Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  This companionship with Diva was rather prolonged, for the adhesive Susan, staggering about in her sables, clung close to their host and simulated a clumsy interest in chrysanthemums; and whatever the other two did, manœuvred herself into a strong position between them and Mr. Wyse, from which, operating on interior lines, she could cut off either assailant. More depressing yet (and throwing a sad new light on his character), Mr. Wyse seemed to appreciate rather than resent the appropriation of himself, and instead of making a sortie through the beleaguering sables, would beg Diva and Elizabeth, who were so fond of fuchsias and knew about them so well, to put their heads together over an afflicted bed of these flowers in quite another part of the garden, and tell him what was the best treatment for their anæmic condition. Pleasant and proper though it was to each of them that Mr. Wyse should pay so little attention to the other, it was bitter as the endive salad to both that he should tolerate, if not enjoy, the companionship which the forwardness of Susan forced on him, and while they absently stared at the fuchsias, the fire kindled, and Elizabeth spake with her tongue.

  “How very plain poor Susan looks to-day,” she said. “Such a colour, though to be sure I attribute that more to what she ate and drank than to anything else. Crimson. Oh, those poor fuchsias! I think I should throw them away.”

  The common antagonism, Diva felt, had drawn her and Elizabeth into the most cordial of understandings. For the moment she felt nothing but enthusiastic sympathy with Elizabeth, in spite of her kingfisher-blue gown… What on earth, in parenthesis, was she to do with hers? She could not give it to Janet: it was impossible to contemplate the idea of Janet walking about the High Street in a tea-gown of kingfisher-blue just in order to thwart Elizabeth…

  “Mr. Wyse seems taken with her,” said Diva. “How he can! Rather a snob. M.B.E. She’s always popping in here. Saw her yesterday going round the corner of the street.”

  “What time, dear?” asked Elizabeth, nosing the scent.

  “Middle of the morning.”

  “And I saw her in the afternoon,” said Elizabeth. “That great lumbering Rolls-Royce went tacking and skidding round the corner below my garden-room.”

  “Was she in it?” asked Diva.

  This appeared rather a slur on Elizabeth’s reliability in observation.

  “No, darling, she was sitting on the top,” she said, taking the edge off the sarcasm, in case Diva had not intended to be critical, by a little laugh. Diva drew the conclusion that Elizabeth had actually seen her inside.

  “Think it’s serious?” she said. “Think he’ll marry her?”

  The idea of course, repellent and odious as it was, had occurred to Elizabeth, so she instantly denied it.

  “Oh, you busy little match-maker,” she said brightly. “Such an idea never entered my head. You shouldn’t make such fun of dear Susan. Come, dear, I can’t look at fuchsias any more. I must be getting home and must say good-bye — au reservoir, rather — to Mr. Wyse, if Susan will allow me to get a word in edgeways.”

  Susan seemed delighted to let Miss Mapp get this particular word in edgewise, and after a little speech from Mr. Wyse, in which he said that he would not dream of allowing them to go yet, and immediately afterwards shook hands warmly with them both, hoping that the reservoir would be a very small one, the two were forced to leave the artful Susan in possession of the field…

  It all looked rather black. Miss Mapp’s vivid imagination altogether failed to picture what Tilling would be like if Susan succeeded in becoming Mrs. Wyse and the sister-in-law of a countess, and she sat down in her garden-room and closed her eyes for a moment, in order to concentrate her power of figuring the situation. What dreadful people these climbers were! How swiftly they swarmed up the social ladder with their Rolls-Royces and their red-currant fool, and their sables! A few weeks ago she herself had never asked Susan into her house, while the very first time she came she unloosed the sluices of the store-cupboard, and now, owing to the necessity of getting her aid in stopping that mischievous rumour, which she herself had been so careful to set on foot, regarding the cause of the duel, Miss Mapp had been positively obliged to flatter and to “Susan” her. And if Diva’s awful surmise proved to be well-founded, Susan would be in a position to patronize them all, and talk about counts and countesses with the same air of unconcern as Mr. Wyse. She would be bidden to the Villa Faraglione, she would play bridge with Cecco and Amelia, she would visit the Wyses of Whitchurch…

  What was to be done? She might head another movement to put Mr. Wyse in his proper place; this, if successful, would have the agreeable result of pulling down Susan a rung or two should she carry out her design. But the failure of the last attempt and Mr. Wyse’s eminence did not argue well for any further manœuvre of the kind. Or should she poison Mr. Wyse’s mind with regard to Susan?… Or was she herself causelessly agitated?

  Or ——

  Curiosity rushed like a devastating tornado across Miss Mapp’s mind, rooting up all other growths, buffeting her with the necessity of knowing what the two whom she had been forced to leave in the garden were doing now, and snatching up her opera-glasses she glided upstairs, and let herself out through the trap-door on to the roof. She did not remember if it was possible to see Mr. Wyse’s garden or any part of it from that watch-tower, but there was a chance…

  Not a glimpse of it was visible. It lay quite hidden behind the red-brick wall which bounded it, and not a chrysanthemum or a fuchsia could she see. But her blood froze as, without putting the glasses down, she ran her eye over such part of the house-wall as rose above the obstruction. In his drawing-room window on the first floor were seated two figures. Susan had taken her sables off: it was as if she intended remaining there for ever, or at least for tea…

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The hippopotamus quarrel over their whisky between Major Flint and Captain Puffin, which culminated in the challenge and all the shining sequel, had had the excellent effect of making the united services more united than ever. They both knew that, had they not severally run away from the encounter, and, so providentially, met at the station, very serious consequences might have ensued. Had not both but only one of them been averse from taking or risking life, the other would surely have remained in Tilling, and spread disastrous reports about the bravery of the refugee; while if neither of them had had scruples on the sacredness of human existence there might have been one if not two corpses lying on the shining sands. Naturally the fact that they both had taken the very earliest opportunity of averting an encounter by flight, made it improbable that any future quarrel would be proceeded with to violent extremes, but it was much safer to run no risks, and not let verbal disagreements rise to hippopotamus-pitch again. Consequently when there was any real danger of such savagery as was implied in sending challenges, they hastened, by mutual concessions, to climb down from these perilous places, where loss of balance might possibly occur. For which of them could be absolutely certain that next time the other of them might not be more courageous?…

  They were coming up from the tram-station one November evening, both fizzing and fuming a good deal, and the Major was extremely lame, lamer than Puffin. The rattle of the tram had made argument impossible during the transit from the links, but they had both in this enforced silence thought of several smart repartees, supposing that the other made the requisite remarks to call them out, and on arrival at the Tilling station they went on at precisely the same point at which they had broken off on starting from the station by the links.

  “Well, I hope I can take a beating in as English a spirit as anybody,” said the Major.

  This was lucky for Captain Puffin: he had thought it likely that he would say just that, and had got a stinger for him.

  “And it worries you to find that your hopes are doomed to disappointment,” he swiftly said.

  Major Flint stepped in a puddle which cooled his foot but not his temper.

  “Most offensive remark,” he said. “I wasn’t called Sporting Benjy in
the regiment for nothing. But never mind that. A worm-cast — —”

  “It wasn’t a worm-cast,” said Puffin. “It was sheep’s dung!”

  Luck had veered here: the Major had felt sure that Puffin would reiterate that utterly untrue contention.

  “I can’t pretend to be such a specialist as you in those matters,” he said, “but you must allow me sufficient power of observation to know a worm-cast when I see it. It was a worm-cast, sir, a cast of a worm, and you had no right to remove it. If you will do me the favour to consult the rules of golf —— ?”

  “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 the 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 passed. Did he then work at his diaries every evening? And what price, to put it vulgarly, Roman roads?

&nb
sp; 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 singly, 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 eaves-dropping. 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.”