by E. F. Benson
It is no use denying that the Cosmic Consciousness of the ladies of Tilling was aware of a disagreeable anticlimax to so many hopes and fears. It had, of course, hoped for the best, but it had not expected that the best would be quite as bad as this. The best, to put it frankly, would have been a bandaged arm, or something of that kind. There was still room for the more hardened optimist to hope that something of some sort had occurred, or that something of some sort had been averted, and that the whole affair was not, in the delicious new slang phrase of the Padre’s, which was spreading like wildfire through Tilling, a “washout”. Pistols might have been innocuously discharged for all that was known to the contrary. But it looked bad.
Miss Mapp was the first to recover from the blow, and took Diva’s podgy hand.
“Diva, darling,” she said, “I feel so deeply thankful. What a wonderful and beautiful end to all our anxiety!”
There was a subconscious regret with regard to the anxiety. The anxiety was, so to speak, a dear and beloved departed… . And Diva did not feel so sure that the end was so beautiful and wonderful. Her grandfather, Miss Mapp had reason to know, had been a butcher, and probably some inherited indifference to slaughter lurked in her tainted blood.
“There’s the portmanteau still,” she said hopefully. “Pistols in the portmanteau. Your idea, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, dear,” said Elizabeth; “but thank God I must have been very wrong about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me that he brought it up from the station to Major Benjy’s house half an hour ago. Fancy your not knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful man, for he attends the Padre’s confirmation class. If there had been pistol’s in it, Major Benjy and Captain Puffin would have gone away too. I am quite happy about that now. It went away and it has come back. That’s all about the portmanteau.”
She paused a moment.
“But what does it contain, then?” she said quickly, more as if she was thinking aloud than talking to Diva. “Why did Major Benjy pack it and send it to the station this morning? Where has it come back from? Why did it go there?”
She felt that she was saying too much, and pressed her hand to her head.
“Has all this happened this morning?” she said. “What a full morning, dear! Lovely autumn leaves! I shall go home and have my lunch and rest. Au reservoir, Diva.”
Miss Mapp’s eternal reservoirs had begun to get on Diva’s nerves, and as she lingered here a moment more a great idea occurred to her, which temporarily banished the disappointment about the duellists. Elizabeth, as all the world knew, had accumulated a great reservoir of provisions in the false book-case in her garden-room, and Diva determined that, if she could think of a neat phrase, the very next time Elizabeth said au reservoir to her, she would work in an allusion to Elizabeth’s own reservoir of corned beef, tongue, flour, Bovril, dried apricots and condensed milk. She would have to frame some stinging rejoinder which would “escape her” when next Elizabeth used that stale old phrase: it would have to be short, swift and spontaneous, and therefore required careful thought. It would be good to bring “pop” into it also. “Your reservoir in the garden-room hasn’t gone ‘pop’ again, I hope, darling?” was the first draft that occurred to her, but that was not sufficiently condensed. “Pop goes the reservoir”, on the analogy of the weasel, was better. And, better than either, was there not some sort of corn called popcorn, which Americans ate?… “Have you any popcorn in your reservoir?” That would be a nasty one…
But it all required thinking over, and the sight of the Padre and the duellists crossing the field below, as she still lingered on this escarpment of the hill, brought the duel back to her mind. It would have been considered inquisitive even at Tilling to put direct questions to the combatants, and (still hoping for the best) ask them point-blank “Who won?” or something of that sort; but until she arrived at some sort of information, the excruciating pangs of curiosity that must be endured could be likened only to some acute toothache of the mind with no dentist to stop or remove the source of the trouble. Elizabeth had already succumbed to these pangs of surmise and excitement, and had frankly gone home to rest, and her absence, the fact that for the next hour or two she could not, except by some extraordinary feat on the telephone, get hold of anything which would throw light on the whole prodigious situation, inflamed Diva’s brain to the highest pitch of inventiveness. She knew that she was Elizabeth’s inferior in point of reconstructive imagination, and the present moment, while the other was recuperating her energies for fresh assaults on the unknown, was Diva’s opportunity. The one person who might be presumed to know more than anybody else was the Padre, but while he was with the duellists, it was as impossible to ask him what had happened as to ask the duellists who had won. She must, while Miss Mapp rested, get hold of the Padre without the duellists.
Even as Athene sprang full grown and panoplied from the brain of Zeus, so from Diva’s brain there sprang her plan complete. She even resisted the temptation to go on admiring autumn tints, in order to see how the interesting trio “looked” when, as they must presently do, they passed close to where she stood, and hurried home, pausing only to purchase, pay for, and carry away with her from the provision shop a large and expensively dressed crab, a dainty of which the Padre was inordinately fond. Ruinous as this was, there was a note of triumph in her voice when, on arrival, she called loudly for Janet, and told her to lay another place on the luncheon table. Then putting a strong constraint on herself, she waited three minutes by her watch, in order to give the Padre time to get home, and then rang him up and reminded him that he had promised to lunch with her that day. It was no use asking him to lunch in such a way that he might refuse: she employed without remorse this pitiless force majeure.
The engagement was short and brisk. He pleaded that not even now could he remember even having been asked (which was not surprising), and said that he and wee wifie had begun lunch. On which Diva unmasked her last gun, and told him that she had ordered a crab on purpose. That silenced further argument, and he said that he and wee wifie would be round in a jiffy, and rang off. She did not particularly want wee wifie, but there was enough crab.
Diva felt that she had never laid out four shilling to better purpose, when, a quarter of an hour later, the Padre gave her the full account of his fruitless search among the sand-dunes, so deeply impressive was his sense of being buoyed up to that incredibly fatiguing and perilous excursion by some Power outside himself. It never even occurred to her to think that it was an elaborate practical joke on the part of the Power outside himself, to spur him on to such immense exertions to no purpose at all. He had only got as far as this over his interrupted lunch with wee wifie, and though she, too, was in agonized suspense as to what happened next, she bore the repetition with great equanimity, only making small mouse-like noises of impatience which nobody heard. He was quite forgetting to speak either Scotch or Elizabethan English, so obvious was the absorption of his hearers, without these added aids to command attention.
“And then I came round the corner of the club-house,” he said, “and there were Captain Puffin and the Major finishing their match on the eighteenth hole.”
“Then there’s been no duel at all,” said Diva, scraping the shell of the crab.
“I feel sure of it. There wouldn’t have been time for a duel and a round of golf, in addition to the impossibility of playing golf immediately after a duel. No nerves could stand it. Besides, I asked one of the caddies. They had come straight from the tram to the club-house, and from the club-house to the first tee. They had not been alone for a moment.”
“Washout,” said Diva, wondering whether this had been worth four shillings, so tame was the conclusion.
Mrs. Bartlett gave a little squeak which was her preliminary to speech.
“But I do not see why there may not be a duel yet, Kenneth,” she said. “Because they did not fight this morning—excellent crab, dear Diva, so good of you to ask us—there’s no reason why there shouldn’t
be a duel this afternoon. Oh, dear me, and cold beef as well: I shall be quite stuffed. Depend upon it a man doesn’t take the trouble to write a challenge and all that, unless he means business.”
The Padre held up his hand. He felt that he was gradually growing to be the hero of the whole affair. He had certainly looked over the edge of numberless hollows in the sand-dunes with vivid anticipations of having a bullet whizz by him on each separate occasion. It behoved him to take a sublime line.
“My dear,” he said, “business is hardly a word to apply to murder. That within the last twenty-four hours there was the intention of fighting a duel, I don’t deny. But something has decidedly happened which has averted that deplorable calamity. Peace and reconciliation is the result of it, and I have never seen two men so unaffectedly friendly.”
Diva got up and whirled round the table to get the port for the Padre, so pleased was she at a fresh idea coming to her while still dear Elizabeth was resting. She attributed it to the crab.
“We’ve all been on a false scent,” she said. “Peace and reconciliation happened before they went out to the sand-dunes at all. It happened at the station. They met at the station, you know. It is proved that Major Flint went there. Major wouldn’t send portmanteau off alone. And it’s proved that Captain Puffin went there too, because the note which his housemaid found on the table before she saw the challenge from the Major, which was on the chimney-piece, said that he had been called away very suddenly. No; they both went to catch the early train in order to go away before they could be stopped, and kill each other. But why didn’t they go? What happened? Don’t suppose the outside porter showed them how wicked they were, confirmation-class or no confirmation-class. Stumps me. Almost wish Elizabeth was here. She’s good at guessing.”
The Padre’s eye brightened. Reaction after the perils of the morning, crab and port combined to make a man of him.
“Eh, ‘tis a bonney wee drappie of port whatever, Mistress Plaistow,” he said. “And I dinna ken that ye’re far wrang in jaloosing that Mistress Mapp might have a wee bitty word to say aboot it a’, ‘gin she had the mind.”
“She was wrong about the portmanteau,” said Diva. “Confessed she was wrong.”
“Hoots! I’m not mindin’ the bit pochmantie,” said the Padre.
“What else does she know?” asked Diva feverishly.
There was no doubt that the Padre had the fullest attention of the two ladies again, and there was no need to talk Scotch any more.
“Begin at the beginning,” he said. “What do we suppose was the cause of the quarrel?”
“Anything,” said Diva. “Golf, tiger-skins, coal strike, summer-time.”
He shook his head.
“I grant you words may pass on such subjects,” he said. “We feel keenly, I know, about summer-time in Tilling, though we shall all be reconciled over that next Sunday, when real time, God’s time, as I am venturing to call it in my sermon, comes in again.”
Diva had to bite her tongue to prevent herself bolting off on this new scent. After all, she had invested in crab to learn about duelling, not about summer-time.
“Well?” she said.
“We may have had words on that subject,” said the Padre, booming as if he was in the pulpit already, “but we should, I hope, none of us go so far as to catch the earliest train with pistols, in defence of our conviction about summer-time. No, Mrs. Plaistow, if you are right, and there is something to be said for your view, in thinking that they both went to such lengths as to be in time for the early train, in order to fight a duel undisturbed, you must look for a more solid cause than that.”
Diva vainly racked her brains to think of anything more worthy of the highest pitches of emotion than this. If it had been she and Miss Mapp who had been embroiled, hoarding and dress would have occurred to her. But as it was, no one in his senses could dream that the Captain and the Major were sartorial rivals, unless they had quarrelled over the question as to which of them wore the snuffiest old clothes.
“Give it up,” she said. “What did they quarrel about?”
“Passion!” said the Padre, in those full, deep tones in which next Sunday he would allude to God’s time. “I do not mean anger, but the flame that exalts man to heaven or—or does exactly the opposite!”
“But whomever for?” asked Diva, quite thrown off her bearings. Such a thing had never occurred to her, for, as far as she was aware, passion, except in the sense of temper, did not exist in Tilling. Tilling was far too respectable.
The Padre considered this a moment.
“I am betraying no confidence,” he said, “because no one has confided in me. But there certainly is a lady in this town—I do not allude to Miss Irene—who has long enjoyed the Major’s particular esteem. May not some deprecating remark—”
Wee wifie gave a much louder squeal than usual.
“He means poor Elizabeth,” she said in a high, tremulous voice. “Fancy, Kenneth!”
Diva, a few seconds before, had seen no reason why the Padre should drink the rest of her port, and was now in the act of drinking some of that unusual beverage herself. She tried to swallow it, but it was too late, and next moment all the openings in her face were fountains of that delicious wine. She choked and she gurgled, until the last drop had left her windpipe—under the persuasion of pattings on the back from the others—and then she gave herself up to loud, hoarse laughter, through which there shrilled the staccato squeaks of wee wifie. Nothing, even if you are being laughed at yourself, is so infectious as prolonged laughter, and the Padre felt himself forced to join it. When one of them got a little better, a relapse ensued by reason of infection from the others, and it was not till exhaustion set in, that this triple volcano became quiescent again.
“Only fancy!” said Evie faintly. “How did such an idea get into your head, Kenneth?”
His voice shook as he answered.
“Well, we were all a little worked up this morning,” he said. “The idea—really, I don’t know what we have all been laughing at—”
“I do,” said Diva. “Go on. About the idea—”
A feminine, a diabolical inspiration flared within wee wifie’s mind.
“Elizabeth suggested it herself,” she squealed.
Naturally Diva could not help remembering that she had found Miss Mapp and the Padre in earnest conversation together when she forced her way in that morning with the news that the duellists had left by the 11.20 tram. Nobody could be expected to have so short a memory as to have forgotten that. Just now she forgave Elizabeth for anything she had ever done. That might have to be reconsidered afterwards, but at present it was valid enough.
“Did she suggest it?” she asked.
The Padre behaved like a man, and lied like Ananias.
“Most emphatically she did not,” he said.
The disappointment would have been severe, had the two ladies believed this confident assertion, and Diva pictured a delightful interview with Elizabeth, in which she would suddenly tell her the wild surmise the Padre had made with regard to the cause of the duel, and see how she looked then. Just see how she looked then: that was all—self-consciousness and guilt would fly their colours…
Miss Mapp had been tempted when she went home that morning, after enjoying the autumn tints, to ask Diva to lunch with her, but remembered in time that she had told her cook to broach one of the tins of corned-beef which no human wizard could coax into the store-cupboard again, if he shut the door after it. Diva would have been sure to say something acid and allusive, to remark on its excellence being happily not wasted on the poor people in the hospital, or, if she had not said anything at all about it, her silence as she ate a great deal would have had a sharp flavour. But Miss Mapp would have liked, especially when she went to take her rest afterwards on the big sofa in the garden-room, to have had somebody to talk to, for her brain seethed with conjectures as to what had happened, was happening and would happen, and discussion was the best method of simplifying a
problem, of narrowing it down to the limits of probability, whereas when she was alone now with her own imaginings, the most fantastic of them seemed plausible. She had, however, handed a glorious suggestion to the Padre, the one, that is, which concerned the cause of the duel, and it had been highly satisfactory to observe the sympathy and respect with which he had imbibed it. She had, too, been so discreet about it; she had not come within measurable distance of asserting that the challenge had been in any way connected with her. She had only been very emphatic on the point of its not being connected with poor dear Irene, and then occupied herself with her sweet flowers. That had been sufficient, and she felt in her bones and marrow that he inferred what she had meant him to infer…
The vulture of surmise ceased to peck at her for a few moments as she considered this, and followed up a thread of gold… Though the Padre would surely be discreet, she hoped that he would “let slip” to dear Evie in the course of the vivid conversation they would be sure to have over lunch, that he had a good guess as to the cause which had led to that savage challenge. Upon which dear Evie would be certain to ply him with direct squeaks and questions, and when she “got hot” (as in animal, vegetable and mineral) his reticence would lead her to make a good guess too. She might be incredulous, but there the idea would be in her mind, while if she felt that these stirring days were no time for scepticism, she could hardly fail to be interested and touched. Before long (how soon Miss Mapp was happily not aware) she would “pop in” to see Diva, or Diva would “pop in” to see her, and Evie, observing a discretion similar to that of the Padre and herself, would soon enable dear Diva to make a good guess too. After that, all would be well, for dear Diva (“such a gossiping darling”) would undoubtedly tell everybody in Tilling, under vows of secrecy (so that she should have the pleasure of telling everybody herself) just what her good guess was. Thus, very presently, all Tilling would know exactly that which Miss Mapp had not said to the dear Padre, namely, that the duel which had been fought (or which hadn’t been fought) was “all about” her. And the best of it was, that though everybody knew, it would still be a great and beautiful secret, reposing inviolably in every breast or chest, as the case might be. She had no anxiety about anybody asking direct questions of the duellists, for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy’s presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be highly inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But, as it was, nothing could be nicer: the whole of the rest of Tilling, under promise of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises of secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there would be no harm done…
