Chapter 8

Presently, when Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot, unhampered by any

duties, wandered out and down the worn stone steps and under the

pergola into the lower garden, Mrs. Wilkins said to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who

seemed pensive, “Don’t you see that if somebody else does the ordering

it frees us?”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said she did see, but nevertheless she thought it rather

silly to have everything taken out of their hands.

“I love things to be taken out of my hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins.

“But we found San Salvatore,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, “and it is rather

silly that Mrs. Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to her.”

“What is rather silly,” said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, “is to

mind. I can’t see the least point in being in authority at the price of

one’s liberty.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing to that for two reasons—first, because she

was struck by the remarkable and growing calm of the hitherto

incoherent and excited Lotty, and secondly because what she was looking

at was so very beautiful.

All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full

flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the

night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was

wistaria. _Wistaria and sunshine_ . . . she remembered the

advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was

tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of

flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet

geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and

marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink

snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The

ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea,

each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on

trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The

cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom—lovely showers of white

and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the

fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were

only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and

purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and

the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the

bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every

sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers—the

periwinkles looked exactly as if they were being poured down each side

of the steps—and flowers that grow only in borders in England, proud

flowers keeping themselves to themselves over there, such as the great

blue irises and the lavender, were being jostled by small, shining

common things like dandelions and daisies and the white bells of the

wild onion, and only seemed the better and the more exuberant for it.

They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in

silence. No, it didn’t matter what Mrs. Fisher did; not here; not in

such beauty. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s discomposure melted out of her. In the

warmth and light of what she was looking at, of what to her was a

manifestation, an entirely new side of God, how could one be

discomposed? If only Frederick were with her, seeing it too, seeing as

he would have seen it when first they were lovers, in the days when he

saw what she saw and loved what she loved. . .

She sighed.

“You mustn’t sigh in heaven,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “One doesn’t.”

“I was thinking how one longs to share this with those one loves,” said

Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“You mustn’t long in heaven,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “You’re supposed to be

quite complete there. And it is heaven, isn’t it, Rose? See how

everything has been let in together—the dandelions and the irises, the

vulgar and the superior, me and Mrs. Fisher—all welcome, all mixed up

anyhow, and all so visibly happy and enjoying ourselves.”

“Mrs. Fisher doesn’t seem happy—not visibly, anyhow,” said Mrs.

Arbuthnot, smiling.

“She’ll begin soon, you’ll see.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said she didn’t believe that after a certain age people

began anything.

Mrs. Wilkins said she was sure no one, however old and tough, could

resist the effects of perfect beauty. Before many days, perhaps only

hours, they would see Mrs. Fisher bursting out into every kind of

exuberance. “I’m quite sure,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “that we’ve got to

heaven, and once Mrs. Fisher realises that that’s where she is, she’s

bound to be different. You’ll see. She’ll leave off being ossified, and

go all soft and able to stretch, and we shall get quite—why, I

shouldn’t be surprised if we get quite fond of her.”

The idea of Mrs. Fisher bursting out into anything, she who seemed so

particularly firmly fixed inside her buttons, made Mrs. Arbuthnot

laugh. She condoned Lotty’s loose way of talking of heaven, because in

such a place, on such a morning, condonation was in the very air.

Besides, what an excuse there was.

And Lady Caroline, sitting where they had left her before breakfast on

the wall, peeped over when she heard laughter, and saw them standing on

the path below, and thought what a mercy it was they were laughing down

there and had not come up and done it round her. She disliked jokes at

all times, but in the morning she hated them; especially close up;

especially crowding in her ears. She hoped the originals were on their

way out for a walk, and not on their way back from one. They were

laughing more and more. What could they possibly find to laugh at?

She looked down on the tops of their heads with a very serious face,

for the thought of spending a month with laughers was a grave one, and

they, as though they felt her eyes, turned suddenly and looked up.

The dreadful geniality of those women. . .

She shrank away from their smiles and wavings, but she could not shrink

out of sight without falling into the lilies. She neither smiled nor

waved back, and turning her eyes to the more distant mountains surveyed

them carefully till the two, tired of waving, moved away along the path

and turned the corner and disappeared.

This time they both did notice that they had been met with, at least,

unresponsiveness.

“If we weren’t in heaven,” said Mrs. Wilkins serenely, “I should say we

had been snubbed, but as nobody snubs anybody there of course we can’t

have been.”

“Perhaps she is unhappy,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Whatever it is she is she’ll get over it here,” said Mrs. Wilkins with

conviction.

“We must try and help her,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Oh, but nobody helps anybody in heaven. That’s finished with. You

don’t try to be, or do. You simply _are_.”

Well, Mrs. Arbuthnot wouldn’t go into that—not here, not to-day. The

vicar, she knew, would have called Lotty’s talk levity, if not

profanity. How old he seemed from here; an old, old vicar.

They left the path, and clambered down the olive terraces, down and

down, to where at the bottom the warm, sleepy sea heaved gently among

the rocks. There a pine-tree grew close to the water, and they sat

under it, and a few yards away was a fishing-boat lying motionless and

green-bellied on the water. The ripples of the sea made little gurgling

noises at their feet. They screwed up their eyes to be able to look

into the blaze of light beyond the shade of their tree. The hot smell

from the pine-needles and from the cushions of wild thyme that padded

the spaces between the rocks, and sometimes a smell of pure honey from

a clump of warm irises up behind them in the sun, puffed across their

faces. Very soon Mrs. Wilkins took her shoes and stockings off, and let

her feet hang in the water. After watching her a minute Mrs. Arbuthnot

did the same. Their happiness was then complete. Their husbands would

not have known them. They left off talking. They ceased to mention

heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.

Meanwhile Lady Caroline, on her wall, was considering her position. The

garden on the top of the wall was a delicious garden, but its situation

made it insecure and exposed to interruptions. At any moment the others

might come and want to use it, because both the hall and the

dining-room had doors opening straight into it. Perhaps, thought Lady

Caroline, she could arrange that it should be solely hers. Mrs. Fisher

had the battlements, delightful with flowers, and a watch-tower all to

herself, besides having snatched the one really nice room in the house.

There were plenty of places the originals could go to—she had herself

seen at least two other little gardens, while the hill the castle stood

on was itself a garden, with walks and seats. Why should not this one

spot be kept exclusively for her? She liked it; she liked it best of

all. It had the Judas tree and an umbrella pine, it had the freesias

and the lilies, it had a tamarisk beginning to flush pink, it had the

convenient low wall to sit on, it had from each of its three sides the

most amazing views—to the east the bay and mountains, to the north the

village across the tranquil clear green water of the little harbour and

the hills dotted with white houses and orange groves, and to the west

was the thin thread of land by which San Salvatore was tied to the

mainland, and then the open sea and the coast line beyond Genoa

reaching away into the blue dimness of France. Yes, she would say she

wanted to have this entirely to herself. How obviously sensible if each

of them had their own special place to sit in apart. It was essential

to her comfort that she should be able to be apart, left alone, not

talked to. The others ought to like it best too. Why herd? One had

enough of that in England, with one’s relations and friends—oh, the

numbers of them!—pressing on one continually. Having successfully

escaped them for four weeks why continue, and with persons having no

earthly claim on one, to herd?

She lit a cigarette. She began to feel secure. Those two had gone for a

walk. There was no sign of Mrs. Fisher. How very pleasant this was.

Somebody came out through the glass doors, just as she was drawing a

deep breath of security. Surely it couldn’t be Mrs. Fisher, wanting to

sit with her? Mrs. Fisher had her battlements. She ought to stay on

them, having snatched them. It would be too tiresome if she wouldn’t,

and wanted not only to have them and her sitting-room but to establish

herself in this garden as well.

No; it wasn’t Mrs. Fisher, it was the cook.

She frowned. Was she going to have to go on ordering the food? Surely

one or other of those two waving women would do that now.

The cook, who had been waiting in increasing agitation in the kitchen,

watching the clock getting nearer to lunch-time while she still was

without knowledge of what lunch was to consist of, had gone at last to

Mrs. Fisher, who had immediately waved her away. She then wandered

about the house seeking a mistress, any mistress, who would tell her

what to cook, and finding none; and at last, directed by Francesca, who

always knew where everybody was, came out to Lady Caroline.

Domenico had provided this cook. She was Costanza, the sister of that

one of his cousins who kept a restaurant down on the piazza. She helped

her brother in his cooking when she had no other job, and knew every

sort of fat, mysterious Italian dish such as the workmen of Castagneto,

who crowded the restaurant at midday, and the inhabitants of Mezzago

when they came over on Sundays, loved to eat. She was a fleshless

spinster of fifty, grey-haired, nimble, rich of speech, and thought

Lady Caroline more beautiful than anyone she had ever seen; and so did

Domenico; and so did the boy Giuseppe who helped Domenico and was,

besides, his nephew; and so did the girl Angela who helped Francesca

and was, besides, Domenico’s niece; and so did Francesca herself.

Domenico and Francesca, the only two who had seen them, thought the two

ladies who arrived last very beautiful, but compared to the fair young

lady who arrived first they were as candles to the electric light that

had lately been installed, and as the tin tubs in the bedrooms to the

wonderful new bathroom their master had had arranged on his last visit.

Lady Caroline scowled at the cook. The scowl, as usual, was transformed

on the way into what appeared to be an intent and beautiful gravity,

and Costanza threw up her hands and took the saints aloud to witness

that here was the very picture of the Mother of God.

Lady Caroline asked her crossly what she wanted, and Costanza’s head

went on one side with delight at the sheer music of her voice. She

said, after waiting a moment in case the music was going to continue,

for she didn’t wish to miss any of it, that she wanted orders; she had

been to the Signorina’s mother, but in vain.

“She is not my mother,” repudiated Lady Caroline angrily; and her anger

sounded like the regretful wail of a melodious orphan.

Costanza poured forth pity. She too, she explained, had no mother—

Lady Caroline interrupted with the curt information that her mother was

alive and in London.

Costanza praised God and the saints that the young lady did not yet

know what it was like to be without a mother. Quickly enough did

misfortunes overtake one; no doubt the young lady already had a

husband.

“No,” said Lady Caroline icily. Worse than jokes in the morning did she

hate the idea of husbands. And everybody was always trying to press

them on her—all her relations, all her friends, all the evening papers.

After all, she could only marry one, anyhow; but you would think from

the way everybody talked, and especially those persons who wanted to be

husbands, that she could marry at least a dozen.

Her soft, pathetic “No” made Costanza, who was standing close to her,

well with sympathy.

“Poor little one,” said Costanza, moved actually to pat her

encouragingly on the shoulder, “take hope. There is still time.”

“For lunch,” said Lady Caroline freezingly, marvelling as she spoke

that she should be patted, she who had taken so much trouble to come to

a place, remote and hidden, where she could be sure that among other

things of a like oppressive nature pattings also were not, “we will

have—”

Costanza became business-like. She interrupted with suggestions, and

her suggestions were all admirable and all expensive.

Lady Caroline did not know they were expensive, and fell in with them

at once. They sounded very nice. Every sort of young vegetables and

fruits came into them, and much butter and a great deal of cream and

incredible numbers of eggs. Costanza said enthusiastically at the end,

as a tribute to this acquiescence, that of the many ladies and

gentlemen she had worked for on temporary jobs such as this she

preferred the English ladies and gentlemen. She more than preferred

them—they roused devotion in her. For they knew what to order; they did

not skimp; they refrained from grinding down the faces of the poor.

From this Lady Caroline concluded that she had been extravagant, and

promptly countermanded the cream.

Costanza’s face fell, for she had a cousin who had a cow, and the cream

was to have come from them both.

“And perhaps we had better not have chickens,” said Lady Caroline.

Costanza’s face fell more, for her brother at the restaurant kept

chickens in his back-yard, and many of them were ready for killing.

“Also do not order strawberries till I have consulted with the other

ladies,” said Lady Caroline, remembering that it was only the first of

April, and that perhaps people who lived in Hampstead might be poor;

indeed, must be poor, or why live in Hampstead? “It is not I who am

mistress here.”

“Is it the old one?” asked Costanza, her face very long.

“No,” said Lady Caroline.

“Which of the other two ladies is it?”

“Neither,” said Lady Caroline.

Then Costanza’s smiles returned, for the young lady was having fun with

her and making jokes. She told her so, in her friendly Italian way, and

was genuinely delighted.

“I never make jokes,” said Lady Caroline briefly. “You had better go,

or lunch will certainly not be ready by half-past twelve.”

And these curt words came out sounding so sweet that Costanza felt as

if kind compliments were being paid her, and forgot her disappointment

about the cream and the chickens, and went away all gratitude and

smiles.

“This,” thought Lady Caroline, “will never do. I haven’t come here to

housekeep, and I won’t.”

She called Costanza back. Costanza came running. The sound of her name

in that voice enchanted her.

“I have ordered the lunch for to-day,” said Lady Caroline, with the

serious angel face that was hers when she was annoyed, “and I have also

ordered the dinner, but from now on you will go to one of the other

ladies for orders. I give no more.”

The idea that she would go on giving orders was too absurd. She never

gave orders at home. Nobody there dreamed of asking her to do anything.

That such a very tiresome activity should be thrust upon her here,

simply because she happened to be able to talk Italian, was ridiculous.

Let the originals give orders if Mrs. Fisher refused to. Mrs. Fisher,

of course, was the one Nature intended for such a purpose. She had the

very air of a competent housekeeper. Her clothes were the clothes of a

housekeeper, and so was the way she did her hair.

Having delivered herself of her ultimatum with an acerbity that turned

sweet on the way, and accompanied it by a peremptory gesture of

dismissal that had the grace and loving-kindness of a benediction, it

was annoying that Costanza should only stand still with her head on one

side gazing at her in obvious delight.

“Oh, _go_ away!” exclaimed Lady Caroline in English, suddenly

exasperated.

There had been a fly in her bedroom that morning which had stuck just

as Costanza was sticking; only one, but it might have been a myriad it

was so tiresome from daylight on. It was determined to settle on her

face, and she was determined it should not. Its persistence was

uncanny. It woke her, and would not let her go to sleep again. She hit

at it, and it eluded her without fuss or effort and with an almost

visible blandness, and she had only hit herself. It came back again

instantly, and with a loud buzz alighted on her cheek. She hit at it

again and hurt herself, while it skimmed gracefully away. She lost her

temper, and sat up in bed and waited, watching to hit at it and kill

it. She kept on hitting at it at last with fury and with all her

strength, as if it were a real enemy deliberately trying to madden her;

and it elegantly skimmed in and out of her blows, not even angry, to be

back again the next instant. It succeeded every time in getting on to

her face, and was quite indifferent how often it was driven away. That

was why she had dressed and come out so early. Francesca had already

been told to put a net over her bed, for she was not going to allow

herself to be annoyed twice like that. People were exactly like flies.

She wished there were nets for keeping them off too. She hit at them

with words and frowns, and like the fly they slipped between her blows

and were untouched. Worse than the fly, they seemed unaware that she

had even tried to hit them. The fly at least did for a moment go away.

With human beings the only way to get rid of them was to go away

herself. That was what, so tired, she had done this April; and having

got here, having got close up to the details of life at San Salvatore,

it appeared that here, too, she was not to be let alone.

Viewed from London there had seemed to be no details. San Salvatore

from there seemed to be an empty, a delicious blank. Yet, after only

twenty-four hours of it, she was discovering that it was not a blank at

all, and that she was having to ward off as actively as ever. Already

she had been much stuck to. Mrs. Fisher had stuck nearly the whole of

the day before, and this morning there had been no peace, not ten

minutes uninterruptedly alone.

Costanza of course had finally to go because she had to cook, but

hardly had she gone before Domenico came. He came to water and tie up.

That was natural, since he was the gardener, but he watered and tied up

all the things that were nearest to her; he hovered closer and closer;

he watered to excess; he tied plants that were as straight and steady

as arrows. Well, at least he was a man, and therefore not quite so

annoying, and his smiling good-morning was received with an answering

smile; upon which Domenico forgot his family, his wife, his mother, his

grown-up children and all his duties, and only wanted to kiss the young

lady’s feet.

He could not do that, unfortunately, but he could talk while he worked,

and talk he did; voluminously; pouring out every kind of information,

illustrating what he said with gestures so lively that he had to put

down the watering-pot, and thus delay the end of the watering.

Lady Caroline bore it for a time but presently was unable to bear it,

and as he would not go, and she could not tell him to, seeing that he

was engaged in his proper work, once again it was she who had to.

She got off the wall and moved to the other side of the garden, where

in a wooden shed were some comfortable low cane chairs. All she wanted

was to turn one of these round with its back to Domenico and its front

to the sea towards Genoa. Such a little thing to want. One would have

thought she might have been allowed to do that unmolested. But he, who

watched her every movement, when he saw her approaching the chairs

darted after her and seized one and asked to be told where to put it.

Would she never get away from being waited on, being made comfortable,

being asked where she wanted things put, having to say thank you? She

was short with Domenico, who instantly concluded the sun had given her

a headache, and ran in and fetched her a sunshade and a cushion and a

footstool, and was skilful, and was wonderful, and was one of Nature’s

gentlemen.

She shut her eyes in a heavy resignation. She could not be unkind to

Domenico. She could not get up and walk indoors as she would have done

if it had been one of the others. Domenico was intelligent and very

competent. She had at once discovered that it was he who really ran the

house, who really did everything. And his manners were definitely

delightful, and he undoubtedly was a charming person. It was only that

she did so much long to be let alone. If only, only she could be left

quite quiet for this one month, she felt that she might perhaps make

something of herself after all.

She kept her eyes shut, because then he would think she wanted to sleep

and would go away.

Domenico’s romantic Italian soul melted within him at the sight, for

having her eyes shut was extraordinarily becoming to her. He stood

entranced, quite still, and she thought he had stolen away, so she

opened them again.

No; there he was, staring at her. Even he. There was no getting away

from being stared at.

“I have a headache,” she said, shutting them again.

“It is the sun,” said Domenico, “and sitting on the wall without a

hat.”

“I wish to sleep.”

“_Sì signorina_,” he said sympathetically; and went softly away.

She opened her eyes with a sigh of relief. The gentle closing of the

glass doors showed her that he had not only gone quite away but had

shut her out in the garden so that she should be undisturbed. Now

perhaps she would be alone till lunch-time.

It was very curious, and no one in the world could have been more

surprised than she herself, but she wanted to think. She had never

wanted to do that before. Everything else that it is possible to do

without too much inconvenience she had either wanted to do or had done

at one period or another of her life, but not before had she wanted to

think. She had come to San Salvatore with the single intention of lying

comatose for four weeks in the sun, somewhere where her parents and

friends were not, lapped in forgetfulness, stirring herself only to be

fed, and she had not been there more than a few hours when this strange

new desire took hold of her.

There had been wonderful stars the evening before, and she had gone out

into the top garden after dinner, leaving Mrs. Fisher alone over her

nuts and wine, and, sitting on the wall at the place where the lilies

crowded their ghost heads, she had looked out into the gulf of the

night, and it had suddenly seemed as if her life had been a noise all

about nothing.

She had been intensely surprised. She knew stars and darkness did

produce unusual emotions because, in others, she had seen them being

produced, but they had not before done it in herself. A noise all about

nothing. Could she be quite well? She had wondered. For a long while

past she had been aware that her life was a noise, but it had seemed to

be very much about something; a noise, indeed, about so much that she

felt she must get out of earshot for a little or she would be

completely, and perhaps permanently, deafened. But suppose it was only

a noise about nothing?

She had not had a question like that in her mind before. It had made

her feel lonely. She wanted to be alone, but not lonely. That was very

different; that was something that ached and hurt dreadfully right

inside one. It was what one dreaded most. It was what made one go to so

many parties; and lately even the parties had seemed once or twice not

to be a perfectly certain protection. Was it possible that loneliness

had nothing to do with circumstances, but only with the way one met

them? Perhaps, she had thought, she had better go to bed. She couldn’t

be very well.

She went to bed; and in the morning, after she had escaped the fly and

had her breakfast and got out again into the garden, there was this

same feeling again, and in broad daylight. Once more she had that

really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not only

been loud but empty. Well, if that were so, and if her first

twenty-eight years—the best ones—had gone just in meaningless noise,

she had better stop a moment and look round her; pause, as they said in

tiresome novels, and consider. She hadn’t got many sets of twenty-eight

years. One more would see her growing very like Mrs. Fisher. Two more—

She averted her eyes.

Her mother would have been concerned if she had known. Her mother

doted. Her father would have been concerned too, for he also doted.

Everybody doted. And when, melodiously obstinate, she had insisted on

going off to entomb herself in Italy for a whole month with queer

people she had got out of an advertisement, refusing even to take her

maid, the only explanation her friends could imagine was that poor

Scrap—such was her name among them—had overdone it and was feeling a

little nervy.

Her mother had been distressed at her departure. It was such an odd

thing to do, such a sign of disappointment. She encouraged the general

idea of the verge of a nervous breakdown. If she could have seen her

adored Scrap, more delightful to look upon than any other mother’s

daughter had ever yet been, the object of her utmost pride, the source

of all her fondest hopes, sitting staring at the empty noonday

Mediterranean considering her three possible sets of twenty-eight

years, she would have been miserable. To go away alone was bad; to

think was worse. No good could come out of the thinking of a beautiful

young woman. Complications could come out of it in profusion, but no

good. The thinking of the beautiful was bound to result in hesitations,

in reluctances, in unhappiness all round. And here, if she could have

seen her, sat her Scrap thinking quite hard. And such things. Such old

things. Things nobody ever began to think till they were at least

forty.