by E. F. Benson
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 go basket-less, 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?”
She gave a croak of laughter and tickled the crab…
“Will he eat the steak, do you think?” she went on. “Is he not lively? I went to the shop of Mr. Hopkins, who was not there, because he was engaged with Miss Coles. And was that not Miss Coles last night at my brother’s? The one who spat in the fire when nobody but I was looking? You are enchanting at Tilling. What is Mr. Hopkins doing with Miss Coles? Do they kiss? But your market basket: that disappoints me, for Algernon said you had the biggest market-basket of all. I bought the biggest I could find: is it as big as yours?”
Miss Mapp’s head was in a whirl. The Contessa said in the loudest possible voice all that everybody else only whispered; she displayed (in her basket) all that everybody else covered up with thick layers of paper. If Miss Mapp had only guessed that the Contessa would have a market-basket, she would have paraded the High Street with a leg of mutton protruding from one end and a pair of Wellington boots from the other… But who could have suspected that a Contessa…
Black thoughts succeeded. Was it possible that Mr. Wyse had been satirical about the affairs of Tilling? If so, she wished him nothing worse than to be married to Susan. But a playful face must be put, for the moment, on the situation.
“Too lovely of you, dear Contessa,” she said. “May we go marketing together to-morrow, and we will measure the size of our baskets? Such fun I have, too, laughing at the dear people in Tilling. But what thrilling news this morning about our sweet Susan and your dear brother, though of course I knew it long ago.”
“Indeed! how was that?” said the Contessa quite sharply.
Miss Mapp was “nettled” at her tone.
“Oh, you must allow me two eyes,” she said, since it was merely tedious to explain how she had seen them from behind a curtain kissing in the garden. “Just two eyes.”
“And a nose for scent,” remarked the Contessa very genially.
This was certainly coarse, though probably Italian. Miss Mapp’s opinion of the Contessa fluctuated violently like a barometer before a storm and indicated “Changeable.”
“Dear Susan is such an intimate friend,” she said.
The Contessa looked at her very fixedly for a moment, and then appeared to dismiss the matter.
“My crab, my steak,” she said. “And whe
re does your nice Captain, no, Major Flint live? I have a note to leave on him, for he has asked me to tea all alone, to see his tiger skins. He is going to be my flirt while I am in Tilling, and when I go he will break his heart, but I will have told him who can mend it again.”
“Dear Major Benjy!” said Miss Mapp, at her wits’ end to know how to deal with so feather-tongued a lady. “What a treat it will be to him to have you to tea. To-day, is it?”
The Contessa quite distinctly winked behind her eyeglass, which she had put up to look at Diva, who whirled by on the other side of the street.
“And if I said ‘To-day,’” she remarked, “you would — what is it that that one says” — and she indicated Diva— “yes, you would pop in, and the good Major would pay no attention to me. So if I tell you I shall go to-day, you will know that is a lie, you clever Miss Mapp, and so you will go to tea with him to-morrow and find me there. Bene! Now where is his house?”
This was a sort of scheming that had never entered into Miss Mapp’s life, and she saw with pain how shallow she had been all these years. Often and often she had, when inquisitive questions were put her, answered them without any strict subservience to truth, but never had she thought of confusing the issues like this. If she told Diva a lie, Diva probably guessed it was a lie, and acted accordingly, but she had never thought of making it practically impossible to tell whether it was a lie or not. She had no more idea when she walked back along the High Street with the Contessa swinging her basket by her side, whether that lady was going to tea with Major Benjy to-day or to-morrow or when, than she knew whether the crab was going to eat the beefsteak.
“There’s his house,” she said, as they paused at the dentist’s corner, “and there’s mine next it, with the little bow-window of my garden-room looking out on to the street. I hope to welcome you there, dear Contessa, for a tiny game of bridge and some tea one of these days very soon. What day do you think? To-morrow?”
(Then she would know if the Contessa was going to tea with Major Benjy to-morrow … unfortunately the Contessa appeared to know that she would know it, too.)
“My flirt!” she said. “Perhaps I may be having tea with my flirt to-morrow.”
Better anything than that.
“I will ask him, too, to meet you,” said Miss Mapp, feeling in some awful and helpless way that she was playing her adversary’s game. “Adversary?” did she say to herself? She did. The inscrutable Contessa was “up to” that too.
“I will not amalgamate my treats,” she said. “So that is his house! What a charming house! How my heart flutters as I ring the bell!”
Miss Mapp was now quite distraught. There was the possibility that the Contessa might tell Major Benjy that it was time he married, but on the other hand she was making arrangements to go to tea with him on an unknown date, and the hero of amorous adventures in India and elsewhere might lose his heart again to somebody quite different from one whom he could hope to marry. By daylight the dear Contessa was undeniably plain: that was something, but in these short days, tea would be conducted by artificial light, and by artificial light she was not so like a rabbit. What was worse was that by any light she had a liveliness which might be mistaken for wit, and a flattering manner which might be taken for sincerity. She hoped men were not so easily duped as that, and was sadly afraid that they were. Blind fools!
The number of visits that Miss Mapp made about tea-time in this week before Christmas to the post-box at the corner of the High Street, with an envelope in her hand containing Mr. Hopkins’s bill for fish (and a postal order enclosed), baffles computation. Naturally, she did not intend, either by day or night, to risk being found again with a blank unstamped envelope in her hand, and the one enclosing Mr. Hopkins’s bill and the postal order would have passed scrutiny for correctness, anywhere. But fair and calm as was the exterior of that envelope, none could tell how agitated was the hand that carried it backwards and forwards until the edges got crumpled and the inscription clouded with much fingering. Indeed, of all the tricks that Miss Mapp had compassed for others, none was so sumptuously contrived as that in which she had now entangled herself.
For these December days were dark, and in consequence not only would the Contessa be looking her best (such as it was) at tea-time, but from Miss Mapp’s window it was impossible to tell whether she had gone to tea with him on any particular afternoon, for there had been a strike at the gas-works, and the lamp at the corner, which, in happier days, would have told all, told nothing whatever. Miss Mapp must therefore trudge to the letter-box with Mr. Hopkins’s bill in her hand as she went out, and (after a feint of posting it) with it in her pocket as she came back, in order to gather from the light in the windows, from the sound of conversation that would be audible as she passed close beneath them, whether the Major was having tea there or not, and with whom. Should she hear that ringing laugh which had sounded so pleasant when she revoked, but now was so sinister, she had quite determined to go in and borrow a book or a tiger-skin — anything. The Major could scarcely fail to ask her to tea, and, once there, wild horses should not drag her away until she had outstayed the other visitor. Then, as her malady of jealousy grew more feverish, she began to perceive, as by the ray of some dreadful dawn, that lights in the Major’s room and sounds of elfin laughter were not completely trustworthy as proofs that the Contessa was there. It was possible, awfully possible, that the two might be sitting in the firelight, that voices might be hushed to amorous whisperings, that pregnant smiles might be taking the place of laughter. On one such afternoon, as she came back from the letter-box with patient Mr. Hopkins’s overdue bill in her pocket, a wild certainty seized her, when she saw how closely the curtains were drawn, and how still it seemed inside his room, that firelight dalliance was going on.
She rang the bell, and imagined she heard whisperings inside while it was being answered. Presently the light went up in the hall, and the Major’s Mrs. Dominic opened the door.
“The Major is in, I think, isn’t he, Mrs. Dominic?” said Miss Mapp, in her most insinuating tones.
“No, miss; out,” said Dominic uncompromisingly. (Miss Mapp wondered if Dominic drank.)
“Dear me! How tiresome, when he told me — —” said she, with playful annoyance. “Would you be very kind, Mrs. Dominic, and just see for certain that he is not in his room? He may have come in.”
“No, miss, he’s out,” said Dominic, with the parrot-like utterance of the determined liar. “Any message?”
Miss Mapp turned away, more certain than ever that he was in and immersed in dalliance. She would have continued to be quite certain about it, had she not, glancing distractedly down the street, caught sight of him coming up with Captain Puffin.
Meantime she had twice attempted to get up a cosy little party of four (so as not to frighten the Contessa) to play bridge from tea till dinner, and on both occasions the Faradiddleony (for so she had become) was most unfortunately engaged. But the second of these disappointing replies contained the hope that they would meet at their marketings to-morrow morning, and though poor Miss Mapp was really getting very tired with these innumerable visits to the post-box, whether wet or fine, she set forth next morning with the hopes anyhow of finding out whether the Contessa had been to tea with Major Flint, or on what day she was going… There she was, just opposite the post office, and there — oh, shame! — was Major Benjy on his way to the tram, in light-hearted conversation with her. It was a slight consolation that Captain Puffin was there too.
Miss Mapp quickened her steps to a little tripping run.
“Dear Contessa, so sorry I am late,” she said. “Such a lot of little things to do this morning. (Major Benjy! Captain Puffin!) Oh, how naughty of you to have begun your shopping without me!”
“Only been to the grocer’s,” said the Contessa. “Major Benjy has been so amusing that I haven’t got on with my shopping at all. I have written to Cecco to say that there is no one so witty.”
(Major Benjy! thought Mis
s Mapp bitterly, remembering how long it had taken her to arrive at that. “And witty.” She had not arrived at that yet.)
“No, indeed!” said the Major. “It was the Contessa, Miss Mapp, who has been so entertaining.”
“I’m sure she would be,” said Miss Mapp, with an enormous smile. “And, oh, Major Benjy, you’ll miss your tram unless you hurry, and get no golf at all, and then be vexed with us for keeping you. You men always blame us poor women.”
“Well, upon my word, what’s a game of golf compared with the pleasure of being with the ladies?” asked the Major, with a great fat bow.
“I want to catch that tram,” said Puffin quite distinctly, and Miss Mapp found herself more nearly forgetting his inebriated insults than ever before.
“You poor Captain Puffin,” said the Contessa, “you shall catch it. Be off, both of you, at once. I will not say another word to either of you. I will never forgive you if you miss it. But to-morrow afternoon, Major Benjy.”
He turned round to bow again, and a bicycle luckily (for the rider) going very slowly, butted softly into him behind.
“Not hurt?” called the Contessa. “Good! Ah, Miss Mapp, let us get to our shopping! How well you manage those men! How right you are about them! They want their golf more than they want us, whatever they may say. They would hate us, if we kept them from their golf. So sorry not to have been able to play bridge with you yesterday, but an engagement. What a busy place Tilling is. Let me see! Where is the list of things that Figgis told me to buy? That Figgis! A roller-towel for his pantry, and some blacking for his boots, and some flannel I suppose for his fat stomach. It is all for Figgis. And there is that swift Mrs. Plaistow. She comes like a train with a red light in her face and wheels and whistlings. She talks like a telegram — Good-morning, Mrs. Plaistow.”