‘Diva dear!’ said Miss Mapp enthusiastically, for Withers was already in the hall. ‘How sweet of you to come round. Anything special?’
‘Yes,’ said Diva, opening her eyes very wide, and spreading a shower of moisture as she whisked off her mackintosh. ‘She's come.’
This could not refer to Susan…
‘Who?’ asked Miss Mapp.
‘Faradiddleony,’ said Diva.
‘No!’ said Miss Mapp very loud, so much interested that she quite forgot to resent Diva's being the first to have the news. ‘Let's have a comfortable cup of tea in the garden-room. Tea, Withers.’
Miss Mapp lit the candles there, for, lost in meditation, she had been sitting in the dark, and with reckless hospitality poked the fire to make it blaze.
‘Tell me all about it,’ she said. That would be a treat for Diva, who was such a gossip.
‘Went to the station just now,’ said Diva. ‘Wanted a new time-table. Besides the Royce had just gone down. Mr Wyse and Susan on the platform.’
‘Sables?’ asked Miss Mapp parenthetically, to complete the picture.
‘Swaddled. Talked to them. Train came in. Woman got out. Kissed Mr Wyse. Shook hands with Susan. Both hands. While luggage was got out.’
‘Much?’ asked Miss Mapp quickly.
‘Hundreds. Covered with coronets and Fs. Two cabs.’
Miss Mapp's mind, on a hot scent, went back to the previous telegraphic utterance.
‘Both hands did you say, dear?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps that's the Italian fashion.’
‘Maybe. Then what else do you think? Faradiddleony kissed Susan! Mr Wyse and she must be engaged. I can't account for it any other way. He must have written to tell his sister. Couldn't have told her then at the station. Must have been engaged some days and we never knew. They went to look at the orchid. Remember? That was when.’
It was bitter, no doubt, but the bitterness could be transmuted into an amazing sweetness.
‘Then now I can speak,’ said Miss Mapp with a sigh of great relief. ‘Oh, it has been so hard keeping silence, but I felt I ought to. I knew all along, Diva dear, all, all along.’
‘How?’ asked Diva with a fallen crest.
Miss Mapp laughed merrily.
‘I looked out of the window, dear, while you went for your hanky and peeped into dining-room and boudoir, didn't you? There they were on the lawn, and they kissed each other. So I said to myself: “Dear Susan has got him! Perseverance rewarded!”’
‘H'm. Only a guess of yours. Or did Susan tell you?’
‘No, dear, she said nothing. But Susan was always secretive.’
‘But they might not have been engaged at all,’ said Diva with a brightened eye. ‘Man doesn't always marry a woman he kisses!’
Diva had betrayed the lowness of her mind now by hazarding that which had for days dwelt in Miss Mapp's mind as almost certain. She drew in her breath with a hissing noise as if in pain.
‘Darling, what a dreadful suggestion,’ she said. ‘No such idea ever occurred to me. Secretive I thought Susan might be, but immoral, never. I must forget you ever thought that. Let's talk about something less painful. Perhaps you would like to tell me more about the Contessa.’
Diva had the grace to look ashamed of herself, and to take refuge in the new topic so thoughtfully suggested.
‘Couldn't see clearly,’ she said. ‘So dark. But tall and lean. Sneezed.’
‘That might happen to anybody, dear,’ said Miss Mapp, ‘whether tall or short. Nothing more?’
‘An eyeglass,’ said Diva after thought.
‘A single one?’ asked Miss Mapp. ‘On a string? How strange for a woman.’
That seemed positively the last atom of Diva's knowledge, and though Miss Mapp tried on the principles of psychoanalysis to disinter something she had forgotten, the catechism led to no results whatever. But Diva had evidently something else to say, for after finishing her tea she whizzed backwards and forwards from window to fireplace with little grunts and whistles, as was her habit when she was struggling with utterance. Long before it came out, Miss Mapp had, of course, guessed what it was. No wonder Diva found difficulty in speaking of a matter in which she had behaved so deplorably…
‘About that wretched dress,’ she said at length. ‘Got it stained with chocolate first time I wore it, and neither I nor Janet can get it out.’
(‘Hurrah,’ thought Miss Mapp.)
‘Must have it dyed again,’ continued Diva. ‘Thought I'd better tell you. Else you might have yours dyed the same colour as mine again. Kingfisher-blue to crimson-lake. All came out of Vogue and Mrs Trout. Rather funny, you know, but expensive. You should have seen your face, Elizabeth, when you came in to Susan's the other night.’
‘Should I, dearest?’ said Miss Mapp, trembling violently.
‘Yes. Wouldn't have gone home with you in the dark for anything. Murder.’
‘Diva dear,’ said Miss Mapp anxiously, ‘you've got a mind which likes to put the worst construction on everything. If Mr Wyse kisses his intended you think things too terrible for words; if I look surprised you think I'm full of hatred and malice. Be more generous, dear. Don't put evil constructions on all you see.’
‘Ho!’ said Diva with a world of meaning.
‘I don't know what you intend to convey by ho,’ said Miss Mapp, ‘and I shan't try to guess. But be kinder, darling, and it will make you happier. Thinketh no evil, you know! Charity!’
Diva felt that the limit of what was tolerable was reached when Elizabeth lectured her on the need of charity, and she would no doubt have explained tersely and unmistakably exactly what she meant by ‘Ho! had not Withers opportunely entered to clear away tea. She brought a note with her, which Miss Mapp opened. ‘Encourage me to hope,’ were the first words that met her eye: Mrs Poppit had been encouraging him to hope again.
‘To dine at Mr Wyse's to-morrow,’ she said. ‘No doubt the announcement will be made then. He probably wrote it before he went to the station. Yes, a few friends. You going dear?’
Diva instantly got up.
‘Think I'll run home and see,’ she said. ‘By the by, Elizabeth, what about the – the tea-gown, if I go? You or I?’
‘If yours is all covered with chocolate, I shouldn't think you'd like to wear it,’ said Miss Mapp.
‘Could tuck it away,’ said Diva, ‘just for once. Put flowers. Then send it to dyer's. You won't see it again. Not crimson-lake, I mean.’
Miss Mapp summoned the whole of her magnanimity. It had been put to a great strain already and was tired out, but it was capable of one more effort.
‘Wear it then,’ she said. ‘It'll be a treat to you. But let me know if you're not asked. I daresay Mr Wyse will want to keep it very small. Goodbye, dear; I'm afraid you'll get very wet going home.’
11
The sea-mist and the rain continued without intermission next morning but shopping with umbrellas and mackintoshes was unusually brisk, for there was naturally a universally felt desire to catch sight of a Contessa with as little delay as possible. The foggy conditions perhaps added to the excitement, for it was not possible to see more than a few yards, and thus at any moment anybody might almost run into her. Diva's impressions, meagre though they were, had been thoroughly circulated, but the morning passed, and the ladies of Tilling went home to change their wet things and take a little ammoniated quinine as a precaution after so long and chilly an exposure, without a single one of them having caught sight of the single eyeglass. It was disappointing, but the disappointment was bearable since Mr Wyse, so far from wanting his party to be very small, had been encouraged by Mrs Poppit to hope that it would include all his world of Tilling with one exception. He had hopes with regard to the Major and the Captain, and the Padre and wee wifie, and Irene and Miss Mapp, and of course Isabel. But apparently he despaired of Diva.
She alone therefore was absent from this long, wet shopping, for she waited indoors, almost pen in hand, to answer in the affirmative the invitati
on which had at present not arrived. Owing to the thickness of the fog, her absence from the street passed unnoticed, for everybody supposed that everybody else had seen her, while she, biting her nails at home, waited and waited and waited. Then she waited. About a quarter past one she gave it up, and duly telephoned, according to promise, via Janet and Withers, to Miss Mapp to say that Mr Wyse had not yet hoped. It was very unpleasant to let them know, but if she had herself rung up and been answered by Elizabeth, who usually rushed to the telephone, she felt that she would sooner have choked than have delivered this message. So Janet telephoned and Withers said she would tell her mistress. And did.
Miss Mapp was steeped in pleasant conjectures. The most likely of all was that the Contessa had seen that roundabout little busybody in the station, and taken an instant dislike to her through her single eyeglass. Or she might have seen poor Diva inquisitively inspecting the luggage with the coronets and the Fs on it, and have learned with pain that this was one of the ladies of Tilling. ‘Algernon,’ she would have said (so said Miss Mapp to herself), ‘who is that queer little woman? Is she going to steal some of my luggage?’ And then Algernon would have told her that this was poor Diva, quite a decent sort of little body. But when it came to Algernon asking his guests for the dinner-party in honour of his betrothal and her arrival at Tilling, no doubt the Contessa would have said, ‘Algernon, I beg…’ or if Diva – poor Diva – was right in her conjectures that the notes had been written before the arrival of the train, it was evident that Algernon had torn up the one addressed to Diva, when the Contessa heard whom she was to meet the next evening… Or Susan might easily have insinuated that they would have two very pleasant tables of bridge after dinner without including Diva, who was so wrong and quarrelsome over the score. Any of these explanations were quite satisfactory, and since Diva would not be present, Miss Mapp would naturally don the crimson-lake. They would all see what crimson-lake looked like when it decked a suitable wearer and was not parodied on the other side of a card-table. How true, as dear Major Benjy had said, that one woman could wear what another could not… And if there was a woman who could not wear crimson-lake it was Diva… Or was Mr Wyse really ashamed to let his sister see Diva in the crimson-lake? It would be just like him to be considerate of Diva, and not permit her to make a guy of herself before the Italian aristocracy. No doubt he would ask her to lunch some day, quite quietly. Or had… Miss Mapp bloomed with pretty conjectures, like some Alpine meadow when smitten into flower by the spring, and enjoyed her lunch very much indeed.
The anxiety and suspense of the morning, which, instead of being relieved, had ended in utter gloom, gave Diva a headache, and she adopted her usual strenuous methods of getting rid of it. So, instead of lying down and taking aspirin and dozing, she set out after lunch to walk it off. She sprinted and splashed along the miry roads, indifferent as to whether she stepped in puddles or not, and careless how wet she got. She bit on the bullet of her omission from the dinner-party this evening, determining not to mind one atom about it, but to look forward to a pleasant evening at home instead of going out (like this) in the wet. And never – never under any circumstances would she ask any of the guests what sort of an evening had been spent, how Mr Wyse announced the news, and how the Faradiddleony played bridge. (She said that satirical word aloud, mouthing it to the puddles and the dripping hedgerows.) She would not evince the slightest interest in it all; she would cover it with spadefuls of oblivion, and when next she met Mr Wyse she would, whatever she might feel, behave exactly as usual. She plumed herself on this dignified resolution, and walked so fast that the hedgerows became quite transparent. That was the proper thing to do; she had been grossly slighted, and, like a true lady, would be unaware of that slight; whereas poor Elizabeth, under such circumstances, would have devised a hundred petty schemes for rendering Mr Wyse's life a burden to him. But if – if (she only said if) she found any reason to believe that Susan was at the bottom of this, then probably she would think of something worthy not so much of a true lady but of a true woman. Without asking any questions, she might easily arrive at information which would enable her to identify Susan as the culprit, and she would then act in some way which would astonish Susan. What that way was she need not think yet, and so she devoted her entire mind to the question all the way home.
Feeling better and with her headache quite gone, she arrived in Tilling again drenched to the skin. It was already after tea-time, and she abandoned tea altogether, and prepared to console herself for her exclusion from gaiety with a ‘good blow-out’ in the shape of regular dinner, instead of the usual muffin now and a tray later. To add dignity to her feast, she put on the crimson-lake tea-gown for the last time that it would be crimson-lake (though the same tea-gown still), since to-morrow it would be sent to the dyer's to go into perpetual mourning for its vanished glories. She had meant to send it today, but all this misery and anxiety had put it out of her head.
Having dressed thus, to the great astonishment of Janet, she sat down to divert her mind from trouble by Patience. As if to reward her for her stubborn fortitude, the malignity of the cards relented, and she brought out an intricate matter three times running. The clock on her mantel-piece chiming a quarter to eight, surprised her with the lateness of the hour, and recalled to her with a stab of pain that it was dinner-time at Mr Wyse's, and at this moment some seven pairs of eager feet were approaching the door. Well, she was dining at a quarter to eight, too; Janet would enter presently to tell her that her own banquet was ready, and gathering up her cards, she spent a pleasant though regretful minute in looking at herself and the crimson-lake for the last time in her long glass. The tremendous walk in the rain had given her an almost equally high colour. Janet's foot was heard on the stairs, and she turned away from the glass. Janet entered.
‘Dinner?’ said Diva.
‘No, ma'am, the telephone,’ said Janet. ‘Mr Wyse is on the telephone, and wants to speak to you very particularly.’
‘Mr Wyse himself?’ asked Diva, hardly believing her ears, for she knew Mr Wyse's opinion of the telephone.
‘Yes, ma'am.’
Diva walked slowly, but reflected rapidly. What must have happened was that somebody had been taken ill at the last moment – was it Elizabeth? – and that he now wanted her to fill the gap… She was torn in two. Passionately as she longed to dine at Mr Wyse's, she did not see how such a course was compatible with dignity. He had only asked her to suit his own convenience; it was not out of encouragement to hope that he invited her now. No; Mr Wyse should want. She would say that she had friends dining with her; that was what the true lady would do.
She took up the ear-piece and said: ‘Hullo!’
It was certainly Mr Wyse's voice that spoke to her, and it seemed to tremble with anxiety.
‘Dear lady,’ he began, ‘a most terrible thing has happened –’
(Wonder if Elizabeth's very ill, thought Diva.)
‘Quite terrible,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘Can you hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Diva, hardening her heart.
‘By the most calamitous mistake the note which I wrote you yesterday was never delivered. Figgis has just found it in the pocket of his overcoat. I shall certainly dismiss him unless you plead for him. Can you hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Diva excitedly.
‘In it I told you that I had been encouraged to hope that you would dine with me to-night. There was such a gratifying response to my other invitations that I most culpably and carelessly, dear lady, thought that everybody had accepted. Can you hear?’
‘Of course I can!’ shouted Diva.
‘Well, I come on my knees to you. Can you possibly forgive the joint stupidity of Figgis and me, and honour me after all? We will put dinner off, of course. At what time, in case you are ever so kind and indulgent as to come, shall we have it? Do not break my heart by refusing. Su – Mrs Poppit will send her car for you.’
‘I have already dressed for dinner,’ said Diva proudly. ‘Very pleased t
o come at once.’
‘You are too kind; you are angelic,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘The car shall start at once; it is at my door now.’
‘Right,’ said Diva.
‘Too good – too kind,’ murmured Mr Wyse. ‘Figgis, what do I do next?’
Diva clapped the instrument into place.
‘Powder,’ she said to herself, remembering what she had seen in the glass, and whizzed upstairs. Her fish would have to be degraded into kedgeree, though plaice would have done just as well as sole for that; the cutlets could be heated up again, and perhaps the whisking for the apple-meringue had not begun yet, and could still be stopped.
‘Janet!’ she shouted. ‘Going out to dinner! Stop the meringue.’
She dashed an interesting pallor on to her face as she heard the hooting of the Royce, and coming downstairs, stepped into its warm luxuriousness, for the electric lamp was burning. There were Susan's sables there – it was thoughtful of Susan to put them in, but ostentatious – and there was a carriage rug, which she was convinced was new, and was very likely a present from Mr Wyse. And soon there was the light streaming out from Mr Wyse's open door, and Mr Wyse himself in the hall to meet and greet and thank and bless her. She pleaded for the contrite Figgis, and was conducted in a blaze of triumph into the drawing-room, where all Tilling was awaiting her. She was led up to the Contessa, with whom Miss Mapp, wreathed in sycophantic smiles, was eagerly conversing.
The crimson-lakes…
There were embarrassing moments during dinner; the Contessa confused by having so many people introduced to her in a lump, got all their names wrong, and addressed her neighbours as Captain Flint and Major Puffin, and thought that Diva was Mrs Mapp. She seemed vivacious and good-humoured, dropped her eyeglass into her soup, talked with her mouth full, and drank a good deal of wine, which was a very bad example for Major Puffin. Then there were many sudden and complete pauses in the talk, for Diva's news of the kissing of Mrs Poppit by the Contessa had spread like wildfire through the fog this morning, owing to Miss Mapp's dissemination of it, and now, whenever Mr Wyse raised his voice ever so little, everybody else stopped talking, in the expectation that the news was about to be announced. Occasionally, also, the Contessa addressed some remark to her brother in shrill and voluble Italian, which rather confirmed the gloomy estimate of her table-manners in the matter of talking with her mouth full, for to speak in Italian was equivalent to whispering, since the purport of what she said could not be understood by anybody except him… Then also, the sensation of dining with a countess produced a slight feeling of strain, which, in addition to the correct behaviour which Mr Wyse's presence always induced, almost congealed correctness into stiffness. But as dinner went on her evident enjoyment of herself made itself felt, and her eccentricities, though carefully observed and noted by Miss Mapp, were not succeeded by silences and hurried bursts of conversation.