The Enchanted April
out-of-doors if he could have brought Lady Caroline safely in with him.
As it was, he went in with extreme reluctance.
Mrs. Fisher, her hands folded on her lap, was doing nothing, merely
gazing fixedly into the fire. The lamp was arranged conveniently for
reading, but she was not reading. Her great dead friends did not seem
worth reading that night. They always said the same things now—over and
over again they said the same things, and nothing new was to be got out
of them any more for ever. No doubt they were greater than any one was
now, but they had this immense disadvantage, that they were dead.
Nothing further was to be expected of them; while of the living, what
might one not still expect? She craved for the living, the
developing—the crystallised and finished wearied her. She was thinking
that if only she had had a son—a son like Mr. Briggs, a dear boy like
that, going on, unfolding, alive, affectionate, taking care of her and
loving her. . .
The look on her face gave Mrs. Wilkins’s heart a little twist when she
saw it. “Poor old dear,” she thought, all the loneliness of age
flashing upon her, the loneliness of having outstayed one’s welcome in
the world, of being in it only on sufferance, the complete loneliness
of the old childless woman who has failed to make friends. It did seem
that people could only be really happy in pairs—any sorts of pairs, not
in the least necessarily lovers, but pairs of friends, pairs of mothers
and children, of brothers and sisters—and where was the other half of
Mrs. Fisher’s pair going to be found?
Mrs. Wilkins thought she had perhaps better kiss her again. The kissing
this afternoon had been a great success; she knew it, she had instantly
felt Mrs. Fisher’s reaction to it. So she crossed over and bent down
and kissed her and said cheerfully, “We’ve come in—” which indeed was
evident.
This time Mrs. Fisher actually put up her hand and held Mrs. Wilkins’s
cheek against her own—this living thing, full of affection, of warm,
racing blood; and as she did this she felt safe with the strange
creature, sure that she who herself did unusual things so naturally
would take the action quite as a matter of course, and not embarrass
her by being surprised.
Mrs. Wilkins was not at all surprised; she was delighted. “I believe
_I’m_ the other half of her pair,” flashed into her mind. “I believe
it’s me, positively me, going to be fast friends with Mrs. Fisher!”
Her face when she lifted her head was full of laughter. Too
extraordinary, the developments produced by San Salvatore. She and Mrs.
Fisher . . . but she _saw_ them being fast friends.
“Where are the others?” asked Mrs. Fisher. “Thank you—dear,” she added,
as Mrs. Wilkins put a footstool under her feet, a footstool obviously
needed, Mrs. Fisher’s legs being short.
“I see myself throughout the years,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, her eyes
dancing, “bringing footstools to Mrs. Fisher. . .”
“The Roses,” she said, straightening herself, “have gone into the lower
garden—I _think_ lovemaking.”
“The Roses?”
“The Fredericks, then, if you like. They’re completely merged and
indistinguishable.”
“Why not say the Arbuthnots, my dear?” said Mr. Wilkins.
“Very well, Mellersh—the Arbuthnots. And the Carolines—”
Both Mr. Wilkins and Mrs. Fisher started. Mr. Wilkins, usually in such
complete control of himself, started even more than Mrs. Fisher, and
for the first time since his arrival felt angry with his wife.
“Really—” he began indignantly.
“Very well, Mellersh—the Briggses, then.”
“The Briggses!” cried Mr. Wilkins, now very angry indeed; for the
implication was to him a most outrageous insult to the entire race of
Desters—dead Desters, living Desters, and Desters still harmless
because they were yet unborn. “Really—”
“I’m sorry, Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins, pretending meekness, “if you
don’t like it.”
“Like it! You’ve taken leave of your senses. Why, they’ve never set
eyes on each other before to-day.”
“That’s true. But that’s why they’re able now to go ahead.”
“Go ahead!” Mr. Wilkins could only echo the outrageous words.
“I’m sorry, Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins again, “if you don’t like it,
but—”
Her grey eyes shone, and her face rippled with the light and conviction
that had so much surprised Rose the first time they met.
“It’s useless minding,” she said. “I shouldn’t struggle if I were you.
Because—”
She stopped, and looked first at one alarmed solemn face and then at
the other, and laughter as well as light flickered and danced over her.
“I see them being the Briggses,” finished Mrs. Wilkins.
That last week the syringa came out at San Salvatore, and all the
acacias flowered. No one had noticed how many acacias there were till
one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate
trees, the lovely successors to the wistaria, hung all over among their
trembling leaves with blossom. To lie under an acacia tree that last
week and look up through the branches at its frail leaves and white
flowers quivering against the blue of the sky, while the least movement
of the air shook down their scent, was a great happiness. Indeed, the
whole garden dressed itself gradually towards the end in white, and
grew more and more scented. There were the lilies, as vigorous as ever,
and the white stocks and white pinks and white banksia roses, and the
syringa and the jessamine, and at last the crowning fragrance of the
acacias. When, on the first of May, everybody went away, even after
they had got to the bottom of the hill and passed through the iron
gates out into the village they still could smell the acacias.