by E. F. Benson
Diva rapidly recollected that the perfidious Elizabeth was among them.
“O but, Mr. Wootten,” she said, “Miss Mapp popped — dropped in to see me just now. Told me she had hardly got any.”
Mr. Wootten turned up his ledger. It was not etiquette to disclose the affairs of one client to another, but if there was a cantankerous customer, one who was never satisfied with prices and quality, that client was Miss Mapp… He allowed a broad grin to overspread his agreeable face.
“Well, ma’am, if in a month’s time I’m short of coal, there are friends of yours in Tilling who can let you have plenty,” he permitted himself to say…
It was idle to attempt to cut out bunches of roses while her hand was so feverish, and she trundled up and down the High Street to cool off. Had she not been so prudent as to make inquiries, as likely as not she would have sent a ton of coal that very day to the hospital, so strongly had Elizabeth’s perfidious warning inflamed her imagination as to the fate of hoarders, and all the time Elizabeth’s own cellars were glutted, though she had asserted that she was almost fuelless. Why, she must have in her possession more coal than Diva herself, since Mr. Wootten had clearly implied that it was Elizabeth who could be borrowed from! And all because of a wretched piece of rose-madder worsted…
By degrees she calmed down, for it was no use attempting to plan revenge with a brain at fever-heat. She must be calm and icily ingenious. As the cooling-process went on she began to wonder whether it was worsted alone that had prompted her friend’s diabolical suggestion. It seemed more likely that another motive (one strangely Elizabethan) was the cause of it. Elizabeth might be taken for certain as being a coal-hoarder herself, and it was ever so like her to divert suspicion by pretending her cellar was next to empty. She had been equally severe on any who might happen to be hoarding food, in case transport was disarranged and supplies fell short, and with a sudden flare of authentic intuition, Diva’s mind blazed with the conjecture that Elizabeth was hoarding food as well.
Luck ever attends the bold and constructive thinker: the apple, for instance, fell from the tree precisely when Newton’s mind was groping after the law of gravity, and as Diva stepped into her grocer’s to begin her morning’s shopping (for she had been occupied with roses ever since breakfast) the attendant was at the telephone at the back of the shop. He spoke in a lucid telephone-voice.
“We’ve only two of the big tins of corned beef,” he said; and there was a pause, during which, to a psychic, Diva’s ears might have seemed to grow as pointed with attention as a satyr’s. But she could only hear little hollow quacks from the other end.
“Tongue as well. Very good. I’ll send them up at once,” he added, and came forward into the shop.
“Good morning,” said Diva. Her voice was tremulous with anxiety and investigation. “Got any big tins of corned beef? The ones that contain six pounds.”
“Very sorry, ma’am. We’ve only got two, and they’ve just been ordered.”
“A small pot of ginger then, please,” said Diva recklessly. “Will you send it round immediately?”
“Yes, ma’am. The boy’s just going out.”
That was luck. Diva hurried into the street, and was absorbed by the headlines of the news outside the stationer’s. This was a favourite place for observation, for you appeared to be quite taken up by the topics of the day, and kept an oblique eye on the true object of your scrutiny… She had not got to wait long, for almost immediately the grocer’s boy came out of the shop with a heavy basket on his arm, delivered the small pot of ginger at her own door, and proceeded along the street. He was, unfortunately, a popular and a conversational youth, who had a great deal to say to his friends, and the period of waiting to see if he would turn up the steep street that led to Miss Mapp’s house was very protracted. At the corner he deliberately put down the basket altogether and lit a cigarette, and never had Diva so acutely deplored the spread of the tobacco-habit among the juvenile population.
Having refreshed himself he turned up the steep street.
He passed the fishmonger’s and the fruiterer’s; he did not take the turn down to the dentist’s and Mr. Wyse’s. He had no errand to the Major’s house or to the Captain’s. Then, oh then, he rang the bell at Miss Mapp’s back door. All the time Diva had been following him, keeping her head well down so as to avert the possibility of observation from the window of the garden-room, and walking so slowly that the motion of her feet seemed not circular at all… Then the bell was answered, and he delivered into Withers’ hands one, two tins of corned beef and a round ox-tongue. He put the basket on his head and came down the street again, shrilly whistling. If Diva had had any reasonably small change in her pocket, she would assuredly have given him some small share in it. Lacking this, she trundled home with all speed, and began cutting out roses with swift and certain strokes of the nail-scissors.
Now she had already noticed that Elizabeth had paid visits to the grocer’s on three consecutive days (three consecutive days: think of it!), and given that her purchases on other occasions had been on the same substantial scale as to-day, it became a matter of thrilling interest as to where she kept these stores. She could not keep them in the coal cellar, for that was already bursting with coal, and Diva, who had assisted her (the base one) in making a prodigious quantity of jam that year from her well-stocked garden, was aware that the kitchen cupboards were like to be as replete as the coal-cellar, before those hoardings of dead oxen began. Then there was the big cupboard under the stairs, but that could scarcely be the site of this prodigious cache, for it was full of cardboard and curtains and carpets and all the rubbishy accumulations which Elizabeth could not bear to part with. Then she had large cupboards in her bedroom and spare rooms full to overflowing of mouldy clothes, but there was positively not another cupboard in the house that Diva knew of, and she crushed her temples in her hands in the attempt to locate the hiding-place of the hoard.
Diva suddenly jumped up with a happy squeal of discovery, and in her excitement snapped her scissors with so random a stroke that she completely cut in half the bunch of roses that she was engaged on. There was another cupboard, the best and biggest of all and the most secret and the most discreet. It lay embedded in the wall of the garden-room, cloaked and concealed behind the shelves of a false book-case, which contained no more than the simulacra of books, just books with titles that had never yet appeared on any honest book. There were twelve volumes of “The Beauties of Nature,” a shelf full of “Elegant Extracts,” there were volumes simply called “Poems,” there were “Commentaries,” there were “Travels” and “Astronomy” and the lowest and tallest shelf was full of “Music.” A card-table habitually stood in front of this false repository of learning, and it was only last week that Diva, prying casually round the room while Elizabeth had gone to take off her gardening-gloves, had noticed a modest catch let into the wood-work. Without doubt, then, the book-case was the door of the cupboard, and with a stroke of intuition, too sure to be called a guess, Diva was aware that she had correctly inferred the storage of this nefarious hoard. It only remained to verify her conclusion, and, if possible, expose it with every circumstance of public ignominy. She was in no hurry: she could bide her time, aware that, in all probability, every day that passed would see an addition to its damning contents. Some day, when she was playing bridge and the card-table had been moved out, in some rubber when she herself was dummy and Elizabeth greedily playing the hand, she would secretly and accidentally press the catch which her acute vision had so providentially revealed to her…
She attacked her chintz curtains again with her appetite for the pink roses agreeably whetted. Another hour’s work would give her sufficient bunches for her purpose, and unless the dyer was as perfidious as Elizabeth, her now purple jacket and skirt would arrive that afternoon. Two days’ hard work would be sufficient for so accomplished a needlewoman as herself to make these original decorations.
In the meantime, for Diva was never id
le, and was chiefly occupied with dress, she got out a certain American fashion paper. There was in it the description of a tea-gown worn by Mrs. Titus W. Trout which she believed was within her dressmaking capacity. She would attempt it, anyhow, and if it proved to be beyond her, she could entrust the more difficult parts to that little dressmaker whom Elizabeth employed, and who was certainly very capable. But the costume was of so daring and splendid a nature that she feared to take anyone into her confidence about it, lest some hint or gossip — for Tilling was a gossipy place — might leak out. Kingfisher blue! It made her mouth water to dwell on the sumptuous syllables!
Miss Mapp was so feverishly occupied all next morning with the application of poppies to the corn-coloured skirt that she paid very little attention to the opening gambits of the day, either as regards the world in general, or, more particularly, Major Benjy. After his early retirement last night he was probably up with the lark this morning, and when between half-past ten and eleven his sonorous “Qui-hi!” sounded through her open window, the shock she experienced interrupted for a moment her floral industry. It was certainly very odd that, having gone to bed at so respectable an hour last night, he should be calling for his porridge only now, but with an impulse of unusual optimism, she figured him as having been at work on his diaries before breakfast, and in that absorbing occupation having forgotten how late it was growing. That, no doubt, was the explanation, though it would be nice to know for certain, if the information positively forced itself on her notice… As she worked, (framing her lips with elaborate motions to the syllables) she dumbly practised the phrase “Major Benjy.” Sometimes in moments of gallantry he called her “Miss Elizabeth,” and she meant, when she had got accustomed to it by practice, to say “Major Benjy” to him by accident, and he would, no doubt, beg her to make a habit of that friendly slip of the tongue… “Tongue” led to a new train of thought, and presently she paused in her work, and pulling the card-table away from the deceptive book-case, she pressed the concealed catch of the door, and peeped in.
There was still room for further small precautions against starvation owing to the impending coal-strike, and she took stock of her provisions. Even if the strike lasted quite a long time, there would now be no immediate lack of the necessaries of life, for the cupboard glistened with tinned meats, and the flour-merchant had sent a very sensible sack. This with considerable exertion she transferred to a high shelf in the cupboard, instead of allowing it to remain standing on the floor, for Withers had informed her of an unpleasant rumour about a mouse, which Mary had observed, lost in thought in front of the cupboard. “So mousie shall only find tins on the floor now,” thought Miss Mapp. “Mousie shall try his teeth on tins.” … There was tea and coffee in abundance, jars of jam filled the kitchen shelves, and if this morning she laid in a moderate supply of dried fruits, there was no reason to face the future with anything but fortitude. She would see about that now, for, busy though she was, she could not miss the shopping-parade. Would Diva, she wondered, be at her window, snipping roses out of chintz curtains? The careful, thrifty soul. Perhaps this time to-morrow, Diva, looking out of her window, would see that somebody else had been quicker about being thrifty than she. That would be fun!
The Major’s dining-room window was open, and as Miss Mapp passed it, she could not help hearing loud, angry remarks about eggs coming from inside. That made it clear that he was still at breakfast, and that if he had been working at his diaries in the fresh morning hours and forgetting the time, early rising, in spite of his early retirement last night, could not be supposed to suit his Oriental temper. But a change of habits was invariably known to be upsetting, and Miss Mapp was hopeful that in a day or two he would feel quite a different man. Further down the street was quaint Irene lounging at the door of her new studio (a converted coach-house), smoking a cigarette and dressed like a jockey.
“Hullo, Mapp,” she said. “Come and have a look round my new studio. You haven’t seen it yet. I shall give a house-warming next week. Bridge-party!”
Miss Mapp tried to steel herself for the hundredth time to appear quite unconscious that she was being addressed when Irene said “Mapp” in that odious manner. But she never could summon up sufficient nerve to be rude to so awful a mimic…
“Good morning, dear one,” she said sycophantically. “Shall I peep in for a moment?”
The decoration of the studio was even more appalling than might have been expected. There was a German stove in the corner made of pink porcelain, the rafters and roof were painted scarlet, the walls were of magenta distemper and the floor was blue. In the corner was a very large orange-coloured screen. The walls were hung with specimens of Irene’s art, there was a stout female with no clothes on at all, whom it was impossible not to recognize as being Lucy; there were studies of fat legs and ample bosoms, and on the easel was a picture, evidently in process of completion, which represented a man. From this Miss Mapp instantly averted her eyes.
“Eve,” said Irene, pointing to Lucy.
Miss Mapp naturally guessed that the gentleman who was almost in the same costume was Adam, and turned completely away from him.
“And what a lovely idea to have a blue floor, dear,” she said. “How original you are. And that pretty scarlet ceiling. But don’t you find when you’re painting that all these bright colours disturb you?”
“Not a bit: they stimulate your sense of colour.”
Miss Mapp moved towards the screen.
“What a delicious big screen,” she said.
“Yes, but don’t go behind it, Mapp,” said Irene, “or you’ll see my model undressing.”
Miss Mapp retreated from it precipitately, as from a wasp’s nest, and examined some of the studies on the wall, for it was more than probable from the unfinished picture on the easel that Adam lurked behind the delicious screen. Terrible though it all was, she was conscious of an unbridled curiosity to know who Adam was. It was dreadful to think that there could be any man in Tilling so depraved as to stand to be looked at with so little on…
Irene strolled round the walls with her.
“Studies of Lucy,” she said.
“I see, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “How clever! Legs and things! But when you have your bridge-party, won’t you perhaps cover some of them up, or turn them to the wall? We should all be looking at your pictures instead of attending to our cards. And if you were thinking of asking the Padre, you know…”
They were approaching the corner of the room where the screen stood, when a movement there as if Adam had hit it with his elbow made Miss Mapp turn round. The screen fell flat on the ground and within a yard of her stood Mr. Hopkins, the proprietor of the fish-shop just up the street. Often and often had Miss Mapp had pleasant little conversations with him, with a view to bringing down the price of flounders. He had little bathing-drawers on…
“Hullo, Hopkins, are you ready?” said Irene. “You know Miss Mapp, don’t you?”
Miss Mapp had not imagined that Time and Eternity combined could hold so embarrassing a moment. She did not know where to look, but wherever she looked, it should not be at Hopkins. But (wherever she looked) she could not be unaware that Hopkins raised his large bare arm and touched the place where his cap would have been, if he had had one.
“Good-morning, Hopkins,” she said. “Well, Irene darling, I must be trotting, and leave you to your — —” she hardly knew what to call it— “to your work.”
She tripped from the room, which seemed to be entirely full of unclothed limbs, and redder than one of Mr. Hopkins’s boiled lobsters hurried down the street. She felt that she could never face him again, but would be obliged to go to the establishment in the High Street where Irene dealt, when it was fish she wanted from a fish-shop… Her head was in a whirl at the brazenness of mankind, especially womankind. How had Irene started the overtures that led to this? Had she just said to Hopkins one morning: “Will you come to my studio and take off all your clothes?” If Irene had not been such a wonder
ful mimic, she would certainly have felt it her duty to go straight to the Padre, and, pulling down her veil, confide to him the whole sad story. But as that was out of the question, she went into Twenlow’s and ordered four pounds of dried apricots.
CHAPTER IV.
The dyer, as Diva had feared, proved perfidious, and it was not till the next morning that her maid brought her the parcel containing the coat and skirt of the projected costume. Diva had already done her marketing, so that she might have no other calls on her time to interfere with the tacking on of the bunches of pink roses, and she hoped to have the dress finished in time for Elizabeth’s afternoon bridge-party next day, an invitation to which had just reached her. She had also settled to have a cold lunch to-day, so that her cook as well as her parlourmaid could devote themselves to the job.
She herself had taken the jacket for decoration, and was just tacking the first rose on to the collar, when she looked out of the window, and what she saw caused her needle to fall from her nerveless hand. Tripping along the opposite pavement was Elizabeth. She had on a dress, the material of which, after a moment’s gaze, Diva identified: it was that corn-coloured coat and skirt which she had worn so much last spring. But the collar, the cuffs, the waistband and the hem of the skirt were covered with staring red poppies. Next moment, she called to remembrance the chintz that had once covered Elizabeth’s sofa in the garden-room.
Diva wasted no time, but rang the bell. She had to make certain.
“Janet,” she said, “go straight out into the High Street, and walk close behind Miss Mapp. Look very carefully at her dress; see if the poppies on it are of chintz.”
Janet’s face fell.
“Why, ma’am, she’s never gone and — —” she began.