“Or stay in Mezzago in a hotel and go on tomorrow. But tell me,” he said, gazing at the adorable profile, “about yourself. London has been extraordinarily dull and empty. Lady Droitwich said you were with people here she didn’t know. I hope they’ve been kind to you? You look – well, as if your cure had done everything a cure should.”
“They’ve been very kind,” said Scrap. “I got them out of an advertisement.”
“An advertisement?”
“It’s a good way, I find, to get friends. I’m fonder of one of these than I’ve been of anybody for years.”
“Really? Who is it?”
“You shall guess which of them it is when you see them. Tell me about Mother. When did you see her last? We arranged not to write to each other unless there was something special. I wanted to have a month that was perfectly blank.”
“And now I’ve come and interrupted. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am – both of having done it and of not having been able to help it.”
“Oh, but,” said Scrap quickly, for he could not have come on a better day – when up there, waiting and watching for her was, she knew, the enamoured Briggs, “I’m really very glad indeed to see you. Tell me about Mother.”
20
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 enquiries 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 onto 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 enquired, wide-eyed.
Arundel warmed to his work. He fathered some of the most entertaining ideas he had lately had onto 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 tomorrow 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 anyone 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: th
e 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 onto 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 – 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…”
21
Now Frederick was not the man to hurt anything if he could help it – besides, he was completely bewildered. Not only was his wife here – here, of all places in the world – but she was clinging to him as she had not clung for years, and murmuring love, and welcoming him. If she welcomed him she must have been expecting him. Strange as this was, it was the only thing in the situation which was evident – that, and the softness of her cheek against his, and the long-forgotten sweet smell of her.
Frederick was bewildered. But not being the man to hurt anything if he could help it, he too put his arms round her, and having put them round her he also kissed her – and presently he was kissing her almost as tenderly as she was kissing him, and presently he was kissing her quite as tenderly, and again presently he was kissing her more tenderly, and just as if he had never left off.
He was bewildered, but he still could kiss. It seemed curiously natural to be doing it. It made him feel as if he were thirty again instead of forty, and Rose were his Rose of twenty, the Rose he had so much adored before she began to weigh what he did with her idea of right, and the balance went against him, and she had turned strange, and stony, and more and more shocked, and oh, so lamentable. He couldn’t get at her in those days at all – she wouldn’t, she couldn’t understand. She kept on referring everything to what she called “God’s eyes” – in God’s eyes it couldn’t be right, it wasn’t right. Her miserable face – whatever her principles did for her they didn’t make her happy – her little miserable face, twisted with effort to be patient, had been at last more than he could bear to see, and he had kept away as much as he could. She never ought to have been the daughter of a Low Church rector – narrow devil – she was quite unfitted to stand up against such an upbringing.
What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again, passed his comprehension – and meanwhile, and until such time as he understood, he still could kiss. In fact, he could not stop kissing, and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he remembered it used to tickle him.
And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of… At first he didn’t know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and then he recognized it as security. Yes, security. No need now to be ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall other people’s and show he didn’t mind it, no need now to be ashamed of getting hot going up hills, or to torment himself with pictures of how he probably appeared to beautiful young women – how middle-aged, how absurd in his inability to keep away from them. Rose cared nothing for such things. With her he was safe. To her he was her lover, as he used to be, and she would never notice or mind any of the ignoble changes that getting older had made in him and would go on making more and more.
Frederick continued, therefore, with greater and greater warmth and growing delight to kiss his wife, and the mere holding of her in his arms caused him to forget everything else. How could he, for instance, remember or think of Lady Caroline, to mention only one of the complications with which his situation bristled, when here was his sweet wife, miraculously restored to him, whispering with her cheek against his in the dearest, most romantic words how much she loved him, how terribly she had missed him? He did for one brief instant – for even in moments of love there are brief instants of lucid thought – recognize the immense power of the woman present and being actually held compared to that of the woman, however beautiful, who is somewhere else, but that is as far as he got towards remembering Scrap – no farther. She was like a dream, fleeing before the morning light.
“When did you start?” murmured Rose, her mouth on his ear. She couldn’t let him go – not even to talk she couldn’t let him go.
“Yesterday morning,” m
urmured Frederick, holding her close. He couldn’t let her go either.
“Oh – the very instant then,” murmured Rose.
This was cryptic, but Frederick said, “Yes, the very instant,” and kissed her neck.
“How quickly my letter got to you,” murmured Rose, whose eyes were shut in the excess of her happiness.
“Didn’t it,” said Frederick, who felt like shutting his eyes himself.
So there had been a letter. Soon, no doubt, light would be vouchsafed him, and meanwhile this was so strangely, touchingly sweet, this holding his Rose to his heart again after all the years, that he couldn’t bother to try to guess anything. Oh, he had been happy during these years, because it was not in him to be unhappy – besides, how many interests life had had to offer him, how many friends, how much success, how many women only too willing to help him to blot out the thought of the altered, petrified, pitiful little wife at home who wouldn’t spend his money, who was appalled by his books, who drifted away and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote and lived by looked in the eyes of God. “No one,” she said once, “should ever write a book God wouldn’t like to read. That is the test, Frederick.” And he had laughed hysterically, burst into a great shriek of laughter and rushed out of the house, away from her solemn little face – away from her pathetic, solemn little face…
But this Rose was his youth again, the best part of his life, the part of it that had had all the visions in it and all the hopes. How they had dreamt together, he and she, before he struck that vein of memoirs – how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry. After the happy days came the happy nights, the happy, happy nights, with her asleep close against his heart, with her when he woke in the morning still close against his heart, for they hardly moved in their deep, happy sleep. It was wonderful to have it all come back to him at the touch of her, at the feel of her face against his – wonderful that she should be able to give him back his youth.
The Enchanted April Page 22
