‘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 that 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. 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 s
ingly, 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 eavesdropping. 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 'stror-dinary 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 'stemi-ous 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 abetti
ng, 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 parlourmaid, 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.