The war finished Scrap. It killed the one man she felt safe with, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her with love. Since then she had been embittered. She was struggling as angrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp got caught in honey. Just as desperately did she try to unstick her wings. It gave her no pleasure to outdo other women; she didn’t want their tiresome men. What could one do with men when one had got them? None of them would talk to her of anything but the things of love, and how foolish and fatiguing that became after a bit. It was as though a healthy person with a normal hunger was given nothing whatever to eat but sugar. Love, love . . . the very word made her want to slap somebody. “Why should I love you? Why should I?” she would ask amazed sometimes when somebody was trying — somebody was always trying — to propose to her. But she never got a real answer, only further incoherence.
A deep cynicism took hold of the unhappy Scrap. Her inside grew hoary with disillusionment, while her gracious and charming outside continued to make the world more beautiful. What had the future in it for her? She would not be able, after such a preparation, to take hold of it. She was fit for nothing; she had wasted all this time being beautiful. Presently she wouldn’t be beautiful, and what then? Scrap didn’t know what then, it appalled her to wonder even. Tired as she was of being conspicuous she was at least used to that, she had never known anything else; and to become inconspicuous, to fade, to grow shabby and dim, would probably be most painful. And once she began, what years and years of it there would be! Imagine, thought Scrap, having most of one’s life at the wrong end. Imagine being old for two or three times as long as being young. Stupid, stupid. Everything was stupid. There wasn’t a thing she wanted to do. There were thousands of things she didn’t want to do. Avoidance, silence, invisibility, if possible unconsciousness — these negations were all she asked for a moment; and here, even here, she was not allowed a minute’s peace, and this absurd woman must come pretending, merely because she wanted to exercise power and make her go to bed and make her — hideous — drink castor oil, that she thought she was ill.
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Fisher, who felt the cold of the stone beginning to come through and knew she could not sit much longer, “you’ll do what is reasonable. Your mother would wish — have you a mother?”
A faint wonder came into Scrap’s eyes. Have you a mother? If ever anybody had a mother it was Scrap. It had not occurred to her that there could be people who had never heard of her mother. She was one of the major marchionesses — there being, as no one knew better than Scrap, marchionesses and marchionesses — and had held high positions at Court. Her father, too, in his day had been most prominent. His day was a little over, poor dear, because in the war he had made some important mistakes, and besides he was now grown old; still, there he was, an excessively well-known person. How restful, how extraordinarily restful to have found some one who had never heard of any of her lot, or at least had not yet connected her with them.
She began to like Mrs. Fisher. Perhaps the originals didn’t know anything about her either. When she first wrote to them and signed her name, that great name of Dester which twisted in and out of English history like a bloody thread, for its bearers constantly killed, she had taken it for granted that they would know who she was; and at the interview of Shaftesbury Avenue she was sure they did know, because they hadn’t asked, as they otherwise would have, for references.
Scrap began to cheer up. If nobody at San Salvatore had ever heard of her, if for a whole month she could shed herself, get right away from everything connected with herself, be allowed really to forget the clinging and the clogging and all the noise, why, perhaps she might make something of herself after all. She might really think; really clear up her mind; really come to some conclusion.
“What I want to do here,” she said, leaning forward in her chair and clasping her hands round her knees and looking up at Mrs. Fisher, whose seat was higher than hers, almost with animation, so much pleased was she that Mrs. Fisher knew nothing about her, “is to come to a conclusion. That’s all. It isn’t much to want, is it? Just that.”
She gazed at Mrs. Fisher, and thought that almost any conclusion would do; the great thing was to get hold of something, catch something tight, cease to drift.
Mrs. Fisher’s little eyes surveyed her. “I should say,” she said, “that what a young woman like you wants is a husband and children.”
“Well, that’s one of the things I’m going to consider,” said Scrap amiably. “But I don’t think it would be a conclusion.”
“And meanwhile,” said Mrs. Fisher, getting up, for the cold of the stone was now through, “I shouldn’t trouble my head if I were you with considerings and conclusions. Women’s heads weren’t made for thinking, I assure you. I should go to bed and get well.”
“I am well,” said Scrap.
“Then why did you send a message that you were ill?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then I’ve had all the trouble of coming out here for nothing.”
“But wouldn’t you prefer coming out and finding me well than coming out and finding me ill?” asked Scrap, smiling.
Even Mrs. Fisher was caught by the smile.
“Well, you’re a pretty creature,” she said forgivingly. “It’s a pity you weren’t born fifty years ago. My friends would have liked looking at you.”
“I’m very glad I wasn’t,” said Scrap. “I dislike being looked at.”
“Absurd,” said Mrs. Fisher, growing stern again. “That’s what you are made for, young women like you. For what else, pray? And I assure you that if my friends had looked at you, you would have been looked at by some very great people.”
“I dislike very great people,” said Scrap, frowning. There had been an incident quite recently — really potentates. . .
“What I dislike,” said Mrs. Fisher, now as cold as that stone she had got up from, “is the pose of the modern young woman. It seems to me pitiful, positively pitiful, in its silliness.”
And, her stick crunching the pebbles, she walked away.
“That’s all right,” Scrap said to herself, dropping back into her comfortable position with her head in the cushion and her feet on the parapet; if only people would go away she didn’t in the least mind why they went.
“Don’t you think darling Scrap is growing a little, just a little, peculiar?” her mother had asked her father a short time before that latest peculiarity of the flight to San Salvatore, uncomfortably struck by the very odd things Scrap said and the way she had taken to slinking out of reach whenever she could and avoiding everybody except — such a sign of age — quite young men, almost boys.
“Eh? What? Peculiar? Well, let her be peculiar if she likes. A woman with her looks can be any damned thing she pleases,” was the infatuated answer.
“I do let her,” said her mother meekly; and indeed if she did not, what difference would it make?
Mrs. Fisher was sorry she had bothered about Lady Caroline. She went along the hall towards her private sitting-room, and her stick as she went struck the stone floor with a vigour in harmony with her feelings. Sheer silliness, these poses. She had no patience with them. Unable to be or do anything of themselves, the young of the present generation tried to achieve a reputation for cleverness by decrying all that was obviously great and obviously good and by praising everything, however obviously bad, that was different. Apes, thought Mrs. Fisher, roused. Apes. Apes. And in her sitting-room she found more apes, or what seemed to her in her present mood more, for there was Mrs. Arbuthnot placidly drinking coffee, while at the writing-table, the writing-table she already looked upon as sacred, using her pen, her own pen brought for her hand alone from Prince of Wales Terrace, sat Mrs. Wilkins writing; at the table; in her room; with her pen.
“Isn’t this a delightful place?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot cordially. “We have just discovered it.”
“I’m writing to Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning her head and also cord
ially — as though, Mrs. Fisher thought, she cared a straw who she was writing to and anyhow knew who the person she called Mellersh was. “He’ll want to know,” said Mrs. Wilkins, optimism induced by her surroundings, “that I’ve got here safely.”
Chapter 11
The sweet smells that were everywhere in San Salvatore were alone enough to produce concord. They came into the sitting-room from the flowers on the battlements, and met the ones from the flowers inside the room, and almost, thought Mrs. Wilkins, could be seen greeting each other with a holy kiss. Who could be angry in the middle of such gentlenesses? Who could be acquisitive, selfish, in the old rasped London way, in the presence of this bounteous beauty?
Yet Mrs. Fisher seemed to be all three of these things.
There was so much beauty, so much more than enough for every one, that it did appear to be a vain activity to try and make a corner in it.
Yet Mrs. Fisher was trying to make a corner in it, and had railed off a portion for her exclusive use.
Well, she would get over that presently; she would get over it inevitably, Mrs. Wilkins was sure, after a day or two in the extraordinary atmosphere of peace in that place.
Meanwhile she obviously hadn’t even begun to get over it. She stood looking at her and Rose with an expression that appeared to be one of anger. Anger. Fancy. Silly old nerve-racked London feelings, thought Mrs. Wilkins, whose eyes saw the room full of kisses, and everybody in it being kissed, Mrs. Fisher as copiously as she herself and Rose.
“You don’t like us being in here,” said Mrs. Wilkins, getting up and at once, after her manner, fixing on the truth. “Why?”
“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Fisher leaning on her stick, “you could have seen that it is my room.”
“You mean because of the photographs,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was a little red and surprised, got up too.
“And the notepaper,” said Mrs. Fisher. “Notepaper with my London address on it. That pen—”
She pointed. It was still in Mrs. Wilkins’s hand.
“Is yours. I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Wilkins, laying it on the table. And she added smiling, that it had just been writing some very amiable things.
“But why,” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who found herself unable to acquiesce in Mrs. Fisher’s arrangements without at least a gentle struggle, “ought we not to be here? It’s a sitting-room.”
“There is another one,” said Mrs. Fisher. “You and your friend cannot sit in two rooms at once, and if I have no wish to disturb you in yours I am unable to see why you should wish to disturb me in mine.”
“But why—” began Mrs. Arbuthnot again.
“It’s quite natural,” Mrs. Wilkins interrupted, for Rose was looking stubborn; and turning to Mrs. Fisher she said that although sharing things with friends was pleasant she could understand that Mrs. Fisher, still steeped in the Prince of Wales Terrace attitude to life, did not yet want to, but that she would get rid of that after a bit and feel quite different. “Soon you’ll want us to share,” said Mrs. Wilkins reassuringly. “Why, you may even get so far as asking me to use your pen if you knew I hadn’t got one.”
Mrs. Fisher was moved almost beyond control by this speech. To have a ramshackle young woman from Hampstead patting her on the back as it were, in breezy certitude that quite soon she would improve, stirred her more deeply than anything had stirred her since her first discovery that Mr. Fisher was not what he seemed. Mrs. Wilkins must certainly be curbed. But how? There was a curious imperviousness about her. At that moment, for instance, she was smiling as pleasantly and with as unclouded a face as if she were saying nothing in the least impertinent. Would she know she was being curbed? If she didn’t know, if she were too tough to feel it, then what? Nothing, except avoidance; except, precisely, one’s own private sitting-room.
“I’m an old woman,” said Mrs. Fisher, “and I need a room to myself. I cannot get about, because of my stick. As I cannot get about I have to sit. Why should I not sit quietly and undisturbed, as I told you in London I intended to? If people are to come in and out all day long, chattering and leaving doors open, you will have broken the agreement, which was that I was to be quiet.”
“But we haven’t the least wish—” began Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was again cut short by Mrs. Wilkins.
“We’re only too glad,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “for you to have this room if it makes you happy. We didn’t know about it, that’s all. We wouldn’t have come in if we had — not till you invited us, anyhow. I expect,” she finished looking down cheerfully at Mrs. Fisher, “you soon will.” And picking up her letter she took Mrs. Arbuthnot’s hand and drew her towards the door.
Mrs. Arbuthnot did not want to go. She, the mildest of women, was filled with a curious and surely unchristian desire to stay and fight. Not, of course, really, nor even with any definitely aggressive words. No; she only wanted to reason with Mrs. Fisher, and to reason patiently. But she did feel that something ought to be said, and that she ought not to allow herself to be rated and turned out as if she were a schoolgirl caught in ill behaviour by Authority.
Mrs. Wilkins, however, drew her firmly to and through the door, and once again Rose wondered at Lotty, at her balance, her sweet and equable temper — she who in England had been such a thing of gusts. From the moment they got into Italy it was Lotty who seemed the elder. She certainly was very happy; blissful, in fact. Did happiness so completely protect one? Did it make one so untouchable, so wise? Rose was happy herself, but not anything like so happy. Evidently not, for not only did she want to fight Mrs. Fisher but she wanted something else, something more than this lovely place, something to complete it; she wanted Frederick. For the first time in her life she was surrounded by perfect beauty, and her one thought was to show it to him, to share it with him. She wanted Frederick. She yearned for Frederick. Ah, if only, only Frederick . . .
“Poor old thing,” said Mrs. Wilkins, shutting the door gently on Mrs. Fisher and her triumph. “Fancy on a day like this.”
“She’s a very rude old thing,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“She’ll get over that. I’m sorry we chose just her room to go and sit in.”
“It’s much the nicest,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “And it isn’t hers.”
“Oh but there are lots of other places, and she’s such a poor old thing. Let her have the room. Whatever does it matter?”
And Mrs. Wilkins said she was going down to the village to find out where the post-office was and post her letter to Mellersh, and would Rose go too.
“I’ve been thinking about Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins as they walked, one behind the other, down the narrow zigzag path up which they had climbed in the rain the night before.
She went first. Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite naturally now, followed. In England it had been the other way about — Lotty, timid, hesitating, except when she burst out so awkwardly, getting behind the calm and reasonable Rose whenever she could.
“I’ve been thinking about Mellersh,” repeated Mrs. Wilkins over her shoulder, as Rose seemed not to have heard.
“Have you?” said Rose, a faint distaste in her voice, for her experiences with Mellersh had not been of a kind to make her enjoy remembering him. She had deceived Mellersh; therefore she didn’t like him. She was unconscious that this was the reason of her dislike, and thought it was that there didn’t seem to be much, if any, of the grace of god about him. And yet how wrong to feel that, she rebuked herself, and how presumptuous. No doubt Lotty’s husband was far, far nearer to God than she herself was ever likely to be. Still, she didn’t like him.
“I’ve been a mean dog,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
“A what?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, incredulous of her hearing.
“All this coming away and leaving him in that dreary place while I rollick in heaven. He had planned to take me to Italy for Easter himself. Did I tell you?”
“No,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot; and indeed she had discouraged talk about husbands. Whenever
Lotty had begun to blurt out things she had swiftly changed the conversation. One husband led to another, in conversation as well as in life, she felt, and she could not, she would not, talk of Frederick. Beyond the bare fact that he was there, he had not been mentioned. Mellersh had had to be mentioned, because of his obstructiveness, but she had carefully kept him from overflowing outside the limits of necessity.
“Well, he did,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “He had never done such a thing in his life before, and I was horrified. Fancy — just as I had planned to come to it myself.”
She paused on the path and looked up at Rose.
“Yes,” said Rose, trying to think of something else to talk about.
“Now you see why I say I’ve been a mean dog. He had planned a holiday in Italy with me, and I had planned a holiday in Italy leaving him at home. I think,” she went on, her eyes fixed on Rose’s face, “Mellersh has every reason to be both angry and hurt.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot was astonished. The extraordinary quickness with which, hour by hour, under her very eyes, Lotty became more selfless, disconcerted her. She was turning into something surprisingly like a saint. Here she was now being affectionate about Mellersh — Mellersh, who only that morning, while they hung their feet into the sea, had seemed a mere iridescence, Lotty had told her, a thing of gauze. That was only that morning; and by the time they had had lunch Lotty had developed so far as to have got him solid enough again to write to, and to write to at length. And now, a few minutes later, she was announcing that he had every reason to be angry with her and hurt, and that she herself had been — the language was unusual, but it did express real penitence — a mean dog.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 277
