The Enchanted April
the first remark that occurred to him.
“It’s a tub of love,” said the sandy young woman earnestly; which
confused him more than ever.
And his confusion became excessive at the next words he heard—spoken,
these, by the old lady, who said: “We won’t wait. Lady Caroline is
always late”—for he only then, on hearing her name, really and properly
remembered Lady Caroline, and the thought of her confused him to
excess.
He went into the dining-room like a man in a dream. He had come out to
this place to see Lady Caroline, and had told her so. He had even told
her in his fatuousness—it was true, but how fatuous—that he hadn’t been
able to help coming. She didn’t know he was married. She thought his
name was Arundel. Everybody in London thought his name was Arundel. He
had used it and written under it so long that he almost thought it was
himself. In the short time since she had left him on the seat in the
garden, where he told her he had come because he couldn’t help it, he
had found Rose again, had passionately embraced and been embraced, and
had forgotten Lady Caroline. It would be an extraordinary piece of good
fortune if Lady Caroline’s being late meant she was tired or bored and
would not come to dinner at all. Then he could—no, he couldn’t. He
turned a deeper red even than usual, he being a man of full habit and
red anyhow, at the thought of such cowardice. No, he couldn’t go away
after dinner and catch his train and disappear to Rome; not unless,
that is, Rose came with him. But even so, what a running away. No, he
couldn’t.
When they got to the dining-room Mrs. Fisher went to the head of the
table—was this Mrs. Fisher’s house? he asked himself. He didn’t know;
he didn’t know anything—and Rose, who in her earlier days of defying
Mrs. Fisher had taken the other end as her place, for after all no one
could say by looking at a table which was its top and which its bottom,
led Frederick to the seat next to her. If only, he thought, he could
have been alone with Rose; just five minutes more alone with Rose, so
that he could have asked her—
But probably he wouldn’t have asked her anything, and only gone on
kissing her.
He looked round. The sandy young woman was telling the man they called
Briggs to go and sit beside Mrs. Fisher—was the house, then, the sandy
young woman’s and not Mrs. Fisher’s? He didn’t know; he didn’t know
anything—and she herself sat down on Rose’s other side, so that she was
opposite him, Frederick, and next to the genial man who had said “Here
we are,” when it was only too evident that there they were indeed.
Next to Frederick, and between him and Briggs, was an empty chair: Lady
Caroline’s. No more than Lady Caroline knew of the presence in
Frederick’s life of Rose was Rose aware of the presence in Frederick’s
life of Lady Caroline. What would each think? He didn’t know; he didn’t
know anything. Yes, he did know something, and that was that his wife
had made it up with him—suddenly, miraculously, unaccountably, and
divinely. Beyond that he knew nothing. The situation was one with which
he felt he could not cope. It must lead him whither it would. He could
only drift.
In silence Frederick ate his soup, and the eyes, the large expressive
eyes of the young woman opposite, were on him, he could feel, with a
growing look in them of inquiry. They were, he could see, very
intelligent and attractive eyes, and full, apart from the inquiry of
goodwill. Probably she thought he ought to talk—but if she knew
everything she wouldn’t think so. Briggs didn’t talk either. Briggs
seemed uneasy. What was the matter with Briggs? And Rose too didn’t
talk, but then that was natural. She never had been a talker. She had
the loveliest expression on her face. How long would it be on it after
Lady Caroline’s entrance? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything.
But the genial man on Mrs. Fisher’s left was talking enough for
everybody. That fellow ought to have been a parson. Pulpits were the
place for a voice like his; it would get him a bishopric in six months.
He was explaining to Briggs, who shuffled about in his seat—why did
Briggs shuffle about in his seat?—that he must have come out by the
same train as Arbuthnot, and when Briggs, who said nothing, wriggled in
apparent dissent, he undertook to prove it to him, and did prove it to
him in long clear sentences.
“Who’s the man with the voice?” Frederick asked Rose in a whisper; and
the young woman opposite, whose ears appeared to have the quickness of
hearing of wild creatures, answered, “He’s my husband.”
“Then by all the rules,” said Frederick pleasantly, pulling himself
together, “you oughtn’t to be sitting next to him.”
“But I want to. I like sitting next to him. I didn’t before I came
here.”
Frederick could think of nothing to say to this, so he only smiled
generally.
“It’s this place,” she said, nodding at him. “It makes one understand.
You’ve no idea what a lot you’ll understand before you’ve done here.”
“I’m sure I hope so,” said Frederick with real fervour.
The soup was taken away, and the fish was brought. Briggs, on the other
side of the empty chair, seemed more uneasy than ever. What was the
matter with Briggs? Didn’t he like fish?
Frederick wondered what Briggs would do in the way of fidgets if he
were in his own situation. Frederick kept on wiping his moustache, and
was not able to look up from his plate, but that was as much as he
showed of what he was feeling.
Though he didn’t look up he felt the eyes of the young woman opposite
raking him like searchlights, and Rose’s eyes were on him too, he knew,
but they rested on him unquestioningly, beautifully, like a
benediction. How long would they go on doing that once Lady Caroline
was there? He didn’t know; he didn’t know anything.
He wiped his moustache for the twentieth unnecessary time, and could
not quite keep his hand steady, and the young woman opposite saw his
hand not being quite steady, and her eyes raked him persistently. Why
did her eyes rake him persistently? He didn’t know; he didn’t know
anything.
Then Briggs leapt to his feet. What was the matter with Briggs?
Oh—yes—quite: she had come.
Frederick wiped his moustache and got up too. He was in for it now.
Absurd, fantastic situation. Well, whatever happened he could only
drift—drift, and look like an ass to Lady Caroline, the most absolute
as well as deceitful ass—an ass who was also a reptile, for she might
well think he had been mocking her out in the garden when he said, no
doubt in a shaking voice—fool and ass—that he had come because he
couldn’t help it; while as for what he would look like to his Rose—when
Lady Caroline introduced him to her—when Lady Caroline introduced him
as her friend whom she had invited in to dinner—well, God alone knew
that.
He, therefore, as he got up wiped his moustache for the last time
before the catastrophe.
But he was reckoning without Scrap.
That accomplished and experienced young woman slipped into the chair
Briggs was holding for her, and on Lotty’s leaning across eagerly, and
saying before any one else could get a word in, “Just fancy, Caroline,
how quickly Rose’s husband has got here!” turned to him without so much
as the faintest shadow of surprise on her face, and held out her hand,
and smiled like a young angel, and said, “and me late your very first
evening.”
The daughter of the Droitwiches. . .
Chapter 22
That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an
enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the
daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the
white roses—you could see these as plainly as in the day-time; but the
coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
The three younger women sat on the low wall at the end of the top
garden after dinner, Rose a little apart from the others, and watched
the enormous moon moving slowly over the place where Shelley had lived
his last months just on a hundred years before. The sea quivered along
the path of the moon. The stars winked and trembled. The mountains were
misty blue outlines, with little clusters of lights shining through
from little clusters of homes. In the garden the plants stood quite
still, straight and unstirred by the smallest ruffle of air. Through
the glass doors the dining-room, with its candle-lit table and
brilliant flowers—nasturtiums and marigolds that night—glowed like some
magic cave of colour, and the three men smoking round it looked
strangely animated figures seen from the silence, the huge cool calm of
outside.
Mrs. Fisher had gone to the drawing-room and the fire. Scrap and Lotty,
their faces upturned to the sky, said very little and in whispers. Rose
said nothing. Her face too was upturned. She was looking at the
umbrella pine, which had been smitten into something glorious,
silhouetted against stars. Every now and then Scrap’s eyes lingered on
Rose; so did Lotty’s. For Rose was lovely. Anywhere at that moment,
among all the well-known beauties, she would have been lovely. Nobody
could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she
was too evidently shining.
Lotty bent close to Scrap’s ear, and whispered. “Love,” she whispered.
Scrap nodded. “Yes,” she said, under her breath.
She was obliged to admit it. You only had to look at Rose to know that
here was Love.
“There’s nothing like it,” whispered Lotty.
Scrap was silent.
“It’s a great thing,” whispered Lotty after a pause, during which they
both watched Rose’s upturned face, “to get on with one’s loving.
Perhaps you can tell me of anything else in the world that works such
wonders.”
But Scrap couldn’t tell her; and if she could have, what a night to
begin arguing in. This was a night for—
She pulled herself up. Love again. It was everywhere. There was no
getting away from it. She had come to this place to get away from it,
and here was everybody in its different stages. Even Mrs. Fisher seemed
to have been brushed by one of the many feathers of Love’s wing, and at
dinner was different—full of concern because Mr. Briggs wouldn’t eat,
and her face when she turned to him all soft with motherliness.
Scrap looked up at the pine-tree motionless among stars. Beauty made
you love, and love made you beautiful. . .
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of
keeping out and off. She didn’t want to grow sentimental. Difficult not
to, here; the marvellous night stole in through all one’s chinks, and
brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous
feelings—feelings one couldn’t manage, great things about death and
time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak,
at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She
felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless.
Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon
she tried to protect herself from the eternities.
“I suppose,” whispered Lotty, “Rose’s husband seems to you just an
ordinary, good-natured, middle-aged man.”
Scrap brought her gaze down from the stars and looked at Lotty a moment
while she focussed her mind again.
“Just a rather red, rather round man,” whispered Lotty.
Scrap bowed her head.
“He isn’t,” whispered Lotty. “Rose sees through all that. That’s mere
trimmings. She sees what we can’t see, because she loves him.”
Always love.
Scrap got up, and winding herself very tightly in her wrap moved away
to her day corner, and sat down there alone on the wall and looked out
across the other sea, the sea where the sun had gone down, the sea with
the far-away dim shadow stretching into it which was France.
Yes, love worked wonders, and Mr. Arundel—she couldn’t at once get used