Scrap wanted to know so much about her mother that Arundel had
presently to invent. He would talk about anything she wished if only he
might be with her for a while and see her and hear her, but he knew
very little of the Droitwiches and their friends really—beyond meeting
them at those bigger functions where literature is also represented,
and amusing them at luncheons and dinners, he knew very little of them
really. To them he had always remained Mr. Arundel; no one called him
Ferdinand; and he only knew the gossip also available to the evening
papers and the frequenters of clubs. But he was, however, good at
inventing; and as soon as he had come to an end of first-hand
knowledge, in order to answer her inquiries and keep her there to
himself he proceeded to invent. It was quite easy to fasten some of the
entertaining things he was constantly thinking on to other people and
pretend they were theirs. Scrap, who had that affection for her parents
which warms in absence, was athirst for news, and became more and more
interested by the news he gradually imparted.
At first it was ordinary news. He had met her mother here, and seen her
there. She looked very well; she said so and so. But presently the
things Lady Droitwich had said took on an unusual quality: they became
amusing.
“Mother said _that?_” Scrap interrupted, surprised.
And presently Lady Droitwich began to do amusing things as well as say
them.
“_Mother_ did that?” Scrap inquired, wide-eyed.
Arundel warmed to his work. He fathered some of the most entertaining
ideas he had lately had on to Lady Droitwich, and also any charming
funny things that had been done—or might have been done, for he could
imagine almost anything.
Scrap’s eyes grew round with wonder and affectionate pride in her
mother. Why, but how funny—fancy mother. What an old darling. Did she
really do that? How perfectly adorable of her. And did she really
say—but how wonderful of her to think of it. What sort of a face did
Lloyd George make?
She laughed and laughed, and had a great longing to hug her mother, and
the time flew, and it grew quite dusk, and it grew nearly dark, and Mr.
Arundel still went on amusing her, and it was a quarter to eight before
she suddenly remembered dinner.
“Oh, good heavens!” she exclaimed, jumping up.
“Yes. It’s late,” said Arundel.
“I’ll go on quickly and send the maid to you. I must run, or I’ll never
be ready in time—”
And she was gone up the path with the swiftness of a young, slender
deer.
Arundel followed. He did not wish to arrive too hot, so had to go
slowly. Fortunately he was near the top, and Francesca came down the
pergola to pilot him indoors, and having shown him where he could wash
she put him in the empty drawing-room to cool himself by the crackling
wood fire.
He got as far away from the fire as he could, and stood in one of the
deep window-recesses looking out at the distant lights of Mezzago. The
drawing-room door was open, and the house was quiet with the hush that
precedes dinner, when the inhabitants are all shut up in their rooms
dressing. Briggs in his room was throwing away spoilt tie after spoilt
tie; Scrap in hers was hurrying into a black frock with a vague notion
that Mr. Briggs wouldn’t be able to see her so clearly in black; Mrs.
Fisher was fastening the lace shawl, which nightly transformed her day
dress into her evening dress, with the brooch Ruskin had given her on
her marriage, formed of two pearl lilies tied together by a blue enamel
ribbon on which was written in gold letters _Esto perpetua;_ Mr.
Wilkins was sitting on the edge of his bed brushing his wife’s
hair—thus far in this third week had he progressed in
demonstrativeness—while she, for her part, sitting on a chair in front
of him, put his studs in a clean shirt; and Rose, ready dressed, sat at
her window considering her day.
Rose was quite aware of what had happened to Mr. Briggs. If she had had
any difficulty about it, Lotty would have removed it by the frank
comments she made while she and Rose sat together after tea on the
wall. Lotty was delighted at more love being introduced into San
Salvatore, even if it were only one-sided, and said that when once
Rose’s husband was there she didn’t suppose, now that Mrs. Fisher too
had at last come unglued—Rose protested at the expression, and Lotty
retorted that it was in Keats—there would be another place in the world
more swarming with happiness than San Salvatore.
“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 had 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 unusual, 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.
Frederick. Come.
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—”