The uneventful days—only outwardly uneventful—slipped by in floods of sunshine,
and the servants, watching the four ladies, came to the conclusion there was
very little life in them. To the servants San Salvatore seemed asleep. No one came to tea, nor did the
ladies go anywhere to tea. Other tenants in other springs had been far more
active. There had been stir and enterprise; the boat had been used; excursions
had been made; Beppo’s fly was ordered; people from Mezzago came over and spent
the day; the house rang with voices; even sometimes champagne had been drunk.
Life was varied, life was interesting. But this? What was this? The servants
were not even scolded. They were left completely to themselves. They yawned. Perplexing, too, was the entire absence of gentlemen. How could gentlemen keep
away from so much beauty? For, added up, and even after the subtraction of the
old one, the three younger ladies produced a formidable total of that which
gentlemen usually sought. Also the evident desire of each lady to spend long hours separated from the
other ladies puzzled the servants. The result was a deathly stillness in the
house, except at meal-times. It might have been as empty as it had been all the
winter, for any sounds of life there were. The old lady sat in her room, alone;
the dark-eyed lady wandered off alone, loitering, so Domenico told them, who
sometimes came across her in the course of his duties, incomprehensibly among
the rocks; the very beautiful fair lady lay in her low chair in the top garden,
alone; the less, but still beautiful fair lady went up the hills and stayed up
them for hours, alone; and every day the sun blazed slowly round the house, and
disappeared at evening into the sea, and nothing at all had happened. The servants yawned. Yet the four visitors, while their bodies sat—that was Mrs. Fisher’s—or
lay—that was Lady Caroline’s—or loitered—that was Mrs. Arbuthnot’s—or went in
solitude up into the hills—that was Mrs. Wilkins’s—were anything but torpid
really. Their minds were unusually busy. Even at night their minds were busy,
and the dreams they had were clear, thin, quick things, entirely different from
the heavy dreams of home. There was that in the atmosphere of San Salvatore
which produced active-mindedness in all except the natives. They, as before,
whatever the beauty around them, whatever the prodigal seasons did, remained
immune from thoughts other than those they were accustomed to. All their lives
they had seen, year by year, the amazing recurrent spectacle of April in the
gardens, and custom had made it invisible to them. They were as blind to it, as
unconscious of it, as Domenico’s dog asleep in the sun. The visitors could not be blind to it—it was too arresting after London in a
particularly wet and gloomy March. Suddenly to be transported to that place
where the air was so still that it held its breath, where the light was so
golden that the most ordinary things were transfigured—to be transported into
that delicate warmth, that caressing fragrance, and to have the old grey castle
as the setting, and, in the distance, the serene clear hills of Perugini’s
backgrounds, was an astonishing contrast. Even Lady Caroline, used all her life
to beauty, who had been everywhere and seen everything, felt the surprise of
it. It was, that year, a particularly wonderful spring, and of all the months
at San Salvatore April, if the weather was fine, was best. May scorched and
withered; March was restless, and could be hard and cold in its brightness; but
April came along softly like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so
beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and
touched. Mrs. Wilkins, we have seen, responded to it instantly. She, so to speak, at
once flung off all her garments and dived straight into glory, unhesitatingly,
with a cry of rapture. Mrs. Arbuthnot was stirred and touched, but differently. She had odd
sensations—presently to be described. Mrs. Fisher, being old, was of a closer, more impermeable texture, and offered
more resistance; but she too had odd sensations, also in their place to be
described. Lady Caroline, already amply acquainted with beautiful houses and climates, to
whom they could not come quite with the same surprise, yet was very nearly as
quick to react as Mrs. Wilkins. The place had an almost instantaneous influence
on her as well, and of one part of this influence she was aware: it had made
her, beginning on the very first evening, want to think, and acted on her
curiously like a conscience. What this conscience seemed to press upon her
notice with an insistence that startled her—Lady Caroline hesitated to accept
the word, but it would keep on coming into her head—was that she was tawdry. Tawdry. She. Fancy. She must think that out. The morning after the first dinner together, she woke up in a condition of
regret that she should have been so talkative to Mrs. Wilkins the night before.
What had made her be, she wondered. Now, of course, Mrs. Wilkins would want to
grab, she would want to be inseparable; and the thought of a grabbing and an
inseparableness that should last four weeks made Scrap’s spirit swoon within
her. No doubt the encouraged Mrs. Wilkins would be lurking in the top garden
waiting to waylay her when she went out, and would hail her with morning
cheerfulness. How much she hated being hailed with morning cheerfulness—or
indeed, hailed at all. She oughtn’t to have encouraged Mrs. Wilkins the night
before. Fatal to encourage. It was bad enough not to encourage, for just
sitting there and saying nothing seemed usually to involve her, but actively to
encourage was suicidal. What on earth had made her? Now she would have to waste
all the precious time, the precious, lovely time for thinking in, for getting
square with herself, in shaking Mrs. Wilkins off. With great caution and on the tips of her toes, balancing herself carefully
lest the pebbles should scrunch, she stole out when she was dressed to her
corner; but the garden was empty. No shaking off was necessary. Neither Mrs.
Wilkins nor anybody else was to be seen. She had it entirely to herself. Except
for Domenico, who presently came and hovered, watering his plants, again
especially all the plants that were nearest her, no one came out at all; and
when, after a long while of following up thoughts which seemed to escape her
just as she had got them, and dropping off exhausted to sleep in the intervals
of this chase, she felt hungry and looked at her watch and saw that it was past
three, she realised that nobody had even bothered to call her in to lunch. So
that, Scrap could not but remark, if any one was shaken off it was she herself. Well, but how delightful, and how very new. Now she would really be able to
think, uninterruptedly. Delicious to be forgotten. Still, she was hungry; and Mrs. Wilkins, after that excessive friendliness the
night before, might at least have told her lunch was ready. And she had really
been excessively friendly—so nice about Mellersh’s sleeping arrangements,
wanting him to have the spare-room and all. She wasn’t usually interested in
arrangements, in fact she wasn’t ever interested in them; so that Scrap
considered she might be said almost to have gone out of her way to be agreeable
to Mrs. Wilkins. And, in return, Mrs. Wilkins didn’t even bother whether or not
she had any lunch. Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn’t mind missing a meal. Life was
full of meals. They took up an enormous proportion of one’s time; and Mrs.
Fisher was, she was afraid, one of those persons who at meals linger. Twice now
had she dined with Mrs. Fisher, and each time she had been difficult at the end
to dislodge, lingering on slowly cracking innumerable nuts and slowly drinking
a glass of wine that seemed as if it would never be finished. Probably it would
be a good thing to make a habit of missing lunch, and as it was quite easy to
have tea brought out to her, and as she breakfasted in her room, only once a
day would she have to sit at the dining-room table and endure the nuts. Scrap burrowed her head comfortably in the cushions, and with her feet crossed
on the low parapet gave herself up to more thought. She said to herself, as she
had said at intervals throughout the morning: Now I’m going to think. But,
never having thought out anything in her life, it was difficult. Extraordinary
how one’s attention wouldn’t stay fixed; extraordinary how one’s mind slipped
sideways. Settling herself down to a review of her past as a preliminary to the
consideration of her future, and hunting in it to begin with for any
justification of that distressing word tawdry, the next thing she knew was that
she wasn’t thinking about this at all, but had somehow switched on to Mr.
Wilkins. Well, Mr. Wilkins was quite easy to think about, though not pleasant. She
viewed his approach with misgivings. For not only was it a profound and
unexpected bore to have a man added to the party, and a man, too, of the kind
she was sure Mr. Wilkins must be, but she was afraid—and her fear was the
result of a drearily unvarying experience—that he might wish to hang about
her. This possibility had evidently not yet occurred to Mrs. Wilkins, and it was not
one to which she could very well draw her attention; not, that is, without
being too fatuous to live. She tried to hope that Mr. Wilkins would be a
wonderful exception to the dreadful rule. If only he were, she would be so much
obliged to him that she believed she might really quite like him. But—she had misgivings. Suppose he hung about her so that she was driven from
her lovely top garden; suppose the light in Mrs. Wilkins’s funny, flickering
face was blown out. Scrap felt she would particularly dislike this to happen to
Mrs. Wilkins’s face, yet she had never in her life met any wives, not any at
all, who had been able to understand that she didn’t in the least want their
husbands. Often she had met wives who didn’t want their husbands either, but
that made them none the less indignant if they thought somebody else did, and
none the less sure, when they saw them hanging round Scrap, that she was trying
to get them. Trying to get them! The bare thought, the bare recollection of
these situations, filled her with a boredom so extreme that it instantly sent
her to sleep again. When she woke up she went on with Mr. Wilkins. Now if, thought Scrap, Mr. Wilkins were not an exception and behaved in the
usual way, would Mrs. Wilkins understand, or would it just simply spoil her
holiday? She seemed quick, but would she be quick about just this? She seemed
to understand and see inside one, but would she understand and see inside one
when it came to Mr. Wilkins? The experienced Scrap was full of doubts. She shifted her feet on the parapet;
she jerked a cushion straight. Perhaps she had better try and explain to Mrs.
Wilkins, during the days still remaining before the arrival—explain in a
general way, rather vague and talking at large—her attitude towards such
things. She might also expound to her her peculiar dislike of people’s
husbands, and her profound craving to be, at least for this one month, let
alone. But Scrap had her doubts about this too. Such talk meant a certain familiarity,
meant embarking on a friendship with Mrs. Wilkins; and if, after having
embarked on it and faced the peril it contained of too much Mrs. Wilkins, Mr.
Wilkins should turn out to be artful—and people did get very artful when they
were set on anything—and manage after all to slip through into the top garden,
Mrs. Wilkins might easily believe she had been taken in, and that she, Scrap,
was deceitful. Deceitful! And about Mr. Wilkins. Wives were really pathetic. At half-past four she heard sounds of saucers on the other side of the daphne
bushes. Was tea being sent out to her? No; the sounds came no closer, they stopped near the house. Tea was to be in
the garden, in her garden. Scrap considered she might at least have been asked
if she minded being disturbed. They all knew she sat there. Perhaps some one would bring hers to her in her corner. No; nobody brought anything. Well, she was too hungry not to go and have it with the others to-day, but she
would give Francesca strict orders for the future. She got up, and walked with that slow grace which was another of her outrageous
number of attractions towards the sounds of tea. She was conscious not only of
being very hungry but of wanting to talk to Mrs. Wilkins again. Mrs. Wilkins
had not grabbed, she had left her quite free all day in spite of the
rapprochement the night before. Of course she was an original, and put
on a silk jumper for dinner, but she hadn’t grabbed. This was a great thing.
Scrap went towards the tea-table quite looking forward to Mrs. Wilkins; and
when she came in sight of it she saw only Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Fisher was pouring out the tea, and Mrs. Arbuthnot was offering Mrs.
Fisher macaroons. Every time Mrs. Fisher offered Mrs. Arbuthnot anything—her
cup, or milk, or sugar—Mrs. Arbuthnot offered her macaroons—pressed them on her
with an odd assiduousness, almost with obstinacy. Was it a game? Scrap
wondered, sitting down and seizing a macaroon. “Where is Mrs. Wilkins?” asked Scrap. They did not know. At least, Mrs. Arbuthnot, on Scrap’s inquiry, did not know;
Mrs. Fisher’s face, at the name, became elaborately uninterested. It appeared that Mrs. Wilkins had not been seen since breakfast. Mrs. Arbuthnot
thought she had probably gone for a picnic. Scrap missed her. She ate the
enormous macaroons, the best and biggest she had ever come across, in silence.
Tea without Mrs. Wilkins was dull; and Mrs. Arbuthnot had that fatal flavour of
motherliness about her, of wanting to pet one, to make one very comfortable,
coaxing one to eat—coaxing her, who was already so frankly, so even
excessively, eating—that seemed to have dogged Scrap’s steps through life.
Couldn’t people leave one alone? She was perfectly able to eat what she wanted
unincited. She tried to quench Mrs. Arbuthnot’s zeal by being short with her.
Useless. The shortness was not apparent. It remained, as all Scrap’s evil
feelings remained, covered up by the impenetrable veil of her loveliness. Mrs. Fisher sat monumentally, and took no notice of either of them. She had had
a curious day, and was a little worried. She had been quite alone, for none of
the three had come to lunch, and none of them had taken the trouble to let her
know they were not coming; and Mrs. Arbuthnot, drifting casually into tea, had
behaved oddly till Lady Caroline joined them and distracted her attention. Mrs. Fisher was prepared not to dislike Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose parted hair and
mild expression seemed very decent and womanly, but she certainly had habits
that were difficult to like. Her habit of instantly echoing any offer made her
of food or drink, of throwing the offer back on one, as it were, was not
somehow what one expected of her. “Will you have some more tea?” was surely a
question to which the answer was simply yes or no; but Mrs. Arbuthnot persisted
in the trick she had exhibited the day before at breakfast, of adding to her
yes or no the words, “Will you?” She had done it again that morning at
breakfast and here she was doing it at tea—the two meals at which Mrs. Fisher
presided and poured out. Why did she do it? Mrs. Fisher failed to understand. But this was not what was worrying her; this was merely by the way. What was
worrying her was that she had been quite unable that day to settle to anything,
and had done nothing but wander restlessly from her sitting-room to her
battlements and back again. It had been a wasted day, and how much she disliked
waste. She had tried to read, and she had tried to write to Kate Lumley; but
no—a few words read, a few lines written, and up she got again and went out on
to the battlements and stared at the sea. It did not matter that the letter to Kate Lumley should not be written. There
was time enough for that. Let the others suppose her coming was definitely
fixed. All the better. So would Mr. Wilkins be kept out of the spare-room and
put where he belonged. Kate would keep. She could be held in reserve. Kate in
reserve was just as potent as Kate in actuality, and there were points about
Kate in reserve which might be missing from Kate in actuality. For instance, if
Mrs. Fisher were going to be restless, she would rather Kate were not there to
see. There was a want of dignity about restlessness, about trotting backwards
and forwards. But it did matter that she could not read a sentence of any of
her great dead friends’ writings; no, not even of Browning’s, who had been so
much in Italy, nor of Ruskin’s, whose Stones of Venice she had brought
with her to re-read so nearly on the very spot; nor even a sentence of a really
interesting book like the one she had found in her sitting-room about the home
life of the German Emperor, poor man—written in the nineties, when he had not
yet begun to be more sinned against than sinning, which was, she was firmly
convinced, what was the matter with him now, and full of exciting things about
his birth and his right arm and accoucheurs—without having to put it
down and go and stare at the sea. Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one’s mind
was a paramount duty. How could one read if one were constantly trotting in and
out? Curious, this restlessness. Was she going to be ill? No, she felt well;
indeed, unusually well, and she went in and out quite quickly—trotted, in
fact—and without her stick. Very odd that she shouldn’t be able to sit still,
she thought, frowning across the tops of some purple hyacinths at the Gulf of
Spezia glittering beyond a headland; very odd that she, who walked so slowly,
with such dependence on her stick, should suddenly trot. It would be interesting to talk to some one about it, she felt. Not to Kate—to
a stranger. Kate would only look at her and suggest a cup of tea. Kate always
suggested cups of tea. Besides, Kate had a flat face. That Mrs. Wilkins,
now—annoying as she was, loose-tongued as she was, impertinent, objectionable,
would probably understand, and perhaps know what was making her be like this.
But she could say nothing to Mrs. Wilkins. She was the last person to whom one
would admit sensations. Dignity alone forbade it. Confide in Mrs. Wilkins?
Never. And Mrs. Arbuthnot, while she wistfully mothered the obstructive Scrap at tea,
felt too that she had had a curious day. Like Mrs. Fisher’s, it had been
active, but, unlike Mrs. Fisher’s, only active in mind. Her body had been quite
still; her mind had not been still at all, it had been excessively active. For
years she had taken care to have no time to think. Her scheduled life in the
parish had prevented memories and desires from intruding on her. That day they
had crowded. She went back to tea feeling dejected, and that she should feel
dejected in such a place with everything about her to make her rejoice, only
dejected her the more. But how could she rejoice alone? How could anybody
rejoice and enjoy and appreciate, really appreciate, alone? Except Lotty. Lotty
seemed able to. She had gone off down the hill directly after breakfast, alone
yet obviously rejoicing, for she had not suggested that Rose should go too, and
she was singing as she went. Rose had spent the day by herself, sitting with her hands clasping her knees,
staring straight in front of her. What she was staring at were the grey swords
of the agaves, and, on their tall stalks, the pale irises that grew in the
remote place she had found, while beyond them, between the grey leaves and the
blue flowers, she saw the sea. The place she had found was a hidden corner
where the sun-baked stones were padded with thyme, and nobody was likely to
come. It was out of sight and sound of the house; it was off any path; it was
near the end of the promontory. She sat so quiet that presently lizards darted
over her feet, and some tiny birds like finches, frightened away at first, came
back again and flitted among the bushes round her just as if she hadn’t been
there. How beautiful it was. And what was the good of it with no one there, no
one who loved being with one, who belonged to one, to whom one could say,
“Look.” And wouldn’t one say, “Look—dearest?” Yes, one would say
dearest and the sweet word, just to say it to somebody who loved one,
would make one happy. She sat quite still, staring straight in front of her. Strange that in this
place she did not want to pray. She who had prayed so constantly at home didn’t
seem able to do it here at all. The first morning she had merely thrown up a
brief thank you to heaven on getting out of bed, and had gone straight to the
window to see what everything looked like—thrown up the thank you as carelessly
as a ball, and thought no more about it. That morning, remembering this and
ashamed, she had knelt down with determination; but perhaps determination was
bad for prayers, for she had been unable to think of a thing to say. And as for
her bedtime prayers, on neither of the nights had she said a single one. She
had forgotten them. She had been so much absorbed in other thoughts that she
had forgotten them; and, once in bed, she was asleep and whirling along among
bright, thin swift dreams before she had so much time as to stretch herself
out. What had come over her? Why had she let go the anchor of prayer? And she had
difficulty, too, in remembering her poor, in remembering even that there were
such things as poor. Holidays, of course, were good, and were recognised by
everybody as good, but ought they so completely to blot out, to make such havoc
of, the realities? Perhaps it was healthy to forget her poor; with all the
greater gusto would she go back to them. But it couldn’t be healthy to forget
her prayers, and still less could it be healthy not to mind. Rose did not mind. She knew she did not mind. And, even worse, she knew she did
not mind not minding. In this place she was indifferent to both the things that
had filled her life and made it seem as if it were happy for years. Well, if
only she could rejoice in her wonderful new surroundings, have that much at
least to set against the indifference, the letting go—but she could not. She
had no work; she did not pray; she was left empty. Lotty had spoilt her day that day, as she had spoilt her day the day
before—Lotty, with her invitation to her husband, with her suggestion that she
too should invite hers. Having flung Frederick into her mind again the day
before, Lotty had left her; for the whole afternoon she had left her alone with
her thoughts. Since then they had been all of Frederick. Where at Hampstead he
came to her only in her dreams, here he left her dreams free and was with her
during the day instead. And again that morning, as she was struggling not to
think of him, Lotty had asked her, just before disappearing singing down the
path, if she had written yet and invited him, and again he was flung into her
mind and she wasn’t able to get him out. How could she invite him? It had gone on so long, their estrangement, such
years; she would hardly know what words to use; and besides, he would not come.
Why should he come? He didn’t care about being with her. What could they talk
about? Between them was the barrier of his work and her religion. She could
not—how could she, believing as she did in purity, in responsibility for the
effect of one’s actions on others—bear his work, bear living by it; and he, she
knew, had at first resented and then been merely bored by her religion. He had
let her slip away; he had given her up; he no longer minded; he accepted her
religion indifferently, as a settled fact. Both it and she—Rose’s mind,
becoming more luminous in the clear light of April at San Salvatore, suddenly
saw the truth—bored him. Naturally when she saw this, when that morning it flashed upon her for the
first time, she did not like it; she liked it so little that for a space the
whole beauty of Italy was blotted out. What was to be done about it? She could
not give up believing in good and not liking evil, and it must be evil to live
entirely on the proceeds of adulteries, however dead and distinguished they
were. Besides, if she did, if she sacrificed her whole past, her bringing up,
her work for the last ten years, would she bore him less? Rose felt right down
at her very roots that if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to
impossible to unbore him. Once a bore always a bore—certainly, she thought, to
the person originally bored. Then, thought she, looking out to sea through eyes grown misty, better cling to
her religion. It was better—she hardly noticed the reprehensibleness of her
thought—than nothing. But oh, she wanted to cling to something tangible, to
love something living, something that one could hold against one’s heart, that
one could see and touch and do things for. If her poor baby hadn’t died . . .
babies didn’t get bored with one, it took them a long while to grow up and find
one out. And perhaps one’s baby never did find one out; perhaps one would
always be to it, however old and bearded it grew, somebody special, somebody
different from every one else, and if for no other reason, precious in that one
could never be repeated. Sitting with dim eyes looking out to sea she felt an extraordinary yearning to
hold something of her very own tight to her bosom. Rose was slender, and as
reserved in figure as in character, yet she felt a queer sensation of—how could
she describe it?—bosom. There was something about San Salvatore that made her
feel all bosom. She wanted to gather to her bosom, to comfort and protect,
soothing the dear head that should lie on it with softest strokings and murmurs
of love. Frederick, Frederick’s child—come to her, pillowed on her, because
they were unhappy, because they had been hurt. . . They would need her then, if
they had been hurt; they would let themselves be loved then, if they were
unhappy. Well, the child was gone, would never come now; but perhaps Frederick—some
day—when he was old and tired . . . Such were Mrs. Arbuthnot’s reflections and emotions that first day at San
Salvatore by herself. She went back to tea dejected as she had not been for
years. San Salvatore had taken her carefully built-up semblance of happiness
away from her, and given her nothing in exchange. Yes—it had given her
yearnings in exchange, this ache and longing, this queer feeling of bosom; but
that was worse than nothing. And she who had learned balance, who never at home
was irritated but always able to be kind, could not, even in her dejection,
that afternoon endure Mrs. Fisher’s assumption of the position as hostess at
tea. One would have supposed that such a little thing would not have touched her,
but it did. Was her nature changing? Was she to be not only thrown back on
long-stifled yearnings after Frederick, but also turned into somebody who
wanted to fight over little things? After tea, when both Mrs. Fisher and Lady
Caroline had disappeared again—it was quite evident that nobody wanted her—she
was more dejected than ever, overwhelmed by the discrepancy between the
splendour outside her, the warm, teeming beauty and self-sufficiency of nature,
and the blank emptiness of her heart. Then came Lotty, back to dinner, incredibly more freckled, exuding the sunshine
she had been collecting all day, talking, laughing, being tactless, being
unwise, being without reticence; and Lady Caroline, so quiet at tea, woke up to
animation, and Mrs. Fisher was not so noticeable, and Rose was beginning to
revive a little, for Lotty’s spirits were contagious as she described the
delights of her day, a day which might easily to any one else have had nothing
in it but a very long and very hot walk and sandwiches, when she suddenly said
catching Rose’s eye, “Letter gone?” Rose flushed. This tactlessness . . . “What letter?” asked Scrap, interested. Both her elbows were on the table and
her chin was supported in her hands, for the nut-stage had been reached, and
there was nothing for it but to wait in as comfortable as position as possible
till Mrs. Fisher had finished cracking. “Asking her husband here,” said Lotty. Mrs. Fisher looked up. Another husband? Was there to be no end to them? Nor was
this one, then, a widow either; but her husband was no doubt a decent,
respectable man, following a decent, respectable calling. She had little hope
of Mr. Wilkins; so little, that she had refrained from inquiring what he did. “Has it?” persisted Lotty, as Rose said nothing. “No,” said Rose. “Oh, well—to-morrow then,” said Lotty. Rose wanted to say No again to this. Lotty would have in her place, and would,
besides, have expounded all her reasons. But she could not turn herself inside
out like that and invite any and everybody to come and look. How was it that
Lotty, who saw so many things, didn’t see stuck on her heart, and seeing keep
quiet about it, the sore place that was Frederick? “Who is your husband?” asked Mrs. Fisher, carefully adjusting another nut
between the crackers. “Who should he be,” said Rose quickly, roused at once by Mrs. Fisher to
irritation, “except Mr. Arbuthnot?” “I mean, of course, what is Mr. Arbuthnot?” And Rose, gone painfully red at this, said after a tiny pause, “My husband.” Naturally, Mrs. Fisher was incensed. She couldn’t have believed it of this one,
with her decent hair and gentle voice, that she too should be impertinent.