Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “So glad you feel that,” said Miss Mapp, smiling till he saw the entire row of her fine teeth. “And oh, may I say one little thing more? I feel this: I feel that the dreadful shock to me of being insulted like that was quite a lovely little blessing in disguise, now that the effect has been to put an end to your intimacy with him. I never liked it, and I liked it less than ever the other night. He’s not a fit friend for you. Oh, I’m so thankful!”

  Major Flint saw that for the present he was irrevocably committed to this clause in the treaty of peace. He could not face seeing it torn up again, as it certainly would be, if he failed to accept it in its entirety, nor could he imagine himself leaving the room with a renewal of hostilities. He would lose his game of golf to-day as it was, for apart from the fact that he would scarcely have time to change his clothes (the idea of playing golf in a frock-coat and top-hat was inconceivable) and catch the 11.20 tram, he could not be seen in Puffin’s company at all. And, indeed, in the future, unless Puffin could be induced to apologize and Miss Mapp to forgive, he saw, if he was to play golf at all with his friend, that endless deceptions and subterfuges were necessary in order to escape detection. One of them would have to set out ten minutes before the other, and walk to the tram by some unusual and circuitous route; they would have to play in a clandestine and furtive manner, parting company before they got to the club-house; disguises might be needful; there was a peck of difficulties ahead. But he would have to go into these later; at present he must be immersed in the rapture of his forgiveness.

  “Most generous of you, Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “As for that — well, I won’t allude to him again.”

  Miss Mapp gave a happy little laugh, and having made a further plan, switched away from the subject of captains and insults with alacrity.

  “Look!” she said. “I found these little rosebuds in flower still, though it is the end of November. Such brave little darlings, aren’t they? One for your button-hole, Major Benjy? And then I must do my little shoppings or Withers will scold me — Withers is so severe with me, keeps me in such order! If you are going into the town, will you take me with you? I will put on my hat.”

  Requests for the present were certainly commands, and two minutes later they set forth. Luck, as usual, befriended ability, for there was Puffin at his door, itching for the Major’s return (else they would miss the tram); and lo! there came stepping along Miss Mapp in her blue-trimmed cloak, and the Major attired as for marriage — top-hat, frock-coat and button-hole. She did not look at Puffin and cut him; she did not seem (with the deceptiveness of appearances) to see him at all, so eager and agreeable was her conversation with her companion. The Major, so Puffin thought, attempted to give him some sort of dazed and hunted glance; but he could not be certain even of that, so swiftly had it to be transformed into a genial interest in what Miss Mapp was saying, and Puffin stared open-mouthed after them, for they were terrible as an army with banners. Then Diva, trundling swiftly out of the fish-shop, came, as well she might, to a dead halt, observing this absolutely inexplicable phenomenon.

  “Good morning, Diva darling,” said Miss Mapp. “Major Benjy and I are doing our little shopping together. So kind of him, isn’t it? and very naughty of me to take up his time. I told him he ought to be playing golf. Such a lovely day! Au reservoir, sweet! Oh, and there’s the Padre, Major Benjy! How quickly he walks! Yes, he sees us! And there’s Mrs. Poppit; everybody is enjoying the sunshine. What a beautiful fur coat, though I should think she found it very heavy and warm. Good morning, dear Susan! You shopping, too, like Major Benjy and me? How is your dear Isabel?”

  Miss Mapp made the most of that morning; the magnanimity of her forgiveness earned her incredible dividends. Up and down the High Street she went, with Major Benjy in attendance, buying grocery, stationery, gloves, eau-de-Cologne, boot-laces, the “Literary Supplement” of The Times, dried camomile flowers, and every conceivable thing that she might possibly need in the next week, so that her shopping might be as protracted as possible. She allowed him (such was her firmness in “spoiling” him) to carry her shopping-basket, and when that was full, she decked him like a sacrificial ram with little parcels hung by loops of string. Sometimes she took him into a shop in case there might be someone there who had not seen him yet on her leash; sometimes she left him on the pavement in a prominent position, marking, all the time, just as if she had been a clinical thermometer, the feverish curiosity that was burning in Tilling’s veins. Only yesterday she had spread the news of his cowardice broadcast; to-day their comradeship was of the chattiest and most genial kind. There he was, carrying her basket, and wearing frock-coat and top-hat and hung with parcels like a Christmas-tree, spending the entire morning with her instead of golfing with Puffin. Miss Mapp positively shuddered as she tried to realize what her state of mind would have been, if she had seen him thus coupled with Diva. She would have suspected (rightly in all probability) some loathsome intrigue against herself. And the cream of it was that until she chose, nobody could possibly find out what had caused this metamorphosis so paralysing to inquiring intellects, for Major Benjy would assuredly never tell anyone that there was a reconciliation, due to his apology for his rudeness, when he had stood by and permitted an intoxicated Puffin to suggest disgraceful bargains. Tilling — poor Tilling — would go crazy with suspense as to what it all meant.

  Never had there been such a shopping! It was nearly lunch-time when, at her front door, Major Flint finally stripped himself of her parcels and her companionship and hobbled home, profusely perspiring, and lame from so much walking on pavements in tight patent-leather shoes. He was weary and footsore; he had had no golf, and, though forgiven, was but a wreck. She had made him ridiculous all the morning with his frock-coat and top-hat and his porterages, and if forgiveness entailed any more of these nightmare sacraments of friendliness, he felt that he would be unable to endure the fatiguing accessories of the regenerate state. He hung up his top-hat and wiped his wet and throbbing head; he kicked off his shoes and shed his frock-coat, and furiously qui-hied for a whisky and soda and lunch.

  His physical restoration was accompanied by a quickening of dismay at the general prospect. What (to put it succinctly) was life worth, even when unharassed by allusions to duels, without the solace of golf, quarrels and diaries in the companionship of Puffin? He hated Puffin — no one more so — but he could not possibly get on without him, and it was entirely due to Puffin that he had spent so outrageous a morning, for Puffin, seeking to silence Miss Mapp by his intoxicated bargain, had been the prime cause of all this misery. He could not even, for fear of that all-seeing eye in Miss Mapp’s garden-room, go across to the house of the unforgiven sea-captain, and by a judicious recital of his woes induce him to beg Miss Mapp’s forgiveness instantly. He would have to wait till the kindly darkness fell… “Mere slavery!” he exclaimed with passion.

  A tap at his sitting-room door interrupted the chain of these melancholy reflections, and his permission to enter was responded to by Puffin himself. The Major bounced from his seat.

  “You mustn’t stop here,” he said in a low voice, as if afraid that he might be overheard. “Miss Mapp may have seen you come in.”

  Puffin laughed shrilly.

  “Why, of course she did,” he gaily assented. “She was at her window all right. Ancient lights, I shall call her. What’s this all about now?”

  “You must go back,” said Major Flint agitatedly. “She must see you go back. I can’t explain now. But I’ll come across after dinner when it’s dark. Go; don’t wait.”

  He positively hustled the mystified Puffin out of the house, and Miss Mapp’s face, which had grown sharp and pointed with doubts and suspicions when she observed him enter Major Benjy’s house, dimpled, as she saw him return, into her sunniest smiles. “Dear Major Benjy,” she said, “he has refused to see him,” and she cut the string of the large cardboard box which had just arrived from the dyer’s with the most pleasurable anticipations…

  W
ell, it was certainly very magnificent, and Miss Greele was quite right, for there was not the faintest tinge to show that it had originally been kingfisher-blue. She had not quite realized how brilliant crimson-lake was in the piece; it seemed almost to cast a ruddy glow on the very ceiling, and the fact that she had caused the orange chiffon with which the neck and sleeves were trimmed to be dyed black (following the exquisite taste of Mrs. Titus Trout) only threw the splendour of the rest into more dazzling radiance. Kingfisher-blue would appear quite ghostly and corpse-like in its neighbourhood; and painful though that would be for Diva, it would, as all her well-wishers must hope, be a lesson to her not to indulge in such garishness. She should be taught her lesson (D.V.), thought Miss Mapp, at Susan’s bridge-party to-morrow evening. Captain Puffin was being taught a lesson, too, for we are never too old to learn, or, for that matter, to teach.

  Though the night was dark and moonless, there was an inconveniently brilliant gas-lamp close to the Major’s door, and that strategist, carrying his round roll of diaries, much the shape of a bottle, under his coat, went about half-past nine that evening to look at the rain-gutter which had been weeping into his yard, and let himself out of the back-door round the corner. From there he went down past the fishmonger’s, crossed the road, and doubled back again up Puffin’s side of the street, which was not so vividly illuminated, though he took the precaution of making himself little with bent knees, and of limping. Puffin was already warming himself over the fire and imbibing Roman roads, and was disposed to be hilarious over the Major’s shopping.

  “But why top-hat and frock-coat, Major?” he asked. “Another visit of the Prince of Wales, I asked myself, or the Voice that breathed o’er Eden? Have a drink — one of mine, I mean? I owe you a drink for the good laugh you gave me.”

  Had it not been for this generosity and the need of getting on the right side of Puffin, Major Flint would certainly have resented such clumsy levity, but this double consideration caused him to take it with unwonted good-humour. His attempt to laugh, indeed, sounded a little hollow, but that is the habit of self-directed merriment.

  “Well, I allow it must have seemed amusing,” he said. “The fact was that I thought she would appreciate my putting a little ceremony into my errand of apology, and then she whisked me off shopping before I could go and change.”

  “Kiss and friends again, then?” asked Puffin.

  The Major grew a little stately over this.

  “No such familiarity passed,” he said. “But she accepted my regrets with — ha — the most gracious generosity. A fine-spirited woman, sir; you’ll find the same.”

  “I might if I looked for it,” said Puffin. “But why should I want to make it up? You’ve done that, and that prevents her talking about duelling and early trains. She can’t mock at me because of you. You might pass me back my bottle, if you’ve taken your drink.”

  The Major reluctantly did so.

  “You must please yourself, old boy,” he said. “It’s your business, and no one’s ever said that Benjy Flint interfered in another man’s affairs. But I trust you will do what good feeling indicates. I hope you value our jolly games of golf and our pleasant evenings sufficiently highly.”

  “Eh! how’s that?” asked Puffin. “You going to cut me too?”

  The Major sat down and put his large feet on the fender. “Tact and diplomacy, Benjy, my boy,” he reminded himself.

  “Ha! That’s what I like,” he said, “a good fire and a friend, and the rest of the world may go hang. There’s no question of cutting, old man; I needn’t tell you that — but we must have one of our good talks. For instance, I very unceremoniously turned you out of my house this afternoon, and I owe you an explanation of that. I’ll give it you in one word: Miss Mapp saw you come in. She didn’t see me come in here this evening — ha! ha! — and that’s why I can sit at my ease. But if she knew — —”

  Puffin guessed.

  “What has happened, Major, is that you’ve thrown me over for Miss Mapp,” he observed.

  “No, sir, I have not,” said the Major with emphasis. “Should I be sitting here and drinking your whisky if I had? But this morning, after that lady had accepted my regret for my share in what occurred the other night, she assumed that since I condemned my own conduct unreservedly, I must equally condemn yours. It really was like a conjuring trick; the thing was done before I knew anything about it. And before I’d had time to say, ‘Hold on a bit,’ I was being led up and down the High Street, carrying as much merchandise as a drove of camels. God, sir, I suffered this morning; you don’t seem to realize that I suffered; I couldn’t stand any more mornings like that: I haven’t the stamina.”

  “A powerful woman,” said Puffin reflectively.

  “You may well say that,” observed Major Flint. “That is finely said. A powerful woman she is, with a powerful tongue, and able to be powerful nasty, and if she sees you and me on friendly terms again, she’ll turn the full hose on to us both unless you make it up with her.”

  “H’m, yes. But as likely as not she’ll tell me and my apologies to go hang.”

  “Have a try, old man,” said the Major encouragingly.

  Puffin looked at his whisky-bottle.

  “Help yourself, Major,” he said. “I think you’ll have to help me out, you know. Go and interview her: see if there’s a chance of my favourable reception.”

  “No, sir,” said the Major firmly, “I will not run the risk of another morning’s shopping in the High Street.”

  “You needn’t. Watch till she comes back from her shopping to-morrow.”

  Major Benjy clearly did not like the prospect at all, but Puffin grew firmer and firmer in his absolute refusal to lay himself open to rebuff, and presently, they came to an agreement that the Major was to go on his ambassadorial errand next morning. That being settled, the still undecided point about the worm-cast gave rise to a good deal of heat, until, it being discovered that the window was open, and that their voices might easily carry as far as the garden-room, they made malignant rejoinders to each other in whispers. But it was impossible to go on quarrelling for long in so confidential a manner, and the disagreement was deferred to a more convenient occasion. It was late when the Major left, and after putting out the light in Puffin’s hall, so that he should not be silhouetted against it, he slid into the darkness, and reached his own door by a subtle detour.

  Miss Mapp had a good deal of division of her swift mind, when, next morning, she learned the nature of Major Benjy’s second errand. If she, like Mr. Wyse, was to encourage Puffin to hope that she would accept his apologies, she would be obliged to remit all further punishment of him, and allow him to consort with his friend again. It was difficult to forgo the pleasure of his chastisement, but, on the other hand, it was just possible that the Major might break away, and, whether she liked it or not (and she would not), refuse permanently to give up Puffin’s society. That would be awkward since she had publicly paraded her reconciliation with him. What further inclined her to clemency, was that this very evening the crimson-lake tea-gown would shed its effulgence over Mrs. Poppit’s bridge-party, and Diva would never want to hear the word “kingfisher” again. That was enough to put anybody in a good temper. So the diplomatist returned to the miscreant with the glad tidings that Miss Mapp would hear his supplication with a favourable ear, and she took up a stately position in the garden-room, which she selected as audience chamber, near the bell so that she could ring for Withers if necessary.

  Miss Mapp’s mercy was largely tempered with justice, and she proposed, in spite of the leniency which she would eventually exhibit, to give Puffin “what for,” first. She had not for him, as for Major Benjy, that feminine weakness which had made it a positive luxury to forgive him: she never even thought of Puffin as Captain Dicky, far less let the pretty endearment slip off her tongue accidentally, and the luxury which she anticipated from the interview was that of administering a quantity of hard slaps. She had appointed half-past twelve as th
e hour for his suffering, so that he must go without his golf again.

  She put down the book she was reading when he appeared, and gazed at him stonily without speech. He limped into the middle of the room. This might be forgiveness, but it did not look like it, and he wondered whether she had got him here on false pretences.

  “Good morning,” said he.

  Miss Mapp inclined her head. Silence was gold.

  “I understood from Major Flint — —” began Puffin.

  Speech could be gold too.

  “If,” said Miss Mapp, “you have come to speak about Major Flint you have wasted your time. And mine!”

  (How different from Major Benjy, she thought. What a shrimp!)

  The shrimp gave a slight gasp. The thing had got to be done, and the sooner he was out of range of this powerful woman the better.

  “I am extremely sorry for what I said to you the other night,” he said.

  “I am glad you are sorry,” said Miss Mapp.

  “I offer you my apologies for what I said,” continued Puffin.

  The whip whistled.

  “When you spoke to me on the occasion to which you refer,” said Miss Mapp, “I saw of course at once that you were not in a condition to speak to anybody. I instantly did you that justice, for I am just to everybody. I paid no more attention to what you said than I should have paid to any tipsy vagabond in the slums. I daresay you hardly remember what you said, so that before I hear your expression of regret, I will remind you of it. You threatened, unless I promised to tell nobody in what a disgusting condition you were, to say that I was tipsy. Elizabeth Mapp tipsy! That was what you said, Captain Puffin.”

  Captain Puffin turned extremely red. (“Now the shrimp’s being boiled,” thought Miss Mapp.)

  “I can’t do more than apologize,” said he. He did not know whether he was angrier with his ambassador or her.

  “Did you say you couldn’t do ‘more,’” said Miss Mapp with an air of great interest. “How curious! I should have thought you couldn’t have done less.”