Scrap finished dressing, and then loitered at her window, waiting till she could hear Mr Wilkins go into the bathroom. When he was safely there, she would slip out and settle herself in her garden and resume her inquiries into the probable meaning of her life. She was getting on with her inquiries. She dozed much less frequently, and was beginning to be inclined to agree that “tawdry” was the word to apply to her past. Also she was afraid that her future looked black.
There – she could hear Mr Wilkins’s educated voice again. Lotty’s door had opened, and he was coming out of it asking his way to the bathroom.
“It’s where you see the crowd,” Lotty’s voice answered – still a cheerful voice, Scrap was glad to notice.
His steps went along the landing, and Lotty’s steps seemed to go downstairs, and then there seemed to be a brief altercation at the bathroom door – hardly so much an altercation as a chorus of vociferations on one side and a wordless determination, Scrap judged, to have a bath by oneself on the other.
Mr Wilkins knew no Italian, and the expression pericoloso left him precisely as it found him – or would have, if he had seen it, but naturally he took no notice of the printed matter on the wall. He firmly closed the door on the servants, resisting Domenico, who tried to the last to press through, and locked himself in as a man should for his bath, judicially considering, as he made his simple preparations for getting in, the singular standard of behaviour of these foreigners who, both male and female, apparently wished to stay with him while he bathed. In Finland, he had heard, the female natives not only were present on such occasions but actually washed the bath-taking traveller. He had not heard, however, that this was true too of Italy, which somehow seemed much nearer civilization – perhaps because one went there, and did not go to Finland.
Impartially examining this reflection, and carefully balancing the claims to civilization of Italy and Finland, Mr Wilkins got into the bath and turned off the tap. Naturally he turned off the tap. It was what one did. But on the instructions, printed in red letters, was a paragraph saying that the tap should not be turned off as long as there was still fire in the stove. It should be left on – not much on, but on – until the fire was quite out, otherwise – and here again was the word pericoloso – the stove would blow up.
Mr Wilkins got into the bath, turned off the tap, and the stove blew up, exactly as the printed instructions said it would. It blew up, fortunately, only in its inside, but it blew up with a terrific noise, and Mr Wilkins leapt out of the bath and rushed to the door, and only the instinct born of years of training made him snatch up a towel as he rushed.
Scrap, halfway across the landing on her way out of doors, heard the explosion.
“Good heavens,” she thought, remembering the instructions, “there goes Mr Wilkins!”
And she ran towards the head of the stairs to call the servants, and as she ran, out ran Mr Wilkins clutching his towel, and they ran into each other.
“That damned bath!” cried Mr Wilkins, perhaps for the only time in his life forgetting himself – but he was upset.
Here was an introduction. Mr Wilkins, imperfectly concealed in his towel, his shoulders exposed at one end and his legs at the other, and Lady Caroline Dester, to meet whom he had swallowed all his anger with his wife and come out to Italy.
For Lotty in her letter had told him who was at San Salvatore besides herself and Mrs Arbuthnot, and Mr Wilkins at once had perceived that this was an opportunity which might never recur. Lotty had merely said, “There are two other women here: Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester,” but that was enough. He knew all about the Droitwiches – their wealth, their connections, their place in history, and the power they had, should they choose to exert it, of making yet another solicitor happy by adding him to those they already employed. Some people employed one solicitor for one branch of their affairs, and another for another. The affairs of the Droitwiches must have many branches. He had also heard – for it was, he considered, part of his business to hear, and having heard to remember – of the beauty of their only daughter. Even if the Droitwiches themselves did not need his services, their daughter might. Beauty led one into strange situations – advice could never come amiss. And should none of them, neither parents nor daughter nor any of their brilliant sons, need him in his professional capacity, it yet was obviously a most valuable acquaintance to make. It opened up vistas. It swelled with possibilities. He might go on living in Hampstead for years and not again come across such another chance.
Directly his wife’s letter reached him he telegraphed and packed. This was business. He was not a man to lose time when it came to business, nor was he a man to jeopardize a chance by neglecting to be amiable. He met his wife perfectly amiably, aware that amiability under such circumstances was wisdom. Besides, he actually felt amiable – very. For once, Lotty was really helping him. He kissed her affectionately on getting out of Beppo’s fly – and was afraid she must have got up extremely early – he made no complaints of the steepness of the walk up, he told her pleasantly of his journey, and when called upon, obediently admired the views. It was all neatly mapped out in his mind, what he was going to do that first day – have a shave, have a bath, put on clean clothes, sleep a while, and then would come lunch and the introduction to Lady Caroline.
In the train he had selected the words of his greeting, going over them with care – some slight expression of his gratification in meeting one of whom he, in common with the whole world, had heard – but of course put delicately, very delicately – some slight reference to her distinguished parents and the part her family had played in the history of England – made, of course, with proper tact – a sentence or two about her eldest brother Lord Winchcombe, who had won his VC in the late war under circumstances which could only cause – he might or might not add this – every Englishman’s heart to beat higher than ever with pride – and the first steps towards what might well be the turning point in his career would have been taken.
And here he was… no, it was too terrible, what could be more terrible? Only a towel on, water running off his legs, and that exclamation. He knew at once the lady was Lady Caroline – the minute the exclamation was out he knew it. Rarely did Mr Wilkins use that word, and never, never in the presence of a lady or a client. While as for the towel – why had he come? Why had he not stayed in Hampstead? It would be impossible to live this down.
But Mr Wilkins was reckoning without Scrap. She, indeed, screwed up her face at the first flash of him on her astonished sight in an enormous effort not to laugh, and having choked the laughter down and got her face serious again, she said as composedly as if he had had all his clothes on, “How do you do.”
What perfect tact. Mr Wilkins could have worshipped her. This exquisite ignoring. Blue blood, of course, coming out.
Overwhelmed with gratitude, he took her offered hand and said “How do you do” in his turn, and merely to repeat the ordinary words seemed magically to restore the situation to normal. Indeed, he was so much relieved, and it was so natural to be shaking hands, to be conventionally greeting, that he forgot he had only a towel on and his professional manner came back to him. He forgot what he was looking like, but he did not forget that this was Lady Caroline Dester – the lady he had come all the way to Italy to see – and he did not forget that it was in her face, her lovely and important face, that he had flung his terrible exclamation. He must at once entreat her forgiveness. To say such a word to a lady – to any lady, but of all ladies to just this one…
“I’m afraid I used unpardonable language,” began Mr Wilkins very earnestly, as earnestly and ceremoniously as if he had had his clothes on.
“I thought it most appropriate,” said Scrap, who was used to damns.
Mr Wilkins was incredibly relieved and soothed by this answer. No offence, then, taken. Blue blood again. Only blue blood could afford such a liberal, such an understanding attitude.
; “It is Lady Caroline Dester, is it not, to whom I am speaking?” he asked, his voice sounding even more carefully cultivated than usual, for he had to restrain too much pleasure, too much relief, too much of the joy of the pardoned and the shriven from getting into it.
“Yes,” said Scrap, and for the life of her she couldn’t help smiling. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t meant to smile at Mr Wilkins, not ever, but really he looked – and then his voice on the top of the rest of him, oblivious of the towel and his legs, and talking just like a church.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Mr Wilkins, with the ceremony of the drawing room. “My name is Mellersh Wilkins.”
And he instinctively held out his hand a second time at the words.
“I thought perhaps it was,” said Scrap, a second time having hers shaken and a second time unable not to smile.
He was about to proceed to the first of the graceful tributes he had prepared in the train, oblivious, as he could not see himself, that he was without his clothes, when the servants came running up the stairs and, simultaneously, Mrs Fisher appeared in the doorway of her sitting room. For all this had happened very quickly, and the servants away in the kitchen, and Mrs Fisher pacing her battlements, had not had time on hearing the noise to appear before the second handshake.
The servants when they heard the dreaded noise knew at once what had happened, and rushed straight into the bathroom to try and staunch the flood, taking no notice of the figure on the landing in the towel, but Mrs Fisher did not know what the noise could be, and coming out of her room to enquire stood rooted on the door sill.
It was enough to root anybody. Lady Caroline shaking hands with what evidently, if he had had clothes on, would have been Mrs Wilkins’s husband, and both of them conversing just as if…
Then Scrap became aware of Mrs Fisher. She turned to her at once. “Do let me,” she said gracefully, “introduce Mr Mellersh Wilkins. He has just come. This,” she added, turning to Mr Wilkins, “is Mrs Fisher.”
And Mr Wilkins, nothing if not courteous, reacted at once to the conventional formula. First he bowed to the elderly lady in the doorway, then he crossed over to her, his wet feet leaving footprints as he went, and having got to her he politely held out his hand.
“It is a pleasure,” said Mr Wilkins in his carefully modulated voice, “to meet a friend of my wife’s.”
Scrap melted away down into the garden.
15
The strange effect of this incident was that when they met that evening at dinner both Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline had a singular feeling of secret understanding with Mr Wilkins. He could not be to them as other men. He could not be to them as he would have been if they had met him in his clothes. There was a sense of broken ice – they felt at once intimate and indulgent, almost they felt to him as nurses do – as those feel who have assisted either patients or young children at their baths. They were acquainted with Mr Wilkins’s legs.
What Mrs Fisher said to him that morning in her first shock will never be known, but what Mr Wilkins said to her in reply, when reminded by what she was saying of his condition, was so handsome in its apology, so proper in its confusion, that she had ended by being quite sorry for him and completely placated. After all, it was an accident, and nobody could help accidents. And when she saw him next at dinner, dressed, polished, spotless as to linen and sleek as to hair, she felt this singular sensation of a secret understanding with him and, added to it, of a kind of almost personal pride in his appearance, now that he was dressed, which presently extended in some subtle way to an almost personal pride in everything he said.
There was no doubt whatever in Mrs Fisher’s mind that a man was infinitely preferable as a companion to a woman. Mr Wilkins’s presence and conversation at once raised the standard of the dinner table from that of a bear garden – yes, a bear garden – to that of a civilized social gathering. He talked as men talk, about interesting subjects, and though most courteous to Lady Caroline, showed no traces of dissolving into simpers and idiocy whenever he addressed her. He was, indeed, precisely as courteous to Mrs Fisher herself – and when for the first time at that table politics were introduced, he listened to her with the proper seriousness on her exhibiting a desire to speak, and treated her opinions with the attention they deserved. He appeared to think much as she did about Lloyd George, and in regard to literature he was equally sound. In fact, there was real conversation, and he liked nuts. How he could have married Mrs Wilkins was a mystery.
Lotty, for her part, looked on with round eyes. She had expected Mellersh to take at least two days before he got to this stage, but the San Salvatore spell had worked instantly. It was not only that he was pleasant at dinner, for she had always seen him pleasant at dinners with other people, but he had been pleasant all day privately – so pleasant that he had complimented her on her looks while she was brushing out her hair, and kissed her. Kissed her! And it was neither good morning nor good night.
Well, this being so, she would put off telling him the truth about her nest egg, and about Rose not being his hostess after all, till next day. Pity to spoil things. She had been going to blurt it out as soon as he had had a rest, but it did seem a pity to disturb such a very beautiful frame of mind as that of Mellersh this first day. Let him too get more firmly fixed in heaven. Once fixed he wouldn’t mind anything.
Her face sparkled with delight at the instantaneous effect of San Salvatore. Even the catastrophe of the bath, of which she had been told when she came in from the garden, had not shaken him. Of course all that he had needed was a holiday. What a brute she had been to him when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as it happened, was ever so much better – though not through any merit of hers. She talked and laughed gaily, not a shred of fear of him left in her, and even when she said, struck by his spotlessness, that he looked so clean that one could eat one’s dinner off him, and Scrap laughed, Mellersh laughed too. He would have minded that at home, supposing that at home she had had the spirit to say it.
It was a successful evening. Scrap, whenever she looked at Mr Wilkins, saw him in his towel, dripping water, and felt indulgent. Mrs Fisher was delighted with him. Rose was a dignified hostess in Mr Wilkins’s eyes, quiet and dignified, and he admired the way she waived her right to preside at the head of the table – as a graceful compliment, of course, to Mrs Fisher’s age. Mrs Arbuthnot was, opined Mr Wilkins, naturally retiring. She was the most retiring of the three ladies. He had met her before dinner alone for a moment in the drawing room, and had expressed in appropriate language his sense of her kindness in wishing him to join her party, and she had been retiring. Was she shy? Probably. She had blushed, and murmured as if in deprecation, and then the others had come in. At dinner she talked least. He would, of course, become better acquainted with her during the next few days, and it would be a pleasure, he was sure.
Meanwhile, Lady Caroline was all – and more than all – Mr Wilkins had imagined, and had received his speeches, worked in skilfully between the courses, graciously; Mrs Fisher was the exact old lady he had been hoping to come across all his professional life; and Lotty had not only immensely improved, but was obviously au mieux – Mr Wilkins knew what was necessary in French – with Lady Caroline. He had been much tormented during the day by the thought of how he had stood conversing with Lady Caroline, forgetful of his not being dressed, and had at last written her a note most deeply apologizing, and beseeching her to overlook his amazing, his incomprehensible obliviousness, to which she had replied in pencil on the back of the envelope, “Don’t worry.” And he had obeyed her commands, and had put it from him. The result was he was now in great contentment. Before going to sleep that night he pinched his wife’s ear. She was amazed. These endearments…
What is more, the morning brought no relapse in Mr Wilkins, and he kept up to this high level throughout the day, in spite of its being the first day of the second week,
and therefore pay day.
Its being pay day precipitated Lotty’s confession, which she had, when it came to the point, been inclined to put off a little longer. She was not afraid, she dared anything, but Mellersh was in such an admirable humour – why risk clouding it just yet? When, however, soon after breakfast Costanza appeared with a pile of very dirty little bits of paper covered with sums in pencil, and having knocked at Mrs Fisher’s door and been sent away, and at Lady Caroline’s door and been sent away, and at Rose’s door and had no answer because Rose had gone out, she waylaid Lotty, who was showing Mellersh over the house, and pointed to the bits of paper and talked very rapidly and loud, and shrugged her shoulders a great deal, and kept on pointing at the bits of paper, Lotty remembered that a week had passed without anybody paying anything to anyone, and that the moment had come to settle up.
“Does this good lady want something?” enquired Mr Wilkins mellifluously.
“Money,” said Lotty.
“Money?”
“It’s the housekeeping bills.”
“Well, you have nothing to do with those,” said Mr Wilkins serenely.
“Oh yes, I have…”
And the confession was precipitated.
It was wonderful how Mellersh took it. One would have imagined that his sole idea about the nest egg had always been that it should be lavished on just this. He did not, as he would have done at home, cross-examine her; he accepted everything as it came pouring out, about her fibs and all, and when she had finished and said, “You have every right to be angry, I think, but I hope you won’t be and will forgive me instead,” he merely asked, “What can be more beneficial than such a holiday?”
Whereupon she put her arm through his and held it tight and said, “Oh, Mellersh, you really are too sweet!” – her face red with pride in him.
The Enchanted April Page 16
