Besides, there was Mrs Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady Caroline had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two reasons: first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order to pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she judged it likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs Fisher. She did not want to travel with Mrs Fisher. She did not want to arrive with Mrs Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why, for a single moment, she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs Fisher.
But unfortunately Mrs Fisher also was filled with a desire to get to San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and she and Lady Caroline had, after all, travelled together. As early as Calais they began to suspect it, in Paris they feared it, at Modane they knew it, at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to Castagneto in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching the back of the other the whole way. But when the road suddenly left off at the church and the steps, further evasion was impossible – and, faced by this abrupt and difficult finish to their journey, there was nothing for it but to amalgamate.
Because of Mrs Fisher’s stick, Lady Caroline had to see about everything. Mrs Fisher’s intentions, she explained from her fly when the situation had become plain to her, were active, but her stick prevented their being carried out. The two drivers told Lady Caroline boys would have to carry the luggage up to the castle, and she went in search of some, while Mrs Fisher waited in the fly because of her stick. Mrs Fisher could speak Italian – but only, she explained, the Italian of Dante, which Matthew Arnold used to read with her when she was a girl, and she thought this might be above the heads of boys. Therefore Lady Caroline, who spoke ordinary Italian very well, was obviously the one to go and do things.
“I am in your hands,” said Mrs Fisher, sitting firmly in her fly. “You must please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick.”
And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and along the quay, and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as much obliged to walk slowly with Mrs Fisher as if she were her own grandmother.
“It’s my stick,” Mrs Fisher complacently remarked at intervals.
And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where seats were, and Lady Caroline – who would have liked to run on and get to the top quickly – was forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs Fisher because of her stick, Mrs Fisher told her how she had been on a zigzag path once with Tennyson.
“Isn’t his cricket wonderful?”* said Lady Caroline absently.
“The Tennyson,” said Mrs Fisher, turning her head and observing her a moment over her spectacles.
“Isn’t he?” said Lady Caroline.
“I am speaking,” said Mrs Fisher, “of Alfred.”
“Oh,” said Lady Caroline.
“And it was a path, too,” Mrs Fisher went on severely, “curiously like this. No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise curiously like this. And at one of the bends he turned and said to me – I see him now turning and saying to me—”
Yes, Mrs Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these two up at the window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she had got off the wall. All she need have done was to have waved her hand and waited till they came down and out into the garden to her.
So she ignored Mrs Arbuthnot’s remark and raised forefinger, and said with marked coldness – at least, she tried to make it sound marked – that she supposed they would be going to breakfast, and that she had had hers; but it was her fate that however coldly she sent forth her words they came out sounding quite warm and agreeable. That was because she had a sympathetic and delightful voice, due entirely to some special formation of her throat and the roof of her mouth, and having nothing whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in consequence ever believed they were being snubbed. It was most tiresome. And if she stared icily it did not look icy at all, because her eyes, lovely to begin with, had the added loveliness of very long, soft, dark eyelashes. No icy stare could come out of eyes like that – it got caught and lost in the soft eyelashes, and the persons stared at merely thought they were being regarded with a flattering and exquisite attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or definitely cross – and who would not be sometimes in such a world? – she only looked so pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means of kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was determined that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be disagreeable or rude without being completely misunderstood.
“I had my breakfast in my room,” she said, trying her utmost to sound curt. “Perhaps I’ll see you later.”
And she nodded, and went back to where she had been sitting on the wall, with the lilies being nice and cool round her feet.
7
Their eyes followed her admiringly. They had no idea they had been snubbed. It was a disappointment, of course, to find she had forestalled them and that they were not to have the happiness of preparing for her, of watching her face when she arrived and first saw everything, but there was still Mrs Fisher. They would concentrate on Mrs Fisher, and would watch her face instead – only, like everybody else, they would have preferred to watch Lady Caroline’s.
Perhaps, then, as Lady Caroline had talked of breakfast, they had better begin by going and having it, for there was too much to be done that day to spend any more time gazing at the scenery – servants to be interviewed, the house to be gone through and examined, and finally Mrs Fisher’s room to be got ready and adorned.
They waved their hands gaily at Lady Caroline, who seemed absorbed in what she saw and took no notice, and turning away found the maidservant of the night before had come up silently behind them in cloth slippers with string soles.
She was Francesca, the elderly parlourmaid, who had been with the owner, he had said, for years, and whose presence made inventories unnecessary – and after wishing them good morning and hoping they had slept well, she told them breakfast was ready in the dining room on the floor below, and if they would follow her she would lead.
They did not understand a single word of the very many in which Francesca succeeded in clothing this simple information, but they followed her, for it at least was clear that they were to follow, and going down the stairs, and along the broad hall like the one above except for glass doors at the end instead of a window opening into the garden, they were shown into the dining room, where, sitting at the head of the table having her breakfast, was Mrs Fisher.
This time they exclaimed. Even Mrs Arbuthnot exclaimed, though her exclamation was only “Oh.”
Mrs Wilkins exclaimed at greater length. “Why, but it’s like having the bread taken out of one’s mouth!” exclaimed Mrs Wilkins.
“How do you do,” said Mrs Fisher. “I can’t get up because of my stick.” And she stretched out her hand across the table.
They advanced and shook it.
“We had no idea you were here,” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“Yes,” said Mrs Fisher, resuming her breakfast. “Yes. I am here.” And with composure she removed the top of her egg.
“It’s a great disappointment,” said Mrs Wilkins. “We had meant to give you such a welcome.”
This was the one, Mrs Fisher remembered, briefly glancing at her, who, when she came to Prince of Wales Terrace, said she had seen Keats. She must be careful with this one – curb her from the beginning.
She therefore ignored Mrs Wilkins and said gravely, with a downward face of impenetrable calm bent on her egg, “Yes. I arrived yesterday with Lady Caroline.”
“It’s really dreadful,” said Mrs Wilkins, exactly as if she had not been ignored. “There’s nobody left to get anything ready for now. I feel thwarted. I feel as if the bread had been taken out of my mouth just when I was going to be happy swallowing it.”
“Where will you sit?” asked Mrs Fisher
of Mrs Arbuthnot – markedly of Mrs Arbuthnot; the comparison with the bread seemed to her most unpleasant.
“Oh, thank you,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, sitting down rather suddenly next to her.
There were only two places she could sit down in: the places laid on either side of Mrs Fisher. She therefore sat down in one, and Mrs Wilkins sat down opposite her in the other.
Mrs Fisher was at the head of the table. Round her was grouped the coffee and the tea. Of course they were all sharing San Salvatore equally, but it was she herself and Lotty, Mrs Arbuthnot mildly reflected, who had found it, who had had the work of getting it, who had chosen to admit Mrs Fisher into it. Without them, she could not help thinking, Mrs Fisher would not have been there. Morally Mrs Fisher was a guest. There was no hostess in this party, but supposing there had been a hostess it would not have been Mrs Fisher, nor Lady Caroline – it would have been either herself or Lotty. Mrs Arbuthnot could not help feeling this as she sat down, and Mrs Fisher, the hand which Ruskin had wrung suspended over the pots before her, enquired, “Tea or coffee?” She could not help feeling it even more definitely when Mrs Fisher touched a small gong on the table beside her as though she had been used to that gong and that table ever since she was little, and, on Francesca’s appearing, bade her in the language of Dante bring more milk. There was a curious air about Mrs Fisher, thought Mrs Arbuthnot, of being in possession, and if she herself had not been so happy, she would have perhaps minded.
Mrs Wilkins noticed it too, but it only made her discursive brain think of cuckoos. She would, no doubt, immediately have begun to talk of cuckoos, incoherently, unrestrainably and deplorably, if she had been in the condition of nerves and shyness she was in last time she saw Mrs Fisher. But happiness had done away with shyness – she was very serene, she could control her conversation, she did not have – horrified – to listen to herself saying things she had no idea of saying when she began; she was quite at her ease, and completely natural. The disappointment of not going to be able to prepare a welcome for Mrs Fisher had evaporated at once, for it was impossible to go on being disappointed in heaven. Nor did she mind her behaving as hostess. What did it matter? You did not mind things in heaven. She and Mrs Arbuthnot, therefore, sat down more willingly than they otherwise would have done, one on either side of Mrs Fisher, and the sun, pouring through the two windows facing east across the bay, flooded the room, and there was an open door leading into the garden, and the garden was full of many lovely things, especially freesias.
The delicate and delicious fragrance of the freesias came in through the door and floated round Mrs Wilkins’s enraptured nostrils. Freesias in London were quite beyond her. Occasionally she went into a shop and asked what they cost, so as just to have an excuse for lifting up a bunch and smelling them, well knowing that it was something awful like a shilling for about three flowers. Here they were everywhere – bursting out of every corner and carpeting the rose beds. Imagine it – having freesias to pick in armsful if you wanted to, and with glorious sunshine flooding the room, and in your summer frock, and its being only the first of April!
“I suppose you realize, don’t you, that we’ve got to heaven?” she said, beaming at Mrs Fisher with all the familiarity of a fellow angel.
“They are considerably younger than I had supposed,” thought Mrs Fisher, “and not nearly so plain.” And she mused a moment – while she took no notice of Mrs Wilkins’s exuberance – on their instant and agitated refusal that day at Prince of Wales Terrace to have anything to do with the giving or the taking of references.
Nothing could affect her, of course – nothing that anybody did. She was far too solidly seated in respectability. At her back stood massively in a tremendous row those three great names she had offered, and they were not the only ones she could turn to for support and countenance. Even if these young women – she had no grounds for believing the one out in the garden to be really Lady Caroline Dester, she had merely been told she was – even if these young women should all turn out to be what Browning used to call – how well she remembered his amusing and delightful way of putting things – fly-by-nights, what could it possibly or in any way matter to her? Let them fly by night if they wished. One was not sixty-five for nothing. In any case, there would only be four weeks of it, at the end of which she would see no more of them. And in the meanwhile there were plenty of places where she could sit quietly away from them and remember. Also there was her own sitting room: a charming room, all honey-coloured furniture and pictures, with windows to the sea towards Genoa, and a door opening on to the battlements. The house possessed two sitting rooms, and she had explained to that pretty creature Lady Caroline – certainly a pretty creature, whatever else she was; Tennyson would have enjoyed taking her for blows on the downs – who had seemed inclined to appropriate the honey-coloured one, that she needed some little refuge entirely to herself because of her stick.
“Nobody wants to see an old woman hobbling about everywhere,” she had said. “I shall be quite content to spend much of my time by myself in here or sitting out on these convenient battlements.”
And she had a very nice bedroom, too: it looked two ways, across the bay to the morning sun – she liked the morning sun – and onto the garden. There were only two of these bedrooms with cross-views in the house, she and Lady Caroline had discovered, and they were by far the airiest. They each had two beds in them, and she and Lady Caroline had had the extra beds taken out at once and put into two of the other rooms. In this way there was much more space and comfort. Lady Caroline, indeed, had turned hers into a bedsitting room, with the sofa out of the bigger drawing room and the writing table and the most comfortable chair, but she herself had not had to do that because she had her own sitting room, equipped with what was necessary. Lady Caroline had thought at first of taking the bigger sitting room entirely for her own, because the dining room on the floor below could quite well be used between meals to sit in by the two others, and was a very pleasant room with nice chairs, but she had not liked the bigger sitting room’s shape – it was a round room in the tower, with deep slit windows pierced through the massive walls, and a domed and ribbed ceiling arranged to look like an open umbrella, and it seemed a little dark. Undoubtedly Lady Caroline had cast covetous glances at the honey-coloured room, and if she – Mrs Fisher – had been less firm, would have installed herself in it. Which would have been absurd.
“I hope,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, smilingly making an attempt to convey to Mrs Fisher that though she – Mrs Fisher – might not be exactly a guest, she certainly was not in the very least a hostess, your room is comfortable.”
“Quite,” said Mrs Fisher. “Will you have some more coffee?”
“No, thank you. Will you?”
“No, thank you. There were two beds in my bedroom, filling it up unnecessarily, and I had one taken out. It has made it much more convenient.”
“Oh that’s why I’ve got two beds in my room!” exclaimed Mrs Wilkins, illuminated – the second bed in her little cell had seemed an unnatural and inappropriate object from the moment she saw it.
“I gave no directions,” said Mrs Fisher, addressing Mrs Arbuthnot. “I merely asked Francesca to remove it.”
“I have two in my room as well,” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“Your second one must be Lady Caroline’s. She had hers removed too,” said Mrs Fisher. “It seems foolish to have more beds in a room than there are occupiers.”
“But we haven’t got any husbands here either,” said Mrs Wilkins, “and I don’t see any use in extra beds in one’s room if one hasn’t got husbands to put in them. Can’t we have them taken away too?”
“Beds,” said Mrs Fisher coldly, “cannot be removed from one room after another. They must remain somewhere.”
Mrs Wilkins’s remarks seemed to Mrs Fisher persistently unfortunate. Each time she opened her mouth she said something best left unsaid. Loose talk about husbands had
never in Mrs Fisher’s circle been encouraged. In the Eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin. Beds too, if they had to be mentioned, were approached with caution, and a decent reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same breath.
She turned more markedly than ever to Mrs Arbuthnot. “Do let me give you a little more coffee,” she said.
“No, thank you. But won’t you have some more?”
“No indeed. I never have more than two cups at breakfast. Would you like an orange?”
“No, thank you. Would you?”
“No, I don’t eat fruit at breakfast. It is an American fashion which I am too old now to adopt. Have you had all you want?”
The Enchanted April Page 7