by E. F. Benson
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.
Though Tilling with all its perspicacity could not have known it, the intuitive reader will certainly have perceived that Miss Mapp’s party for Wednesday night had, so to speak, further irons in its fire. It had originally been a bribe to Susan Poppit, in order to induce her to spread broadcast that that ridiculous rumour (whoever had launched it) had been promptly denied by the person whom it most immediately concerned. It served a second purpose in showing that Miss Mapp was too high above the mire of scandal, however interesting, to know or care who might happen to be wallowing in it, and for this reason she asked everybody who had done so. Such loftiness of soul had earned her an amazing bonus, for it had induced those who sat in the seat of the scoffers before to come hastily off, and join the thin but unwavering ranks of the true believers, who up till then had consisted only of Susan and Mr. Wyse. Frankly, so blest a conclusion had never occurred to Miss Mapp: it was one of those unexpected rewards that fall like ripe plums into the lap of the upright. By denying a rumour she had got everybody to believe it, and when on Wednesday morning she went out to get the chocolate cakes which were so useful in allaying the appetites of guests, she encountered no broken conversations and gleeful smiles, but sidelong glances of respectful envy.
But what Tilling did not and could not know was that this, the first of the autumn after-dinner bridge-parties, was destined to look on the famous teagown of kingfisher-blue, as designed for Mrs. Trout. No doubt other ladies would have hurried up their new gowns, or at least have camouflaged their old ones, in honour of the annual inauguration of evening bridge, but Miss Mapp had no misgivings about being outshone. And once again here she felt that luck waited on merit, for though when she dressed that evening she found she had not anticipated that artificial light would cast a somewhat pale (though not ghastly) reflection from the vibrant blue on to her features, similar in effect to (but not so marked as) the light that shines on the faces of those who lean over the burning brandy and raisins of “snapdragon,” this interesting pallor seemed very aptly to bear witness to all that she had gone through. She did not look ill — she was satisfied as to that — she looked gorgeous and a little wan.
The bridge tables were not set out in the garden-room, which entailed a scurry over damp gravel on a black, windy night, but in the little square parlour above her dining-room, where Withers, in the intervals of admitting her guests, was laying out plates of sandwiches and the chocolate cakes, reinforced when the interval for refreshments came with hot soup, whisky and syphons, and a jug of “cup” prepared according to an ancestral and economical recipe, which Miss Mapp had taken a great deal of trouble about. A single bottle of white wine, with suitable additions of ginger, nutmeg, herbs and soda-water, was the mother of a gallon of a drink that seemed aflame with fiery and probably spirituous ingredients. Guests were very careful how they partook of it, so stimulating it seemed.
Miss Mapp was reading a book on gardening upside down (she had taken it up rather hurriedly) when the Poppits arrived, and sprang to her feet with a pretty cry at being so unexpectedly but delightfully disturbed.
“Susan! Isabel!” she said. “Lovely of you to have come! I was reading about flowers, making plans for next year.”
She saw the four eyes riveted to her dress. Susan looked quite shabby in comparison, and Isabel did not look anything at all.
“My dear, too lovely!” said Mrs. Poppit slowly.
Miss Mapp looked brig
htly about, as if wondering what was too lovely: at last she guessed.
“Oh, my new frock?” she said. “Do you like it, dear? How sweet of you. It’s just a little nothing that I talked over with that nice Miss Greele in the High Street. We put our heads together, and invented something quite cheap and simple. And here’s Evie and the dear Padre. So kind of you to look in.”
Four more eyes were riveted on it.
“Enticed you out just once, Padre,” went on Miss Mapp. “So sweet of you to spare an evening. And here’s Major Benjy and Captain Puffin. Well, that is nice!”
This was really tremendous of Miss Mapp. Here was she meeting without embarrassment or awkwardness the two, who if the duel had not been averted, would have risked their very lives over some dispute concerning her. Everybody else, naturally, was rather taken aback for the moment at this situation, so deeply dyed in the dramatic. Should either of the gladiators have heard that it was the Padre who undoubtedly had spread the rumour concerning their hostess, Mrs. Poppit was afraid that even his cloth might not protect him. But no such deplorable calamity occurred, and only four more eyes were riveted to the kingfisher-blue.
“Upon my word,” said the Major, “I never saw anything more beautiful than that gown, Miss Elizabeth. Straight from Paris, eh? Paris in every line of it.”
“Oh, Major Benjy,” said Elizabeth. “You’re all making fun of me and my simple little frock. I’m getting quite shy. Just a bit of old stuff that I had. But so nice of you to like it. I wonder where Diva is. We shall have to scold her for being late. Ah — she shan’t be scolded. Diva, darl — —”
The endearing word froze on Miss Mapp’s lips and she turned deadly white. In the doorway, in equal fury and dismay, stood Diva, dressed in precisely the same staggeringly lovely costume as her hostess. Had Diva and Miss Greele put their heads together too? Had Diva got a bit of old stuff …?
Miss Mapp pulled herself together first and moistened her dry lips.
“So sweet of you to look in, dear,” she said. “Shall we cut?”
Naturally the malice of cards decreed that Miss Mapp and Diva should sit next each other as adversaries at the same table, and the combined effect of two lots of kingfisher-blue was blinding. Complete silence on every subject connected, however remotely, with dress was, of course, the only line for correct diplomacy to pursue, but then Major Benjy was not diplomatic, only gallant.
“Never saw such stunning gowns, eh, Padre?” he said. “Dear me, they are very much alike too, aren’t they? Pair of exquisite sisters.”
It would be hard to say which of the two found this speech the more provocative of rage, for while Diva was four years younger than Miss Mapp, Miss Mapp was four inches taller than Diva. She cut the cards to her sister with a hand that trembled so much that she had to do it again, and Diva could scarcely deal.
Mr. Wyse frankly confessed the next day when, at one o’clock, Elizabeth found herself the first arrival at his house, that he had been very self-indulgent.
“I have given myself a treat, dear Miss Mapp,” he said. “I have asked three entrancing ladies to share my humble meal with me, and have provided — is it not shocking of me? — nobody else to meet them. Your pardon, dear lady, for my greediness.”
Now this was admirably done. Elizabeth knew very well why two out of the three men in Tilling had not been asked (very gratifying, that reason was), and with the true refinement of which Mr. Wyse was so amply possessed, where he was taking all the blame on himself, and putting it so prettily. She bestowed her widest smile on him.
“Oh, Mr. Wyse,” she said. “We shall all quarrel over you.”
Not until Miss Mapp had spoken did she perceive how subtle her words were. They seemed to bracket herself and Mr. Wyse together: all the men (two out of the three, at any rate) had been quarrelling over her, and now there seemed a very fair prospect of three of the women quarreling over Mr. Wyse…
Without being in the least effeminate, Mr. Wyse this morning looked rather like a modern Troubadour. He had a velveteen coat on, a soft, fluffy, mushy tie which looked as if made of Shirley poppies, very neat knickerbockers, brown stockings with blobs, like the fruit of plane trees, dependent from elaborate “tops,” and shoes with a cascade of leather frilling covering the laces. He might almost equally well be about to play golf over putting-holes on the lawn as the guitar. He made a gesture of polished, polite dissent, not contradicting, yet hardly accepting this tribute, remitting it perhaps, just as the King when he enters the City of London touches the sword of the Lord Mayor and tells him to keep it…
“So pleasant to be in Tilling again,” he said. “We shall have a cosy, busy winter, I hope. You, I know, Miss Mapp, are always busy.”
“The day is never long enough for me,” said Elizabeth enthusiastically. “What with my household duties in the morning, and my garden, and our pleasant little gatherings, it is always bed-time too soon. I want to read a great deal this winter, too.”
Diva (at the sight of whom Elizabeth had to make a strong effort of self-control) here came in, together with Mrs. Poppit, and the party was complete. Elizabeth would have been willing to bet that, in spite of the warmness of the morning, Susan would have on her sable coat, and though, technically, she would have lost, she more than won morally, for Mr. Wyse’s repeated speeches about his greediness were hardly out of his mouth when she discovered that she had left her handkerchief in the pocket of her sable coat, which she had put over the back of a conspicuous chair in the hall. Figgis, however, came in at the moment to say that lunch was ready, and she delayed them all very much by a long, ineffectual search for it, during which Figgis, with a visible effort, held up the sable coat, so that it was displayed to the utmost advantage. And then, only fancy, Susan discovered that it was in her sable muff all the time!
All three ladies were on tenterhooks of anxiety as to who was to be placed on Mr. Wyse’s right, who on his left, and who would be given only the place between two other women. But his tact was equal to anything.
“Miss Mapp,” he said, “will you honour me by taking the head of my table and be hostess for me? Only I must have that vase of flowers removed, Figgis; I can look at my flowers when Miss Mapp is not here. Now, what have we got for breakfast — lunch, I should say?”
The macaroni which Mr. Wyse had brought back with him from Naples naturally led on to Italian subjects, and the general scepticism about the Contessa di Faraglione had a staggering blow dealt it.
“My sister,” began Mr. Wyse (and by a swift sucking motion, Diva drew into her mouth several serpents of dependent macaroni in order to be able to listen better without this agitating distraction), “my sister, I hope, will come to England this winter, and spend several weeks with me.” (Sensation.)
“And the Count?” asked Diva, having swallowed the serpents.
“I fear not; Cecco — Francesco, you know — is a great stay-at-home. Amelia is looking forward very much to seeing Tilling. I shall insist on her making a long stay here, before she visits our relations at Whitchurch.”
Elizabeth found herself reserving judgment. She would believe in the Contessa Faraglione — no one more firmly — when she saw her, and had reasonable proofs of her identity.
“Delightful!” she said, abandoning with regret the fruitless pursuit with a fork of the few last serpents that writhed on her plate. “What an addition to our society! We shall all do our best to spoil her, Mr. Wyse. When do you expect her?”
“Early in December. You must be very kind to her, dear ladies. She is an insatiable bridge-player. She has heard much of the great players she will meet here.”
That decided Mrs. Poppit. She would join the correspondence class conducted by “Little Slam,” in “Cosy Corner.” Little Slam, for the sum of two guineas, payable in advance, engaged to make first-class players of anyone with normal intelligence. Diva’s mind flew off to the subject of dress, and the thought of the awful tragedy concerning the tea-gown of kingfisher-blue, combined with the endive salad
, gave a wry twist to her mouth for a moment.
“I, as you know,” continued Mr. Wyse, “am no hand at bridge.”
“Oh, Mr. Wyse, you play beautifully,” interpolated Elizabeth.
“Too flattering of you, Miss Mapp. But Amelia and Cecco do not agree with you. I am never allowed to play when I am at the Villa Faraglione, unless a table cannot be made up without me. But I shall look forward to seeing many well-contested games.”
The quails and the figs had come from Capri, and Miss Mapp, greedily devouring each in turn, was so much incensed by the information that she had elicited about them, that, though she joined in the general Lobgesang, she was tempted to inquire whether the ice had not been brought from the South Pole by some Antarctic expedition. Her mind was not, like poor Diva’s, taken up with obstinate questionings about the kingfisher-blue tea-gown, for she had already determined what she was going to do about it. Naturally it was impossible to contemplate fresh encounters like that of last night, but another gown, crimson-lake, the colour of Mrs. Trout’s toilet for the second evening of the Duke of Hampshire’s visit, as Vogue informed her, had completely annihilated Newport with its splendour. She had already consulted Miss Greele about it, who said that if the kingfisher-blue was bleached first the dye of crimson-lake would be brilliant and pure… The thought of that, and the fact that Miss Greele’s lips were professionally sealed, made her able to take Diva’s arm as they strolled about the garden afterwards. The way in which both Diva and Susan had made up to Mr. Wyse during lunch was really very shocking, though it did not surprise Miss Mapp, but she supposed their heads had been turned by the prospect of playing bridge with a countess. Luckily she expected nothing better of either of them, so their conduct was in no way a blow or a disappointment to her.