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_MISS MAPP_
_By E. F. Benson, Author of "Queen Lucia." "Dodo Wonders." &c._
_McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.,
TORONTO_
PREFACE
I lingered at the window of the garden-room from which Miss Mapp so
often and so ominously looked forth. To the left was the front of her
house, straight ahead the steep cobbled way, with a glimpse of the High
Street at the end, to the right the crooked chimney and the church.
The street was populous with passengers, but search as I might, I could
see none who ever so remotely resembled the objects of her vigilance.
E. F. BENSON.
Lamb House, Rye.
_Printed in Great Britain._
CHAPTER I
Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage
of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of
high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but
these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of
mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence
with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming
little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest
suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.
She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very
convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a
strategical point of high value. This garden-room, solid and spacious,
was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight
down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into
the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front door the road
turned sharply, so that as she looked out from this projecting window,
her own house was at right angles on her left, the street in question
plunged steeply downwards in front of her, and to her right she
commanded an uninterrupted view of its further course which terminated
in the disused graveyard surrounding the big Norman church. Anything of
interest about the church, however, could be gleaned from a guide-book,
and Miss Mapp did not occupy herself much with such coldly venerable
topics. Far more to her mind was the fact that between the church and
her strategic window was the cottage in which her gardener lived, and
she could thus see, when not otherwise engaged, whether he went home
before twelve, or failed to get back to her garden again by one, for he
had to cross the street in front of her very eyes. Similarly she could
observe whether any of his abandoned family ever came out from her
garden door weighted with suspicious baskets, which might contain
smuggled vegetables. Only yesterday morning she had hurried forth with a
dangerous smile to intercept a laden urchin, with inquiries as to what
was in "that nice basket." On that occasion that nice basket had proved
to contain a strawberry net which was being sent for repair to the
gardener's wife; so there was nothing more to be done except verify its
return. This she did from a side window of the garden-room which
commanded the strawberry beds; she could sit quite close to that, for it
was screened by the large-leaved branches of a fig-tree and she could
spy unseen.
Otherwise this road to the right leading up to the church was of no
great importance (except on Sunday morning, when she could get a
practically complete list of those who attended Divine Service), for no
one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To
the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic
window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might
be, and were, made. She could, from behind a curtain negligently
half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye
on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or
made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations
with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank
march across the few steps of garden and steal into the house,
noiselessly ascend the stairs, and catch the offender red-handed at this
public dalliance. But all such domestic espionage to right and left was
flavourless and insipid compared to the tremendous discoveries which
daily and hourly awaited the trained observer of the street that lay
directly in front of her window.
There was little that concerned the social movements of Tilling that
could not be proved, or at least reasonably conjectured, from Miss
Mapp's eyrie. Just below her house on the left stood Major Flint's
residence, of Georgian red brick like her own, and opposite was that of
Captain Puffin. They were both bachelors, though Major Flint was
generally supposed to have been the hero of some amazingly amorous
adventures in early life, and always turned the subject with great
abruptness when anything connected with duelling was mentioned. It was
not, therefore, unreasonable to infer that he had had experiences of a
bloody sort, and colour was added to this romantic conjecture by the
fact that in damp, rheumatic weather his left arm was very stiff, and he
had been known to say that his wound troubled him. What wound that was
no one exactly knew (it might have been anything from a vaccination mark
to a sabre-cut), for having said that his wound troubled him, he would
invariably add: "Pshaw! that's enough about an old campaigner"; and
though he might subsequently talk of nothing else except the old
campaigner, he drew a veil over his old campaigns. That he had seen
service in India was, indeed, probable by his referring to lunch as
tiffin, and calling to his parlour-maid with the ejaculation of
"Qui-hi." As her name was Sarah, this was clearly a reminiscence of days
in bungalows. When not in a rage, his manner to his own sex was bluff
and hearty; but whether in a rage or not, his manner to the fairies, or
lovely women, was gallant and pompous in the extreme. He certainly had a
lock of hair in a small gold specimen case on his watch-chain, and had
been seen to kiss it when, rather carelessly, he thought that he was
unobserved.
Miss Mapp's eye, as she took her seat in her window on this sunny July
morning, lingered for a moment on the Major's house, before she
proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back page of
her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young women
dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes which
Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust herself to. Neither the Major nor
Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time that the
first signals of animation might be expected. Indeed, at this moment,
she quite distinctly heard that muffled roar which to her experienced
ear was easily interpreted to be "Qui-hi!"
"So the Major has just come down to breakfast," she mechanically
inferred, "and it's close on ten o'clock. Let me see: Tuesday, Thursday,
Saturday--Porridge morning."
Her penetrating glance shifted to the house exactly opposite to that in
which it was porridge morning, and even as she looked a hand was thrust
out of a small upper window and deposited a sponge on the sill. Then
from the inside the lower sash was thrust firmly down, so as to prevent
the sponge from blowing away and falling into the street. Captain
Puffin, it was therefore clear, was a little later than the Major that
morning. But he always shaved and brushed his teeth before his bath, so
that there was but a few minutes between them.
General manoeuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering life
from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the town
with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping purchases, the
exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to the golf links,
and other first steps in the duties and diversions of the day, did not
get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp had ample time to
skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste meditations about
the occupants of these two houses, before she need really make herself
alert to miss nothing. Of the two, Major Flint, without doubt, was the
more attractive to the feminine sense; for years Miss Mapp had tried to
cajole him into marrying her, and had not nearly finished yet. With his
record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in
the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a
rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his
loud pshawings and sniffs at "nonsense and balderdash," his thumpings on
the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious
swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes
or vegetarianism, there was something dashing and risky about him; you
felt that you were in the presence of some hot coal straight from the
furnace of creation. Captain Puffin, on the other hand, was of clay so
different that he could hardly be considered to be made of clay at all.
He was lame and short and meagre, with strings of peaceful beads and
Papuan aprons in his hall instead of wild tiger-skins, and had a jerky,
inattentive manner and a high pitched voice. Yet to Miss Mapp's mind
there was something behind his unimpressiveness that had a mysterious
quality--all the more so, because nothing of it appeared on the surface.
Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his sniffings, the
least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the table, great hulking
kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure that Captain Puffin did
not hold a joker which would some time come to light. The idea of being
Mrs. Puffin was not so attractive as the other, but she occasionally
gave it her remote consideration.
Yet there was mystery about them both, in spite of the fact that most of
their movements were so amply accounted for. As a rule, they played golf
together in the morning, reposed in the afternoon, as could easily be
verified by anyone standing on a still day in the road between their
houses and listening to the loud and rhythmical breathings that fanned
the tranquil air, certainly went out to tea-parties afterwards and
played bridge till dinner-time; or if no such entertainment was
proffered them, occupied arm-chairs at the country club, or laboriously
amassed a hundred at billiards. Though tea-parties were profuse, dining
out was very rare at Tilling; Patience or a jig-saw puzzle occupied the
hour or two that intervened between domestic supper and bed-time; but
again and again, Miss Mapp had seen lights burning in the sitting-room
of those two neighbours at an hour when such lights as were still in
evidence at Tilling were strictly confined to bedrooms, and should,
indeed, have been extinguished there. And only last week, being plucked
from slumber by some unaccountable indigestion (for which she blamed a
small green apple), she had seen at no less than twelve-thirty in the
morning the lights in Captain Puffin's sitting-room still shining
through the blind. This had excited her so much that at risk of toppling
into the street, she had craned her neck from her window, and observed a
similar illumination in the house of Major Flint. They were not together
then, for in that case any prudent householder (and God knew that they
both of them scraped and saved enough, or, if He didn't know, Miss Mapp
did) would have quenched his own lights, if he were talking to his
friend in his friend's house. The next night, the pangs of indigestion
having completely vanished, she set her alarum clock at the same
timeless hour, and had observed exactly the same phenomenon. Such late
hours, of course, amply accounted for these late breakfasts; but why, so
Miss Mapp pithily asked herself, why these late hours? Of course they
both kept summer-time, whereas most of Tilling utterly refused (except
when going by train) to alter their watches because Mr. Lloyd George
told them to; but even allowing for that ... then she perceived that
summer-time made it later than ever for its adherents, so that was no
excuse.
Miss Mapp had a mind that was incapable of believing the improbable, and
the current explanation of these late hours was very improbable, indeed.
Major Flint often told the world in general that he was revising his
diaries, and that the only uninterrupted time which he could find in
this pleasant whirl of life at Tilling was when he was alone in the
evening. Captain Puffin, on his part, confessed to a student's curiosity
about the ancient history of Tilling, with regard to which he was
preparing a monograph. He could talk, when permitted, by the hour about
the reclamation from the sea of the marsh land south of the town, and
about the old Roman road which was built on a raised causeway, of which
traces remained; but it argued, so thought Miss Mapp, an unprecedented
egoism on the part of Major Flint, and an equally unprecedented love of
antiquities on the part of Captain Puffin, that they should prosecute
their studies (with gas at the present price) till such hours. No; Miss
Mapp knew better than that, but she had not made up her mind exactly
what it was that she knew. She mentally rejected the idea that egoism
(even in these days of diaries and autobiographies) and antiquities
accounted for so much study, with the same healthy intolerance with
which a vigorous stomach rejects unwholesome food, and did not allow
herself to be insidiously poisoned by its retention. But as she took up
her light aluminium opera-glasses to make sure whether it was Isabel
Poppit or not who was now stepping with that high, prancing tread into
the stationer's in the High Street, she exclaimed to herself, for the
three hundred and sixty-fifth time after breakfast: "It's very
baffling"; for it was precisely a year to-day since she had first seen
those mysterious midnight squares of illuminated blind. "Baffling," in
fact, was a word that constantly made short appearances in Miss Mapp's
vocabulary, though its retention for a whole year over one subject was
unprecedented. But never yet had "baffled" sullied her wells of pure
undefiled English.
Movement had begun; Mrs. Plaistow, carrying her wicker basket, came
round the corner by the church, in the direction of Miss Mapp's window,
and as there was a temporary coolness between them (following violent
heat) with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue, which a
forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow, having definitely promised
it to Miss Mapp ... but Miss Mapp's large-mindedness scorned to recall
the sordid details of this paltry appropriation. The heat had quite
subsided, and Miss Mapp was, for her part, quite prepared to let the
coolness regain the normal temperature of cordiality the moment that
Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted. Outwardly and publicly friendly
relationships had been resumed, and as the coolness had lasted six weeks
or so, it was probable that the worsted had already been incorporated
into the ornamental border of Mrs. Plaistow's jumper or winter scarf,
and a proper expression of regret would have to do instead. So the
nearer Mrs. Plaistow approached, the more invisible she became to Miss
Mapp's eye, and when she was within saluting distance had vanished
altogether. Simultaneously Miss Poppit came out of the stationer's in
the High Street.
Mrs. Plaistow turned the corner below Miss Mapp's window, and went
bobbing along down the steep hill. She walked with the motion of those
mechanical dolls sold in the street, which have three legs set as spokes
to a circle, so that their feet emerge from their dress with Dutch and
rigid regularity, and her figure had a certain squat rotundity that
suited her gait. She distinctly looked into Captain Puffin's dining-room
window as she passed, and with the misplaced juvenility so
characteristic of her waggled her plump little hand at it. At the corner
beyond Major Flint's house she hesitated a moment, and turned off down
the entry into the side street where Mr. Wyse lived. The dentist lived
there, too, and as Mr. Wyse was away on the continent of Europe, Mrs.
Plaistow was almost certain to be visiting the other. Rapidly Miss Mapp
remembered that at Mrs. Bartlett's bridge party yesterday Mrs. Plaistow
had selected soft chocolates for consumption instead of those stuffed
with nougat or almonds. That furnished additional evidence for the
dentist, for generally you could not get a nougat chocolate at all if
Godiva Plaistow had been in the room for more than a minute or two....
As she crossed the narrow cobbled roadway, with the grass growing
luxuriantly between the rounded pebbles, she stumbled and recovered
herself with a swift little forward run, and the circular feet twinkled
with the rapidity of those of a thrush scudding over the lawn.
By this time Isabel Poppit had advanced as far as the fish shop three
doors below the turning down which Mrs. Plaistow had vanished. Her
prancing progress paused there for a moment, and she waited with one
knee highly elevated, like a statue of a curveting horse, before she
finally decided to pass on. But she passed no further than the fruit
shop next door, and took the three steps that elevated it from the
street in a single prance, with her Roman nose high in the air.
Presently she emerged, but with no obvious rotundity like that of a
melon projecting from her basket, so that Miss Mapp could see exactly
what she had purchased, and went back to the fish shop again. Surely she
would not put fish on the top of fruit, and even as Miss Mapp's lucid
intelligence rejected this supposition, the true solution struck her.
"Ice," she said to herself, and, sure enough, projecting from the top of
Miss Poppit's basket when she came out was an angular peak, wrapped up
in paper already wet.
Miss Poppit came up the street and Miss Mapp put up her illustrated
paper again, with the revolting picture of the Brighton sea-nymphs
turned towards the window. Peeping out behind it, she observed that Miss
Poppit's basket was apparently oozing with bright venous blood, and
felt certain that she had bought red currants. That, coupled with the
ice, made conjecture complete. She had bought red currants slightly
damaged (or they would not have oozed so speedily), in order to make
that iced red-currant fool of which she had so freely partaken at Miss
Mapp's last bridge party. That was a very scurvy trick, for iced
red-currant fool was an invention of Miss Mapp's, who, when it was
praised, said that she inherited the recipe from her grandmother. But
Miss Poppit had evidently entered the lists against Grandmamma Mapp, and
she had as evidently guessed that quite inferior fruit--fruit that was
distinctly "off," was undetectable when severely iced. Miss Mapp could
only hope that the fruit in the basket now bobbing past her window was
so much "off" that it had begun to ferment. Fermented red-currant fool
was nasty to the taste, and, if persevered in, disastrous in its
effects. General unpopularity might be needed to teach Miss Poppit not
to trespass on Grandmamma Mapp's preserves.
Isabel Poppit lived with a flashy and condescending mother just round
the corner beyond the gardener's cottage, and opposite the west end of
the church. They were comparatively new inhabitants of Tilling, having
settled here only two or three years ago, and Tilling had not yet quite
ceased to regard them as rather suspicious characters. Suspicion
smouldered, though it blazed no longer. They were certainly rich, and
Miss Mapp suspected them of being profiteers. They kept a butler, of
whom they were both in considerable awe, who used almost to shrug his
shoulders when Mrs. Poppit gave him an order: they kept a motor-car to
which Mrs. Poppit was apt to allude more frequently than would have
been natural if she had always been accustomed to one, and they went to
Switzerland for a month every winter and to Scotland "for the
shooting-season," as Mrs. Poppit terribly remarked, every summer. This
all looked very black, and though Isabel conformed to the manners of
Tilling in doing household shopping every morning with her wicker
basket, and buying damaged fruit for fool, and in dressing in the
original home-made manner indicated by good breeding and narrow incomes,
Miss Mapp was sadly afraid that these habits were not the outcome of
chaste and instinctive simplicity, but of the ambition to be received by
the old families of Tilling as one of them. But what did a true
Tillingite want with a butler and a motor-car? And if these were not
sufficient to cast grave doubts on the sincerity of the inhabitants of
"Ye Smalle House," there was still very vivid in Miss Mapp's mind that
dreadful moment, undimmed by the years that had passed over it, when
Mrs. Poppit broke the silence at an altogether too sumptuous lunch by
asking Mrs. Plaistow if she did not find the super-tax a grievous burden
on "our little incomes." ... Miss Mapp had drawn in her breath sharply,
as if in pain, and after a few gasps turned the conversation.... Worst
of all, perhaps, because more recent, was the fact that Mrs. Poppit had
just received the dignity of the M.B.E., or Member of the Order of the
British Empire, and put it on her cards too, as if to keep the scandal
alive. Her services in connection with the Tilling hospital had been
entirely confined to putting her motor-car at its disposal when she did
not want it herself, and not a single member of the Tilling Working
Club, which had knitted its fingers to the bone and made enough
seven-tailed bandages to reach to the moon, had been offered a similar
decoration. If anyone had she would have known what to do: a stinging
letter to the Prime Minister saying that she worked not with hope of
distinction, but from pure patriotism, would have certainly been Miss
Mapp's rejoinder. She actually drafted the letter, when Mrs. Poppit's
name appeared, and diligently waded through column after column of
subsequent lists, to make sure that she, the originator of the Tilling
Working Club, had not been the victim of a similar insult.
Mrs. Poppit was a climber: that was what she was, and Miss Mapp was
obliged to confess that very nimble she had been. The butler and the
motor-car (so frequently at the disposal of Mrs. Poppit's friends) and
the incessant lunches and teas had done their work; she had fed rather
than starved Tilling into submission, and Miss Mapp felt that she alone
upheld the dignity of the old families. She was positively the only old
family (and a solitary spinster at that) who had not surrendered to the
Poppits. Naturally she did not carry her staunchness to the extent, so
to speak, of a hunger-strike, for that would be singular conduct, only
worthy of suffragettes, and she partook of the Poppits' hospitality to
the fullest extent possible, but (here her principles came in) she never
returned the hospitality of the Member of the British Empire, though she
occasionally asked Isabel to her house, and abused her soundly on all
possible occasions....
This spiteful retrospect passed swiftly and smoothly through Miss Mapp's
mind, and did not in the least take off from the acuteness with which
she observed the tide in the affairs of Tilling which, after the ebb of
the night, was now flowing again, nor did it, a few minutes after
Isabel's disappearance round the corner, prevent her from hearing the
faint tinkle of the telephone in her own house. At that she started to
her feet, but paused again at the door. She had shrewd suspicions about
her servants with regard to the telephone: she was convinced (though at
present she had not been able to get any evidence on the point) that
both her cook and her parlourmaid used it for their own base purposes at
her expense, and that their friends habitually employed it for
conversation with them. And perhaps--who knows?--her housemaid was the
worst of the lot, for she affected an almost incredible stupidity with
regard to the instrument, and pretended not to be able either to speak
through it or to understand its cacklings. All that might very well be
assumed in order to divert suspicion, so Miss Mapp paused by the door to
let any of these delinquents get deep in conversation with her friend: a
soft and stealthy advance towards the room called the morning-room (a
small apartment opening out of the hall, and used chiefly for the
bestowal of hats and cloaks and umbrellas) would then enable her to
catch one of them red-mouthed, or at any rate to overhear fragments of
conversation which would supply equally direct evidence.
She had got no further than the garden-door into her house when Withers,
her parlourmaid, came out. Miss Mapp thereupon began to smile and hum a
tune. Then the smile widened and the tune stopped.
"Yes, Withers?" she said. "Were you looking for me?"
"Yes, Miss," said Withers. "Miss Poppit has just rung you up----"
Miss Mapp looked much surprised.
"And to think that the telephone should have rung without my hearing
it," she said. "I must be growing deaf, Withers, in my old age. What
does Miss Poppit want?"
"She hopes you will be able to go to tea this afternoon and play bridge.
She expects that a few friends may look in at a quarter to four."
A flood of lurid light poured into Miss Mapp's mind. To expect that a
few friends may look in was the orthodox way of announcing a regular
party to which she had not been asked, and Miss Mapp knew as if by a
special revelation that if she went, she would find that she made the
eighth to complete two tables of bridge. When the butler opened the
door, he would undoubtedly have in his hand a half sheet of paper on
which were written the names of the expected friends, and if the
caller's name was not on that list, he would tell her with brazen
impudence that neither Mrs. Poppit nor Miss Poppit were at home, while,
before the baffled visitor had turned her back, he would admit another
caller who duly appeared on his reference paper.... So then the Poppits
were giving a bridge-party to which she had only been bidden at the last
moment, clearly to take the place of some expected friend who had
developed influenza, lost an aunt or been obliged to go to London: here,
too, was the explanation of why (as she had overheard yesterday) Major
Flint and Captain Puffin were only intending to play one round of golf
to-day, and to come back by the 2.20 train. And why seek any further for
the explanation of the lump of ice and the red currants (probably
damaged) which she had observed Isabel purchase? And anyone could see
(at least Miss Mapp could) why she had gone to the stationer's in the
High Street just before. Packs of cards.
Who the expected friend was who had disappointed Mrs. Poppit could be
thought out later: at present, as Miss Mapp smiled at Withers and hummed
her tune again, she had to settle whether she was going to be delighted
to accept, or obliged to decline. The argument in favour of being
obliged to decline was obvious: Mrs. Poppit deserved to be "served out"
for not including her among the original guests, and if she declined it
was quite probable that at this late hour her hostess might not be able
to get anyone else, and so one of her tables would be completely
spoiled. In favour of accepting was the fact that she would get a rubber
of bridge and a good tea, and would be able to say something
disagreeable about the red-currant fool, which would serve Miss Poppit
out for attempting to crib her ancestral dishes....
A bright, a joyous, a diabolical idea struck her, and she went herself
to the telephone, and genteelly wiped the place where Withers had
probably breathed on it.
"So kind of you, Isabel," she said, "but I am very busy to-day, and you
didn't give me much notice, did you? So I'll try to look in if I can,
shall I? I might be able to squeeze it in."
There was a pause, and Miss Mapp knew that she had put Isabel in a hole.
If she successfully tried to get somebody else, Miss Mapp might find she
could squeeze it in, and there would be nine. If she failed to get
someone else, and Miss Mapp couldn't squeeze it in, then there would be
seven.... Isabel wouldn't have a tranquil moment all day.
"Ah, do squeeze it in," she said in those horrid wheedling tones which
for some reason Major Flint found so attractive. That was one of the
weak points about him, and there were many, many others. But that was
among those which Miss Mapp found it difficult to condone.
"If I possibly can," said Miss Mapp. "But at this late hour--Good-bye,
dear, or only _au reservoir_, we hope."
She heard Isabel's polite laugh at this nearly new and delicious
Malaprop before she rang off. Isabel collected malaprops and wrote them
out in a note book. If you reversed the note-book and began at the other
end, you would find the collection of Spoonerisms, which were very
amusing, too.
Tea, followed by a bridge-party, was, in summer, the chief manifestation
of the spirit of hospitality in Tilling. Mrs. Poppit, it is true, had
attempted to do something in the way of dinner-parties, but though she
was at liberty to give as many dinner-parties as she pleased, nobody
else had followed her ostentatious example. Dinner-parties entailed a
higher scale of living; Miss Mapp, for one, had accurately counted the
cost of having three hungry people to dinner, and found that one such
dinner-party was not nearly compensated for, in the way of expense, by
being invited to three subsequent dinner-parties by your guests.
Voluptuous teas were the rule, after which you really wanted no more
than little bits of things, a cup of soup, a slice of cold tart, or a
dished-up piece of fish and some toasted cheese. Then, after the
excitement of bridge (and bridge was very exciting in Tilling), a
jig-saw puzzle or Patience cooled your brain and composed your nerves.
In winter, however, with its scarcity of daylight, Tilling commonly gave
evening bridge-parties, and asked the requisite number of friends to
drop in after dinner, though everybody knew that everybody else had only
partaken of bits of things. Probably the ruinous price of coal had
something to do with these evening bridge-parties, for the fire that
warmed your room when you were alone would warm all your guests as well,
and then, when your hospitality was returned, you could let your
sitting-room fire go out. But though Miss Mapp was already planning
something in connection with winter bridge, winter was a long way off
yet....
Before Miss Mapp got back to her window in the garden-room Mrs. Poppit's
great offensive motor-car, which she always alluded to as "the Royce,"
had come round the corner and, stopping opposite Major Flint's house,
was entirely extinguishing all survey of the street beyond. It was clear
enough then that she had sent the Royce to take the two out to the
golf-links, so that they should have time to play their round and catch
the 2.20 back to Tilling again, so as to be in good time for the
bridge-party. Even as she looked, Major Flint came out of his house on
one side of the Royce and Captain Puffin on the other. The Royce
obstructed their view of each other, and simultaneously each of them
shouted across to the house of the other. Captain Puffin emitted a loud
"Coo-ee, Major," (an Australian ejaculation, learned on his voyages),
while Major Flint bellowed "Qui-hi, Captain," which, all the world knew,
was of Oriental origin. The noise each of them made prevented him from
hearing the other, and presently one in a fuming hurry to start ran
round in front of the car at the precise moment that the other ran round
behind it, and they both banged loudly on each other's knockers. These
knocks were not so precisely simultaneous as the shouts had been, and
this led to mutual discovery, hailed with peals of falsetto laughter on
the part of Captain Puffin and the more manly guffaws of the Major....
After that the Royce lumbered down the grass-grown cobbles of the
street, and after a great deal of reversing managed to turn the corner.
Miss Mapp set off with her basket to do her shopping. She carried in it
the weekly books, which she would leave, with payment but not without
argument, at the tradesmen's shops. There was an item for suet which
she intended to resist to the last breath in her body, though her
butcher would probably surrender long before that. There was an item for
eggs at the dairy which she might have to pay, though it was a monstrous
overcharge. She had made up her mind about the laundry, she intended to
pay that bill with an icy countenance and say "Good morning for ever,"
or words to that effect, unless the proprietor instantly produced
the--the article of clothing which had been lost in the wash (like King
John's treasures), or refunded an ample sum for the replacing of it. All
these quarrelsome errands were meat and drink to Miss Mapp: Tuesday
morning, the day on which she paid and disputed her weekly bills, was as
enjoyable as Sunday mornings when, sitting close under the pulpit, she
noted the glaring inconsistencies and grammatical errors in the
discourse. After the bills were paid and business was done, there was
pleasure to follow, for there was a fitting-on at the dress-maker's, the
fitting-on of a tea-gown, to be worn at winter-evening bridge-parties,
which, unless Miss Mapp was sadly mistaken, would astound and agonize by
its magnificence all who set eyes on it. She had found the description
of it, as worn by Mrs. Titus W. Trout, in an American fashion paper; it
was of what was described as kingfisher blue, and had lumps and wedges
of lace round the edge of the skirt, and orange chiffon round the neck.
As she set off with her basket full of tradesmen's books, she pictured
to herself with watering mouth the fury, the jealousy, the madness of
envy which it would raise in all properly-constituted breasts.
In spite of her malignant curiosity and her cancerous suspicions about
all her friends, in spite, too, of her restless activities, Miss Mapp
was not, as might have been expected, a lady of lean and emaciated
appearance. She was tall and portly, with plump hands, a broad,
benignant face and dimpled, well-nourished cheeks. An acute observer
might have detected a danger warning in the sidelong glances of her
rather bulgy eyes, and in a certain tightness at the corners of her
expansive mouth, which boded ill for any who came within snapping
distance, but to a more superficial view she was a rollicking,
good-natured figure of a woman. Her mode of address, too, bore out this
misleading impression: nothing, for instance, could have been more
genial just now than her telephone voice to Isabel Poppit, or her smile
to Withers, even while she so strongly suspected her of using the
telephone for her own base purposes, and as she passed along the High
Street, she showered little smiles and bows on acquaintances and
friends. She markedly drew back her lips in speaking, being in no way
ashamed of her long white teeth, and wore a practically perpetual smile
when there was the least chance of being under observation. Though at
sermon time on Sunday, as has been already remarked, she greedily noted
the weaknesses and errors of which those twenty minutes was so
rewardingly full, she sat all the time with down-dropped eyes and a
pretty sacred smile on her lips, and now, when she spied on the other
side of the street the figure of the vicar, she tripped slantingly
across the road to him, as if by the move of a knight at chess, looking
everywhere else, and only perceiving him with glad surprise at the very
last moment. He was a great frequenter of tea parties and except in Lent
an assiduous player of bridge, for a clergyman's duties, so he very
properly held, were not confined to visiting the poor and exhorting the
sinner. He should be a man of the world, and enter into the pleasures of
his prosperous parishioners, as well as into the trials of the
troubled. Being an accomplished card-player he entered not only into
their pleasures but their pockets, and there was no lady of Tilling who
was not pleased to have Mr. Bartlett for a partner. His winnings, so he
said, he gave annually to charitable objects, though whether the
charities he selected began at home was a point on which Miss Mapp had
quite made up her mind. "Not a penny of that will the poor ever see,"
was the gist of her reflections when on disastrous days she paid him
seven-and-ninepence. She always called him "Padre," and had never
actually caught him looking over his adversaries' hands.
"Good morning, Padre," she said as soon as she perceived him. "What a
lovely day! The white butterflies were enjoying themselves so in the
sunshine in my garden. And the swallows!"
Miss Mapp, as every reader will have perceived, wanted to know whether
he was playing bridge this afternoon at the Poppits. Major Flint and
Captain Puffin certainly were, and it might be taken for granted that
Godiva Plaistow was. With the Poppits and herself that made six....
Mr. Bartlett was humorously archaic in speech. He interlarded archaisms
with Highland expressions, and his face was knobby, like a chest of
drawers.
"Ha, good morrow, fair dame," he said. "And prithee, art not thou even
as ye white butterflies?"
"Oh, Mr. Bartlett," said the fair dame with a provocative glance.
"Naughty! Comparing me to a delicious butterfly!"
"Nay, prithee, why naughty?" said he. "Yea, indeed, it's a day to make
ye little fowles rejoice! Ha! I perceive you are on the errands of the
guid wife Martha." And he pointed to the basket.
"Yes; Tuesday morning," said Miss Mapp. "I pay all my household books on
Tuesday. Poor but honest, dear Padre. What a rush life is to-day! I
hardly know which way to turn. Little duties in all directions! And you;
you're always busy! Such a busy bee!"
"Busy B? Busy Bartlett, quo' she! Yes, I'm a busy B to-day, Mistress
Mapp. Sermon all morning: choir practice at three, a baptism at six. No
time for a walk to-day, let alone a bit turn at the gowf."
Miss Mapp saw her opening, and made a busy bee line for it.
"Oh, but you should get regular exercise, Padre," said she. "You take no
care of yourself. After the choir practice now, and before the baptism,
you could have a brisk walk. To please me!"
"Yes. I had meant to get a breath of air then," said he. "But ye guid
Dame Poppit has insisted that I take a wee hand at the cartes with them,
the wifey and I. Prithee, shall we meet there?"
("That makes seven without me," thought Miss Mapp in parenthesis.) Aloud
she said:
"If I can squeeze it in, Padre. I have promised dear Isabel to do my
best."
"Well, and a lassie can do no mair," said he. "Au reservoir then."
Miss Mapp was partly pleased, partly annoyed by the agility with which
the Padre brought out her own particular joke. It was she who had
brought it down to Tilling, and she felt she had an option on it at the
end of every interview, if she meant (as she had done on this occasion)
to bring it out. On the other hand it was gratifying to see how popular
it had become. She had heard it last month when on a visit to a friend
at that sweet and refined village called Riseholme. It was rather
looked down on there, as not being sufficiently intellectual. But within
a week of Miss Mapp's return, Tilling rang with it, and she let it be
understood that she was the original humorist.
Godiva Plaistow came whizzing along the pavement, a short, stout,
breathless body who might, so thought Miss Mapp, have acted up to the
full and fell associations of her Christian name without exciting the
smallest curiosity on the part of the lewd. (Miss Mapp had much the same
sort of figure, but her height, so she was perfectly satisfied to
imagine, converted corpulence into majesty.) The swift alternation of
those Dutch-looking feet gave the impression that Mrs. Plaistow was
going at a prodigious speed, but they could stop revolving without any
warning, and then she stood still. Just when a collision with Miss Mapp
seemed imminent, she came to a dead halt.
It was as well to be quite certain that she was going to the Poppits,
and Miss Mapp forgave and forgot about the worsted until she had found
out. She could never quite manage the indelicacy of saying "Godiva,"
whatever Mrs. Plaistow's figure and age might happen to be, but always
addressed her as "Diva," very affectionately, whenever they were on
speaking terms.
"What a lovely morning, Diva darling," she said; and noticing that Mr.
Bartlett was well out of earshot, "The white butterflies were enjoying
themselves so in the sunshine in my garden. And the swallows."
Godiva was telegraphic in speech.
"Lucky birds," she said. "No teeth. Beaks."
Miss Mapp remembered her disappearance round the dentist's corner half
an hour ago, and her own firm inference on the problem.
"Toothache, darling?" she said. "So sorry."
"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.