The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Olga suddenly burst out laughing.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Georgie.

  “Oh, it’s all so delicious!” she said. “I never knew before how terribly interesting little things were. It’s all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves, and ordinary dull people, not Riseholmites, don’t see how exciting they are? Tommy Luton’s measles: the Quantocks’ secret: Elizabeth’s lover! And to think that I believed I was coming to a backwater.”

  Georgie held up his picture and half closed his eyes. “I believe it’s finished,” he said. “I shall have it framed, and put it in my drawing-room.”

  This was a trap, and Olga fell into it.

  “Yes, it will look nice there,” she said. “Really, Georgie, it is very clever of you.”

  He began washing his brushes.

  “And what was your news?” he said.

  She got up from her seat.

  “I forgot all about it, with talking of the Quantocks’ secret,” she said. “That just shows you: I completely forgot, Georgie. I’ve just accepted an offer to sing in America, a four months’ engagement, at fifty thousand million pounds a night. A penny less, and I wouldn’t have gone. But I really can’t refuse. It’s all been very sudden, but they want to produce Lucretia there before it appears in England. Then I come back, and sing in London all the summer. Oh, me!”

  There was dead silence, while Georgie dried his brushes.

  “When do you go?” he asked.

  “In about a fortnight.”

  “Oh,” said he.

  She moved down the room to the piano and shut it without speaking, while he folded the paper round his finished picture.

  “Why don’t you come, too?” she said at length. “It would do you no end of good, for you would get out of this darling two-penny place which will all go inside a nut-shell. There are big things in the world, Georgie: seas, continents, people, movements, emotions. I told my Georgie I was going to ask you, and he thoroughly approves. We both like you, you know. It would be lovely if you would come. Come for a couple of months, anyhow: of course you’ll be our guest, please.”

  The world, at that moment, had grown absolutely black to him, and it was by that that he knew who, for him, was the light of it. He shook his head.

  “Why can’t you come?” she said.

  He looked at her straight in the face.

  “Because I adore you,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The glad word went round Riseholme one March morning that the earliest flower in Perdita’s garden was in bloom. The day was one of those glories of the English spring-time, with large white clouds blown across wide spaces of blue sky by the southwest wind, and with swift shadows that bowled across the green below them. Parliament was in full conclave that day, and in the elms the rooks were busy.

  An awful flatness had succeeded Olga’s departure. Riseholme naturally took a good deal of credit for the tremendous success which had attended the production of Lucretia, since it so rightly considered that the real cradle of the opera was here, where she had tried it over for the first time. Lucia seemed to remember it better than anybody, for she remembered all sorts of things which no one else had the faintest recollection of: how she had discussed music with Signor Cortese, and he had asked her where she had her musical training. Such a treat to talk Italian with a Roman—lingua Toscana in bocca Romana—and what a wonderful evening it was. Poor Mrs Colonel recollected very little of this, but Lucia had long been aware that her memory was going sadly. After producing Lucretia in New York, Olga had appeared in some of her old roles, notably in the part of Brunnhilde, and Lucia was very reminiscent of that charming party of Christmas Day at dear Georgino’s, when they had the tableaux. Dear Olga was so simple and unspoiled: she had come to Lucia afterwards, and asked her to tell her how she had worked out her scheme of gestures in the awakening, and Lucia had been very glad, very glad indeed to give her a few hints. In fact, Lucia was quite herself: it was only her subjects whom it had been a little hard to stir up. Georgie in particular had been very listless and dull, and Lucia, for all her ingenuity, was at a complete loss to find a reason for it.

  But today the warm inflowing tide of spring seemed to renovate the muddy flats, setting the weeds, that had lain dank and dispirited, a-floating again on the return of the water. No one could quite resist the magic of the season, and Georgie, who had intended out of mere politeness to go to see the earliest of Perdita’s stupid flowers (having been warned of its epiphany by telephone from The Hurst) found, when he set foot outside his house on that warm windy morning, that it would be interesting to stroll across the green first, and see if there was any news. All the news he had really cared about for the last two months was news from America, of which he had a small packet done up in a pink riband.

  After getting rid of Piggy, he went to the newspaper shop, to get his “Times,” which most unaccountably had not arrived, and the sight of “Todd’s News” in its yellow cover stirred his drowsy interest. Not one atom of light had ever been thrown on that extraordinary occurrence when Robert bought the whole issue, and though Olga never failed to enquire, he had not been able to give her the slightest additional information. Occasionally he set a languid trap for one of the Quantocks, but they never by any chance fell into it. The whole affair must be classed with problems like the origin of evil, among the insoluble mysteries of life.

  It was possible to get letters by the second post an hour earlier than the house-to-house delivery by calling at the office, and as Georgie was waiting for his “Times,” Mrs Quantock came hurrying out of the post-office with a small packet in her hands, which she was opening as she walked. She was so much absorbed by this that she did not see Georgie at all, though she passed quite close to him, and soon after shed a registered envelope. At that the “old familiar glamour” began to steal over him again, and he found himself wondering with intensity what it contained.

  She was now some hundred yards in front of him, walking in the direction of The Hurst, and there could be no doubt that she, too, was on her way to see Perdita’s first flower. He followed her going more briskly than she and began to catch her up. Soon (this time by accident, not in the manner in which, through eagerness she had untidily cast the registered envelope away) she dropped a small paper, and Georgie picked it up, meaning to give it her. It had printed matter on the front of it, and was clearly a small pamphlet. He could not possibly help seeing what that printed matter was, for it was in capital letters:

  INCREASE YOUR HEIGHT

  Georgie quickened his step, and the old familiar glamour brightened round him. As soon as he got within speaking distance, he called to her, and turning round, “like a guilty thing surprised,” a little box flew out of her hand. As it fell the lid came off, and there was scattered on the green grass a multitude of red lozenges. She gave a cry of dismay.

  “Oh! Mr Georgie, how you startled me” she said. “Do help me to pick them up. Do you think the damp will have hurt them? Any news? I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I’ve spoken to nobody.”

  Georgie assisted in the recovery of the red lozenges.

  “You dropped this as you walked,” he said. “I picked it up in order to give it you.”

  “Ah, that is kind, and did you see what it was?”

  “I couldn’t help seeing the outside,” said Georgie.

  She looked at him a moment, wondering what was the most prudent course. If she said nothing more, he would probably tell everybody….

  “Well, then I shall let you into the whole secret,” she said. “It’s the most wonderful invention, and increases your height, whatever your age is, from two to six inches. Fancy! There are some exercises you have to do, rather like those Yoga ones, every morning, and you eat three lozenges a day. Quite harmless they are, and then you soon begin to shoot up.
It sounds incredible, doesn’t it? but there are so many testimonials that I can’t doubt it is genuine. Here’s one of a man who grew six inches. I saw it advertised in some paper, and sent for it. Only a guinea! What fun when Robert begins to see that I am taller than he is! But now not a word! Don’t tell dear Lucia whatever you do. She is half a head taller than I, and it would be no fun if everybody grew from two to six inches. You may write for them, and I’ll give you the address, but you must tell nobody.”

  “Too wonderful” said Georgie. “I shall watch you. Here we are. Look, there’s Perdita’s flower. What a beauty!”

  It was not necessary to press the mermaid’s tail, for Lucia had seen them from the music-room, and they heard her high heels clacking over the polished floor of the hall.

  “Listen! No more need of high heels!” said Mrs Quantock. “And I’ve got something else to tell you. Lucia may hear that. Ah, dear Lucia, what a wonderful Perdita-blossom!”

  “Is it not?” said Lucia, blowing kisses to Georgie, and giving them to Daisy. “That shows spring is here. Primavera! And Peppino’s piccolo libro comes out today. I should not be a bit surprised if you each of you found a copy of it arrived before evening. Glorious! It’s glorious!”

  Surely it was no wonder that Georgie’s blood began to canter along his arteries again. There had been very pleasant exciting years before now, requiring for their fuel no more than was ready at this moment to keep up the fire. Mrs Quantock was on tiptoe, so to speak, to increase her height, Peppino was just delivered of a second of these vellum volumes with seals and tapes outside, Mrs Weston was going to become Mrs Colonel at the end of the week, and at the same hour and church Elizabeth was going to become Mrs Atkinson. Had these things no savour, because—

  “How is ’oo?” said Georgie, with a sudden flush of the spring-time through him. “Me vewy well, sank ’oo and me so want to read Peppino’s bookie-bookie.”

  “’Oo come in,” said Lucia. “Evewybody come in. Now, who’s got ickle bit news?”

  Mrs Quantock had been walking on her toes all across the hall, in anticipation of the happy time when she would be from two to six inches taller. As the animated pamphlet said, the world assumed a totally different aspect when you were even two inches taller. She was quite sorry to sit down.

  “Is next week very full with you, dear Lucia?” she asked.

  Lucia pressed her finger to her forehead.

  “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” she began. “No, not Tuesday, I am doing nothing on Tuesday. You want to be the death of me between you. Why?”

  “I hope that my dear friend, Princess Popoffski, will be staying with me” said Mrs Quantock. “Do get over your prejudice against spiritualism, and give it a chance. Come to a seance on Tuesday. You, too, of course, Georgie: I know better than to invite Lucia without you.”

  Lucia put on the far-away look which she reserved for the masterpieces of music, and for Georgie’s hopeless devotion.

  “Lovely! That will be lovely!” she said. “Most interesting! I shall come with a perfectly open mind.”

  Georgie scarcely lamented the annihilation of a mystery. He must surely have imagined the mystery, for it all collapsed like a card-house, if the Princess was coming back. The seances had been most remarkable, too; and he would have to get out his planchette again.

  “And what’s going to happen on Wednesday?” he asked Lucia. “All I know is that I’ve not been asked. Me’s offended.”

  “Ickle surprise,” said Lucia. “You’re not engaged that evening, are you? Nor you, dear Daisy? That’s lovely. Eight o’clock? No, I think a quarter to. That will give us more time. I shan’t tell you what it is.”

  Mrs Quantock, grasping her lozenges, wondered how much taller she would be by then. As Lucia played to them, she drew a lozenge out of the box and put it into her mouth, in order to begin growing at once. It tasted rather bitter, but not unpleasantly so.

  MISS MAPP (Part 1)

  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.

  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, 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. 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 residenc
e, 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 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 woman, 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!”