Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  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.

  CHAPTER IX.

  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 manœuvre 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 wash-out, 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 bloodthirsty gallantry, whereas he had enjoyed 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 ve
ry 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 rôle. That’s my view, and if you don’t like it, you may dislike it.”

  Puffin yawned.

  “Mapp’s a cat,” he said. “Stroke a cat and you’ll get scratched. Shy a brick at a cat, and she’ll spit at you and skedaddle. You’re poor company to-night, Major, with all these qualms.”

  “Then, sir, you can relieve yourself of my company,” said the Major, “by going home.”

  “Just what I was about to do. Good night, old boy. Same time to-morrow for the tram, if you’re not too badly mauled.”

  Miss Mapp, sitting by the hot-water pipes in the garden-room, looked out not long after to see what the night was like. Though it was not yet half-past ten the cowards’ sitting-rooms were both dark, and she wondered what precisely that meant. There was no bridge-party anywhere that night, and apparently there were no diaries or Roman roads either. Why this sober and chastened darkness?…

  The Major qui-hied for his breakfast at an unusually early hour next morning, for the courage of this resolve to placate, if possible, the hostility of Miss Mapp had not, like that of the challenge, oozed out during the night. He had dressed himself in his frock-coat, seen last on the occasion when the Prince of Wales proved not to have come by the 6.37, and no female breast however furious could fail to recognize the compliment of such a formality. Dressed thus, with top-hat and patent-leather boots, he was clearly observed from the garden-room to emerge into the street just when Captain Puffin’s hand thrust the sponge on to the window-sill of his bath-room. Probably he too had observed this apparition, for his fingers prematurely loosed hold of the sponge, and it bounded into the street. Wild surmises flashed into Miss Mapp’s active brain, the most likely of which was that Major Benjy was going to propose to Mrs. Poppit, for if he had been going up to London for some ceremonial occasion, he would be walking down the street instead of up it. And then she saw his agitated finger press the electric bell of her own door. So he was not on his way to propose to Mrs. Poppit…

  She slid from the room and hurried across the few steps of garden to the house just in time to intercept Withers though not with any idea of saying that she was out. Then Withers, according to instructions, waited till Miss Mapp had tiptoed upstairs, and conducted the Major to the garden-room, promising that she would “tell” her mistress. This was unnecessary, as her mistress knew. The Major pressed a half-crown into her astonished hand, thinking it was a florin. He couldn’t precisely account for that impulse, but general propitiation was at the bottom of it.

  Miss Mapp meantime had sat down on her bed, and firmly rejected the idea that his call had anything to do with marriage. During all these years of friendliness he had not got so far as that, and, whatever the future might hold, it was not likely that he would begin now at this moment when she was so properly punishing him for his unchivalrous behaviour. But what could the frock-coat mean? (There was Captain Puffin’s servant picking up the sponge. She hoped it was covered with mud.) It would be a very just continuation of his punishment to tell Withers she would not see him, but the punishment which that would entail on herself would be more than she could bear, for she would not know a moment’s peace while she was ignorant of the nature of his errand. Could he be on his way to the Padre’s to challenge him for that very stinging allusion to sand-dunes yesterday, and was he come to give her fair warning, so that she might stop a duel? It did not seem likely. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she adjusted her face in the glass to an expression of frozen dignity and threw over her shoulders the cloak trimmed with blue in which, on the occasion of the Prince’s visit, she had sat down in the middle of the road. That matched the Major’s frock-coat.

  She hummed a little song as she mounted the few steps to the garden-room, and stopped just after she had opened the door. She did not offer to shake hands.

  “You wish to see me, Major Flint?” she said, in such a voice as icebergs might be supposed to use when passing each other by night in the Arctic seas.

  Major Flint certainly looked as if he hated seeing her, instead of wishing it, for he backed into a corner of the room and dropped his hat.

  “Good morning, Miss Mapp,” he said. “Very good of you. I — I called.”

  He clearly had a difficulty in saying what he had come to say, but if he thought that she was proposing to give him the smallest assistance, he was in error.

  “Yes, you called,” said she. “Pray be seated.”

  He did so; she stood; he got up again.

  “I called,” said the Major, “I called to express my very deep regret at my share, or, rather, that I did not take a more active share — I allowed, in fact, a friend of mine to speak to you in a manner that did equal discredit — —”

  Miss Mapp put her head on one side, as if trying to recollect some trivial and unimportant occurrence.

  “Yes?” she said. “What was that?”

  “Captain Puffin,” began the Major.

  Then Miss Mapp remembered it all.

  “I hope, Major Flint,” she said, “that you will not find it necessary to mention Captain Puffin’s name to me. I wish him nothing but well, but he and his are no concern of mine. I have the charity to suppose that he was quite drunk on the occasion to which I imagine you allude. Intoxication alone could excuse what he said. Let us leave Captain Puffin out of whatever you have come to say to me.”

  This was adroit; it compelled the Major to begin all over again.

  “I come entirely on my own account,” he began.

  “I understand,” said Miss Mapp, instantly bringing Captain Puffin in again. “Captain Puffin, now I presume sober, has no regret for what he said when drunk. I quite see, and I expected no more and no less from him. Yes. I am afraid I interrupted you.”

  Major Flint threw his friend overboard like ballast from a bumping balloon.

  “I speak for myself,” he said. “I behaved, Miss Mapp, like a — ha — worm. Defenceless lady, insolent fellow drunk — I allude to Captain P —— . I’m very sorry for my part in it.”

  Up till this moment Miss Mapp had not made up her mind whether she intended to forgive him or not; but here she saw how crushing a penalty she might be able to inflict on Puffin if she forgave the erring and possibly truly repentant Major. He had already spoken strongly about his friend’s offence, and she could render life supremely nasty for them both — particularly Puffin — if she made the Major agree that he could not, if truly sorry, hold further intercourse with him. There would be no more golf, no more diaries. Besides, if she was observed to be friendly with the Major again and to cut Captain Puffin, a very natural interpretation would be that she had learned that in the original quarrel the Major had been defending her from some odious tongue to the extent of a challenge, even though he subsequently ran away. Tilling was quite clever enough to make that inference without any suggestion from her… But if she forgave neither of them, they would probably go on boozing and golfing together, and saying quite dreadful things about her, and not care very much whether she forgave them or not. Her mind was made up, and she gave a wan smile.

  “Oh, Major Flint,” she said, “it hurt me so dreadfully that
you should have stood by and heard that Man — if he is a man — say those awful things to me and not take my side. It made me feel so lonely. I had always been such good friends with you, and then you turned your back on me like that. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve it. I lay awake ever so long.”

  This was affecting, and he violently rubbed the nap of his hat the wrong way… Then Miss Mapp broke into her sunniest smile.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you came to say you were sorry!” she said. “Dear Major Benjy, we’re quite friends again.”

  She dabbed her handkerchief on her eyes.

  “So foolish of me!” she said. “Now sit down in my most comfortable chair and have a cigarette.”

  Major Flint made a peck at the hand she extended to him, and cleared his throat to indicate emotion. It really was a great relief to think that she would not make awful allusions to duels in the middle of bridge-parties.

  “And since you feel as you do about Captain Puffin,” she said, “of course, you won’t see anything more of him. You and I are quite one, aren’t we, about that? You have dissociated yourself from him completely. The fact of your being sorry does that.”

  It was quite clear to the Major that this condition was involved in his forgiveness, though that fact, so obvious to Miss Mapp, had not occurred to him before. Still, he had to accept it, or go unhouseled again. He could explain to Puffin, under cover of night, or perhaps in deaf-and-dumb alphabet from his window…

  “Infamous, unforgivable behaviour!” he said. “Pah!”