“What does one do with people like this?” Scrap asked herself, her eyes fixed on Mrs Fisher in what felt to her an indignant stare but appeared to Mrs Fisher as really charming docility.
“Now you’ll take my advice,” said Mrs Fisher, touched, “and not neglect what may very well turn into an illness. We are in Italy, you know, and one has to be careful. You ought, to begin with, to go to bed.”
“I never go to bed,” snapped Scrap, and it sounded as moving, as forlorn, as that line spoken years and years ago by an actress playing the part of Poor Jo in a dramatized version of Bleak House – “I’m always moving on,” said Poor Jo in this play, urged to do so by a policeman; and Mrs Fisher, then a girl, had laid her head on the red velvet parapet of the front row of the dress circle and wept aloud.
It was wonderful, Scrap’s voice. It had given her, in the ten years since she came out, all the triumphs that intelligence and wit can have, because it made whatever she said seem memorable. She ought, with a throat formation like that, to have been a singer, but in every kind of music Scrap was dumb except this one music of the speaking voice – and what a fascination, what a spell lay in that. Such was the loveliness of her face and the beauty of her colouring that there was not a man into whose eyes at the sight of her there did not leap a flame of intensest interest – but, when he heard her voice, the flame in that man’s eyes was caught and fixed. It was the same with every man, educated and uneducated, old, young, desirable themselves or undesirable, men of her own world and bus conductors, generals and Tommies – during the war she had had a perplexing time, bishops equally with vergers, round about her confirmation startling occurrences had taken place – wholesome and unwholesome, rich and penniless, brilliant or idiotic – and it made no difference at all what they were, or how long and securely married: into the eyes of every one of them, when they saw her, leapt this flame, and when they heard her it stayed there.
Scrap had had enough of this look. It only led to difficulties. At first it had delighted her. She had been excited, triumphant. To be apparently incapable of doing or saying the wrong thing, to be applauded, listened to, petted, adored wherever she went, and when she came home to find nothing there either but the most indulgent proud fondness – why, how extremely pleasant. And so easy, too. No preparation necessary for this achievement, no hard work, nothing to learn. She need take no trouble. She had only to appear, and presently say something.
But gradually experiences gathered around her. After all, she had to take trouble, she had to make efforts, because, she discovered with astonishment and rage, she had to defend herself. That look, that leaping look, meant that she was going to be grabbed at. Some of those who had it were more humble than others, especially if they were young, but they all, according to their several ability, grabbed – and she who had entered the world so jauntily, with her head in the air and the completest confidence in anybody whose hair was grey, began to distrust, and then to dislike, and soon to shrink away from, and presently to be indignant. Sometimes it was just as if she didn’t belong to herself, wasn’t her own at all, but was regarded as a universal thing, a sort of beauty-of-all-work. Really men… And she found herself involved in queer, vague quarrels, being curiously hated. Really women… And when the war came, and she flung herself into it along with everybody else, it finished her. Really generals…
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 at the 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 someone 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 in 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 the 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 cordially – 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.”
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 everyone, 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 i
f 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?”
The Enchanted April Page 11
