Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Wisdom,” said Godiva. “Out at one o’clock. Gas. Ready for bridge this afternoon. Playing? Poppits.”

  “If I can squeeze it in, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “Such a hustle to-day.”

  Diva put her hand to her face as “wisdom” gave her an awful twinge. Of course she did not believe in the “hustle,” but her pangs prevented her from caring much.

  “Meet you then,” she said. “Shall be all comfortable then. Au — —”

  This was more than could be borne, and Miss Mapp hastily interrupted.

  “Au reservoir, Diva dear,” she said with extreme acerbity, and Diva’s feet began swiftly revolving again.

  The problem about the bridge-party thus seemed to be solved. The two Poppits, the two Bartletts, the Major and the Captain with Diva darling and herself made eight, and Miss Mapp with a sudden recrudescence of indignation against Isabel with regard to the red-currant fool and the belated invitation, made up her mind that she would not be able to squeeze it in, thus leaving the party one short. Even apart from the red-currant fool it served the Poppits right for not asking her originally, but only when, as seemed now perfectly clear, somebody else had disappointed them. But just as she emerged from the butcher’s shop, having gained a complete victory in the matter of that suet, without expending the last breath in her body or anything like it, the whole of the seemingly solid structure came toppling to the ground. For on emerging, flushed with triumph, leaving the baffled butcher to try his tricks on somebody else if he chose but not on Miss Mapp, she ran straight into the Disgrace of Tilling and her sex, the suffragette, post-impressionist artist (who painted from the nude, both male and female), the socialist and the Germanophil, all incarnate in one frame. In spite of these execrable antecedents, it was quite in vain that Miss Mapp had tried to poison the collective mind of Tilling against this Creature. If she hated anybody, and she undoubtedly did, she hated Irene Coles. The bitterest part of it all was that if Miss Coles was amused at anybody, and she undoubtedly was, she was amused at Miss Mapp.

  Miss Coles was strolling along in the attire to which Tilling generally had got accustomed, but Miss Mapp never. She had an old wide-awake hat jammed down on her head, a tall collar and stock, a large loose coat, knickerbockers and grey stockings. In her mouth was a cigarette, in her hand she swung the orthodox wicker-basket. She had certainly been to the other fishmonger’s at the end of the High Street, for a lobster, revived perhaps after a sojourn on the ice, by this warm sun, which the butterflies and the swallows had been rejoicing in, was climbing with claws and waving legs over the edge of it.

  Irene removed her cigarette from her mouth and did something in the gutter which is usually associated with the floor of third-class smoking carriages. Then her handsome, boyish face, more boyish because her hair was closely clipped, broke into a broad grin.

  “Hullo, Mapp!” she said. “Been giving the tradesmen what for on Tuesday morning?”

  Miss Mapp found it extremely difficult to bear this obviously insolent form of address without a spasm of rage. Irene called her Mapp because she chose to, and Mapp (more bitterness) felt it wiser not to provoke Coles. She had a dreadful, humorous tongue, an indecent disregard of public or private opinion, and her gift of mimicry was as appalling as her opinion about the Germans. Sometimes Miss Mapp alluded to her as “quaint Irene,” but that was as far as she got in the way of reprisals.

  “Oh, you sweet thing!” she said. “Treasure!”

  Irene, in some ghastly way, seemed to take note of this. Why men like Captain Puffin and Major Flint found Irene “fetching” and “killing” was more than Miss Mapp could understand, or wanted to understand.

  Quaint Irene looked down at her basket.

  “Why, there’s my lunch going over the top like those beastly British Tommies,” she said, “Get back, love.”

  Miss Mapp could not quite determine whether “love” was a sarcastic echo of “Treasure.” It seemed probable.

  “Oh, what a dear little lobster,” she said. “Look at his sweet claws.”

  “I shall do more than look at them soon,” said Irene, poking it into her basket again. “Come and have tiffin, qui-hi, I’ve got to look after myself to-day.”

  “What has happened to your devoted Lucy?” asked Miss Mapp. Irene lived in a very queer way with one gigantic maid, who, but for her sex, might have been in the Guards.

  “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 dressmaker’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 to-day? 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 to-day, 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.