by E. F. Benson
Love-bird’s welcome was to dab rather crossly at the caressing hand which its mistress extended, and to trot away to ambush itself beneath some fine hollyhocks, where it regarded them with singular disfavour.
‘My little secret garden,’ continued Miss Mapp as they came to the archway. ‘When I am in here and shut the door, I mustn’t be disturbed for anything less than a telegram. A rule of the house: I am very strict about it. The tower of the church keeping watch, as I always say over my little nook, and taking care of me. Otherwise not overlooked at all. A little paved walk round it, you see, flower-beds, a pocket-handkerchief of a lawn, and in the middle a pillar with a bust of good Queen Anne. Picked it up in a shop here for a song. One of my lucky days.’
‘Oh Georgie, isn’t it too sweet?’ cried Lucia. ‘Un giardino segreto. Molto bello!’
Miss Mapp gave a little purr of ecstasy.
‘How lovely to be able to talk Italian like that,’ she said. ‘So pleased you like my little . . . giardino segreto, was it? Now shall we have our tea, for I’m sure you want refreshment, and see the house afterwards? Or would you prefer a little whisky and soda, Mr Pillson? I shan’t be shocked. Major Benjy — I should say Major Flint — often prefers a small whisky and soda to tea on a hot day after his game of golf, when he pops in to see me and tell me all about it.’
The intense interest in humankind, so strenuously cultivated at Riseholme, obliterated for a moment Lucia’s appreciation of the secret garden.
‘I wonder if it was he whom we saw at the corner of the High Street,’ she said. ‘A big soldier-like man, with a couple of golf-clubs.’
‘How you hit him off in a few words,’ said Miss Mapp admiringly. ‘That can be nobody else but Major Benjy. Going off no doubt by the steam-tram (most convenient, lands you close to the links) for a round of golf after tea. I told him it would be far too hot to play earlier. I said I should scold him if he was naughty and played after lunch. He served for many years in India. Hindustanee is quite a second language to him. Calls “Quai-hai” when he wants his breakfast. Volumes of wonderful diaries, which we all hope to see published some day. His house is next to mine down the street. Lots of tiger-skins. A rather impetuous bridge-player: quite wicked sometimes. You play bridge of course, Mrs Lucas. Plenty of that in Tilling. Some good players.’
They had strolled back over the lawn to the garden-room where Withers was laying tea. It was cool and spacious, one window was shaded with the big leaves of a fig-tree, through which, unseen, Miss Mapp so often peered out to see whether her gardener was idling. Over the big bow-window looking on to the street one curtain was half-drawn, a grand piano stood near it, book-cases half-lined the walls, and above them hung many water-colour sketches of the sort that proclaims a domestic origin. Their subjects also betrayed them, for there was one of the front of Miss Mapp’s house, and one of the secret garden, another of the crooked chimney, and several of the church tower looking over the house-roofs on to Miss Mapp’s lawn.
Though she continued to spray on her visitors a perpetual shower of flattering and agreeable trifles, Miss Mapp’s inner attention was wrestling with the problem of how much a week, when it came to the delicate question of terms for the rent of her house, she should ask Lucia. The price had not been mentioned in her advertisement in The Times, and though she had told the local house-agent to name twelve guineas a week, Lucia was clearly more than delighted with what she had seen already, and it would be a senseless Quixotism to let her have the house for twelve, if she might, all the time, be willing to pay fifteen. Moreover, Miss Mapp (from behind the curtain where Georgie had seen her) was aware that Lucia had a Rolls-Royce car, so that a few additional guineas a week would probably be of no significance to her. Of course, if Lucia was not enthusiastic about the house as well as the garden, it might be unwise to ask fifteen, for she might think that a good deal, and would say something tiresome about letting Miss Mapp hear from her when she got safe away back to Riseholme, and then it was sure to be a refusal. But if she continued to rave and talk Italian about the house when she saw over it, fifteen guineas should be the price. And not a penny of that should Messrs Woolgar & Pipstow, the house-agents, get for commission since Lucia had said definitely that she saw the advertisement in The Times. That was Miss Mapp’s affair: nothing to do with Woolgar & Pipstow. Meantime she begged Georgie not to look at those water-colours on the walls.
‘Little daubs of my own,’ she said, most anxious that this should be known. ‘I should sink into the ground with shame, clear Mr Pillson, if you looked at them, for I know what a great artist you are yourself. And Withers has brought us our tea . . . You like the one of my little giardino segreto? (I must remember that beautiful phrase.) How kind of you to say so! Perhaps it isn’t quite so bad as the others, for the subject inspired me, and it’s so important, isn’t it, to love your subject? Major Benjy likes it too. Cream, Mrs Lucas? I see Withers has picked some strawberries for us from my little plot. Such a year for strawberries! And Major Benjy was chatting with friends I’ll be bound, when you passed him.’
‘Yes, a clergyman,’ said Lucia, ‘who kindly directed us to your house. In fact he seemed to know we were going there before I said so, didn’t he, Georgie? A broad Scotch accent.’
‘Dear Padre!’ said Miss Mapp. ‘It’s one of his little ways to talk Scotch, though he came from Birmingham. A very good bridge-player when he can spare time as he usually can. Reverend Kenneth Bartlett. Was there a teeny little thin woman with him like a mouse? It would be his wife.’
‘No, not thin, at all,’ said Lucia thoroughly interested. ‘Quite the other way round: in fact round. A purple coat and a skirt covered with pink roses that looked as if they were made of chintz.’
Miss Mapp nearly choked over her first sip of tea, but just saved herself.
‘I declare I’m quite frightened of you, Mrs Lucas,’ she said. ‘What an eye you’ve got. Dear Diva Plaistow, whom we’re all devoted to. Christened Godiva! Such a handicap! And they were chintz roses, which she cut out of an old pair of curtains and tacked them on. She’s full of absurd delicious fancies like that. Keeps us all in fits of laughter. Anyone else?’
‘Yes, a girl with no hat and an Eton crop. She was dressed in a fisherman’s jersey and knickerbockers.’
Miss Mapp looked pensive.
‘Quaint Irene,’ she said. ‘Irene Coles. Just a touch of unconventionality, which sometimes is very refreshing, but can be rather embarrassing. Devoted to her art. She paints strange pictures, men and women with no clothes on. One has to be careful to knock when one goes to see quaint Irene in her studio. But a great original.’
‘And then when we turned up out of the High Street,’ said Georgie eagerly, ‘we met another Rolls-Royce. I was afraid we shouldn’t be able to pass it.’
‘So was I,’ said Miss Mapp unintentionally betraying the fact that she had been watching from the garden-room. ‘That car is always up and down this street here.’
‘A large woman in it,’ said Lucia. ‘Wrapped in sables on this broiling day. A little man beside her.’
‘Mr and Mrs Wyse,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘Lately married. She was Mrs Poppit, MBE. Very worthy, and such a crashing snob.’
As soon as tea was over and the inhabitants of Tilling thus plucked and roasted, the tour of the house was made. There were charming little panelled parlours with big windows letting in a flood of air and sunshine and vases of fresh flowers on the tables. There was a broad staircase with shallow treads, and every moment Lucia became more and more enamoured of the plain well-shaped rooms. It all looked so white and comfortable, and, for one wanting a change, so different from the Hurst with its small latticed windows, its steep irregular stairs, its single steps, up or down, at the threshold of every room. People of the age of Anne seemed to have a much better idea of domestic convenience, and Lucia’s Italian exclamations grew gratifyingly frequent. Into Miss Mapp’s own bedroom she went alone with the owner, leaving Georgie on the landing outside, for delicac
y would not permit his looking on the scene where Miss Mapp nightly disrobed herself, and the bed where she nightly disposed herself. Besides, it would be easier for Lucia to ask that important point-blank question of terms, and for herself to answer it if they were alone.
‘I’m charmed with the house,’ said Lucia. ‘And what exactly, how much I mean, for a period of two months—’
‘Fifteen guineas a week,’ said Miss Mapp without pause. ‘That would include the use of my piano. A sweet instrument by Blumenfelt.’
‘I will take it for August and September,’ said Lucia.
‘And I’m sure I hope you’ll be as pleased with it,’ said Miss Mapp, ‘as I’m sure I shall be with my tenant.’
A bright idea struck her, and she smiled more widely than ever.
‘That would not include, of course, the wages of my gardener, such a nice steady man,’ she said, ‘or garden-produce. Flowers for the house by all means, but not fruit or vegetables.’
At that moment Lucia, blinded by passion for Mallards, Tilling and the Tillingites, would have willingly agreed to pay the water-rate as well. If Miss Mapp had guessed that, she would certainly have named this unusual condition.
Miss Mapp, as requested by Lucia, had engaged rooms for her and Georgie at a pleasant hostelry near by, called the Trader’s Arms, and she accompanied them there with Lucia’s car following, like an empty carriage at a funeral, to see that all was ready for them. There must have been some misunderstanding of the message, for Georgie found that a double bedroom had been provided for them. Luckily Lucia had lingered outside with Miss Mapp, looking at the view over the marsh, and Georgie with embarrassed blushes explained at the bureau that this would not do at all, and the palms of his hands got cold and wet until the mistake was erased and remedied. Then Miss Mapp left them and they went out to wander about the town. But Mallards was the magnet for Lucia’s enamoured eye, and presently they stole back towards it. Many houses apparently were to be let furnished in Tilling just now, and Georgie too grew infected with the desire to have one. Riseholme would be very dismal without Lucia, for the moment the fête was over he felt sure that an appalling reaction after the excitement would settle on it; he might even miss being knighted. He had sketched everything sketchable, there would be nobody to play duets with, and the whole place would stagnate again until Lucia’s return, just as it had stagnated during her impenetrable widowhood. Whereas here there were innumerable subjects for his brush, and Lucia would be installed in Mallards with a Blumenfelt in the garden-room, and, as was already obvious, a maelstrom of activities whirling in her brain. Major Benjy interested her, so did quaint Irene and the Padre, all the group, in fact, which had seen them drive up with such pre-knowledge, so it seemed, of their destination.
The wall of Miss Mapp’s garden, now known to them from inside, ran up to where they now stood, regarding the front of Mallards, and Georgie suddenly observed that just beside them was the sweetest little gabled cottage with the board announcing that it was to be let furnished.
‘Look, Lucia,’ he said. ‘How perfectly fascinating! If it wasn’t for that blasted fête, I believe I should be tempted to take it, if I could get it for the couple of months when you are here.’
Lucia had been waiting just for that. She was intending to hint something of the sort before long unless he did, and had made up her mind to stand treat for a bottle of champagne at dinner, so that when they strolled about again afterwards, as she was quite determined to do, Georgie, adventurous with wine, might find the light of the late sunset glowing on Georgian fronts in the town and on the levels of the surrounding country, quite irresistible. But how wise to have waited, so that Georgie should make the suggestion himself.
‘My dear, what a delicious idea!’ she said. ‘Are you really thinking of it? Heavenly for me to have a friend here instead of being planted among strangers. And certainly it is a darling little house. It doesn’t seem to be occupied, no smoke from any of the chimneys. I think we might really peep in through the windows and get some idea of what it’s like.’
They had to stand on tiptoe to do this, but by shading their eyes from the westerly sun they could get a very decent idea of the interior.
‘This must be the dining-room,’ said Georgie, peering in.
‘A lovely open fireplace,’ said Lucia. ‘So cosy.’
They moved on sideways like crabs.
‘A little hall,’ said Lucia. ‘Pretty staircase going up out of it.’
More crab-like movements.
‘The sitting-room,’ said Georgie. ‘Quite charming, and if you press your nose close you can see out of the other window into a tiny garden beyond. The wooden paling must be that of your kitchen-garden.’
They stepped back into the street to get a better idea of the topography, and at this moment Miss Mapp looked out of the bow-window of her garden-room and saw them there. She was as intensely interested in this as they in the house.
‘And three bedrooms I should think upstairs,’ said Lucia, ‘and two attics above. Heaps.’
‘I shall go and see the agent to-morrow morning,’ said Georgie. ‘I can imagine myself being very comfortable there!’
They strolled off into the disused graveyard round the church. Lucia turned to have one more look at the front of Mallards, and Miss Mapp made a low swift curtsey, remaining down so that she disappeared completely.
‘About that old fête,’ said Georgie, ‘I don’t want to throw Daisy over, because she’ll never get another Drake.’
‘But you can go down there for the week,’ said Lucia who had thought it all out, ‘and come back as soon as it’s over. You know how to be knighted by now. You needn’t go to all those endless rehearsals. Georgie, look at that wonderful clock on the church.’
‘Lovely,’ said Georgie absently. ‘I told Daisy I simply would not be knighted every day. I shall have no shoulder left.’
‘And I think that must be the Town Hall,’ said Lucia. ‘Quite right about not being knighted so often. What a perfect sketch you could do of that.’
‘Heaps of room for us all in the cottage,’ said Georgie. ‘I hope there’s a servants’ sitting-room.’
‘They’ll be in and out of Mallards all day,’ said Lucia. ‘A lovely servants’ hall there.’
‘If I can get it, I will,’ said Georgie. ‘I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I’ve often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn’t. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.’
It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp’s garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.
‘Georgie, what can that be?’ whispered Lucia. ‘It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good night?’
‘Not very likely,’ said he. ‘Let’s wait one second.’
He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by the breathless Mrs Plaistow hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.
‘Diva and quaint Irene,’ said Lucia. ‘It must have been a signal.’
‘It might be a coincidence,’ said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.
Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o’clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.
Their interest in the business was vivid, for if Miss Mapp succeeded in letting
Mallards, she had promised to take Diva’s house, Wasters, for two months at eight guineas a week (the house being much smaller) and Diva would take Irene’s house, Taormina (smaller still) at five guineas a week, and Irene would take a four-roomed labourer’s cottage (unnamed) just outside the town at two guineas a week, and the labourer, who, with his family would be harvesting in August and hop-picking in September, would live in some sort of shanty and pay no rent at all. Thus from top to bottom of this ladder of lessors and lessees they all scored, for they all received more than they paid, and all would enjoy the benefit of a change without the worry and expense of travel and hotels. Each of these ladies would wake in the morning in an unfamiliar room, would sit in unaccustomed chairs, read each other’s books (and possibly letters), look at each other’s pictures, imbibe all the stimulus of new surroundings, without the wrench of leaving Tilling at all. No true Tillingite was ever really happy away from her town; foreigners were very queer untrustworthy people, and if you did not like the food it was impossible to engage another cook for an hotel of which you were not the proprietor. Annually in the summer this sort of ladder of house-letting was set up in Tilling and was justly popular. But it all depended on a successful letting of Mallards, for if Elizabeth Mapp did not let Mallards, she would not take Diva’s Wasters nor Diva Irene’s Taormina.
Diva and Irene therefore hurried to the garden-room where they would hear their fate; Irene forging on ahead with that long masculine stride that easily kept pace with Major Benjy’s, the short-legged Diva with that twinkle of feet that was like the scudding of a thrush over the lawn.
‘Well, Mapp, what luck?’ asked Irene.
Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.
‘I think I shall tease you both,’ said she playfully with her widest smile.