The Enchanted April
alone, indicate that she too was troubled? If so, he was her man. He
would cultivate her. He would follow her and sit with her, and
encourage her to tell him about herself. Arbuthnot, he understood from
Lotty, was a British Museum official—nothing specially important at
present, but Mr. Wilkins regarded it as his business to know all sorts
and kinds. Besides, there was promotion. Arbuthnot, promoted, might
become very much worth while.
As for Lotty, she was charming. She really had all the qualities he had
credited her with during his courtship, and they had been, it appeared,
merely in abeyance since. His early impressions of her were now being
endorsed by the affection and even admiration Lady Caroline showed for
her. Lady Caroline Dester was the last person, he was sure, to be
mistaken on such a subject. Her knowledge of the world, her constant
association with only the best, must make her quite unerring. Lotty was
evidently, then, that which before marriage he had believed her to
be—she was valuable. She certainly had been most valuable in
introducing him to Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. A man in his
profession could be immensely helped by a clever and attractive wife.
Why had she not been attractive sooner? Why this sudden flowering?
Mr. Wilkins began too to believe there was something peculiar, as Lotty
had almost at once informed him, in the atmosphere of San Salvatore. It
promoted expansion. It brought out dormant qualities. And feeling more
and more pleased, and even charmed, by his wife, and very content with
the progress he was making with the two others, and hopeful of progress
to be made with the retiring third, Mr. Wilkins could not remember ever
having had such an agreeable holiday. The only thing that might perhaps
be bettered was the way they would call him Mr. Wilkins. Nobody said
Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. Yet he had introduced himself to Lady Caroline—he
flinched a little on remembering the circumstances—as Mellersh-Wilkins.
Still, this was a small matter, not enough to worry about. He would be
foolish if in such a place and such society he worried about anything.
He was not even worrying about what the holiday was costing, and had
made up his mind to pay not only his own expenses but his wife’s as
well, and surprise her at the end by presenting her with her nest-egg
as intact as when she started; and just the knowledge that he was
preparing a happy surprise for her made him feel warmer than ever
towards her.
In fact Mr. Wilkins, who had begun by being consciously and according
to plan on his best behaviour, remained on it unconsciously, and with
no effort at all.
And meanwhile the beautiful golden days were dropping gently from the
second week one by one, equal in beauty with those of the first, and
the scent of beanfields in flower on the hillside behind the village
came across to San Salvatore whenever the air moved. In the garden that
second week the poet’s eyed narcissus disappeared out the long grass at
the edge of the zigzag path, and wild gladiolus, slender and
rose-coloured, came in their stead, white pinks bloomed in the borders,
filling the whole place with their smoky-sweet smell, and a bush nobody
had noticed burst into glory and fragrance, and it was a purple lilac
bush. Such a jumble of spring and summer was not to be believed in,
except by those who dwelt in those gardens. Everything seemed to be out
together—all the things crowded into one month which in England are
spread penuriously over six. Even primroses were found one day by Mrs.
Wilkins in a cold corner up in the hills; and when she brought them
down to the geraniums and heliotrope of San Salvatore they looked quite
shy.
Chapter 17
On the first day of the third week Rose wrote to Frederick.
In case she should again hesitate and not post the letter, she gave it
to Domenico to post; for if she did not write now there would be no
time left at all. Half the month at San Salvatore was over. Even if
Frederick started directly he got the letter, which of course he
wouldn’t be able to do, what with packing and passport, besides not
being in a hurry to come, he couldn’t arrive for five days.
Having done it, Rose wished she hadn’t. He wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t
bother to answer. And if he did answer, it would just be giving some
reason which was not true, and about being too busy to get away; and
all that had been got by writing to him would be that she would be more
unhappy than before.
What things one did when one was idle. This resurrection of Frederick,
or rather this attempt to resurrect him, what was it but the result of
having nothing whatever to do? She wished she had never come away on a
holiday. What did she want with holidays? Work was her salvation; work
was the only thing that protected one, that kept one steady and one’s
values true. At home in Hampstead, absorbed and busy, she had managed
to get over Frederick, thinking of him latterly only with the gentle
melancholy with which one thinks of some one once loved but long since
dead; and now this place, idleness in this soft place, had thrown her
back to the wretched state she had climbed so carefully out of years
ago. Why, if Frederick did come she would only bore him. Hadn’t she
seen in a flash quite soon after getting to San Salvatore that that was
really what kept him away from her? And why should she suppose that
now, after such a long estrangement, she would be able not to bore him,
be able to do anything but stand before him like a tongue-tied idiot,
with all the fingers of her spirit turned into thumbs? Besides, what a
hopeless position, to have as it were to beseech: Please wait a
little—please don’t be impatient—I think perhaps I shan’t be a bore
presently.
A thousand times a day Rose wished she had let Frederick alone. Lotty,
who asked her every evening whether she had sent her letter yet,
exclaimed with delight when the answer at last was yes, and threw her
arms round her. “Now we shall be _completely_ happy!” cried the
enthusiastic Lotty.
But nothing seemed less certain to Rose, and her expression became more
and more the expression of one who has something on her mind.
Mr. Wilkins, wanting to find out what it was, strolled in the sun in
his Panama hat, and began to meet her accidentally.
“I did not know,” said Mr. Wilkins the first time, courteously raising
his hat, “that you too liked this particular spot.” And he sat down
beside her.
In the afternoon she chose another spot; and she had not been in it
half an hour before Mr. Wilkins, lightly swinging his cane, came round
the corner.
“We are destined to meet in our rambles,” said Mr. Wilkins pleasantly.
And he sat down beside her.
Mr. Wilkins was very kind, and she had, she saw, misjudged him in
Hampstead, and this was the real man, ripened like fruit by the
beneficent sun of San Salvatore, but Rose did want to be alone. Still,
she was grateful to him for proving to her that though she might bore
Frederick she did not bore everybody; if she had, he would not have sat
talking to her on each occasion till it was time to go in. True he
bored her, but that wasn’t anything like so dreadful as if she bored
him. Then indeed her vanity would have been sadly ruffled. For now that
Rose was not able to say her prayers she was being assailed by every
sort of weakness: vanity, sensitiveness, irritability,
pugnacity—strange, unfamiliar devils to have coming crowding on one and
taking possession of one’s swept and empty heart. She had never been
vain or irritable or pugnacious in her life before. Could it be that
San Salvatore was capable of opposite effects, and the same sun that
ripened Mr. Wilkins made her go acid?
The next morning, so as to be sure of being alone, she went down, while
Mr. Wilkins was still lingering pleasantly with Mrs. Fisher over
breakfast, to the rocks by the water’s edge where she and Lotty had sat
the first day. Frederick by now had got her letter. To-day, if he were
like Mr. Wilkins, she might get a telegram from him.
She tried to silence the absurd hope by jeering at it. Yet—if Mr.
Wilkins had telegraphed, why not Frederick? The spell of San Salvatore
lurked even, it seemed, in notepaper. Lotty had not dreamed of getting
a telegram, and when she came in at lunch-time there it was. It would
be too wonderful if when she went back at lunch-time she found one
there for her too. . .
Rose clasped her hands tight round her knees. How passionately she
longed to be important to somebody again—not important on platforms,
not important as an asset in an organisation, but privately important,
just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or
notice. It didn’t seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people,
just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself.
Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to
one—oh, _oh_ how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!
All the morning she sat beneath the pine-tree by the sea. Nobody came
near her. The great hours passed slowly; they seemed enormous. But she
wouldn’t go up before lunch, she would give the telegram time to
arrive. . .
That day Scrap, egged on by Lotty’s persuasions and also thinking that
perhaps she had sat long enough, had arisen from her chair and cushions
and gone off with Lotty and sandwiches up into the hills till evening.
Mr. Wilkins, who wished to go with them, stayed on Lady Caroline’s
advice with Mrs. Fisher in order to cheer her solitude, and though he
left off cheering her about eleven to go and look for Mrs. Arbuthnot,
so as for a space to cheer her too, thus dividing himself impartially
between these solitary ladies, he came back again presently mopping his
forehead and continued with Mrs. Fisher where he had left off, for this
time Mrs. Arbuthnot had hidden successfully. There was a telegram, too,
for her he noticed when he came in. Pity he did not know where she was.
“Ought we to open it?” he said to Mrs. Fisher.
“No,” said Mrs. Fisher.
“It may require an answer.”
“I don’t approve of tampering with other people’s correspondence.”
“Tampering! My dear lady—”
Mr. Wilkins was shocked. Such a word. Tampering. He had the greatest
possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little
difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he
felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and
secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for though he had been
skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no
inkling of what was so evidently worrying her.
“Poor old thing,” said Lotty, on his asking her if she perhaps could
throw light on Mrs. Fisher’s troubles. “She hasn’t got love.”
“Love?” Mr. Wilkins could only echo, genuinely scandalised. “But
surely, my dear—at her age—”
“_Any_ love,” said Lotty.
That very morning he had asked his wife, for he now sought and
respected her opinion, if she could tell him what was the matter with
Mrs. Arbuthnot, for she too, though he had done his best to thaw her
into confidences, had remained persistently retiring.
“She wants her husband,” said Lotty.
“Ah,” said Mr. Wilkins, a new light shed on Mrs. Arbuthnot’s shy and
modest melancholy. And he added, “Very proper.”
And Lotty said, smiling at him, “One does.”
And Mr. Wilkins said, smiling at her, “Does one?”
And Lotty said, smiling at him, “Of course.”
And Mr. Wilkins, much pleased with her, though it was still quite early
in the day, a time when caresses are sluggish, pinched her ear.
Just before half-past twelve Rose came slowly up through the pergola
and between the camellias ranged on either side of the old stone steps.
The rivulets of periwinkles that flowed down them when first she