Quite suddenly all the group, with the exception of Mrs Poppit, melted away. Wee wifie gave a loud squeal, as if to say something, but her husband led her firmly off, while Diva, with rapidly revolving feet, sped like an arrow up the centre of the High Street.
‘Such a lovely morning!’ said Miss Mapp to Mrs Poppit, when there was no one else to talk to. ‘And everyone looks so pleased and happy, and all in such a hurry, busy as bees, to do their little businesses. Yes.’
Mrs Poppit began to move quietly away with the deliberate tortoise-like progression necessitated by the fur coat. It struck Miss Mapp that she, too, had intended to take part in the general breaking up of the group, but had merely been unable to get under way as fast as the others.
‘Such a lovely fur coat,’ said Miss Mapp sycophantically. ‘Such beautiful long fur! And what is the news this morning? Has a little bird been whispering anything?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Poppit very decidedly, and having now sufficient way on to turn, she went up the street down which Miss Mapp had just come. The latter was thus left all alone with her shopping basket and her scarf.
With the unerring divination which was the natural fruit of so many years of ceaseless conjecture, she instantly suspected the worst. All that busy conversation which her appearance had interrupted, all those smiles which her presence had seemed but to render broader and more hilarious, certainly concerned her. They could not still have been talking about that fatal explosion from the cupboard in the garden-room, because the duel had completely silenced the last echoes of that, and she instantly put her finger on the spot. Somebody had been gossiping (and how she hated gossip); somebody had given voice to what she had been so studiously careful not to say. Until that moment, when she had seen the rapid breaking up of the group of her friends all radiant with merriment, she had longed to be aware that somebody had given voice to it, and that everybody (under seal of secrecy) knew the unique queenliness of her position, the overwhelming interesting role that the violent passions of men had cast her for. She had not believed in the truth of it herself, when that irresistible seizure of coquetry took possession of her as she bent over her sweet chrysanthemums; but the Padre's respectful reception of it had caused her to hope that everybody else might believe in it. The character of the smiles, however, that wreathed the faces of her friends did not quite seem to give fruition to that hope. There were smiles and smiles, respectful smiles, sympathetic smiles, envious and admiring smiles, but there were also smiles of hilarious and mocking incredulity. She concluded that she had to deal with the latter variety.
‘Something,’ thought Miss Mapp, as she stood quite alone in the High Street, with Mrs Poppit labouring up the hill, and Diva already a rose-madder speck in the distance, ‘has got to be done,’ and it only remained to settle what. Fury with the dear Padre for having hinted precisely what she meant, intended and designed that he should hint, was perhaps the paramount emotion in her mind; fury with everybody else for not respectfully believing what she did not believe herself made an important pendant.
‘What am I to do?’ said Miss Mapp aloud, and had to explain to Mr Hopkins, who had all his clothes on, that she had not spoken to him. Then she caught sight again of Mrs Poppit's sable coat hardly farther off than it had been when first this thunderclap of an intuition deafened her, and still reeling from the shock, she remembered that it was almost certainly Mrs Poppit who was the cause of Mr Wyse writing her that exquisitely delicate note with regard to Thursday. It was a herculean task, no doubt, to plug up all the fountains of talk in Tilling which were spouting so merrily at her expense, but a beginning must be made before she could arrive at the end. A short scurry of nimble steps brought her up to the sables.
‘Dear Mrs Poppit,’ she said, ‘if you are walking by my little house, would you give me two minutes' talk? And – so stupid of me to forget just now – will you come in after dinner on Wednesday for a little rubber? The days are closing in now; one wants to make the most of the daylight, and I think it is time to begin our pleasant little winter evenings.’
This was a bribe, and Mrs Poppit instantly pocketed it, with the effect that two minutes later she was in the garden-room, and had deposited her sable coat on the sofa (‘Quite shook the room with the weight of it,’ said Miss Mapp to herself while she arranged her plan).
She stood looking out of the window for a moment, writhing with humiliation at having to be suppliant to the Member of the British Empire. She tried to remember Mrs Poppit's Christian name, and was even prepared to use that, but this crowning ignominy was saved her, as she could not recollect it.
‘Such an annoying thing has happened,’ she said, though the words seemed to blister her lips. ‘And you, dear Mrs Poppit, as a woman of the world, can advise me what to do. The fact is that somehow or other, and I can't think how, people are saying that the duel last week, which was so happily averted, had something to do with poor little me. So absurd! But you know what gossips we have in our dear little Tilling.’
Mrs Poppit turned on her a fallen and disappointed face.
‘But hadn't it?’ she said. ‘Why, when they were all laughing about it just now’ (‘I was right, then,’ thought Miss Mapp, ‘and what a tactless woman!’), ‘I said I believed it. And I told Mr Wyse.’
Miss Mapp cursed herself for her frankness. But she could obliterate that again, and not lose a rare (goodness knew how rare!) believer.
‘I am in such a difficult position,’ she said. ‘I think I ought to let it be understood that there is no truth whatever in such an idea, however much truth there may be. And did dear Mr Wyse believe – in fact, I know he must have, for he wrote me, oh, such a delicate, understanding note. He, at any rate, takes no notice of all that is being said and hinted.’
Miss Mapp was momentarily conscious that she meant precisely the opposite of this. Dear Mr Wyse did take notice, most respectful notice, of all that was being said and hinted, thank goodness! But a glance at Mrs Poppit's fat and interested face showed her that the verbal discrepancy had gone unnoticed, and that the luscious flavour of romance drowned the perception of anything else. She drew a handkerchief out, and buried her thoughtful eyes in it a moment, rubbing them with a stealthy motion, which Mrs Poppit did not perceive, though Diva would have.
‘My lips are sealed,’ she continued, opening them very wide, ‘and I can say nothing, except that I want this rumour to be contradicted. I daresay those who started it thought it was true, but, true or false, I must say nothing. I have always led a very quiet life in my little house, with my sweet flowers for my companions, and if there is one thing more than another that I dislike, it is that my private affairs should be made matters of public interest. I do no harm to anybody, I wish everybody well, and nothing – nothing will induce me to open my lips upon this subject. I will not,’ cried Miss Mapp, ‘say a word to defend or justify myself. What is true will prevail. It comes in the Bible.’
Mrs Poppit was too much interested in what she said to mind where it came from.
‘What can I do?’ she asked.
‘Contradict, dear, the rumour that I have had anything to do with the terrible thing which might have happened last week. Say on my authority that it is so. I tremble to think’ – here she trembled very much – ‘what might happen if the report reached Major Benjy's ears, and he found out who had started it. We must have no more duels in Tilling. I thought I should never survive that morning.’
‘I will go and tell Mr Wyse instantly - dear,’ said Mrs Poppit.
That would never do. True believers were so scarce that it was wicked to think of unsettling their faith.
‘Poor Mr Wyse!’ said Miss Mapp with a magnanimous smile. ‘Do not think, dear, of troubling him with these little trumpery affairs. He will not take part in these little tittle-tattles. But if you could let dear Diva and quaint Irene and sweet Evie and the good Padre know that I laugh at all such nonsense –’
‘But they laugh at it, too,’ said Mrs Poppit.
> That would have been baffling for anyone who allowed herself to be baffled, but that was not Miss Mapp's way.
‘Oh, that bitter laughter!’ she said. ‘It hurt me to hear it. It was envious laughter, dear, scoffing, bitter laughter. I heard! I cannot bear that the dear things should feel like that. Tell them that I say how silly they are to believe anything of the sort. Trust me, I am right about it. I wash my hands of such nonsense.’
She made a vivid dumb-show of this, and after drying them on an imaginary towel, let a sunny smile peep out of the eyes which she had rubbed.
‘All gone!’ she said; ‘and we will have a dear little party on Wednesday to show we are all friends again. And we meet for lunch at dear Mr Wyse's the next day? Yes? He will get tired of poor little me if he sees me two days running, so I shall not ask him. I will just try to get two tables together, and nobody shall contradict dear Diva, however many shillings she says she has won. I would sooner pay them all myself than have any more of our unhappy divisions. You will have talked to them all before Wednesday, will you not, dear?’
As there were only four to talk to, Mrs Poppit thought that she could manage it, and spent a most interesting afternoon. For two years now she had tried to unfreeze Miss Mapp, who, when all was said and done, was the centre of the Tilling circle, and who, if any attempt was made to shove her out towards the circumference, always gravitated back again. And now, on these important errands she was Miss Mapp's accredited ambassador, and all the terrible business of the opening of the store cupboard and her decoration as MBE was quite forgiven and forgotten. There would be so much walking to be done from house to house, that it was impossible to wear her sable coat unless she had the Royce to take her about…
The effect of her communications would have surprised anybody who did not know Tilling. A less subtle society, when assured from a first-hand, authoritative source that a report which it had entirely refused to believe was false, would have prided itself on its perspicacity, and said that it had laughed at such an idea, as soon as ever it heard it, as being palpably (look at Miss Mapp!) untrue. Not so Tilling. The very fact that, by the mouth of her ambassador, she so uncompromisingly denied it, was precisely why Tilling began to wonder if there was not something in it, and from wondering if there was not something in it, surged to the conclusion that there certainly was. Diva, for instance, the moment she was told that Elizabeth (for Mrs Poppit remembered her Christian name perfectly) utterly and scornfully denied the truth of the report, became intensely thoughtful.
‘Say there's nothing in it?’ she observed. ‘Can't understand that.’
At that moment Diva's telephone-bell rang, and she hurried out and in.
‘Party at Elizabeth's on Wednesday,’ she said. ‘She saw me laughing. Why ask me?’
Mrs Poppit was full of her sacred mission.
‘To show how little she minds your laughing,’ she suggested.
‘As if it wasn't true, then. Seems like that. Wants us to think it's not true.’
‘She was very earnest about it,’ said the ambassador.
Diva got up, and tripped over the outlying skirts of Mrs Poppit's fur coat as she went to ring the bell.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Take it off and have a chat. Tea's coming. Muffins!’
‘Oh, no, thanks!’ said Mrs Poppit. ‘I've so many calls to make.’
‘What? Similar calls?’ asked Diva. ‘Wait ten minutes. Tea, Janet. Quickly.’
She whirled round the room once or twice, all corrugated with perplexity, beginning telegraphic sentences, and not finishing them: ‘Says it's not true - laughs at notion of – And Mr Wyse believes – The Padre believed. After all, the Major – Little cock-sparrow Captain Puffin – Or t'other way round, do you think? – No other explanation, you know – Might have been blood –’
She buried her teeth in a muffin.
‘Believe there's something in it,’ she summed up.
She observed her guest had neither tea nor muffin.
‘Help yourself,’ she said. ‘Want to worry this out.’
‘Elizabeth absolutely denies it,’ said Mrs Poppit. ‘Her eyes were full of –’
‘Oh, anything,’ said Diva. ‘Rubbed them. Or pepper if it was at lunch. That's no evidence.’
‘But her solemn assertion –’ began Mrs Poppit, thinking that she was being a complete failure as an ambassador. She was carrying no conviction at all.
‘Saccharine!’ observed Diva, handing her a small phial. ‘Haven't got more than enough sugar for myself. I expect Elizabeth's got plenty – well, never mind that. Don't you see? If it wasn't true she would try to convince us that it was. Seemed absurd on the face of it. But if she tries to convince us that it isn't true – well, something in it.’
There was the gist of the matter, and Mrs Poppit proceeding next to the Padre's house, found more muffins and incredulity. Nobody seemed to believe Elizabeth's assertion that there was ‘nothing in it’. Evie ran round the room with excited squeaks, the Padre nodded his head, in confirmation of the opinion which, when he first delivered it, had been received with mocking incredulity over the crab. Quaint Irene, intent on Mr Hopkins's left knee in the absence of the model, said: ‘Good old Mapp; better late than never.’ Utter incredulity, in fact, was the ambassador's welcome… and all the incredulous were going to Elizabeth's party on Wednesday.
Mrs Poppit had sent the Royce home for the last of her calls, and staggered up the hill past Elizabeth's house. Oddly enough, just as she passed the garden-room, the window was thrown up.
‘Cup of tea, dear Susan?’ said Elizabeth. She had found an old note of Mrs Poppit's among the waste paper for the firing of the kitchen oven fully signed.
‘Just two minutes’ talk, Elizabeth,’ she promptly responded.
The news that nobody in Tilling believed her left Miss Mapp more than calm, on the bright side of calm, that is to say. She had a few indulgent phrases that tripped readily off her tongue for the dear things who hated to be deprived of their gossip, but Susan certainly did not receive the impression that this playful magnanimity was attained with an effort. Elizabeth did not seem really to mind: she was very gay. Then, skilfully changing the subject, she mourned over her dead dahlias.
Though Tilling with all its perspicacity could not have known it, the intuitive reader will certainly have perceived that Miss Mapp's party for Wednesday night had, so to speak, further irons in its fire. It had originally been a bribe to Susan Poppit, in order to induce her to spread broadcast that that ridiculous rumour (whoever had launched it) had been promptly denied by the person whom it most immediately concerned. It served a second purpose in showing that Miss Mapp was too high above the mire of scandal, however interesting, to know or care who might happen to be wallowing in it, and for this reason she asked everybody who had done so. Such loftiness of soul had earned her an amazing bonus, for it had induced those who sat in the seat of the scoffers before to come hastily off, and join the thin but unwavering ranks of the true believers, who up till then had consisted only of Susan and Mr Wyse. Frankly, so blest a conclusion had never occurred to Miss Mapp: it was one of those unexpected rewards that fall like ripe plums into the lap of the upright. By denying a rumour she had got everybody to believe it, and when on Wednesday morning she went out to get the chocolate cakes which were so useful in allaying the appetites of guests, she encountered no broken conversations and gleeful smiles, but sidelong glances of respectful envy.
But what Tilling did not and could not know was that this, the first of the autumn after-dinner bridge-parties, was destined to look on the famous tea-gown of kingfisher-blue, as designed for Mrs Trout. No doubt other ladies would have hurried up their new gowns, or at least have camouflaged their old ones, in honour of the annual inauguration of evening bridge, but Miss Mapp had no misgivings about being outshone. And once again here she felt that luck waited on merit, for though when she dressed that evening she found she had not anticipated that artificial light would cast a somewhat pale (though
not ghastly) reflection from the vibrant blue on to her features, similar in effect to (but not so marked as) the light that shines on the faces of those who lean over the burning brandy and raisins of ‘snapdragons’, this interesting pallor seemed very aptly to bear witness to all that she had gone through. She did not look ill – she was satisfied as to that – she looked gorgeous and a little wan.
The bridge-tables were not set out in the garden-room, which entailed a scurry over damp gravel on a black, windy night, but in the little square parlour above her dining-room, where Withers, in the intervals of admitting her guests, was laying out plates of sandwiches and the chocolate cakes, reinforced when the interval for refreshments came with hot soup, whisky and syphons, and a jug of ‘cup’ prepared according to an ancestral and economical recipe, which Miss Mapp had taken a great deal of trouble about. A single bottle of white wine, with suitable additions of ginger, nutmeg, herbs and soda-water, was the mother of a gallon of a drink that seemed aflame with fiery and probably spirituous ingredients. Guests were very careful how they partook of it, so stimulating it seemed.
Miss Mapp was reading a book on gardening upside down (she had taken it up rather hurriedly) when the Poppits arrived, and sprang to her feet with a pretty cry at being so unexpectedly but delightfully disturbed.
‘Susan! Isabel!’ she said. ‘Lovely of you to have come! I was reading about flowers, making plans for next year.’
She saw the four eyes riveted to her dress. Susan looked quite shabby in comparison, and Isabel did not look anything at all.
‘My dear, too lovely!’ said Mrs Poppit slowly.
Miss Mapp looked brightly about, as if wondering what was too lovely: at last she guessed.
‘Oh, my new frock?’ she said. ‘Do you like it, dear? How sweet of you. It's just a little nothing that I talked over with that nice Miss Greele in the High Street. We put our heads together, and invented something quite cheap and simple. And here's Evie and the dear Padre. So kind of you to look in.’