Again, it was known that Major Benjy had called at Mallards soon after the scene, whatever it was, had taken place, and had refused to go into the garden-room, when he heard that Georgie was painting Elizabeth’s portrait. Withers was witness (she had brought several pots of jam to Diva’s house that morning, not vegetable marrow at all, but raspberry, which looked like a bribe) that the Major had said ‘Faugh!’ when she told him that Georgie was there. Major Benjy himself could not be cross-examined because he had gone out by the eleven o’clock tram to play golf. Lucia had not been seen in the High Street at all, nor had Miss Mapp, and Georgie had only passed through it in his car, quite early, going in the direction of Grebe. This absence of the principals, in these earlier stages of development, was felt to be in accordance with the highest rules of dramatic technique, and everybody, as far as was known, was to meet that very night at Lucia’s house-warming. Opinion as to what would happen then was as divergent as the rumours of what had happened already. Some said that Miss Mapp had declined the invitation on the plea that she was engaged to dine with Major Benjy. This was unlikely, because he never had anybody to dinner. Some said that she had accepted, and that Lucia no doubt intended to send out a message that she was not expected, but that Georgie’s car would take her home again. So sorry. All this, however, was a matter of pure conjecture, and it was work enough to sift out what had happened, without wasting time (for time was precious) in guessing what would happen.
The church clock had hardly struck half-past eleven (winter time) before the first of the principals appeared on the stage of the High Street. This was Miss Mapp, wreathed in smiles, and occupied in her usual shopping errands. She trotted about from grocer to butcher, and butcher to general stores, where she bought a mouse-trap, and was exceedingly affable to tradespeople. She nodded to her friends, she patted Mr Woolgar’s dog on the head, she gave a penny to a ragged individual with a lugubrious baritone voice who was singing ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, and said ‘Thank you for your sweet music.’ Then after pausing for a moment on the pavement in front of Wasters, she rang the bell. Diva, who had seen her from the window, flew to open it.
‘Good morning, Diva dear,’ she said. ‘I just looked in. Any news?’
‘Good gracious, it’s I who ought to ask you that,’ said Diva. ‘What did happen really?’
Elizabeth looked very much surprised.
‘How? When? Where?’ she asked.
‘As if you didn’t know,’ said Diva, fizzing with impatience. ‘Mr Georgie, Lucia, paint-boxes, no chain on the door, you at the garden-room window, belly-pelly. Etcetera. Yesterday morning.’
Elizabeth put her finger to her forehead, as if trying to recall some dim impression. She appeared to succeed.
‘Dear gossipy one,’ she said, ‘I believe I know what you mean. Georgie came to paint in the garden-room, as he so often does—’
‘Do you call him Georgie?’ asked Diva in an eager parenthesis.
‘Yes, I fancy that’s his name, and he calls me Elizabeth.’
‘No!’ said Diva.
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Do not interrupt me, dear… I happened to be at the window as he rang the bell, and I just popped my head out, and told him he was a naughty boy not to walk straight in.’
‘In baby-talk?’ asked Diva. ‘Like Lucia?’
‘Like any baby you chance to mention,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Why not?’
‘But with her sitting in her car just below?’
‘Yes, dear, it so happened that she was just coming to leave an invitation on me for her house-warming tonight. Are you going?’
‘Yes, of course, everybody is. But how could you do it?’
Elizabeth sat wrapped in thought.
‘I’m beginning to see what you mean,’ she said at length. ‘But what an absurd notion. You mean, don’t you, that dear Lulu thinks—goodness, how ridiculous—that I was mimicking her.’
‘Nobody knows what she thinks,’ said Diva. ‘She’s not been seen this morning.’
‘But gracious goodness me, what have I done?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Why this excitement? Is there a law that only Mrs Lucas of Grebe may call Georgie, Georgie? So ignorant of me if there is. Ought I to call him Frederick? And pray, why shouldn’t I talk baby-talk? Another law perhaps. I must get a book of the laws of England.’
‘But you knew she was in the car just below you and must have heard.’
Elizabeth was now in possession of what she wanted to know. Diva was quite a decent barometer of Tilling weather, and the weather was stormy.
‘Rubbish, darling,’ she said. ‘You are making mountains out of mole-hills. If Lulu heard—and I don’t know that she did, mind—what cause of complaint has she? Mayn’t I say Georgie? Mayn’t I say “vewy naughty boy”? Let us hear no more about it. You will see this evening how wrong you all are. Lulu will be just as sweet and cordial as ever. And you will hear with your own ears how Georgie calls me Elizabeth.’
These were brave words, and they very fitly represented the stout heart that inspired them. Tilling had taken her conduct to be equivalent to an act of war, exactly as she had meant it to be, and if anyone thought that E. M. was afraid they were wrong… Then there was that matter of Mr Wyse’s letter, resigning from the hanging committee. She must tap the barometer again.
‘I think everybody is a shade mad this morning,’ she observed, ‘and I should call Mr Wyse, if anybody asked me to be candid, a raving lunatic. There was a little misunderstanding months and months ago—I am vague about it—concerning two pictures that Lulu and Georgie sent in to the art exhibition in the summer. I thought it was all settled and done with. But I did act a little irregularly. Technically I was wrong, and when I have been wrong about a thing, as you very well know, dear Diva, I am not ashamed to confess it.’
‘Of course you were wrong,’ said Diva cordially, ‘if Mr Wyse’s account of it is correct. You sent the pictures back, such beauties, too, with a formal rejection from the hanging committee when they had never seen them at all. So rash, too: I wonder at you.’
These unfavourable comments did not make the transaction appear any the less irregular.
‘I said I was wrong, Diva,’ remarked Elizabeth with some asperity, ‘and I should have thought that was enough. And now Mr Wyse, raking bygones up again in the way he has, has written to me to say that he and Susan resign their places on the hanging committee.’
‘I know: they told everybody,’ said Diva. ‘Awkward. What are you going to do?’
The barometer had jerked alarmingly downwards on this renewed tapping.
‘I shall cry peccavi,’ said Elizabeth, with the air of doing something exceedingly noble. ‘I shall myself resign. That will show that whatever anybody else does, I am doing the best in my power to put right a technical error. I hope Mr Wyse will appreciate that, and be ashamed of the letter he wrote me. More than that, I shall regard his letter as having been written in a fit of temporary insanity, which I trust will not recur.’
‘Yes; I suppose that’s the best thing you can do,’ said Diva. ‘It will show him that you regret what you did, now that it’s all found out.’
‘That is not generous of you, Diva,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘I am sorry you said that.’
‘More than I am,’ said Diva. ‘It’s a very fair statement. Isn’t it now? What’s wrong with it?’
Elizabeth suddenly perceived that at this crisis it was unwise to indulge in her usual tiffs with Diva. She wanted allies.
‘Diva, dear, we mustn’t quarrel,’ she said. ‘That would never do. I felt I had to pop in to consult you as to the right course to take with Mr Wyse, and I’m so glad you agree with me. How I trust your judgment! I must be going. What a delightful evening we have in store for us. Major Benjy was thinking of declining, but I persuaded him it would not be kind. A house-warming, you know. Such a special occasion.’
The evening to which everybody had looked forward so much was, in the main, a disappointment to bellicose spirits. Nothing could
exceed Lucia’s cordiality to Elizabeth unless it was Elizabeth’s to Lucia: they left the dining-room at the end of dinner with arms and waists intertwined, a very bitter sight. They then played bridge at the same table, and so loaded each other with compliments while deploring their own errors, that Diva began to entertain the most serious fears that they had been mean enough to make it up on the sly, or that Lucia in a spirit of Christian forbearance, positively unnatural, had decided to overlook all the attacks and insults with which Elizabeth had tried to provoke her. Or did Lucia think that this degrading display of magnanimity was a weapon by which she would secure victory, by enlisting for her the sympathy and applause of Tilling? If so, that was a great mistake; Tilling did not want to witness a demonstration of forgiveness or white feathers but a combat without quarter. Again, if she thought that such nobility would soften the malevolent heart of Mapp, she showed a distressing ignorance of Mapp’s nature, for she would quite properly construe this as not being nobility at all but the most ignoble cowardice. There was Georgie under Lucia’s very nose, interlarding his conversation with far more ‘Elizabeths’ than was in the least necessary to show that he was talking to her, and she volleyed ‘Georgies’ at him in return. Every now and then, when these discharges of Christian names had been particularly resonant, Elizabeth caught Diva’s eye with a glance of triumph as if to remind her that she had prophesied that Lulu would be all sweetness and cordiality, and Diva turned away sick at heart.
On the other hand, there were still grounds for hope, and, as the evening went on, these became more promising: they were like small caps of foam and cats’-paws of wind upon a tranquil sea. To begin with, it was only this morning that the baseness of Elizabeth in that matter concerning the art committee had come to light. Georgie, not Lucia, had been directly responsible for that damning disclosure, but it must be supposed that he had acted with her connivance, if not with her express wish, and this certainly did not look so much like forgiveness as a nasty one for Elizabeth. That was hopeful, and Diva’s eagle eye espied other signs of bad weather. Elizabeth, encouraged by Lucia’s compliments and humilities throughout a long rubber, began to come out more in her true colours, and to explain to her partner that she had lost a few tricks (no matter) by not taking a finesse, or a whole game by not supporting her declaration, and Diva thought she detected a certain dangerous glitter in Lucia’s eye as she bent to these chastisements. Surely, too, she bit her lip when Elizabeth suddenly began to call her Lulu again. Then there was Irene’s conduct to consider: Irene was fizzing and fidgeting in her chair, she cast glances of black hatred at Elizabeth, and once Diva distinctly saw Lucia frown and shake her head at her. Again, at the voluptuous supper which succeeded many rubbers of bridge, there was the famous lobster à la Riseholme. It had become, as all Tilling knew, a positive obsession with Elizabeth to get the secret of that delicious dish, and now, flushed with continuous victories at bridge and with Lucia’s persevering pleasantness, she made another direct request for it.
‘Lulu dear,’ she said, ‘it would be sweet of you to give me the recipe for your lobster. So good…’
Diva felt this to be a crucial moment: Lucia had often refused it before, but now if she was wholly Christian and cowardly she would consent. But once more she gave no reply, and asked the Padre on what day of the week Christmas fell. So Diva heaved a sigh of relief, for there was still hope.
In spite of this rebuff, it was hardly to be wondered at that Elizabeth felt in a high state of elation when the evening was over. The returning revellers changed the order of their going, and Georgie took back her and Diva. He went outside with Diva, for, during the last half-hour, Mapp (as he now mentally termed her in order to be done with Elizabeth) had grown like a mushroom in complaisance and self-confidence, and he could not trust himself, if she went on, as she would no doubt do, in the same strain, not to rap out something very sharp. ‘Let her just wait,’ he thought, ‘she’ll soon be singing a different tune.’
Georgie’s precautions in going outside, well wrapped up in his cap and his fur tippet and his fur rug, were well founded, for hardly had Mapp kissed her hand for the last time to Lulu (who would come to the door to see them off), and counted over the money she had won, than she burst into staves of intolerable triumph and condescension.
‘So that’s that!’ she said, pulling up the window. ‘And if I was to ask you, dear Diva, which of us was right about how this evening would go off, I don’t think there would be very much doubt about the answer. Did you ever see Lulu so terribly anxious to please me? And did you happen to hear me say Georgie and him say Elizabeth? Lulu didn’t like it, I am sure, but she had to swallow her medicine, and she did so with a very good grace, I am bound to say. She just wanted a little lesson, and I think I may say I’ve given it her. I had no idea, I will confess, that she would take it lying down like that. I just had to lean out of the window, pretend not to see her, and talk to Georgie in that silly voice and language and the thing was done.’
Diva had been talking simultaneously for some time, but Elizabeth only paused to take breath, and went on in a slightly louder tone. So Diva talked louder too, until Georgie turned round to see what was happening. They both broke off, and smiled at him, and then both began again.
‘If you would allow me to get a word in edgeways,’ said Diva, who had some solid arguments to produce, and, had she not been a lady, could have slapped Mapp’s face in impotent rage—’I don’t think,’ said Elizabeth, ‘that we shall have much more trouble with her and her queenly airs. Quite a pleasant house-warming, and there was no doubt that the house wanted it, for it was bitterly cold in the dining-room, and I strongly suspect that chicken-cream of being rabbit. She only had to be shown that whatever Riseholme may have stood from her in the way of condescensions and graces, she had better not try them on at Tilling. She was looking forward to teaching us, and ruling us and guiding us. Pop! Elizabeth (that’s me, dear!) has a little lamb, which lives at Grebe and gives a house-warming, so you may guess who that is. The way she flattered and sued tonight over our cards when but a few weeks ago she was thinking of holding bridge classes—’
‘You were just as bad,’ shouted Diva. ‘You told her she played beauti—’
‘She was “all over me”, to use that dreadful slang expression of Major Benjy’s,’ continued Mapp. ‘She was like a dog that has had a scolding and begs—so prettily—to be forgiven. Mind, dear, I do not say that she is a bad sort of woman by any means, but she required to be put in her place, and Tilling ought to thank me for having done so. Dear me, here we are already at your house. How short the drive has seemed!’
‘Anyhow, you didn’t get the recipe for the lobster à la Riseholme,‘ said Diva, for this was one of the things she most wanted to say.
‘A little final wriggle,’ said Mapp. ‘I have not the least doubt that she will think it over and send it me tomorrow. Good night, darling. I shall be sending out invitations for a cosy evening of bridge some time at the end of this week.’
The baffled Diva let herself into Wasters in low spirits, so convinced and lucid had been Mapp’s comments on the evening. It was such a dismal conclusion to so much excitement; and all that thrilling tension, instead of snapping, had relaxed into the most depressing slackness. But she did not quite give up hope, for there had been cats’-paws and caps of foam on the tranquil sea. She fell asleep visualizing these.
CHAPTER 9
Though Georgie had thought that the garden-room would have to give him at least two more sittings before his sketch arrived at that high state of finish which he, like the Pre-Raphaelites, regarded as necessary to any work of art, he decided that he would leave it in a more impressionist state, and sent it next morning to be framed. In consequence the glass of water which Elizabeth had brought out for him in anticipation of his now usual visit at eleven o’clock remained unsullied by washings from his brush, and at twelve, Elizabeth, being rather thirsty in consequence of so late a supper the night before, drank it hersel
f. On the second morning, a very wet one, Major Benjy did not go out for his usual round of golf, and again Georgie did not come to paint. But at a few minutes to one she observed that his car was at the door of Mallards Cottage; it passed her window, it stopped at Major Benjy’s, and he got in. It was impossible not to remember that Lucia always lunched at one in the winter because a later hour for colazione made the afternoon so short. But it was a surprise to see Major Benjy driving away with Miss Milliner Michael-Angelo, and difficult to conjecture where else it was at all likely that they could have gone.
There was half an hour yet to her own luncheon, and she wrote seven post cards inviting seven friends to tea on Saturday, with bridge to follow. The Wyses, the Padres, Diva, Major Benjy and Georgie were the destinataires of these missives; these, with herself, made eight, and there would thus be two tables of agreeable gamblers. Lucia was not to be favoured: it would be salutary for her to be left out every now and then, just to impress upon her the lesson of which she had stood so sadly in need. She must learn to go to heel, to come when called, and to produce recipes when desired, which at present she had not done.
There had been several days of heavy rain, but early in the afternoon it cleared up, and Elizabeth set out for a brisk healthy walk. The field-paths would certainly make very miry going, for she saw from the end of the High Street that there was much water lying in the marsh, and she therefore kept to that excellent road, which, having passed Grebe, went nowhere particular. She was prepared to go in and thank Lucia for her lovely house-warming, in order to make sure whether Georgie and Major Benjy had gone to lunch with her, but no such humiliating need occurred, for there in front of the house was drawn up Georgie’s motor-car, so (whether she liked it or not, and she didn’t) that problem was solved. The house stood quite close to the road: a flagged pathway of half a dozen yards, flanked at the entrance-gate by thick hornbeam hedges on which the leaf still lingered, separated it from the road, and just as Elizabeth passed Georgie’s car drawn up there, the front door opened, and she saw Lucia and her two guests on the threshold. Major Benjy was laughing in that fat voice of his, and Georgie was giving forth his shrill little neighs like a colt with a half-cracked voice.