And so the second week began, and all was harmony. The arrival of Mr. Wilkins,
instead of, as three of the party had feared and the fourth had only been
protected from fearing by her burning faith in the effect on him of San
Salvatore, disturbing such harmony as there was, increased it. He fitted in. He
was determined to please, and he did please. He was most amiable to his
wife—not only in public, which she was used to, but in private, when he
certainly wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t wanted to. He did want to. He was so
much obliged to her, so much pleased with her, for making him acquainted with
Lady Caroline, that he felt really fond of her. Also proud; for there must be,
he reflected, a good deal more in her than he had supposed, for Lady Caroline
to have become so intimate with her and so affectionate. And the more he
treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and
became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really
very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a
highly virtuous circle. Positively, for him, Mellersh petted her. There was at no time much pet in
Mellersh, because he was by nature a cool man; yet such was the influence on
him of, as Lotty supposed, San Salvatore, that in this second week he sometimes
pinched both her ears, one after the other, instead of only one; and Lotty,
marvelling at such rapidly developing affectionateness, wondered what he would
do, should he continue at this rate, in the third week, when her supply of ears
would have come to an end. He was particularly nice about the washstand, and genuinely desirous of not
taking up too much of the space in the small bedroom. Quick to respond, Lotty
was even more desirous not to be in his way; and the room became the scene of
many an affectionate combat de générosité, each of which left them more
pleased with each other than ever. He did not again have a bath in the
bathroom, though it was mended and ready for him, but got up and went down
every morning to the sea, and in spite of the cool nights making the water cold
early had his dip as a man should, and came up to breakfast rubbing his hands
and feeling, as he told Mrs. Fisher, prepared for anything. Lotty’s belief in the irresistible influence of the heavenly atmosphere of San
Salvatore being thus obviously justified, and Mr. Wilkins, whom Rose knew as
alarming and Scrap had pictured as icily unkind, being so evidently a changed
man, both Rose and Scrap began to think there might after all be something in
what Lotty insisted on, and that San Salvatore did work purgingly on the
character. They were the more inclined to think so in that they too felt a working going
on inside themselves: they felt more cleared, both of them, that second
week—Scrap in her thoughts, many of which were now quite nice thoughts, real
amiable ones about her parents and relations, with a glimmer in them of
recognition of the extraordinary benefits she had received at the hands
of—what? Fate? Providence?—anyhow of something, and of how, having received
them, she had misused them by failing to be happy; and Rose in her bosom, which
though it still yearned, yearned to some purpose, for she was reaching the
conclusion that merely inactively to yearn was no use at all, and that she must
either by some means stop her yearning or give it at least a chance—remote,
but still a chance—of being quieted by writing to Frederick and asking him to
come out. If Mr. Wilkins could be changed, thought Rose, why not Frederick? How wonderful
it would be, how too wonderful, if the place worked on him too and were able to
make them even a little understand each other, even a little be friends. Rose,
so far had loosening and disintegration gone on in her character, now was
beginning to think her obstinate strait-lacedness about his books and her
austere absorption in good works had been foolish and perhaps even wrong. He
was her husband, and she had frightened him away. She had frightened love away,
precious love, and that couldn’t be good. Was not Lotty right when she said the
other day that nothing at all except love mattered? Nothing certainly seemed
much use unless it was built up on love. But once frightened away, could it
ever come back? Yes, it might in that beauty, it might in the atmosphere of
happiness Lotty and San Salvatore seemed between them to spread round like some
divine infection. She had, however, to get him there first, and he certainly couldn’t be got
there if she didn’t write and tell him where she was. She would write. She must write; for if she did there was at least a chance of
his coming, and if she didn’t there was manifestly none. And then, once here in
this loveliness, with everything so soft and kind and sweet all round, it would
be easier to tell him, to try and explain, to ask for something different, for
at least an attempt at something different in their lives in the future,
instead of the blankness of separation, the cold—oh, the cold—of nothing at all
but the great windiness of faith, the great bleakness of works. Why, one person
in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one’s very own, to talk
to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, was worth more than all the
speeches on platforms and the compliments of chairmen in the world. It was also
worth more—Rose couldn’t help it, the thought would come—than all the prayers. These thoughts were not head thoughts, like Scrap’s, who was altogether free
from yearnings, but bosom thoughts. They lodged in the bosom; it was in the
bosom that Rose ached, and felt so dreadfully lonely. And when her courage
failed her, as it did on most days, and it seemed impossible to write to
Frederick, she would look at Mr. Wilkins and revive. There he was, a changed man. There he was, going into that small, uncomfortable
room every night, that room whose proximities had been Lotty’s only misgiving,
and coming out of it in the morning, and Lotty coming out of it too, both of
them as unclouded and as nice to each other as when they went in. And hadn’t
he, so critical at home, Lotty had told her, of the least thing going wrong,
emerged from the bath catastrophe as untouched in spirit as Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego were untouched in body when they emerged from the fire? Miracles
were happening in this place. If they could happen to Mr. Wilkins, why not to
Frederick? She got up quickly. Yes, she would write. She would go and write to him at
once. But suppose— She paused. Suppose he didn’t answer. Suppose he didn’t even answer. And she sat down again to think a little longer. In these hesitations did Rose spend most of the second week. Then there was Mrs. Fisher. Her restlessness increased that second week. It
increased to such an extent that she might just as well not have had her
private sitting-room at all, for she could no longer sit. Not for ten minutes
together could Mrs. Fisher sit. And added to the restlessness, as the days of
the second week proceeded on their way, she had a curious sensation, which
worried her, of rising sap. She knew the feeling, because she had sometimes had
it in childhood in specially swift springs, when the lilacs and the syringas
seemed to rush out into blossom in a single night, but it was strange to have
it again after over fifty years. She would have liked to remark on the
sensation to some one, but she was ashamed. It was such an absurd sensation at
her age. Yet oftener and oftener, and every day more and more, did Mrs. Fisher
have a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently going to burgeon. Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She
had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth
fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly
what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do
with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was—the feeling that presently,
that at any moment now, she might crop out all green. Mrs. Fisher was upset. There were many things she disliked more than anything
else, and one was when the elderly imagined they felt young and behaved
accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, they were only deceiving
themselves; but how deplorable were the results. She herself had grown old as
people should grow old—steadily and firmly. No interruptions, no belated
after-glows and spasmodic returns. If, after all these years, she were now
going to be deluded into some sort of unsuitable breaking-out, how humiliating. Indeed she was thankful, that second week, that Kate Lumley was not there. It
would be most unpleasant, should anything different occur in her behaviour, to
have Kate looking on. Kate had known her all her life. She felt she could let
herself go—here Mrs. Fisher frowned at the book she was vainly trying to
concentrate on, for where did that expression come from?—much less painfully
before strangers than before an old friend. Old friends, reflected Mrs. Fisher,
who hoped she was reading, compare one constantly with what one used to be.
They are always doing it if one develops. They are surprised at development.
They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say, fifty, to the end of
one’s days. That, thought Mrs. Fisher, her eyes going steadily line by line down the page
and not a word of it getting through into her consciousness, is foolish of
friends. It is condemning one to a premature death. One should continue (of
course with dignity) to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing
against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive
one was not dead—obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change,
ripening, were life. What she would dislike would be unripening, going back to
something green. She would dislike it intensely; and this is what she felt she
was on the brink of doing. Naturally it made her very uneasy, and only in constant movement could she find
distraction. Increasingly restless and no longer able to confine herself to her
battlements, she wandered more and more frequently, and also aimlessly, in and
out of the top garden, to the growing surprise of Scrap, especially when she
found that all Mrs. Fisher did was to stare for a few minutes at the view, pick
a few dead leaves off the rose-bushes, and go away again. In Mr. Wilkins’s conversation she found temporary relief, but though he joined
her whenever he could he was not always there, for he spread his attentions
judiciously among the three ladies, and when he was somewhere else she had to
face and manage her thoughts as best she could by herself. Perhaps it was the
excess of light and colour at San Salvatore which made every other place seem
dark and black; and Prince of Wales Terrace did seem a very dark black spot to
have to go back to—a dark, narrow street, and her house dark and narrow as the
street, with nothing really living or young in it. The goldfish could hardly be
called living, or at most not more than half living, and were certainly not
young, and except for them there were only the maids, and they were dusty old
things. Dusty old things. Mrs. Fisher paused in her thoughts, arrested by the strange
expression. Where had it come from? How was it possible for it to come at all?
It might have been one of Mrs. Wilkins’s, in its levity, its almost slang.
Perhaps it was one of hers, and she had heard her say it and unconsciously
caught it from her. If so, this was both serious and disgusting. That the foolish creature should
penetrate into Mrs. Fisher’s very mind and establish her personality there, the
personality which was still, in spite of the harmony apparently existing
between her and her intelligent husband, so alien to Mrs. Fisher’s own, so far
removed from what she understood and liked, and infect her with her undesirable
phrases, was most disturbing. Never in her life before had such a sentence come
into Mrs. Fisher’s head. Never in her life before had she thought of her maids,
or of anybody else, as dusty old things. Her maids were not dusty old things;
they were most respectable, neat women, who were allowed the use of the
bathroom every Saturday night. Elderly, certainly, but then so was she, so was
her house, so was her furniture, so were her goldfish. They were all elderly,
as they should be, together. But there was a great difference between being
elderly and being a dusty old thing. How true it was what Ruskin said, that evil communications corrupt good
manners. But did Ruskin say it? On second thoughts she was not sure, but it was
just the sort of thing he would have said if he had said it, and in any case it
was true. Merely hearing Mrs. Wilkins’s evil communications at meals—she did
not listen, she avoided listening, yet it was evident she had heard—those
communications which, in that they so often were at once vulgar, indelicate and
profane, and always, she was sorry to say, laughed at by Lady Caroline, must be
classed as evil, was spoiling her own mental manners. Soon she might not only
think but say. How terrible that would be. If that were the form her
breaking-out was going to take, the form of unseemly speech, Mrs. Fisher was
afraid she would hardly with any degree of composure be able to bear it. At this stage Mrs. Fisher wished more than ever that she were able to talk over
her strange feelings with some one who would understand. There was, however, no
one who would understand except Mrs. Wilkins herself. She would. She would know
at once, Mrs. Fisher was sure, what she felt like. But this was impossible. It
would be as abject as begging the very microbe that was infecting one for
protection against its disease. She continued, accordingly, to bear her sensations in silence, and was driven
by them into that frequent aimless appearing in the top garden which presently
roused even Scrap’s attention. Scrap had noticed it, and vaguely wondered at it, for some time before Mr.
Wilkins inquired of her one morning as he arranged her cushions for her—he had
established the daily assisting of Lady Caroline into her chair as his special
privilege—whether there was anything the matter with Mrs. Fisher. At that moment Mrs. Fisher was standing by the eastern parapet, shading her
eyes and carefully scrutinising the distant white houses of Mezzago. They could
see her through the branches of the daphnes. “I don’t know,” said Scrap. “She is a lady, I take it,” said Mr. Wilkins, “who would be unlikely to have
anything on her mind?” “I should imagine so,” said Scrap, smiling. “If she has, and her restlessness appears to suggest it, I should be more than
glad to assist her with advice.” “I am sure you would be most kind.” “Of course she has her own legal adviser, but he is not on the spot. I am. And
a lawyer on the spot,” said Mr. Wilkins, who endeavoured to make his
conversation when he talked to Lady Caroline light, aware that one must be
light with young ladies, “is worth two in—we won’t be ordinary and complete the
proverb, but say London.” “You should ask her.” “Ask her if she needs assistance? Would you advise it? Would it not be a
little—a little delicate to touch on such a question, the question whether or
no a lady has something on her mind?” “Perhaps she will tell you if you go and talk to her. I think it must be lonely
to be Mrs. Fisher.” “You are all thoughtfulness and consideration,” declared Mr. Wilkins, wishing,
for the first time in his life, that he were a foreigner so that he might
respectfully kiss her hand on withdrawing to go obediently and relieve Mrs.
Fisher’s loneliness. It was wonderful what a variety of exits from her corner Scrap contrived for
Mr. Wilkins. Each morning she found a different one, which sent him off pleased
after he had arranged her cushions for her. She allowed him to arrange the
cushions because she instantly had discovered, the very first five minutes of
the very first evening, that her fears lest he should cling to her and stare in
dreadful admiration were baseless. Mr. Wilkins did not admire like that. It was
not only, she instinctively felt, not in him, but if it had been he would not
have dared to in her case. He was all respectfulness. She could direct his
movements in regard to herself with the raising of an eyelash. His one concern
was to obey. She had been prepared to like him if he would only be so obliging
as not to admire her, and she did like him. She did not forget his moving
defencelessness the first morning in his towel, and he amused her, and he was
kind to Lotty. It is true she liked him most when he wasn’t there, but then she
usually liked everybody most when they weren’t there. Certainly he did seem to
be one of those men, rare in her experience, who never looked at a woman from
the predatory angle. The comfort of this, the simplification it brought into
the relations of the party, was immense. From this point of view Mr. Wilkins
was simply ideal; he was unique and precious. Whenever she thought of him, and
was perhaps inclined to dwell on the aspects of him that were a little boring,
she remembered this and murmured, “But what a treasure.” Indeed it was Mr. Wilkins’s one aim during his stay at San Salvatore to be a
treasure. At all costs the three ladies who were not his wife must like him and
trust him. Then presently when trouble arose in their lives—and in what lives
did not trouble sooner or later arise?—they would recollect how reliable he was
and how sympathetic, and turn to him for advice. Ladies with something on their
minds were exactly what he wanted. Lady Caroline, he judged, had nothing on
hers at the moment, but so much beauty—for he could not but see what was
evident—must have had its difficulties in the past and would have more of them
before it had done. In the past he had not been at hand; in the future he hoped
to be. And meanwhile the behaviour of Mrs. Fisher, the next in importance of
the ladies from the professional point of view, showed definite promise. It was
almost certain that Mrs. Fisher had something on her mind. He had been
observing her attentively, and it was almost certain. With the third, with Mrs. Arbuthnot, he had up to this made least headway, for
she was so very retiring and quiet. But might not this very retiringness, this
tendency to avoid the others and spend her time alone, indicate that she too
was troubled? If so, he was her man. He would cultivate her. He would follow
her and sit with her, and encourage her to tell him about herself. Arbuthnot,
he understood from Lotty, was a British Museum official—nothing specially
important at present, but Mr. Wilkins regarded it as his business to know all
sorts and kinds. Besides, there was promotion. Arbuthnot, promoted, might
become very much worth while. As for Lotty, she was charming. She really had all the qualities he had
credited her with during his courtship, and they had been, it appeared, merely
in abeyance since. His early impressions of her were now being endorsed by the
affection and even admiration Lady Caroline showed for her. Lady Caroline
Dester was the last person, he was sure, to be mistaken on such a subject. Her
knowledge of the world, her constant association with only the best, must make
her quite unerring. Lotty was evidently, then, that which before marriage he
had believed her to be—she was valuable. She certainly had been most valuable
in introducing him to Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. A man in his profession
could be immensely helped by a clever and attractive wife. Why had she not been
attractive sooner? Why this sudden flowering? Mr. Wilkins began too to believe there was something peculiar, as Lotty had
almost at once informed him, in the atmosphere of San Salvatore. It promoted
expansion. It brought out dormant qualities. And feeling more and more pleased,
and even charmed, by his wife, and very content with the progress he was making
with the two others, and hopeful of progress to be made with the retiring
third, Mr. Wilkins could not remember ever having had such an agreeable
holiday. The only thing that might perhaps be bettered was the way they would
call him Mr. Wilkins. Nobody said Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. Yet he had introduced
himself to Lady Caroline—he flinched a little on remembering the
circumstances—as Mellersh-Wilkins. Still, this was a small matter, not enough to worry about. He would be foolish
if in such a place and such society he worried about anything. He was not even
worrying about what the holiday was costing, and had made up his mind to pay
not only his own expenses but his wife’s as well, and surprise her at the end
by presenting her with her nest-egg as intact as when she started; and just the
knowledge that he was preparing a happy surprise for her made him feel warmer
than ever towards her. In fact Mr. Wilkins, who had begun by being consciously and according to plan
on his best behaviour, remained on it unconsciously, and with no effort at all. And meanwhile the beautiful golden days were dropping gently from the second
week one by one, equal in beauty with those of the first, and the scent of
beanfields in flower on the hillside behind the village came across to San
Salvatore whenever the air moved. In the garden that second week the poet’s
eyed narcissus disappeared out the long grass at the edge of the zigzag path,
and wild gladiolus, slender and rose-coloured, came in their stead, white pinks
bloomed in the borders, filling the whole place with their smoky-sweet smell,
and a bush nobody had noticed burst into glory and fragrance, and it was a
purple lilac bush. Such a jumble of spring and summer was not to be believed
in, except by those who dwelt in those gardens. Everything seemed to be out
together—all the things crowded into one month which in England are spread
penuriously over six. Even primroses were found one day by Mrs. Wilkins in a
cold corner up in the hills; and when she brought them down to the geraniums
and heliotrope of San Salvatore they looked quite shy.