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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
E. F. Benson's "The Complete Short Stories of E. F. Benson" is a captivating collection of stories that showcase the author's mastery of the short story format. Benson's writing style is characterized by its rich descriptive language, keen observational skills, and astute insight into human nature. Set in the early 20th century, the stories explore themes of love, society, class, and the supernatural, providing a fascinating glimpse into the world of the British aristocracy of the time. Benson's ability to create fully dimensional characters and intricately plotted narratives makes this collection a must-read for fans of classic literature. E. F. Benson, a prolific author and accomplished storyteller, drew inspiration from his own experiences as a member of the English upper class to create the vivid and engaging stories found in this collection. His deep understanding of social dynamics and psychological subtleties imbues his work with a sense of authenticity and depth. I highly recommend "The Complete Short Stories of E. F. Benson" to readers who appreciate finely crafted storytelling, nuanced characters, and insightful explorations of human nature. This collection is a literary gem that will delight and captivate readers of all backgrounds and interests. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Seitenzahl: 1930
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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The Complete Short Stories of E. F. Benson
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
Introduction
This edition presents The Complete Short Stories of E. F. Benson, assembling in one place the author’s shorter fiction from his principal volumes and from uncollected sources. It is devoted to short stories rather than the novels and other long‑form works for which Benson is also known, and it includes selections grouped here as Make Way for Lucia Stories, The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories, The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories, Visible and Invisible, Spook Stories, More Spook Stories, and Uncollected Stories. The aim is comprehensive clarity: to offer readers the range of Benson’s storytelling in concise forms, from sparkling social comedy to the uncanny.
Across these sections, the collection represents the principal genres Benson pursued in the short form. The supernatural tales, long admired within the British ghost-story tradition, stand beside urbane society pieces and comic miniatures related to the Lucia milieu. While Benson also wrote novels and nonfiction, those longer or discursive modes lie outside the scope here. What unites the present texts is their brevity and self-contained architecture: stories shaped for magazines and book collections, attentive to pace, atmosphere, and a decisive turn. Readers encounter both quiet terrors and polished studies of manners, each distilled to a pointed narrative moment.
The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories (1912) introduces many of Benson’s abiding strategies for the uncanny. Everyday settings—boarding houses, gardens, familiar drawing rooms—harbor a disquiet that advances by increments rather than shocks. Rational narrators describe events with cool precision, allowing dread to gather in the interstices of ordinary description. The title tale turns on a recurring dream and a particular chamber whose associations gradually darken; others explore apparitions, obsessions, and inexplicable visitations. The emphasis is on atmosphere, timing, and implication, a pattern that shaped Benson’s later ghostly work and secured his place among practitioners of the modern English ghost story.
The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories (1920) gathers non‑supernatural narratives that reveal Benson’s range beyond the macabre. Here are portraits of city drawing rooms and holiday resorts, of negotiating tables and private corners where reputation and desire contest one another. The plots often hinge on a tactical concealment or social false step, producing irony rather than horror, suspense rather than shock. Dialogue is crisp, settings are economically sketched, and the moral temperature is cool. Benson’s exact ear for status, tact, and embarrassment lends these tales their bite, aligning them with his broader achievement in social comedy and observation.
Visible and Invisible (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and More Spook Stories (1934) refine Benson’s supernatural method. The uncanny emerges from daylight normality: a walk home at dusk, a rented house, a holiday by the sea. The prose remains measured, the incidents carefully staged, the terror often arriving by suggestion and afterwardsness rather than spectacle. Recurring techniques include first‑person testimony, embedded reminiscence, and the use of quiet, plausible detail to ground an impossible event. Humor is not absent; it heightens the contrast when the intrusion falls. Taken together, these volumes consolidate Benson’s reputation for elegant, economical ghost stories with lingering resonance.
The Make Way for Lucia Stories showcase Benson’s comic brilliance in miniature, aligning with the world of his celebrated social satires. In these shorter pieces, village hierarchies, cultural fashions, and the theater of good manners become engines of plot, as rivals stage musical evenings, committee meetings, and seasonal fêtes with admirable zeal and mixed results. The tone is buoyant, the observation exact, and the intrigue domestically scaled, yet the craftsmanship mirrors that of the ghost stories: careful timing, nimble shifts of perspective, and an unerring sense of when to end. Together they offer a sparkling counterpoint to the collection’s darker veins.
The Uncollected Stories draw together pieces first published in periodicals and items not previously gathered by Benson in book form, completing the record of his short fiction. They confirm the breadth of his concerns: the performance of self in society, the pressures of place and memory, and the possibility that the ordinary may tilt, without warning, toward comedy or fear. Throughout, Benson’s signatures persist—lucid sentences, poised irony, and a craftsman’s feel for narrative proportion. By assembling these diverse modes within a single compass, the collection underscores his continuing significance and offers both newcomers and returning readers a coherent, comprehensive encounter with his shorter work.
Historical Context
Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) came of age in late Victorian Britain, the son of Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (1883–1896), and was educated at Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge. His early career unfolded amid elite literary networks and ecclesiastical culture that prized polished conversation and moral restraint. These milieus, stretching from Cambridge courts to London drawing rooms, framed both his satirical and supernatural instincts. After 1919 he settled in Rye, East Sussex, at Lamb House—formerly Henry James’s—which reinforced a fascination with refined manners and haunted interiors. The convergence of Anglican rationalism and Jamesian psychological nuance underpins the tone across his short fiction.
From the 1890s through the 1930s, the booming Anglo‑American periodical market shaped how Benson wrote and how readers encountered his tales. Illustrated magazines, railway bookstalls, and later cheap reprint series rewarded brisk plots, memorable turns, and compact atmospheres. Editors favored seasonal ghost numbers and serial social comedies, encouraging Benson to refine self‑contained episodes that could circulate internationally. Changes in copyright regimes and the decline of strict circulating‑library gatekeeping broadened audiences beyond the highbrow novel market. This ecosystem explains the varied provenance of pieces later gathered in The Room in the Tower and Spook Stories, or recovered as Uncollected Stories, and the ready reception of the Make Way for Lucia stories.
Victorian psychical research and popular spiritualism supplied a shared vocabulary for Benson’s supernatural mode. The Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882, lent quasi‑scientific legitimacy to hauntings, telepathy, and apparitions discussed in newspapers and clubs. After 1914, wartime bereavement intensified séance culture in Britain and the United States, making readers receptive to soberly reported uncanny experiences. Collections from 1912 onward—through Visible and Invisible (1923)—reflect this climate: they often stage investigations, controlled experiments, or skeptical witnesses confronting the inexplicable. Benson’s stance is neither credulous nor dismissive, mirroring a broad middle‑class attempt to reconcile empirical habits with unresolved loss.
Technological modernity gave Benson fresh ways to set dread against comfort. Electric lighting, telephones, and motorcars were altering London’s rhythms by 1900, even in patrician districts like Belgravia’s Lowndes Square—evoked in The Countess of Lowndes Square. Yet the survival of Georgian terraces, country houses, and parish customs preserved older social scripts. In many stories, a well‑appointed flat, seaside villa, or club becomes the stage where anachronistic forces intrude—voices on a wire, footprints on polished floors, shadows in lift shafts. This collision let Benson explore anxieties about privacy, class permeability, and urban anonymity while retaining a decorous surface, a strategy that appealed to readers wary of outright Gothic excess.
After the First World War, provincial England presented a theater of status recalibration that nourished the Lucia tales. Women’s expanded civic roles, new consumer rituals, and shifting incomes reconfigured small‑town hierarchies. Living in Rye from 1919 and serving as its mayor from 1934 to 1937, Benson observed club committees, fêtes, and municipal politicking firsthand. These experiences informed his portrait of Tilling’s rival hostesses and their social campaigns, set against the national backdrop of franchise reforms and rising leisure culture. Contemporary readers embraced the stories as witty maps of interwar manners, while critics noted their precise, almost ethnographic attention to ritual and prestige.
Expanding continental tourism and imperial circuits supplied Benson with settings and motifs beyond London and Sussex. Railway links and alpine resorts drew Britons to Switzerland—where Benson, a keen skater, had long sojourned—and to Italian and Mediterranean towns whose art, churches, and ruins carried historical residue. The travel boom, propelled by Thomas Cook itineraries and post‑1900 hotel infrastructures, made foreignness both accessible and disquieting. Benson’s stories exploit that ambivalence: holiday landscapes become liminal zones, where polite misreadings or ancient survivals tip into menace. Such plots echo a broader British negotiation with cosmopolitan modernity, balancing connoisseurship with unease about the persistence of the archaic.
Edwardian and interwar codes of discretion shaped both what Benson could state and how he insinuated it. Libel sensitivities in small communities, the conventions of family magazines, and prevailing sexual mores encouraged indirection, irony, and euphemism. In social comedies, reputations hinge on taste and timing; in ghost tales, suppressed motives or unspeakable desires often take spectral form. Later critics have read these patterns as registering the pressures of conformity on private selves, without explicit confession or scandal. The resulting tonal poise—urbane, clipped, suggestive—helped his pieces clear editorial thresholds while rewarding attentive readers with psychological depth beneath the bright surface.
By the late 1920s and 1930s, as economic uncertainty shadowed Britain after 1929, compact supernatural tales offered affordable diversion and a controlled shiver. Volumes such as Spook Stories (1928) and More Spook Stories (1934) benefited from anthology culture and the rise of broadcast readings after the BBC’s 1922 founding. Benson’s death in 1940, amid the opening phase of the Second World War, fixed his reputation as both a civilized ironist and a reliable purveyor of the uncanny. Subsequent reprints grouped the ghost pieces with the Lucia sketches, revealing how a shared social sensibility underlay his apparently disparate short‑form achievements.
Synopsis (Selection)
Make Way for Lucia Stories
Social comedies set in provincial England, where status games, rivalries, and artistic affectations are dissected with surgical wit.
Arch, sparkling tones turn tea-table rituals into theater, exploring performance, prestige, and communal control—Benson’s satiric signature at its most nimble.
Early Supernatural: The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories + Visible And Invisible
Everyday settings slide into mounting dread as diary-like first-person accounts and recurrent dreams blur boundaries between waking life and the uncanny.
Recurring motifs—haunted rooms, oppressive houses, watchful landscapes, and perilous curiosity—show Benson tightening from luxuriant atmospherics to terser shocks and rational narrators unsettled by the inexplicable.
The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories
A mixed suite of society tales, crime pieces, and occasional uncanny turns where impeccable manners mask moral calculation and sudden reversals.
Brisk, ironic storytelling bridges high comedy and cooler puzzle-making, foregrounding reputation, deception, and the costs of social performance.
Later Ghost Tales: Spook Stories + More Spook Stories
Late-career supernatural vignettes honed into efficient set-pieces, where skeptical observers meet precise, rule-bound hauntings that invade modern routines.
Dry urbanity and clean architectures of dread recur—coastal villages, cursed objects, and liminal thresholds—blending chill, anecdote, and wry amusement while refining the ghost story’s mechanics.
Uncollected Stories
A grab-bag of experiments ranging from light satire to eerie sketches, revealing flexibility in voice and structure beyond the main volumes.
It highlights connective tissue across the oeuvre—petty social theaters, disciplined narration, and abrupt irruptions of the uncanny—while hinting at directions Benson only briefly pursued.
The Complete Short Stories of E. F. Benson
Make Way for Lucia Stories
Table of Contents
The Male Impersonator
MISS ELIZABETH MAPP was sitting, on this warm September morning, in the little public garden at Tilling, busy as a bee with her watercolour sketch. She had taken immense pains with the drawing of the dykes that intersected the marsh, of the tidal river which ran across it from the coast, and of the shipyard in the foreground: indeed she had procured a photograph of this particular view and, by the judicious use of tracing-paper, had succeeded in seeing the difficult panorama precisely as the camera saw it: now the rewarding moment was come to use her paintbox. She was intending to be very bold over this, following the method which Mr Sargent practised with such satisfactory results, namely of painting, not what she knew was there, but what her eye beheld, and there was no doubt whatever that the broad waters of the high tide, though actually grey and muddy, appeared to be as blue as the sky which they reflected. So, with a fierce glow of courage she filled her broad brush with the same strong solution of cobalt as she had used for the sky, and unhesitatingly applied it.
"There!" she said to herself. "That's what he would have done. And now I must wait till it dries."
The anxiety of waiting to see the effect of so reckless a proceeding by no means paralysed the natural activity of Miss Mapp's mind, and there was plenty to occupy it. She had returned only yesterday afternoon from a month's holiday in Switzerland, and there was much to plan and look forward to. Already she had made a minute inspection of her house and garden, satisfying herself that the rooms had been kept well-aired, that no dusters or dish-cloths were missing, that there was a good crop of winter lettuces, and that all her gardener's implements were there except one trowel, which she might possibly have overlooked: she did not therefore at present entertain any dark suspicions on the subject. She had also done her marketing in the High Street, where she had met several friends, of whom Godiva Plaistow was coming to tea to give her all the news, and thus, while the cobalt dried, she could project her mind into the future. The little circle of friends, who made life so pleasant and busy (and sometimes so agitating) an affair in Tilling would all have returned now for the winter, and the days would scurry by in a round of housekeeping, bridge, weekly visits to the workhouse, and intense curiosity as to anything of domestic interest which took place in the strenuous world of this little country town.
The thought of bridge caused a slight frown to gather on her forehead. Bridge was the chief intellectual pursuit of her circle and, shortly before she went away, that circle had been convulsed by the most acute divergences of opinion with regard to majority-calling. Miss Mapp had originally been strongly against it.
"I'm sure I don't know by what right the Portland Club tells us how to play bridge," she witheringly remarked. "Tilling might just as well tell the Portland Club to eat salt with gooseberry tart, and for my part I shall continue to play the game I prefer."
But then one evening Miss Mapp held no less than nine clubs in her hand and this profusion caused her to see certain advantages in majority-calling to which she had hitherto been blind, and she warmly espoused it. Unfortunately, of the eight players who spent so many exciting evenings together, there were thus left five who rejected majority (which was a very inconvenient number since one must always be sitting out) and three who preferred it. This was even more inconvenient, for they could not play bridge at all.
"We really must make a compromise," thought Miss Mapp, meaning that everybody must come round to her way of thinking, "or our dear little cosy bridge evenings won't be possible."
The warm sun had now dried her solution of cobalt, and, holding her sketch at arm's length, she was astonished to observe how blue she had made the river, and wondered if she had seen it quite as brilliant as that. But the cowardly notion of toning it down a little was put out of her head by the sound of the church clock striking one, and it was time to go home to lunch.
The garden where she had been sketching was on the southward slope of the hill below the Church square, and having packed her artistic implements she climbed the steep little rise. As she skirted along one side of this square, which led into Curfew Street, she saw a large pantechnicon van lumbering along its cobbled way. It instantly occurred to her that the house at the far end of the street, which had stood empty so long, had been taken at last, and since this was one of the best residences in Tilling, it was naturally a matter of urgent importance to ascertain if this surmise was true. Sure enough the van stopped at the door, and Miss Mapp noticed that the bills in the windows of "Suntrap" which announced that it was for sale, had been taken down. That was extremely interesting, and she wondered why Diva Plaistow, who, in the brief interview they had held in the High Street this morning, had been in spate with a torrent of miscellaneous gossip, had not mentioned a fact of such primary importance. Could it be that dear Diva was unaware of it? It was pleasant to think that after a few hours in Tilling she knew more local news than poor Diva who had been here all August.
She retraced her steps and hurried home. Just as she opened the door she heard the telephone bell ringing, and was met by the exciting intelligence that this was a trunk call. Trunk calls were always thrilling; no one trunked over trivialities. She applied ear and mouth to the proper places.
"Tilling 76?" asked a distant insect-like voice.
Now, Miss Mapp's real number was Tilling 67, but she had a marvellous memory, and it instantly flashed through her mind that the number of Suntrap was 76. The next process was merely automatic, and she said, "Yes." If a trunk call was coming for Suntrap and a pantechnicon van had arrived at Suntrap, there was no question of choice: the necessity of hearing what was destined for Suntrap knew no law.
"Her ladyship will come down by motor this afternoon," said the insect, "and she —"
"Who will come down?" asked Miss Mapp, with her mouth watering.
"Lady Deal, I tell you. Has the first van arrived?"
"Yes," said Miss Mapp.
"Very well. Fix up a room for her ladyship. She'll get her food at some hotel, but she'll stop for a night or two settling in. How are you getting on, Susie?"
Miss Mapp did not feel equal to saying how Susie was getting on, and she slid the receiver quietly into its place.
She sat for a moment considering the immensity of her trove, feeling perfectly certain that Diva knew nothing about it all, or the fact that Lady Deal had taken Suntrap must have been her very first item of news. Then she reflected that a trunk call had been expended on Susie, and that she could do no less than pass the message on. A less scrupulous woman might have let Susie languish in ignorance, but her fine nature dictated the more honourable course. So she rang up Tilling 76, and in a hollow voice passed on the news. Susie asked if it was Jane speaking, and Miss Mapp again felt she did not know enough about Jane to continue the conversation.
"It's only at Tilling that such interesting things happen," she thought as she munched her winter lettuce . . . She had enjoyed her holiday at the Riffel Alp, and had had long talks to a Bishop about the revised prayer book, and to a Russian exile about Bolshevism and to a member of the Alpine Club about Mount Everest, but these remote cosmic subjects really mattered far less than the tenant of Suntrap, for the new prayer book was only optional, and Russia and Mount Everest were very far away and had no bearing on daily life, as she had not the smallest intention of exploring either of them. But she had a consuming desire to know who Susie was, and since it would be a pleasant little stroll after lunch to go down Curfew Street, and admire the wide view at the end of it, she soon set out again. The pantechnicon van was in process of unlading, and as she lingered a big bustling woman came to the door of Suntrap, and told the men where to put the piano. It was a slight disappointment to see that it was only an upright: Miss Mapp would have preferred a concert-grand for so territorially-sounding a mistress. When the piano had bumped its way into the rather narrow entrance, she put on her most winning smile, and stepped up to Susie with a calling-card in her hand, of which she had turned down the right-hand corner to show by this mystic convention that she had delivered it in person.
"Has her ladyship arrived yet?" she asked. "No? Then would you kindly give her my card when she gets here? Thank you!"
Miss Mapp had a passion for indirect procedure: it was so much more amusing, when in pursuit of any object, however trivial and innocent, to advance with stealth under cover rather than march up to it in the open and grab it, and impersonating Susie and Jane, though only for a moment at the end of a wire, supplied that particular sauce which rendered her life at Tilling so justly palatable. But she concealed her stalkings under the brushwood, so to speak, of a frank and open demeanour, and though she was sure she had a noble quarry within shot, did not propose to disclose herself just yet. Probably Lady Deal would return her card next day, and in the interval she would be able to look her up in the Peerage, of which she knew she had somewhere an antique and venerable copy, and she would thus be in a position to deluge Diva with a flood of information: she might even have ascertained Lady Deal's views on majority-calling at bridge. She made a search for this volume, but without success, in the bookshelves of her big garden-room, which had been the scene of so much of Tilling's social life, and of which the bow-window, looking both towards the church and down the cobbled way which ran down to the High Street, was so admirable a post for observing the activities of the town. But she knew this book was somewhere in the house, and she could find it at leisure when she had finished picking Diva's brains of all the little trifles and shreds of news which had happened in Tilling during her holiday.
Though it was still only four o'clock, Miss Mapp gazing attentively out of her window suddenly observed Diva's round squat little figure trundling down the street from the church in the direction of her house, with those short twinkling steps of hers which so much resembled those of a thrush scudding over the lawn in search of worms. She hopped briskly into Miss Mapp's door, and presently scuttled into the garden-room, and began to speak before the door was more than ajar.
"I know I'm very early, Elizabeth," she said, "but I felt I must tell you what has happened without losing a moment. I was going up Curfew Street just now, and what do you think! Guess!"
Elizabeth gave a half-yawn and dexterously transformed it into an indulgent little laugh.
"I suppose you mean that the new tenant is settling into Suntrap," she said.
Diva's face fell: all the joy of the herald of great news died out of it.
"What? You know?" she said.
"Oh, dear me, yes," replied Elizabeth. "But thank you, Diva, for coming to tell me. That was a kind intention."
This was rather irritating: it savoured of condescension.
"Perhaps you know who the tenant is," said Diva with an unmistakable ring of sarcasm in her voice.
Miss Mapp gave up the idea of any further secrecy, for she could never find a better opportunity for making Diva's sarcasm look silly.
"Oh yes, it's Lady Deal," she said. "She is coming down — let me see, Thursday isn't it? — she is coming down today."
"But how did you know?" asked Diva.
Miss Mapp put a meditative finger to her forehead. She did not mean to lie, but she certainly did not mean to tell the truth.
"Now, who was it who told me?" she said. "Was it someone at the Riffel Alp? No, I don't think so. Someone in London, perhaps: yes, I feel sure that was it. But that doesn't matter: it's Lady Deal anyhow who has taken the house. In fact, I was just glancing round to see if I could find a Peerage: it might be useful just to ascertain who she was. But here's tea. Now it's your turn, dear: you shall tell me all the news of Tilling, and then we'll see about Lady Deal."
After this great piece of intelligence, all that poor Diva had to impart of course fell very flat: the forthcoming harvest festival, the mistake (if it was a mistake) that Mrs Poppit had made in travelling first-class with a third-class ticket, the double revoke made by Miss Terling at bridge, were all very small beer compared to this noble vintage, and presently the two ladies were engaged in a systematic search for the Peerage. It was found eventually in a cupboard in the spare bedroom, and Miss Mapp eagerly turned up "Deal".
"Viscount," she said. "Born, succeeded and so on. Ah, married —"
She gave a cry of dismay and disgust.
"Oh, how shocking!" she said. "Lady Deal was Helena Herman. I remember seeing her at a music hall."
"No!" said Diva.
"Yes," said Miss Mapp firmly. "And she was a male impersonator. That's the end of her; naturally we can have nothing to do with her, and I think everybody ought to know at once. To think that a male impersonator should come to Tilling and take one of the best houses in the place! Why, it might as well have remained empty."
"Awful!" said Diva. "But what an escape I've had, Elizabeth. I very nearly left my card at Suntrap, and then I should have had this dreadful woman calling on me. What a mercy I didn't."
Miss Mapp found bitter food for thought in this, but that had to be consumed in private, for it would be too humiliating to tell Diva that she had been caught in the trap which Diva had avoided. Diva must not know that, and when she had gone Miss Mapp would see about getting out.
At present Diva showed no sign of going.
"How odd that your informant in London didn't tell you what sort of a woman Lady Deal was," she said, "and how lucky we've found her out in time. I am going to the choir practice this evening, and I shall be able to tell several people. All the same, Elizabeth, it would be thrilling to know a male impersonator, and she may be a very decent woman."
"Then you can go and leave your card, dear," said Miss Mapp, "and I should think you would know her at once."
"Well, I suppose it wouldn't do," said Diva regretfully. As Elizabeth had often observed with pain, she had a touch of Bohemianism about her.
Though Diva prattled endlessly on, it was never necessary to attend closely to what she was saying, and long before she left Miss Mapp had quite made up her mind as to what to do about that card. She only waited to see Diva twinkle safely down the street and then set off in the opposite direction for Suntrap. She explained to Susie with many apologies that she had left a card here by mistake, intending to bestow it next door, and thus triumphantly recovered it. That she had directed that the card should be given to Lady Deal was one of those trumpery little inconsistencies which never troubled her.
The news of the titled male impersonator spread like influenza through Tilling, and though many ladies secretly thirsted to know her, public opinion felt that such moral proletarianism was impossible. Classes, it was true, in these democratic days were being sadly levelled, but there was a great gulf between male impersonators and select society which even viscountesses could not bridge. So the ladies of Tilling looked eagerly but furtively at any likely stranger they met in their shoppings, but their eyes assumed a glazed expression when they got close. Curfew Street, however, became a very favourite route for strolls before lunch when shopping was over, for the terrace at the end of it not only commanded a lovely view of the marsh but also of Suntrap. Miss Mapp, indeed, abandoned her Sargentesque sketch of the river, and began a new one here. But for a couple of days there were no great developments in the matter of the male impersonator.
Then one morning the wheels of fate began to whizz. Miss Mapp saw emerging from the door of Suntrap a bath-chair, and presently, heavily leaning on two sticks, there came out an elderly lady who got into it, and was propelled up Curfew Street by Miss Mapp's part-time gardener. Curiosity was a quality she abhorred, and with a strong effort but a trembling hand she went on with her sketch without following the bath-chair, or even getting a decent view of its occupant. But in ten minutes she found it was quite hopeless to pursue her artistic efforts when so overwhelming a human interest beckoned, and, bundling her painting materials into her satchel, she hurried down towards the High Street, where the bath-chair had presumably gone. But before she reached it, she met Diva scudding up towards her house. As soon as they got within speaking distance they broke into telegraphic phrases, being both rather out of breath.
"Bath-chair came out of Suntrap," began Miss Mapp.
"Thought so," panted Diva. "Saw it through the open door yesterday."
"Went down towards the High Street," said Miss Mapp.
"I passed it twice," said Diva proudly.
"What's she like?" asked Miss Mapp. "Only got a glimpse."
"Quite old," said Diva. "Should think between fifty and sixty. How long ago did you see her at the music hall?"
"Ten years. But she seemed quite young then . . . Come into the garden-room, Diva. We shall see in both directions from there, and we can talk quietly."
The two ladies hurried into the bow-window of the garden-room, and having now recovered their breath went on less spasmodically.
"That's very puzzling you know," said Miss Mapp. "I'm sure it wasn't more than ten years ago, and, as I say, she seemed quite young. But of course make-up can do a great deal, and also I should think impersonation was a very ageing life. Ten years of it might easily have made her an old woman."
"But hardly as old as this," said Diva. "And she's quite lame: two sticks, and even then great difficulty in walking. Was she lame when you saw her on the stage?"
"I can't remember that," said Miss Mapp. "Indeed, she couldn't have been lame, for she was Romeo, and swarmed up to a high balcony. What was her face like?"
"Kind and nice," said Diva, "but much wrinkled and a good deal of moustache."
Miss Mapp laughed in a rather unkind manner.
"That would make the male impersonation easier," she said. "Go on, Diva, what else?"
"She stopped at the grocer's, and Cannick came hurrying out in the most sycophantic manner. And she ordered something — I couldn't hear what — to be sent up to Suntrap. Also she said some name, which I couldn't hear, but I'm sure it wasn't Lady Deal. That would have caught my ear at once."
Miss Mapp suddenly pointed down the street.
"Look! there's Cannick's boy coming up now," she said. "They have been quick. I suppose that's because she's a viscountess. I'm sure I wait hours sometimes for what I order. Such a snob! I've got an idea!"
She flew out into the street.
"Good-morning, Thomas," she said. "I was wanting to order — let me see now, what was it? What a heavy basket you've got. Put it down on my steps, while I recollect."
The basket may have been heavy, but its contents were not, for it contained but two small parcels. The direction on them was clearly visible, and having ascertained that, Miss Mapp ordered a pound of apples and hurried back to the garden-room.
"To Miss Mackintosh, Suntrap," she said. "What do you make of that, Diva?"
"Nothing," said Diva.
"Then I'll tell you. Lady Deal wants to live down her past, and she has changed her name. I call that very deceitful, and I think worse of her than ever. Lucky that I could see through it."
"That's far-fetched," said Diva, "and it doesn't explain the rest. She's much older than she could possibly be if she was on the stage ten years ago, and she says she isn't Lady Deal at all. She may be right, you know."
Miss Mapp was justly exasperated, the more so because some faint doubt of the sort had come into her own mind, and it would be most humiliating if all her early and superior information proved false. But her vigorous nature rejected such an idea and she withered Diva.
"Considering I know that Lady Deal has taken Suntrap," she said, "and that she was a male impersonator, and that she did come down here some few days ago, and that this woman and her bath-chair came out of Suntrap, I don't think there can be much question about it. So that, Diva, is that."
Diva got up in a huff.
"As you always know you're right, dear," she said, "I won't stop to discuss it."
"So wise, darling," said Elizabeth.
Now Miss Mapp's social dictatorship among the ladies of Tilling had long been paramount, but every now and then signs of rebellious upheavals showed themselves. By virtue of her commanding personality these had never assumed really serious proportions, for Diva, who was generally the leader in these uprisings, had not the same moral massiveness. But now when Elizabeth was so exceedingly superior, the fumes of Bolshevism mounted swiftly to Diva's head. Moreover, the sight of this puzzling male impersonator, old, wrinkled, and moustached, had kindled to a greater heat her desire to know her and learn what it felt like to be Romeo on the music-hall stage and, after years of that delirious existence, to subside into a bath-chair and Suntrap and Tilling. What a wonderful life! . . . And behind all this there was a vague notion that Elizabeth had got her information in some clandestine manner and had muddled it. For all her clear-headedness and force Elizabeth did sometimes make a muddle and it would be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to catch her out. So in a state of brooding resentment Diva went home to lunch and concentrated on how to get even with Elizabeth.
Now, it had struck her that Mrs Bartlett, the wife of the vicar of Tilling, had not been so staggered when she was informed at the choir practice of the identity and of the lurid past of the new parishioner as might have been expected: indeed, Mrs Bartlett had whispered, "Oh dear me, how exciting — I mean, how shocking," and Diva suspected that she did not mean "shocking". So that afternoon she dropped in at the Vicarage with a pair of socks which she had knitted for the Christmas tree at the workhouse, though that event was still more than three months away. After a cursory allusion to her charitable errand, she introduced the true topic.
"Poor woman!" she said. "She was being wheeled about the High Street this morning and looked so lonely. However many males she has impersonated, that's all over for her. She'll never be Romeo again."
"No indeed, poor thing!" said Mrs Bartlett; "and, dear me, how she must miss the excitement of it. I wonder if she'll write her memoirs: most people do if they've had a past. Of course, if they haven't, there's nothing to write about. Shouldn't I like to read Lady Deal's memoirs! But how much more exciting to hear her talk about it all, if we only could!"
"I feel just the same," said Diva, "and, besides, the whole thing is mysterious. What if you and I went to call? Indeed, I think it's almost your duty to do so, as the clergyman's wife. Her settling in Tilling looks very like repentance, in which case you ought to set the example, Evie, of being friendly."
"But what would Elizabeth Mapp say?" asked Mrs Bartlett. "She thought nobody ought to know her."
"Pooh," said Diva. "If you'll come and call, Evie, I'll come with you. And is it really quite certain that she is Lady Deal?"
"Oh, I hope so," said Evie.
"Yes, so do I, I'm sure, but all the authority we have for it at present is that Elizabeth said that Lady Deal had taken Suntrap. And who told Elizabeth that? There's too much Elizabeth in it. Let's go and call there, Evie: now, at once."
"Oh, but dare we?" said the timorous Evie. "Elizabeth will see us. She's sketching at the corner there."
"No, that's her morning sketch," said Diva. "Besides, who cares if she does?"
The socks for the Christmas tree were now quite forgotten and, with this parcel still unopened, the two ladies set forth, with Mrs Bartlett giving fearful sidelong glances this way and that. But there were no signs of Elizabeth, and they arrived undetected at Suntrap, and enquired if Lady Deal was in.
"No, ma'am," said Susie. "Her ladyship was only here for two nights settling Miss Mackintosh in, but she may be down again tomorrow. Miss Mackintosh is in."
Susie led the way to the drawing-room, and there, apparently, was Miss Mackintosh.
"How good of you to come and call on me," she said. "And will you excuse my getting up? I am so dreadfully lame. Tea, Susie, please!"
Of course it was a disappointment to know that the lady in the bath-chair was not the repentant male impersonator, but the chill of that was tempered by the knowledge that Elizabeth had been completely at sea, and how far from land, no one yet could conjecture. Their hostess seemed an extremely pleasant woman, and under the friendly stimulus of tea even brighter prospects disclosed themselves.
"I love Tilling already," said Miss Mackintosh, "and Lady Deal adores it. It's her house, not mine, you know — but I think I had better explain it all, and then I've got some questions to ask. You see, I'm Florence's old governess, and Susie is her old nurse, and Florence wanted to make us comfortable, and at the same time to have some little house to pop down to herself when she was utterly tired out with her work."
Diva's head began to whirl. It sounded as if Florence was Lady Deal, but then, according to the Peerage, Lady Deal was Helena Herman. Perhaps she was Helena Florence Herman.
"It may get clearer soon," she thought to herself, "and, anyhow, we're coming to Lady Deal's work."
"Her work must be very tiring indeed," said Evie.
"Yes, she's very naughty about it," said Miss Mackintosh. "Girl-guides, mothers' meetings, Primrose League, and now she's standing for Parliament. And it was so like her; she came down here last week, before I arrived, in order to pull furniture about and make the house comfortable for me when I got here. And she's coming back tomorrow to spend a week here I hope. Won't you both come in and see her? She longs to know Tilling. Do you play bridge by any chance? Florence adores bridge."
"Yes, we play a great deal in Tilling," said Diva. "We're devoted to it too."
"That's capital. Now, I'm going to insist that you should both dine with us tomorrow, and we'll have a rubber and a talk. I hope you both hate majority-calling as much as we do."
"Loathe it," said Diva.
"Splendid. You'll come, then. And now I long to know something. Who was the mysterious lady who called here in the afternoon when Florence came down to move furniture, and returned an hour or two afterwards and asked for the card she had left with instructions that it should be given to Lady Deal? Florence is thrilled about her. Some short name, Tap or Rap. Susie couldn't remember it."
Evie suddenly gave vent to a shrill cascade of squeaky laughter.
"Oh dear me," she said. "That would be Miss Mapp. Miss Mapp is a great figure in Tilling. And she called! Fancy!"
"But why did she come back and take her card away?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "I told Florence that Miss Mapp had heard something dreadful about her. And how did she know that Lady Deal was coming here at all? The house was taken in my name."
"That's just what we all long to find out," said Diva eagerly. "She said that somebody in London told her."
"But who?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "Florence only settled to come at lunchtime that day, and she told her butler to ring up Susie and say she would be arriving."
Diva's eyes grew round and bright with inductive reasoning.
"I believe we're on the right tack," she said. "Could she have received Lady Deal's butler's message, do you think? What's your number?"
"Tilling 76," said Miss Mackintosh.
Evie gave three ecstatic little squeaks.
"Oh, that's it, that's it!" she said. "Elizabeth Mapp is Tilling 67. So careless of them, but all quite plain. And she did hear it from somebody in London. Quite true, and so dreadfully false and misleading, and so like her. Isn't it, Diva? Well, it does serve her right to be found out."
Miss Mackintosh was evidently a true Tillingite.
"How marvellous!" she said. "Tell me much more about Miss Mapp. But let's go back. Why did she take that card away?"
Diva looked at Evie, and Evie looked at Diva.
"You tell her," said Evie.
"Well, it was like this," said Diva. "Let us suppose that she heard the butler say that Lady Deal was coming —"
"And passed it on," interrupted Miss Mackintosh. "Because Susie got the message and said it was wonderfully clear for a trunk call. That explains it. Please go on."
"And so Elizabeth Mapp called," said Diva, "and left her card. I didn't know that until you told me just now. And now I come in. I met her that very afternoon, and she told me that Lady Deal, so she had heard in London, had taken this house. So we looked up Lady Deal in a very old Peerage of hers —"
Miss Mackintosh waved her arms wildly.
"Oh, please stop, and let me guess," she cried. "I shall go crazy with joy if I'm right. It was an old Peerage, and so she found that Lady Deal was Helena Herman —"
"Whom she had seen ten years ago at a music hall as a male impersonator," cried Diva.
"And didn't want to know her," interrupted Miss Mackintosh.
"Yes, that's it, but that is not all. I hope you won't mind, but it's too rich. She saw you this morning coming out of your house in your bath-chair, and was quite sure that you were that Lady Deal."
The three ladies rocked with laughter. Sometimes one recovered, and sometimes two, but they were re-infected by the third, and so they went on, solo and chorus, and duet and chorus, till exhaustion set in.
"But there's still a mystery," said Diva at length, wiping her eyes. "Why did the Peerage say that Lady Deal was Helena Herman?"
"Oh, that's the last Lady Deal," said Miss Mackintosh. "Helena Herman's Lord Deal died without children and Florence's Lord Deal, my Lady Deal, succeeded. Cousins."
"If that isn't a lesson for Elizabeth Mapp," said Diva. "Better go to the expense of a new Peerage than make such a muddle. But what a long call we've made. We must go."
"Florence shall hear every word of it tomorrow night," said Miss Mackintosh. "I promise not to tell her till then. We'll all tell her."
"Oh, that is kind of you," said Diva.
"It's only fair. And what about Miss Mapp being told?"
"She'll find it out by degrees," said the ruthless Diva. "It will hurt more in bits."
"Oh, but she mustn't be hurt," said Miss Mackintosh. "She's too precious, I adore her."
"So do we," said Diva. "But we like her to be found out occasionally. You will, too, when you know her."
Desirable Residences
HOUSES in Tilling are in much request during the months of August and September by holiday-makers of the quieter sort, who do not want to stay in large hotels on esplanades in places where there are piers, to flock to the shore in brilliant bathing-costumes, to pose for photographers in the certainty of winning prizes as plump sea-nymphs, to dress for dinner and dance afterwards. But families in search of tranquillity combined with agreeable pastimes, find Tilling much to their mind: there is a golf-links, there are illimitable sands and safe bathing: no treacherous currents swirl the swimmer out to sea when the tide is ebbing (indeed, the shore is so flat that the ebb merely leaves him stranded like a star-fish miles away from his clothes): there are stretches of charming country inland for exploratory picnics, and Tilling itself is so full of picturesque corners and crooked chimneys and timbered houses that easels in August render the streets almost impassable.
The higher social circles in this little town are mainly composed of well-to-do maiden ladies and widows, most of whom, owing to the remunerative demand for holiday residences, live in rather larger houses than they otherwise would and recoup themselves by advantageous letting. Thus towards the middle of July a very lively general post takes place.
Those who own the largest houses with gardens, like Miss Elizabeth Mapp, can let them for as much as fifteen guineas a week, and themselves take houses for that period at eight to ten guineas at week, thus collaring the difference and enjoying a change of habitation, which often gives them rich peeps into the private habits of their neighbours. Those who have smaller houses, like Mrs Plaistow, similarly let them for perhaps eight guineas a week and take something at five: the owners of the latter take cottages, and the cottagers go hop-picking.
Many householders, of course, go away for these months, but those who remain always let their own houses and are content with something smaller. The system seems to resemble that of those thrifty villagers who earned their living by taking in each other's washing, and answers excellently.
Miss Mapp on this moming of early July had received an enquiry from her last year's tenants, as to whether she would let her house to them again on the same terms. They were admirable tenants who brought their own servants, a father who played golf, a mother who wrote letters in the garden, and two daughters with spectacles who steadily sketched their way along the streets of the town.
Miss Mapp instantly made up her mind to do so, and had to settle whether she should take a smaller house herself or go away. If she could get Diva Plaistow's house, she thought she would remain here and take her holiday in the winter. Diva was asking eight guineas a week, including garden-produce. The crop on her apple-trees this year was prodigious, and since garden-produce was included, Miss Mapp supposed she would have the right to fill hampers with what she couldn’t eat and take them away at the end of her tenancy.
"I shouldn't have to buy an apple all winter," thought Miss Mapp. "And then fifteen guineas a week for eight weeks makes a hundred and twenty guineas, and subtract eight times eight which is sixty-four (I shall try to get it a little cheaper) which leaves — let me see . . ."
She arrived at the sumptuous remainder by tracing figures with the handle of her teaspoon on the table-cloth, and having written to the admirable tenants to say that she would be happy to let her house again at the same price, hurried to the house-agents to make enquiries. She could, of course, have gone to Diva direct, but it would not be pretty to haggle in person with so old a friend. She put on her most genial smile, and was artful.
"Good-morning, Mr Hassall," she said. "A cousin has asked me to enquire about houses in Tilling for the summer. I think Mrs Plaistow’s little house might suit her, but I fancy she wouldn't pay as much as eight guineas a week."
"Very nice house, ma'am. Very good value," said Mr Hassall. "Garden-produce included."
"Yes, but eight guineas is rather high. But perhaps you would tell Mrs Plaistow that you've had an enquiry offering seven. And what about servants?"
"Mrs Plaistow is thinking of getting another house for the summer, and taking her servants with her."
Miss Mapp considered this, still smiling.
"I see. Then would you make enquiries, and let me know as soon as possible? I am going home at once, Good-morning. What a lovely day!"
This question about servants was, like all Miss Mapp's manoeuvres, much to the point. If Diva was leaving servants, her plan was to pick a quarrel with her cook without delay, and give her a month's warning, which would bring her to the beginning of August. But there was no need for that now.
Miss Mapp stepped out of the office into the hot sunshine, and failed to observe Diva, round and red, trundling up the street behind her. But Diva, whose eyes were gimlets, saw Miss Mapp and where she came from, and popping in to see whether there were any enquiries for her house, heard from Mr Hassall that he had just received one, offering seven guineas a week. Such evidence was naturally conclusive, and she had not the smallest doubt that this nameless tenant was Miss Mapp herself.
Mr Hassall allowed that the enquiry had been made by Miss Mapp on behalf of a cousin, and Diva laughed in a shrill and scornful manner. She no more believed in the cousin than she believed in the man in the moon, and it was like Elizabeth — too sadly like her, in fact — to attempt to haggle behind her back. She also drew the inference that Elizabeth had received an offer for her house, and already rolling in prospective riches, wanted to roll a little more.
"Kindly ring Miss Mapp up at once," she said, "for I saw her going up the street towards her house, and say that I am asking eight guineas a week, and will not take less. I should like a definite answer at once, and I'll wait."
The telephone bell saluted Miss Mapp's ears as she entered her own door, and the ultimatum was delivered. It was tiresome to have used the cousinly subterfuge and have got nothing by it, but the difference between even eight guineas a week and fifteen was quite pleasant. So she accepted these terms, and since it would soon be obvious that she was her own cousin, she admitted the fact at once.
Diva was so pleased to have seen through the transparent and abject trick so instantaneously, that, full of self-satisfaction at her own acuteness, she bore poor Elizabeth no grudge whatever. She only sighed to think how like Elizabeth that was, and having thus secured a very decent let, inspected a smaller house belonging to Mrs Tropp which would suit her very well, and obtained it, for the period during which she had let her own, at four guineas a week.
* * *
Some fortnight later, Miss Mapp was returning from an afternoon bridge-party at Diva's. She had won every rubber, which was satisfactory, and had caught Diva revoking beyond all chance of wriggling out of it, which made a sort of riches in the mind of much vaster value than that of the actual penalty. But it was annoying only to have been playing those new stakes of fourpence halfpenny a hundred. This singular sum was the result of compromise: the wilder and wealthier ladies of Tilling liked playing for sixpence a hundred, but those of more moderate means stuck out for threepence. Diva who hardly ever won a rubber at all was one of these.
She said she played bridge to amuse herself and not to make money. Miss Mapp had acidly replied, "That's lucky, darling." But that was smoothed over, and this compromise had been arrived at. It worked quite well, and was a convenient way of getting rid of coppers if you lost, and the only difficulty was when there happened to be a difference of fifty or a hundred and fifty between the scores. "If a hundred is fourpence halfpenny,’ said Miss Mapp, "and fifty is half a hundred, which I think you'll grant, fifty is twopence farthing." . . . So after that, they all brought one or two farthings with them.
Still, even at these new and paltry stakes, Miss Mapp's bag this evening jingled pleasantly as she stepped homewards. But one thing rather troubled her: it was like a thunder-cloud muttering on the horizon of an otherwise sunny sky. For she had heard no more from the admirable tenants: there had just been the enquiry whether she was thinking of letting, and then a silence which by degrees grew ominous.
She wondered whether she had acted with more precipitation than prudence in committing herself to take Diva's house, before she actually let her own, and no sooner had she reached home than she became unpleasantly convinced that she had. The evening post had come in, and there was a letter from That Woman who had written so many in the garden, to say that a more bracing climate had been recommended for her husband, and that therefore many regrets . . .
It was a staggering moment. Instead of raking in a balance of seven guineas a week, she would possibly be paying out eight. July was slipping away, so the pessimistic Mr Hassall reminded her when she saw him next morning, and he was afraid that most holiday-makers had already made their arrangements. It would be wise perhaps to abate the price she was asking.
By the twentieth of July, anybody could have had Miss Mapp's house for twelve guineas a week: by the twenty-fourth, which ironically enough happened to be her birthday, for ten. But still there was no one who had the sense to secure so wonderful a bargain. It looked, in fact, as if the Nemesis which has an eye to the violation of economic problems, had awakened to the fact that the ladies of Tilling took in each other's washing (or rather took each other's houses) and scored all round.
And Nemesis, by way of being funny, did something further.
On July the thirtieth, Miss Mapp's most desirable residence, with garden and the enjoyment of garden-produce, could be had, throughout August and September, for the derisory sum of eight guineas a week. On that very day two children in the cottage which Mrs Tropp (Diva's lessor) had taken for herself developed mumps. A phobia about microbes was Mrs Tropp's most powerful characteristic, and with the prospect of being houseless for two months (for she would sooner have had mumps straight away than be afraid of catching them) she came in great distress to Diva, with the offer to take her own house back again at the increased rental of five guineas a week.
Besides, she added, to turn two swollen children out into the hop-fields was tantamount to manslaughter. Upon which, to Mrs Tropp's pained surprise, Diva burst out into a fit of giggles. When she recovered, she accepted Mrs Tropp's proposal.
"So right," she said, "we couldn't bear to have manslaughter on our consciences. Oh, dear me, how it hurts to laugh. Poor Elizabeth!"
Diva, still hurting very much, whirled away to Mr Hassall's.
"A cousin of mine," she said, "is looking out for a house at Tilling for August and September. Miss Mapp's, I think, would suit her, but seven guineas a week, I feel sure, is the utmost she would pay. I should like a definite answer at once, and I'll wait. Why, if I didn't use exactly those words to you, Mr Hassall, when last you telephoned to Miss Mapp for me! I won't give my name at present — just an offer."
Miss Mapp was in the depths of depression that afternoon when the telephone bell summoned her. She had practically determined to stay in her own spacious and comfortable house for the next two months, since it was of quite a different class to Diva's, but the thought of paying out eight guineas a week for a miserable little habitation (in spite of the apple-trees) in which would never set foot gnawed at her very vitals. Of course with the produce of her own garden and Diva's, she would have any amount of vegetables, and with the entire crop of Diva's apples added to her own cooking-pears (never had there been such a yield) she would do well in the way of fruit for the winter, but at a staggering price . . .
Then the telephone bell rang and with a sob of relief she accepted the offer it brought her. She hurried to Mr Hassall's to confirm it and sign the lease. When she knew that the applicant was Diva, and divined beyond doubt that Diva's cousin was Diva too, she moistened her lips once or twice, but otherwise showed no loss of self-control.
So for two months these ladies stayed in each other's houses. Mrs Plaistow's letters were addressed to "Care of Miss Mapp", and Miss Mapp's letters to "Care of Mrs Plaistow". Every week Diva received a cheque for one guinea from her tenant (which was the balance due) and another from Mrs Tropp, and immensely enjoyed living in quite the best house in Tilling. She gave several parties there, to all of which she invited Elizabeth who with equal regularity regretfully declined them on the grounds that in the little house in which she found herself it was impossible to return hospitalities . . .
It may be added that on the happy day on which Miss Mapp got back to her own spaciousness, several large hampers of apples were smuggled in through the back door. But Diva had had a similar inspiration, and, scorning concealment, took away with her a hand-cart piled high with cooking-pears.
The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories
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