Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  Rose stared at her astonished. If she went on like this, soon a nimbus might be expected round her head, was there already, if one didn’t know it was the sun through the tree-trunks catching her sandy hair.

  A great desire to love and be friends, to love everybody, to be friends with everybody, seemed to be invading Lotty — a desire for sheer goodness. Rose’s own experience was that goodness, the state of being good, was only reached with difficulty and pain. It took a long time to get to it; in fact one never did get to it, or, if for a flashing instant one did, it was only for a flashing instant. Desperate perseverance was needed to struggle along its path, and all the way was dotted with doubts. Lotty simply flew along. She had certainly, thought Rose, not got rid of her impetuousness. It had merely taken another direction. She was now impetuously becoming a saint. Could one really attain goodness so violently? Wouldn’t there be an equally violent reaction?

  “I shouldn’t,” said Rose with caution, looking down into Lotty’s bright eyes — the path was steep, so that Lotty was well below her— “I shouldn’t be sure of that too quickly.”

  “But I am sure of it, and I’ve written and told him so.”

  Rose stared. “Why, but only this morning—” she began.

  “It’s all in this,” interrupted Lotty, tapping the envelope and looking pleased.

  “What — everything?”

  “You mean about the advertisement and my savings being spent? Oh no — not yet. But I’ll tell him all that when he comes.”

  “When he comes?” repeated Rose.

  “I’ve invited him to come and stay with us.”

  Rose could only go on staring.

  “It’s the least I could do. Besides — look at this.” Lotty waived her hand. “Disgusting not to share it. I was a mean dog to go off and leave him, but no dog I’ve every heard of was ever as mean as I’d be if I didn’t try and persuade Mellersh to come out and enjoy this too. It’s barest decency that he should have some of the fun out of my nest-egg. After all, he has housed me and fed me for years. One shouldn’t be churlish.”

  “But — do you think he’ll come?

  “Oh, I hope so,” said Lotty with the utmost earnestness; and added, “Poor lamb.”

  At that Rose felt she would like to sit down. Mellersh a poor lamb? That same Mellersh who a few hours before was mere shimmer? There was a seat at the bend of the path, and Rose went to it and sat down. She wished to get her breath, gain time. If she had time she might perhaps be able to catch up the leaping Lotty, and perhaps be able to stop her before she committed herself to what she probably presently would be sorry for. Mellersh at San Salvatore? Mellersh, from whom Lotty had taken such pains so recently to escape?

  “I see him here,” said Lotty, as if in answer to her thoughts.

  Rose looked at her with real concern: for every time Lotty said in that convinced voice, “I see,” what she saw came true. Then it was to be supposed that Mr. Wilkins too would presently come true.

  “I wish,” said Rose anxiously, “I understood you.”

  “Don’t try,” said Lotty, smiling.

  “But I must, because I love you.”

  “Dear Rose,” said Lotty, swiftly bending down and kissing her.

  “You’re so quick,” said Rose. “I can’t follow your developments. I can’t keep touch. It was what happened with Freder—”

  She broke off and looked frightened.

  “The whole idea of our coming here,” she went on again, as Lotty didn’t seem to have noticed, “was to get away, wasn’t it? Well, we’ve got away. And now, after only a single day of it, you want to write to the very people—”

  She stopped.

  “The very people we were getting away from,” finished Lotty. “It’s quite true. It seems idiotically illogical. But I’m so happy, I’m so well, I feel so fearfully wholesome. This place — why, it makes me feel flooded with love.”

  And she stared down at Rose in a kind of radiant surprise.

  Rose was silent a moment. Then she said, “And do you think it will have the same effect on Mr. Wilkins?”

  Lotty laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “But even if it doesn’t, there’s enough love about to flood fifty Mr. Wilkinses, as you call him. The great thing is to have lots of love about. I don’t see,” she went on, “at least I don’t see here, though I did at home, that it matters who loves as long as somebody does. I was a stingy beast at home, and used to measure and count. I had a queer obsession about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance. It’s only love that’s any good. At home I wouldn’t love Mellersh unless he loved me back, exactly as much, absolute fairness. Did you ever. And as he didn’t, neither did I, and the aridity of that house! The aridity . . .”

  Rose said nothing. She was bewildered by Lotty. One odd effect of San Salvatore on her rapidly developing friend was her sudden free use of robust words. She had not used them in Hampstead. Beast and dog were more robust than Hampstead cared about. In words, too, Lotty had come unchained.

  But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write to her husband and say “Come.” The Wilkins ménage, however pompous Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a healthier, more natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to Mellersh and would get an answer. She couldn’t write to Frederick, for only too well did she know he wouldn’t answer. At least, he might answer — a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it, with perfunctory thanks for her letter. But that would be worse than no answer at all; for his handwriting, her name on an envelope addressed by him, stabbed her heart. Too acutely did it bring back the letters of their beginnings together, the letters from him so desolate with separation, so aching with love and longing. To see apparently one of these very same letters arrive, and open it to find:

  Dear Rose — Thanks for letter. Glad you’re having a good time.

  Don’t hurry back. Say if you want any money. Everything going

  splendidly here —

  Yours, Frederick.

  — no, it couldn’t be borne.

  “I don’t think I’ll come down to the village with you to-day,” she said, looking up at Lotty with eyes suddenly gone dim. “I think I want to think.”

  “All right,” said Lotty, at once starting off briskly down the path. “But don’t think too long,” she called back over her shoulder. “Write and invite him at once.”

  “Invite whom?” asked Rose, startled.

  “Your husband.”

  Chapter 12

  At the evening meal, which was the first time the whole four sat round the dining-room table together, Scrap appeared.

  She appeared quite punctually, and in one of those wrappers or tea-gowns which are sometimes described as ravishing. This one really was ravishing. It certainly ravished Mrs. Wilkins, who could not take her eyes off the enchanting figure opposite. It was a shell-pink garment, and clung to the adorable Scrap as though it, too, loved her.

  “What a beautiful dress!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins eagerly.

  “What — this old rag?” said Scrap, glancing down at it as if to see which one she had got on. “I’ve had it a hundred years.” And she concentrated on her soup.

  “You must be very cold in it,” said Mrs. Fisher, thin-lipped; for it showed a great deal of Scrap — the whole of her arms, for instance, and even where it covered her up it was so thin that you still saw her.

  “Who — me?” said Scrap, looking up a moment. “Oh, no.”

  And she continued her soup.

  “You mustn’t catch a chill, you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, feeling that such loveliness must at all costs be preserved unharmed. “There’s a great difference here when the sun goes down.”

  “I’m quite warm,” said Scrap, industriously eating her soup.

  “You look as if you had nothing at all on underneath,” said Mrs. Fisher.

  “I haven’t. At least, hardly anything,” said
Scrap, finishing her soup.

  “How every imprudent,” said Mrs. Fisher, “and how highly improper.”

  Whereupon Scrap stared at her.

  Mrs. Fisher had arrived at dinner feeling friendly towards Lady Caroline. She at least had not intruded into her room and sat at her table and written with her pen. She did, Mrs. Fisher had supposed, know how to behave. Now it appeared that she did not know, for was this behaving, to come dressed — no, undressed — like that to a meal? Such behaviour was not only exceedingly improper but also most inconsiderate, for the indelicate creature would certainly catch a chill, and then infect the entire party. Mrs. Fisher had a great objection to other people’s chills. They were always the fruit of folly; and then they were handed on to her, who had done nothing at all to deserve them.

  “Bird-brained,” though Mrs. Fisher, sternly contemplating Lady Caroline. “Not an idea in her head except vanity.”

  “But there are no men here,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “so how can it be improper? Have you noticed,” she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, “How difficult it is to be improper without men?”

  Mrs. Fisher neither answered her not looked at her; but Scrap looked at her, and did that with her mouth which in any other mouth would have been a fain grin. Seen from without, across the bowl of nasturtiums, it was the most beautiful of brief and dimpled smiles.

  She had a very alive sort of face, that one, thought Scrap, observing Mrs. Wilkins with a dawn of interest. It was rather like a field of corn swept by lights and shadows. Both she and the dark one, Scrap noticed, had changed their clothes, but only in order to put on silk jumpers. The same amount of trouble would have been enough to dress them properly, reflected Scrap. Naturally they looked like nothing on earth in the jumpers. It didn’t matter what Mrs. Fisher wore; indeed, the only thing for her, short of plumes and ermine, was what she did wear. But these others were quite young still, and quite attractive. They really definitely had faces. How different life would be for them if they made the most of themselves instead of the least. And yet — Scrap was suddenly bored, and turned away her thoughts and absently ate toast. What did it matter? If you did make the most of yourself, you only collected people round you who ended by wanting to grab.

  “I’ve had the most wonderful day,” began Mrs. Wilkins, her eyes shining.

  Scrap lowered hers. “Oh,” she thought, “she’s going to gush.”

  “As though anybody were interested in her day,” thought Mrs. Fisher, lowering hers also.

  In fact, whenever Mrs. Wilkins spoke Mrs. Fisher deliberately cast down her eyes. Thus would she mark her disapproval. Besides, it seemed the only safe thing to do with her eyes, for no one could tell what the uncurbed creature would say next. That which she had just said, for instance, about men — addressed too, to her — what could she mean? Better not conjecture, thought Mrs. Fisher; and her eyes, though cast down, yet saw Lady Caroline stretch out her hand to the Chianti flask and fill her glass again.

  Again. She had done it once already, and the fish was only just going out of the room. Mrs. Fisher could see that the other respectable member of the party, Mrs. Arbuthnot, was noticing it too. Mrs. Arbuthnot was, she hoped and believed, respectable and well-meaning. It is true she also had invaded her sitting-room, but no doubt she had been dragged there by the other one, and Mrs. Fisher had little if anything against Mrs. Arbuthnot, and observed with approval that she only drank water. That was as it should be. So, indeed, to give her her dues, did the freckled one; and very right at their age. She herself drank wine, but with what moderation: one meal, one glass. And she was sixty-five, and might properly, and even beneficially, have had at least two.

  “That,” she said to Lady Caroline, cutting right across what Mrs. Wilkins was telling them about her wonderful day and indicating the wine-glass, “is very bad for you.”

  Lady Caroline, however, could not have heard, for she continued to sip, her elbow on the table, and listen to what Mrs. Wilkins was saying.

  And what was it she was saying? She had invited somebody to come and stay? A man?

  Mrs. Fisher could not credit her ears. Yet it evidently was a man, for she spoke of the person as he.

  Suddenly and for the first time — but then this was most important — Mrs. Fisher addressed Mrs. Wilkins directly. She was sixty-five, and cared very little what sorts of women she happened to be with for a month, but if the women were to be mixed with men it was a different proposition altogether. She was not going to be made a cat’s-paw of. She had not come out there to sanction by her presence what used in her day to be called fast behaviour. Nothing had been said at the interview in London about men; if there had been she would have declined, of course to come.

  “What is his name?” asked Mrs. Fisher, abruptly interposing.

  Mrs. Wilkins turned to her with a slight surprise. “Wilkins,” she said.

  “Wilkins?”

  “Yes,”

  “Your name?”

  “And his.”

  “A relation?”

  “Not blood.”

  “A connection?”

  “A husband.”

  Mrs. Fisher once more cast down her eyes. She could not talk to Mrs. Wilkins. There was something about the things she said. . . “A husband.” Suggesting one of many. Always that unseemly twist to everything. Why could she not say “My husband”? Besides, Mrs. Fisher had, she herself knew not for what reason, taken both the Hampstead young women for widows. War ones. There had been an absence of mention of husbands at the interview which would not, she considered, be natural if such persons did after all exist. And if a husband was not a relation, who was? “Not blood.” What a way to talk. Why, a husband was the first of all relations. How well she remembered Ruskin — no, it was not Ruskin, it was the Bible that said a man should leave his father and mother and cleave only to his wife; showing that she became by marriage an even more than blood relation. And if the husband’s father and mother were to be nothing to him compared to his wife, how much less than nothing ought the wife’s father and mother be to her compared to her husband. She herself had been unable to leave her father and mother in order to cleave to Mr. Fisher because they were no longer, when she married, alive, but she certainly would have left them if they had been there to leave. Not blood, indeed. Silly talk.

  The dinner was very good. Succulence succeeded succulence. Costanza had determined to do as she chose in the matter of cream and eggs the first week, and see what happened at the end of it when the bills had to be paid. Her experience of the English was that they were quiet about bills. They were shy of words. They believed readily. Besides, who was the mistress here? In the absence of a definite one, it occurred to Costanza that she might as well be the mistress herself. So she did as she chose about the dinner, and it was very good.

  The four, however, were so much preoccupied by their own conversation that they ate it without noticing how good it was. Even Mrs. Fisher, she who in such matters was manly, did not notice. The entire excellent cooking was to her as though it were not; which shows how much she must have been stirred.

  She was stirred. It was that Mrs. Wilkins. She was enough to stir anybody. And she was undoubtedly encouraged by Lady Caroline, who, in her turn, was no doubt influenced by the Chianti.

  Mrs. Fisher was very glad there were no men present, for they certainly would have been foolish about Lady Caroline. She was precisely the sort of young woman to unbalance them; especially, Mrs. Fisher recognized, at that moment. Perhaps it was the Chianti momentarily intensifying her personality, but she was undeniably most attractive; and there were few things Mrs. Fisher disliked more than having to look on while sensible, intelligent men, who the moment before were talking seriously and interestingly about real matters, became merely foolish and simpering — she had seen them actually simpering — just because in walked a bit of bird-brained beauty. Even Mr. Gladstone, that great wise statesman, whose hand had once rested for an unforgettable moment
solemnly on her head, would have, she felt, on perceiving Lady Caroline left off talking sense and horribly embarked on badinage.

  “You see,” Mrs. Wilkins said — a silly trick that, with which she mostly began her sentences; Mrs. Fisher each time wished to say, “Pardon me — I do not see, I hear” — but why trouble?— “You see,” said Mrs. Wilkins, leaning across towards Lady Caroline, “we arranged, didn’t we, in London that if any of us wanted to we could each invite one guest. So now I’m doing it.”

  “I don’t remember that,” said Mrs. Fisher, her eyes on her plate.

  “Oh yes, we did — didn’t we, Rose?”

  “Yes — I remember,” said Lady Caroline. “Only it seemed so incredible that one could ever want to. One’s whole idea was to get away from one’s friends.”

  “And one’s husbands.”

  Again that unseemly plural. But how altogether unseemly, thought Mrs. Fisher. Such implications. Mrs. Arbuthnot clearly thought so too, for she had turned red.

  “And family affection,” said Lady Caroline — or was it the Chianti speaking? Surely it was the Chianti.

  “And the want of family affection,” said Mrs. Wilkins — what a light she was throwing on her home life and real character.

  “That wouldn’t be so bad,” said Lady Caroline. “I’d stay with that. It would give one room.”

  “Oh no, no — it’s dreadful,” cried Mrs. Wilkins. “It’s as if one had no clothes on.”

  “But I like that,” said Lady Caroline.

  “Really—” said Mrs. Fisher.

  “It’s a divine feeling, getting rid of things,” said Lady Caroline, who was talking altogether to Mrs. Wilkins and paid no attention to the other two.

  “Oh, but in a bitter wind to have nothing on and know there never will be anything on and you going to get colder and colder till at last you die of it — that’s what it was like, living with somebody who didn’t love one.”

  These confidences, thought Mrs. Fisher . . . and no excuse whatever for Mrs. Wilkins, who was making them entirely on plain water. Mrs. Arbuthnot, judging from her face, quite shared Mrs. Fisher’s disapproval; she was fidgeting.