The hippopotamus quarrel over their whisky between Major Flint and
Captain Puffin, which culminated in the challenge and all the shining
sequel, had had the excellent effect of making the united services more
united than ever. They both knew that, had they not severally run away
from the encounter, and, so providentially, met at the station, very
serious consequences might have ensued. Had not both but only one of
them been averse from taking or risking life, the other would surely
have remained in Tilling, and spread disastrous reports about the
bravery of the refugee; while if neither of them had had scruples on the
sacredness of human existence there might have been one if not two
corpses lying on the shining sands. Naturally the fact that they both
had taken the very earliest opportunity of averting an encounter by
flight, made it improbable that any future quarrel would be proceeded
with to violent extremes, but it was much safer to run no risks, and not
let verbal disagreements rise to hippopotamus-pitch again. Consequently
when there was any real danger of such savagery as was implied in
sending challenges, they hastened, by mutual concessions, to climb down
from these perilous places, where loss of balance might possibly occur.
For which of them could be absolutely certain that next time the other
of them might not be more courageous?...
They were coming up from the tram-station one November evening, both
fizzing and fuming a good deal, and the Major was extremely lame, lamer
than Puffin. The rattle of the tram had made argument impossible during
the transit from the links, but they had both in this enforced silence
thought of several smart repartees, supposing that the other made the
requisite remarks to call them out, and on arrival at the Tilling
station they went on at precisely the same point at which they had
broken off on starting from the station by the links.
"Well, I hope I can take a beating in as English a spirit as anybody,"
said the Major.
This was lucky for Captain Puffin: he had thought it likely that he
would say just that, and had got a stinger for him.
"And it worries you to find that your hopes are doomed to
disappointment," he swiftly said.
Major Flint stepped in a puddle which cooled his foot but not his
temper.
"Most offensive remark," he said. "I wasn't called Sporting Benjy in the
regiment for nothing. But never mind that. A worm-cast----"
"It wasn't a worm-cast," said Puffin. "It was sheep's dung!"
Luck had veered here: the Major had felt sure that Puffin would
reiterate that utterly untrue contention.
"I can't pretend to be such a specialist as you in those matters," he
said, "but you must allow me sufficient power of observation to know a
worm-cast when I see it. It was a worm-cast, sir, a cast of a worm, and
you had no right to remove it. If you will do me the favour to consult
the rules of golf----?"
"Oh, I grant you that you are more a specialist in the rules of golf,
Major, than in the practice of it," said Puffin brightly.
Suddenly it struck Sporting Benjy that the red signals of danger danced
before his eyes, and though the odious Puffin had scored twice to his
once, he called up all his powers of self-control, for if his friend was
anything like as exasperated as himself, the breeze of disagreement
might develop into a hurricane. At the moment he was passing through a
swing-gate which led to a short cut back to the town, but before he
could take hold of himself he had slammed it back in his fury, hitting
Puffin, who was following him, on the knee. Then he remembered he was a
sporting Christian gentleman, and no duellist.
"I'm sure I beg your pardon, my dear fellow," he said, with the utmost
solicitude. "Uncommonly stupid of me. The gate flew out of my hand. I
hope I didn't hurt you."
Puffin had just come to the same conclusion as Major Flint: magnanimity
was better than early trains, and ever so much better than bullets.
Indeed there was no comparison....
"Not hurt a bit, thank you, Major," he said, wincing with the shrewdness
of the blow, silently cursing his friend for what he felt sure was no
accident, and limping with both legs. "It didn't touch me. Ha! What a
brilliant sunset. The town looks amazingly picturesque."
"It does indeed," said the Major. "Fine subject for Miss Mapp."
Puffin shuffled alongside.
"There's still a lot of talk going on in the town," he said, "about that
duel of ours. Those fairies of yours are all agog to know what it was
about. I am sure they all think that there was a lady in the case. Just
like the vanity of the sex. If two men have a quarrel, they think it
must be because of their silly faces."
Ordinarily the Major's gallantry would have resented this view, but the
reconciliation with Puffin was too recent to risk just at present.
"Poor little devils," he said. "It makes an excitement for them. I
wonder who they think it is. It would puzzle me to name a woman in
Tilling worth catching an early train for."
"There are several who'd be surprised to hear you say that, Major," said
Puffin archly.
"Well, well," said the other, strutting and swelling, and walking
without a sign of lameness....
They had come to where their houses stood opposite each other on the
steep cobbled street, fronted at its top end by Miss Mapp's garden-room.
She happened to be standing in the window, and the Major made a great
flourish of his cap, and laid his hand on his heart.
"And there's one of them," said Puffin, as Miss Mapp acknowledged these
florid salutations with a wave of her hand, and tripped away from the
window.
"Poking your fun at me," said the Major. "Perhaps she was the cause of
our quarrel, hey? Well, I'll step across, shall I, about half-past nine,
and bring my diaries with me?"
"I'll expect you. You'll find me at my Roman roads."
The humour of this joke never staled, and they parted with hoots and
guffaws of laughter.
It must not be supposed that duelling, puzzles over the portmanteau, or
the machinations of Susan had put out of Miss Mapp's head her amiable
interest in the hour at which Major Benjy went to bed. For some time she
had been content to believe, on direct information from him, that he
went to bed early and worked at his diaries on alternate evenings, but
maturer consideration had led her to wonder whether he was being quite
as truthful as a gallant soldier should be. For though (on alternate
evenings) his house would be quite dark by half-past nine, it was not
for twelve hours or more afterwards that he could be heard qui-hi-ing
for his breakfast, and unless he was in some incipient stage of
sleeping-sickness, such hours provided more than ample slumber for a
growing child, and might be considered excessive for a middle-aged man.
She had a mass of evidence to show that on the other set of alternate
nights his diaries (which must, in parenthesis, be of extraordinary
fullness) occupied him into the small hours, and to go to bed at
half-past nine on one night and after one o'clock on the next implied a
complicated kind of regularity which cried aloud for elucidation. If he
had only breakfasted early on the mornings after he had gone to bed
early, she might have allowed herself to be weakly credulous, but he
never qui-hied earlier than half-past nine, and she could not but think
that to believe blindly in such habits would be a triumph not for faith
but for foolishness. "People," said Miss Mapp to herself, as her
attention refused to concentrate on the evening paper, "don't do it. I
never heard of a similar case."
She had been spending the evening alone, and even the conviction that
her cold apple tart had suffered diminution by at least a slice, since
she had so much enjoyed it hot at lunch, failed to occupy her mind for
long, for this matter had presented itself with a clamouring insistence
that drowned all other voices. She had tried, when, at the conclusion of
her supper, she had gone back to the garden-room, to immerse herself in
a book, in an evening paper, in the portmanteau problem, in a jig-saw
puzzle, and in Patience, but none of these supplied the stimulus to lead
her mind away from Major Benjy's evenings, or the narcotic to dull her
unslumbering desire to solve a problem that was rapidly becoming one of
the greater mysteries.
Her radiator made a seat in the window agreeably warm, and a chink in
the curtains gave her a view of the Major's lighted window. Even as she
looked, the illumination was extinguished. She had expected this, as he
had been at his diaries late--quite naughtily late--the evening before,
so this would be a night of infant slumber for twelve hours or so.
Even as she looked, a chink of light came from his front door, which
immediately enlarged itself into a full oblong. Then it went completely
out. "He has opened the door, and has put out the hall-light," whispered
Miss Mapp to herself.... "He has gone out and shut the door.... (Perhaps
he is going to post a letter.) ... He has gone into Captain Puffin's
house without knocking. So he is expected."
Miss Mapp did not at once guess that she held in her hand the key to the
mystery. It was certainly Major Benjy's night for going to bed early....
Then a fierce illumination beat on her brain. Had she not, so
providentially, actually observed the Major cross the road,
unmistakable in the lamplight, and had she only looked out of her window
after the light in his was quenched, she would surely have told herself
that good Major Benjy had gone to bed. But good Major Benjy, on ocular
evidence, she now knew to have done nothing of the kind: he had gone
across to see Captain Puffin.... He was not good.
She grasped the situation in its hideous entirety. She had been deceived
and hoodwinked. Major Benjy never went to bed early at all: on alternate
nights he went and sat with Captain Puffin. And Captain Puffin, she
could not but tell herself, sat up on the other set of alternate nights
with the Major, for it had not escaped her observation that when the
Major seemed to be sitting up, the Captain seemed to have gone to bed.
Instantly, with strong conviction, she suspected orgies. It remained to
be seen (and she would remain to see it) to what hour these orgies were
kept up.
About eleven o'clock a little mist had begun to form in the street,
obscuring the complete clarity of her view, but through it there still
shone the light from behind Captain Puffin's red blind, and the mist was
not so thick as to be able wholly to obscure the figure of Major Flint
when he should pass below the gas lamp again into his house. But no such
figure passed. Did he then work at his diaries every evening? And what
price, to put it vulgarly, Roman roads?
Every moment her sense of being deceived grew blacker, and every moment
her curiosity as to what they were doing became more unbearable. After a
spasm of tactical thought she glided back into her house from the
garden-room, and, taking an envelope in her hand, so that she might, if
detected, say that she was going down to the letter-box at the corner to
catch the early post, she unbolted her door and let herself out. She
crossed the street and tip-toed along the pavement to where the red
light from Captain Puffin's window shone like a blurred danger-signal
through the mist.
From inside came a loud duet of familiar voices: sometimes they spoke
singly, sometimes together. But she could not catch the words: they
sounded blurred and indistinct, and she told herself that she was very
glad that she could not hear what they said, for that would have seemed
like eaves-dropping. The voices sounded angry. Was there another duel
pending? And what was it about this time?
Quite suddenly, from so close at hand that she positively leaped off the
pavement into the middle of the road, the door was thrown open and the
duet, louder than ever, streamed out into the street. Major Benjy
bounced out on to the threshold, and stumbled down the two steps that
led from the door.
"Tell you it was a worm-cast," he bellowed. "Think I don't know a
worm-cast when I see a worm-cast?"
Suddenly his tone changed: this was getting too near a quarrel.
"Well, good-night, old fellow," he said. "Jolly evening."
He turned and saw, veiled and indistinct in the mist, the female figure
in the roadway. Undying coquetry, as Mr. Stevenson so finely remarked,
awoke, for the topic preceding the worm-cast had been "the sex."
"Bless me," he crowed, "if there isn't an unprotected lady all 'lone
here in the dark, and lost in the fog. 'Llow me to 'scort you home,
madam. Lemme introduce myself and friend--Major Flint, that's me, and my
friend Captain Puffin."
He put up his hand and whispered an aside to Miss Mapp: "Revolutionized
the theory of navigation."
Major Benjy was certainly rather gay and rather indistinct, but his
polite gallantry could not fail to be attractive. It was naughty of him
to have said that he went to bed early on alternate nights, but
really.... Still, it might be better to slip away unrecognized, and,
thinking it would be nice to scriggle by him and disappear in the mist,
she made a tactical error in her scriggling, for she scriggled full into
the light that streamed from the open door where Captain Puffin was
standing.
He gave a shrill laugh.
"Why, it's Miss Mapp," he said in his high falsetto. "Blow me, if it
isn't our mutual friend Miss Mapp. What a 'strordinary coincidence."
Miss Mapp put on her most winning smile. To be dignified and at the same
time pleasant was the proper way to deal with this situation. Gentlemen
often had a glass of grog when they thought the ladies had gone
upstairs. That was how, for the moment, she summed things up.
"Good evening," she said. "I was just going down to the pillar-box to
post a letter," and she exhibited her envelope. But it dropped out of
her hand, and the Major picked it up for her.
"I'll post it for you," he said very pleasantly. "Save you the trouble.
Insist on it. Why, there's no stamp on it! Why, there's no address on
it! I say, Puffie, here's a letter with no address on it. Forgotten the
address, Miss Mapp? Think they'll remember it at the post office? Well,
that's one of the mos' comic things I ever came across. An, an anonymous
letter, eh?"
The night air began to have a most unfortunate effect on Puffin. When
he came out it would have been quite unfair to have described him as
drunk. He was no more than gay and ready to go to bed. Now he became
portentously solemn, as the cold mist began to do its deadly work.
"A letter," he said impressively, "without an address is an uncommonly
dangerous thing. Hic! Can't tell into whose hands it may fall. I would
sooner go 'bout with a loaded pistol than with a letter without any
address. Send it to the bank for safety. Send for the police. Follow my
advice and send for the p'lice. Police!"
Miss Mapp's penetrating mind instantly perceived that that dreadful
Captain Puffin was drunk, and she promised herself that Tilling should
ring with the tale of his excesses to-morrow. But Major Benjy, whom, if
she mistook not, Captain Puffin had been trying, with perhaps some small
success, to lead astray, was a gallant gentleman still, and she
conceived the brilliant but madly mistaken idea of throwing herself on
his protection.
"Major Benjy," she said, "I will ask you to take me home. Captain Puffin
has had too much to drink----"
"Woz that?" asked Captain Puffin, with an air of great interest.
Miss Mapp abandoned dignity and pleasantness, and lost her temper.
"I said you were drunk," she said with great distinctness. "Major Benjy,
will you----"
Captain Puffin came carefully down the two steps from the door on to the
pavement.
"Look here," he said, "this all needs 'splanation. You say I'm drunk, do
you? Well, I say you're drunk, going out like this in mill' of the night
to post letter with no 'dress on it. Shamed of yourself, mill'aged woman
going out in the mill' of the night in the mill' of Tilling. Very
shocking thing. What do you say, Major?"
Major Benjy drew himself up to his full height, and put on his hat in
order to take it off to Miss Mapp.
"My fren' Cap'n Puffin," he said, "is a man of strictly 'stemious
habits. Boys together. Very serious thing to call a man of my fren's
character drunk. If you call him drunk, why shouldn't he call you drunk?
Can't take away man's character like that."
"Abso----" began Captain Puffin. Then he stopped and pulled himself
together.
"Absolooly," he said without a hitch.
"Tilling shall hear of this to-morrow," said Miss Mapp, shivering with
rage and sea-mist.
Captain Puffin came a step closer.
"Now I'll tell you what it is, Miss Mapp," he said. "If you dare to say
that I was drunk, Major and I, my fren' the Major and I will say you
were drunk. Perhaps you think my fren' the Major's drunk too. But sure's
I live, I'll say we were taking lil' walk in the moonlight and found you
trying to post a letter with no 'dress on it, and couldn't find the slit
to put it in. But 'slong as you say nothing, I say nothing. Can't say
fairer than that. Liberal terms. Mutual Protection Society. Your lips
sealed, our lips sealed. Strictly private. All trespassers will be
prosecuted. By order. Hic!"
Miss Mapp felt that Major Benjy ought instantly to have challenged his
ignoble friend to another duel for this insolent suggestion, but he did
nothing of the kind, and his silence, which had some awful quality of
consent about it, chilled her mind, even as the sea-mist, now thick and
cold, made her certain that her nose was turning red. She still boiled
with rage, but her mind grew cold with odious apprehensions: she was
like an ice-pudding with scalding sauce.... There they all stood, veiled
in vapours, and outlined by the red light that streamed from the
still-open door of the intoxicated Puffin, getting colder every moment.
"Yessorno," said Puffin, with chattering teeth.
Bitter as it was to accept those outrageous terms, there really seemed,
without the Major's support, to be no way out of it.
"Yes," said Miss Mapp.
Puffin gave a loud crow.
"The ayes have it, Major," he said. "So we're all frens again. Goonight
everybody."
* * * * *
Miss Mapp let herself into her house in an agony of mortification. She
could scarcely realize that her little expedition, undertaken with so
much ardent and earnest curiosity only a quarter of an hour ago, had
ended in so deplorable a surfeit of sensation. She had gone out in
obedience to an innocent and, indeed, laudable desire to ascertain how
Major Benjy spent those evenings on which he had deceived her into
imagining that, owing to her influence, he had gone ever so early to
bed, only to find that he sat up ever so late and that she was fettered
by a promise not to breathe to a soul a single word about the depravity
of Captain Puffin, on pain of being herself accused out of the mouth of
two witnesses of being equally depraved herself. More wounding yet was
the part played by her Major Benjy in these odious transactions, and it
was only possible to conclude that he put a higher value on his
fellowship with his degraded friend than on chivalry itself.... And what
did his silence imply? Probably it was a defensive one; he imagined that
he, too, would be included in the stories that Miss Mapp proposed to
sow broadcast upon the fruitful fields of Tilling, and, indeed, when she
called to mind his bellowing about worm-casts, his general instability
of speech and equilibrium, she told herself that he had ample cause for
such a supposition. He, when his lights were out, was abetting,
assisting and perhaps joining Captain Puffin. When his window was alight
on alternate nights she made no doubt now that Captain Puffin was
performing a similar role. This had been going on for weeks under her
very nose, without her having the smallest suspicion of it.
Humiliated by all that had happened, and flattened in her own estimation
by the sense of her blindness, she penetrated to the kitchen and lit a
gas-ring to make herself some hot cocoa, which would at least comfort
her physical chatterings. There was a letter for Withers, slipped
sideways into its envelope, on the kitchen table, and mechanically she
opened and read it by the bluish flame of the burner. She had always
suspected Withers of having a young man, and here was proof of it. But
that he should be Mr. Hopkins of the fish-shop!
There is known to medical science a pleasant device known as a
counter-irritant. If the patient has an aching and rheumatic joint he is
counselled to put some hot burning application on the skin, which smarts
so agonizingly that the ache is quite extinguished. Metaphorically, Mr.
Hopkins was thermogene to Miss Mapp's outraged and aching consciousness,
and the smart occasioned by the knowledge that Withers must have
encouraged Mr. Hopkins (else he could scarcely have written a letter so
familiar and amorous), and thus be contemplating matrimony, relieved the
aching humiliation of all that had happened in the sea-mist. It shed a
new and lurid light on Withers, it made her mistress feel that she had
nourished a serpent in her bosom, to think that Withers was
contemplating so odious an act of selfishness as matrimony. It would be
necessary to find a new parlour-maid, and all the trouble connected with
that would not nearly be compensated for by being able to buy fish at a
lower rate. That was the least that Withers could do for her, to insist
that Mr. Hopkins should let her have dabs and plaice exceptionally
cheap. And ought she to tell Withers that she had seen Mr. Hopkins ...
no, that was impossible: she must write it, if she decided (for Withers'
sake) to make this fell communication.
Miss Mapp turned and tossed on her uneasy bed, and her mind went back to
the Major and the Captain and that fiasco in the fog. Of course she was
perfectly at liberty (having made her promise under practical
compulsion) to tell everybody in Tilling what had occurred, trusting to
the chivalry of the men not to carry out their counter threat, but
looking at the matter quite dispassionately, she did not think it would
be wise to trust too much to chivalry. Still, even if they did carry out
their unmanly menace, nobody would seriously believe that she had been
drunk. But they might make a very disagreeable joke of pretending to do
so, and, in a word, the prospect frightened her. Whatever Tilling did or
did not believe, a residuum of ridicule would assuredly cling to her,
and her reputation of having perhaps been the cause of the quarrel
which, so happily did not end in a duel, would be lost for ever. Evie
would squeak, quaint Irene would certainly burst into hoarse laughter
when she heard the story. It was very inconvenient that honesty should
be the best policy.
Her brain still violently active switched off for a moment on to the
eternal problem of the portmanteau. Why, so she asked herself for the
hundredth time, if the portmanteau contained the fatal apparatus of
duelling, did not the combatants accompany it? And if (the only other
alternative) it did not----?
An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the
room had leaped into light. The challenge distinctly said that Major
Benjy's seconds would wait upon Captain Puffin in the course of the
morning. With what object then could the former have gone down to the
station to catch the early train? There could be but one object, namely
to get away as quickly as possible from the dangerous vicinity of the
challenged Captain. And why did Captain Puffin leave that note on his
table to say that he was suddenly called away, except in order to escape
from the ferocious neighbourhood of his challenger?
"The cowards!" ejaculated Miss Mapp. "They both ran away from each
other! How blind I've been!"
The veil was rent. She perceived how, carried away with the notion that
a duel was to be fought among the sand-dunes, Tilling had quite
overlooked the significance of the early train. She felt sure that she
had solved everything now, and gave herself up to a rapturous
consideration of what use she would make of the precious solution. All
regrets for the impossibility of ruining the character of Captain Puffin
with regard to intoxicants were gone, for she had an even deadlier
blacking to hand. No faintest hesitation at ruining the reputation of
Major Benjy as well crossed her mind; she gloried in it, for he had not
only caused her to deceive herself about the early hours on alternate
nights, but by his infamous willingness to back up Captain Puffin's
bargain, he had shown himself imperviously waterproof to all chivalrous
impulses. For weeks now the sorry pair of them had enjoyed the spurious
splendours of being men of blood and valour, when all the time they had
put themselves to all sorts of inconvenience in catching early trains
and packing bags by candle-light in order to escape the hot impulses of
quarrel that, as she saw now, were probably derived from drained
whisky-bottles. That mysterious holloaing about worm-casts was just such
another disagreement. And, crowning rapture of all, her own position as
cause of the projected duel was quite unassailed. Owing to her silence
about drink, no one would suspect a mere drunken brawl: she would still
figure as heroine, though the heroes were terribly dismantled. To be
sure, it would have been better if their ardour about her had been such
that one of them, at the least, had been prepared to face the ordeal,
that they had not both preferred flight, but even without that she had
much to be thankful for. "It will serve them both," said Miss Mapp
(interrupted by a sneeze, for she had been sitting up in bed for quite a
considerable time), "right."
To one of Miss Mapp's experience, the first step of her new and
delightful strategic campaign was obvious, and she spent hardly any time
at all in the window of her garden-room after breakfast next morning,
but set out with her shopping-basket at an unusually early hour. She
shuddered as she passed between the front doors of her miscreant
neighbours, for the chill of last night's mist and its dreadful memories
still lingered there, but her present errand warmed her soul even as the
tepid November day comforted her body. No sign of life was at present
evident in those bibulous abodes, no qui-his had indicated breakfast,
and she put her utmost irony into the reflection that the United
Services slept late after their protracted industry last night over
diaries and Roman roads. By a natural revulsion, violent in proportion
to the depth of her previous regard for Major Benjy, she hugged herself
more closely on the prospect of exposing him than on that of exposing
the other. She had had daydreams about Major Benjy and the conversion of
these into nightmares annealed her softness into the semblance of some
red-hot stone, giving vengeance a concentrated sweetness as of
saccharine contrasted with ordinary lump sugar. This sweetness was of so
powerful a quality that she momentarily forgot all about the contents of
Withers's letter on the kitchen table, and tripped across to Mr.
Hopkins's with an oblivious smile for him.
"Good morning, Mr. Hopkins," she said. "I wonder if you've got a nice
little dab for my dinner to-day? Yes? Will you send it up then, please?
What a mild morning, like May!"
The opening move, of course, was to tell Diva about the revelation that
had burst on her the night before. Diva was incomparably the best
disseminator of news: she walked so fast, and her telegraphic style was
so brisk and lucid. Her terse tongue, her revolving feet! Such a gossip!
"Diva darling, I had to look in a moment," said Elizabeth, pecking her
affectionately on both cheeks. "Such a bit of news!"
"Oh, Contessa di Faradidleony," said Diva sarcastically. "I heard
yesterday. Journey put off."
Miss Mapp just managed to stifle the excitement which would have
betrayed that this was news to her.
"No, dear, not that," she said. "I didn't suspect you of not knowing
that. Unfortunate though, isn't it, just when we were all beginning to
believe that there was a Contessa di Faradidleony! What a sweet name!
For my part I shall believe in her when I see her. Poor Mr. Wyse!"
"What's the news then?" asked Diva.
"My dear, it all came upon me in a flash," said Elizabeth. "It explains
the portmanteau and the early train and the duel."
Diva looked disappointed. She thought this was to be some solid piece of
news, not one of Elizabeth's ideas only.
"Drive ahead," she said.
"They ran away from each other," said Elizabeth, mouthing her words as
if speaking to a totally deaf person who understood lip-reading. "Never
mind the cause of the duel: that's another affair. But whatever the
cause," here she dropped her eyes, "the Major having sent the challenge
packed his portmanteau. He ran away, dear Diva, and met Captain Puffin
at the station running away too."
"But did----" began Diva.
"Yes, dear, the note on Captain Puffin's table to his housekeeper said
he was called away suddenly. What called him away? Cowardice, dear! How
ignoble it all is. And we've all been thinking how brave and wonderful
they were. They fled from each other, and came back together and played
golf. I never thought it was a game for men. The sand-dunes where they
were supposed to be fighting! They might lose a ball there, but that
would be the utmost. Not a life. Poor Padre! Going out there to stop a
duel, and only finding a game of golf. But I understand the nature of
men better now. What an eye-opener!"
Diva by this time was trundling away round the room, and longing to be
off in order to tell everybody. She could find no hole in Elizabeth's
arguments; it was founded as solidly as a Euclidean proposition.
"Ever occurred to you that they drink?" she asked. "Believe in Roman
roads and diaries? I don't."
Miss Mapp bounded from her chair. Danger flags flapped and crimsoned in
her face. What if Diva went flying round Tilling, suggesting that in
addition to being cowards those two men were drunkards? They would, as
soon as any hint of the further exposure reached them, conclude that she
had set the idea on foot, and then----
"No, Diva darling," she said, "don't dream of imagining such a thing. So
dangerous to hint anything of the sort. Cowards they may be, and indeed
are, but never have I seen anything that leads me to suppose that they
drink. We must give them their due, and stick to what we know; we must
not launch accusations wildly about other matters, just because we know
they are cowards. A coward need not be a drunkard, thank God! It is all
miserable enough, as it is!"
Having averted this danger, Miss Mapp, with her radiant, excited face,
seemed to be bearing all the misery very courageously, and as Diva could
no longer be restrained from starting on her morning round they plunged
together into the maelstrom of the High Street, riding and whirling in
its waters with the solution of the portmanteau and the early train for
life-buoy. Very little shopping was done that morning, for every
permutation and combination of Tilling society (with the exception, of
course, of the cowards) had to be formed on the pavement with a view to
the amplest possible discussion. Diva, as might have been expected, gave
proof of her accustomed perfidy before long, for she certainly gave
the Padre to understand that the chain of inductive reasoning was of
her own welding and Elizabeth had to hurry after him to correct this
grabbing impression; but the discovery in itself was so great, that
small false notes like these could not spoil the glorious harmony. Even
Mr. Wyse abandoned his usual neutrality with regard to social politics
and left his tall malacca cane in the chemist's, so keen was his gusto,
on seeing Miss Mapp on the pavement outside, to glean any fresh detail
of evidence.
By eleven o'clock that morning, the two duellists were universally known
as "the cowards," the Padre alone demurring, and being swampingly
outvoted. He held (sticking up for his sex) that the Major had been
brave enough to send a challenge (on whatever subject) to his friend,
and had, though he subsequently failed to maintain that high level,
shown courage of a high order, since, for all he knew, Captain Puffin
might have accepted it. Miss Mapp was spokesman for the mind of Tilling
on this too indulgent judgment.
"Dear Padre," she said, "you are too generous altogether. They both ran
away: you can't get over that. Besides you must remember that, when the
Major sent the challenge, he knew Captain Puffin, oh so well, and quite
expected he would run away----"
"Then why did he run away himself?" asked the Padre.
This was rather puzzling for a moment, but Miss Mapp soon thought of the
explanation.
"Oh, just to make sure," she said, and Tilling applauded her ready
irony.
And then came the climax of sensationalism, when at about ten minutes
past eleven the two cowards emerged into the High Street on their way to
catch the 11.20 tram out to the links. The day threatened rain, and
they both carried bags which contained a change of clothes. Just round
the corner of the High Street was the group which had applauded Miss
Mapp's quickness, and the cowards were among the breakers. They glanced
at each other, seeing that Miss Mapp was the most towering of the
breakers, but it was too late to retreat, and they made the usual
salutations.
"Good morning," said Diva, with her voice trembling. "Off to catch the
early train together--I mean the tram."
"Good morning, Captain Puffin," said Miss Mapp with extreme sweetness.
"What a nice little travelling bag! Oh, and the Major's got one too!
H'm!"
A certain dismay looked from Major Flint's eyes, Captain Puffin's mouth
fell open, and he forgot to shut it.
"Yes; change of clothes," said the Major. "It looks a threatening
morning."
"Very threatening," said Miss Mapp. "I hope you will do nothing rash or
dangerous."
There was a moment's silence, and the two looked from one face to
another of this fell group. They all wore fixed, inexplicable smiles.
"It will be pleasant among the sand-dunes," said the Padre, and his wife
gave a loud squeak.
"Well, we shall be missing our tram," said the Major. "Au--au reservoir,
ladies."
Nobody responded at all, and they hurried off down the street, their
bags bumping together very inconveniently.
"Something's up, Major," said Puffin, with true Tilling perspicacity, as
soon as they had got out of hearing....
* * * * *
Precisely at the same moment Miss Mapp gave a little cooing laugh.
"Now I must run and do my bittie shopping, Padre," she said, and kissed
her hand all round.... The curtain had to come down for a little while
on so dramatic a situation. Any discussion, just then, would be an
anti-climax.