The Enchanted April
arrived were gone, and now there were these bushes, incredibly
rosetted. Pink, white, red, striped—she fingered and smelt them one
after the other, so as not to get to her disappointment too quickly. As
long as she hadn’t seen for herself, seen the table in the hall quite
empty except for its bowl of flowers, she still could hope, she still
could have the joy of imagining the telegram lying on it waiting for
her. But there is no smell in a camellia, as Mr. Wilkins, who was
standing in the doorway on the look-out for her and knew what was
necessary in horticulture, reminded her.
She started at his voice and looked up.
“A telegram has come for you,” said Mr. Wilkins.
She stared at him, her mouth open.
“I searched for you everywhere, but failed—”
Of course. She knew it. She had been sure of it all the time. Bright
and burning, Youth in that instant flashed down again on Rose. She flew
up the steps, red as the camellia she had just been fingering, and was
in the hall and tearing open the telegram before Mr. Wilkins had
finished his sentence. Why, but if things could happen like this—why,
but there was no end to—why, she and Frederick—they were going to
be—again—at last—
“No bad news, I trust?” said Mr. Wilkins who had followed her, for when
she had read the telegram she stood staring at it and her face went
slowly white. Curious to watch how her face went slowly white.
She turned and looked at Mr. Wilkins as if trying to remember him.
“Oh no. On the contrary—”
She managed to smile. “I’m going to have a visitor,” she said, holding
out the telegram; and when he had taken it she walked away towards the
dining-room, murmuring something about lunch being ready.
Mr. Wilkins read the telegram. It had been sent that morning from
Mezzago, and was:
Am passing through on way to Rome. May I pay my respects this
afternoon?
Thomas Briggs.
Why should such a telegram make the interesting lady turn pale? For her
pallor on reading it had been so striking as to convince Mr. Wilkins
she was receiving a blow.
“Who is Thomas Briggs?” he asked, following her into the dining-room.
She looked at him vaguely. “Who is—?” she repeated, getting her
thoughts together again.
“Thomas Briggs.”
“Oh. Yes. He is the owner. This is his house. He is very nice. He is
coming this afternoon.”
Thomas Briggs was at that very moment coming. He was jogging along the
road between Mezzago and Castagneto in a fly, sincerely hoping that the
dark-eyed lady would grasp that all he wanted was to see her, and not
at all to see if his house were still there. He felt that an owner of
delicacy did not intrude on a tenant. But—he had been thinking so much
of her since that day. Rose Arbuthnot. Such a pretty name. And such a
pretty creature—mild, milky, mothery in the best sense; the best sense
being that she wasn’t his mother and couldn’t have been if she had
tried, for parents were the only things impossible to have younger than
oneself. Also, he was passing so near. It seemed absurd not just to
look in and see if she were comfortable. He longed to see her in his
house. He longed to see it as her background, to see her sitting in his
chairs, drinking out of his cups, using all his things. Did she put the
big crimson brocade cushion in the drawing-room behind her little dark
head? Her hair and the whiteness of her skin would look lovely against
it. Had she seen the portrait of herself on the stairs? He wondered if
she liked it. He would explain it to her. If she didn’t paint, and she
had said nothing to suggest it, she wouldn’t perhaps notice how exactly
the moulding of the eyebrows and the slight hollow of the cheek—
He told the fly to wait in Castagneto, and crossed the piazza, hailed
by children and dogs, who all knew him and sprang up suddenly from
nowhere, and walking quickly up the zigzag path, for he was an active
young man not much more than thirty, he pulled the ancient chain that
rang the bell, and waited decorously on the proper side of the open
door to be allowed to come in.
At the sight of him Francesca flung up every bit of her that would
fling up—eyebrows, eyelids, and hands, and volubly assured him that all
was in perfect order and that she was doing her duty.
“Of course, of course,” said Briggs, cutting her short. “No one doubts
it.”
And he asked her to take in his card to her mistress.
“Which mistress?” asked Francesca.
“Which mistress?”
“There are four,” said Francesca, scenting an irregularity on the part
of the tenants, for her master looked surprised; and she felt pleased,
for life was dull and irregularities helped it along at least a little.
“Four?” he repeated surprised. “Well, take it to the lot then,” he
said, recovering himself, for he noticed her expression.
Coffee was being drunk in the top garden in the shade of the umbrella
pine. Only Mrs. Fisher and Mr. Wilkins were drinking it, for Mrs.
Arbuthnot, after eating nothing and being completely silent during
lunch, had disappeared immediately afterwards.
While Francesca went away into the garden with his card, her master
stood examining the picture on the staircase of that Madonna by an
early Italian painter, name unknown, picked up by him at Orvieto, who
was so much like his tenant. It really was remarkable, the likeness. Of
course his tenant that day in London had had her hat on, but he was
pretty sure her hair grew just like that off her forehead. The
expression of the eyes, grave and sweet, was exactly the same. He
rejoiced to think that he would always have her portrait.
He looked up at the sound of footsteps, and there she was, coming down
the stairs just as he had imagined her in that place, dressed in white.
She was astonished to see him so soon. She had supposed he would come
about tea-time, and till then she had meant to sit somewhere out of
doors where she could be by herself.
He watched her coming down the stairs with the utmost eager interest.
In a moment she would be level with her portrait.
“It really is extraordinary,” said Briggs.
“How do you do,” said Rose, intent only on a decent show of welcome.
She did not welcome him. He was here, she felt, the telegram bitter in
her heart, instead of Frederick, doing what she had longed Frederick
would do, taking his place.
“Just stand still a moment—”
She obeyed automatically.
“Yes—quite astonishing. Do you mind taking off your hat?”
Rose, surprised, took it off obediently.
“Yes—I thought so—I just wanted to make sure. And look—have you
noticed—”
He began to make odd swift passes with his hand over the face in the
picture, measuring it, looking from it to her.
Rose’s surprise became amusement, and she could not help smiling. “Have
you come to compare me with my original?” she asked.
“You do see how extraordinarily alike—”
“I didn’t know I looked so solemn.”
“You don’t. Not now. You did a minute ago, quite as solemn. Oh yes—how
do you do,” he finished suddenly, noticing her outstretched hand. And
he laughed and shook it, flushing—a trick of his—to the roots of his
fair hair.
Francesca came back. “The Signora Fisher,” she said, “will be pleased
to see him.”
“Who is the Signora Fisher?” he asked Rose.
“One of the four who are sharing your house.”
“Then there are four of you?”
“Yes. My friend and I found we couldn’t afford it by ourselves.”
“Oh, I say—” began Briggs in confusion, for he would best have liked
Rose Arbuthnot—pretty name—not to have to afford anything, but to stay
at San Salvatore as long as she liked as his guest.
“Mrs. Fisher is having coffee in the top garden,” said Rose. “I’ll take
you to her and introduce you.”
“I don’t want to go. You’ve got your hat on, so you were going for a
walk. Mayn’t I come too? I’d immensely like being shown round by you.”
“But Mrs. Fisher is waiting for you.”
“Won’t she keep?”
“Yes,” said Rose, with the smile that had so much attracted him the
first day. “I think she will keep quite well till tea.”
“Do you speak Italian?”
“No,” said Rose. “Why?”
On that he turned to Francesca, and told her at a great rate, for in
Italian he was glib, to go back to the Signora in the top garden and
tell her he had encountered his old friend the Signora Arbuthnot, and
was going for a walk with her and would present himself to her later.
“Do you invite me to tea?” he asked Rose, when Francesca had gone.
“Of course. It’s your house.”
“It isn’t. It’s yours.”
“Till Monday week,” she smiled.
“Come and show me all the views,” he said eagerly; and it was plain,
even to the self-depreciatory Rose, that she did not bore Mr. Briggs.
Chapter 18
They had a very pleasant walk, with a great deal of sitting down in
warm, thyme-fragrant corners, and if anything could have helped Rose to
recover from the bitter disappointment of the morning it would have
been the company and conversation of Mr. Briggs. He did help her to
recover, and the same process took place as that which Lotty had
undergone with her husband, and the more Mr. Briggs thought Rose
charming the more charming she became.
Briggs was a man incapable of concealments, who never lost time if he
could help it. They had not got to the end of the headland where the
lighthouse is—Briggs asked her to show him the lighthouse, because the
path to it, he knew, was wide enough for two to walk abreast and fairly
level—before he had told her of the impression she had made on him in
London.
Since even the most religious, sober women like to know they have made
an impression, particularly the kind that has nothing to do with
character or merits, Rose was pleased. Being pleased, she smiled.
Smiling, she was more attractive than ever. Colour came into her
cheeks, and brightness into her eyes. She heard herself saying things
that really sounded quite interesting and even amusing. If Frederick
were listening now, she thought, perhaps he would see that she couldn’t
after all be such a hopeless bore; for here was a man, nice-looking,
young, and surely clever—he seemed clever, and she hoped he was, for
then the compliment would be still greater—who was evidently quite
happy to spend the afternoon just talking to her.
And indeed Mr. Briggs seemed very much interested. He wanted to hear
all about everything she had been doing from the moment she got there.
He asked her if she had seen this, that, and the other in the house,
what she liked best, which room she had, if she were comfortable, if
Francesca was behaving, if Domenico took care of her, and whether she
didn’t enjoy using the yellow sitting-room—the one that got all the sun
and looked out towards Genoa.
Rose was ashamed how little she had noticed in the house, and how few
of the things he spoke of as curious or beautiful in it she had even
seen. Swamped in thoughts of Frederick, she appeared to have lived in
San Salvatore blindly, and more than half the time had gone, and what
had been the good of it? She might just as well have been sitting
hankering on Hampstead Heath. No, she mightn’t; through all her
hankerings she had been conscious that she was at least in the very
heart of beauty; and indeed it was this beauty, this longing to share
it, that had first started her off hankering.
Mr. Briggs, however, was too much alive for her to be able to spare any
attention at this moment for Frederick, and she praised the servants in
answer to his questions, and praised the yellow sitting-room without
telling him she had only been in it once and then was ignominiously
ejected, and she told him she knew hardly anything about art and
curiosities, but thought perhaps if somebody would tell her about them
she would know more, and she said she had spent every day since her
arrival out-of-doors, because out-of-doors there was so very wonderful