The Enchanted April
and different from anything she had ever seen.
Briggs walked by her side along his paths that were yet so happily for
the moment her paths, and felt all the innocent glows of family life.
He was an orphan and an only child, and had a warm, domestic
disposition. He would have adored a sister and spoilt a mother, and was
beginning at this time to think of marrying; for though he had been
very happy with his various loves, each of whom, contrary to the usual
experience, turned ultimately into his devoted friend, he was fond of
children and thought he had perhaps now got to the age of settling if
he did not wish to be too old by the time his eldest son was twenty.
San Salvatore had latterly seemed a little forlorn. He fancied it
echoed when he walked about it. He had felt lonely there; so lonely
that he had preferred this year to miss out a spring and let it. It
wanted a wife in it. It wanted that final touch of warmth and beauty,
for he never thought of his wife except in terms of warmth and
beauty—she would of course be beautiful and kind. It amused him how
much in love with this vague wife he was already.
At such a rate was he making friends with the lady with the sweet name
as he walked along the path towards the lighthouse, that he was sure
presently he would be telling her everything about himself and his past
doings and his future hopes; and the thought of such a swiftly
developing confidence made him laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” she asked, looking at him and smiling.
“It’s so like coming home,” he said.
“But it is coming home for you to come here.”
“I mean _really_ like coming home. To one’s—one’s family. I never had a
family. I’m an orphan.”
“Oh, are you?” said Rose with the proper sympathy. “I hope you’ve not
been one very long. No—I mean I hope you have been one very long. No—I
don’t know what I mean, except that I’m sorry.”
He laughed again. “Oh I’m used to it. I haven’t anybody. No sisters or
brothers.”
“Then you’re an only child,” she observed intelligently.
“Yes. And there’s something about you that’s exactly my idea of a—of a
family.”
She was amused.
“So—cosy,” he said, looking at her and searching for a word.
“You wouldn’t think so if you saw my house in Hampstead,” she said, a
vision of that austere and hard-seated dwelling presenting itself to
her mind, with nothing soft in it except the shunned and neglected Du
Barri sofa. No wonder, she thought, for a moment clear-brained, that
Frederick avoided it. There was nothing cosy about _his_ family.
“I don’t believe any place you lived in could be anything but exactly
like you,” he said.
“You’re not going to pretend San Salvatore is like me?”
“Indeed I do pretend it. Surely you admit that it is beautiful?”
He said several things like that. She enjoyed her walk. She could not
recollect any walk so pleasant since her courting days.
She came back to tea, bringing Mr. Briggs, and looking quite different,
Mr. Wilkins noticed, from what she had looked till then. Trouble here,
trouble here, thought Mr. Wilkins, mentally rubbing his professional
hands. He could see himself being called in presently to advise. On the
one hand there was Arbuthnot, on the other hand here was Briggs.
Trouble brewing, trouble sooner or later. But why had Briggs’s telegram
acted on the lady like a blow? If she had turned pale from excess of
joy, then trouble was nearer than he had supposed. She was not pale
now; she was more like her name than he had yet seen her. Well, he was
the man for trouble. He regretted, of course, that people should get
into it, but being in he was their man.
And Mr. Wilkins, invigorated by these thoughts, his career being very
precious to him, proceeded to assist in doing the honours to Mr.
Briggs, both in his quality of sharer in the temporary ownership of San
Salvatore and of probable helper out of difficulties, with great
hospitality, and pointed out the various features of the place to him,
and led him to the parapet and showed him Mezzago across the bay.
Mrs. Fisher too was gracious. This was this young man’s house. He was a
man of property. She liked property, and she liked men of property.
Also there seemed a peculiar merit in being a man of property so young.
Inheritance, of course; and inheritance was more respectable than
acquisition. It did indicate fathers; and in an age where most people
appeared neither to have them nor to want them she liked this too.
Accordingly it was a pleasant meal, with everybody amiable and pleased.
Briggs thought Mrs. Fisher a dear old lady, and showed he thought so;
and again the magic worked, and she became a dear old lady. She
developed benignity with him, and a kind of benignity which was almost
playful—actually before tea was over including in some observation she
made him the words “My dear boy.”
Strange words in Mrs. Fisher’s mouth. It is doubtful whether in her
life she had used them before. Rose was astonished. How nice people
really were. When would she leave off making mistakes about them? She
hadn’t suspected this side of Mrs. Fisher, and she began to wonder
whether those other sides of her with which alone she was acquainted
had not perhaps after all been the effect of her own militant and
irritating behaviour. Probably they were. How horrid, then, she must
have been. She felt very penitent when she saw Mrs. Fisher beneath her
eyes blossoming out into real amiability the moment some one came along
who was charming to her, and she could have sunk into the ground with
shame when Mrs. Fisher presently laughed, and she realised by the shock
it gave her that the sound was entirely new. Not once before had she or
any one else there heard Mrs. Fisher laugh. What an indictment of the
lot of them! For they had all laughed, the others, some more and some
less, at one time or another since their arrival, and only Mrs. Fisher
had not. Clearly, since she could enjoy herself as she was now enjoying
herself, she had not enjoyed herself before. Nobody had cared whether
she did or not, except perhaps Lotty. Yes; Lotty had cared, and had
wanted her to be happy; but Lotty seemed to produce a bad effect on
Mrs. Fisher, while as for Rose herself she had never been with her for
five minutes without wanting, really wanting, to provoke and oppose
her.
How very horrid she had been. She had behaved unpardonably. Her
penitence showed itself in a shy and deferential solicitude towards
Mrs. Fisher which made the observant Briggs think her still more
angelic, and wish for a moment that he were an old lady himself in
order to be behaved to by Rose Arbuthnot just like that. There was
evidently no end, he thought, to the things she could do sweetly. He
would even not mind taking medicine, really nasty medicine, if it were
Rose Arbuthnot bending over him with the dose.
She felt his bright blue eyes, the brighter because he was so sunburnt,
fixed on her with a twinkle in them, and smiling asked him what he was
thinking about.
But he couldn’t very well tell her that, he said; and added, “Some
day.”
“Trouble, trouble,” thought Mr. Wilkins at this, again mentally rubbing
his hands. “Well, I’m their man.”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Fisher benignly, “you have no thoughts we may not
hear.”
“I’m sure,” said Briggs, “I would be telling you every one of my
secrets in a week.”
“You would be telling somebody very safe, then,” said Mrs. Fisher
benevolently—just such a son would she have liked to have had. “And in
return,” she went on, “I daresay I would tell you mine.”
“Ah no,” said Mr. Wilkins, adapting himself to this tone of easy
_badinage_, “I must protest. I really must. I have a prior claim, I am
the older friend. I have known Mrs. Fisher ten days, and you, Briggs,
have not yet known her one. I assert my right to be told her secrets
first. That is,” he added, bowing gallantly, “if she has any—which I
beg leave to doubt.”
“Oh, haven’t I!” exclaimed Mrs. Fisher, thinking of those green leaves.
That she should exclaim at all was surprising, but that she should do
it with gaiety was miraculous. Rose could only watch her in wonder.
“Then I shall worm them out,” said Briggs with equal gaiety.
“They won’t need much worming out,” said Mrs. Fisher. “My difficulty is
to keep them from bursting out.”
It might have been Lotty talking. Mr. Wilkins adjusted the single
eyeglass he carried with him for occasions like this, and examined Mrs.
Fisher carefully. Rose looked on, unable not to smile too since Mrs.
Fisher seemed so much amused, though Rose did not quite know why, and
her smile was a little uncertain, for Mrs. Fisher amused was a new
sight, not without its awe-inspiring aspects, and had to be got
accustomed to.
What Mrs. Fisher was thinking was how much surprised they would be if
she told them of her very odd and exciting sensation of going to come
out all over buds. They would think she was an extremely silly old
woman, and so would she have thought as lately as two days ago; but the
bud idea was becoming familiar to her, she was more _apprivoisée_ now,
as dear Matthew Arnold used to say, and though it would undoubtedly be
best if one’s appearance and sensations matched, yet supposing they did
not—and one couldn’t have everything—was it not better to feel young
somewhere rather than old everywhere? Time enough to be old everywhere
again, inside as well as out, when she got back to her sarcophagus in
Prince of Wales Terrace.
Yet it is probable that without the arrival of Briggs Mrs. Fisher would
have gone on secretly fermenting in her shell. The others only knew her
as severe. It would have been more than her dignity could bear suddenly
to relax—especially towards the three young women. But now came the
stranger Briggs, a stranger who at once took to her as no young man had
taken to her in her life, and it was the coming of Briggs and his real
and manifest appreciation—for just such a grandmother, thought Briggs,
hungry for home life and its concomitants, would he have liked to
have—that released Mrs. Fisher from her shell; and here she was at
last, as Lotty had predicted, pleased, good-humoured and benevolent.
Lotty, coming back half an hour later from her picnic, and following
the sound of voices into the top garden in the hope of still finding
tea, saw at once what had happened, for Mrs. Fisher at that very moment
was laughing.
“She’s burst her cocoon,” thought Lotty; and swift as she was in all
her movements, and impulsive, and also without any sense of propriety
to worry and delay her, she bent over the back of Mrs. Fisher’s chair
and kissed her.
“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Fisher, starting violently, for such a
thing had not happened to her since Mr. Fisher’s earlier days, and then
only gingerly. This kiss was a real kiss, and rested on Mrs. Fisher’s
cheek a moment with a strange, soft sweetness.
When she saw whose it was, a deep flush spread over her face. Mrs.
Wilkins kissing her and the kiss feeling so affectionate. . . Even if
she had wanted to she could not in the presence of the appreciative Mr.
Briggs resume her cast-off severity and begin rebuking again; but she
did not want to. Was it possible Mrs. Wilkins liked her—had liked her
all this time, while she had been so much disliking her herself? A
queer little trickle of warmth filtered through the frozen defences of
Mrs. Fisher’s heart. Somebody young kissing her—somebody young
_wanting_ to kiss her. . . Very much flushed, she watched the strange
creature, apparently quite unconscious she had done anything
extraordinary, shaking hands with Mr. Briggs, on her husband’s
introducing him, and immediately embarking on the friendliest
conversation with him, exactly as if she had known him all her life.
What a strange creature; what a very strange creature. It was natural,