The Enchanted April
The old familiar tyranny had begun again. Her holiday of peace and
liberation was interrupted—perhaps over, for who knew if he would go
away, after all, to-morrow? He might leave the house, driven out of it
by Kate Lumley, but there was nothing to prevent his taking rooms in
the village and coming up every day. This tyranny of one person over
another! And she was so miserably constructed that she wouldn’t even be
able to frown him down without being misunderstood.
Scrap, who loved this time of the evening in her corner, felt indignant
with Mr. Briggs who was doing her out of it, and she turned her back on
the garden and him and went towards the house without a look or a word.
But Briggs, when he realised her intention, leapt to his feet, snatched
chairs which were not in her way out of it, kicked a footstool which
was not in her path on one side, hurried to the door, which stood wide
open, in order to hold it open, and followed her through it, walking by
her side along the hall.
What was to be done with Mr. Briggs? Well, it was his hall; she
couldn’t prevent his walking along it.
“I hope,” he said, not able while walking to take his eyes off her, so
that he knocked against several things he would otherwise have
avoided—the corner of a bookcase, an ancient carved cupboard, the table
with the flowers on it, shaking the water over—“that you are quite
comfortable here? If you’re not I’ll—I’ll flay them alive.”
His voice vibrated. What was to be done with Mr. Briggs? She could of
course stay in her room the whole time, say she was ill, not appear at
dinner; but again, the tyranny of this . . .
“I’m very comfortable indeed,” said Scrap.
“If I had dreamed you were coming—” he began.
“It’s a wonderful old place,” said Scrap, doing her utmost to sound
detached and forbidding, but with little hope of success.
The kitchen was on this floor, and passing its door, which was open a
crack, they were observed by the servants, whose thoughts, communicated
to each other by looks, may be roughly reproduced by such rude symbols
as Aha and Oho—symbols which represented and included their
appreciation of the inevitable, their foreknowledge of the inevitable,
and their complete understanding and approval.
“Are you going upstairs?” asked Briggs, as she paused at the foot of
them.
“Yes.”
“Which room do you sit in? The drawing-room, or the small yellow room?”
“In my own room.”
So then he couldn’t go up with her; so then all he could do was to wait
till she came out again.
He longed to ask her which was her own room—it thrilled him to hear her
call any room in his house her own room—that he might picture her in
it. He longed to know if by any happy chance it was his room, for ever
after to be filled with her wonder; but he didn’t dare. He would find
that out later from some one else—Francesca, anybody.
“Then I shan’t see you again till dinner?”
“Dinner is at eight,” was Scrap’s evasive answer as she went upstairs.
He watched her go.
She passed the Madonna, the portrait of Rose Arbuthnot, and the
dark-eyed figure he had thought so sweet seemed to turn pale, to
shrivel into insignificance as she passed.
She turned the bend of the stairs, and the setting sun, shining through
the west window a moment on her face, turned her to glory.
She disappeared, and the sun went out too, and the stairs were dark and
empty.
He listened till her footsteps were silent, trying to tell from the
sound of the shutting door which room she had gone into, then wandered
aimlessly away through the hall again, and found himself back in the
top garden.
Scrap from her window saw him there. She saw Lotty and Rose sitting on
the end parapet, where she would have liked to have been, and she saw
Mr. Wilkins buttonholing Briggs and evidently telling him the story of
the oleander tree in the middle of the garden.
Briggs was listening with a patience she thought rather nice, seeing
that it was his oleander and his own father’s story. She knew Mr.
Wilkins was telling him the story by his gestures. Domenico had told it
her soon after her arrival, and he had also told Mrs. Fisher, who had
told Mr. Wilkins. Mrs. Fisher thought highly of this story, and often
spoke of it. It was about a cherrywood walking-stick. Briggs’s father
had thrust this stick into the ground at that spot, and said to
Domenico’s father, who was then the gardener, “Here we will have an
oleander.” And Briggs’s father left the stick in the ground as a
reminder to Domenico’s father, and presently—how long afterwards nobody
remembered—the stick began to sprout, and it was an oleander.
There stood poor Mr. Briggs being told all about it, and listening to
the story he must have known from infancy with patience.
Probably he was thinking of something else. She was afraid he was. How
unfortunate, how extremely unfortunate, the determination that seized
people to get hold of and engulf other people. If only they could be
induced to stand more on their own feet. Why couldn’t Mr. Briggs be
more like Lotty, who never wanted anything of anybody, but was complete
in herself and respected other people’s completeness? One loved being
with Lotty. With her one was free, and yet befriended. Mr. Briggs
looked so really nice, too. She thought she might like him if only he
wouldn’t so excessively like her.
Scrap felt melancholy. Here she was shut up in her bedroom, which was
stuffy from the afternoon sun that had been pouring into it, instead of
out in the cool garden, and all because of Mr. Briggs.
Intolerable tyranny, she thought, flaring up. She wouldn’t endure it;
she would go out all the same; she would run downstairs while Mr.
Wilkins—really that man was a treasure—held Mr. Briggs down telling him
about the oleander, and get out of the house by the front door, and
take cover in the shadows of the zigzag path. Nobody could see her
there; nobody would think of looking for her there.
She snatched up a wrap, for she did not mean to come back for a long
while, perhaps not even to dinner—it would be all Mr. Briggs’s fault if
she went dinnerless and hungry—and with another glance out of the
window to see if she were still safe, she stole out and got away to the
sheltering trees of the zigzag path, and there sat down on one of the
seats placed at each bend to assist the upward journey of those who
were breathless.
Ah, this was lovely, thought Scrap with a sigh of relief. How cool. How
good it smelt. She could see the quiet water of the little harbour
through the pine trunks, and the lights coming out in the houses on the
other side, and all round her the green dusk was splashed by the
rose-pink of the gladioluses in the grass and the white of the crowding
daisies.
Ah, this was lovely. So still. Nothing moving—not a leaf, not a stalk.
The only sound was a dog barking, far away somewhere up on the hills,
or when the door of the little restaurant in the piazza below was
opened and there was a burst of voices, silenced again immediately by
the swinging to of the door.
She drew in a deep breath of pleasure. Ah, this was—
Her deep breath was arrested in the middle. What was that?
She leaned forward listening, her body tense.
Footsteps. On the zigzag path. Briggs. Finding her out.
Should she run?
No—the footsteps were coming up, not down. Some one from the village.
Perhaps Angelo, with provisions.
She relaxed again. But the steps were not the steps of Angelo, that
swift and springy youth; they were slow and considered, and they kept
on pausing.
“Some one who isn’t used to hills,” thought Scrap.
The idea of going back to the house did not occur to her. She was
afraid of nothing in life except love. Brigands or murderers as such
held no terrors for the daughter of the Droitwiches; she only would
have been afraid of them if they left off being brigands and murderers
and began instead to try and make love.
The next moment the footsteps turned the corner of her bit of path, and
stood still.
“Getting his wind,” thought Scrap, not looking round.
Then as he—from the sounds of the steps she took them to belong to a
man—did not move, she turned her head, and beheld with astonishment a
person she had seen a good deal of lately in London, the well-known
writer of amusing memoirs, Mr. Ferdinand Arundel.
She stared. Nothing in the way of being followed surprised her any
more, but that he should have discovered where she was surprised her.
Her mother had promised faithfully to tell no one.
“You?” she said, feeling betrayed. “Here?”
He came up to her and took off his hat. His forehead beneath the hat
was wet with the beads of unaccustomed climbing. He looked ashamed and
entreating, like a guilty but devoted dog.
“You must forgive me,” he said. “Lady Droitwich told me where you were,
and as I happened to be passing through on my way to Rome I thought I
would get out at Mezzago and just look in and see how you were.”
“But—didn’t my mother tell you I was doing a rest-cure?”
“Yes. She did. And that’s why I haven’t intruded on you earlier in the
day. I thought you would probably sleep all day, and wake up about now
so as to be fed.”
“But—”
“I know. I’ve got nothing to say in excuse. I couldn’t help myself.”
“This,” thought Scrap, “comes of mother insisting on having authors to
lunch, and me being so much more amiable in appearance than I really
am.”
She had been amiable to Ferdinand Arundel; she liked him—or rather she
did not dislike him. He seemed a jovial, simple man, and had the eyes
of a nice dog. Also, though it was evident that he admired her, he had
not in London grabbed. There he had merely been a good-natured,
harmless person of entertaining conversation, who helped to make
luncheons agreeable. Now it appeared that he too was a grabber. Fancy
following her out there—daring to. Nobody else had. Perhaps her mother
had given him the address because she considered him so absolutely
harmless, and thought he might be useful and see her home.
Well, whatever he was he couldn’t possibly give her the trouble an
active young man like Mr. Briggs might give her. Mr. Briggs,
infatuated, would be reckless, she felt, would stick at nothing, would
lose his head publicly. She could imagine Mr. Briggs doing things with
rope-ladders, and singing all night under her window—being really
difficult and uncomfortable. Mr. Arundel hadn’t the figure for any kind
of recklessness. He had lived too long and too well. She was sure he
couldn’t sing, and wouldn’t want to. He must be at least forty. How
many good dinners could not a man have eaten by the time he was forty?
And if during that time instead of taking exercise he had sat writing
books, he would quite naturally acquire the figure Mr. Arundel had in
fact acquired—the figure rather for conversation than adventure.
Scrap, who had become melancholy at the sight of Briggs, became
philosophical at the sight of Arundel. Here he was. She couldn’t send
him away till after dinner. He must be nourished.
This being so, she had better make the best of it, and do that with a
good grace which anyhow wasn’t to be avoided. Besides, he would be a
temporary shelter from Mr. Briggs. She was at least acquainted with
Ferdinand Arundel, and could hear news from him of her mother and her
friends, and such talk would put up a defensive barrier at dinner
between herself and the approaches of the other one. And it was only
for one dinner, and he couldn’t eat _her_.
She therefore prepared herself for friendliness. “I’m to be fed,” she
said, ignoring his last remark, “at eight, and you must come up and be
fed too. Sit down and get cool and tell me how everybody is.”
“May I really dine with you? In these travelling things?” he said,
wiping his forehead before sitting down beside her.