The Enchanted April
girl, though not without little curves beneath her thin frock where
little curves should be. She was looking out across the bay, and was
sharply defined against the background of empty blue. She was full in
the sun. Her feet dangled among the leaves and flowers of the lilies
just as if it did not matter that they should be bent or bruised.
“She ought to have a headache,” whispered Mrs. Arbuthnot at last,
“sitting there in the sun like that.”
“She ought to have a hat,” whispered Mrs. Wilkins.
“She’s treading on lilies.”
“But they’re hers as much as ours.”
“Only one-fourth of them.”
Lady Caroline turned her head. She looked up at them a moment,
surprised to see them so much younger than they had seemed that day at
the club, and so much less unattractive. Indeed, they were really
almost quite attractive, if any one could ever be really quite
attractive in the wrong clothes. Her eyes, swiftly glancing over them,
took in every inch of each of them in the half second before she smiled
and waved her hand and called out Good-morning. There was nothing, she
saw at once, to be hoped for in the way of interest from their clothes.
She did not consciously think this, for she was having a violent
reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one,
her experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in
hand and gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen
by everybody. You didn’t take your clothes to parties; they took you.
It was quite a mistake to think that a woman, a really well-dressed
woman, wore out her clothes; it was the clothes that wore out the
woman—dragging her about at all hours of the day and night. No wonder
men stayed young longer. Just new trousers couldn’t excite them. She
couldn’t suppose that even the newest trousers ever behaved like that,
taking the bit between their teeth. Her images were disorderly, but she
thought as she chose, she used what images she liked. As she got off the
wall and came towards the window, it seemed a restful thing to know she
was going to spend an entire month with people in dresses made as she
dimly remembered dresses used to be made five summers ago.
“I got here yesterday morning,” she said, looking up at them and
smiling. She really was bewitching. She had everything, even a dimple.
“It’s a great pity,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling back, “because we
were going to choose the nicest room for you.”
“Oh, but I’ve done that,” said Lady Caroline. “At least, I think it’s
the nicest. It looks two ways—I adore a room that looks two ways, don’t
you? Over the sea to the west, and over this Judas tree to the north.”
“And we had meant to make it pretty for you with flowers,” said Mrs.
Wilkins.
“Oh, Domenico did that. I told him to directly I got here. He’s the
gardener. He’s wonderful.”
“It’s a good thing, of course,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot a little
hesitatingly, “to be independent, and to know exactly what one wants.”
“Yes, it saves trouble,” agreed Lady Caroline.
“But one shouldn’t be so independent,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “as to leave
no opportunity for other people to exercise their benevolences on one.”
Lady Caroline, who had been looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot, now looked at
Mrs. Wilkins. That day at that queer club she had had merely a blurred
impression of Mrs. Wilkins, for it was the other one who did all the
talking, and her impression had been of somebody so shy, so awkward
that it was best to take no notice of her. She had not even been able
to say good-bye properly, doing it in an agony, turning red, turning
damp. Therefore she now looked at her in some surprise; and she was
still more surprised when Mrs. Wilkins added, gazing at her with the
most obvious sincere admiration, speaking indeed with a conviction that
refused to remain unuttered, “I didn’t realise you were _so_ pretty.”
She stared at Mrs. Wilkins. She was not usually told this quite so
immediately and roundly. Abundantly as she was used to it—impossible
not to be after twenty-eight solid years—it surprised her to be told it
with such bluntness, and by a woman.
“It’s very kind of you to think so,” she said.
“Why, you’re lovely,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Quite, quite lovely.”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot pleasantly, “you make the most of it.”
Lady Caroline then stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Oh yes,” she said. “I
make the most of it. I’ve been doing that ever since I can remember.”
“Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling and raising a warning
forefinger, “it won’t last.”
Then Lady Caroline began to be afraid these two were originals. If so,
she would be bored. Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted
on being original, who came and buttonholed her and kept her waiting
while they were being original. And the one who admired her—it would
be tiresome if she dogged her about in order to look at her. What
she wanted of this holiday was complete escape from all she had had
before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being
dogged, wasn’t contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to
find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a
mediaeval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy
goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful.
Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed
such timid creatures, even the dark one—she couldn’t remember their
names—that day at the club, that she had felt it quite safe to be very
friendly. Here they had come out of their shells; already; indeed, at
once. There was no sign of timidity about either of them here. If they
had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very first contact,
unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon her, and
then good-bye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days, lying
unmolested in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not being
spoken to, not waited on, not grabbed at and monopolised, but just
recovering from the fatigue, the deep and melancholy fatigue, of the
too much.
Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady Caroline
had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two reasons:
first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order to pick
out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she judged it
likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She
did not want to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want to arrive
with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why for a single moment
she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs. Fisher.
But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to get to
San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and
she and Lady Caroline had after all travelled together. As early as
Calais they began to suspect it; in Paris they feared it; at Modane
they knew it; at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to Castagneto
in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching the back of
the other the whole way. But when the road suddenly left off at the
church and the steps, further evasion was impossible; and faced by this
abrupt and difficult finish to their journey there was nothing for it
but to amalgamate.
Because of Mrs. Fisher’s stick Lady Caroline had to see about
everything. Mrs. Fisher’s intentions, she explained from her fly when
the situation had become plain to her, were active, but her stick
prevented their being carried out. The two drivers told Lady Caroline
boys would have to carry the luggage up to the castle, and she went in
search of some, while Mrs. Fisher waited in the fly because of her
stick. Mrs. Fisher could speak Italian, but only, she explained, the
Italian of Dante, which Matthew Arnold used to read with her when she
was a girl, and she thought this might be above the heads of boys.
Therefore Lady Caroline, who spoke ordinary Italian very well, was
obviously the one to go and do things.
“I am in your hands,” said Mrs. Fisher, sitting firmly in her fly. “You
must please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick.”
And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and along the
quay, and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as much
obliged to walk slowly with Mrs. Fisher as if she were her own
grandmother.
“It’s my stick,” Mrs. Fisher complacently remarked at intervals.
And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where seats
were, and Lady Caroline, who would have liked to run on and get to the
top quickly, was forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs. Fisher
because of her stick, Mrs. Fisher told her how she had been on a zigzag
path once with Tennyson.
“Isn’t his cricket wonderful?” said Lady Caroline absently.
“_The_ Tennyson,” said Mrs. Fisher, turning her head and observing her
a moment over her spectacles.
“Isn’t he?” said Lady Caroline.
“I am speaking,” said Mrs. Fisher, “of Alfred.”
“Oh,” said Lady Caroline.
“And it was a path, too,” Mrs. Fisher went on severely, “curiously like
this. No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise curiously like this.
And at one of the bends he turned and said to me—I see him now turning
and saying to me—”
Yes, Mrs. Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these two up at
the window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she had got off
the wall. All she need have done was to have waved her hand, and waited
till they came down and out into the garden to her.
So she ignored Mrs. Arbuthnot’s remark and raised forefinger, and said
with marked coldness—at least, she tried to make it sound marked—that
she supposed they would be going to breakfast, and that she had had
hers; but it was her fate that however coldly she sent forth her words
they came out sounding quite warm and agreeable. That was because she
had a sympathetic and delightful voice, due entirely to some special
formation of her throat and the roof of her mouth, and having nothing
whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in consequence ever
believed they were being snubbed. It was most tiresome. And if she
stared icily it did not look icy at all, because her eyes, lovely to
begin with, had the added loveliness of very long, soft, dark
eyelashes. No icy stare could come out of eyes like that; it got caught
and lost in the soft eyelashes, and the persons stared at merely
thought they were being regarded with a flattering and exquisite
attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or definitely
cross—and who would not be sometimes in such a world?—she only looked
so pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means
of kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was
determined that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be
disagreeable or rude without being completely misunderstood.
“I had my breakfast in my room,” she said, trying her utmost to sound
curt. “Perhaps I’ll see you later.”
And she nodded, and went back to where she had been sitting on the
wall, with the lilies being nice and cool round her feet.
Chapter 7
Their eyes followed her admiringly. They had no idea they had been
snubbed. It was a disappointment, of course, to find she had
forestalled them and that they were not to have the happiness of
preparing for her, of watching her face when she arrived and first saw
everything, but there was still Mrs. Fisher. They would concentrate on
Mrs. Fisher, and would watch her face instead; only, like everybody
else, they would have preferred to watch Lady Caroline’s.
Perhaps, then, as Lady Caroline had talked of breakfast, they had
better begin by going and having it, for there was too much to be done
that day to spend any more time gazing at the scenery—servants to be