by E. F. Benson
“Dinner?” said Diva.
“No, ma’am, the telephone,” said Janet. “Mr. Wyse is on the telephone, and wants to speak to you very particularly.”
“Mr. Wyse himself?” asked Diva, hardly believing her ears, for she knew Mr. Wyse’s opinion of the telephone.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Diva walked slowly, but reflected rapidly. What must have happened was that somebody had been taken ill at the last moment—was it Elizabeth?—and that he now wanted her to fill the gap… She was torn in two. Passionately as she longed to dine at Mr. Wyse’s, she did not see how such a course was compatible with dignity. He had only asked her to suit his own convenience; it was not out of encouragement to hope that he invited her now. No; Mr. Wyse should want. She would say that she had friends dining with her; that was what the true lady would do.
She took up the ear-piece and said: “Hullo!”
It was certainly Mr. Wyse’s voice that spoke to her, and it seemed to tremble with anxiety.
“Dear lady,” he began, “a most terrible thing has happened—”
(Wonder if Elizabeth’s very ill, thought Diva.) “Quite terrible,” said Mr. Wyse. “Can you hear?”
“Yes,” said Diva, hardening her heart.
“By the most calamitous mistake the note which I wrote you yesterday was never delivered. Figgis has just found it in the pocket of his overcoat. I shall certainly dismiss him unless you plead for him. Can you hear?”
“Yes,” said Diva excitedly.
“In it I told you that I had been encouraged to hope that you would dine with me to-night. There was such a gratifying response to my other invitations that I most culpably and carelessly, dear lady, thought that everybody had accepted. Can you hear?”
“Of course I can!” shouted Diva.
“Well, I come on my knees to you. Can you possibly forgive the joint stupidity of Figgis and me, and honour me after all? We will put dinner off, of course. At what time, in case you are ever so kind and indulgent as to come, shall we have it? Do not break my heart by refusing. Su—Mrs. Poppit will send her car for you.”
“I have already dressed for dinner,” said Diva proudly. “Very pleased to come at once.”
“You are too kind; you are angelic,” said Mr. Wyse. “The car shall start at once; it is at my door now.”
“Right,” said Diva.
“Too good—too kind,” murmured Mr. Wyse. “Figgis, what do I do next?”
Diva clapped the instrument into place.
“Powder,” she said to herself, remembering what she had seen in the glass, and whizzed upstairs. Her fish would have to be degraded into kedgeree, though plaice would have done just as well as sole for that; the cutlets could be heated up again, and perhaps the whisking for the apple-meringue had not begun yet, and could still be stopped.
“Janet!” she shouted. “Going out to dinner! Stop the meringue.”
She dashed an interesting pallor on to her face as she heard the hooting of the Royce, and coming downstairs, stepped into its warm luxuriousness, for the electric lamp was burning. There were Susan’s sables there—it was thoughtful of Susan to put them in, but ostentatious—and there was a carriage rug, which she was convinced was new, and was very likely a present from Mr. Wyse. And soon there was the light streaming out from Mr. Wyse’s open door, and Mr. Wyse himself in the hall to meet and greet and thank and bless her. She pleaded for the contrite Figgis, and was conducted in a blaze of triumph into the drawing-room, where all Tilling was awaiting her. She was led up to the Contessa, with whom Miss Mapp, wreathed in sycophantic smiles, was eagerly conversing.
The crimson-lakes…
There were embarrassing moments during dinner; the Contessa confused by having so many people introduced to her in a lump, got all their names wrong, and addressed her neighbours as Captain Flint and Major Puffin, and thought that Diva was Mrs. Mapp. She seemed vivacious and good-humoured, dropped her eyeglass into her soup, talked with her mouth full, and drank a good deal of wine, which was a very bad example for Major Puffin. Then there were many sudden and complete pauses in the talk, for Diva’s news of the kissing of Mrs. Poppit by the Contessa had spread like wildfire through the fog this morning, owing to Miss Mapp’s dissemination of it, and now, whenever Mr. Wyse raised his voice ever so little, everybody else stopped talking, in the expectation that the news was about to be announced. Occasionally, also, the Contessa addressed some remark to her brother in shrill and voluble Italian, which rather confirmed the gloomy estimate of her table-manners in the matter of talking with her mouth full, for to speak in Italian was equivalent to whispering, since the purport of what she said could not be understood by anybody except him… Then also, the sensation of dining with a countess produced a slight feeling of strain, which, in addition to the correct behaviour which Mr. Wyse’s presence always induced, almost congealed correctness into stiffness. But as dinner went on her evident enjoyment of herself made itself felt, and her eccentricities, though carefully observed and noted by Miss Mapp, were not succeeded by silences and hurried bursts of conversation.
“And is your ladyship making a long stay in Tilling?” asked the (real) Major, to cover the pause which had been caused by Mr. Wyse saying something across the table to Isabel.
She dropped her eyeglass with quite a splash into her gravy, pulled it out again by the string as if landing a fish, and sucked it.
“That depends on you gentlemen,” she said with greater audacity than was usual in Tilling. “If you and Major Puffin and that sweet little Scotch clergyman all fall in love with me, and fight duels about me, I will stop for ever…”
The Major recovered himself before anybody else.
“Your ladyship may take that for granted,” he said gallantly, and a perfect hubbub of conversation rose to cover this awful topic.
She laid her hand on his arm.
“You must not call me ladyship, Captain Flint,” she said. “Only servants say that. Contessa, if you like. And you must blow away this fog for me. I have seen nothing but bales of cotton-wool out of the window. Tell me this, too: why are those ladies dressed alike? Are they sisters? Mrs. Mapp, the little round one, and her sister, the big round one?”
The Major cast an apprehensive eye on Miss Mapp seated just opposite, whose acuteness of hearing was one of the terrors of Tilling… His apprehensions were perfectly well founded, and Miss Mapp hated and despised the Contessa from that hour.
“No, not sisters,” said he, “and your la—you’ve made a little error about the names. The one opposite is Miss Mapp, the other Mrs. Plaistow.”
The Contessa moderated her voice.
“I see; she looks vexed, your Miss Mapp. I think she must have heard, and I will be very nice to her afterwards. Why does not one of you gentlemen marry her? I see I shall have to arrange that. The sweet little Scotch clergyman now; little men like big wives. Ah! Married already is he to the mouse? Then it must be you, Captain Flint. We must have more marriages in Tilling.”
Miss Mapp could not help glancing at the Contessa, as she made this remarkable observation. It must be the cue, she thought, for the announcement of that which she had known so long… In the space of a wink the clever Contessa saw that she had her attention, and spoke rather loudly to the Major.
“I have lost my heart to your Miss Mapp,” she said. “I am jealous of you, Captain Flint. She will be my great friend in Tilling, and if you marry her, I shall hate you, for that will mean that she likes you best.”
Miss Mapp hated nobody at that moment, not even Diva, off whose face the hastily-applied powder was crumbling, leaving little red marks peeping out like the stars on a fine evening. Dinner came to an end with roasted chestnuts brought by the Contessa from Capri.
“I always scold Amelia for the luggage she takes with her,” said Mr. Wyse to Diva. “Amelia, dear, you are my hostess to-night”—everybody saw him look at Mrs. Poppit—”you must catch somebody’s eye.”
“I will catch Miss Mapp’s,” s
aid Amelia, and all the ladies rose as if connected with some hidden mechanism which moved them simultaneously… There was a great deal of pretty diffidence at the door, but the Contessa put an end to that.
“Eldest first,” she said, and marched out, making Miss Mapp, Diva and the mouse feel remarkably young. She might drop her eyeglass and talk with her mouth full, but really such tact… They all determined to adopt this pleasing device in the future. The disappointment about the announcement of the engagement was sensibly assuaged, and Miss Mapp and Susan, in their eagerness to be younger than the Contessa, and yet take precedence of all the rest, almost stuck in the doorway. They rebounded from each other, and Diva whizzed out between them. Quaint Irene went in her right place—last. However quaint Irene was, there was no use in pretending that she was not the youngest.
However hopelessly Amelia had lost her heart to Miss Mapp, she did not devote her undivided attention to her in the drawing-room, but swiftly established herself at the card-table, where she proceeded, with a most complicated sort of Patience and a series of cigarettes, to while away the time till the gentlemen joined them. Though the ladies of Tilling had plenty to say to each other, it was all about her, and such comments could not conveniently be made in her presence. Unless, like her, they talked some language unknown to the subject of their conversation, they could not talk at all, and so they gathered round her table, and watched the lightning rapidity with which she piled black knaves on red queens in some packs and red knaves on black queens in others. She had taken off all her rings in order to procure a greater freedom of finger, and her eyeglass continued to crash on to a glittering mass of magnificent gems. The rapidity of her motions was only equalled by the swift and surprising monologue that poured from her mouth.
“There, that odious king gets in my way,” she said. “So like a man to poke himself in where he isn’t wanted. Bacco! No, not that: I have a cigarette. I hear all you ladies are terrific bridge-players: we will have a game presently, and I shall sink into the earth with terror at your Camorra! Dio! there’s another king, and that’s his own queen whom he doesn’t want at all. He is amoroso for that black queen, who is quite covered up, and he would liked to be covered up with her. Susan, my dear” (that was interesting, but they all knew it already), “kindly ring the bell for coffee. I expire if I do not get my coffee at once, and a toothpick. Tell me all the scandal of Tilling, Miss Mapp, while I play—all the dreadful histories of that Major and that Captain. Such a grand air has the Captain—no, it is the Major, the one who does not limp. Which of all you ladies do they love most? It is Miss Mapp, I believe: that is why she does not answer me. Ah! here is the coffee, and the other king: three lumps of sugar, dear Susan, and then stir it up well, and hold it to my mouth, so that I can drink without interruption. Ah, the ace! He is the intervener, or is it the King’s Proctor? It would be nice to have a proctor who told you all the love-affairs that were going on. Susan, you must get me a proctor: you shall be my proctor. And here are the men—the wretches, they have been preferring wine to women, and we will have our bridge, and if anybody scolds me, I shall cry, Miss Mapp, and Captain Flint will hold my hand and comfort me.”
She gathered up a heap of cards and rings, dropped them on the floor, and cut with the remainder.
Miss Mapp was very lenient with the Contessa, who was her partner, and pointed out the mistakes of her and their adversaries with the most winning smile and eagerness to explain things clearly. Then she revoked heavily herself, and the Contessa, so far from being angry with her, burst into peals of unquenchable merriment. This way of taking a revoke was new to Tilling, for the right thing was for the revoker’s partner to sulk and be sarcastic for at least twenty minutes after. The Contessa’s laughter continued to spurt out at intervals during the rest of the rubber, and it was all very pleasant; but at the end she said she was not up to Tilling standards at all, and refused to play any more. Miss Mapp, in the highest good-humour urged her not to despair.
“Indeed, dear Contessa,” she said, “you play very well. A little overbidding of your hand, perhaps, do you think? but that is a tendency we are all subject to: I often overbid my hand myself. Not a little wee rubber more. I’m sure I should like to be your partner again. You must come and play at my house some afternoon. We will have tea early, and get a good two hours. Nothing like practice.”
The evening came to an end without the great announcement being made, but Miss Mapp, as she reviewed the events of the party, sitting next morning in her observation-window, found the whole evidence so overwhelming that it was no longer worth while to form conjectures, however fruitful, on the subject, and she diverted her mind to pleasing reminiscences and projects for the future. She had certainly been distinguished by the Contessa’s marked regard, and her opinion of her charm and ability was of the very highest… No doubt her strange remark about duelling at dinner had been humorous in intention, but many a true word is spoken in jest, and the Contessa—perspicacious woman—had seen at once that Major Benjy and Captain Puffin were just the sort of men who might get to duelling (or, at any rate, challenging) about a woman. And her asking which of the ladies the men were most in love with, and her saying that she believed it was Miss Mapp! Miss Mapp had turned nearly as red as poor Diva when that came out, so lightly and yet so acutely…
Diva! It had, of course, been a horrid blow to find that Diva had been asked to Mr. Wyse’s party in the first instance, and an even shrewder one when Diva entered (with such unnecessary fussing and apology on the part of Mr. Wyse) in the crimson-lake. Luckily, it would be seen no more, for Diva had promised—if you could trust Diva—to send it to the dyer’s; but it was a great puzzle to know why Diva had it on at all, if she was preparing to spend a solitary evening at home. By eight o’clock she ought by rights to have already had her tray, dressed in some old thing; but within three minutes of her being telephoned for she had appeared in the crimson-lake, and eaten so heartily that it was impossible to imagine, greedy though she was, that she had already consumed her tray… But in spite of Diva’s adventitious triumph, the main feeling in Miss Mapp’s mind was pity for her. She looked so ridiculous in that dress with the powder peeling off her red face. No wonder the dear Contessa stared when she came in.
There was her bridge-party for the Contessa to consider. The Contessa would be less nervous, perhaps, if there was only one table: that would be more homey and cosy, and it would at the same time give rise to great heart-burnings and indignation in the breasts of those who were left out. Diva would certainly be one of the spurned, and the Contessa would not play with Mr. Wyse… Then there was Major Benjy, he must certainly be asked, for it was evident that the Contessa delighted in him…
Suddenly Miss Mapp began to feel less sure that Major Benjy must be of the party. The Contessa, charming though she was, had said several very tropical, Italian things to him. She had told him that she would stop here for ever if the men fought duels about her. She had said “you dear darling” to him at bridge when, as adversary, he failed to trump her losing card, and she had asked him to ask her to tea (“with no one else, for I have a great deal to say to you”), when the general macédoine of sables, au reservoirs, and thanks for such a nice evening took place in the hall. Miss Mapp was not, in fact, sure when she thought it over, that the Contessa was a nice friend for Major Benjy. She did not do him the injustice of imagining that he would ask her to tea alone; the very suggestion proved that it must be a piece of the Contessa’s Southern extravagance of expression. But, after all, thought Miss Mapp to herself, as she writhed at the idea, her other extravagant expressions were proved to cover a good deal of truth. In fact, the Major’s chance of being asked to the select bridge-party diminished swiftly towards vanishing point.
It was time (and indeed late) to set forth on morning marketings, and Miss Mapp had already determined not to carry her capacious basket with her to-day, in case of meeting the Contessa in the High Street. It would be grander and Wysier and more magnificent to g
o basketless, and direct that the goods should be sent up, rather than run the risk of encountering the Contessa with a basket containing a couple of mutton cutlets, a ball of wool and some tooth-powder. So she put on her Prince of Wales’s cloak, and, postponing further reflection over the bridge-party till a less busy occasion, set forth in unencumbered gentility for the morning gossip. At the corner of the High Street, she ran into Diva.
“News,” said Diva. “Met Mr. Wyse just now. Engaged to Susan. All over the town by now. Everybody knows. Oh, there’s the Padre for the first time.”
She shot across the street, and Miss Mapp, shaking the dust of Diva off her feet, proceeded on her chagrined way. Annoyed as she was with Diva, she was almost more annoyed with Susan. After all she had done for Susan, Susan ought to have told her long ago, pledging her to secrecy. But to be told like this by that common Diva, without any secrecy at all, was an affront that she would find it hard to forgive Susan for. She mentally reduced by a half the sum that she had determined to squander on Susan’s wedding-present. It should be plated, not silver, and if Susan was not careful, it shouldn’t be plated at all.
She had just come out of the chemist’s, after an indignant interview about precipitated chalk. He had deposited the small packet on the counter, when she asked to have it sent up to her house. He could not undertake to deliver small packages. She left the precipitated chalk lying there. Emerging, she heard a loud, foreign sort of scream from close at hand. There was the Contessa, all by herself, carrying a marketing basket of unusual size and newness. It contained a bloody steak and a crab.
“But where is your basket, Miss Mapp?” she exclaimed. “Algernon told me that all the great ladies of Tilling went marketing in the morning with big baskets, and that if I aspired to be du monde, I must have my basket, too. It is the greatest fun, and I have already written to Cecco to say I am just going marketing with my basket. Look, the steak is for Figgis, and the crab is for Algernon and me, if Figgis does not get it. But why are you not du monde? Are you du demi-monde. Miss Mapp?”