Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “Your husband,” said Lotty, swinging her feet, “might be here quite soon, perhaps to-morrow evening if he starts at once, and there’ll be a glorious final few days before we all go home refreshed for life. I don’t believe any of us will ever be the same again — and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Caroline doesn’t end by getting fond of the young man Briggs. It’s in the air. You have to get fond of people here.”

  Rose sat at her window thinking of these things. Lotty’s optimism . . . yet it had been justified by Mr. Wilkins; and look, too, at Mrs. Fisher. If only it would come true as well about Frederick! For Rose, who between lunch and tea had left off thinking about Frederick, was now, between tea and dinner, thinking of him harder than ever.

  It has been funny and delightful, that little interlude of admiration, but of course it couldn’t go on once Caroline appeared. Rose knew her place. She could see as well as any one the unusually, the unique loveliness of Lady Caroline. How warm, though, things like admiration and appreciation made one feel, how capable of really deserving them, how different, how glowing. They seemed to quicken unsuspected faculties into life. She was sure she had been a thoroughly amusing woman between lunch and tea, and a pretty one too. She was quite certain she had been pretty; she saw it in Mr. Briggs’s eyes as clearly as in a looking-glass. For a brief space, she thought, she had been like a torpid fly brought back to gay buzzing by the lighting of a fire in a wintry room. She still buzzed, she still tingled, just at the remembrance. What fun it had been, having an admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers. They seemed, in some strange way, to make one come alive.

  Although it was all over she still glowed with it and felt more exhilarated, more optimistic, more as Lotty probably constantly felt, than she had done since she was a girl. She dressed with care, though she knew Mr. Briggs would no longer see her, but it gave her pleasure to see how pretty, while she was about it, she could make herself look; and very nearly she stuck a crimson camellia in her hair down by her ear. She did hold it there for a minute, and it looked almost sinfully attractive and was exactly the colour of her mouth, but she took it out again with a smile and a sigh and put it in the proper place for flowers, which is water. She mustn’t be silly, she thought. Think of the poor. Soon she would be back with them again, and what would a camellia behind her ear seem like then? Simply fantastic.

  But on one thing she was determined: the first thing she would do when she got home would be to have it out with Frederick. If he didn’t come to San Salvatore that is what she would do — the very first thing. Long ago she ought to have done this, but always she had been handicapped, when she tried to, by being so dreadfully fond of him and so much afraid that fresh wounds were going to be given her wretched, soft heart. But now let him wound her as much as he chose, as much as he possibly could, she would still have it out with him. Not that he ever intentionally wounded her; she knew he never meant to, she knew he often had no idea of having done it. For a person who wrote books, thought Rose, Frederick didn’t seem to have much imagination. Anyhow, she said to herself, getting up from the dressing-table, things couldn’t go on like this. She would have it out with him. This separate life, this freezing loneliness, she had had enough of it. Why shouldn’t she too be happy? Why on earth — the energetic expression matched her mood of rebelliousness — shouldn’t she too be loved and allowed to love?

  She looked at her little clock. Still ten minutes before dinner. Tired of staying in her bedroom she thought she would go on to Mrs. Fisher’s battlements, which would be empty at this hour, and watch the moon rise out of the sea.

  She went into the deserted upper hall with this intention, but was attracted on her way along it by the firelight shining through the open door of the drawing-room.

  How gay it looked. The fire transformed the room. A dark, ugly room in the daytime, it was transformed just as she had been transformed by the warmth of — no, she wouldn’t be silly; she would think of the poor; the thought of them always brought her down to sobriety at once.

  She peeped in. Firelight and flowers; and outside the deep slits of windows hung the blue curtain of the night. How pretty. What a sweet place San Salvatore was. And that gorgeous lilac on the table — she must go and put her face in it . . .

  But she never got to the lilac. She went one step towards it, and then stood still, for she had seen the figure looking out of the window in the farthest corner, and it was Frederick.

  All the blood in Rose’s body rushed to her heart and seemed to stop its beating.

  She stood quite still. He had not heard her. He did not turn round. She stood looking at him. The miracle had happened, and he had come.

  She stood holding her breath. So he needed her, for he had come instantly. So he too must have been thinking, longing . . .

  Her heart, which had seemed to stop beating, was suffocating her now, the way it raced along. Frederick did love her then — he must love her, or why had he come? Something, perhaps her absence, had made him turn to her, want her . . . and now the understanding she had made up her mind to have with him would be quite — would be quite — easy —

  Her thoughts wouldn’t go on. Her mind stammered. She couldn’t think. She could only see and feel. She didn’t know how it had happened. It was a miracle. God could do miracles. God had done this one. God could — God could — could —

  Her mind stammered again, and broke off.

  “Frederick—” she tried to say; but no sound came, or if it did the crackling of the fire covered it up.

  She must go nearer. She began to creep towards him — softly, softly.

  He did not move. He had not heard.

  She stole nearer and nearer, and the fire crackled and he heard nothing.

  She stopped a moment, unable to breathe. She was afraid. Suppose he — suppose he — oh, but he had come, he had come.

  She went on again, close up to him, and her heart beat so loud that she thought he must hear it. And couldn’t he feel — didn’t he know —

  “Frederick,” she whispered, hardly able even to whisper, choked by the beating of her heart.

  He spun round on his heels.

  “Rose!” he exclaimed, staring blankly.

  But she did not see his stare, for her arms were round his neck, and her cheek was against his, and she was murmuring, her lips on his ear, “I knew you would come — in my very heart I always, always knew you would come—”

  Chapter 21

  Now Frederick was not the man to hurt anything if he could help it; besides, he was completely bewildered. Not only was his wife here — here, of all places in the world — but she was clinging to him as she had not clung for years, and murmuring love, and welcoming him. If she welcomed him she must have been expecting him. Strange as this was, it was the only thing in the situation which was evident — that, and the softness of her cheek against his, and the long-forgotten sweet smell of her.

  Frederick was bewildered. But not being the man to hurt anything if he could help it he too put his arms round her, and having put them round her he also kissed her; and presently he was kissing her almost as tenderly as she was kissing him; and presently he was kissing her quite as tenderly; and again presently he was kissing her more tenderly, and just as if he had never left off.

  He was bewildered, but he still could kiss. It seemed curiously natural to be doing it. It made him feel as if he were thirty again instead of forty, and Rose were his Rose of twenty, the Rose he had so much adored before she began to weigh what he did with her idea of right, and the balance went against him, and she had turned strange, and stony, and more and more shocked, and oh, so lamentable. He couldn’t get at her in those days at all; she wouldn’t, she couldn’t understand. She kept on referring everything to what she called God’s eyes — in God’s eyes it couldn’t be right, it wasn’t right. Her miserable face — whatever her principles did for her they didn’t make her happy — her little miserable face, twisted with effort to be patient,
had been at last more than he could bear to see, and he had kept away as much as he could. She never ought to have been the daughter of a low-church rector — narrow devil; she was quite unfitted to stand up against such an upbringing.

  What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again, passed his comprehension; and meanwhile, and until such time as he understood, he still could kiss. In fact he could not stop kissing; and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he remembered it used to tickle him.

  And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of — at first he didn’t know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and then he recognized it as security. Yes; security. No need now to be ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall other people’s and show he didn’t mind it; no need now to be ashamed of getting hot going up hills, or to torment himself with pictures of how he probably appeared to beautiful young women — how middle-aged, how absurd in his inability to keep away from them. Rose cared nothing for such things. With her he was safe. To her he was her lover, as he used to be; and she would never notice or mind any of the ignoble changes that getting older had made in him and would go on making more and more.

  Frederick continued, therefore, with greater and greater warmth and growing delight to kiss his wife, and the mere holding of her in his arms caused him to forget everything else. How could he, for instance, remember or think of Lady Caroline, to mention only one of the complications with which his situation bristled, when here was his sweet wife, miraculously restored to him, whispering with her cheek against his in the dearest, most romantic words how much she loved him, how terribly she had missed him? He did for one brief instant, for even in moments of love there were brief instants of lucid thought, recognize the immense power of the woman present and being actually held compared to that of the woman, however beautiful, who is somewhere else, but that is as far as he got towards remembering Scrap; no farther. She was like a dream, fleeing before the morning light.

  “When did you start?” murmured Rose, her mouth on his ear. She couldn’t let him go; not even to talk she couldn’t let him go.

  “Yesterday morning,” murmured Frederick, holding her close. He couldn’t let her go either.

  “Oh — the very instant then,” murmured Rose.

  This was cryptic, but Frederick said, “Yes, the very instant,” and kissed her neck.

  “How quickly my letter got to you,” murmured Rose, whose eyes were shut in the excess of her happiness.

  “Didn’t it,” said Frederick, who felt like shutting his eyes himself.

  So there had been a letter. Soon, no doubt, light would be vouchsafed him, and meanwhile this was so strangely, touchingly sweet, this holding his Rose to his heart again after all the years, that he couldn’t bother to try to guess anything. Oh, he had been happy during these years, because it was not in him to be unhappy; besides, how many interests life had had to offer him, how many friends, how much success, how many women only too willing to help him to blot out the thought of the altered, petrified, pitiful little wife at home who wouldn’t spend his money, who was appalled by his books, who drifted away and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote and lived by looked in the eyes of God. “No one,” she said once, “should ever write a book God wouldn’t like to read. That is the test, Frederick.” And he had laughed hysterically, burst into a great shriek of laughter, and rushed out of the house, away from her solemn little face — away from her pathetic, solemn little face. . .

  But this Rose was his youth again, the best part of his life, the part of it that had had all the visions in it and all the hopes. How they had dreamed together, he and she, before he struck that vein of memoirs; how they had planned, and laughed and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry. After the happy days came the happy nights, the happy, happy nights, with her asleep close against his heart, with her when he woke in the morning still close against his heart, for they hardly moved in their deep, happy sleep. It was wonderful to have it all come back to him at the touch of her, at the feel of her face against his — wonderful that she should be able to give him back his youth.

  “Sweetheart — sweetheart,” he murmured, overcome by remembrance, clinging to her now in his turn.

  “Beloved husband,” she breathed — the bliss of it — the sheer bliss . . .

  Briggs, coming in a few minutes before the gong went on the chance that Lady Caroline might be there, was much astonished. He had supposed Rose Arbuthnot was a widow, and he still supposed it; so that he was much astonished.

  “Well I’m damned,” thought Briggs, quite clearly and distinctly, for the shock of what he saw in the window startled him so much that for a moment he was shaken free of his own confused absorption.

  Aloud he said, very red, “Oh I say — I beg your pardon” — and then stood hesitating, and wondering whether he oughtn’t to go back to his bedroom again.

  If he had said nothing they would not have noticed he was there, but when he begged their pardon Rose turned and looked at him as one looks who is trying to remember, and Frederick looked at him too without at first quite seeing him.

  They didn’t seem, thought Briggs, to mind or to be at all embarrassed. He couldn’t be her brother; no brother ever brought that look into a woman’s face. It was very awkward. If they didn’t mind, he did. It upset him to come across his Madonna forgetting herself.

  “Is this one of your friends?” Frederick was able after an instant to ask Rose, who made no attempt to introduce the young man standing awkwardly in front of them but continued to gaze at him with a kind of abstracted, radiant goodwill.

  “It’s Mr. Briggs,” said Rose, recognizing him. “This is my husband,” she added.

  And Briggs, shaking hands, just had time to think how surprising it was to have a husband when you were a widow before the gong sounded, and Lady Caroline would be there in a minute, and he ceased to be able to think at all, and merely became a thing with its eyes fixed on the door.

  Through the door immediately entered, in what seemed to him an endless procession, first Mrs. Fisher, very stately in her evening lace shawl and brooch, who when she saw him at once relaxed into smiles and benignity, only to stiffen, however, when she caught sight of the stranger; then Mr. Wilkins, cleaner and neater and more carefully dressed and brushed than any man on earth; and then, tying something hurriedly as she came, Mrs. Wilkins; and then nobody.

  Lady Caroline was late. Where was she? Had she heard the gong? Oughtn’t it to be beaten again? Suppose she didn’t come to dinner after all. . .

  Briggs went cold.

  “Introduce me,” said Frederick on Mrs. Fisher’s entrance, touching Rose’s elbow.

  “My husband,” said Rose, holding him by the hand, her face exquisite.

  “This,” thought Mrs. Fisher, “must now be the last of the husbands, unless Lady Caroline produces one from up her sleeve.”

  But she received him graciously, for he certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go about abroad pretending they are husbands when they are not, and said she supposed he had come to accompany his wife home at the end of the month, and remarked that now the house would be completely full. “So that,” she added, smiling at Briggs, “we shall at last really be getting our money’s worth.”

  Briggs grinned automatically, because he was just able to realize that somebody was being playful with him, but he had not heard her and he did not look at her. Not only were his eyes fixed on the door but his whole body was concentrated on it.

  Introduced in his turn, Mr. Wilkins was most hospitable and called Frederick “sir.”

  “Well, sir,” said Mr. Wilkins heartily, “here we are, here we are” — and having gripped his hand with an understandin
g that only wasn’t mutual because Arbuthnot did not yet know what he was in for in the way of trouble, he looked at him as a man should, squarely in the eyes, and allowed his look to convey as plainly as a look can that in him would be found staunchness, integrity, reliability — in fact a friend in need. Mrs. Arbuthnot was very much flushed, Mr. Wilkins noticed. He had not seen her flushed like that before. “Well, I’m their man,” he thought.

  Lotty’s greeting was effusive. It was done with both hands. “Didn’t I tell you?” she laughed to Rose over her shoulder while Frederick was shaking her hands in both his.

  “What did you tell her?” asked Frederick, in order to say something. The way they were all welcoming him was confusing. They had evidently all expected him, not only Rose.

  The sandy but agreeable young woman didn’t answer his question, but looked extraordinarily pleased to see him. Why should she be extraordinarily pleased to see him?

  “What a delightful place this is,” said Frederick, confused, and making the first remark that occurred to him.

  “It’s a tub of love,” said the sandy young woman earnestly; which confused him more than ever.

  And his confusion became excessive at the next words he heard — spoken, these, by the old lady, who said: “We won’t wait. Lady Caroline is always late” — for he only then, on hearing her name, really and properly remembered Lady Caroline, and the thought of her confused him to excess.

  He went into the dining-room like a man in a dream. He had come out to this place to see Lady Caroline, and had told her so. He had even told her in his fatuousness — it was true, but how fatuous — that he hadn’t been able to help coming. She didn’t know he was married. She thought his name was Arundel. Everybody in London thought his name was Arundel. He had used it and written under it so long that he almost thought it was himself. In the short time since she had left him on the seat in the garden, where he told her he had come because he couldn’t help it, he had found Rose again, had passionately embraced and been embraced, and had forgotten Lady Caroline. It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune if Lady Caroline’s being late meant she was tired or bored and would not come to dinner at all. Then he could — no, he couldn’t. He turned a deeper red even than usual, he being a man of full habit and red anyhow, at the thought of such cowardice. No, he couldn’t go away after dinner and catch his train and disappear to Rome; not unless, that is, Rose came with him. But even so, what a running away. No, he couldn’t.