The glad word went round Riseholme one March morning that the earliest flower in Perdita's garden was in bloom. The day was one of those glories of the English spring-time, with large white clouds blown across wide spaces of blue sky by the south-west wind, and with swift shadows that bowled across the green below them. Parliament was in full conclave that day, and in the elms the rooks were busy.
An awful flatness had succeeded Olga' s departure. Riseholme naturally took a good deal of credit for the tremendous success which had attended the production of Lucrezia in New York, since it so rightly considered that the real cradle of the opera was here, where she had tried it over for the first time. Lucia seemed to remember it better than anybody, for she could recall all sorts of things which no one else had the faintest recollection of: how she had discussed music with Signor Cortese, and how he had asked her where she had her musical training. Such a treat to talk Italian with a Roman – lingua Toscana in bocca Romana – and what a wonderful evening it was! Poor Mrs Colonel recollected very little of this, but Lucia had long been aware that her memory was going, sadly… After Lucrezia, Olga had appeared in some of her old roles, notably in the part of Brünnhilde, and Lucia was very reminiscent of that charming party on Christmas Day at dear Georgino's, when they had the tableaux. Dear Olga was so simple and unspoiled: she had come to Lucia afterwards, and asked her to tell her how she had worked out her scheme of gestures in the awakening, and Lucia had been very glad, very glad indeed, to give her a few hints. In fact, Lucia was quite herself: it was only her subjects whom it had been a little hard to stir up. Georgie, in particular, had been very listless and dull, and Lucia, for all her ingenuity, was at a complete loss to find any reason for it.
But to-day the warm inflowing tide of spring seemed to renovate the muddy flats, setting the weeds, that had lain dark and dispirited, afloating again on the return of the water. No one could quite resist the magic of the season, and Georgie, who had intended, out of mere politeness, to go to see the first of Perdita's stupid flowers (having been warned of its epiphany by telephone from The Hurst), found, when he set foot outside his house on that warm, windy morning, that it would be interesting to stroll across the green first and see if there was any news. All the news he had really cared about for the last two months was news from America, of which he had a small packet done up in a pink riband.
After getting rid of Piggy, he went to the newspaper shop to get his Times, which most unaccountably had not arrived, and the sight of Todd's News, in its yellow cover, stirred his drowsy interest. Not one atom of light had ever been thrown on that extraordinary occurrence when Robert bought the whole issue, and though Olga never failed to inquire, he had not been able to give her the slightest additional information. Occasionally he set a languid trap for one of the Quantocks, but they never by any chance fell into it. The whole affair must be classed, with problems like the origin of evil, among the insoluble mysteries of life.
It was possible to get letters by the second post an hour earlier than the house-to-house delivery by calling at the office, and as Georgie was waiting for his Times, Mrs Quantock came hurrying out of the post-office with a small packet in her hands, which she was opening as she walked. She was so much absorbed in this that she did not see Georgie at all, though she passed quite close to him, and soon after shed a registered envelope. At that, the ‘old familiar glamour’ began to steal over him again, and he found himself wondering with intensity what it contained…
She was now some hundred yards in front of him, walking in the direction of The Hurst, and there could be no doubt that she, too, was on her way to see Perdita's first flower. He followed her, going more briskly than she, and began to catch her up. Soon (this time by accident, not in the manner in which, through eagerness, she had untidily thrown the registered envelope away) she dropped a small paper, and Georgie picked it up, meaning to give it her. It had printing on the outer leaf of it, and was clearly a small pamphlet, and he could not possibly help seeing what that printing was, for it was in capital letters:
INCREASE YOUR HEIGHT
Georgie quickened his step, and the old familiar glamour brightened round him. As soon as he got within speaking distance, he called to her, and as she turned round, ‘like a guilty thing surprised’, a little box flew out of her hand. As it fell, the lid came off, and there were scattered on the green grass a multitude of red lozenges.
She gave a cry of dismay.
‘Oh! Mr Georgie, how you startled me!’ she said. ‘Do help me to pick them up. Do you think the damp will have hurt them? Any news? I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I've spoken to nobody.’
Georgie assisted in the recovery of the red lozenges.
‘You dropped this as you walked,’ he said. ‘I picked it up in order to give it to you.’
‘Oh, that is kind, and did you see what it was?’
‘I couldn't help seeing the outside,’ said Georgie.
She looked at him a moment, wondering what was the most prudent course. If she only thanked him for restoring it to her, he would probably tell everybody…
‘Well, then I shall let you into the whole secret,’ she said. ‘It's the most wonderful invention, and increases your height, whatever your age is, from two to six inches. Fancy! There are some exercises you have to do, rather like those Yoga ones, every morning, and you eat three lozenges a day. Quite harmless they are, and then you soon begin to shoot up. It sounds incredible, doesn't it, but there are so many testimonials that I can't doubt it is genuine. Here's one of a man who grew six inches. I saw it advertised in some paper and sent for it. Only a guinea! What fun when Robert begins to see that I am taller than he is! But now not a word! Don't tell dear Lucia, whatever you do. She is half a head taller than I, and it would be no fun if everybody grew from two to six inches. You may write for them, and I'll give you the address, but you must tell nobody.’
‘Too wonderful!’ said Georgie. ‘I shall watch you. Here we are. Look, there's Perdita's first flower. What a beauty!’
It was not necessary to press the mermaid's tail, for Lucia had seen them from the music-room, and they heard her high heels clacking over the polished floor of the hall.
‘Listen! There'll soon be more need of them!’ said Mrs Quantock. ‘And I've got something else to tell you. Lucia may hear that. Ah, dear Lucia, what a wonderful Perdita-blossom!’
‘Is it not?’ said Lucia, blowing kisses to Georgie and giving them to Daisy. ‘That shows spring is here. Primavera! And Pepino's piccolo libro comes out to-day. I should not be a bit surprised if you each of you found a copy of it arrive before evening. Glorious! It's glorious!’
Surely it was no wonder that Georgie's blood began to canter along his arteries again. There had been very pleasant exciting years before now, requiring for their fuel no more than there was ready at this moment to heap on the fire. Mrs Quantock was on tip-toe, so to speak, to increase her height. Pepino was just delivered of a third of these vellum volumes with seals and tapes outside. Mrs Weston was going to become Mrs Colonel at the end of the week, and at the same hour and church Elizabeth was going to become Mrs Atkinson. Had these things no savour, because –
‘How is 'oo,’ said Georgie, with a sudden flush of the spring-time through him. ‘Me vewy well, sank 'oo, and me so want to read Pepino's bookie-bookie.’
‘*Oo come in,’ said Lucia. ‘Evewybody come in. Now, who's got ickle bit news?’
Mrs Quantock had been walking on her toes all across the hall in anticipation of the happy time when she would be from two to six inches taller. As Mr Alderstout said, in his convincing pamphlet, the world assumed a totally different aspect when you were even two inches taller. She was quite sorry to sit down.
‘Is next week very full with you, dear Lucia?’ she asked.
Lucia pressed her finger to her forehead.
‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,’ she began. ‘No, not Tuesday. I am doing nothing on Tuesday. You want to be the death of me between you. Why?’
‘I hope that my dear friend Princess Popoffski will be staying with me,’ said Mrs Quantock. ‘Do get over your prejudice against spiritualism, and give it a chance. Come to a séance on Tuesday. You too, of course, Georgie: I know better than to invite Lucia without you.’
Lucia put on the far-away look which she reserved for the masterpieces of music and for Georgie's hopeless devotion.
‘Lovely! That will be lovely!’ she said. ‘Most interesting! I shall come with a perfectly open mind.’
Georgie scarcely lamented the annihilation of a mystery. He must have invented the mystery, for it all collapsed like a card-house if the Princess was coming back. The séances had been most remarkable too; and he would have to get out his plan-chette again.
‘And what's going to happen on Wednesday?’ he asked Lucia. ‘All I know is that I've not been asked. Me's offended.’
‘Ickle surprise,’ said Lucia. ‘You're not engaged that evening, are you? Nor you, dear Daisy? That's lovely. Eight o'clock? No, I think a quarter to. That will give us more time. Shan't tell you what it is.’
Mrs Quantock, grasping her lozenges, wondered how much taller she would be by then. As Lucia played to them, she discreetly drew a lozenge out of the box, and put it into her mouth, in order to begin growing at once. It tasted rather bitter, but not unpleasantly so…
Miss Mapp
including
The Male Impersonator
PREFACE
I lingered at the window of the garden-room from which Miss Mapp so often and so ominously looked forth. To the left was the front of her house, straight ahead the steep cobbled way, with a glimpse of the High Street at the end, to the right the crooked chimney and the church.
The street was populous with passengers, but search as I might, I could see none who ever so remotely resembled the objects of her vigilance.
E.F. Benson.
Lamb House, Rye.
1
Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.
She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a strategical point of high value. This garden-room, solid and spacious, was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front-door the road turned sharply, so that as she looked out from this projecting window, her own house was at right angles on her left, the street in question plunged steeply downwards in front of her, and to her right she commanded an uninterrupted view of its further course which terminated in the disused grave-yard surrounding the big Norman church. Anything of interest about the church, however, could be gleaned from a guidebook, and Miss Mapp did not occupy herself much with such coldly venerable topics. Far more to her mind was the fact that between the church and her strategic window was the cottage in which her gardener lived, and she could thus see, when not otherwise engaged, whether he went home before twelve, or failed to get back to her garden again by one, for he had to cross the street in front of her very eyes. Similarly she could observe whether any of his abandoned family ever came out from her garden-door weighted with suspicious baskets, which might contain smuggled vegetables. Only yesterday morning she had hurried forth with a dangerous smile to intercept a laden urchin, with inquiries as to what was in ‘that nice basket’. On that occasion that nice basket had proved to contain a strawberry net which was being sent for repair to the gardener's wife; so there was nothing more to be done except verify its return. This she did from a side window of the garden-room which commanded the strawberry beds; she could sit quite close to that, for it was screened by the large-leaved branches of a fig-tree and she could spy unseen.
Otherwise this road to the right leading up to the church was of no great importance (except on Sunday morning, when she could get a practically complete list of those who attended Divine Service), for no one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might be, and were, made. She could, from behind a curtain negligently half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank march across the few steps of garden and steal into the house, noiselessly ascend the stairs, and catch the offender red-handed at this public dalliance. But all such domestic espionage to right and left was flavourless and insipid compared to the tremendous discoveries which daily and hourly awaited the trained observer of the street that lay directly in front of her window.
There was little that concerned the social movements of Tilling that could not be proved, or at least reasonably conjectured, from Miss Mapp's eyrie. Just below her house on the left stood Major Flint's residence, of Georgian red brick like her own, and opposite was that of Captain Puffin. They were both bachelors, though Major Flint was generally supposed to have been the hero of some amazingly amorous adventures in early life, and always turned the subject with great abruptness when anything connected with duelling was mentioned. It was not, therefore, unreasonable to infer that he had had experiences of a bloody sort, and colour was added to this romantic conjecture by the fact that in damp, rheumatic weather his left arm was very stiff, and he had been known to say that his wound troubled him. What wound that was no one exactly knew (it might have been anything from a vaccination mark to a sabre-cut), for having said that his wound troubled him, he would invariably add: ‘Pshaw! that's enough about an old campaigner’; and though he might subsequently talk of nothing else except the old campaigner, he drew a veil over his old campaigns. That he had seen service in India was, indeed, probable by his referring to lunch as tiffin, and calling to his parlourmaid with the ejaculation of ‘Qui-hi’. As her name was Sarah, this was clearly a reminiscence of days in bungalows. When not in a rage, his manner to his own sex was bluff and hearty; but whether in a rage or not, his manner to the fairies, or lovely women, was gallant and pompous in the extreme. He certainly had a lock of hair in a small gold specimen case on his watch-chain, and had been seen to kiss it when, rather carelessly, he thought that he was unobserved.
Miss Mapp's eye, as she took her seat in her window on this sunny July morning, lingered for a moment on the Major's house, before she proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back page of her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young women dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes which Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust to. Neither the Major nor Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time that the first signals of animation might be expected. Indeed, at this moment, she quite distinctly heard the muffled roar which to her experienced ear was easily interpreted to be ‘Qui-hi!’
‘So the Major has just come down to breakfast,’ she mechanically inferred, ‘and it's close on ten o'clock. Let me see: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday – Porridge morning.’
Her penetrating glance shifted to the house exactly opposite to that in which it was porridge morning, and even as she looked a hand was thrust out of a small upper window and deposited a sponge on the sill. Then from the inside the lower sash was thrust firmly down, so as to prevent the sponge from blowing away and falling into the street. Captain Puffin, it was therefore clear, was a little later t
han the Major that morning. But he always shaved and brushed his teeth before his bath, so that there was but a few minutes between them.
General manoeuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering life from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the town with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping purchases, the exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to the golf-links, and other first steps in the duties and diversions of the day, did not get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp had ample time to skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste meditations about the occupants of these two houses, before she need really make herself alert to miss nothing. Of the two, Major Flint, without doubt, was the more attractive to the feminine sense; for years Miss Mapp had tried to cajole him into marrying her, and had not nearly finished yet. With his record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his loud pshawings and sniffs at ‘nonsense and balderdash’, his thumpings on the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes or vegetarianism, there was something dashing and risky about him; you felt that you were in the presence of some hot coal straight from the furnace of creation. Captain Puffin, on the other hand, was of clay so different that he could hardly be considered to be made of clay at all. He was lame and short and meagre, with strings of peaceful beads and Papuan aprons in his hall instead of wild tiger-skins, and had a jerky, inattentive manner and a high-pitched voice. Yet to Miss Mapp's mind there was something behind his unimpressiveness that had a mysterious quality – all the more so, because nothing of it appeared on the surface. Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his sniffings, the least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the table, great hulking kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure that Captain Puffin did not hold a joker which would sometime come to light. The idea of being Mrs Puffin was not so attractive as the other, but she occasionally gave it her remote consideration.