The Greatest Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
was a shade too professional, so to speak, for the usual detective work of Tilling. But the fuse was set now. Sooner or later the explosion must come. She wondered as they went out to commune with Elizabeth's sweet flowers till the other guests arrived how great a torrent would be let loose. She did not repent her exploration — far from it — but her pleasurable anticipations were strongly diluted with suspense.
Miss Mapp had found such difficulty in getting eight players together today, that she had transgressed her principles and asked Mrs Poppit as well as Isabel, and they, with Diva, the two Bartletts, and the Major and the Captain, formed the party. The moment Mrs Poppit appeared, Elizabeth hated her more than ever, for she put up her glasses, and began to give her patronising advice about her garden, which she had not been allowed to see before.
"You have quite a pretty little piece of garden, Miss Mapp," she said, "though, to be sure, I fancied from what you said that it was more extensive. Dear me, your roses do not seem to be doing very well. Probably they are old plants and want renewing. You must send your gardener round — you keep a gardener? — and I will let you have a dozen vigorous young bushes."
Miss Mapp licked her dry lips. She kept a kind of gardener: two days a week.
"Too good of you," she said, "but that rose-bed is quite sacred, dear Mrs Poppit. Not all the vigorous young bushes in the world would tempt me. It's my 'Friendship's Border:' some dear friend gave me each of my rose trees."
Mrs Poppit transferred her gaze to the wistaria that grew over the steps up to the garden-room. Some of the dear friends she thought must be centenarians.
"Your wistaria wants pruning sadly," she said. "Your gardener does not understand wistarias. That corner there was made, I may say, for fuchsias. You should get a dozen choice fuchsias."
Miss Mapp laughed.
"Oh, you must excuse me," she said with a glance at Mrs Poppit's brocaded silk. "I can't bear fuchsias. They always remind me of overdressed women. Ah, there's Mr Bartlett. How de do, Padre. And dear Evie!"
Dear Evie appeared fascinated by Diva's dress.
"Such beautiful rosebuds," she murmured, "and what a lovely shade of purple. And Elizabeth's poppies too, quite a pair of you. But surely this morning, Diva, didn't I see your good Janet in just such another dress, and I thought at the time how odd it was that —"
"If you saw Janet this morning," said Diva quite firmly, "you saw her in her print dress."
"And here's Major Benjy," said Miss Mapp, who had made her slip about his Christian name yesterday, and had been duly entreated to continue slipping. "And Captain Puffin. Well, that is nice! Shall we go into my little garden shed, dear Mrs Poppit, and have our tea?"
Major Flint was still a little lame, for his golf today had been of the nature of gardening, and he hobbled up the steps behind the ladies, with that little cock-sparrow sailor following him and telling the Padre how badly and yet how successfully he himself had played.
"Pleasantest room in Tilling, I always say, Miss Elizabeth," said he, diverting his mind from a mere game to the fairies.
"My dear little room," said Miss Mapp, knowing that it was much larger than anything in Mrs Poppit's house. "So tiny!"
"Oh, not a bad-sized little room," said Mrs Poppit encouragingly. "Much the same proportions, on a very small scale, as the throne-room at Buckingham Palace."
"That beautiful throne-room!" exclaimed Miss Mapp. "A cup of tea, dear Mrs Poppit? None of that naughty redcurrant fool, I am afraid. And a little chocolate cake?"
These substantial chocolate cakes soon did their fell work of producing the sense of surfeit, and presently Elizabeth's guests dropped off gorged from the tea table. Diva fortunately remembered their consistency in time, and nearly cleared a plate of jumbles instead, which the hostess had hoped would form a pleasant accompaniment to her dessert at her supper this evening, and was still crashingly engaged on them when the general drifting movement towards the two bridge tables set in. Mrs Poppit, with her glasses up, followed by Isabel, was employed in making a tour of the room, in case, as Miss Mapp had already determined, she never saw it again, examining the quality of the carpet, the curtains, the chair-backs with the air of a doubtful purchaser.
"And quite a quantity of books, I see," she announced as she came opposite the fatal cupboard. "Look, Isabel, what a quantity of books. There is something strange about them, though; I do not believe they are real."
She put out her hand and pulled at the back of one of the volumes of "Elegant Extracts". The door swung open, and from behind it came a noise of rattling, bumping and clattering. Something soft and heavy thumped on to the floor, and a cloud of floury dust arose. A bottle of Bovril embedded itself quietly there without damage, and a tin of Bath Oliver biscuits beat a fierce tattoo on one of corned beef. Innumerable dried apricots from the burst package flew about like shrapnel, and tapped at the tins. A jar of prunes, breaking its fall on the flour, rolled merrily out into the middle of the floor.
The din was succeeded by complete silence. The Padre had said "What ho, i' fegs?" during the tumult, but his voice had been drowned by the rattling of the dried apricots. The Member of the Order of the British Empire stepped free of the provisions that bumped round her, and examined them through her glasses. Diva crammed the last jumble into her mouth and disposed of it with the utmost rapidity. The birthday of her life had come, as Miss Rossetti said.
"Dear Elizabeth!" she exclaimed. "What a disaster! All your little stores in case of the coal-strike. Let me help to pick them up. I do not think anything is broken. Isn't that lucky?"
Evie hurried to the spot.
"Such a quantity of good things," she said rapidly under her breath. "Tinned meats and Bovril and prunes, and ever so many apricots. Let me pick them all up, and with a little dusting . . . Why, what a big cupboard, and such a quantity of good things."
Miss Mapp had certainly struck a streak of embarrassments. What with naked Mr Hopkins, and Janet's frock and this unveiling of her hoard, life seemed at the moment really to consist of nothing else than beastly situations. How on earth that catch of the door had come undone, she had no idea, but much as she would have liked to suspect foul play from somebody, she was bound to conclude that Mrs Poppit with her prying hands had accidentally pressed it. It was like Diva, of course, to break the silence with odious allusions to hoarding, and bitterly she wished that she had not started the topic the other day, but had been content to lay in her stores without so pointedly affirming that she was doing nothing of the kind. But this was no time for vain laments, and restraining a natural impulse to scratch and beat Mrs Poppit, she exhibited an admirable inventiveness and composure. Though she knew it would deceive nobody, everybody had to pretend he was deceived.
"Oh, my poor little Christmas presents for your needy parishioners, Padre," she said. "You've seen them before you were meant to, and you must forget all about them. And so little harm done, just an apricot or two. Withers will pick them all up, so let us get to our bridge."
Withers entered the room at this moment to clear away tea, and Miss Mapp explained it all over again.
"All our little Christmas presents have come tumbling out, Withers," she said. "Will you put as many as you can back in the cupboard and take the rest indoors? Don't tread on the apricots."
It was difficult to avoid doing this, as the apricots were everywhere, and their colour on the brown carpet was wonderfully protective. Miss Mapp herself had already stepped on two, and their adhesive stickiness was hard to get rid of. In fact, for the next few minutes the coal-shovel was in strong request for their removal from the soles of shoes, and the fender was littered with their squashed remains . . . The party generally was distinctly thoughtful as it sorted itself out into two tables, for every single member of it was trying to assimilate the amazing proposition that Miss Mapp had, halfway through September, loaded her cupboard with Christmas presents on a scale that staggered belief. The feat required thought: it required a faith so childlike as to verge on the imbecile. Conversation during deals had an awkward tendency towards discussion of the coal-strike. As often as it drifted there the subject was changed very abruptly, just as if there