you what it is, Miss Mapp,” he said.
“If you dare to say that I was drunk, Major and I, my fren’
the Major and I will say you were drunk. Perhaps you think my
fren’ the Major’s drunk too. But sure’s I live,
I’ll say we were taking lil’ walk in the moonlight and found
you trying to post a letter with no ’dress on it, and
couldn’t find the slit to put it in. But ’slong as you say
nothing, I say nothing. Can’t say fairer than that. Liberal terms.
Mutual Protection Society. Your lips sealed, our lips sealed. Strictly
private. All trespassers will be prosecuted. By order. Hic!”

Miss Mapp felt that Major Benjy ought instantly to have challenged his
ignoble friend to another duel for this insolent suggestion, but he did
nothing of the kind, and his silence, which had some awful quality of
consent about it, chilled her mind, even as the sea-mist, now thick and
cold, made her certain that her nose was turning red. She still boiled
with rage, but her mind grew cold with[198]
odious apprehensions: she was like an ice-pudding with scalding
sauce… There they all stood, veiled in vapours, and outlined by
the red light that streamed from the still-open door of the intoxicated
Puffin, getting colder every moment.

“Yessorno,” said Puffin, with chattering teeth.

Bitter as it was to accept those outrageous terms, there really seemed,
without the Major’s support, to be no way out of it.

“Yes,” said Miss Mapp.

Puffin gave a loud crow.

“The ayes have it, Major,” he said. “So we’re
all frens again. Goonight everybody.”

Miss Mapp let herself into her house in an agony of mortification. She
could scarcely realize that her little expedition, undertaken with so
much ardent and earnest curiosity only a quarter of an hour ago, had
ended in so deplorable a surfeit of sensation. She had gone out in
obedience to an innocent and, indeed, laudable desire to ascertain how
Major Benjy spent those evenings on which he had deceived her into
imagining that, owing to her influence, he had gone ever so early to
bed, only to find that he sat up ever so late and that she was fettered
by a promise not to breathe to a soul a single word about the depravity
of Captain Puffin, on pain of being herself accused out of the mouth of
two witnesses of being equally depraved herself. More wounding yet was
the part played by her Major Benjy in these odious transactions, and it
was only possible to conclude that he put a higher value on his
fellowship with his degraded friend than on chivalry itself… And
what did his silence imply? Probably it was a defensive one; he imagined
that he,[199]
too, would be included in the stories that Miss Mapp proposed to sow
broadcast upon the fruitful fields of Tilling, and, indeed, when she
called to mind his bellowing about worm-casts, his general instability
of speech and equilibrium, she told herself that he had ample cause for
such a supposition. He, when his lights were out, was abetting,
assisting and perhaps joining Captain Puffin. When his window was alight
on alternate nights she made no doubt now that Captain Puffin was
performing a similar rôle. This had been going on for weeks under
her very nose, without her having the smallest suspicion of it.

Humiliated by all that had happened, and flattened in her own estimation
by the sense of her blindness, she penetrated to the kitchen and lit a
gas-ring to make herself some hot cocoa, which would at least comfort
her physical chatterings. There was a letter for Withers, slipped
sideways into its envelope, on the kitchen table, and mechanically she
opened and read it by the bluish flame of the burner. She had always
suspected Withers of having a young man, and here was proof of it. But
that he should be Mr. Hopkins of the fish-shop!

There is known to medical science a pleasant device known as a
counter-irritant. If the patient has an aching and rheumatic joint he is
counselled to put some hot burning application on the skin, which smarts
so agonizingly that the ache is quite extinguished. Metaphorically, Mr.
Hopkins was thermogene to Miss Mapp’s outraged and aching
consciousness, and the smart occasioned by the knowledge that Withers
must have encouraged Mr. Hopkins (else he could scarcely have written a
letter so familiar and amorous), and thus be contemplating matrimony,
relieved the aching humiliation of all that had happened in the
sea-mist. It shed a new and lurid light on Withers,[200]
it made her mistress feel that she had nourished a serpent in her bosom,
to think that Withers was contemplating so odious an act of selfishness
as matrimony. It would be necessary to find a new parlour-maid, and all
the trouble connected with that would not nearly be compensated for by
being able to buy fish at a lower rate. That was the least that Withers
could do for her, to insist that Mr. Hopkins should let her have dabs
and plaice exceptionally cheap. And ought she to tell Withers that she
had seen Mr. Hopkins … no, that was impossible: she must write
it, if she decided (for Withers’ sake) to make this fell
communication.

Miss Mapp turned and tossed on her uneasy bed, and her mind went back to
the Major and the Captain and that fiasco in the fog. Of course she was
perfectly at liberty (having made her promise under practical
compulsion) to tell everybody in Tilling what had occurred, trusting to
the chivalry of the men not to carry out their counter threat, but
looking at the matter quite dispassionately, she did not think it would
be wise to trust too much to chivalry. Still, even if they did carry out
their unmanly menace, nobody would seriously believe that she had been
drunk. But they might make a very disagreeable joke of pretending to do
so, and, in a word, the prospect frightened her. Whatever Tilling did or
did not believe, a residuum of ridicule would assuredly cling to her,
and her reputation of having perhaps been the cause of the quarrel
which, so happily did not end in a duel, would be lost for ever. Evie
would squeak, quaint Irene would certainly burst into hoarse laughter
when she heard the story. It was very inconvenient that honesty should
be the best policy.

Her brain still violently active switched off for a moment[201]
on to the eternal problem of the portmanteau. Why, so she asked herself
for the hundredth time, if the portmanteau contained the fatal apparatus
of duelling, did not the combatants accompany it? And if (the only other
alternative) it did not——?

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the
room had leaped into light. The challenge distinctly said that Major
Benjy’s seconds would wait upon Captain Puffin in the course of
the morning. With what object then could the former have gone down to
the station to catch the early train? There could be but one object,
namely to get away as quickly as possible from the dangerous vicinity of
the challenged Captain. And why did Captain Puffin leave that note on
his table to say that he was suddenly called away, except in order to
escape from the ferocious neighbourhood of his challenger?

“The cowards!” ejaculated Miss Mapp. “They both ran
away from each other! How blind I’ve been!”

The veil was rent. She perceived how, carried away with the notion that
a duel was to be fought among the sand-dunes, Tilling had quite
overlooked the significance of the early train. She felt sure that she
had solved everything now, and gave herself up to a rapturous
consideration of what use she would make of the precious solution. All
regrets for the impossibility of ruining the character of Captain Puffin
with regard to intoxicants were gone, for she had an even deadlier
blacking to hand. No faintest hesitation at ruining the reputation of
Major Benjy as well crossed her mind; she gloried in it, for he had not
only caused her to deceive herself about the early hours on alternate
nights, but by his infamous willingness to back up Captain
Puffin’s bargain, he had shown himself[202]
imperviously waterproof to all chivalrous impulses. For weeks now the
sorry pair of them had enjoyed the spurious splendours of being men of
blood and valour, when all the time they had put themselves to all sorts
of inconvenience in catching early trains and packing bags by
candle-light in order to escape the hot impulses of quarrel that, as she
saw now, were probably derived from drained whisky-bottles. That
mysterious holloaing about worm-casts was just such another
disagreement. And, crowning rapture of all, her own position as cause of
the projected duel was quite unassailed. Owing to her silence about
drink, no one would suspect a mere drunken brawl: she would still figure
as heroine, though the heroes were terribly dismantled. To be sure, it
would have been better if their ardour about her had been such that one
of them, at the least, had been prepared to face the ordeal, that they
had not both preferred flight, but even without that she had much to be
thankful for. “It will serve them both,” said Miss Mapp
(interrupted by a sneeze, for she had been sitting up in bed for quite a
considerable time), “right.”

To one of Miss Mapp’s experience, the first step of her new and
delightful strategic campaign was obvious, and she spent hardly any time
at all in the window of her garden-room after breakfast next morning,
but set out with her shopping-basket at an unusually early hour. She
shuddered as she passed between the front doors of her miscreant
neighbours, for the chill of last night’s mist and its dreadful
memories still lingered there, but her present errand warmed her soul
even as the tepid November day comforted her body. No sign of life was
at present evident in those bibulous abodes, no qui-his had indicated
breakfast, and she put her utmost irony into[203]
the reflection that the United Services slept late after their
protracted industry last night over diaries and Roman roads. By a
natural revulsion, violent in proportion to the depth of her previous
regard for Major Benjy, she hugged herself more closely on the prospect
of exposing him than on that of exposing the other. She had had
daydreams about Major Benjy and the conversion of these into nightmares
annealed her softness into the semblance of some red-hot stone, giving
vengeance a concentrated sweetness as of saccharine contrasted with
ordinary lump sugar. This sweetness was of so powerful a quality that
she momentarily forgot all about the contents of Withers’s letter
on the kitchen table, and tripped across to Mr. Hopkins’s with an
oblivious smile for him.

“Good morning, Mr. Hopkins,” she said. “I wonder if
you’ve got a nice little dab for my dinner to-day? Yes? Will you
send it up then, please? What a mild morning, like May!”

The opening move, of course, was to tell Diva about the revelation that
had burst on her the night before. Diva was incomparably the best
disseminator of news: she walked so fast, and her telegraphic style was
so brisk and lucid. Her terse tongue, her revolving feet! Such a gossip!

“Diva darling, I had to look in a moment,” said Elizabeth,
pecking her affectionately on both cheeks. “Such a bit of
news!”

“Oh, Contessa di Faradidleony,” said Diva sarcastically.
“I heard yesterday. Journey put off.”

Miss Mapp just managed to stifle the excitement which would have
betrayed that this was news to her.

“No, dear, not that,” she said. “I didn’t
suspect you of not knowing that. Unfortunate though, isn’t it,
just[204]
when we were all beginning to believe that there was a Contessa di
Faradidleony! What a sweet name! For my part I shall believe in her when
I see her. Poor Mr. Wyse!”

“What’s the news then?” asked Diva.

“My dear, it all came upon me in a flash,” said Elizabeth.
“It explains the portmanteau and the early train and the
duel.”

Diva looked disappointed. She thought this was to be some solid piece of
news, not one of Elizabeth’s ideas only.

“Drive ahead,” she said.

“They ran away from each other,” said Elizabeth, mouthing
her words as if speaking to a totally deaf person who understood
lip-reading. “Never mind the cause of the duel: that’s
another affair. But whatever the cause,” here she dropped her
eyes, “the Major having sent the challenge packed his portmanteau.
He ran away, dear Diva, and met Captain Puffin at the station running
away too.”

“But did——” began Diva.

“Yes, dear, the note on Captain Puffin’s table to his
housekeeper said he was called away suddenly. What called him away?
Cowardice, dear! How ignoble it all is. And we’ve all been
thinking how brave and wonderful they were. They fled from each other,
and came back together and played golf. I never thought it was a game
for men. The sand-dunes where they were supposed to be fighting! They
might lose a ball there, but that would be the utmost. Not a life. Poor
Padre! Going out there to stop a duel, and only finding a game of golf.
But I understand the nature of men better now. What an
eye-opener!”

Diva by this time was trundling away round the room,[205]
and longing to be off in order to tell everybody. She could find no hole
in Elizabeth’s arguments; it was founded as solidly as a Euclidean
proposition.

“Ever occurred to you that they drink?” she asked.
“Believe in Roman roads and diaries? I don’t.”

Miss Mapp bounded from her chair. Danger flags flapped and crimsoned in
her face. What if Diva went flying round Tilling, suggesting that in
addition to being cowards those two men were drunkards? They would, as
soon as any hint of the further exposure reached them, conclude that she
had set the idea on foot, and then——

“No, Diva darling,” she said, “don’t dream of
imagining such a thing. So dangerous to hint anything of the sort.
Cowards they may be, and indeed are, but never have I seen anything that
leads me to suppose that they drink. We must give them their due, and
stick to what we know; we must not launch accusations wildly about other
matters, just because we know they are cowards. A coward need not be a
drunkard, thank God! It is all miserable enough, as it is!”

Having averted this danger, Miss Mapp, with her radiant, excited face,
seemed to be bearing all the misery very courageously, and as Diva could
no longer be restrained from starting on her morning round they plunged
together into the maelstrom of the High Street, riding and whirling in
its waters with the solution of the portmanteau and the early train for
life-buoy. Very little shopping was done that morning, for every
permutation and combination of Tilling society (with the exception, of
course, of the cowards) had to be formed on the pavement with a view to
the amplest possible discussion. Diva, as might have been expected, gave
proof of her accustomed perfidy before long, for she certainly gave
the[206]
Padre to understand that the chain of inductive reasoning was of her own
welding and Elizabeth had to hurry after him to correct this grabbing
impression; but the discovery in itself was so great, that small false
notes like these could not spoil the glorious harmony. Even Mr. Wyse
abandoned his usual neutrality with regard to social politics and left
his tall malacca cane in the chemist’s, so keen was his gusto, on
seeing Miss Mapp on the pavement outside, to glean any fresh detail of
evidence.

By eleven o’clock that morning, the two duellists were universally
known as “the cowards,” the Padre alone demurring, and being
swampingly outvoted. He held (sticking up for his sex) that the Major
had been brave enough to send a challenge (on whatever subject) to his
friend, and had, though he subsequently failed to maintain that high
level, shown courage of a high order, since, for all he knew, Captain
Puffin might have accepted it. Miss Mapp was spokesman for the mind of
Tilling on this too indulgent judgment.

“Dear Padre,” she said, “you are too generous
altogether. They both ran away: you can’t get over that. Besides
you must remember that, when the Major sent the challenge, he knew
Captain Puffin, oh so well, and quite expected he would run
away——”

“Then why did he run away himself?” asked the Padre.

This was rather puzzling for a moment, but Miss Mapp soon thought of the
explanation.

“Oh, just to make sure,” she said, and Tilling applauded her
ready irony.

And then came the climax of sensationalism, when at about ten minutes
past eleven the two cowards emerged into the High Street on their way to
catch the 11.20[207]
tram out to the links. The day threatened rain, and they both carried
bags which contained a change of clothes. Just round the corner of the
High Street was the group which had applauded Miss Mapp’s
quickness, and the cowards were among the breakers. They glanced at each
other, seeing that Miss Mapp was the most towering of the breakers, but
it was too late to retreat, and they made the usual salutations.

“Good morning,” said Diva, with her voice trembling.
“Off to catch the early train together—I mean the
tram.”

“Good morning, Captain Puffin,” said Miss Mapp with extreme
sweetness. “What a nice little travelling bag! Oh, and the
Major’s got one too! H’m!”

A certain dismay looked from Major Flint’s eyes, Captain
Puffin’s mouth fell open, and he forgot to shut it.

“Yes; change of clothes,” said the Major. “It looks a
threatening morning.”

“Very threatening,” said Miss Mapp. “I hope you will
do nothing rash or dangerous.”

There was a moment’s silence, and the two looked from one face to
another of this fell group. They all wore fixed, inexplicable smiles.

“It will be pleasant among the sand-dunes,” said the Padre,
and his wife gave a loud squeak.

“Well, we shall be missing our tram,” said the Major.
“Au—au reservoir, ladies.”

Nobody responded at all, and they hurried off down the street, their
bags bumping together very inconveniently.

“Something’s up, Major,” said Puffin, with true
Tilling perspicacity, as soon as they had got out of hearing…

Precisely at the same moment Miss Mapp gave a little cooing laugh.

[208]
“Now I must run and do my bittie shopping, Padre,” she said,
and kissed her hand all round… The curtain had to come down for a
little while on so dramatic a situation. Any discussion, just then,
would be an anti-climax.

CHAPTER IX

Captain Puffin found but a sombre diarist when he came over to study his
Roman roads with Major Flint that evening, and indeed he was a sombre
antiquarian himself. They had pondered a good deal during the day over
their strange reception in the High Street that morning and the
recondite allusions to bags, sand-dunes and early trains, and the more
they pondered the more probable it became that not only was something
up, but, as regards the duel, everything was up. For weeks now they had
been regarded by the ladies of Tilling with something approaching
veneration, but there seemed singularly little veneration at the back of
the comments this morning. Following so closely on the encounter with
Miss Mapp last night, this irreverent attitude was probably due to some
atheistical manœuvre of hers. Such, at least, was the
Major’s view, and when he held a view he usually stated it, did
Sporting Benjy.

“We’ve got you to thank for this, Puffin,” he said.
“Upon my soul, I was ashamed of you for saying what you did to
Miss Mapp last night. Utter absence of any chivalrous feeling hinting
that if she said you were drunk you would say she was. She was as sober
and lucid last night as she was this morning. And she was devilish
lucid, to my mind, this morning.”

“Pity you didn’t take her part last night,” said
Puffin.[209]
“You thought that was a very ingenious idea of mine to make her
hold her tongue.”

“There are finer things in this world, sir, than ingenuity,”
said the Major. “What your ingenuity has led to is this public
ridicule. You may not mind that yourself—you may be used to
it—but a man should regard the consequences of his act on
others… My status in Tilling is completely changed. Changed for
the worse, sir.”

Puffin emitted his fluty, disagreeable laugh.

“If your status in Tilling depended on a reputation for
bloodthirsty bravery,” he said, “the sooner it was changed
the better. We’re in the same boat: I don’t say I like the
boat, but there we are. Have a drink, and you’ll feel better.
Never mind your status.”

“I’ve a good mind never to have a drink again,” said
the Major, pouring himself out one of his stiff little glasses,
“if a drink leads to this sort of thing.”

“But it didn’t,” said Puffin. “How it all got
out, I can’t say, nor for that matter can you. If it hadn’t
been for me last night, it would have been all over Tilling that you and
I were tipsy as well. That wouldn’t have improved our status that
I can see.”

“It was in consequence of what you said to
Mapp——” began the Major.

“But, good Lord, where’s the connection?” asked
Puffin. “Produce the connection! Let’s have a look at the
connection! There ain’t any connection! Duelling wasn’t as
much as mentioned last night.”

Major Flint pondered this in gloomy, sipping silence.

“Bridge-party at Mrs. Poppit’s the day after
to-morrow,” he said. “I don’t feel as if I could face
it. Suppose they all go on making allusions to duelling and early trains
and that? I shan’t be able to keep my mind on the cards[210]
for fear of it. More than a sensitive man ought to be asked to
bear.”

Puffin made a noise that sounded rather like “Fudge!”

“Your pardon?” said the Major haughtily.

“Granted by all means,” said Puffin. “But I
don’t see what you’re in such a taking about. We’re no
worse off than we were before we got a reputation for being such
fire-eaters. Being fire-eaters is a wash-out, that’s all. Pleasant
while it lasted, and now we’re as we were.”

“But we’re not,” said the Major. “We’re
detected frauds! That’s not the same as being a fraud; far from
it. And who’s going to rub it in, my friend? Who’s been
rubbing away for all she’s worth? Miss Mapp, to whom, if I may say
so without offence, you behaved like a cur last night.”

“And another cur stood by and wagged his tail,” retorted
Puffin.

This was about as far as it was safe to go, and Puffin hastened to say
something pleasant about the hearthrug, to which his friend had a
suitable rejoinder. But after the affair last night, and the dark
sayings in the High Street this morning, there was little content or
cosiness about the session. Puffin’s brazen optimism was but a
tinkling cymbal, and the Major did not feel like tinkling at all. He but
snorted and glowered, revolving in his mind how to square Miss Mapp.
Allied with her, if she could but be won over, he felt he could face the
rest of Tilling with indifference, for hers would be the most
penetrating shafts, the most stinging pleasantries. He had more too, so
he reflected, to lose than Puffin, for till the affair of the duel the
other had never been credited with deeds of bloodthirsty gallantry,
whereas he had enjoyed no end of a reputation in amorous and honourable
affairs. Marriage[211]
no doubt would settle it satisfactorily, but this bachelor life, with
plenty of golf and diaries, was not to be lightly exchanged for the
unknown. Short of that …

A light broke, and he got to his feet, following the gleam and walking
very lame out of general discomfiture.

“Tell you what it is, Puffin,” he said. “You and I,
particularly you, owe that estimable lady a very profound apology for
what happened last night. You ought to withdraw every word you said, and
I every word that I didn’t say.”

“Can’t be done,” said Puffin. “That would be
giving up my hold over your lady friend. We should be known as drunkards
all over the shop before you could say winkie. Worse off than
before.”

“Not a bit of it. If it’s Miss Mapp, and I’m sure it
is, who has been spreading these—these damaging rumours about our
duel, it’s because she’s outraged and offended, quite
rightly, at your conduct to her last night. Mine, too, if you like.
Ample apology, sir, that’s the ticket.”

“Dog-ticket,” said Puffin. “No thanks.”

“Very objectionable expression,” said Major Flint.
“But you shall do as you like. And so, with your permission, shall
I. I shall apologize for my share in that sorry performance, in which,
thank God, I only played a minor rôle. That’s my view, and
if you don’t like it, you may dislike it.”

Puffin yawned.

“Mapp’s a cat,” he said. “Stroke a cat and
you’ll get scratched. Shy a brick at a cat, and she’ll spit
at you and skedaddle. You’re poor company to-night, Major, with
all these qualms.”

“Then, sir, you can relieve yourself of my company,” said
the Major, “by going home.”

[212]
“Just what I was about to do. Good night, old boy. Same time
to-morrow for the tram, if you’re not too badly mauled.”

Miss Mapp, sitting by the hot-water pipes in the garden-room, looked out
not long after to see what the night was like. Though it was not yet
half-past ten the cowards’ sitting-rooms were both dark, and she
wondered what precisely that meant. There was no bridge-party anywhere
that night, and apparently there were no diaries or Roman roads either.
Why this sober and chastened darkness?…

The Major qui-hied for his breakfast at an unusually early hour next
morning, for the courage of this resolve to placate, if possible, the
hostility of Miss Mapp had not, like that of the challenge, oozed out
during the night. He had dressed himself in his frock-coat, seen last on
the occasion when the Prince of Wales proved not to have come by the
6.37, and no female breast however furious could fail to recognize the
compliment of such a formality. Dressed thus, with top-hat and
patent-leather boots, he was clearly observed from the garden-room to
emerge into the street just when Captain Puffin’s hand thrust the
sponge on to the window-sill of his bath-room. Probably he too had
observed this apparition, for his fingers prematurely loosed hold of the
sponge, and it bounded into the street. Wild surmises flashed into Miss
Mapp’s active brain, the most likely of which was that Major Benjy
was going to propose to Mrs. Poppit, for if he had been going up to
London for some ceremonial occasion, he would be walking down the street
instead of up it. And then she saw his agitated finger press the
electric bell of her own door. So he was not on his way to propose to
Mrs. Poppit…

She slid from the room and hurried across the few steps[213]
of garden to the house just in time to intercept Withers though not with
any idea of saying that she was out. Then Withers, according to
instructions, waited till Miss Mapp had tiptoed upstairs, and conducted
the Major to the garden-room, promising that she would
“tell” her mistress. This was unnecessary, as her mistress
knew. The Major pressed a half-crown into her astonished hand, thinking
it was a florin. He couldn’t precisely account for that impulse,
but general propitiation was at the bottom of it.

Miss Mapp meantime had sat down on her bed, and firmly rejected the idea
that his call had anything to do with marriage. During all these years
of friendliness he had not got so far as that, and, whatever the future
might hold, it was not likely that he would begin now at this moment
when she was so properly punishing him for his unchivalrous behaviour.
But what could the frock-coat mean? (There was Captain Puffin’s
servant picking up the sponge. She hoped it was covered with mud.) It
would be a very just continuation of his punishment to tell Withers she
would not see him, but the punishment which that would entail on herself
would be more than she could bear, for she would not know a
moment’s peace while she was ignorant of the nature of his errand.
Could he be on his way to the Padre’s to challenge him for that
very stinging allusion to sand-dunes yesterday, and was he come to give
her fair warning, so that she might stop a duel? It did not seem likely.
Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she adjusted her face in the
glass to an expression of frozen dignity and threw over her shoulders
the cloak trimmed with blue in which, on the occasion of the
Prince’s visit, she had sat down in the middle of the road. That
matched the Major’s frock-coat.

She hummed a little song as she mounted the few steps[214]
to the garden-room, and stopped just after she had opened the door. She
did not offer to shake hands.

“You wish to see me, Major Flint?” she said, in such a voice
as icebergs might be supposed to use when passing each other by night in
the Arctic seas.

Major Flint certainly looked as if he hated seeing her, instead of
wishing it, for he backed into a corner of the room and dropped his hat.

“Good morning, Miss Mapp,” he said. “Very good of you.
I—I called.”

He clearly had a difficulty in saying what he had come to say, but if he
thought that she was proposing to give him the smallest assistance, he
was in error.

“Yes, you called,” said she. “Pray be seated.”

He did so; she stood; he got up again.

“I called,” said the Major, “I called to express my
very deep regret at my share, or, rather, that I did not take a more
active share—I allowed, in fact, a friend of mine to speak to you
in a manner that did equal discredit——”

Miss Mapp put her head on one side, as if trying to recollect some
trivial and unimportant occurrence.

“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”

“Captain Puffin,” began the Major.

Then Miss Mapp remembered it all.

“I hope, Major Flint,” she said, “that you will not
find it necessary to mention Captain Puffin’s name to me. I wish
him nothing but well, but he and his are no concern of mine. I have the
charity to suppose that he was quite drunk on the occasion to which I
imagine you allude. Intoxication alone could excuse what he said. Let us
leave Captain Puffin out of whatever you have come to say to me.”

[215]
This was adroit; it compelled the Major to begin all over again.

“I come entirely on my own account,” he began.

“I understand,” said Miss Mapp, instantly bringing Captain
Puffin in again. “Captain Puffin, now I presume sober, has no
regret for what he said when drunk. I quite see, and I expected no more
and no less from him. Yes. I am afraid I interrupted you.”

Major Flint threw his friend overboard like ballast from a bumping
balloon.

“I speak for myself,” he said. “I behaved, Miss Mapp,
like a—ha—worm. Defenceless lady, insolent fellow
drunk—I allude to Captain P——. I’m very sorry
for my part in it.”

Up till this moment Miss Mapp had not made up her mind whether she
intended to forgive him or not; but here she saw how crushing a penalty
she might be able to inflict on Puffin if she forgave the erring and
possibly truly repentant Major. He had already spoken strongly about his
friend’s offence, and she could render life supremely nasty for
them both—particularly Puffin—if she made the Major agree
that he could not, if truly sorry, hold further intercourse with him.
There would be no more golf, no more diaries. Besides, if she was
observed to be friendly with the Major again and to cut Captain Puffin,
a very natural interpretation would be that she had learned that in the
original quarrel the Major had been defending her from some odious
tongue to the extent of a challenge, even though he subsequently ran
away. Tilling was quite clever enough to make that inference without any
suggestion from her… But if she forgave neither of them, they
would probably go on boozing and golfing together, and saying quite
dreadful things about[216]
her, and not care very much whether she forgave them or not. Her mind
was made up, and she gave a wan smile.

“Oh, Major Flint,” she said, “it hurt me so dreadfully
that you should have stood by and heard that Man—if he is a
man—say those awful things to me and not take my side. It made me
feel so lonely. I had always been such good friends with you, and then
you turned your back on me like that. I didn’t know what I had
done to deserve it. I lay awake ever so long.”

This was affecting, and he violently rubbed the nap of his hat the wrong
way… Then Miss Mapp broke into her sunniest smile.

“Oh, I’m so glad you came to say you were sorry!” she
said. “Dear Major Benjy, we’re quite friends again.”

She dabbed her handkerchief on her eyes.

“So foolish of me!” she said. “Now sit down in my most
comfortable chair and have a cigarette.”

Major Flint made a peck at the hand she extended to him, and cleared his
throat to indicate emotion. It really was a great relief to think that
she would not make awful allusions to duels in the middle of
bridge-parties.

“And since you feel as you do about Captain Puffin,” she
said, “of course, you won’t see anything more of him. You
and I are quite one, aren’t we, about that? You have dissociated
yourself from him completely. The fact of your being sorry does
that.”

It was quite clear to the Major that this condition was involved in his
forgiveness, though that fact, so obvious to Miss Mapp, had not occurred
to him before. Still, he had to accept it, or go unhouseled again. He
could explain to Puffin, under cover of night, or perhaps in
deaf-and-dumb alphabet from his window…

[217]
“Infamous, unforgivable behaviour!” he said.
“Pah!”

“So glad you feel that,” said Miss Mapp, smiling till he saw
the entire row of her fine teeth. “And oh, may I say one little
thing more? I feel this: I feel that the dreadful shock to me of being
insulted like that was quite a lovely little blessing in disguise, now
that the effect has been to put an end to your intimacy with him. I
never liked it, and I liked it less than ever the other night.
He’s not a fit friend for you. Oh, I’m so thankful!”

Major Flint saw that for the present he was irrevocably committed to
this clause in the treaty of peace. He could not face seeing it torn up
again, as it certainly would be, if he failed to accept it in its
entirety, nor could he imagine himself leaving the room with a renewal
of hostilities. He would lose his game of golf to-day as it was, for
apart from the fact that he would scarcely have time to change his
clothes (the idea of playing golf in a frock-coat and top-hat was
inconceivable) and catch the 11.20 tram, he could not be seen in
Puffin’s company at all. And, indeed, in the future, unless Puffin
could be induced to apologize and Miss Mapp to forgive, he saw, if he
was to play golf at all with his friend, that endless deceptions and
subterfuges were necessary in order to escape detection. One of them
would have to set out ten minutes before the other, and walk to the tram
by some unusual and circuitous route; they would have to play in a
clandestine and furtive manner, parting company before they got to the
club-house; disguises might be needful; there was a peck of difficulties
ahead. But he would have to go into these later; at present he must be
immersed in the rapture of his forgiveness.

“Most generous of you, Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “As
for that—well, I won’t allude to him again.”

[218]
Miss Mapp gave a happy little laugh, and having made a further plan,
switched away from the subject of captains and insults with alacrity.

“Look!” she said. “I found these little rosebuds in
flower still, though it is the end of November. Such brave little
darlings, aren’t they? One for your button-hole, Major Benjy? And
then I must do my little shoppings or Withers will scold
me—Withers is so severe with me, keeps me in such order! If you
are going into the town, will you take me with you? I will put on my
hat.”

Requests for the present were certainly commands, and two minutes later
they set forth. Luck, as usual, befriended ability, for there was Puffin
at his door, itching for the Major’s return (else they would miss
the tram); and lo! there came stepping along Miss Mapp in her
blue-trimmed cloak, and the Major attired as for marriage—top-hat,
frock-coat and button-hole. She did not look at Puffin and cut him; she
did not seem (with the deceptiveness of appearances) to see him at all,
so eager and agreeable was her conversation with her companion. The
Major, so Puffin thought, attempted to give him some sort of dazed and
hunted glance; but he could not be certain even of that, so swiftly had
it to be transformed into a genial interest in what Miss Mapp was
saying, and Puffin stared open-mouthed after them, for they were
terrible as an army with banners. Then Diva, trundling swiftly out of
the fish-shop, came, as well she might, to a dead halt, observing this
absolutely inexplicable phenomenon.

“Good morning, Diva darling,” said Miss Mapp. “Major
Benjy and I are doing our little shopping together. So kind of him,
isn’t it? and very naughty of me to[219]
take up his time. I told him he ought to be playing golf. Such a lovely
day! Au reservoir, sweet! Oh, and there’s the Padre, Major Benjy!
How quickly he walks! Yes, he sees us! And there’s Mrs. Poppit;
everybody is enjoying the sunshine. What a beautiful fur coat, though I
should think she found it very heavy and warm. Good morning, dear Susan!
You shopping, too, like Major Benjy and me? How is your dear
Isabel?”

Miss Mapp made the most of that morning; the magnanimity of her
forgiveness earned her incredible dividends. Up and down the High Street
she went, with Major Benjy in attendance, buying grocery, stationery,
gloves, eau-de-Cologne, boot-laces, the “Literary
Supplement” of The Times, dried camomile flowers, and every
conceivable thing that she might possibly need in the next week, so that
her shopping might be as protracted as possible. She allowed him (such
was her firmness in “spoiling” him) to carry her
shopping-basket, and when that was full, she decked him like a
sacrificial ram with little parcels hung by loops of string. Sometimes
she took him into a shop in case there might be someone there who had
not seen him yet on her leash; sometimes she left him on the pavement in
a prominent position, marking, all the time, just as if she had been a
clinical thermometer, the feverish curiosity that was burning in
Tilling’s veins. Only yesterday she had spread the news of his
cowardice broadcast; to-day their comradeship was of the chattiest and
most genial kind. There he was, carrying her basket, and wearing
frock-coat and top-hat and hung with parcels like a Christmas-tree,
spending the entire morning with her instead of golfing with Puffin.
Miss Mapp positively shuddered as she tried to realize what her state of
mind would have been, if she had seen him thus coupled with[220]
Diva. She would have suspected (rightly in all probability) some
loathsome intrigue against herself. And the cream of it was that until
she chose, nobody could possibly find out what had caused this
metamorphosis so paralysing to inquiring intellects, for Major Benjy
would assuredly never tell anyone that there was a reconciliation, due
to his apology for his rudeness, when he had stood by and permitted an
intoxicated Puffin to suggest disgraceful bargains. Tilling—poor
Tilling—would go crazy with suspense as to what it all meant.

Never had there been such a shopping! It was nearly lunch-time when, at
her front door, Major Flint finally stripped himself of her parcels and
her companionship and hobbled home, profusely perspiring, and lame from
so much walking on pavements in tight patent-leather shoes. He was weary
and footsore; he had had no golf, and, though forgiven, was but a wreck.
She had made him ridiculous all the morning with his frock-coat and
top-hat and his porterages, and if forgiveness entailed any more of
these nightmare sacraments of friendliness, he felt that he would be
unable to endure the fatiguing accessories of the regenerate state. He
hung up his top-hat and wiped his wet and throbbing head; he kicked off
his shoes and shed his frock-coat, and furiously qui-hied for a whisky
and soda and lunch.

His physical restoration was accompanied by a quickening of dismay at
the general prospect. What (to put it succinctly) was life worth, even
when unharassed by allusions to duels, without the solace of golf,
quarrels and diaries in the companionship of Puffin? He hated
Puffin—no one more so—but he could not possibly get on
without him, and it was entirely due to Puffin that he had spent so
outrageous a morning, for Puffin, seeking[221]
to silence Miss Mapp by his intoxicated bargain, had been the prime
cause of all this misery. He could not even, for fear of that all-seeing
eye in Miss Mapp’s garden-room, go across to the house of the
unforgiven sea-captain, and by a judicious recital of his woes induce
him to beg Miss Mapp’s forgiveness instantly. He would have to
wait till the kindly darkness fell… “Mere slavery!”
he exclaimed with passion.

A tap at his sitting-room door interrupted the chain of these melancholy
reflections, and his permission to enter was responded to by Puffin
himself. The Major bounced from his seat.

“You mustn’t stop here,” he said in a low voice, as if
afraid that he might be overheard. “Miss Mapp may have seen you
come in.”

Puffin laughed shrilly.

“Why, of course she did,” he gaily assented. “She was
at her window all right. Ancient lights, I shall call her. What’s
this all about now?”

“You must go back,” said Major Flint agitatedly. “She
must see you go back. I can’t explain now. But I’ll come
across after dinner when it’s dark. Go; don’t wait.”

He positively hustled the mystified Puffin out of the house, and Miss
Mapp’s face, which had grown sharp and pointed with doubts and
suspicions when she observed him enter Major Benjy’s house,
dimpled, as she saw him return, into her sunniest smiles. “Dear
Major Benjy,” she said, “he has refused to see him,”
and she cut the string of the large cardboard box which had just arrived
from the dyer’s with the most pleasurable anticipations…

Well, it was certainly very magnificent, and Miss Greele was quite
right, for there was not the faintest tinge[222]
to show that it had originally been kingfisher-blue. She had not quite
realized how brilliant crimson-lake was in the piece; it seemed almost
to cast a ruddy glow on the very ceiling, and the fact that she had
caused the orange chiffon with which the neck and sleeves were trimmed
to be dyed black (following the exquisite taste of Mrs. Titus Trout)
only threw the splendour of the rest into more dazzling radiance.
Kingfisher-blue would appear quite ghostly and corpse-like in its
neighbourhood; and painful though that would be for Diva, it would, as
all her well-wishers must hope, be a lesson to her not to indulge in
such garishness. She should be taught her lesson (D.V.), thought Miss
Mapp, at Susan’s bridge-party to-morrow evening. Captain Puffin
was being taught a lesson, too, for we are never too old to learn, or,
for that matter, to teach.

Though the night was dark and moonless, there was an inconveniently
brilliant gas-lamp close to the Major’s door, and that strategist,
carrying his round roll of diaries, much the shape of a bottle, under
his coat, went about half-past nine that evening to look at the
rain-gutter which had been weeping into his yard, and let himself out of
the back-door round the corner. From there he went down past the
fishmonger’s, crossed the road, and doubled back again up
Puffin’s side of the street, which was not so vividly illuminated,
though he took the precaution of making himself little with bent knees,
and of limping. Puffin was already warming himself over the fire and
imbibing Roman roads, and was disposed to be hilarious over the
Major’s shopping.

“But why top-hat and frock-coat, Major?” he asked.
“Another visit of the Prince of Wales, I asked myself, or the
Voice that breathed o’er Eden? Have a drink—one[223]
of mine, I mean? I owe you a drink for the good laugh you gave
me.”

Had it not been for this generosity and the need of getting on the right
side of Puffin, Major Flint would certainly have resented such clumsy
levity, but this double consideration caused him to take it with
unwonted good-humour. His attempt to laugh, indeed, sounded a little
hollow, but that is the habit of self-directed merriment.

“Well, I allow it must have seemed amusing,” he said.
“The fact was that I thought she would appreciate my putting a
little ceremony into my errand of apology, and then she whisked me off
shopping before I could go and change.”

“Kiss and friends again, then?” asked Puffin.

The Major grew a little stately over this.

“No such familiarity passed,” he said. “But she
accepted my regrets with—ha—the most gracious generosity. A
fine-spirited woman, sir; you’ll find the same.”

“I might if I looked for it,” said Puffin. “But why
should I want to make it up? You’ve done that, and that prevents
her talking about duelling and early trains. She can’t mock at me
because of you. You might pass me back my bottle, if you’ve taken
your drink.”

The Major reluctantly did so.

“You must please yourself, old boy,” he said.
“It’s your business, and no one’s ever said that Benjy
Flint interfered in another man’s affairs. But I trust you will do
what good feeling indicates. I hope you value our jolly games of golf
and our pleasant evenings sufficiently highly.”

“Eh! how’s that?” asked Puffin. “You going to
cut me too?”

The Major sat down and put his large feet on the fender.[224]
“Tact and diplomacy, Benjy, my boy,” he reminded himself.

“Ha! That’s what I like,” he said, “a good fire
and a friend, and the rest of the world may go hang. There’s no
question of cutting, old man; I needn’t tell you that—but we
must have one of our good talks. For instance, I very unceremoniously
turned you out of my house this afternoon, and I owe you an explanation
of that. I’ll give it you in one word: Miss Mapp saw you come in.
She didn’t see me come in here this evening—ha!
ha!—and that’s why I can sit at my ease. But if she
knew——”

Puffin guessed.

“What has happened, Major, is that you’ve thrown me over for
Miss Mapp,” he observed.

“No, sir, I have not,” said the Major with emphasis.
“Should I be sitting here and drinking your whisky if I had? But
this morning, after that lady had accepted my regret for my share in
what occurred the other night, she assumed that since I condemned my own
conduct unreservedly, I must equally condemn yours. It really was like a
conjuring trick; the thing was done before I knew anything about it. And
before I’d had time to say, ‘Hold on a bit,’ I was
being led up and down the High Street, carrying as much merchandise as a
drove of camels. God, sir, I suffered this morning; you don’t seem
to realize that I suffered; I couldn’t stand any more mornings
like that: I haven’t the stamina.”

“A powerful woman,” said Puffin reflectively.

“You may well say that,” observed Major Flint. “That
is finely said. A powerful woman she is, with a powerful tongue, and
able to be powerful nasty, and if she sees you and me on friendly terms
again, she’ll turn the full hose on to us both unless you make it
up with her.”

[225]
“H’m, yes. But as likely as not she’ll tell me and my
apologies to go hang.”

“Have a try, old man,” said the Major encouragingly.

Puffin looked at his whisky-bottle.

“Help yourself, Major,” he said. “I think you’ll
have to help me out, you know. Go and interview her: see if
there’s a chance of my favourable reception.”

“No, sir,” said the Major firmly, “I will not run the
risk of another morning’s shopping in the High Street.”

“You needn’t. Watch till she comes back from her shopping
to-morrow.”

Major Benjy clearly did not like the prospect at all, but Puffin grew
firmer and firmer in his absolute refusal to lay himself open to rebuff,
and presently, they came to an agreement that the Major was to go on his
ambassadorial errand next morning. That being settled, the still
undecided point about the worm-cast gave rise to a good deal of heat,
until, it being discovered that the window was open, and that their
voices might easily carry as far as the garden-room, they made malignant
rejoinders to each other in whispers. But it was impossible to go on
quarrelling for long in so confidential a manner, and the disagreement
was deferred to a more convenient occasion. It was late when the Major
left, and after putting out the light in Puffin’s hall, so that he
should not be silhouetted against it, he slid into the darkness, and
reached his own door by a subtle detour.

Miss Mapp had a good deal of division of her swift mind, when, next
morning, she learned the nature of Major Benjy’s second errand. If
she, like Mr. Wyse, was to encourage Puffin to hope that she would
accept his apologies, she would be obliged to remit all further
punishment[226]
of him, and allow him to consort with his friend again. It was difficult
to forgo the pleasure of his chastisement, but, on the other hand, it
was just possible that the Major might break away, and, whether she
liked it or not (and she would not), refuse permanently to give up
Puffin’s society. That would be awkward since she had publicly
paraded her reconciliation with him. What further inclined her to
clemency, was that this very evening the crimson-lake tea-gown would
shed its effulgence over Mrs. Poppit’s bridge-party, and Diva
would never want to hear the word “kingfisher” again. That
was enough to put anybody in a good temper. So the diplomatist returned
to the miscreant with the glad tidings that Miss Mapp would hear his
supplication with a favourable ear, and she took up a stately position
in the garden-room, which she selected as audience chamber, near the
bell so that she could ring for Withers if necessary.

Miss Mapp’s mercy was largely tempered with justice, and she
proposed, in spite of the leniency which she would eventually exhibit,
to give Puffin “what for,” first. She had not for him, as
for Major Benjy, that feminine weakness which had made it a positive
luxury to forgive him: she never even thought of Puffin as Captain
Dicky, far less let the pretty endearment slip off her tongue
accidentally, and the luxury which she anticipated from the interview
was that of administering a quantity of hard slaps. She had appointed
half-past twelve as the hour for his suffering, so that he must go
without his golf again.

She put down the book she was reading when he appeared, and gazed at him
stonily without speech. He[227]
limped into the middle of the room. This might be forgiveness, but it
did not look like it, and he wondered whether she had got him here on
false pretences.

“Good morning,” said he.

Miss Mapp inclined her head. Silence was gold.

“I understood from Major Flint——” began Puffin.

Speech could be gold too.

“If,” said Miss Mapp, “you have come to speak about
Major Flint you have wasted your time. And mine!”

(How different from Major Benjy, she thought. What a shrimp!)

The shrimp gave a slight gasp. The thing had got to be done, and the
sooner he was out of range of this powerful woman the better.

“I am extremely sorry for what I said to you the other
night,” he said.

“I am glad you are sorry,” said Miss Mapp.

“I offer you my apologies for what I said,” continued
Puffin.

The whip whistled.

“When you spoke to me on the occasion to which you refer,”
said Miss Mapp, “I saw of course at once that you were not in a
condition to speak to anybody. I instantly did you that justice, for I
am just to everybody. I paid no more attention to what you said than I
should have paid to any tipsy vagabond in the slums. I daresay you
hardly remember what you said, so that before I hear your expression of
regret, I will remind you of it. You threatened, unless I promised to
tell nobody in what a disgusting condition you were, to say that I was
tipsy. Elizabeth Mapp tipsy! That was what you said, Captain
Puffin.”

[228]
Captain Puffin turned extremely red. (“Now the shrimp’s
being boiled,” thought Miss Mapp.)

“I can’t do more than apologize,” said he. He did not
know whether he was angrier with his ambassador or her.

“Did you say you couldn’t do ‘more,’” said
Miss Mapp with an air of great interest. “How curious! I should
have thought you couldn’t have done less.”

“Well, what more can I do?” asked he.

“If you think,” said Miss Mapp, “that you hurt me by
your conduct that night, you are vastly mistaken. And if you think you
can do no more than apologize, I will teach you better. You can make an
effort, Captain Puffin, to break with your deplorable habits, to try to
get back a little of the self-respect, if you ever had any, which you
have lost. You can cease trying, oh, so unsuccessfully, to drag Major
Benjy down to your level. That’s what you can do.”

She let these withering observations blight him.

“I accept your apologies,” she said. “I hope you will
do better in the future, Captain Puffin, and I shall look anxiously for
signs of improvement. We will meet with politeness and friendliness when
we are brought together and I will do my best to wipe all remembrance of
your tipsy impertinence from my mind. And you must do your best too. You
are not young, and engrained habits are difficult to get rid of. But do
not despair, Captain Puffin. And now I will ring for Withers and she
will show you out.”

She rang the bell, and gave a sample of her generous oblivion.

“And we meet, do we not, this evening at Mrs.
Poppit’s?” she said, looking not at him, but about a[229]
foot above his head. “Such pleasant evenings one always has there,
I hope it will not be a wet evening, but the glass is sadly down. Oh,
Withers, Captain Puffin is going. Good morning, Captain Puffin. Such a
pleasure!”

Miss Mapp hummed a rollicking little tune as she observed him totter
down the street.

“There!” she said, and had a glass of Burgundy for
lunch as a treat.

CHAPTER X

The news that Mr. Wyse was to be of the party that evening at Mrs.
Poppit’s and was to dine there first, en famille (as he casually
let slip in order to air his French), created a disagreeable impression
that afternoon in Tilling. It was not usual to do anything more than
“have a tray” for your evening meal, if one of these winter
bridge-parties followed, and there was, to Miss Mapp’s mind, a
deplorable tendency to ostentation in this dinner-giving before a party.
Still, if Susan was determined to be extravagant, she might have asked
Miss Mapp as well, who resented this want of hospitality. She did not
like, either, this hole-and-corner en famille work with Mr. Wyse; it
indicated a pushing familiarity to which, it was hoped, Mr. Wyse’s
eyes were open.