The Enchanted April
her fear was the result of a drearily unvarying experience—that he
might wish to hang about her.
This possibility had evidently not yet occurred to Mrs. Wilkins, and it
was not one to which she could very well draw her attention; not, that
is, without being too fatuous to live. She tried to hope that Mr.
Wilkins would be a wonderful exception to the dreadful rule. If only he
were, she would be so much obliged to him that she believed she might
really quite like him.
But—she had misgivings. Suppose he hung about her so that she was
driven from her lovely top garden; suppose the light in Mrs. Wilkins’s
funny, flickering face was blown out. Scrap felt she would particularly
dislike this to happen to Mrs. Wilkins’s face, yet she had never in her
life met any wives, not any at all, who had been able to understand
that she didn’t in the least want their husbands. Often she had met
wives who didn’t want their husbands either, but that made them none
the less indignant if they thought somebody else did, and none the less
sure, when they saw them hanging round Scrap, that she was trying to
get them. Trying to get them! The bare thought, the bare recollection
of these situations, filled her with a boredom so extreme that it
instantly sent her to sleep again.
When she woke up she went on with Mr. Wilkins.
Now if, thought Scrap, Mr. Wilkins were not an exception and behaved in
the usual way, would Mrs. Wilkins understand, or would it just simply
spoil her holiday? She seemed quick, but would she be quick about just
this? She seemed to understand and see inside one, but would she
understand and see inside one when it came to Mr. Wilkins?
The experienced Scrap was full of doubts. She shifted her feet on the
parapet; she jerked a cushion straight. Perhaps she had better try and
explain to Mrs. Wilkins, during the days still remaining before the
arrival—explain in a general way, rather vague and talking at large—her
attitude towards such things. She might also expound to her her
peculiar dislike of people’s husbands, and her profound craving to be,
at least for this one month, let alone.
But Scrap had her doubts about this too. Such talk meant a certain
familiarity, meant embarking on a friendship with Mrs. Wilkins; and if,
after having embarked on it and faced the peril it contained of too
much Mrs. Wilkins, Mr. Wilkins should turn out to be artful—and people
did get very artful when they were set on anything—and manage after all
to slip through into the top garden, Mrs. Wilkins might easily believe
she had been taken in, and that she, Scrap, was deceitful. Deceitful!
And about Mr. Wilkins. Wives were really pathetic.
At half-past four she heard sounds of saucers on the other side of the
daphne bushes. Was tea being sent out to her?
No; the sounds came no closer, they stopped near the house. Tea was to
be in the garden, in her garden. Scrap considered she might at least
have been asked if she minded being disturbed. They all knew she sat
there.
Perhaps some one would bring hers to her in her corner.
No; nobody brought anything.
Well, she was too hungry not to go and have it with the others to-day,
but she would give Francesca strict orders for the future.
She got up, and walked with that slow grace which was another of her
outrageous number of attractions towards the sounds of tea. She was
conscious not only of being very hungry but of wanting to talk to Mrs.
Wilkins again. Mrs. Wilkins had not grabbed, she had left her quite
free all day in spite of the _rapprochement_ the night before. Of
course she was an original, and put on a silk jumper for dinner, but
she hadn’t grabbed. This was a great thing. Scrap went towards the
tea-table quite looking forward to Mrs. Wilkins; and when she came in
sight of it she saw only Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Mrs. Fisher was pouring out the tea, and Mrs. Arbuthnot was offering
Mrs. Fisher macaroons. Every time Mrs. Fisher offered Mrs. Arbuthnot
anything—her cup, or milk, or sugar—Mrs. Arbuthnot offered her
macaroons—pressed them on her with an odd assiduousness, almost with
obstinacy. Was it a game? Scrap wondered, sitting down and seizing a
macaroon.
“Where is Mrs. Wilkins?” asked Scrap.
They did not know. At least, Mrs. Arbuthnot, on Scrap’s inquiry, did
not know; Mrs. Fisher’s face, at the name, became elaborately
uninterested.
It appeared that Mrs. Wilkins had not been seen since breakfast. Mrs.
Arbuthnot thought she had probably gone for a picnic. Scrap missed her.
She ate the enormous macaroons, the best and biggest she had ever come
across, in silence. Tea without Mrs. Wilkins was dull; and Mrs.
Arbuthnot had that fatal flavour of motherliness about her, of wanting
to pet one, to make one very comfortable, coaxing one to eat—coaxing
her, who was already so frankly, so even excessively, eating—that
seemed to have dogged Scrap’s steps through life. Couldn’t people leave
one alone? She was perfectly able to eat what she wanted unincited. She
tried to quench Mrs. Arbuthnot’s zeal by being short with her. Useless.
The shortness was not apparent. It remained, as all Scrap’s evil
feelings remained, covered up by the impenetrable veil of her
loveliness.
Mrs. Fisher sat monumentally, and took no notice of either of them. She
had had a curious day, and was a little worried. She had been quite
alone, for none of the three had come to lunch, and none of them had
taken the trouble to let her know they were not coming; and Mrs.
Arbuthnot, drifting casually into tea, had behaved oddly till Lady
Caroline joined them and distracted her attention.
Mrs. Fisher was prepared not to dislike Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose parted
hair and mild expression seemed very decent and womanly, but she
certainly had habits that were difficult to like. Her habit of
instantly echoing any offer made her of food or drink, of throwing the
offer back on one, as it were, was not somehow what one expected of
her. “Will you have some more tea?” was surely a question to which the
answer was simply yes or no; but Mrs. Arbuthnot persisted in the trick
she had exhibited the day before at breakfast, of adding to her yes
or no the words, “Will _you?_” She had done it again that morning at
breakfast and here she was doing it at tea—the two meals at which Mrs.
Fisher presided and poured out. Why did she do it? Mrs. Fisher failed
to understand.
But this was not what was worrying her; this was merely by the way.
What was worrying her was that she had been quite unable that day to
settle to anything, and had done nothing but wander restlessly from her
sitting-room to her battlements and back again. It had been a wasted
day, and how much she disliked waste. She had tried to read, and she
had tried to write to Kate Lumley; but no—a few words read, a few lines
written, and up she got again and went out on to the battlements and
stared at the sea.
It did not matter that the letter to Kate Lumley should not be written.
There was time enough for that. Let the others suppose her coming was
definitely fixed. All the better. So would Mr. Wilkins be kept out of
the spare-room and put where he belonged. Kate would keep. She could be
held in reserve. Kate in reserve was just as potent as Kate in
actuality, and there were points about Kate in reserve which might be
missing from Kate in actuality. For instance, if Mrs. Fisher were going
to be restless, she would rather Kate were not there to see. There was
a want of dignity about restlessness, about trotting backwards and
forwards. But it did matter that she could not read a sentence of any
of her great dead friends’ writings; no, not even of Browning’s, who
had been so much in Italy, nor of Ruskin’s, whose _Stones of Venice_
she had brought with her to re-read so nearly on the very spot; nor
even a sentence of a really interesting book like the one she had found
in her sitting-room about the home life of the German Emperor, poor
man—written in the nineties, when he had not yet begun to be more
sinned against than sinning, which was, she was firmly convinced, what
was the matter with him now, and full of exciting things about his
birth and his right arm and _accoucheurs_—without having to put it down
and go and stare at the sea.
Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of
one’s mind was a paramount duty. How could one read if one were
constantly trotting in and out? Curious, this restlessness. Was she
going to be ill? No, she felt well; indeed, unusually well, and she
went in and out quite quickly—trotted, in fact—and without her stick.
Very odd that she shouldn’t be able to sit still, she thought, frowning
across the tops of some purple hyacinths at the Gulf of Spezia
glittering beyond a headland; very odd that she, who walked so slowly,
with such dependence on her stick, should suddenly trot.
It would be interesting to talk to some one about it, she felt. Not to
Kate—to a stranger. Kate would only look at her and suggest a cup of
tea. Kate always suggested cups of tea. Besides, Kate had a flat face.
That Mrs. Wilkins, now—annoying as she was, loose-tongued as she was,
impertinent, objectionable, would probably understand, and perhaps know
what was making her be like this. But she could say nothing to Mrs.
Wilkins. She was the last person to whom one would admit sensations.
Dignity alone forbade it. Confide in Mrs. Wilkins? Never.
And Mrs. Arbuthnot, while she wistfully mothered the obstructive Scrap
at tea, felt too that she had had a curious day. Like Mrs. Fisher’s, it
had been active, but, unlike Mrs. Fisher’s, only active in mind. Her
body had been quite still; her mind had not been still at all, it had
been excessively active. For years she had taken care to have no time
to think. Her scheduled life in the parish had prevented memories and
desires from intruding on her. That day they had crowded. She went back
to tea feeling dejected, and that she should feel dejected in such a
place with everything about her to make her rejoice, only dejected her
the more. But how could she rejoice alone? How could anybody rejoice
and enjoy and appreciate, really appreciate, alone? Except Lotty. Lotty
seemed able to. She had gone off down the hill directly after
breakfast, alone yet obviously rejoicing, for she had not suggested
that Rose should go too, and she was singing as she went.
Rose had spent the day by herself, sitting with her hands clasping her
knees, staring straight in front of her. What she was staring at were
the grey swords of the agaves, and, on their tall stalks, the pale
irises that grew in the remote place she had found, while beyond them,
between the grey leaves and the blue flowers, she saw the sea. The
place she had found was a hidden corner where the sun-baked stones were
padded with thyme, and nobody was likely to come. It was out of sight
and sound of the house; it was off any path; it was near the end of the
promontory. She sat so quiet that presently lizards darted over her
feet, and some tiny birds like finches, frightened away at first, came
back again and flitted among the bushes round her just as if she hadn’t
been there. How beautiful it was. And what was the good of it with no
one there, no one who loved being with one, who belonged to one, to
whom one could say, “Look.” And wouldn’t one say, “Look—_dearest?_”
Yes, one would say _dearest_ and the sweet word, just to say it to
somebody who loved one, would make one happy.
She sat quite still, staring straight in front of her. Strange that in
this place she did not want to pray. She who had prayed so constantly
at home didn’t seem able to do it here at all. The first morning she
had merely thrown up a brief thank you to heaven on getting out of bed,
and had gone straight to the window to see what everything looked