Chapter 16
And so the second week began, and all was harmony. The arrivalof Mr. Wilkins, instead of, as three of the party had feared and thefourth had only been protected from fearing by her burning faith in theeffect on him of San Salvatore, disturbing such harmony as there was,increased it. He fitted in. He was determined to please, and he didplease. He was most amiable to his wife--not only in public, which shewas used to, but in private, when he certainly wouldn't have been if hehadn't wanted to. He did want to. He was so much obliged to her, somuch pleased with her, for making him acquainted with Lady Caroline,that he felt really fond of her. Also proud; for there must be, hereflected, a good deal more in her than he had supposed, for LadyCaroline to have become so intimate with her and so affectionate. Andthe more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the moreLotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affectedin his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went roundand round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.
Positively, for him, Mellersh petted her. There was at no timemuch pet in Mellersh, because he was by nature a cool man; yet such wasthe influence on him of, as Lotty supposed, San Salvatore, that in thissecond week he sometimes pinched both her ears, one after the other,instead of only one; and Lotty, marveling at such rapidly developingaffectionateness, wondered what he would do, should he continue at thisrate, in the third week, when her supply of ears would have come to anend.
He was particularly nice about the washstand, and genuinelydesirous of not taking up too much of the space in the small bedroom.Quick to respond, Lotty was even more desirous not to be in his way;and the room became the scene of many an affectionate combat degenerosite, each of which left them more pleased with each other thanever. He did not again have a bath in the bathroom, though it wasmended and ready for him, but got up and went down every morning to thesea, and in spite of the cool nights making the water cold early hadhis dip as a man should, and came up to breakfast rubbing his hands andfeeling, as he told Mrs. Fisher, prepared for anything.
Lotty's belief in the irresistible influence of the heavenlyatmosphere of San Salvatore being thus obviously justified, and Mr.Wilkins, whom Rose knew as alarming and Scrap had pictured as icilyunkind, being so evidently a changed man, both Rose and Scrap began tothink there might after all be something in what Lotty insisted on, andthat San Salvatore did work purgingly on the character.
They were the more inclined to think so in that they too felt aworking going on inside themselves: they felt more cleared, both ofthem, that second week--Scrap in her thoughts, many of which were nowquite nice thoughts, real amiable ones about her parents and relations,with a glimmer in them of recognition of the extraordinary benefits shehad received at the hands of--what? Fate? Providence?--anyhow ofsomething, and of how, having received them, she had misused them byfailing to be happy; and Rose in her bosom, which though it stillyearned, yearned to some purpose, for she was reaching the conclusionthat merely inactively to yearn was no use at all, and that she musteither by some means stop her yearning or give it at least a chance--remote, but still a chance--of being quieted by writing to Frederickand asking him to come out.
If Mr. Wilkins could be changed, thought Rose, why not Frederick?How wonderful it would be, how too wonderful, if the place worked onhim too and were able to make them even a little understand each other,even a little be friends. Rose, so far had loosening anddisintegration gone on in her character, now was beginning to think herobstinate strait-lacedness about his books and her austere absorptionin good works had been foolish and perhaps even wrong. He was herhusband, and she had frightened him away. She had frightened loveaway, precious love, and that couldn't be good. Was not Lotty rightwhen she said the other day that nothing at all except love mattered?Nothing certainly seemed much use unless it was built up on love. Butonce frightened away, could it ever come back? Yes, it might in thatbeauty, it might in the atmosphere of happiness Lotty and San Salvatoreseemed between them to spread round like some divine infection.
She had, however, to get him there first, and he certainlycouldn't be got there if she didn't write and tell him where she was.
She would write. She must write; for if she did there was atleast a chance of his coming, and if she didn't there was manifestlynone. And then, once here in this loveliness, with everything so softand kind and sweet all round, it would be easier to tell him, to tryand explain, to ask for something different, for at least an attempt atsomething different in their lives in the future, instead of theblankness of separation, the cold--oh, the cold--of nothing at all butthe great windiness of faith, the great bleakness of works. Why, oneperson in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one's veryown, to talk to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, wasworth more than all the speeches on platforms and the compliments ofchairmen in the world. It was also worth more--Rose couldn't help it,the thought would come--than all the prayers.
These thoughts were not head thoughts, like Scrap's, who wasaltogether free from yearnings, but bosom thoughts. They lodged in thebosom; it was in the bosom that Rose ached, and felt so dreadfullylonely. And when her courage failed her, as it did on most days, andit seemed impossible to write to Frederick, she would look at Mr.Wilkins and revive.
There he was, a changed man. There he was, going into that small,uncomfortable room every night, that room whose proximities hadbeen Lotty's only misgiving, and coming out of it in the morning, andLotty coming out of it too, both of them as unclouded and as nice toeach other as when they went in. And hadn't he, so critical at home,Lotty had told her, of the least thing going wrong, emerged from thebath catastrophe as untouched in spirit as Shadrach, Meshach andAbednego were untouched in body when they emerged from the fire?Miracles were happening in this place. If they could happen to Mr.Wilkins, why not to Frederick?
She got up quickly. Yes, she would write. She would go andwrite to him at once.
But suppose--
She paused. Suppose he didn't answer. Suppose he didn't evenanswer.
And she sat down again to think a little longer.
In these hesitations did Rose spend most of the second week.
Then there was Mrs. Fisher. Her restlessness increased thatsecond week. It increased to such an extent that she might just aswell not have had her private sitting-room at all, for she could nolonger sit. Not for ten minutes together could Mrs. Fisher sit. Andadded to the restlessness, as the days of the second week proceeded ontheir way, she had a curious sensation, which worried her, of risingsap. She knew the feeling, because she had sometimes had it inchildhood in specially swift springs, when the lilacs and the syringesseemed to rush out into blossom in a single night, but it was strangeto have it again after over fifty years. She would have liked toremark on the sensation to some one, but she was ashamed. It was suchan absurd sensation at her age. Yet oftener and oftener, and every daymore and more, did Mrs. Fisher have a ridiculous feeling as if she werepresently going to burgeon.
Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon,indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood,suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was notin legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignitydemanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at herage; and yet there it was--the feeling that presently, that at anymoment now, she might crop out all green.
Mrs. Fisher was upset. There were many things she disliked morethan anything else, and one was when the elderly imagined they feltyoung and behaved accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, theywere only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results.She herself had grown old as people should grow old--steadily andfirmly. No interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodicreturns. If, after all these years, she were now going to be deludedinto some sort of unsuitable breaking-out, how humiliating.
Indeed she was thankful, that second week, that Kate Lumley wasnot there. I
t would be most unpleasant, should anything differentoccur in her behaviour, to have Kate looking on. Kate had known herall her life. She felt she could let herself go--here Mrs. Fisherfrowned at the book she was vainly trying to concentrate on, for wheredid that expression come from?--much less painfully before strangersthan before an old friend. Old friends, reflected Mrs. Fisher, whohoped she was reading, compare one constantly with what one used to be.They are always doing it if one develops. They are surprised atdevelopment. They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say,fifty, to the end of one's days.
That, thought Mrs. Fisher, her eyes going steadily line by linedown the page and not a word of it getting through into herconsciousness, is foolish of friends. It is condemning one to apremature death. One should continue (of course with dignity) todevelop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing,against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was notdead--obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change,ripening, were life. What she would dislike would be unripening, goingback to something green. She would dislike it intensely; and this iswhat she felt she was on the brink of doing.
Naturally it made her very uneasy, and only in constant movementcould she find distraction. Increasingly restless and no longer ableto confine herself to her battlements, she wandered more and morefrequently, and also aimlessly, in and out of the top garden, to thegrowing surprise of Scrap, especially when she found that all Mrs.Fisher did was to stare for a few minutes at the view, pick a few deadleaves off the rose-bushes, and go away again.
In Mr. Wilkins's conversation she found temporary relief, butthough he joined her whenever he could he was not always there, for hespread his attentions judiciously among the three ladies, and when hewas somewhere else she had to face and manage her thoughts as best shecould by herself. Perhaps it was the excess of light and colour at SanSalvatore which made every other place seem dark and black; and Princeof Wales Terrace did seem a very dark black spot to have to go back to--a dark, narrow street, and her house dark and narrow as the street,with nothing really living or young in it. The goldfish could hardlybe called living, or at most not more than half living, and werecertainly not young, and except for them there were only the maids, andthey were dusty old things.
Dusty old things. Mrs. Fisher paused in her thoughts, arrestedby the strange expression. Where had it come from? How was itpossible for it to come at all? It might have been one of Mrs.Wilkins's, in its levity, its almost slang. Perhaps it was one ofhers, and she had heard her say it and unconsciously caught it fromher.
If so, this was both serious and disgusting. That the foolishcreature should penetrate into Mrs. Fisher's very mind and establishher personality there, the personality which was still, in spite of theharmony apparently existing between her and her intelligent husband, soalien to Mrs. Fisher's own, so far removed from what she understood andliked, and infect her with her undesirable phrases, was mostdisturbing. Never in her life before had such a sentence come intoMrs. Fisher's head. Never in her life before had she thought of hermaids, or of anybody else, as dusty old things. Her maids were notdusty old things; they were most respectable, neat women, who wereallowed the use of the bathroom every Saturday night. Elderly,certainly, but then so was she, so was her house, so was her furniture,so were her goldfish. They were all elderly, as they should be,together. But there was a great difference between being elderly andbeing a dusty old thing.
How true it was what Ruskin said, that evil communicationscorrupt good manners. But did Ruskin say it? On second thoughts shewas not sure, but it was just the sort of thing he would have said ifhe had said it, and in any case it was true. Merely hearing Mrs.Wilkins's evil communications at meals--she did not listen, she avoidedlistening, yet it was evident she had heard--those communications which,in that they so often were at once vulgar, indelicate and profane, andalways, she was sorry to say, laughed at by Lady Caroline, must beclassed as evil, was spoiling her own mental manners. Soon she mightnot only think but say. How terrible that would be. If that were theform her breaking-out was going to take, the form of unseemly speech,Mrs. Fisher was afraid she would hardly with any degree of composure beable to bear it.
At this stage Mrs. Fisher wished more than ever that she wereable to talk over her strange feelings with some one who wouldunderstand. There was, however, no one who would understand exceptMrs. Wilkins herself. She would. She would know at once, Mrs. Fisherwas sure, what she felt like. But this was impossible. It would be asabject as begging the very microbe that was infecting one forprotection against its disease.
She continued, accordingly, to bear her sensations in silence,and was driven by them into that frequent aimless appearing in the topgarden which presently roused even Scrap's attention.
Scrap had noticed it, and vaguely wondered at it, for some timebefore Mr. Wilkins inquired of her one morning as he arranged hercushions for her--he had established the daily assisting of LadyCaroline into her chair as his special privilege--whether there wasanything the matter with Mrs. Fisher.
At that moment Mrs. Fisher was standing by the eastern parapet,shading her eyes and carefully scrutinizing the distant white houses ofMezzago. They could see her through the branches of the daphnes.
"I don't know," said Scrap.
"She is a lady, I take it," said Mr. Wilkins, "who would beunlikely to have anything on her mind?"
"I should imagine so," said Scrap, smiling.
"If she has, and her restlessness appears to suggest it, I shouldbe more than glad to assist her with advice."
"I am sure you would be most kind."
"Of course she has her own legal adviser, but he is not on thespot. I am. And a lawyer on the spot," said Mr. Wilkins, whoendeavoured to make his conversation when he talked to Lady Carolinelight, aware that one must be light with young ladies, "is worth twoin--we won't be ordinary and complete the proverb, but say London."
"You should ask her."
"Ask her if she needs assistance? Would you advise it? Would itnot be a little--a little delicate to touch on such a question, thequestion whether or no a lady has something on her mind?"
"Perhaps she will tell you if you go and talk to her. I think itmust be lonely to be Mrs. Fisher."
"You are all thoughtfulness and consideration," declared Mr.Wilkins, wishing, for the first time in his life, that he were aforeigner so that he might respectfully kiss her hand on withdrawing togo obediently and relieve Mrs. Fisher's loneliness.
It was wonderful what a variety of exits from her corner Scrapcontrived for Mr. Wilkins. Each morning she found a different one,which sent him off pleased after he had arranged her cushions for her.She allowed him to arrange the cushions because she instantly haddiscovered, the very first five minutes of the very first evening, thather fears lest he should cling to her and stare in dreadful admirationwere baseless. Mr. Wilkins did not admire like that. It was not only,she instinctively felt, not in him, but if it had been he would nothave dared to in her case. He was all respectfulness. She coulddirect his movements in regard to herself with the raising of aneyelash. His one concern was to obey. She had been prepared to likehim if he would only be so obliging as not to admire her, and she didlike him. She did not forget his moving defencelessness the firstmorning in his towel, and he amused her, and he was kind to Lotty. Itis true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usuallyliked everybody most when they weren't there. Certainly he did seem tobe one of those men, rare in her experience, who never looked at awoman from the predatory angle. The comfort of this, thesimplification it brought into the relations of the party, was immense.From this point of view Mr. Wilkins was simply ideal; he was unique andprecious. Whenever she thought of him, and was perhaps inclined todwell on the aspects of him that were a little boring, she rememberedthis and murmured, "But what a treasure."
Indeed it was Mr. Wilkins's one aim during his stay at SanSalvatore to be a treasure. At all costs the three ladies w
ho were nothis wife must like him and trust him. Then presently when troublearose in their lives--and in what lives did not trouble sooner or laterarise?--they would recollect how reliable he was and how sympathetic,and turn to him for advice. Ladies with something on their minds wereexactly what he wanted. Lady Caroline, he judged, had nothing on hersat the moment, but so much beauty--for he could not but see what wasevident--must have had its difficulties in the past and would have moreof them before it had done. In the past he had not been at hand; inthe future he hoped to be. And meanwhile the behaviour of Mrs. Fisher,the next in importance of the ladies from the professional point ofview, showed definite promise. It was almost certain that Mrs. Fisherhad something on her mind. He had been observing her attentively, andit was almost certain.
With the third, with Mrs. Arbuthnot, he had up to this made leastheadway, for she was so very retiring and quiet. But might not thisvery retiringness, this tendency to avoid the others and spend her timealone, indicate that she too was troubled? If so, he was her man. Hewould cultivate her. He would follow her and sit with her, andencourage her to tell him about herself. Arbuthnot, he understood fromLotty, was a British Museum official--nothing specially important atpresent, but Mr. Wilkins regarded it as his business to know all sortsand kinds. Besides, there was promotion. Arbuthnot, promoted, mightbecome very much worth while.
As for Lotty, she was charming. She really had all the qualitieshe had credited her with during his courtship, and they had been, itappeared, merely in abeyance since. His early impressions of her werenow being endorsed by the affection and even admiration Lady Carolineshowed for her. Lady Caroline Dester was the last person, he was sure,to be mistaken on such a subject. Her knowledge of the world, herconstant association with only the best, must make her quite unerring.Lotty was evidently, then, that which before marriage he had believedher to be--she was valuable. She certainly had been most valuable inintroducing him to Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. A man in hisprofession could be immensely helped by a clever and attractive wife.Why had she not been attractive sooner? Why this sudden flowering?
Mr. Wilkins began too to believe there was something peculiar, asLotty had almost at once informed him, in the atmosphere of SanSalvatore. It promoted expansion. It brought out dormant qualities.And feeling more and more pleased, and even charmed, by his wife, andvery content with the progress he was making with the two others, andhopeful of progress to be made with the retiring third, Mr. Wilkinscould not remember ever having had such an agreeable holiday. The onlything that might perhaps be bettered was the way they would call himMr. Wilkins. Nobody said Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. Yet he had introducedhimself to Lady Caroline--he flinched a little on remembering thecircumstances--as Mellersh-Wilkins.
Still, this was a small matter, not enough to worry about. Hewould be foolish if in such a place and such society he worried aboutanything. He was not even worrying about what the holiday was costing,and had made up his mind to pay not only his own expenses but hiswife's as well, and surprise her at the end by presenting her with hernest-egg as intact as when she started; and just the knowledge that hewas preparing a happy surprise for her made him feel warmer than evertowards her.
In fact Mr. Wilkins, who had begun by being consciously andaccording to plan on his best behaviour, remained on it unconsciously,and with no effort at all.
And meanwhile the beautiful golden days were dropping gently fromthe second week one by one, equal in beauty with those of the first,and the scent of beanfields in flower on the hillside behind thevillage came across to San Salvatore whenever the air moved. In thegarden that second week the poet's eyed narcissus disappeared out thelong grass at the edge of the zigzag path, and wild gladiolus, slenderand rose-coloured, came in their stead, white pinks bloomed in theborders, filing the whole place with their smoky-sweet smell, and abush nobody had noticed burst into glory and fragrance, and it was apurple lilac bush. Such a jumble of spring and summer was not to bebelieved in, except by those who dwelt in those gardens. Everythingseemed to be out together--all the things crowded into one month whichin England are spread penuriously over six. Even primroses were foundone day by Mrs. Wilkins in a cold corner up in the hills; and when shebrought them down to the geraniums and heliotrope of San Salvatore theylooked quite shy.
The Enchanted April Page 16