The same delightful prospect at the end of the High Street, over the
marsh, which had witnessed not so long ago the final encounter in the
Wars of the Roses and the subsequent armistice, was, of course, found to
be peculiarly attractive that morning to those who knew (and who did
not?) that the combatants had left by the 11.20 steam-tram to fight
among the sand-dunes, and that the intrepid Padre had rushed after them
in a taxi. The Padre's taxi had returned empty, and the driver seemed to
know nothing whatever about anything, so the only thing for everybody to
do was to put off lunch and wait for the arrival of the next tram, which
occurred at 1.37. In consequence, all the doors in Tilling flew open
like those of cuckoo clocks at ten minutes before that hour, and this
pleasant promenade was full of those who so keenly admired autumn tints.
From here the progress of the tram across the plain was in full view;
so, too, was the shed-like station across the river, which was the
terminus of the line, and expectation, when the two-waggoned little
train approached the end of its journey, was so tense that it was
almost disagreeable. A couple of hours had elapsed since, like the
fishers who sailed away into the West and were seen no more till the
corpses lay out on the shining sand, the three had left for the
sand-dunes, and a couple of hours, so reasoned the Cosmic Consciousness
of Tilling, gave ample time for a duel to be fought, if the Padre was
not in time to stop it, and for him to stop it if he was. No surgical
assistance, as far as was known, had been summoned, but the reason for
that might easily be that a surgeon's skill was no longer, alas! of any
avail for one, if not both, of the combatants. But if such was the case,
it was nice to hope that the Padre had been in time to supply spiritual
aid to anyone whom first-aid and probes were powerless to succour.
The variety of _denouements_ which the approaching tram, that had now
cut off steam, was capable of providing was positively bewildering. They
whirled through Miss Mapp's head like the autumn leaves which she
admired so much, and she tried in vain to catch them all, and, when
caught, to tick them off on her fingers. Each, moreover, furnished
diverse and legitimate conclusions. For instance (taking the thumb)
I. If nobody of the slightest importance arrived by the tram, that
might be because
(_a_) Nothing had happened, and they were all playing golf.
(_b_) The worst had happened, and, as the Padre had feared, the
duellists had first shot him and then each other.
(_c_) The next worst had happened, and the Padre was arranging for
the reverent removal of the corpse of
(i) Major Benjy, or
(ii) Captain Puffin, or those of
(iii) Both.
Miss Mapp let go of her thumb and lightly touched her forefinger.
II. The Padre might arrive alone.
In that case anything or nothing might have happened to either or both
of the others, and the various contingencies hanging on this arrival
were so numerous that there was not time to sort them out.
III. The Padre might arrive with two limping figures whom he assisted.
Here it must not be forgotten that Captain Puffin always limped, and the
Major occasionally. Miss Mapp did not forget it.
IV. The Padre might arrive with a stretcher. Query--Whose?
V. The Padre might arrive with two stretchers.
VI. Three stretchers might arrive from the shining sands, at the town
where the women were weeping and wringing their hands.
In that case Miss Mapp saw herself busily employed in strengthening poor
Evie, who now was running about like a mouse from group to group picking
up crumbs of Cosmic Consciousness.
Miss Mapp had got as far as sixthly, though she was aware she had not
exhausted the possibilities, when the tram stopped. She furtively took
out from her pocket (she had focussed them before she put them in) the
opera-glasses through which she had watched the station-yard on a day
which had been very much less exciting than this. After one glance she
put them back again, feeling vexed and disappointed with herself, for
the _denouement_ which they had so unerringly disclosed was one that
had not entered her mind at all. In that moment she had seen that out of
the tram there stepped three figures and no stretcher. One figure, it is
true, limped, but in a manner so natural, that she scorned to draw any
deductions from that halting gait. They proceeded, side by side, across
the bridge over the river towards the town.
It is no use denying that the Cosmic Consciousness of the ladies of
Tilling was aware of a disagreeable anti-climax to so many hopes and
fears. It had, of course, hoped for the best, but it had not expected
that the best would be quite as bad as this. The best, to put it
frankly, would have been a bandaged arm, or something of that kind.
There was still room for the more hardened optimist to hope that
something of some sort had occurred, or that something of some sort had
been averted, and that the whole affair was not, in the delicious new
slang phrase of the Padre's, which was spreading like wildfire through
Tilling, a "wash-out." Pistols might have been innocuously discharged
for all that was known to the contrary. But it looked bad.
Miss Mapp was the first to recover from the blow, and took Diva's podgy
hand.
"Diva, darling," she said, "I feel so deeply thankful. What a wonderful
and beautiful end to all our anxiety!"
There was a subconscious regret with regard to the anxiety. The anxiety
was, so to speak, a dear and beloved departed.... And Diva did not feel
so sure that the end was so beautiful and wonderful. Her grandfather,
Miss Mapp had reason to know, had been a butcher, and probably some
inherited indifference to slaughter lurked in her tainted blood.
"There's the portmanteau still," she said hopefully. "Pistols in the
portmanteau. Your idea, Elizabeth."
"Yes, dear," said Elizabeth; "but thank God I must have been very wrong
about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me that he brought it up
from the station to Major Benjy's house half an hour ago. Fancy your not
knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful man, for he attends the
Padre's confirmation class. If there had been pistols in it, Major Benjy
and Captain Puffin would have gone away too. I am quite happy about that
now. It went away and it has come back. That's all about the
portmanteau."
She paused a moment.
"But what does it contain, then?" she said quickly, more as if she was
thinking aloud than talking to Diva. "Why did Major Benjy pack it and
send it to the station this morning? Where has it come back from? Why
did it go there?"
She felt that she was saying too much, and pressed her hand to her head.
"Has all this happened this morning?" she said. "What a full morning,
dear! Lovely autumn leaves! I shall go home and have my lunch and rest.
Au reservoir, Diva."
Miss Mapp's eternal reservoirs had begun to get on Diva's nerves, and as
she lingered here a moment more a great idea occurred to her, which
temporarily banished the disappointment about the duellists. Elizabeth,
as all the world knew, had accumulated a great reservoir of provisions
in the false book-case in her garden-room, and Diva determined that, if
she could think of a neat phrase, the very next time Elizabeth said _au
reservoir_ to her, she would work in an allusion to Elizabeth's own
reservoir of corned beef, tongue, flour, bovril, dried apricots and
condensed milk. She would have to frame some stinging rejoinder which
would "escape her" when next Elizabeth used that stale old phrase: it
would have to be short, swift and spontaneous, and therefore required
careful thought. It would be good to bring "pop" into it also. "Your
reservoir in the garden-room hasn't gone 'pop' again, I hope, darling?"
was the first draft that occurred to her, but that was not sufficiently
condensed. "Pop goes the reservoir," on the analogy of the weasel, was
better. And, better than either, was there not some sort of corn called
pop-corn, which Americans ate?... "Have you any pop-corn in your
reservoir?" That would be a nasty one....
But it all required thinking over, and the sight of the Padre and the
duellists crossing the field below, as she still lingered on this
escarpment of the hill, brought the duel back to her mind. It would have
been considered inquisitive even at Tilling to put direct questions to
the combatants, and (still hoping for the best) ask them point-blank
"Who won?" or something of that sort; but until she arrived at some sort
of information, the excruciating pangs of curiosity that must be endured
could be likened only to some acute toothache of the mind with no
dentist to stop or remove the source of the trouble. Elizabeth had
already succumbed to these pangs of surmise and excitement, and had
frankly gone home to rest, and her absence, the fact that for the next
hour or two she could not, except by some extraordinary feat on the
telephone, get hold of anything which would throw light on the whole
prodigious situation, inflamed Diva's brain to the highest pitch of
inventiveness. She knew that she was Elizabeth's inferior in point of
reconstructive imagination, and the present moment, while the other was
recuperating her energies for fresh assaults on the unknown, was Diva's
opportunity. The one person who might be presumed to know more than
anybody else was the Padre, but while he was with the duellists, it was
as impossible to ask him what had happened as to ask the duellists who
had won. She must, while Miss Mapp rested, get hold of the Padre without
the duellists.
Even as Athene sprang full grown and panoplied from the brain of Zeus,
so from Diva's brain there sprang her plan complete. She even resisted
the temptation to go on admiring autumn tints, in order to see how the
interesting trio "looked" when, as they must presently do, they passed
close to where she stood, and hurried home, pausing only to purchase,
pay for, and carry away with her from the provision shop a large and
expensively-dressed crab, a dainty of which the Padre was inordinately
fond. Ruinous as this was, there was a note of triumph in her voice
when, on arrival, she called loudly for Janet, and told her to lay
another place at the luncheon table. Then putting a strong constraint on
herself, she waited three minutes by her watch, in order to give the
Padre time to get home, and then rang him up and reminded him that he
had promised to lunch with her that day. It was no use asking him to
lunch in such a way that he might refuse: she employed without remorse
this pitiless _force majeure_.
The engagement was short and brisk. He pleaded that not even now could
he remember even having been asked (which was not surprising), and said
that he and wee wifie had begun lunch. On which Diva unmasked her last
gun, and told him that she had ordered a crab on purpose. That silenced
further argument, and he said that he and wee wifie would be round in a
jiffy, and rang off. She did not particularly want wee wifie, but there
was enough crab.
Diva felt that she had never laid out four shillings to better purpose,
when, a quarter of an hour later, the Padre gave her the full account of
his fruitless search among the sand-dunes, so deeply impressive was his
sense of being buoyed up to that incredibly fatiguing and perilous
excursion by some Power outside himself. It never even occurred to her
to think that it was an elaborate practical joke on the part of the
Power outside himself, to spur him on to such immense exertions to no
purpose at all. He had only got as far as this over his interrupted
lunch with wee wifie, and though she, too, was in agonized suspense as
to what happened next, she bore the repetition with great equanimity,
only making small mouse-like noises of impatience which nobody heard. He
was quite forgetting to speak either Scotch or Elizabethan English, so
obvious was the absorption of his hearers, without these added aids to
command attention.
"And then I came round the corner of the club-house," he said, "and
there were Captain Puffin and the Major finishing their match on the
eighteenth hole."
"Then there's been no duel at all," said Diva, scraping the shell of the
crab.
"I feel sure of it. There wouldn't have been time for a duel and a round
of golf, in addition to the impossibility of playing golf immediately
after a duel. No nerves could stand it. Besides, I asked one of their
caddies. They had come straight from the tram to the club-house, and
from the club-house to the first tee. They had not been alone for a
moment."
"Wash-out," said Diva, wondering whether this had been worth four
shillings, so tame was the conclusion.
Mrs. Bartlett gave a little squeak which was her preliminary to speech.
"But I do not see why there may not be a duel yet, Kenneth," she said.
"Because they did not fight this morning--excellent crab, dear Diva, so
good of you to ask us--there's no reason why there shouldn't be a duel
this afternoon. O dear me, and cold beef as well: I shall be quite
stuffed. Depend upon it a man doesn't take the trouble to write a
challenge and all that, unless he means business."
The Padre held up his hand. He felt that he was gradually growing to be
the hero of the whole affair. He had certainly looked over the edge of
numberless hollows in the sand-dunes with vivid anticipations of having
a bullet whizz by him on each separate occasion. It behoved him to take
a sublime line.
"My dear," he said, "business is hardly a word to apply to murder. That
within the last twenty-four hours there was the intention of fighting a
duel, I don't deny. But something has decidedly happened which has
averted that deplorable calamity. Peace and reconciliation is the result
of it, and I have never seen two men so unaffectedly friendly."
Diva got up and whirled round the table to get the port for the Padre,
so pleased was she at a fresh idea coming to her while still dear
Elizabeth was resting. She attributed it to the crab.
"We've all been on a false scent," she said. "Peace and reconciliation
happened before they went out to the sand-dunes at all. It happened at
the station. They met at the station, you know. It is proved that Major
Flint went there. Major wouldn't send portmanteau off alone. And it's
proved that Captain Puffin went there too, because the note which his
housemaid found on the table before she saw the challenge from the
Major, which was on the chimney-piece, said that he had been called away
very suddenly. No: they both went to catch the early train in order to
go away before they could be stopped, and kill each other. But why
didn't they go? What happened? Don't suppose the outside porter showed
them how wicked they were, confirmation-class or no confirmation-class.
Stumps me. Almost wish Elizabeth was here. She's good at guessing."
The Padre's eye brightened. Reaction after the perils of the morning,
crab and port combined to make a man of him.
"Eh, 'tis a bonny wee drappie of port whatever, Mistress Plaistow," he
said. "And I dinna ken that ye're far wrang in jaloosing that Mistress
Mapp might have a wee bitty word to say aboot it a', 'gin she had the
mind."
"She was wrong about the portmanteau," said Diva. "Confessed she was
wrong."
"Hoots! I'm not mindin' the bit pochmantie," said the Padre.
"What else does she know?" asked Diva feverishly.
There was no doubt that the Padre had the fullest attention of the two
ladies again, and there was no need to talk Scotch any more.
"Begin at the beginning," he said. "What do we suppose was the cause of
the quarrel?"
"Anything," said Diva. "Golf, tiger-skins, coal-strike, summer-time."
He shook his head.
"I grant you words may pass on such subjects," he said. "We feel keenly,
I know, about summer-time in Tilling, though we shall all be reconciled
over that next Sunday, when real time, God's time, as I am venturing to
call it in my sermon, comes in again."
Diva had to bite her tongue to prevent herself bolting off on this new
scent. After all, she had invested in crab to learn about duelling, not
about summer-time.
"Well?" she said.
"We may have had words on that subject," said the Padre, booming as if
he was in the pulpit already, "but we should, I hope, none of us go so
far as to catch the earliest train with pistols, in defence of our
conviction about summer-time. No, Mrs. Plaistow, if you are right, and
there is something to be said for your view, in thinking that they both
went to such lengths as to be in time for the early train, in order to
fight a duel undisturbed, you must look for a more solid cause than
that."
Diva vainly racked her brains to think of anything more worthy of the
highest pitches of emotion than this. If it had been she and Miss Mapp
who had been embroiled, hoarding and dress would have occurred to her.
But as it was, no one in his senses could dream that the Captain and the
Major were sartorial rivals, unless they had quarrelled over the
question as to which of them wore the snuffiest old clothes.
"Give it up," she said. "What did they quarrel about?"
"Passion!" said the Padre, in those full, deep tones in which next
Sunday he would allude to God's time. "I do not mean anger, but the
flame that exalts man to heaven or--or does exactly the opposite!"
"But whomever for?" asked Diva, quite thrown off her bearings. Such a
thing had never occurred to her, for, as far as she was aware, passion,
except in the sense of temper, did not exist in Tilling. Tilling was
far too respectable.
The Padre considered this a moment.
"I am betraying no confidence," he said, "because no one has confided in
me. But there certainly is a lady in this town--I do not allude to Miss
Irene--who has long enjoyed the Major's particular esteem. May not some
deprecating remark----"
Wee wifie gave a much louder squeal than usual.
"He means poor Elizabeth," she said in a high, tremulous voice. "Fancy,
Kenneth!"
Diva, a few seconds before, had seen no reason why the Padre should
drink the rest of her port, and was now in the act of drinking some of
that unusual beverage herself. She tried to swallow it, but it was too
late, and next moment all the openings in her face were fountains of
that delicious wine. She choked and she gurgled, until the last drop had
left her windpipe--under the persuasion of pattings on the back from the
others--and then she gave herself up to loud, hoarse laughter, through
which there shrilled the staccato squeaks of wee wifie. Nothing, even if
you are being laughed at yourself, is so infectious as prolonged
laughter, and the Padre felt himself forced to join it. When one of them
got a little better, a relapse ensued by reason of infection from the
others, and it was not till exhaustion set in, that this triple volcano
became quiescent again.
"Only fancy!" said Evie faintly. "How did such an idea get into your
head, Kenneth?"
His voice shook as he answered.
"Well, we were all a little worked up this morning," he said. "The
idea--really, I don't know what we have all been laughing at----"
"I do," said Diva. "Go on. About the idea----"
A feminine, a diabolical inspiration flared within wee wifie's mind.
"Elizabeth suggested it herself," she squealed.
Naturally Diva could not help remembering that she had found Miss Mapp
and the Padre in earnest conversation together when she forced her way
in that morning with the news that the duellists had left by the 11.20
tram. Nobody could be expected to have so short a memory as to have
forgotten _that_. Just now she forgave Elizabeth for anything she had
ever done. That might have to be reconsidered afterwards, but at present
it was valid enough.
"Did she suggest it?" she asked.
The Padre behaved like a man, and lied like Ananias.
"Most emphatically she did not," he said.
The disappointment would have been severe, had the two ladies believed
this confident assertion, and Diva pictured a delightful interview with
Elizabeth, in which she would suddenly tell her the wild surmise the
Padre had made with regard to the cause of the duel, and see how she
looked then. Just see how she looked then: that was
all--self-consciousness and guilt would fly their colours....
* * * * *
Miss Mapp had been tempted when she went home that morning, after
enjoying the autumn tints, to ask Diva to lunch with her, but remembered
in time that she had told her cook to broach one of the tins of
corned-beef which no human wizard could coax into the store-cupboard
again, if he shut the door after it. Diva would have been sure to say
something acid and allusive, to remark on its excellence being happily
not wasted on the poor people in the hospital, or, if she had not said
anything at all about it, her silence as she ate a great deal would have
had a sharp flavour. But Miss Mapp would have liked, especially when she
went to take her rest afterwards on the big sofa in the garden-room, to
have had somebody to talk to, for her brain seethed with conjectures as
to what had happened, was happening and would happen, and discussion was
the best method of simplifying a problem, of narrowing it down to the
limits of probability, whereas when she was alone now with her own
imaginings, the most fantastic of them seemed plausible. She had,
however, handed a glorious suggestion to the Padre, the one, that is,
which concerned the cause of the duel, and it had been highly
satisfactory to observe the sympathy and respect with which he had
imbibed it. She had, too, been so discreet about it; she had not come
within measurable distance of asserting that the challenge had been in
any way connected with her. She had only been very emphatic on the point
of its not being connected with poor dear Irene, and then occupied
herself with her sweet flowers. That had been sufficient, and she felt
in her bones and marrow that he inferred what she had meant him to
infer....
The vulture of surmise ceased to peck at her for a few moments as she
considered this, and followed up a thread of gold.... Though the Padre
would surely be discreet, she hoped that he would "let slip" to dear
Evie in the course of the vivid conversation they would be sure to have
over lunch, that he had a good guess as to the cause which had led to
that savage challenge. Upon which dear Evie would be certain to ply him
with direct squeaks and questions, and when she "got hot" (as in animal,
vegetable and mineral) his reticence would lead her to make a good
guess too. She might be incredulous, but there the idea would be in her
mind, while if she felt that these stirring days were no time for
scepticism, she could hardly fail to be interested and touched. Before
long (how soon Miss Mapp was happily not aware) she would "pop in" to
see Diva, or Diva would "pop in" to see her, and, Evie observing a
discretion similar to that of the Padre and herself, would soon enable
dear Diva to make a good guess too. After that, all would be well, for
dear Diva ("such a gossiping darling") would undoubtedly tell everybody
in Tilling, under vows of secrecy (so that she should have the pleasure
of telling everybody herself) just what her good guess was. Thus, very
presently, all Tilling would know exactly that which Miss Mapp had not
said to the dear Padre, namely, that the duel which had been fought (or
which hadn't been fought) was "all about" her. And the best of it was,
that though everybody knew, it would still be a great and beautiful
secret, reposing inviolably in every breast or chest, as the case might
be. She had no anxiety about anybody asking direct questions of the
duellists, for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no
delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy's presence,
how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be
taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely
questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be highly
inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But, as it
was, nothing could be nicer: the whole of the rest of Tilling, under
promise of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises of
secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there would be no
harm done....
After this excursion into Elysian fields, poor Miss Mapp had to get
back to her vulture again, and the hour's rest that she had felt was due
to herself as the heroine of a duel became a period of extraordinary
cerebral activity. Puzzle as she might, she could make nothing whatever
of the portmanteau and the excursion to the early train, and she got up
long before her hour was over, since she found that the more she
thought, the more invincible were the objections to any conclusion that
she drowningly grasped at. Whatever attack she made on this mystery, the
garrison failed to march out and surrender but kept their flag flying,
and her conjectures were woefully blasted by the forces of the most
elementary reasons. But as the agony of suspense, if no fresh topic of
interest intervened, would be frankly unendurable, she determined to
concentrate no more on it, but rather to commit it to the ice-house or
safe of her subconscious mind, from which at will, when she felt
refreshed and reinvigorated, she could unlock it and examine it again.
The whole problem was more superlatively baffling than any that she
could remember having encountered in all these inquisitive years, just
as the subject of it was more majestic than any, for it concerned not
hoarding, nor visits of the Prince of Wales, nor poppy-trimmed gowns,
but life and death and firing of deadly pistols. And should love be
added to this august list? Certainly not by her, though Tilling might do
what it liked. In fact Tilling always did.
She walked across to the bow-window from which she had conducted so many
exciting and successful investigations. But to-day the view seemed as
stale and unprofitable as the world appeared to Hamlet, even though Mrs.
Poppit at that moment went waddling down the street and disappeared
round the corner where the dentist and Mr. Wyse lived. With a sense of
fatigue Miss Mapp recalled the fact that she had seen the housemaid
cleaning Mr. Wyse's windows yesterday--("Children dear, was it
yesterday?")--and had noted her industry, and drawn from it the
irresistible conclusion that Mr. Wyse was probably expected home. He
usually came back about mid-October, and let slip allusions to his
enjoyable visits in Scotland and his _villeggiatura_ (so he was pleased
to express it) with his sister the Contessa di Faraglione at Capri. That
Contessa Faraglione was rather a mythical personage to Miss Mapp's mind:
she was certainly not in a mediaeval copy of "Who's Who?" which was the
only accessible handbook in matters relating to noble and notable
personages, and though Miss Mapp would not have taken an oath that she
did not exist, she saw no strong reason for supposing that she did.
Certainly she had never been to Tilling, which was strange as her
brother lived there, and there was nothing but her brother's allusions
to certify her. About Mrs. Poppit now: had she gone to see Mr. Wyse or
had she gone to the dentist? One or other it must be, for apart from
them that particular street contained nobody who counted, and at the
bottom it simply conducted you out into the uneventful country. Mrs.
Poppit was all dressed up, and she would never walk in the country in
such a costume. It would do either for Mr. Wyse or the dentist, for she
was the sort of woman who would like to appear grand in the dentist's
chair, so that he might be shy of hurting such a fine lady. Then again,
Mrs. Poppit had wonderful teeth, almost too good to be true, and before
now she had asked who lived at that pretty little house just round the
corner, as if to show that she didn't know where the dentist lived! Or
had she found out by some underhand means that Mr. Wyse had come back,
and had gone to call on him and give him the first news of the duel,
and talk to him about Scotland? Very likely they had neither of them
been to Scotland at all: they conspired to say that they had been to
Scotland and stayed at shooting-lodges (keepers' lodges more likely) in
order to impress Tilling with their magnificence....
Miss Mapp sat down on the central-heating pipes in her window, and fell
into one of her reconstructive musings. Partly, if Mr. Wyse was back, it
was well just to run over his record; partly she wanted to divert her
mind from the two houses just below, that of Major Benjy on the one side
and that of Captain Puffin on the other, which contained the key to the
great, insoluble mystery, from conjecture as to which she wanted to
obtain relief. Mr. Wyse, anyhow, would serve as a mild opiate, for she
had never lost an angry interest in him. Though he was for eight months
of the year, or thereabouts, in Tilling, he was never, for a single
hour, _of_ Tilling. He did not exactly invest himself with an air of
condescension and superiority--Miss Mapp did him that justice--but he
made other people invest him with it, so that it came to the same thing:
he was invested. He did not drag the fact of his sister being the
Contessa Faraglione into conversation, but if talk turned on sisters,
and he was asked about his, he confessed to her nobility. The same
phenomenon appeared when the innocent county of Hampshire was mentioned,
for it turned out that he knew the county well, being one of the Wyses
of Whitchurch. You couldn't say he talked about it, but he made other
people talk about it.... He was quite impervious to satire on such
points, for when, goaded to madness, Miss Mapp had once said that she
was one of the Mapps of Maidstone, he had merely bowed and said: "A very
old family, I believe," and when the conversation branched off on to
old families he had rather pointedly said "we" to Miss Mapp. So poor
Miss Mapp was sorry she had been satirical.... But for some reason,
Tilling never ceased to play up to Mr. Wyse, and there was not a
tea-party or a bridge-party given during the whole period of his
residence there to which he was not invited. Hostesses always started
with him, sending him round a note with "To await answer," written in
the top left-hand corner, since he had clearly stated that he considered
the telephone an undignified instrument only fit to be used for
household purposes, and had installed his in the kitchen, in the manner
of the Wyses of Whitchurch. That alone, apart from Mr. Wyse's
old-fashioned notions on the subject, made telephoning impossible, for
your summons was usually answered by his cook, who instantly began
scolding the butcher irrespective and disrespectful of whom you were.
When her mistake was made known to her, she never apologized, but
grudgingly said she would call Mr. Figgis, who was Mr. Wyse's valet. Mr.
Figgis always took a long time in coming, and when he came he sneezed or
did something disagreeable and said: "Yes, yes; what is it?" in a very
testy manner. After explanations he would consent to tell his master,
which took another long time, and even then Mr. Wyse did not come
himself, and usually refused the proffered invitation. Miss Mapp had
tried the expedient of sending Withers to the telephone when she wanted
to get at Mr. Wyse, but this had not succeeded, for Withers and Mr.
Wyse's cook quarrelled so violently before they got to business that Mr.
Figgis had to calm the cook and Withers to complain to Miss Mapp....
This, in brief, was the general reason why Tilling sent notes to Mr.
Wyse. As for chatting through the telephone, which was the main use of
telephones, the thing was quite out of the question.
Miss Mapp revived a little as she made this piercing analysis of Mr.
Wyse, and the warmth of the central heating pipes, on this baffling day
of autumn tints, was comforting.... No one could say that Mr. Wyse was
not punctilious in matters of social etiquette, for though he refused
three-quarters of the invitations which were showered on him, he
invariably returned the compliment by an autograph note hoping that he
might have the pleasure of entertaining you at lunch on Thursday next,
for he always gave a small luncheon-party on Thursday. These invitations
were couched in Chesterfield-terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a
mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence,
and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of
your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of
Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance
encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you
might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope.... These polite
expressions were traced in a neat upright hand on paper which, when he
had just come back from Italy, often bore a coronet on the top with
"Villa Faraglione, Capri" printed on the right-hand top corner and
"Amelia" (the name of his putative sister) in sprawling gilt on the
left, the whole being lightly erased. Of course he was quite right to
filch a few sheets, but it threw rather a lurid light on his character
that they should be such grand ones.
Last year only, in a fit of passion at Mr. Wyse having refused six
invitations running on the plea of other engagements, Miss Mapp had
headed a movement, the object of which was that Tilling should not
accept any of Mr. Wyse's invitations unless he accepted its. This had
met with theoretical sympathy; the Bartletts, Diva, Irene, the Poppits
had all agreed--rather absently--that it would be a very proper thing to
do, but the very next Thursday they had all, including the originator,
met on Mr. Wyse's doorstep for a luncheon-party, and the movement then
and there collapsed. Though they all protested and rebelled against such
a notion, the horrid fact remained that everybody basked in Mr. Wyse's
effulgence whenever it was disposed to shed itself on them. Much as they
distrusted the information they dragged out of him, they adored hearing
about the Villa Faraglione, and dressed themselves in their very best
clothes to do so. Then again there was the quality of the lunch itself:
often there was caviare, and it was impossible (though the interrogator
who asked whether it came from Twemlow's feared the worst) not to be
mildly excited to know, when Mr. Wyse referred the question to Figgis,
that the caviare had arrived from Odessa that morning. The haunch of
roe-deer came from Perthshire; the wine, on the subject of which the
Major could not be silent, and which often made him extremely talkative,
was from "my brother-in-law's vineyard." And Mr. Wyse would taste it
with the air of a connoisseur and say: "Not quite as good as last year:
I must tell the Cont---- I mean my sister."
Again when Mr. Wyse did condescend to honour a tea-party or a
bridge-party, Tilling writhed under the consciousness that their general
deportment was quite different from that which they ordinarily practised
among themselves. There was never any squabbling at Mr. Wyse's table,
and such squabbling as took place at the other tables was conducted in
low hissings and whispers, so that Mr. Wyse should not hear. Diva never
haggled over her gains or losses when he was there, the Padre never
talked Scotch or Elizabethan English. Evie never squeaked like a mouse,
no shrill recriminations or stately sarcasms took place between
partners, and if there happened to be a little disagreement about the
rules, Mr. Wyse's decision, though he was not a better player than any
of them, was accepted without a murmur. At intervals for refreshment, in
the same way, Diva no longer filled her mouth and both hands with
nougat-chocolate; there was no scrambling or jostling, but the ladies
were waited on by the gentlemen, who then refreshed themselves. And yet
Mr. Wyse in no way asserted himself, or reduced them all to politeness
by talking about the polished manners of Italians; it was Tilling itself
which chose to behave in this unusual manner in his presence. Sometimes
Diva might forget herself for a moment, and address something withering
to her partner, but the partner never replied in suitable terms, and
Diva became honey-mouthed again. It was, indeed, if Mr. Wyse had
appeared at two or three parties, rather a relief not to find him at the
next, and breathe freely in less rarefied air. But whether he came or
not he always returned the invitation by one to a Thursday
luncheon-party, and thus the high circles of Tilling met every week at
his house.
Miss Mapp came to the end of this brief retrospect, and determined, when
once it was proved that Mr. Wyse had arrived, to ask him to tea on
Tuesday. That would mean lunch with him on Thursday, and it was
unnecessary to ask anybody else unless Mr. Wyse accepted. If he refused,
there would be no tea-party.... But, after the events of the last
twenty-four hours, there was no vividness in these plans and
reminiscences, and her eye turned to the profile of the Colonel's house.
"The portmanteau," she said to herself.... No: she must take her mind
off that subject. She would go for a walk, not into the High Street, but
into the quiet level country, away from the turmoil of passion (in the
Padre's sense) and quarrels (in her own), where she could cool her
curiosity and her soul with contemplation of the swallows and the white
butterflies (if they had not all been killed by the touch of frost last
night) and the autumn tints of which there were none whatever in the
treeless marsh.... Decidedly the shortest way out of the town was that
which led past Mr. Wyse's house. But before leaving the garden-room she
practised several faces at the looking-glass opposite the door, which
should suitably express, if she met anybody to whom the cause of the
challenge was likely to have spread, the bewildering emotion which the
unwilling cause of it must feel. There must be a wistful wonder, there
must be a certain pride, there must be the remains of romantic
excitement, and there must be deep womanly anxiety. The carriage of the
head "did" the pride, the wide-open eyes "did" the wistful wonder and
the romance, the deep womanly anxiety lurked in the tremulous smile, and
a violent rubbing of the cheeks produced the colour of excitement. In
answer to any impertinent questions, if she encountered such, she meant
to give an absent answer, as if she had not understood. Thus equipped
she set forth.
It was rather disappointing to meet nobody, but as she passed Mr. Wyse's
bow-window she adjusted the chrysanthemums she wore, and she had a good
sight of his profile and the back of Mrs. Poppit's head. They appeared
deep in conversation, and Miss Mapp felt that the tiresome woman was
probably giving him a very incomplete account of what had happened. She
returned late for tea, and broke off her apologies to Withers for being
such a trouble because she saw a note on the hall table. There was a
coronet on the back of the envelope, and it was addressed in the neat,
punctilious hand which so well expressed its writer. Villa Faraglione,
Capri, a coronet and Amelia all lightly crossed out headed the page, and
she read:
"DEAR MISS MAPP,
"It is such a pleasure to find myself in our little Tilling again,
and our mutual friend Mrs. Poppit, M.B.E., tells me you are in
residence, and encourages me to hope that I may induce you to take
_dejeuner_ with me on Thursday, at one o'clock. May I assure you,
with all delicacy, that you will not meet here anyone whose
presence could cause you the slightest embarrassment?
"Pray excuse this hasty note. Figgis will wait for your answer if
you are in.
"Yours very sincerely,
"ALGERNON WYSE."
Had not Withers been present, who might have misconstrued her action,
Miss Mapp would have kissed the note; failing that, she forgave Mrs.
Poppit for being an M.B.E.
"The dear woman!" she said. "She has heard, and has told him."
Of course she need not ask Mr. Wyse to tea now....