THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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would enable her to identify Susan as the culprit, and she would then act in some way which would astonish Susan. What that way was she need not think yet, and so she devoted her entire mind to the question all the way home.
Feeling better and with her headache quite gone, she arrived in Tilling again drenched to the skin. It was already after teatime, and she abandoned tea altogether, and prepared to console herself for her exclusion from gaiety with a "good blow-out" in the shape of regular dinner, instead of the usual muffin now and a tray later. To add dignity to her feast, she put on the crimson-lake tea-gown for the last time that it would be crimson-lake (though the same tea-gown still), since tomorrow it would be sent to the dyer's to go into perpetual mourning for its vanished glories. She had meant to send it today, but all this misery and anxiety had put it out of her head.
Having dressed thus, to the great astonishment of Janet, she sat down to divert her mind from trouble by Patience. As if to reward her for her stubborn fortitude, the malignity of the cards relented, and she brought out an intricate matter three times running. The clock on her mantelpiece chiming a quarter to eight, surprised her with the lateness of the hour, and recalled to her with a stab of pain that it was dinner-time at Mr Wyse's, and at this moment some seven pairs of eager feet were approaching the door. Well, she was dining at a quarter to eight, too; Janet would enter presently to tell her that her own banquet was ready, and gathering up her cards, she spent a pleasant though regretful minute in looking at herself and the crimson-lake for the last time in her long glass. The tremendous walk in the rain had given her an almost equally high colour. Janet's foot was heard on the stairs, and she turned away from the glass. Janet entered.
"Dinner?" said Diva.
"No, ma'am, the telephone," said Janet. "Mr Wyse is on the telephone, and wants to speak to you very particularly."
"Mr Wyse himself?" asked Diva, hardly believing her ears, for she knew Mr Wyse's opinion of the telephone.
"Yes, ma'am."
Diva walked slowly, but reflected rapidly. What must have happened was that somebody had been taken ill at the last moment — was it Elizabeth? — and that he now wanted her to fill the gap . . . She was torn in two. Passionately as she longed to dine at Mr Wyse's, she did not see how such a course was compatible with dignity. He had only asked her to suit his own convenience; it was not out of encouragement to hope that he invited her now. No; Mr Wyse should want. She would say that she had friends dining with her; that was what the true lady would do.
She took up the earpiece and said: "Hello!"
It was certainly Mr Wyse's voice that spoke to her, and it seemed to tremble with anxiety.
"Dear lady," he began, "a most terrible thing has happened —"
(Wonder if Elizabeth's very ill, thought Diva.)
"Quite terrible," said Mr Wyse. "Can you hear?"
"Yes," said Diva, hardening her heart.
"By the most calamitous mistake the note which I wrote you yesterday was never delivered. Figgis has just found it in the pocket of his overcoat. I shall certainly dismiss him unless you plead for him. Can you hear?"
"Yes," said Diva excitedly.
"In it I told you that I had been encouraged to hope that you would dine with me tonight. There was such a gratifying response to my other invitations that I most culpably and carelessly, dear lady, thought that everybody had accepted. Can you hear?"
"Of course I can!" shouted Diva.
"Well, I come on my knees to you. Can you possibly forgive the joint stupidity of Figgis and me, and honour me after all? We will put dinner off, of course. At what time, in case you are ever so kind and indulgent as to come, shall we have it? Do not break my heart by refusing. Su — Mrs Poppit will send her car for you."
"I have already dressed for dinner," said Diva proudly. "Very pleased to come at once."
"You are too kind; you are angelic," said Mr Wyse. "The car shall start at once; it is at my door now."
"Right," said Diva.
"Too good — too kind," murmured Mr Wyse. "Figgis, what do I do next?"
Diva clapped the instrument into place.
"Powder," she said to herself, remembering what she had seen in the glass, and whizzed upstairs. Her fish would have to be degraded into kedgeree, though plaice would have done just as well as sole for that; the cutlets could be heated up again, and perhaps the whisking for the apple-meringue had not begun yet, and could still be stopped.
"Janet!" she shouted. "Going out to dinner! Stop the meringue."
She dashed an interesting pallor on to her face as she heard the hooting of the Royce, and coming downstairs, stepped into its warm luxuriousness, for the electric lamp was burning. There were Susan's sables there — it was thoughtful of Susan to put them in, but ostentatious — and there was a carriage rug, which she was convinced was new, and was very likely a present from Mr Wyse. And soon there was the light streaming out from Mr Wyse's open door, and Mr Wyse himself in the hall to meet and greet and thank and bless her. She pleaded for the contrite Figgis, and was conducted in a blaze of triumph into the drawing-room, where all Tilling was awaiting her. She was led up to the Contessa, with whom Miss Mapp, wreathed in sycophantic smiles, was eagerly conversing.
The crimson-lakes . . .
* * *
There were embarrassing moments during dinner; the Contessa confused by having so many people introduced to her in a lump, got all their names wrong, and addressed her neighbours as Captain Flint and Major Puffin, and thought that Diva was Mrs Mapp. She seemed vivacious and good-humoured, dropped her eyeglass into her soup, talked with her mouth full, and drank a good deal of wine, which was a very bad example for Major Puffin. Then there were many sudden and complete pauses in the talk, for Diva's news of the kissing of Mrs Poppit by the Contessa had spread like wildfire through the fog this morning, owing to Miss Mapp's dissemination of it, and now, whenever Mr Wyse raised his voice ever so little, everybody else stopped talking, in the expectation that the news was about to be announced. Occasionally, also, the Contessa addressed some remark to her brother in shrill and voluble Italian, which rather confirmed the gloomy estimate of her table-manners in the matter of talking with her mouth full, for to speak in Italian was equivalent to whispering, since the purport of what she said could not be understood by anybody except him . . . Then also, the sensation of dining with a countess produced a slight feeling of strain, which, in addition to the correct behaviour which Mr Wyse's presence always induced, almost congealed correctness into stiffness. But as dinner went on her evident enjoyment of herself made itself felt, and her eccentricities, though carefully observed and noted by Miss Mapp, were not succeeded by silences and hurried bursts of conversation.
"And is your ladyship making a long stay in Tilling?" asked the (real) Major, to cover the pause which had been caused by Mr Wyse saying something across the table to Isabel.
She dropped her eyeglass with quite a splash into her gravy, pulled it out again by the string as if landing a fish, and sucked it.
"That depends on you gentlemen," she said with greater audacity than was usual in Tilling. "If you and Major Puffin and that sweet little Scotch clergyman all fall in love with me, and fight duels about me, I will stop for ever . . ."
The Major recovered himself before anybody else.
"Your ladyship may take that for granted," he said gallantly, and a perfect hubbub of conversation rose to cover this awful topic.
She laid her hand on his arm.
"You must not call me ladyship, Captain Flint," she said. "Only servants say that. Contessa, if you like. And you must blow away this fog for me. I have seen nothing but bales of cotton-wool out of the window. Tell me this, too: why are those ladies dressed alike? Are they sisters? Mrs Mapp, the little round one, and her sister, the big round one?"
The Major cast an apprehensive eye on Miss Mapp seated just opposite, whose acuteness of hearing was one of the terrors of Tilling . . . His apprehensions