When Mrs. Wilkins woke next morning she lay in bed a few minutes before getting
up and opening the shutters. What would she see out of her window? A shining
world, or a world of rain? But it would be beautiful; whatever it was would be
beautiful. She was in a little bedroom with bare white walls and a stone floor and sparse
old furniture. The beds—there were two—were made of iron, enamelled black and
painted with bunches of gay flowers. She lay putting off the great moment of
going to the window as one puts off opening a precious letter, gloating over
it. She had no idea what time it was; she had forgotten to wind up her watch
ever since, centuries ago, she last went to bed in Hampstead. No sounds were to
be heard in the house, so she supposed it was very early, yet she felt as if
she had slept a long while—so completely rested, so perfectly content. She lay
with her arms clasped round her head thinking how happy she was, her lips
curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself: adorable condition. She
had not been in a bed without Mellersh once now for five whole years; and the
cool roominess of it, the freedom of one’s movements, the sense of
recklessness, of audacity, in giving the blankets a pull if one wanted to, or
twitching the pillows more comfortably! It was like the discovery of an
entirely new joy. Mrs. Wilkins longed to get up and open the shutters, but where she was was
really so very delicious. She gave a sigh of contentment, and went on lying
there looking round her, taking in everything in her room, her own little room,
her very own to arrange just as she pleased for this one blessed month, her
room bought with her own savings, the fruit of her careful denials, whose door
she could bolt if she wanted to, and nobody had the right to come in. It was
such a strange little room, so different from any she had known, and so sweet.
It was like a cell. Except for the two beds, it suggested a happy austerity.
“And the name of the chamber,” she thought, quoting and smiling round at it,
“was Peace.” Well, this was delicious, to lie there thinking how happy she was, but outside
those shutters it was more delicious still. She jumped up, pulled on her
slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to
the window and threw open the shutters. “Oh!” cried Mrs. Wilkins. All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun
poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the
lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the
light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass
slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting
through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and
the sea like a great black sword. She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to
feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and
caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair. Far out in the bay a
cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered like a flock of white birds
on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how beautiful. Not to have died before this
. . . to have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this. . . . She stared, her
lips parted. Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how
could one describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself,
it was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as though
she were washed through with light. And how astonishing to feel this sheer
bliss, for here she was, not doing and not going to do a single unselfish
thing, not going to do a thing she didn’t want to do. According to everybody
she had ever come across she ought at least to have twinges. She had not one
twinge. Something was wrong somewhere. Wonderful that at home she should have
been so good, so terribly good, and merely felt tormented. Twinges of every
sort had there been her portion; aches, hurts, discouragements, and she the
whole time being steadily unselfish. Now she had taken off all her goodness and
left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.
She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked. She was stripped,
and exulting. And there, away in the dim mugginess of Hampstead, was Mellersh
being angry. She tried to visualise Mellersh, she tried to see him having breakfast and
thinking bitter things about her; and lo, Mellersh himself began to shimmer,
became rose-colour, became delicate violet, became an enchanting blue, became
formless, became iridescent. Actually Mellersh, after quivering a minute, was
lost in light. “Well,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, staring, as it were, after him. How
extraordinary not to be able to visualise Mellersh; and she who used to know
every feature, every expression of his by heart. She simply could not see him
as he was. She could only see him resolved into beauty, melted into harmony
with everything else. The familiar words of the General Thanksgiving came quite
naturally into her mind, and she found herself blessing God for her creation,
preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for His
inestimable Love; out loud; in a burst of acknowledgment. While Mellersh, at
that moment angrily pulling on his boots before going out into the dripping
streets, was indeed thinking bitter things about her. She began to dress, choosing clean white clothes in honour of the summer’s day,
unpacking her suit-cases, tidying her adorable little room. She moved about
with quick, purposeful steps, her long thin body held up straight, her small
face, so much puckered at home with effort and fear, smoothed out. All she had
been and done before this morning, all she had felt and worried about, was
gone. Each of her worries behaved as the image of Mellersh had behaved, and
dissolved into colour and light. And she noticed things she had not noticed for
years—when she was doing her hair in front of the glass she noticed it, and
thought, “Why, what pretty stuff.” For years she had forgotten she had such a
thing as hair, plaiting it in the evening and unplaiting it in the morning with
the same hurry and indifference with which she laced and unlaced her shoes. Now
she suddenly saw it, and she twisted it round her fingers before the glass, and
was glad it was so pretty. Mellersh couldn’t have seen it either, for he had
never said a word about it. Well, when she got home she would draw his
attention to it. “Mellersh,” she would say, “look at my hair. Aren’t you
pleased you’ve got a wife with hair like curly honey?” She laughed. She had never said anything like that to Mellersh yet, and the
idea of it amused her. But why had she not? Oh yes—she used to be afraid of
him. Funny to be afraid of anybody; and especially of one’s husband, whom one
saw in his more simplified moments, such as asleep, and not breathing properly
through his nose. When she was ready she opened her door to go across to see if Rose, who had
been put the night before by a sleepy maidservant into a cell opposite, were
awake. She would say good-morning to her, and then she would run down and stay
with that cypress tree till breakfast was ready, and after breakfast she
wouldn’t so much as look out of a window till she had helped Rose get
everything ready for Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. There was much to be done
that day, settling in, arranging the rooms; she mustn’t leave Rose to do it
alone. They would make it all so lovely for the two to come, have such an
entrancing vision ready for them of little cells bright with flowers. She
remembered she had wanted Lady Caroline not to come; fancy wanting to shut some
one out of heaven because she thought she would be shy of her! And as though it
mattered if she were, and as though she would be anything so self-conscious as
shy. Besides, what a reason. She could not accuse herself of goodness over
that. And she remembered she had wanted not to have Mrs. Fisher either, because
she had seemed lofty. How funny of her. So funny to worry about such little
things, making them important. The bedrooms and two of the sitting-rooms at San Salvatore were on the top
floor, and opened into a roomy hall with a wide glass window at the north end.
San Salvatore was rich in small gardens in different parts and on different
levels. The garden this window looked down on was made on the highest part of
the walls, and could only be reached through the corresponding spacious hall on
the floor below. When Mrs. Wilkins came out of her room this window stood wide
open, and beyond it in the sun was a Judas tree in full flower. There was no
sign of anybody, no sound of voices or feet. Tubs of arum lilies stood about on
the stone floor, and on a table flamed a huge bunch of fierce nasturtiums.
Spacious, flowery, silent, with the wide window at the end opening into the
garden, and the Judas tree absurdly beautiful in the sunshine, it seemed to
Mrs. Wilkins, arrested on her way across to Mrs. Arbuthnot, too good to be
true. Was she really going to live in this for a whole month? Up to now she had
had to take what beauty she could as she went along, snatching at little bits
of it when she came across it—a patch of daisies on a fine day in a Hampstead
field, a flash of sunset between two chimney pots. She had never been in
definitely, completely beautiful places. She had never been even in a venerable
house; and such a thing as a profusion of flowers in her rooms was unattainable
to her. Sometimes in the spring she had bought six tulips at Shoolbred’s,
unable to resist them, conscious that Mellersh if he knew what they had cost
would think it inexcusable; but they had soon died, and then there were no
more. As for the Judas tree, she hadn’t an idea what it was, and gazed at it
out there against the sky with the rapt expression of one who sees a heavenly
vision. Mrs. Arbuthnot, coming out of her room, found her there like that, standing in
the middle of the hall staring. “Now what does she think she sees now?” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We are in God’s hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to her, speaking
with extreme conviction. “Oh!” said Mrs. Arbuthnot quickly, her face, which had been covered with smiles
when she came out of her room, falling. “Why, what has happened?” For Mrs. Arbuthnot had woken up with such a delightful feeling of security, of
relief, and she did not want to find she had not after all escaped from the
need of refuge. She had not even dreamed of Frederick. For the first time for
years she had been spared the nightly dream that he was with her, that they
were heart to heart, and its miserable awakening. She had slept like a baby,
and had woken up confident; she had found there was nothing she wished to say
in her morning prayer except Thank you. It was disconcerting to be told she
was after all in God’s hands. “I hope nothing has happened?” she asked anxiously. Mrs. Wilkins looked at her a moment, and laughed. “How funny,” she said,
kissing her. “What is funny?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, her face clearing because Mrs. Wilkins
laughed. “We are. This is. Everything. It’s all so wonderful. It’s so funny and so
adorable that we should be in it. I daresay when we finally reach heaven—the
one they talk about so much—we shan’t find it a bit more beautiful.” Mrs. Arbuthnot relaxed to smiling security again. “Isn’t it divine?” she said. “Were you ever, ever in your life so happy?” asked Mrs. Wilkins, catching her
by the arm. “No,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Nor had she been; not ever; not even in her first
love-days with Frederick. Because always pain had been close at hand in that
other happiness, ready to torture with doubts, to torture even with the very
excess of her love; while this was the simple happiness of complete harmony
with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts,
just breathes, just is. “Let’s go and look at that tree close,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t believe it
can only be a tree.” And arm in arm they went along the hall, and their husbands would not have
known them their faces were so young with eagerness, and together they stood at
the open window, and when their eyes, having feasted on the marvellous pink
thing, wandered farther among the beauties of the garden, they saw sitting on
the low wall at the east edge of it, gazing out over the bay, her feet in
lilies, Lady Caroline. They were astonished. They said nothing in their astonishment, but stood quite
still, arm in arm, staring down at her. She too had on a white frock, and her head was bare. They had had no idea that
day in London, when her hat was down to her nose and her furs were up to her
ears, that she was so pretty. They had merely thought her different from the
other women in the club, and so had the other women themselves, and so had all
the waitresses, eyeing her sideways and eyeing her again as they passed the
corner where she sat talking; but they had had no idea she was so pretty. She
was exceedingly pretty. Everything about her was very much that which it was.
Her fair hair was very fair, her lovely grey eyes were very lovely and grey,
her dark eyelashes were very dark, her white skin was very white, her red mouth
was very red. She was extravagantly slender—the merest thread of a girl,
though not without little curves beneath her thin frock where little curves
should be. She was looking out across the bay, and was sharply defined against
the background of empty blue. She was full in the sun. Her feet dangled among
the leaves and flowers of the lilies just as if it did not matter that they
should be bent or bruised. “She ought to have a headache,” whispered Mrs. Arbuthnot at last, “sitting
there in the sun like that.” “She ought to have a hat,” whispered Mrs. Wilkins. “She’s treading on lilies.” “But they’re hers as much as ours.” “Only one-fourth of them.” Lady Caroline turned her head. She looked up at them a moment, surprised to see
them so much younger than they had seemed that day at the club, and so much
less unattractive. Indeed, they were really almost quite attractive, if any one
could ever be really quite attractive in the wrong clothes. Her eyes, swiftly
glancing over them, took in every inch of each of them in the half second
before she smiled and waved her hand and called out Good-morning. There was
nothing, she saw at once, to be hoped for in the way of interest from their
clothes. She did not consciously think this, for she was having a violent
reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one, her
experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in hand and
gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You
didn’t take your clothes to parties; they took you. It was quite a mistake to
think that a woman, a really well-dressed woman, wore out her clothes; it was
the clothes that wore out the woman—dragging her about at all hours of the day
and night. No wonder men stayed young longer. Just new trousers couldn’t
excite them. She couldn’t suppose that even the newest trousers ever behaved
like that, taking the bit between their teeth. Her images were disorderly, but
she thought as she chose, she used what images she liked. As she got off the
wall and came towards the window, it seemed a restful thing to know she was
going to spend an entire month with people in dresses made as she dimly
remembered dresses used to be made five summers ago. “I got here yesterday morning,” she said, looking up at them and smiling. She
really was bewitching. She had everything, even a dimple. “It’s a great pity,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling back, “because we were going
to choose the nicest room for you.” “Oh, but I’ve done that,” said Lady Caroline. “At least, I think it’s the
nicest. It looks two ways—I adore a room that looks two ways, don’t you? Over
the sea to the west, and over this Judas tree to the north.” “And we had meant to make it pretty for you with flowers,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Oh, Domenico did that. I told him to directly I got here. He’s the gardener.
He’s wonderful.” “It’s a good thing, of course,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot a little hesitatingly, “to
be independent, and to know exactly what one wants.” “Yes, it saves trouble,” agreed Lady Caroline. “But one shouldn’t be so independent,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “as to leave no
opportunity for other people to exercise their benevolences on one.” Lady Caroline, who had been looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot, now looked at Mrs.
Wilkins. That day at that queer club she had had merely a blurred impression of
Mrs. Wilkins, for it was the other one who did all the talking, and her
impression had been of somebody so shy, so awkward that it was best to take no
notice of her. She had not even been able to say good-bye properly, doing it in
an agony, turning red, turning damp. Therefore she now looked at her in some
surprise; and she was still more surprised when Mrs. Wilkins added, gazing at
her with the most obvious sincere admiration, speaking indeed with a conviction
that refused to remain unuttered, “I didn’t realise you were so pretty.” She stared at Mrs. Wilkins. She was not usually told this quite so immediately
and roundly. Abundantly as she was used to it—impossible not to be after
twenty-eight solid years—it surprised her to be told it with such bluntness,
and by a woman. “It’s very kind of you to think so,” she said. “Why, you’re lovely,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Quite, quite lovely.” “I hope,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot pleasantly, “you make the most of it.” Lady Caroline then stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Oh yes,” she said. “I make the
most of it. I’ve been doing that ever since I can remember.” “Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling and raising a warning forefinger, “it
won’t last.” Then Lady Caroline began to be afraid these two were originals. If so, she
would be bored. Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted on being
original, who came and buttonholed her and kept her waiting while they were
being original. And the one who admired her—it would be tiresome if she dogged
her about in order to look at her. What she wanted of this holiday was complete
escape from all she had had before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast.
Being admired, being dogged, wasn’t contrast, it was repetition; and as for
originals, to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in
a mediaeval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings out
and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps she had
better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed such timid creatures, even
the dark one—she couldn’t remember their names—that day at the club, that she
had felt it quite safe to be very friendly. Here they had come out of their
shells; already; indeed, at once. There was no sign of timidity about either of
them here. If they had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very
first contact, unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon her,
and then good-bye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days, lying unmolested
in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not being spoken to, not waited
on, not grabbed at and monopolised, but just recovering from the fatigue, the
deep and melancholy fatigue, of the too much. Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady Caroline had
started two days earlier than had been arranged for two reasons: first, because
she wished to arrive before the others in order to pick out the room or rooms
she preferred, and second, because she judged it likely that otherwise she
would have to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want to travel with Mrs.
Fisher. She did not want to arrive with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever
why for a single moment she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs.
Fisher. But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to get to San
Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and she and Lady
Caroline had after all travelled together. As early as Calais they began to
suspect it; in Paris they feared it; at Modane they knew it; at Mezzago they
concealed it, driving out to Castagneto in two separate flys, the nose of the
one almost touching the back of the other the whole way. But when the road
suddenly left off at the church and the steps, further evasion was impossible;
and faced by this abrupt and difficult finish to their journey there was
nothing for it but to amalgamate. Because of Mrs. Fisher’s stick Lady Caroline had to see about everything. Mrs.
Fisher’s intentions, she explained from her fly when the situation had become
plain to her, were active, but her stick prevented their being carried out. The
two drivers told Lady Caroline boys would have to carry the luggage up to the
castle, and she went in search of some, while Mrs. Fisher waited in the fly
because of her stick. Mrs. Fisher could speak Italian, but only, she explained,
the Italian of Dante, which Matthew Arnold used to read with her when she was a
girl, and she thought this might be above the heads of boys. Therefore Lady
Caroline, who spoke ordinary Italian very well, was obviously the one to go and
do things. “I am in your hands,” said Mrs. Fisher, sitting firmly in her fly. “You must
please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick.” And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and along the quay,
and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as much obliged to walk
slowly with Mrs. Fisher as if she were her own grandmother. “It’s my stick,” Mrs. Fisher complacently remarked at intervals. And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where seats were, and
Lady Caroline, who would have liked to run on and get to the top quickly, was
forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs. Fisher because of her stick, Mrs.
Fisher told her how she had been on a zigzag path once with Tennyson. “Isn’t his cricket wonderful?” said Lady Caroline absently. “The Tennyson,” said Mrs. Fisher, turning her head and observing her a
moment over her spectacles. “Isn’t he?” said Lady Caroline. “I am speaking,” said Mrs. Fisher, “of Alfred.” “Oh,” said Lady Caroline. “And it was a path, too,” Mrs. Fisher went on severely, “curiously like this.
No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise curiously like this. And at one of
the bends he turned and said to me—I see him now turning and saying to me—” Yes, Mrs. Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these two up at the
window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she had got off the wall.
All she need have done was to have waved her hand, and waited till they came
down and out into the garden to her. So she ignored Mrs. Arbuthnot’s remark and raised forefinger, and said with
marked coldness—at least, she tried to make it sound marked—that she supposed
they would be going to breakfast, and that she had had hers; but it was her
fate that however coldly she sent forth her words they came out sounding quite
warm and agreeable. That was because she had a sympathetic and delightful
voice, due entirely to some special formation of her throat and the roof of her
mouth, and having nothing whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in
consequence ever believed they were being snubbed. It was most tiresome. And if
she stared icily it did not look icy at all, because her eyes, lovely to begin
with, had the added loveliness of very long, soft, dark eyelashes. No icy stare
could come out of eyes like that; it got caught and lost in the soft eyelashes,
and the persons stared at merely thought they were being regarded with a
flattering and exquisite attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or
definitely cross—and who would not be sometimes in such a world?—she only
looked so pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means
of kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was determined
that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be disagreeable or rude
without being completely misunderstood. “I had my breakfast in my room,” she said, trying her utmost to sound curt.
“Perhaps I’ll see you later.” And she nodded, and went back to where she had been sitting on the wall, with
the lilies being nice and cool round her feet.