And so the second week began, and all was harmony. The arrival of Mr.
Wilkins, instead of, as three of the party had feared and the fourth
had only been protected from fearing by her burning faith in the effect
on him of San Salvatore, disturbing such harmony as there was,
increased it. He fitted in. He was determined to please, and he did
please. He was most amiable to his wife—not only in public, which she
was used to, but in private, when he certainly wouldn’t have been if he
hadn’t wanted to. He did want to. He was so much obliged to her, so
much pleased with her, for making him acquainted with Lady Caroline,
that he felt really fond of her. Also proud; for there must be, he
reflected, a good deal more in her than he had supposed, for Lady
Caroline to have become so intimate with her and so affectionate. And
the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more
Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected
in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round
and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.
Positively, for him, Mellersh petted her. There was at no time much pet
in Mellersh, because he was by nature a cool man; yet such was the
influence on him of, as Lotty supposed, San Salvatore, that in this
second week he sometimes pinched both her ears, one after the other,
instead of only one; and Lotty, marvelling at such rapidly developing
affectionateness, wondered what he would do, should he continue at this
rate, in the third week, when her supply of ears would have come to an
end.
He was particularly nice about the washstand, and genuinely desirous 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 de générosité_,
each of which left them more pleased with each other than ever. He did
not again have a bath in the bathroom, though it was mended and ready
for him, but got up and went down every morning to the sea, and in
spite of the cool nights making the water cold early had his dip as a
man should, and came up to breakfast rubbing his hands and feeling, as
he told Mrs. Fisher, prepared for anything.
Lotty’s belief in the irresistible influence of the heavenly atmosphere
of San Salvatore being thus obviously justified, and Mr. Wilkins, whom
Rose knew as alarming and Scrap had pictured as icily unkind, being so
evidently a changed man, both Rose and Scrap began to think there might
after all be something in what Lotty insisted on, and that San
Salvatore did work purgingly on the character.
They were the more inclined to think so in that they too felt a working
going on inside themselves: they felt more cleared, both of them, that
second week—Scrap in her thoughts, many of which were now quite nice
thoughts, real amiable ones about her parents and relations, with a
glimmer in them of recognition of the extraordinary benefits she had
received at the hands of—what? Fate? Providence?—anyhow of something,
and of how, having received them, she had misused them by failing to be
happy; and Rose in her bosom, which though it still yearned, yearned to
some purpose, for she was reaching the conclusion that merely
inactively to yearn was no use at all, and that she must either by some
means stop her yearning or give it at least a chance—remote, but still
a chance—of being quieted by writing to Frederick and 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 on him
too and were able to make them even a little understand each other,
even a little be friends. Rose, so far had loosening and disintegration
gone on in her character, now was beginning to think her obstinate
strait-lacedness about his books and her austere absorption in good
works had been foolish and perhaps even wrong. He was her husband, and
she had frightened him away. She had frightened love away, precious
love, and that couldn’t be good. Was not Lotty right when she said the
other day that nothing at all except love mattered? Nothing certainly
seemed much use unless it was built up on love. But once frightened
away, could it ever come back? Yes, it might in that beauty, it might
in the atmosphere of happiness Lotty and San Salvatore seemed between
them to spread round like some divine infection.
She had, however, to get him there first, and he certainly couldn’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 at least a
chance of his coming, and if she didn’t there was manifestly none. And
then, once here in this loveliness, with everything so soft and kind
and sweet all round, it would be easier to tell him, to try and
explain, to ask for something different, for at least an attempt at
something different in their lives in the future, instead of the
blankness of separation, the cold—oh, the cold—of nothing at all but
the great windiness of faith, the great bleakness of works. Why, one
person in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one’s very
own, to talk to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, was
worth more than all the speeches on platforms and the compliments of
chairmen 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 was altogether
free from yearnings, but bosom thoughts. They lodged in the bosom; it
was in the bosom that Rose ached, and felt so dreadfully lonely. And
when her courage failed her, as it did on most days, and it 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 had been
Lotty’s only misgiving, and coming out of it in the morning, and Lotty
coming out of it too, both of them as unclouded and as nice to each
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 the bath
catastrophe as untouched in spirit as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
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 and write to him
at once.
But suppose—
She paused. Suppose he didn’t answer. Suppose he didn’t even answer.
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 that second
week. It increased to such an extent that she might just as well not
have had her private sitting-room at all, for she could no longer sit.
Not for ten minutes together could Mrs. Fisher sit. And added to the
restlessness, as the days of the second week proceeded on their way,
she had a curious sensation, which worried her, of rising sap. She knew
the feeling, because she had sometimes had it in childhood in specially
swift springs, when the lilacs and the syringas seemed to rush out into
blossom in a single night, but it was strange to have it again after
over fifty years. She would have liked to remark on the sensation to
some one, but she was ashamed. It was such an absurd sensation at her
age. Yet oftener and oftener, and every day more and more, did Mrs.
Fisher have a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently 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 not in
legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded
that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and
yet there it was—the feeling that presently, that at any moment now,
she might crop out all green.
Mrs. Fisher was upset. There were many things she disliked more than
anything else, and one was when the elderly imagined they felt young
and behaved accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, they were
only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results. She
herself had grown old as people should grow old—steadily and firmly. No
interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodic returns. If, after
all these years, she were now going to be deluded into some sort of
unsuitable breaking-out, how humiliating.
Indeed she was thankful, that second week, that Kate Lumley was not
there. It would be most unpleasant, should anything different occur in
her behaviour, to have Kate looking on. Kate had known her all her
life. She felt she could let herself go—here Mrs. Fisher frowned at the
book she was vainly trying to concentrate on, for where did that
expression come from?—much less painfully before strangers than before
an old friend. Old friends, reflected Mrs. Fisher, who hoped she was
reading, compare one constantly with what one used to be. They are
always doing it if one develops. They are surprised at development.
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 line down
the page and not a word of it getting through into her consciousness,
is foolish of friends. It is condemning one to a premature death. One
should continue (of course with dignity) to develop, however old one
may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness,
because as long as one was alive one was not dead—obviously, decided
Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life. What she
would dislike would be unripening, going back to something green. She
would dislike it intensely; and this is what she felt she was on the
brink of doing.
Naturally it made her very uneasy, and only in constant movement could
she find distraction. Increasingly restless and no longer able to
confine herself to her battlements, she wandered more and more
frequently, and also aimlessly, in and out of the top garden, to the
growing 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 dead
leaves off the rose-bushes, and go away again.
In Mr. Wilkins’s conversation she found temporary relief, but though he
joined her whenever he could he was not always there, for he spread his
attentions judiciously among the three ladies, and when he was
somewhere else she had to face and manage her thoughts as best she
could by herself. Perhaps it was the excess of light and colour at San
Salvatore which made every other place seem dark and black; and Prince
of 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 hardly be
called living, or at most not more than half living, and were certainly
not young, and except for them there were only the maids, and they were
dusty old things.
Dusty old things. Mrs. Fisher paused in her thoughts, arrested by the
strange expression. Where had it come from? How was it possible 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 of hers, and she had heard
her say it and unconsciously caught it from her.
If so, this was both serious and disgusting. That the foolish creature
should penetrate into Mrs. Fisher’s very mind and establish her
personality there, the personality which was still, in spite of the
harmony apparently existing between her and her intelligent husband, so
alien to Mrs. Fisher’s own, so far removed from what she understood and
liked, and infect her with her undesirable phrases, was most
disturbing. Never in her life before had such a sentence come into Mrs.
Fisher’s head. Never in her life before had she thought of her maids,
or of anybody else, as dusty old things. Her maids were not dusty old
things; they were most respectable, neat women, who were allowed 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 and being a dusty old
thing.
How true it was what Ruskin said, that evil communications corrupt good
manners. But did Ruskin say it? On second thoughts she was not sure,
but it was just the sort of thing he would have said if he had said it,
and in any case it was true. Merely hearing Mrs. Wilkins’s evil
communications at meals—she did not listen, she avoided listening, yet
it was evident she had heard—those communications which, in that they
so often were at once vulgar, indelicate and profane, and always, she
was sorry to say, laughed at by Lady Caroline, must be classed as evil,
was spoiling her own mental manners. Soon she might not only think but
say. How terrible that would be. If that were the form her breaking-out
was going to take, the form of unseemly speech, Mrs. Fisher was afraid
she would hardly with any degree of composure be able to bear it.
At this stage Mrs. Fisher wished more than ever that she were able to
talk over her strange feelings with some one who would understand.
There was, however, no one who would understand except Mrs. Wilkins
herself. She would. She would know at once, Mrs. Fisher was sure, what
she felt like. But this was impossible. It would be as abject as
begging the very microbe that was infecting one for protection against
its disease.
She continued, accordingly, to bear her sensations in silence, and was
driven by them into that frequent aimless appearing in the top garden
which presently roused even Scrap’s attention.
Scrap had noticed it, and vaguely wondered at it, for some time before
Mr. Wilkins inquired of her one morning as he arranged her cushions for
her—he had established the daily assisting of Lady Caroline into her
chair as his special privilege—whether there was anything the matter
with Mrs. Fisher.
At that moment Mrs. Fisher was standing by the eastern parapet, shading
her eyes and carefully scrutinising the distant white houses of
Mezzago. 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 be unlikely to
have anything on her mind?”
“I should imagine so,” said Scrap, smiling.
“If she has, and her restlessness appears to suggest it, I should be
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 the spot. I
am. And a lawyer on the spot,” said Mr. Wilkins, who endeavoured to
make his conversation when he talked to Lady Caroline light, aware that
one must be light with young ladies, “is worth two in—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 it not be
a little—a little delicate to touch on such a question, the question
whether or no a lady has something on her mind?”
“Perhaps she will tell you if you go and talk to her. I think it must
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 a foreigner so
that he might respectfully kiss her hand on withdrawing to go
obediently and relieve Mrs. Fisher’s loneliness.
It was wonderful what a variety of exits from her corner Scrap
contrived 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 had
discovered, the very first five minutes of the very first evening, that
her fears lest he should cling to her and stare in dreadful admiration
were 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 not
have dared to in her case. He was all respectfulness. She could direct
his movements in regard to herself with the raising of an eyelash. His
one concern was to obey. She had been prepared to like him if he would
only be so obliging as not to admire her, and she did like him. She did
not forget his moving defencelessness the first morning in his towel,
and he amused her, and he was kind to Lotty. It is true she liked him
most when he wasn’t there, but then she usually liked everybody most
when they weren’t there. Certainly he did seem to be one of those men,
rare in her experience, who never looked at a woman from the predatory
angle. The comfort of this, the simplification it brought into the
relations of the party, was immense. From this point of view Mr.
Wilkins was simply ideal; he was unique and precious. Whenever she
thought of him, and was perhaps inclined to dwell on the aspects of him
that were a little boring, she remembered this and murmured, “But what
a treasure.”
Indeed it was Mr. Wilkins’s one aim during his stay at San Salvatore to
be a treasure. At all costs the three ladies who were not his wife must
like him and trust him. Then presently when trouble arose in their
lives—and in what lives did not trouble sooner or later arise?—they
would recollect how reliable he was and how sympathetic, and turn to
him for advice. Ladies with something on their minds were exactly what
he wanted. Lady Caroline, he judged, had nothing on hers at the moment,
but so much beauty—for he could not but see what was evident—must have
had its difficulties in the past and would have more of them before it
had done. In the past he had not been at hand; in the future he hoped
to be. And meanwhile the behaviour of Mrs. Fisher, the next in
importance of the ladies from the professional point of view, showed
definite promise. It was almost certain that Mrs. Fisher had something
on her mind. He had been observing her attentively, and it was almost
certain.
With the third, with Mrs. Arbuthnot, he had up to this made least
headway, for she was so very retiring and quiet. But might not this
very retiringness, this tendency to avoid the others and spend her time
alone, indicate that she too was troubled? If so, he was her man. He
would cultivate her. He would follow her and sit with her, and
encourage her to tell him about herself. Arbuthnot, he understood from
Lotty, was a British Museum official—nothing specially important at
present, but Mr. Wilkins regarded it as his business to know all sorts
and kinds. Besides, there was promotion. Arbuthnot, promoted, might
become very much worth while.
As for Lotty, she was charming. She really had all the qualities he had
credited her with during his courtship, and they had been, it appeared,
merely in abeyance since. His early impressions of her were now being
endorsed by the affection and even admiration Lady Caroline showed for
her. Lady Caroline Dester was the last person, he was sure, to be
mistaken on such a subject. Her knowledge of the world, her constant
association with only the best, must make her quite unerring. Lotty was
evidently, then, that which before marriage he had believed her to
be—she was valuable. She certainly had been most valuable in
introducing him to Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. A man in his
profession 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, as Lotty
had almost at once informed him, in the atmosphere of San Salvatore. It
promoted expansion. It brought out dormant qualities. And feeling more
and more pleased, and even charmed, by his wife, and very content with
the progress he was making with the two others, and hopeful of progress
to be made with the retiring third, Mr. Wilkins could not remember ever
having had such an agreeable holiday. The only thing that might perhaps
be bettered was the way they would call him Mr. Wilkins. Nobody said
Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. Yet he had introduced himself to Lady Caroline—he
flinched a little on remembering the circumstances—as Mellersh-Wilkins.
Still, this was a small matter, not enough to worry about. He would be
foolish if in such a place and such society he worried about anything.
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 his wife’s as
well, and surprise her at the end by presenting her with her nest-egg
as intact as when she started; and just the knowledge that he was
preparing a happy surprise for her made him feel warmer than ever
towards her.
In fact Mr. Wilkins, who had begun by being consciously and according
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 from the
second week one by one, equal in beauty with those of the first, and
the scent of beanfields in flower on the hillside behind the village
came across to San Salvatore whenever the air moved. In the garden that
second week the poet’s eyed narcissus disappeared out the long grass at
the edge of the zigzag path, and wild gladiolus, slender and
rose-coloured, came in their stead, white pinks bloomed in the borders,
filling the whole place with their smoky-sweet smell, and a bush nobody
had noticed burst into glory and fragrance, and it was a purple lilac
bush. Such a jumble of spring and summer was not to be believed in,
except by those who dwelt in those gardens. Everything seemed to be out
together—all the things crowded into one month which in England are
spread penuriously over six. Even primroses were found one day by Mrs.
Wilkins in a cold corner up in the hills; and when she brought them
down to the geraniums and heliotrope of San Salvatore they looked quite
shy.