The Enchanted April
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 some one 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.”
Chapter 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 every one, 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