by E. F. Benson
Miss Mapp and Diva alike were perhaps busier when they were being dummy than when they were playing the cards. Over the background of each mind was spread a hatred of the other, red as their tea-gowns, and shot with black despair as to what on earth they should do now with those ill-fated pieces of pride. Miss Mapp was prepared to make a perfect chameleon of hers, if only she could get away from Diva's hue, but what if, having changed, say, to purple, Diva became purple too? She could not stand a third coincidence, and besides, she much doubted whether any gown that had once been of so pronounced a crimson-lake, could successfully attempt to appear of any other hue except perhaps black. If Diva died, she might perhaps consult Miss Greele as to whether black would be possible, but then if Diva died, there was no reason for not wearing crimson-lake for ever, since it would be an insincerity of which Miss Mapp humbly hoped she was incapable, to go into mourning for Diva just because she died.
In front of this lurid background of despair moved the figures which would have commanded all her attention, have aroused all the feelings of disgust and pity of which she was capable, had only Diva stuck to kingfisher-blue. There they sat on the sofa, talking in voices which it was impossible to overhear, and if ever a woman made up to a man, and if ever a man was taken in by shallow artifices, ‘they’, thought Miss Mapp, ‘are the ones’. There was no longer any question that Susan was doing her utmost to inveigle Mr Wyse into matrimony, for no other motive, not politeness, not the charm of conversation, not the low, comfortable seat by the fire could possibly have had force enough to keep her for a whole evening from the bridge-table. That dinner en famille, so Miss Mapp sarcastically reflected – what if it was the first of hundreds of similar dinners en famille? Perhaps, when safely married, Susan would ask her to one of the family dinners, with a glassful of foam which she called champagne, and the leg of a crow which she called game from the shooting-lodge… There was no use in denying that Mr Wyse seemed to be swallowing flattery and any other form of bait as fast as they were supplied him; never had he been so made up to since the day, now two years ago, when Miss Mapp herself wrote him down as uncapturable. But now, on this awful evening of crimson-lake, it seemed only prudent to face the prospect of his falling into the nets which were spread for him… Susan the sister-in-law of a contessa. Susan the wife of the man whose urbanity made all Tilling polite to each other, Susan a Wyse of Whitchurch! It made Miss Mapp feel positively weary of earth…
Nor was this the sum of Miss Mapp's mental activities, as she sat being dummy to Diva, for, in addition to the rage, despair and disgust with which these various topics filled her, she had narrowly to watch Diva's play, in order, at the end, to point out to her with lucid firmness all the mistakes she had made, while with snorts and sniffs and muttered exclamations and jerks of the head and pullings-out of cards and puttings of them back with amazing assertions that she had not quitted them, she wrestled with the task she had set herself of getting two no-trumps. It was impossible to count the tricks that Diva made, for she had a habit of putting her elbow on them after she had raked them in, as if in fear that her adversaries would filch them when she was not looking, and Miss Mapp, distracted with other interests, forgot that no-trumps had been declared and thought it was hearts, of which Diva played several after their adversaries’ hands were quite denuded of them. She often did that ‘to make sure’.
‘Three tricks,’ she said triumphantly at the conclusion, counting the cards in the cache below her elbow.
Miss Mapp gave a long sigh, but remembered that Mr Wyse was present.
‘You could have got two more,’ she said, ‘if you hadn't played those hearts, dear. You would have been able to trump Major Benjy's club and the Padre's diamond, and we should have gone out. Never mind, you played it beautifully otherwise.’
‘Can't trump when it's no-trumps,’ said Diva, forgetting that Mr Wyse was there. ‘That's nonsense. Got three tricks. Did go out. Did you think it was hearts? Wasn't.’
Miss Mapp naturally could not demean herself to take any notice of this.
‘Your deal, is it, Major Benjy?’ she asked. ‘Me to cut?’
Diva had remembered just after her sharp speech to her partner that Mr Wyse was present, and looked towards the sofa to see if there were any indications of pained surprise on his face which might indicate that he had heard. But what she saw there – or, to be more accurate, what she failed to see there – forced her to give an exclamation which caused Miss Mapp to look round in the direction where Diva's bulging eyes were glued… There was no doubt whatever about it: Mrs Poppit and Mr Wyse were no longer there. Unless they were under the sofa they had certainly left the room together and altogether. Had she gone to put on her sable coat on this hot night? Was Mr Wyse staggering under its weight as he fitted her into it? Miss Mapp rejected the supposition; they had gone to another room to converse more privately. This looked very black indeed, and she noted the time on the clock in order to ascertain, when they came back, how long they had been absent.
The rubber went on its wild way, relieved from the restraining influence of Mr Wyse, and when, thirty-nine minutes afterwards, it came to its conclusion and neither the hostess nor Mr Wyse had returned, Miss Mapp was content to let Diva muddle herself madly, adding up the score with the assistance of her fingers, and went across to the other table till she should be called back to check her partner's figures. They would be certain to need checking.
‘Has Mr Wyse gone away already, dear Isabel?’ she said. ‘How early!’
(‘And four makes nine,’ muttered Diva, getting to her little finger.)
Isabel was dummy, and had time for conversation.
‘I think he has only gone with Mamma into the conservatory,’ she said – ‘no more diamonds, partner? – to advise her about the orchids.’
Now the conservatory was what Miss Mapp considered a potting-shed with a glass roof, and the orchids were one anaemic odontoglossum, and there would scarcely be room besides that for Mrs Poppit and Mr Wyse. The potting-shed was visible from the drawing-room window, over which curtains were drawn.
‘Such a lovely night,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘And while Diva is checking the score may I have a peep at the stars, dear? So fond of the sweet stars.’
She glided to the window (conscious that Diva was longing to glide too, but was preparing to quarrel with the Major's score) and took her peep at the sweet stars. The light from the hall shone full into the potting-shed, but there was nobody there. She made quite sure of that.
Diva had heard about the sweet stars, and for the first time in her life made no objection to her adversaries' total.
‘You're right, Major Flint, eighteen-pence,’ she said. ‘Stupid of me: I've left my handkerchief in the pocket of my cloak. I'll pop out and get it. Back in a minute. Cut again for partners.’
She trundled to the door and popped out of it before Miss Mapp had the slightest chance of intercepting her progress. This was bitter because the dining-room opened out of the hall, and so did the book-cupboard with a window which dear Susan called her boudoir. Diva was quite capable of popping into both of these apartments. In fact, if the truants were there, it was no use bothering about the sweet stars any more, and Diva would already have won…
There was a sweet moon as well, and just as baffled Miss Mapp was turning away from the window, she saw that which made her positively glue her nose to the cold windowpane, and tuck the curtain in, so that her silhouette should not be visible from outside. Down the middle of the garden path came the two truants, Susan in her sables and Mr Wyse close beside her with his coat-collar turned up. Her ample form with the small round head on the top looked like a short-funnelled locomotive engine, and he like the driver on the footplate. The perfidious things had said they were going to consult over the orchid. Did orchids grow on the lawn? It was news to Miss Mapp if they did.
They stopped, and Mr Wyse quite clearly pointed to some celestial object, moon or star, and they both gazed at it. The sight of two such middle-aged
people behaving like this made Miss Mapp feel quite sick, but she heroically continued a moment more at her post. Her heroism was rewarded, for immediately after the inspection of the celestial object, they turned and inspected each other. And Mr Wyse kissed her.
Miss Mapp ‘scriggled’ from behind the curtain into the room again.
‘Aldebaran!’ she said. ‘So lovely!’
Simultaneously Diva re-entered with her handkerchief, thwarted and disappointed, for she had certainly found nobody either in the boudoir or in the dining-room. But there was going to be a sit-down supper, and as Boon was not there, she had taken a marron glacé.
Miss Mapp was flushed with excitement and disgust, and almost forgot about Diva's gown.
‘Found your hanky, dear?’ she said. ‘Then shall we cut for partners again? You and me, Major Benjy. Don't scold me if I play wrong.’
She managed to get a seat that commanded a full-face view of the door, for the next thing was to see how ‘the young couple’ (as she had already labelled them in her sarcastic mind) ‘looked’ when they returned from their amorous excursion to the orchid that grew on the lawn. They entered, most unfortunately, while she was in the middle of playing a complicated hand, and her brain was so switched off from the play by their entrance that she completely lost the thread of what she was doing, and threw away two tricks that simply required to be gathered up by her, but now lurked below Diva's elbow. What made it worse was that no trace of emotion, no heightened colour, no coy and downcast eye betrayed a hint of what had happened on the lawn. With brazen effrontery Susan informed her daughter that Mr Wyse thought a little leaf-mould…
‘What a liar!’ thought Miss Mapp, and triumphantly put her remaining trump on to her dummy's best card. Then she prepared to make the best of it.
‘We've lost three, I'm afraid, Major Benjy,’ she said. ‘Don't you think you overbid your hand just a little wee bit?’
‘I don't know about that, Miss Elizabeth,’ said the Major. ‘If you hadn't let those two spades go, and hadn't trumped my best heart –’
Miss Mapp interrupted with her famous patter.
‘Oh, but if I had taken the spades,’ she said quickly, ‘I should have had to lead up to Diva's clubs, and then they would have got the rough in diamonds, and I should have never been able to get back into your hand again. Then at the end if I hadn't trumped your heart, I should have had to lead the losing spade and Diva would have overtrumped, and brought in her club, and we should have gone down two more. If you follow me, I think you*l agree that I was right to do that. But all good players overbid their hands sometimes, Major Benjy. Such fun!’
The supper was unusually ostentatious, but Miss Mapp saw the reason for that; it was clear that Susan wanted to impress poor Mr Wyse with her wealth, and probably when it came to settlements, he would learn some very unpleasant news. But there were agreeable little circumstances to temper her dislike of this extravagant display, for she was hungry, and Diva, always a gross feeder, spilt some hot chocolate sauce on the crimson-lake, which, if indelible, might supply a solution to the problem of what was to be done now about her own frock. She kept an eye, too, on Captain Puffin, to see if he showed any signs of improvement in the direction she had indicated to him in her interview, and was rejoiced to see that one of these glances was clearly the cause of his refusing a second glass of port. He had already taken the stopper out of the decanter when their eyes met… and then he put it back again. Improvement already!
Everything else (pending the discovery as to whether chocolate on crimson-lake spelt ruin) now faded into a middle distance, while the affairs of Susan and poor Mr Wyse occupied the entire foreground of Miss Mapp's consciousness. Mean and cunning as Susan's conduct must have been in entrapping Mr Wyse when others had failed to gain his affection, Miss Mapp felt that it would be only prudent to continue on the most amicable of terms with her, for as future sister-in-law to a countess, and wife to the man who by the mere exercise of his presence could make Tilling sit up and behave, she would doubtless not hesitate about giving Miss Mapp some nasty ones back if retaliation demanded. It was dreadful to think that this audacious climber was so soon to belong to the Wyses of Whitchurch, but since the moonlight had revealed that such was Mr Wyse's intention, it was best to be friends with the Mammon of the British Empire. Poppit-cum-Wyse was likely to be a very important centre of social life in Tilling, when not in Scotland or Whitchurch or Capri, and Miss Mapp wisely determined that even the announcement of the engagement should not induce her to give voice to the very proper sentiments which it could not help inspiring.
After all she had done for Susan, in letting the door of high-life in Tilling swing open for her when she could not possibly keep it shut any longer, it seemed only natural that, if she only kept on good terms with her now, Susan would insist that her dear Elizabeth must be the first to be told of the engagement. This made her pause before adopting the obvious course of setting off immediately after breakfast next morning, and telling all her friends, under promise of secrecy, just what she had seen in the moonlight last night. Thrilling to the narrator as such an announcement would be, it would be even more thrilling, provided only that Susan had sufficient sense of decency to tell her of the engagement before anybody else, to hurry off to all the others and inform them that she had known of it ever since the night of the bridge-party.
It was important, therefore, to be at home whenever there was the slightest chance of Susan coming round with her news, and Miss Mapp sat at her window the whole of that first morning, so as not to miss her, and hardly attended at all to the rest of the pageant of life that moved within the radius of her observation. Her heart beat fast when, about the middle of the morning, Mr Wyse came round the dentist's corner, for it might be that the bashful Susan had sent him to make the announcement, but, if so, he was bashful too, for he walked by her house without pause. He looked rather worried, she thought (as well he might), and passing on he disappeared round the church corner, clearly on his way to his betrothed. He carried a square parcel in his hand, about as big as some jewel-case that might contain a tiara. Half an hour afterwards, however, he came back, still carrying the tiara. It occurred to her that the engagement might have been broken off… A little later, again with a quickened pulse, Miss Mapp saw the Royce lumber down from the church corner. It stopped at her house, and she caught a glimpse of sables within. This time she felt certain that Susan had come with her interesting news, and waited till Withers, having answered the door, came to inquire, no doubt, whether she would see Mrs Poppit. But, alas, a minute later the Royce lumbered on, carrying the additional weight of the Christmas number of Punch which Miss Mapp had borrowed last night and had not, of course, had time to glance at yet.
Anticipation is supposed to be pleasanter than any fulfilment, however agreeable, and if that is the case, Miss Mapp during the next day or two had more enjoyment than the announcement of fifty engagements could have given her, so constantly (when from the garden-room she heard the sound of the knocker on her front-door) did she spring up in certainty that this was Susan, which it never was. But, however enjoyable it all might be, she appeared to herself at least to be suffering tortures of suspense, through which by degrees an idea, painful and revolting in the extreme, yet strangely exhilarating, began to insinuate itself into her mind. There seemed a deadly probability of the correctness of the conjecture, as the week went by without further confirmation of that kiss, for, after all, who knew anything about the character and antecedents of Susan? As for Mr Wyse, was he not a constant visitor to the fierce and fickle south, where, as everyone knew, morality was wholly extinct? And how, if it was all too true, should Tilling treat this hitherto unprecedented situation? It was terrible to contemplate this moral upheaval, which might prove to be a social upheaval also. Time and again, as Miss Mapp vainly waited for news, she was within an ace of communicating her suspicions to the Padre. He ought to know, for Christmas (as was usual in December) was daily drawing nearer…
Suddenly from close outside came the sound of a doorknocker imperiously plied, which could be no other than her own. Only a telegram or some urgent errand could bring anyone out on such a day, and unable to bear the suspense of waiting till Withers had answered it, she hurried into the house to open the door herself. Was the news of the engagement coming to her at last? Late though it was, she would welcome it even now, for it would atone, in part at any rate… It was Diva.