The Second E.F. Benson Megapack. E.F. Benson
ransack her memory though she might, that nobody had thought of this before.
The hot weather had continued late into September and showed no signs of breaking yet, and it would be agreeable to her and acutely painful to others that just at the end of the summer she should appear in a perfectly new costume, before the days of jumpers and heavy skirts and large woollen scarves came in. She was preparing, therefore, to take the light white jacket which she wore over her blouse, and cover the broad collar and cuffs of it with these pretty roses. The belt of the skirt would be similarly decorated, and so would the edge of it, if there were enough clean ones. The jacket and skirt had already gone to the dyer’s, and would be back in a day or two, white no longer, but of a rich purple hue, and by that time she would have hundreds of these little pink roses ready to be tacked on. Perhaps a piece of the chintz, trellis and all, could be sewn over the belt, but she was determined to have single little bunches of roses peppered all over the collar and cuffs of the jacket and, if possible, round the edge of the skirt. She had already tried the effect, and was of the opinion that nobody could possibly guess what the origin of these roses was. When carefully sewn on they looked as if they were a design in the stuff.
She let the circumcised roses fall on to the window-seat, and from time to time, when they grew numerous, swept them into a cardboard box. Though she worked with zealous diligence, she had an eye to the movements in the street outside, for it was shopping-hour, and there were many observations to be made. She had not anything like Miss Mapp’s genius for conjecture, but her memory was appallingly good, and this was the third morning running on which Elizabeth had gone into the grocer’s. It was odd to go to your grocer’s every day like that; groceries twice a week was sufficient for most people. From here on the floor above the street she could easily look into Elizabeth’s basket, and she certainly was carrying nothing away with her from the grocer’s, for the only thing there was a small bottle done up in white paper with sealing wax, which, Diva had no need to be told, certainly came from the chemist’s, and was no doubt connected with too many plums.
Miss Mapp crossed the street to the pavement below Diva’s house, and precisely as she reached it, Diva’s maid opened the door into the drawing-room, bringing in the second post, or rather not bringing in the second post, but the announcement that there wasn’t any second post. This opening of the door caused a draught, and the bunches of roses which littered the window-seat rose brightly in the air. Diva managed to beat most of them down again, but two fluttered out of the window. Precisely then, and at no other time, Miss Mapp looked up, and one settled on her face, the other fell into her basket. Her trained faculties were all on the alert, and she thrust them both inside her glove for future consideration, without stopping to examine them just then. She only knew that they were little pink roses, and that they had fluttered out of Diva’s window…
She paused on the pavement, and remembered that Diva had not yet expressed regret about the worsted, and that she still“popped” as much as ever. Thus Diva deserved a punishment of some sort, and happily, at that very moment she thought of a subject on which she might be able to make her uncomfortable. The street was full, and it would be pretty to call up to her, instead of ringing her bell, in order to save trouble to poor overworked Janet. (Diva only kept two servants, though of course poverty was no crime.)
“Diva darling!” she cooed.
Diva’s head looked out like a cuckoo in a clock preparing to chime the hour.
“Hullo!” she said. “Want me?”
“May I pop up for a moment, dear?” said Miss Mapp.“That’s to say if you’re not very busy.”
“Pop away,” said Diva. She was quite aware that Miss Mapp said “pop” in crude inverted commas, so to speak, for purposes of mockery, and so she said it herself more than ever.“I’ll tell my maid to pop down and open the door.”
While this was being done, Diva bundled her chintz curtains together and stored them and the roses she had cut out into her work-cupboard, for secrecy was an essential to the construction of these decorations. But in order to appear naturally employed, she pulled out the woollen scarf she was knitting for the autumn and winter, forgetting for the moment that the rose-madder stripe at the end on which she was now engaged was made of that fatal worsted which Miss Mapp considered to have been feloniously appropriated. That was the sort of thing Miss Mapp never forgot. Even among her sweet flowers. Her eye fell on it the moment she entered the room, and she tucked the two chintz roses more securely into her glove.
“I thought I would just pop across from the grocer’s,” she said. “What a pretty scarf, dear! That’s a lovely shade of rose-madder. Where can I have seen something like it before?”
This was clearly ironical, and had best be answered by irony. Diva was no coward.
“Couldn’t say, I’m sure,” she said.
Miss Mapp appeared to recollect, and smiled as far back as her wisdom-teeth. (Diva couldn’t do that.)
“I have it,” she said. “It was the wool I ordered at Heynes’s, and then he sold it you, and I couldn’t get any more.”
“So it was,” said Diva. “Upset you a bit. There was the wool in the shop. I bought it.”
“Yes, dear; I see you did. But that wasn’t what I popped in about. This coal-strike, you know.”
“Got a cellar full,” said Diva.
“Diva, you’ve not been hoarding, have you?” asked Miss Mapp with great anxiety. “They can take away every atom of coal you’ve got, if so, and fine you I don’t know what for every hundredweight of it.”
“Pooh!” said Diva, rather forcing the indifference of this rude interjection.
“Yes, love, pooh by all means, if you like poohing!” said Miss Mapp. “But I should have felt very unfriendly if one morning I found you were fined—found you were fined—quite a play upon words—and I hadn’t warned you.”
Diva felt a little less poohish.
“But how much do they allow you to have?” she asked.
“Oh, quite a little: enough to go on with. But I daresay they won’t discover you. I just took the trouble to come and warn you.”
Diva did remember something about hoarding; there had surely been dreadful exposures of prudent housekeepers in the papers which were very uncomfortable reading.
“But all these orders were only for the period of the war,” she said.
“No doubt you’re right, dear,” said Miss Mapp brightly. “I’m sure I hope you are. Only if the coal strike comes on, I think you’ll find that the regulations against hoarding are quite as severe as they ever were. Food hoarding, too. Twemlow—such a civil man—tells me that he thinks we shall have plenty of food, or anyhow sufficient for everybody for quite a long time, provided that there’s no hoarding. Not been hoarding food, too, dear Diva? You naughty thing: I believe that great cupboard is full of sardines and biscuits and bovril.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Diva indignantly. “You shall see for yourself”—and then she suddenly remembered that the cupboard was full of chintz curtains and little bunches of pink roses, neatly cut out of them, and a pair of nail scissors.
There was a perfectly perceptible pause, during which Miss Mapp noticed that there were no curtains over the window. There certainly used to be, and they matched with the chintz cover of the window seat, which was decorated with little bunches of pink roses peeping through trellis. This was in the nature of a bonus: she had not up till then connected the chintz curtains with the little things that had fluttered down upon her and were now safe in her glove; her only real object in this call had been to instil a general uneasiness into Diva’s mind about the coal strike and the danger of being well provided with fuel. That she humbly hoped that she had accomplished. She got up.
“Must be going,” she said. “Such a lovely little chat! But what has happened to your pretty curtains?”
“Gone to the wash,” said Diva firmly.