The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  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 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 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?”

  “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 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 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 thewords 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.”

  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 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 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.”

  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.”

  “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 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.