by E. F. Benson
“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.
“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 dress-maker’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 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:
“I won’t be druv,
Though I am willing.
Good morning, my love,
Said the Pig of Tilling.”
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 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 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, 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 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.
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.
“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 if 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 today? 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 today, 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?”
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.
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 tha
t 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.
“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.