Lucia Rising by E. F. Benson

Author:E. F. Benson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141931609
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

Yours very sincerely,

ALGERNON WYSE

Had not Withers been present, who might have misconstrued her action, Miss Mapp would have kissed the note; failing that, she forgave Mrs Poppit for being an MBE.

‘The dear woman!’ she said. ‘She has heard, and has told him.’

Of course she need not ask Mr Wyse to tea now…

7

A white frost on three nights running and a terrible blackening of dahlias, whose reputation was quite gone by morning, would probably have convinced the ladies of Tilling that it was time to put summer clothing in camphor and winter clothing in the back-yard to get aired, even if the Padre had not preached that remarkable sermon on Sunday. It was so remarkable that Miss Mapp quite forgot to note grammatical lapses and listened entranced.

The text was: ‘He made summer and winter,’ and after repeating the words very impressively, so that there might be no mistake about the origin of the seasons, the Padre began to talk about something quite different – namely, the unhappy divisions which exist in Christian communities. That did not deceive Miss Mapp for a moment: she saw precisely what he was getting at over his oratorical fences. He got at it…

Ever since summer-time had been inaugurated a few years before, it had been one of the chronic dissensions of Tilling. Miss Mapp, Diva and the Padre flatly refused to recognize it, except when they were going by train or tram, when principle must necessarily go to the wall, or they would never have succeeded in getting anywhere, while Miss Mapp, with the halo of martyrdom round her head, had once arrived at a summer-time party an hour late, in order to bear witness to the truth, and, in consequence, had got only dregs of tea and the last faint strawberry. But the Major and Captain Puffin used the tram so often, that they had fallen into the degrading habit of dislocating their clocks and watches on the first of May, and dislocating them again in the autumn, when they were forced into uniformity with properly-minded people. Irene was flippant on the subject, and said that any old time would do for her. The Poppits followed convention, and Mrs Poppit, in naming the hour for a party to the stalwarts, wrote ‘4.30 (your 3.30)’. The King, after all, had invited her to be decorated at a particular hour, summer-time, and what was good enough for the King was good enough for Mrs Poppit.

The sermon was quite uncompromising. There was summer and winter, by Divine ordinance, but there was nothing said about summer-time and winter-time. There was but one Time, and even as Life only stained the white radiance of eternity, as the gifted but, alas! infidel poet remarked, so, too, did Time. But ephemeral as Time was, noon in the Bible clearly meant twelve o'clock, and not one o'clock: towards even, meant towards even, and not the middle of a broiling afternoon. The sixth hour similarly was the Roman way of saying twelve. Winter-time, in

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