When they got to the dining-room Mrs. Fisher went to the head of the table — was this Mrs. Fisher’s house? He asked himself. He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything — and Rose, who in her earlier day of defying Mrs. Fisher had taken the other end as her place, for after all no one could say by looking at a table which was its top and which its bottom, led Frederick to the seat next to her. If only, he thought, he could have been alone with Rose; just five minutes more alone with Rose, so that he could have asked her —
But probably he wouldn’t have asked her anything, and only gone on kissing her.
He looked round. The sandy young woman was telling the man they called Briggs to go and sit beside Mrs. Fisher — was the house, then, the sandy young woman’s and not Mrs. Fisher’s? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything — and she herself sat down on Rose’s other side, so that she was opposite him, Frederick, and next to the genial man who had said “Here we are,” when it was only too evident that there they were indeed.
Next to Frederick, and between him and Briggs, was an empty chair: Lady Caroline’s. No more than Lady Caroline knew of the presence in Frederick’s life of Rose was Rose aware of the presence in Frederick’s life of Lady Caroline. What would each think? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything. Yes, he did know something, and that was that his wife had made it up with him — suddenly, miraculously, unaccountably, and divinely. Beyond that he knew nothing. The situation was one with which he felt he could not cope. It must lead him whither it would. He could only drift.
In silence Frederick ate his soup, and the eyes, the large expressive eyes of the young woman opposite, were on him, he could feel, with a growing look in them of inquiry. They were, he could see, very intelligent and attractive eyes, and full, apart from the inquiry of goodwill. Probably she thought he ought to talk — but if she knew everything she wouldn’t think so. Briggs didn’t talk either. Briggs seemed uneasy. What was the matter with Briggs? And Rose too didn’t talk, but then that was natural. She never had been a talker. She had the loveliest expression on her face. How long would it be on it after Lady Caroline’s entrance? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything.
But the genial man on Mrs. Fisher’s left was talking enough for everybody. That fellow ought to have been a parson. Pulpits were the place for a voice like his; it would get him a bishopric in six months. He was explaining to Briggs, who shuffled about in his seat — why did Briggs shuffle about in his seat? — that he must have come out by the same train as Arbuthnot, and when Briggs, who said nothing, wriggled in apparent dissent, he undertook to prove it to him, and did prove it to him in long clear sentences.
“Who’s the man with the voice?” Frederick asked Rose in a whisper; and the young woman opposite, whose ears appeared to have the quickness of hearing of wild creatures, answered, “He’s my husband.”
“Then by all the rules,” said Frederick pleasantly, pulling himself together, “you oughtn’t to be sitting next to him.”
“But I want to. I like sitting next to him. I didn’t before I came here.”
Frederick could think of nothing to say to this, so he only smiled generally.
“It’s this place,” she said, nodding at him. “It makes one understand. You’ve no idea what a lot you’ll understand before you’ve done here.”
“I’m sure I hope so,” said Frederick with real fervour.
The soup was taken away, and the fish was brought. Briggs, on the other side of the empty chair, seemed more uneasy than ever. What was the matter with Briggs? Didn’t he like fish?
Frederick wondered what Briggs would do in the way of fidgets if he were in his own situation. Frederick kept on wiping his moustache, and was not able to look up from his plate, but that was as much as he showed of what he was feeling.
Though he didn’t look up he felt the eyes of the young woman opposite raking him like searchlights, and Rose’s eyes were on him too, he knew, but they rested on him unquestioningly, beautifully, like a benediction. How long would they go on doing that once Lady Caroline was there? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything.
He wiped his moustache for the twentieth unnecessary time, and could not quite keep his hand steady, and the young woman opposite saw his hand not being quite steady, and her eyes raked him persistently. Why did her eyes rake him persistently? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything.
Then Briggs leapt to his feet. What was the matter with Briggs? Oh — yes — quite: she had come.
Frederick wiped his moustache and got up too. He was in for it now. Absurd, fantastic situation. Well, whatever happened he could only drift — drift, and look like an ass to Lady Caroline, the most absolute as well as deceitful ass — an ass who was also a reptile, for she might well think he had been mocking her out in the garden when he said, no doubt in a shaking voice — fool and ass — that he had come because he couldn’t help it; while as for what he would look like to his Rose — when Lady Caroline introduced him to her — when Lady Caroline introduced him as her friend whom she had invited in to dinner — well, God alone knew that.
He, therefore, as he got up wiped his moustache for the last time before the catastrophe.
But he was reckoning without Scrap.
That accomplished and experienced young woman slipped into the chair Briggs was holding for her, and on Lotty’s leaning across eagerly, and saying before any one else could get a word in, “Just fancy, Caroline, how quickly Rose’s husband has got here!” turned to him without so much as the faintest shadow of surprise on her face, and held out her hand, and smiled like a young angel, and said, “and me late your very first evening.”
The daughter of the Droitwiches. . .
Chapter 22
That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses — you could see these as plainly as in the day-time; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
The three younger women sat on the low wall at the end of the top garden after dinner, Rose a little apart from the others, and watched the enormous moon moving slowly over the place where Shelley had lived his last months just on a hundred years before. The sea quivered along the path of the moon. The stars winked and trembled. The mountains were misty blue outlines, with little clusters of lights shining through from little clusters of homes. In the garden the plants stood quite still, straight and unstirred by the smallest ruffle of air. Through the glass doors the dining-room, with its candle-lit table and brilliant flowers — nasturtiums and marigolds that night — glowed like some magic cave of colour, and the three men smoking round it looked strangely animated figures seen from the silence, the huge cool calm of outside.
Mrs. Fisher had gone to the drawing-room and the fire. Scrap and Lotty, their faces upturned to the sky, said very little and in whispers. Rose said nothing. Her face too was upturned. She was looking at the umbrella pine, which had been smitten into something glorious, silhouetted against stars. Every now and then Scrap’s eyes lingered on Rose; so did Lotty’s. For Rose was lovely. Anywhere at that moment, among all the well-known beauties, she would have been lovely. Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining.
Lotty bent close to Scrap’s ear, and whispered. “Love,” she whispered.
Scrap nodded. “Yes,” she said, under her breath.
She was obliged to admit it. You only had to look at Rose to know that here was Love.
“There’s nothing like it,” whispered Lotty.
Scrap was silent.
“It’s a great thing,” whispered Lotty after a pause, during which they both watched Rose’s upturned face, “to get on with one’s loving. Perhaps you can tell me of anything else in the world that works such wonders.”
But Scrap couldn’t tell her; and if she could have, what a night to begin arguing in. This was a night for —
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She pulled herself up. Love again. It was everywhere. There was no getting away from it. She had come to this place to get away from it, and here was everybody in its different stages. Even Mrs. Fisher seemed to have been brushed by one of the many feathers of Love’s wing, and at dinner was different — full of concern because Mr. Briggs wouldn’t eat, and her face when she turned to him all soft with motherliness.
Scrap looked up at the pine-tree motionless among stars. Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful. . .
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn’t want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one’s chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings — feelings one couldn’t manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tired to protect herself from the eternities.
“I suppose,” whispered Lotty, “Rose’s husband seems to you just an ordinary, good-natured, middle-aged man.”
Scrap brought her gaze down from the stars and looked at Lotty a moment while she focused her mind again.
“Just a rather red, rather round man,” whispered Lotty.
Scrap bowed her head.
“He isn’t,” whispered Lotty. “Rose sees through all that. That’s mere trimmings. She sees what we can’t see, because she loves him.”
Always love.
Scrap got up, and winding herself very tightly in her wrap moved away to her day corner, and sat down there alone on the wall and looked out across the other sea, the sea where the sun had gone down, the sea with the far-away dim shadow stretching into it which was France.
Yes, love worked wonders, and Mr. Arundel — she couldn’t at once get used to his other name — was to Rose Love itself; but it also worked inverted wonders, it didn’t invariably, as she well knew, transfigure people into saints and angels. Grievously indeed did it sometimes do the opposite. She had had it in her life applied to her to excess. If it had let her alone, if it had at least been moderate and infrequent, she might, she thought, have turned out a quite decent, generous-minded, kindly, human being. And what was she, thanks to this love Lotty talked so much about? Scrap searched for a just description. She was a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster.
The glass doors of the dining-room opened, and the three men came out into the garden, Mr. Wilkins’s voice flowing along in front of them. He appeared to be doing all the talking; the other two were saying nothing.
Perhaps she had better go back to Lotty and Rose; it would be tiresome to be discovered and hemmed into the cul-de-sac by Mr. Briggs.
She got up reluctantly, for she considered it unpardonable of Mr. Briggs to force her to move about like this, to force her out of any place she wished to sit in; and she emerged from the daphne bushes feeling like some gaunt, stern figure of just resentment and wishing that she looked as gaunt and stern as she felt; so would she have struck repugnance into the soul of Mr. Briggs, and been free of him. But she knew she didn’t look like that, however hard she might try. At dinner his hand shook when he drank, and he couldn’t speak to her without flushing scarlet and then going pale, and Mrs. Fisher’s eyes had sought hers with the entreaty of one who asks that her only son may not be hurt.
How could a human being, thought Scrap, frowning as she issued forth from her corner, how could a man made in God’s image behave so; and be fitted for better things she was sure, with his youth, his attractiveness, and his brains. He had brains. She had examined him cautiously whenever at dinner Mrs. Fisher forced him to turn away to answer her, and she was sure he had brains. Also he had character; there was something noble about his head, about the shape of his forehead — noble and kind. All the more deplorable that he should allow himself to be infatuated by a mere outside, and waste any of his strength, any of his peace of mind, hanging round just a woman-thing. If only he could see right through her, see through all her skin and stuff, he would be cured, and she might go on sitting undisturbed on this wonderful night by herself.
Just beyond the daphne bushes she met Fredrick, hurrying.
“I was determined to find you first,” he said, “before I go to Rose.” And he added quickly, “I want to kiss your shoes.”
“Do you?” said Scrap, smiling. “Then I must go and put on my new ones. These aren’t nearly good enough.”
She felt immensely well-disposed towards Frederick. He, at least, would grab no more. His grabbing days, so sudden and so brief, were done. Nice man; agreeable man. She now definitely liked him. Clearly he had been getting into some sort of a tangle, and she was grateful to Lotty for stopping her in time at dinner from saying something hopelessly complicating. But whatever he had been getting into he was out of it now; his face and Rose’s face had the same light in them.
“I shall adore you for ever now,” said Frederick.
Scrap smiled. “Shall you?” she said.
“I adored you before because of your beauty. Now I adore you because you’re not only as beautiful as a dream but as decent as a man.”
“When the impetuous young woman,” Frederick went on, “the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose’s husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved to his friend.”
“Did I?” said Scrap, her enchanting dimple very evident.
“It’s the rarest, most precious of combinations,” said Frederick, “to be a woman and have the loyalty of a man.”
“Is it?” smiled Scrap, a little wistfully. These were indeed handsome compliments. If only she were really like that . . .
“And I want to kiss your shoes.”
“Won’t this save trouble?” she asked, holding out her hand.
He took it and swiftly kissed it, and was hurrying away again. “Bless you,” he said as he went.
“Where is your luggage?” Scrap called after him.
“Oh, Lord, yes—” said Frederick, pausing. “It’s at the station.”
“I’ll send for it.”
He disappeared through the bushes. She went indoors to give the order; and this is how it happened that Domenico, for the second time that evening, found himself journeying into Mezzago and wondering as he went.
Then, having made the necessary arrangements for the perfect happiness of these two people, she came slowly out into the garden again, very much absorbed in thought. Love seemed to bring happiness to everybody but herself. It had certainly got hold of everybody there, in its different varieties, except herself. Poor Mr. Briggs had been got hold of by its least dignified variety. Poor Mr. Briggs. He was a disturbing problem, and his going away next day wouldn’t she was afraid solve him.
When she reached the others Mr. Arundel — she kept on forgetting that he wasn’t Mr. Arundel — was already, his arm through Rose’s, going off with her, probably to the greater seclusion of the lower garden. No doubt they had a great deal to say to each other; something had gone wrong between them, and had suddenly been put right. San Salvatore, Lotty would say, San Salvatore working its spell of happiness. She could quite believe in its spell. Even she was happier there than she had been for ages and ages. The only person who would go empty away would be Mr. Briggs.
Poor Mr. Briggs. When she came in sight of the group he looked much too nice and boyish not to be happy. It seemed out of the picture that the owner of the place, the person to whom they owed all this, should be the only one to go away from it unblessed.
Compunction seized Scrap. What very pleasant days she had spent in his house, lying in his garden, enjoying his flowers, loving his views, using his things, being comfortable, being rested — recovering, in fact. She had had the most leisured, peaceful, and thoughtful time of her life; and all really t
hanks to him. Oh, she knew she paid him some ridiculous small sum a week, out of all proportion to the benefits she got in exchange, but what was that in the balance? And wasn’t it entirely thanks to him that she had come across Lotty? Never else would she and Lotty have met; never else would she have known her.
Compunction laid its quick, warm hand on Scrap. Impulsive gratitude flooded her. She went straight up to Briggs.
“I owe you so much,” she said, overcome by the sudden realization of all she did owe him, and ashamed of her churlishness in the afternoon and at dinner. Of course he hadn’t known she was being churlish. Of course her disagreeable inside was camouflaged as usual by the chance arrangement of her outside; but she knew it. She was churlish. She had been churlish to everybody for years. Any penetrating eye, thought Scrap, any really penetrating eye, would see her for what she was — a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious and a selfish spinster.
“I owe you so much,” therefore said Scrap earnestly, walking straight up to Briggs, humbled by these thoughts.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 289
