Chapter 6

When Mrs. Wilkins woke next morning she lay in bed a few minutes before

getting up and opening the shutters. What would she see out of her

window? A shining world, or a world of rain? But it would be beautiful;

whatever it was would be beautiful.

She was in a little bedroom with bare white walls and a stone floor

and sparse old furniture. The beds—there were two—were made of iron,

enamelled black and painted with bunches of gay flowers. She lay

putting off the great moment of going to the window as one puts off

opening a precious letter, gloating over it. She had no idea what time

it was; she had forgotten to wind up her watch ever since, centuries

ago, she last went to bed in Hampstead. No sounds were to be heard in

the house, so she supposed it was very early, yet she felt as if she

had slept a long while—so completely rested, so perfectly content.

She lay with her arms clasped round her head thinking how happy she

was, her lips curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself:

adorable condition. She had not been in a bed without Mellersh once

now for five whole years; and the cool roominess of it, the freedom

of one’s movements, the sense of recklessness, of audacity, in giving

the blankets a pull if one wanted to, or twitching the pillows more

comfortably! It was like the discovery of an entirely new joy.

Mrs. Wilkins longed to get up and open the shutters, but where she was

was really so very delicious. She gave a sigh of contentment, and went

on lying there looking round her, taking in everything in her room, her

own little room, her very own to arrange just as she pleased for this

one blessed month, her room bought with her own savings, the fruit of

her careful denials, whose door she could bolt if she wanted to, and

nobody had the right to come in. It was such a strange little room, so

different from any she had known, and so sweet. It was like a cell.

Except for the two beds, it suggested a happy austerity. “And the name

of the chamber,” she thought, quoting and smiling round at it, “was

Peace.”

Well, this was delicious, to lie there thinking how happy she was, but

outside those shutters it was more delicious still. She jumped up,

pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but

one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.

“_Oh!_” cried Mrs. Wilkins.

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet.

The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring.

Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour,

were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom

of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle

rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and

violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great

black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she

alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up

to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair.

Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered

like a flock of white birds on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how

beautiful. Not to have died before this . . . to have been allowed to

see, breathe, feel this. . . . She stared, her lips parted. Happy?

Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one

describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it

was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as

though she were washed through with light. And how astonishing to feel

this sheer bliss, for here she was, not doing and not going to do a

single unselfish thing, not going to do a thing she didn’t want to do.

According to everybody she had ever come across she ought at least to

have twinges. She had not one twinge. Something was wrong somewhere.

Wonderful that at home she should have been so good, so terribly good,

and merely felt tormented. Twinges of every sort had there been her

portion; aches, hurts, discouragements, and she the whole time being

steadily unselfish. Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it

behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.

She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked. She was

stripped, and exulting. And there, away in the dim mugginess of

Hampstead, was Mellersh being angry.

She tried to visualise Mellersh, she tried to see him having breakfast

and thinking bitter things about her; and lo, Mellersh himself began to

shimmer, became rose-colour, became delicate violet, became an

enchanting blue, became formless, became iridescent. Actually Mellersh,

after quivering a minute, was lost in light.

“_Well_,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, staring, as it were, after him. How

extraordinary not to be able to visualise Mellersh; and she who used to

know every feature, every expression of his by heart. She simply could

not see him as he was. She could only see him resolved into beauty,

melted into harmony with everything else. The familiar words of the

General Thanksgiving came quite naturally into her mind, and she found

herself blessing God for her creation, preservation, and all the

blessings of this life, but above all for His inestimable Love; out

loud; in a burst of acknowledgment. While Mellersh, at that moment

angrily pulling on his boots before going out into the dripping

streets, was indeed thinking bitter things about her.

She began to dress, choosing clean white clothes in honour of the

summer’s day, unpacking her suit-cases, tidying her adorable little

room. She moved about with quick, purposeful steps, her long thin body

held up straight, her small face, so much puckered at home with effort

and fear, smoothed out. All she had been and done before this morning,

all she had felt and worried about, was gone. Each of her worries

behaved as the image of Mellersh had behaved, and dissolved into colour

and light. And she noticed things she had not noticed for years—when

she was doing her hair in front of the glass she noticed it, and

thought, “Why, what pretty stuff.” For years she had forgotten she had

such a thing as hair, plaiting it in the evening and unplaiting it in

the morning with the same hurry and indifference with which she laced

and unlaced her shoes. Now she suddenly saw it, and she twisted it

round her fingers before the glass, and was glad it was so pretty.

Mellersh couldn’t have seen it either, for he had never said a word

about it. Well, when she got home she would draw his attention to it.

“Mellersh,” she would say, “look at my hair. Aren’t you pleased you’ve

got a wife with hair like curly honey?”

She laughed. She had never said anything like that to Mellersh yet, and

the idea of it amused her. But why had she not? Oh yes—she used to be

afraid of him. Funny to be afraid of anybody; and especially of one’s

husband, whom one saw in his more simplified moments, such as asleep,

and not breathing properly through his nose.

When she was ready she opened her door to go across to see if Rose, who

had been put the night before by a sleepy maidservant into a cell

opposite, were awake. She would say good-morning to her, and then she

would run down and stay with that cypress tree till breakfast was

ready, and after breakfast she wouldn’t so much as look out of a window

till she had helped Rose get everything ready for Lady Caroline and

Mrs. Fisher. There was much to be done that day, settling in, arranging

the rooms; she mustn’t leave Rose to do it alone. They would make it

all so lovely for the two to come, have such an entrancing vision ready

for them of little cells bright with flowers. She remembered she had

wanted Lady Caroline not to come; fancy wanting to shut some one out of

heaven because she thought she would be shy of her! And as though it

mattered if she were, and as though she would be anything so

self-conscious as shy. Besides, what a reason. She could not accuse

herself of goodness over that. And she remembered she had wanted not to

have Mrs. Fisher either, because she had seemed lofty. How funny of

her. So funny to worry about such little things, making them important.

The bedrooms and two of the sitting-rooms at San Salvatore were on the

top floor, and opened into a roomy hall with a wide glass window at the

north end. San Salvatore was rich in small gardens in different parts

and on different levels. The garden this window looked down on was made

on the highest part of the walls, and could only be reached through the

corresponding spacious hall on the floor below. When Mrs. Wilkins came

out of her room this window stood wide open, and beyond it in the sun

was a Judas tree in full flower. There was no sign of anybody, no sound

of voices or feet. Tubs of arum lilies stood about on the stone floor,

and on a table flamed a huge bunch of fierce nasturtiums. Spacious,

flowery, silent, with the wide window at the end opening into the

garden, and the Judas tree absurdly beautiful in the sunshine, it

seemed to Mrs. Wilkins, arrested on her way across to Mrs. Arbuthnot,

too good to be true. Was she really going to live in this for a whole

month? Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went

along, snatching at little bits of it when she came across it—a patch

of daisies on a fine day in a Hampstead field, a flash of sunset

between two chimney pots. She had never been in definitely, completely

beautiful places. She had never been even in a venerable house; and

such a thing as a profusion of flowers in her rooms was unattainable to

her. Sometimes in the spring she had bought six tulips at Shoolbred’s,

unable to resist them, conscious that Mellersh if he knew what they had

cost would think it inexcusable; but they had soon died, and then there

were no more. As for the Judas tree, she hadn’t an idea what it was,

and gazed at it out there against the sky with the rapt expression of

one who sees a heavenly vision.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, coming out of her room, found her there like that,

standing in the middle of the hall staring.

“Now what does she think she sees now?” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“We _are_ in God’s hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to her, speaking

with extreme conviction.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Arbuthnot quickly, her face, which had been covered

with smiles when she came out of her room, falling. “Why, what has

happened?”

For Mrs. Arbuthnot had woken up with such a delightful feeling of

security, of relief, and she did not want to find she had not after all

escaped from the need of refuge. She had not even dreamed of Frederick.

For the first time for years she had been spared the nightly dream that

he was with her, that they were heart to heart, and its miserable

awakening. She had slept like a baby, and had woken up confident; she

had found there was nothing she wished to say in her morning prayer

except Thank you. It was disconcerting to be told she was after all in

God’s hands.

“I hope nothing has happened?” she asked anxiously.

Mrs. Wilkins looked at her a moment, and laughed. “How funny,” she

said, kissing her.

“What is funny?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, her face clearing because Mrs.

Wilkins laughed.

“We are. This is. Everything. It’s all so wonderful. It’s so funny and

so adorable that we should be in it. I daresay when we finally reach

heaven—the one they talk about so much—we shan’t find it a bit more

beautiful.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot relaxed to smiling security again. “Isn’t it divine?”

she said.

“Were you ever, ever in your life so happy?” asked Mrs. Wilkins,

catching her by the arm.

“No,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Nor had she been; not ever; not even in her

first love-days with Frederick. Because always pain had been close at

hand in that other happiness, ready to torture with doubts, to torture

even with the very excess of her love; while this was the simple

happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that

asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.

“Let’s go and look at that tree close,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t

believe it can only be a tree.”

And arm in arm they went along the hall, and their husbands would not

have known them their faces were so young with eagerness, and together

they stood at the open window, and when their eyes, having feasted on

the marvellous pink thing, wandered farther among the beauties of the

garden, they saw sitting on the low wall at the east edge of it, gazing

out over the bay, her feet in lilies, Lady Caroline.

They were astonished. They said nothing in their astonishment, but

stood quite still, arm in arm, staring down at her.

She too had on a white frock, and her head was bare. They had had no

idea that day in London, when her hat was down to her nose and her furs

were up to her ears, that she was so pretty. They had merely thought

her different from the other women in the club, and so had the other

women themselves, and so had all the waitresses, eyeing her sideways

and eyeing her again as they passed the corner where she sat talking;

but they had had no idea she was so pretty. She was exceedingly pretty.

Everything about her was very much that which it was. Her fair hair was

very fair, her lovely grey eyes were very lovely and grey, her dark

eyelashes were very dark, her white skin was very white, her red mouth

was very red. She was extravagantly slender—the merest thread of a

girl, though not without little curves beneath her thin frock where

little curves should be. She was looking out across the bay, and was

sharply defined against the background of empty blue. She was full in

the sun. Her feet dangled among the leaves and flowers of the lilies

just as if it did not matter that they should be bent or bruised.

“She ought to have a headache,” whispered Mrs. Arbuthnot at last,

“sitting there in the sun like that.”

“She ought to have a hat,” whispered Mrs. Wilkins.

“She’s treading on lilies.”

“But they’re hers as much as ours.”

“Only one-fourth of them.”

Lady Caroline turned her head. She looked up at them a moment,

surprised to see them so much younger than they had seemed that day at

the club, and so much less unattractive. Indeed, they were really

almost quite attractive, if any one could ever be really quite

attractive in the wrong clothes. Her eyes, swiftly glancing over them,

took in every inch of each of them in the half second before she smiled

and waved her hand and called out Good-morning. There was nothing, she

saw at once, to be hoped for in the way of interest from their clothes.

She did not consciously think this, for she was having a violent

reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one,

her experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in

hand and gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen

by everybody. You didn’t take your clothes to parties; they took you.

It was quite a mistake to think that a woman, a really well-dressed

woman, wore out her clothes; it was the clothes that wore out the

woman—dragging her about at all hours of the day and night. No wonder

men stayed young longer. Just new trousers couldn’t excite them. She

couldn’t suppose that even the newest trousers ever behaved like that,

taking the bit between their teeth. Her images were disorderly, but she

thought as she chose, she used what images she liked. As she got off the

wall and came towards the window, it seemed a restful thing to know she

was going to spend an entire month with people in dresses made as she

dimly remembered dresses used to be made five summers ago.

“I got here yesterday morning,” she said, looking up at them and

smiling. She really was bewitching. She had everything, even a dimple.

“It’s a great pity,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling back, “because we

were going to choose the nicest room for you.”

“Oh, but I’ve done that,” said Lady Caroline. “At least, I think it’s

the nicest. It looks two ways—I adore a room that looks two ways, don’t

you? Over the sea to the west, and over this Judas tree to the north.”

“And we had meant to make it pretty for you with flowers,” said Mrs.

Wilkins.

“Oh, Domenico did that. I told him to directly I got here. He’s the

gardener. He’s wonderful.”

“It’s a good thing, of course,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot a little

hesitatingly, “to be independent, and to know exactly what one wants.”

“Yes, it saves trouble,” agreed Lady Caroline.

“But one shouldn’t be so independent,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “as to leave

no opportunity for other people to exercise their benevolences on one.”

Lady Caroline, who had been looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot, now looked at

Mrs. Wilkins. That day at that queer club she had had merely a blurred

impression of Mrs. Wilkins, for it was the other one who did all the

talking, and her impression had been of somebody so shy, so awkward

that it was best to take no notice of her. She had not even been able

to say good-bye properly, doing it in an agony, turning red, turning

damp. Therefore she now looked at her in some surprise; and she was

still more surprised when Mrs. Wilkins added, gazing at her with the

most obvious sincere admiration, speaking indeed with a conviction that

refused to remain unuttered, “I didn’t realise you were _so_ pretty.”

She stared at Mrs. Wilkins. She was not usually told this quite so

immediately and roundly. Abundantly as she was used to it—impossible

not to be after twenty-eight solid years—it surprised her to be told it

with such bluntness, and by a woman.

“It’s very kind of you to think so,” she said.

“Why, you’re lovely,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Quite, quite lovely.”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot pleasantly, “you make the most of it.”

Lady Caroline then stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Oh yes,” she said. “I

make the most of it. I’ve been doing that ever since I can remember.”

“Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling and raising a warning

forefinger, “it won’t last.”

Then Lady Caroline began to be afraid these two were originals. If so,

she would be bored. Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted

on being original, who came and buttonholed her and kept her waiting

while they were being original. And the one who admired her—it would

be tiresome if she dogged her about in order to look at her. What

she wanted of this holiday was complete escape from all she had had

before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being

dogged, wasn’t contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to

find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a

mediaeval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy

goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful.

Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed

such timid creatures, even the dark one—she couldn’t remember their

names—that day at the club, that she had felt it quite safe to be very

friendly. Here they had come out of their shells; already; indeed, at

once. There was no sign of timidity about either of them here. If they

had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very first contact,

unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon her, and

then good-bye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days, lying

unmolested in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not being

spoken to, not waited on, not grabbed at and monopolised, but just

recovering from the fatigue, the deep and melancholy fatigue, of the

too much.

Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady Caroline

had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two reasons:

first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order to pick

out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she judged it

likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She

did not want to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want to arrive

with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why for a single moment

she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs. Fisher.

But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to get to

San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and

she and Lady Caroline had after all travelled together. As early as

Calais they began to suspect it; in Paris they feared it; at Modane

they knew it; at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to Castagneto

in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching the back of

the other the whole way. But when the road suddenly left off at the

church and the steps, further evasion was impossible; and faced by this

abrupt and difficult finish to their journey there was nothing for it

but to amalgamate.

Because of Mrs. Fisher’s stick Lady Caroline had to see about

everything. Mrs. Fisher’s intentions, she explained from her fly when

the situation had become plain to her, were active, but her stick

prevented their being carried out. The two drivers told Lady Caroline

boys would have to carry the luggage up to the castle, and she went in

search of some, while Mrs. Fisher waited in the fly because of her

stick. Mrs. Fisher could speak Italian, but only, she explained, the

Italian of Dante, which Matthew Arnold used to read with her when she

was a girl, and she thought this might be above the heads of boys.

Therefore Lady Caroline, who spoke ordinary Italian very well, was

obviously the one to go and do things.

“I am in your hands,” said Mrs. Fisher, sitting firmly in her fly. “You

must please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick.”

And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and along the

quay, and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as much

obliged to walk slowly with Mrs. Fisher as if she were her own

grandmother.

“It’s my stick,” Mrs. Fisher complacently remarked at intervals.

And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where seats

were, and Lady Caroline, who would have liked to run on and get to the

top quickly, was forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs. Fisher

because of her stick, Mrs. Fisher told her how she had been on a zigzag

path once with Tennyson.

“Isn’t his cricket wonderful?” said Lady Caroline absently.

“_The_ Tennyson,” said Mrs. Fisher, turning her head and observing her

a moment over her spectacles.

“Isn’t he?” said Lady Caroline.

“I am speaking,” said Mrs. Fisher, “of Alfred.”

“Oh,” said Lady Caroline.

“And it was a path, too,” Mrs. Fisher went on severely, “curiously like

this. No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise curiously like this.

And at one of the bends he turned and said to me—I see him now turning

and saying to me—”

Yes, Mrs. Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these two up at

the window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she had got off

the wall. All she need have done was to have waved her hand, and waited

till they came down and out into the garden to her.

So she ignored Mrs. Arbuthnot’s remark and raised forefinger, and said

with marked coldness—at least, she tried to make it sound marked—that

she supposed they would be going to breakfast, and that she had had

hers; but it was her fate that however coldly she sent forth her words

they came out sounding quite warm and agreeable. That was because she

had a sympathetic and delightful voice, due entirely to some special

formation of her throat and the roof of her mouth, and having nothing

whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in consequence ever

believed they were being snubbed. It was most tiresome. And if she

stared icily it did not look icy at all, because her eyes, lovely to

begin with, had the added loveliness of very long, soft, dark

eyelashes. No icy stare could come out of eyes like that; it got caught

and lost in the soft eyelashes, and the persons stared at merely

thought they were being regarded with a flattering and exquisite

attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or definitely

cross—and who would not be sometimes in such a world?—she only looked

so pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means

of kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was

determined that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be

disagreeable or rude without being completely misunderstood.

“I had my breakfast in my room,” she said, trying her utmost to sound

curt. “Perhaps I’ll see you later.”

And she nodded, and went back to where she had been sitting on the

wall, with the lilies being nice and cool round her feet.