Chapter 3

The owner of the mediaeval castle was an Englishman, a Mr. Briggs, who

was in London at the moment and wrote that it had beds enough for eight

people, exclusive of servants, three sitting-rooms, battlements,

dungeons, and electric light. The rent was £60 for the month, the

servants’ wages were extra, and he wanted references—he wanted

assurances that the second half of his rent would be paid, the first

half being paid in advance, and he wanted assurances of respectability

from a solicitor, or a doctor, or a clergyman. He was very polite in

his letter, explaining that his desire for references was what was

usual and should be regarded as a mere formality.

Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins had not thought of references, and they

had not dreamed a rent could be so high. In their minds had floated

sums like three guineas a week; or less, seeing that the place was

small and old.

Sixty pounds for a single month.

It staggered them.

Before Mrs. Arbuthnot’s eyes rose up boots: endless vistas, all the

stout boots that sixty pounds would buy; and besides the rent there

would be the servants’ wages, and the food, and the railway journeys

out and home. While as for references, these did indeed seem a

stumbling-block; it did seem impossible to give any without making

their plan more public than they had intended.

They had both—even Mrs. Arbuthnot, lured for once away from perfect

candour by the realisation of the great saving of trouble and criticism

an imperfect explanation would produce—they had both thought it would

be a good plan to give out, each to her own circle, their circles being

luckily distinct, that each was going to stay with a friend who had a

house in Italy. It would be true as far as it went—Mrs. Wilkins

asserted that it would be quite true, but Mrs. Arbuthnot thought it

wouldn’t be quite—and it was the only way, Mrs. Wilkins said, to keep

Mellersh even approximately quiet. To spend any of her money just on

the mere getting to Italy would cause him indignation; what he would

say if he knew she was renting part of a mediaeval castle on her own

account Mrs. Wilkins preferred not to think. It would take him days to

say it all; and this although it was her very own money, and not a

penny of it had ever been his.

“But I expect,” she said, “your husband is just the same. I expect all

husbands are alike in the long run.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, because her reason for not wanting

Frederick to know was the exactly opposite one—Frederick would be only

too pleased for her to go, he would not mind it in the very least;

indeed, he would hail such a manifestation of self-indulgence and

worldliness with an amusement that would hurt, and urge her to have a

good time and not to hurry home with a crushing detachment. Far better,

she thought, to be missed by Mellersh than to be sped by Frederick. To

be missed, to be needed, from whatever motive, was, she thought, better

than the complete loneliness of not being missed or needed at all.

She therefore said nothing, and allowed Mrs. Wilkins to leap at her

conclusions unchecked. But they did, both of them, for a whole day feel

that the only thing to be done was to renounce the mediaeval castle;

and it was in arriving at this bitter decision that they really

realised how acute had been their longing for it.

Then Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose mind was trained in the finding of ways out

of difficulties, found a way out of the reference difficulty; and

simultaneously Mrs. Wilkins had a vision revealing to her how to reduce

the rent.

Mrs. Arbuthnot’s plan was simple, and completely successful. She took

the whole of the rent in person to the owner, drawing it out of her

Savings Bank—again she looked furtive and apologetic, as if the clerk

must know the money was wanted for purposes of self-indulgence—and,

going up with the six ten pound notes in her hand-bag to the address

near the Brompton Oratory where the owner lived, presented them to him,

waiving her right to pay only half. And when he saw her, and her parted

hair and soft dark eyes and sober apparel, and heard her grave voice,

he told her not to bother about writing round for those references.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, scribbling a receipt for the rent. “Do

sit down, won’t you? Nasty day, isn’t it? You’ll find the old castle

has lots of sunshine, whatever else it hasn’t got. Husband going?”

Mrs. Arbuthnot, unused to anything but candour, looked troubled at this

question and began to murmur inarticulately, and the owner at once

concluded that she was a widow—a war one, of course, for other widows

were old—and that he had been a fool not to guess it.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning red right up to his fair hair. “I

didn’t mean—h’m, h’m, h’m—”

He ran his eye over the receipt he had written. “Yes, I think that’s

all right,” he said, getting up and giving it to her. “Now,” he added,

taking the six notes she held out and smiling, for Mrs. Arbuthnot was

agreeable to look at, “I’m richer, and you’re happier. I’ve got money,

and you’ve got San Salvatore. I wonder which is best.”

“I think you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot with her sweet smile.

He laughed and opened the door for her. It was a pity the interview was

over. He would have liked to ask her to lunch with him. She made him

think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting,

besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.

“I hope you’ll like the old place,” he said, holding her hand a minute

at the door. The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was

reassuring; it was the sort of hand, he thought, that children would

like to hold in the dark. “In April, you know, it’s simply a mass of

flowers. And then there’s the sea. You must wear white. You’ll fit in

very well. There are several portraits of you there.”

“Portraits?”

“Madonnas, you know. There’s one on the stairs really exactly like

you.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot smiled and said good-bye and thanked him. Without the

least trouble and at once she had got him placed in his proper

category: he was an artist and of an effervescent temperament.

She shook hands and left, and he wished she hadn’t. After she was gone

he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only

because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as

soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that

grave, sweet lady.

Rose Arbuthnot.

Her letter, making the appointment, lay on the table.

Pretty name.

That difficulty, then, was overcome. But there still remained the other

one, the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs,

and especially on Mrs. Wilkins’s, which was in size, compared with Mrs.

Arbuthnot’s, as the egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in

its turn was overcome by the vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins,

revealing to her the steps to be taken for its overcoming. Having got

San Salvatore—the beautiful, the religious name, fascinated them—they

in their turn would advertise in the Agony Column of _The Times_, and

would inquire after two more ladies, of similar desires to their own,

to join them and share the expenses.

At once the strain of the nest-eggs would be reduced from half to a

quarter. Mrs. Wilkins was prepared to fling her entire egg into the

adventure, but she realised that if it were to cost even sixpence over

her ninety pounds her position would be terrible. Imagine going to

Mellersh and saying, “I owe.” It would be awful enough if some day

circumstances forced her to say, “I have no nest-egg,” but at least she

would be supported in such a case by the knowledge that the egg had

been her own. She therefore, though prepared to fling her last penny

into the adventure, was not prepared to fling into it a single farthing

that was not demonstrably her own; and she felt that if her share of

the rent was reduced to fifteen pounds only, she would have a safe

margin for the other expenses. Also they might economise very much on

food—gather olives off their own trees and eat them, for instance, and

perhaps catch fish.

Of course, as they pointed out to each other, they could reduce the

rent to an almost negligible sum by increasing the number of sharers;

they could have six more ladies instead of two if they wanted to,

seeing that there were eight beds. But supposing the eight beds were

distributed in couples in four rooms, it would not be altogether what

they wanted, to find themselves shut up at night with a stranger.

Besides, they thought that perhaps having so many would not be quite

so peaceful. After all, they were going to San Salvatore for peace and

rest and joy, and six more ladies, especially if they got into one’s

bedroom, might a little interfere with that.

speech first

However, there seemed to be only two ladies in England at that moment

who had any wish to join them, for they had only two answers to their

advertisement.

“Well, we only want two,” said Mrs. Wilkins, quickly recovering, for

she had imagined a great rush.

“I think a choice would have been a good thing,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“You mean because then we needn’t have had Lady Caroline Dester.”

“I didn’t say that,” gently protested Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“We needn’t have her,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Just one more person would

help us a great deal with the rent. We’re not obliged to have two.”

“But why should we not have her? She seems really quite what we want.”

“Yes—she does from her letter,” said Mrs. Wilkins doubtfully.

She felt she would be terribly shy of Lady Caroline. Incredible as it

may seem, seeing how they get into everything, Mrs. Wilkins had never

come across any members of the aristocracy.

They interviewed Lady Caroline, and they interviewed the other

applicant, a Mrs. Fisher.

Lady Caroline came to the club in Shaftesbury Avenue, and appeared to

be wholly taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from

everybody she had ever known. When she saw the club, and Mrs.

Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Wilkins, she was sure that here was exactly what

she wanted. She would be in Italy—a place she adored; she would not be

in hotels—places she loathed; she would not be staying with

friends—persons she disliked; and she would be in the company of

strangers who would never mention a single person she knew, for the

simple reason that they had not, could not have, and would not come

across them. She asked a few questions about the fourth woman, and was

satisfied with the answers. Mrs. Fisher, of Prince of Wales Terrace. A

widow. She too would be unacquainted with any of her friends. Lady

Caroline did not even know where Prince of Wales Terrace was.

“It’s in London,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Is it?” said Lady Caroline.

It all seemed most restful.

Mrs. Fisher was unable to come to the club because, she explained by

letter, she could not walk without a stick; therefore Mrs. Arbuthnot

and Mrs. Wilkins went to her.

“But if she can’t come to the club how can she go to Italy?” wondered

Mrs. Wilkins, aloud.

“We shall hear that from her own lips,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

From Mrs. Fisher’s lips they merely heard, in reply to delicate

questioning, that sitting in trains was not walking about; and they

knew that already. Except for the stick, however, she appeared to be a

most desirable fourth—quiet, educated, elderly. She was much older than

they or Lady Caroline—Lady Caroline had informed them she was

twenty-eight—but not so old as to have ceased to be active-minded. She

was very respectable indeed, and still wore a complete suit of black

though her husband had died, she told them, eleven years before. Her

house was full of signed photographs of illustrious Victorian dead, all

of whom she said she had known when she was little. Her father had been

an eminent critic, and in his house she had seen practically everybody

who was anybody in letters and art. Carlyle had scowled at her; Matthew

Arnold had held her on his knee; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on

the length of her pig-tail. She animatedly showed them the photographs,

hung everywhere on her walls, pointing out the signatures with her

stick, and she neither gave any information about her own husband nor

asked for any about the husbands of her visitors; which was the

greatest comfort. Indeed, she seemed to think that they also were

widows, for on inquiring who the fourth lady was to be, and being told

it was a Lady Caroline Dester, she said, “Is she a widow too?” And on

their explaining that she was not, because she had not yet been

married, observed with abstracted amiability, “All in good time.”

But Mrs. Fisher’s very abstractedness—and she seemed to be absorbed

chiefly in the interesting people she used to know and in their

memorial photographs, and quite a good part of the interview was taken

up by reminiscent anecdote of Carlyle, Meredith, Matthew Arnold,

Tennyson, and a host of others—her very abstractedness was a

recommendation. She only asked, she said, to be allowed to sit quiet in

the sun and remember. That was all Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins

asked of their sharers. It was their idea of a perfect sharer that she

should sit quiet in the sun and remember, rousing herself on Saturday

evenings sufficiently to pay her share. Mrs. Fisher was very fond, too,

she said, of flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end with

her father at Box Hill—

“Who lived at Box Hill?” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on Mrs.

Fisher’s reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who had

actually been familiar with all the really and truly and undoubtedly

great—actually seen them, heard them talking, touched them.

Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some surprise.

Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly of Mrs.

Fisher’s reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs. Arbuthnot would

take her away and she wouldn’t have heard half, had already interrupted

several times with questions which appeared ignorant to Mrs. Fisher.

“Meredith of course,” said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. “I remember a

particular week-end”—she continued. “My father often took me, but I

always remember this week-end particularly—”

“Did you know Keats?” eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.

Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had

been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare.

“Oh of course—how ridiculous of me!” cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing

scarlet. “It’s because”—she floundered—“it’s because the immortals

somehow still seem alive, don’t they—as if they were here, going to

walk into the room in another minute—and one forgets they are dead. In

fact one knows perfectly well that they’re not dead—not nearly so dead

as you and I even now,” she assured Mrs. Fisher, who observed her over

the top of her glasses.

“I thought I _saw_ Keats the other day,” Mrs. Wilkins incoherently

proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher’s look over the top of her glasses.

“In Hampstead—crossing the road in front of that house—you know—the

house where he lived—”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going.

Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them.

“I _really_ thought I saw him,” protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing for

belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour passed

over her face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs. Fisher’s

glasses and the steady eyes looking at her over their tops. “I believe

I _did_ see him—he was dressed in a—”

Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice said

they would be late for lunch.

It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references. She had no

wish to find herself shut up for four weeks with somebody who saw

things. It is true that there were three sitting-rooms, besides the

garden and the battlements at San Salvatore, so that there would be

opportunities of withdrawal from Mrs. Wilkins; but it would be

disagreeable to Mrs. Fisher, for instance, if Mrs. Wilkins were

suddenly to assert that she saw Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was dead; let

him remain so. She had no wish to be told he was walking about the

garden. The only reference she really wanted, for she was much too old

and firmly seated in her place in the world for questionable associates

to matter to her, was one with regard to Mrs. Wilkins’s health. Was her

health quite normal? Was she an ordinary, everyday, sensible woman?

Mrs. Fisher felt that if she were given even one address she would be

able to find out what she needed. So she asked for references, and her

visitors appeared to be so much taken aback—Mrs. Wilkins, indeed, was

instantly sobered—that she added, “It is usual.”

Mrs. Wilkins found her speech first. “But,” she said, “aren’t we the

ones who ought to ask for some from you?”

And this seemed to Mrs. Arbuthnot too the right attitude. Surely it was

they who were taking Mrs. Fisher into their party, and not Mrs. Fisher

who was taking them into it?

For answer Mrs. Fisher, leaning on her stick, went to the writing-table

and in a firm hand wrote down three names and offered them to Mrs.

Wilkins, and the names were so respectable, more, they were so

momentous, they were so nearly august, that just to read them was

enough. The President of the Royal Academy, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, and the Governor of the Bank of England—who would dare

disturb such personages in their meditations with inquiries as to

whether a female friend of theirs was all she should be?

“They have known me since I was little,” said Mrs. Fisher—everybody

seemed to have known Mrs. Fisher since or when she was little.

“I don’t think references are nice things at all between—between

ordinary decent women,” burst out Mrs. Wilkins, made courageous by

being, as she felt, at bay; for she very well knew that the only

reference she could give without getting into trouble was Shoolbred,

and she had little confidence in that, as it would be entirely based on

Mellersh’s fish. “We’re not business people. We needn’t distrust each

other—”

And Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with a dignity that yet was sweet, “I’m afraid

references do bring an atmosphere into our holiday plan that isn’t

quite what we want, and I don’t think we’ll take yours up or give you

any ourselves. So that I suppose you won’t wish to join us.”

And she held out her hand in good-bye.

Then Mrs. Fisher, her gaze diverted to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who inspired

trust and liking even in Tube officials, felt that she would be idiotic

to lose the opportunity of being in Italy in the particular conditions

offered, and that she and this calm-browed woman between them would

certainly be able to curb the other one when she had her attacks. So

she said, taking Mrs. Arbuthnot’s offered hand, “Very well. I waive

references.”

She waived references.

The two as they walked to the station in Kensington High Street could

not help thinking that this way of putting it was lofty. Even Mrs.

Arbuthnot, spendthrift of excuses for lapses, thought Mrs. Fisher might

have used other words; and Mrs. Wilkins, by the time she got to the

station, and the walk and the struggle on the crowded pavement with

other people’s umbrellas had warmed her blood, actually suggested

waiving Mrs. Fisher.

“If there is any waiving to be done, do let us be the ones who waive,”

she said eagerly.

But Mrs. Arbuthnot, as usual, held on to Mrs. Wilkins; and presently,

having cooled down in the train, Mrs. Wilkins announced that at San

Salvatore Mrs. Fisher would find her level. “I see her finding her

level there,” she said, her eyes very bright.

Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, sitting with her quiet hands folded, turned

over in her mind how best she could help Mrs. Wilkins not to see quite

so much; or at least, if she must see, to see in silence.