Part 18 (1/2)

”Contradict, dear, the rumour that I have had anything to do with the terrible thing which might have happened last week. Say on my authority that it is so. I tremble to think”--here she trembled very much--”what might happen if the report reached Major Benjy's ears, and he found out who had started it. We must have no more duels in Tilling. I thought I should never survive that morning.”

”I will go and tell Mr. Wyse instantly--dear,” said Mrs. Poppit.

That would never do. True believers were so scarce that it was wicked to think of unsettling their faith.

”Poor Mr. Wyse!” said Miss Mapp with a magnanimous smile. ”Do not think, dear, of troubling him with these little trumpery affairs. He will not take part in these little t.i.ttle-tattles. But if you could let dear Diva and quaint Irene and sweet Evie and the good Padre know that I laugh at all such nonsense----”

”But they laugh at it, too,” said Mrs. Poppit.

That would have been baffling for anyone who allowed herself to be baffled, but that was not Miss Mapp's way.

”Oh, that bitter laughter!” she said. ”It hurt me to hear it. It was envious laughter, dear, scoffing, bitter laughter. I heard! I cannot bear that the dear things should feel like that. Tell them that I say how silly they are to believe anything of the sort. Trust me, I am right about it. I wash my hands of such nonsense.”

She made a vivid dumb-show of this, and after drying them on an imaginary towel, let a sunny smile peep out the eyes which she had rubbed.

”All gone!” she said; ”and we will have a dear little party on Wednesday to show we are all friends again. And we meet for lunch at dear Mr.

Wyse's the next day? Yes? He will get tired of poor little me if he sees me two days running, so I shall not ask him. I will just try to get two tables together, and n.o.body shall contradict dear Diva, however many s.h.i.+llings she says she has won. I would sooner pay them all myself than have any more of our unhappy divisions. You will have talked to them all before Wednesday, will you not, dear?”

As there were only four to talk to, Mrs. Poppit thought that she could manage it, and spent a most interesting afternoon. For two years now she had tried to unfreeze Miss Mapp, who, when all was said and done, was the centre of the Tilling circle, and who, if any attempt was made to shove her out towards the circ.u.mference, always gravitated back again.

And now, on these important errands she was Miss Mapp's accredited amba.s.sador, and all the terrible business of the opening of the store-cupboard and her decoration as M.B.E. was quite forgiven and forgotten. There would be so much walking to be done from house to house, that it was impossible to wear her sable coat unless she had the Royce to take her about....

The effect of her communications would have surprised anybody who did not know Tilling. A less subtle society, when a.s.sured from a first-hand, authoritative source that a report which it had entirely refused to believe was false, would have prided itself on its perspicacity, and said that it had laughed at such an idea, as soon as ever it heard it, as being palpably (look at Miss Mapp!) untrue. Not so Tilling. The very fact that, by the mouth of her amba.s.sador, she so uncompromisingly denied it, was precisely why Tilling began to wonder if there was not something in it, and from wondering if there was not something in it, surged to the conclusion that there certainly was. Diva, for instance, the moment she was told that Elizabeth (for Mrs. Poppit remembered her Christian name perfectly) utterly and scornfully denied the truth of the report, became intensely thoughtful.

”Say there's nothing in it?” she observed. ”Can't understand that.”

At that moment Diva's telephone bell rang, and she hurried out and in.

”Party at Elizabeth's on Wednesday,” she said. ”She saw me laughing. Why ask me?”

Mrs. Poppit was full of her sacred mission.

”To show how little she minds your laughing,” she suggested.

”As if it wasn't true, then. Seems like that. Wants us to think it's not true.”

”She was very earnest about it,” said the amba.s.sador.

Diva got up, and tripped over the outlying skirts of Mrs. Poppit's fur coat as she went to ring the bell.

”Sorry,” she said. ”Take it off and have a chat. Tea's coming. m.u.f.fins!”

”Oh, no, thanks!” said Mrs. Poppit. ”I've so many calls to make.”

”What? Similar calls?” asked Diva. ”Wait ten minutes. Tea, Janet.

Quickly.”

She whirled round the room once or twice, all corrugated with perplexity, beginning telegraphic sentences, and not finis.h.i.+ng them: ”Says it's not true--laughs at notion of--And Mr. Wyse believes--The Padre believed. After all, the Major--Little c.o.c.k-sparrow Captain Puffin--Or t'other way round, do you think?--No other explanation, you know--Might have been blood----”

She buried her teeth in a m.u.f.fin.