Chapter 7

Their eyes followed her admiringly. They had no idea they had been

snubbed. It was a disappointment, of course, to find she had

forestalled them and that they were not to have the happiness of

preparing for her, of watching her face when she arrived and first saw

everything, but there was still Mrs. Fisher. They would concentrate on

Mrs. Fisher, and would watch her face instead; only, like everybody

else, they would have preferred to watch Lady Caroline’s.

Perhaps, then, as Lady Caroline had talked of breakfast, they had

better begin by going and having it, for there was too much to be done

that day to spend any more time gazing at the scenery—servants to be

interviewed, the house to be gone through and examined, and finally

Mrs. Fisher’s room to be got ready and adorned.

They waved their hands gaily at Lady Caroline, who seemed absorbed in

what she saw and took no notice, and turning away found the maidservant

of the night before had come up silently behind them in cloth slippers

with string soles.

She was Francesca, the elderly parlour-maid, who had been with the

owner, he had said, for years, and whose presence made inventories

unnecessary; and after wishing them good-morning and hoping they had

slept well, she told them breakfast was ready in the dining-room on the

floor below, and if they would follow her she would lead.

They did not understand a single word of the very many in which

Francesca succeeded in clothing this simple information, but they

followed her, for it at least was clear that they were to follow, and

going down the stairs, and along the broad hall like the one above

except for glass doors at the end instead of a window opening into the

garden, they were shown into the dining-room; where, sitting at the

head of the table having her breakfast, was Mrs. Fisher.

This time they exclaimed. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot exclaimed, though her

exclamation was only “Oh.”

Mrs. Wilkins exclaimed at greater length. “Why, but it’s like having

the bread taken out of one’s mouth!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins.

“How do you do,” said Mrs. Fisher. “I can’t get up because of my

stick.” And she stretched out her hand across the table.

They advanced and shook it.

“We had no idea you were here,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fisher, resuming her breakfast. “Yes. I am here.” And

with composure she removed the top of her egg.

“It’s a great disappointment,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “We had meant to give

you _such_ a welcome.”

This was the one, Mrs. Fisher remembered, briefly glancing at her, who

when she came to Prince of Wales Terrace said she had seen Keats. She

must be careful with this one—curb her from the beginning.

She therefore ignored Mrs. Wilkins and said gravely, with a downward

face of impenetrable calm bent on her egg, “Yes. I arrived yesterday

with Lady Caroline.”

“It’s really dreadful,” said Mrs. Wilkins, exactly as if she had not

been ignored. “There’s nobody left to get anything ready for now. I

feel thwarted. I feel as if the bread had been taken out of my mouth

just when I was going to be happy swallowing it.”

“Where will you sit?” asked Mrs. Fisher of Mrs. Arbuthnot—markedly of

Mrs. Arbuthnot; the comparison with the bread seemed to her most

unpleasant.

“Oh, thank you—” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, sitting down rather suddenly next

to her.

There were only two places she could sit down in, the places laid on

either side of Mrs. Fisher. She therefore sat down in one, and Mrs.

Wilkins sat down opposite her in the other.

Mrs. Fisher was at the head of the table. Round her was grouped the

coffee and the tea. Of course they were all sharing San Salvatore

equally, but it was she herself and Lotty, Mrs. Arbuthnot mildly

reflected, who had found it, who had had the work of getting it, who

had chosen to admit Mrs. Fisher into it. Without them, she could not

help thinking, Mrs. Fisher would not have been there. Morally Mrs.

Fisher was a guest. There was no hostess in this party, but supposing

there had been a hostess it would not have been Mrs. Fisher, nor Lady

Caroline, it would have been either herself or Lotty. Mrs. Arbuthnot

could not help feeling this as she sat down, and Mrs. Fisher, the hand

which Ruskin had wrung suspended over the pots before her, inquired,

“Tea or coffee?” She could not help feeling it even more definitely

when Mrs. Fisher touched a small gong on the table beside her as though

she had been used to that gong and that table ever since she was

little, and, on Francesca’s appearing, bade her in the language of

Dante bring more milk. There was a curious air about Mrs. Fisher,

thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, of being in possession; and if she herself had

not been so happy she would have perhaps minded.

Mrs. Wilkins noticed it too, but it only made her discursive brain

think of cuckoos. She would no doubt immediately have begun to talk of

cuckoos, incoherently, unrestrainably and deplorably, if she had been

in the condition of nerves and shyness she was in last time she saw

Mrs. Fisher. But happiness had done away with shyness—she was very

serene; she could control her conversation; she did not have,

horrified, to listen to herself saying things she had no idea of saying

when she began; she was quite at her ease, and completely natural. The

disappointment of not going to be able to prepare a welcome for Mrs.

Fisher had evaporated at once, for it was impossible to go on being

disappointed in heaven. Nor did she mind her behaving as hostess. What

did it matter? You did not mind things in heaven. She and Mrs.

Arbuthnot, therefore, sat down more willingly than they otherwise would

have done, one on either side of Mrs. Fisher, and the sun, pouring

through the two windows facing east across the bay, flooded the room,

and there was an open door leading into the garden, and the garden was

full of many lovely things, especially freesias.

The delicate and delicious fragrance of the freesias came in through

the door and floated round Mrs. Wilkins’s enraptured nostrils. Freesias

in London were quite beyond her. Occasionally she went into a shop and

asked what they cost, so as just to have an excuse for lifting up a

bunch and smelling them, well knowing that it was something awful like

a shilling for about three flowers. Here they were everywhere—bursting

out of every corner and carpeting the rose beds. Imagine it—having

freesias to pick in armsful if you wanted to, and with glorious

sunshine flooding the room, and in your summer frock, and its being

only the first of April!

“I suppose you realise, don’t you, that we’ve got to heaven?” she said,

beaming at Mrs. Fisher with all the familiarity of a fellow-angel.

“They are considerably younger than I had supposed,” thought Mrs.

Fisher, “and not nearly so plain.” And she mused a moment, while she

took no notice of Mrs. Wilkins’s exuberance, on their instant and

agitated refusal that day at Prince of Wales Terrace to have anything

to do with the giving or the taking of references.

Nothing could affect her, of course; nothing that anybody did. She was

far too solidly seated in respectability. At her back stood massively

in a tremendous row those three great names she had offered, and they

were not the only ones she could turn to for support and countenance.

Even if these young women—she had no grounds for believing the one

out in the garden to be really Lady Caroline Dester, she had merely

been told she was—even if these young women should all turn out to be

what Browning used to call—how well she remembered his amusing and

delightful way of putting things—Fly-by-Nights, what could it possibly,

or in any way matter to her? Let them fly by night if they wished. One

was not sixty-five for nothing. In any case there would only be four

weeks of it, at the end of which she would see no more of them. And in

the meanwhile there were plenty of places where she could sit quietly

away from them and remember. Also there was her own sitting-room, a

charming room, all honey-coloured furniture and pictures, with windows

to the sea towards Genoa, and a door opening on to the battlements. The

house possessed two sitting-rooms, and she had explained to that pretty

creature Lady Caroline—certainly a pretty creature, whatever else she

was; Tennyson would have enjoyed taking her for blows on the downs—who

had seemed inclined to appropriate the honey-coloured one, that she

needed some little refuge entirely to herself because of her stick.

“Nobody wants to see an old woman hobbling about everywhere,” she had

said. “I shall be quite content to spend much of my time by myself in

here or sitting out on these convenient battlements.”

And she had a very nice bedroom, too; it looked two ways, across the

bay to the morning sun—she liked the morning sun—and onto the garden.

There were only two of these bedrooms with cross-views in the house,

she and Lady Caroline had discovered, and they were by far the airiest.

They each had two beds in them, and she and Lady Caroline had had the

extra beds taken out at once and put into two of the other rooms. In

this way there was much more space and comfort. Lady Caroline, indeed,

had turned hers into a bed-sitting-room, with the sofa out of the

bigger drawing-room and the writing-table and the most comfortable

chair, but she herself had not had to do that because she had her own

sitting-room, equipped with what was necessary. Lady Caroline had

thought at first of taking the bigger sitting-room entirely for her

own, because the dining-room on the floor below could quite well be

used between meals to sit in by the two others, and was a very pleasant

room with nice chairs, but she had not liked the bigger sitting-room’s

shape—it was a round room in the tower, with deep slit windows pierced

through the massive walls, and a domed and ribbed ceiling arranged to

look like an open umbrella, and it seemed a little dark. Undoubtedly

Lady Caroline had cast covetous glances at the honey-coloured room, and

if she, Mrs. Fisher, had been less firm would have installed herself in

it. Which would have been absurd.

“I hope,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smilingly making an attempt to convey to

Mrs. Fisher that though she, Mrs. Fisher, might not be exactly a guest

she certainly was not in the very least a hostess, “your room is

comfortable.”

“Quite,” said Mrs. Fisher. “Will you have some more coffee?”

“No, thank you. Will you?”

“No, thank you. There were two beds in my bedroom, filling it up

unnecessarily, and I had one taken out. It has made it much more

convenient.”

“Oh _that’s_ why I’ve got two beds in my room!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins,

illuminated; the second bed in her little cell had seemed an unnatural

and inappropriate object from the moment she saw it.

“I gave no directions,” said Mrs. Fisher, addressing Mrs. Arbuthnot, “I

merely asked Francesca to remove it.”

“I have two in my room as well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Your second one must be Lady Caroline’s. She had hers removed too,”

said Mrs. Fisher. “It seems foolish to have more beds in a room than

there are occupiers.”

“But _we_ haven’t got any husbands here either,” said Mrs. Wilkins,

“and I don’t see any use in extra beds in one’s room if one hasn’t got

husbands to put in them. Can’t we have them taken away too?”

“Beds,” said Mrs. Fisher coldly, “cannot be removed from one room after

another. They must remain somewhere.”

Mrs. Wilkins’s remarks seemed to Mrs. Fisher persistently unfortunate.

Each time she opened her mouth she said something best left unsaid.

Loose talk about husbands had never in Mrs. Fisher’s circle been

encouraged. In the ’eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands

were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin. Beds too, if

they had to be mentioned, were approached with caution; and a decent

reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same

breath.

She turned more markedly than ever to Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Do let me give

you a little more coffee,” she said.

“No, thank you. But won’t you have some more?”

“No indeed. I never have more than two cups at breakfast. Would you

like an orange?”

“No, thank you. Would you?”

“No, I don’t eat fruit at breakfast. It is an American fashion which I

am too old now to adopt. Have you had all you want?”

“Quite. Have you?”

Mrs. Fisher paused before replying. Was this a habit, this trick of

answering a simple question with the same question? If so it must be

curbed, for no one could live for four weeks in any real comfort with

somebody who had a habit.

She glanced at Mrs. Arbuthnot, and her parted hair and gentle brow

reassured her. No; it was accident, not habit, that had produced those

echoes. She could as soon imagine a dove having tiresome habits as Mrs.

Arbuthnot. Considering her, she thought what a splendid wife she would

have been for poor Carlyle. So much better than that horrid clever

Jane. She would have soothed him.

“Then shall we go?” she suggested.

“Let me help you up,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, all consideration.

“Oh, thank you—I can manage perfectly. It’s only sometimes that my

stick prevents me—”

Mrs. Fisher got up quite easily; Mrs. Arbuthnot had hovered over her

for nothing.

“_I’m_ going to have one of these gorgeous oranges,” said Mrs. Wilkins,

staying where she was and reaching across to a black bowl piled with

them. “Rose, how can you resist them. Look—have this one. Do have this

beauty—” And she held out a big one.

“No, I’m going to see to my duties,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, moving

towards the door. “You’ll forgive me for leaving you, won’t you,” she

added politely to Mrs. Fisher.

Mrs. Fisher moved towards the door too; quite easily; almost quickly;

her stick did not hinder her at all. She had no intention of being left

with Mrs. Wilkins.

“What time would you like to have lunch?” Mrs. Arbuthnot asked her,

trying to keep her head as at least a non-guest, if not precisely a

hostess, above water.

“Lunch,” said Mrs. Fisher, “is at half-past twelve.”

“You shall have it at half-past twelve then,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“I’ll tell the cook. It will be a great struggle,” she continued,

smiling, “but I’ve brought a little dictionary—”

“The cook,” said Mrs. Fisher, “knows.”

“Oh?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Lady Caroline has already told her,” said Mrs. Fisher.

“Oh?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot again.

“Yes. Lady Caroline speaks the kind of Italian cooks understand. I am

prevented going into the kitchen because of my stick. And even if I

were able to go, I fear I shouldn’t be understood.”

“But—” began Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“But it’s _too_ wonderful,” Mrs. Wilkins finished for her from the

table, delighted with these unexpected simplifications in her and

Rose’s lives. “Why, we’ve got positively nothing to do here, either of

us, except just be happy. You wouldn’t believe,” she said, turning her

head and speaking straight to Mrs. Fisher, portions of orange in either

hand, “how terribly good Rose and I have been for years without

stopping, and how much now we need a perfect rest.”

And Mrs. Fisher, going without answering her out of the room, said to

herself, “She must, she shall be curbed.”