“Sweetheart – sweetheart,” he murmured, overcome by remembrance, clinging to her now in his turn.
“Beloved husband,” she breathed – the bliss of it – the sheer bliss…
Briggs, coming in a few minutes before the gong went on the chance that Lady Caroline might be there, was much astonished. He had supposed Rose Arbuthnot was a widow, and he still supposed it – so that he was much astonished.
“Well I’m damned,” thought Briggs, quite clearly and distinctly, for the shock of what he saw in the window startled him so much that for a moment he was shaken free of his own confused absorption.
Aloud he said, very red, “Oh I say – I beg your pardon” – and then stood hesitating, and wondering whether he oughtn’t to go back to his bedroom again.
If he had said nothing they would not have noticed he was there, but when he begged their pardon Rose turned and looked at him as one looks who is trying to remember, and Frederick looked at him too without, at first, quite seeing him.
They didn’t seem, thought Briggs, to mind, or to be at all embarrassed. He couldn’t be her brother: no brother ever brought that look into a woman’s face. It was very awkward. If they didn’t mind, he did. It upset him to come across his Madonna forgetting herself.
“Is this one of your friends?” Frederick was able after an instant to ask Rose, who made no attempt to introduce the young man standing awkwardly in front of them but continued to gaze at him with a kind of abstracted, radiant goodwill.
“It’s Mr Briggs,” said Rose, recognizing him. “This is my husband,” she added.
And Briggs, shaking hands, just had time to think how surprising it was to have a husband when you were a widow before the gong sounded, and Lady Caroline would be there in a minute, and he ceased to be able to think at all, and merely became a thing with its eyes fixed on the door.
Through the door immediately entered, in what seemed to him an endless procession, first Mrs Fisher – very stately in her evening lace shawl and brooch, who when she saw him at once relaxed into smiles and benignity, only to stiffen, however, when she caught sight of the stranger – then Mr Wilkins – cleaner and neater and more carefully dressed and brushed than any man on earth – and then, tying something hurriedly as she came, Mrs Wilkins – and then nobody.
Lady Caroline was late. Where was she? Had she heard the gong? Oughtn’t it to be beaten again? Suppose she didn’t come to dinner after all…
Briggs went cold.
“Introduce me,” said Frederick on Mrs Fisher’s entrance, touching Rose’s elbow.
“My husband,” said Rose, holding him by the hand, her face exquisite.
“This,” thought Mrs Fisher, “must now be the last of the husbands, unless Lady Caroline produces one from up her sleeve.”
But she received him graciously, for he certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go about abroad pretending they are husbands when they are not, and said she supposed he had come to accompany his wife home at the end of the month, and remarked that now the house would be completely full. “So that,” she added, smiling at Briggs, “we shall at last really be getting our money’s worth.”
Briggs grinned automatically, because he was just able to realize that somebody was being playful with him, but he had not heard her, and he did not look at her. Not only were his eyes fixed on the door but his whole body was concentrated on it.
Introduced in his turn, Mr Wilkins was most hospitable and called Frederick “sir”.
“Well, sir,” said Mr Wilkins heartily, “here we are, here we are” – and having gripped his hand with an understanding that only wasn’t mutual because Arbuthnot did not yet know what he was in for in the way of trouble, he looked at him as a man should – squarely in the eyes – and allowed his look to convey as plainly as a look can that in him would be found staunchness, integrity, reliability – in fact, a friend in need. Mrs Arbuthnot was very much flushed, Mr Wilkins noticed. He had not seen her flushed like that before. “Well, I’m their man,” he thought.
Lotty’s greeting was effusive. It was done with both hands. “Didn’t I tell you?” she laughed to Rose over her shoulder while Frederick was shaking her hands in both his.
“What did you tell her?” asked Frederick, in order to say something. The way they were all welcoming him was confusing. They had evidently all expected him – not only Rose.
The sandy but agreeable young woman didn’t answer his question, but looked extraordinarily pleased to see him. Why should she be extraordinarily pleased to see him?
“What a delightful place this is,” said Frederick, confused, and making the first remark that occurred to him.
“It’s a tub of love,” said the sandy young woman earnestly, which confused him more than ever.
And his confusion became excessive at the next words he heard – spoken, these, by the old lady, who said: “We won’t wait. Lady Caroline is always late” – for he only then, on hearing her name, really and properly remembered Lady Caroline, and the thought of her confused him to excess.
He went into the dining room like a man in a dream. He had come out to this place to see Lady Caroline, and had told her so. He had even told her in his fatuousness – it was true, but how fatuous – that he hadn’t been able to help coming. She didn’t know he was married. She thought his name was Arundel. Everybody in London thought his name was Arundel. He had used it and written under it so long that he almost thought it was himself. In the short time since she had left him on the seat in the garden, where he told her he had come because he couldn’t help it, he had found Rose again, had passionately embraced and been embraced, and had forgotten Lady Caroline. It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune if Lady Caroline’s being late meant she was tired or bored and would not come to dinner at all. Then he could – no, he couldn’t. He turned a deeper red even than usual – he being a man of full habit and red anyhow – at the thought of such cowardice. No, he couldn’t go away after dinner and catch his train and disappear to Rome – not unless, that is, Rose came with him. But even so, what a running away. No, he couldn’t.
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 days 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 enquiry. They were, he could see, very intelligent and attractive eyes, and full –
apart from the enquiry – 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 anyone 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 for your very first evening.”
The daughter of the Droitwiches…
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 daytime, 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 candlelit 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…
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 marvellous 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 tried 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 or 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 that 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.
The Enchanted April Page 23
