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 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 Faradiddleony,’ 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 Faradiddleony! 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 argument; 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 expect
ed, 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.
9
Captain Puffin found but a sombre diarist when he came over to study his Roman roads with Major Flint that evening, and indeed he was a sombre antiquarian himself. They had pondered a good deal during the day over their strange reception in the High Street that morning and the recondite allusions to bags, sand-dunes and early trains, and the more they pondered the more probable it became that not only was something up, but, as regards the duel, everything was up. For weeks now they had been regarded by the ladies of Tilling with something approaching veneration, but there seemed singularly little veneration at the back of the comments this morning. Following so closely on the encounter with Miss Mapp last night, this irreverent attitude was probably due to some atheistical manoeuvre of hers. Such, at least, was the Major's view, and when he held a view he usually stated it, did Sporting Benjy.
‘We've got you to thank for this, Puffin,’ he said. ‘Upon my soul, I was ashamed of you for saying what you did to Miss Mapp last night. Utter absence of any chivalrous feeling hinting that if she said you were drunk, you would say she was. She was as sober and lucid last night as she was this morning. And she was devilish lucid, to my mind, this morning.’
‘Pity you didn't take her part last night,’ said Puffin. ‘You thought that was a very ingenious idea of mine to make her hold her tongue.’
‘There are finer things in this world, sir, than ingenuity,’ said the Major. ‘What your ingenuity has led to is this public ridicule. You may not mind that yourself – you may be used to it – but a man should regard the consequences of his act on others… My status in Tilling is completely changed. Changed for the worse, sir.’
Puffin emitted his fluty, disagreeable laugh.
‘If your status in Tilling depended on a reputation for bloodthirsty bravery,’ he said, ‘the sooner it was changed the better. We're in the same boat: I don't say I like the boat, but there we are. Have a drink, and you'll feel better. Never mind your status.’
‘I've a good mind never to have a drink again,’ said the Major, pouring himself out one of his stiff little glasses, ‘if a drink leads to this sort of thing.’
‘But it didn't,’ said Puffin. ‘How it all got out, I can't say, nor for that matter can you. If it hadn't been for me last night, it would have been all over Tilling that you and I were tipsy as well. That wouldn't have improved our status that I can see.’
‘It was in consequence of what you said to Mapp –’ began the Major.
‘But, good Lord, where's the connection?’ asked Puffin. ‘Produce the connection! Let's have a look at the connection! There ain't any connection! Duelling wasn't as much as mentioned last night.’
Major Flint pondered this in gloomy, sipping silence.
‘Bridge-party at Mrs Poppit's the day after to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I don't feel as if I could face it. Suppose they all go on making allusions to duelling and early trains and that? I shan't be able to keep my mind on the cards for fear of it. More than a sensitive man ought to be asked to bear.’
Puffin made a noise that sounded rather like ‘Fudge!’
‘Your pardon?’ said the Major haughtily.
‘Granted by all means,’ said Puffin. ‘But I don't see what you're in such a taking about. We're no worse off than we were before we got a reputation for being such fire-eaters. Being fire-eaters is a washout, that's all. Pleasant while it lasted, and now we're as we were.’
‘But we're not,’ said the Major. ‘We're detected frauds! That's not the same as being a fraud; far from it. And who's going to rub it in, my friend? Who's been rubbing away for all she's worth? Miss Mapp, to whom, if I may say so without offence, you behaved like a cur last night.’
‘And another cur stood by and wagged his tail,’ retorted Puffin.
This was about as far as it was safe to go, and Puffin hastened to say something pleasant about the hearthrug, to which his friend had a suitable rejoinder. But after the affair last night, and the dark sayings in the High Street this morning, there was little content or cosiness about the session. Puffin's brazen optimism was but a tinkling cymbal, and the Major did not feel like tinkling at all. He but snorted and glowered, revolving in his mind how to square Miss Mapp. Allied with her, if she could but be won over, he felt he could face the rest of Tilling with indifference, for hers would be the most penetrating shafts, the most stinging pleasantries. He had more too, so he reflected, to lose than Puffin, for till the affair of the duel the other had never been credited with deeds of blood-thirsty gallantry, whereas he had enjoye
d no end of a reputation in amorous and honourable affairs. Marriage no doubt would settle it satisfactorily, but this bachelor life, with plenty of golf and diaries, was not to be lightly exchanged for the unknown. Short of that…
A light broke, and he got to his feet, following the gleam and walking very lame out of general discomfiture.
‘Tell you what it is, Puffin,’ he said. ‘You and I, particularly you, owe that estimable lady a very profound apology for what happened last night. You ought to withdraw every word you said, and I every word that I didn't say.’
‘Can't be done,’ said Puffin. ‘That would be giving up my hold over your lady friend. We should be known as drunkards all over the shop before you could say winkie. Worse off than before.’
‘Not a bit of it. If it's Miss Mapp, and I'm sure it is, who has been spreading these – these damaging rumours about our duel it's because she's outraged and offended quite rightly, at your conduct to her last night. Mine, too, if you like. Ample apology, sir, that's the ticket.’
‘Dog-ticket,’ said Puffin. ‘No thanks.’
‘Very objectionable expression,’ said Major Flint. ‘But you shall do as you like. And so, with your permission, shall I. I shall apologize for my share in that sorry performance, in which, thank God, I only played a minor role. That's my view, and if you don't like it, you may dislike it.’