The owner of the mediaeval castle was an Englishman, a Mr. Briggs, who was in
London at the moment and wrote that it had beds enough for eight people,
exclusive of servants, three sitting-rooms, battlements, dungeons, and electric
light. The rent was £60 for the month, the servants’ wages were extra, and he
wanted references—he wanted assurances that the second half of his rent would
be paid, the first half being paid in advance, and he wanted assurances of
respectability from a solicitor, or a doctor, or a clergyman. He was very
polite in his letter, explaining that his desire for references was what was
usual and should be regarded as a mere formality. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins had not thought of references, and they had not
dreamed a rent could be so high. In their minds had floated sums like three
guineas a week; or less, seeing that the place was small and old. Sixty pounds for a single month. It staggered them. Before Mrs. Arbuthnot’s eyes rose up boots: endless vistas, all the stout boots
that sixty pounds would buy; and besides the rent there would be the servants’
wagesc, and the food, and the railway journeys out and home. While as for
references, these did indeed seem a stumbling-block; it did seem impossible to
give any without making their plan more public than they had intended. They had both—even Mrs. Arbuthnot, lured for once away from perfect candour by
the realisation of the great saving of trouble and criticism an imperfect
explanation would produce—they had both thought it would be a good plan to give
out, each to her own circle, their circles being luckily distinct, that each
was going to stay with a friend who had a house in Italy. It would be true as
far as it went—Mrs. Wilkins asserted that it would be quite true, but Mrs.
Arbuthnot thought it wouldn’t be quite—and it was the only way, Mrs. Wilkins
said, to keep Mellersh even approximately quiet. To spend any of her money just
on the mere getting to Italy would cause him indignation; what he would say if
he knew she was renting part of a mediaeval castle on her own account Mrs.
Wilkins preferred not to think. It would take him days to say it all; and this
although it was her very own money, and not a penny of it had ever been his. “But I expect,” she said, “your husband is just the same. I expect all husbands
are alike in the long run.” Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, because her reason for not wanting Frederick to
know was the exactly opposite one—Frederick would be only too pleased for her
to go, he would not mind it in the very least; indeed, he would hail such a
manifestation of self-indulgence and worldliness with an amusement that would
hurt, and urge her to have a good time and not to hurry home with a crushing
detachment. Far better, she thought, to be missed by Mellersh than to be sped
by Frederick. To be missed, to be needed, from whatever motive, was, she
thought, better than the complete loneliness of not being missed or needed at
all. She therefore said nothing, and allowed Mrs. Wilkins to leap at her conclusions
unchecked. But they did, both of them, for a whole day feel that the only thing
to be done was to renounce the mediaeval castle; and it was in arriving at this
bitter decision that they really realised how acute had been their longing for
it. Then Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose mind was trained in the finding of ways out of
difficulties, found a way out of the reference difficulty; and simultaneously
Mrs. Wilkins had a vision revealing to her how to reduce the rent. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s plan was simple, and completely successful. She took the whole
of the rent in person to the owner, drawing it out of her Savings Bank—again
she looked furtive and apologetic, as if the clerk must know the money was
wanted for purposes of self-indulgence—and, going up with the six ten pound
notes in her hand-bag to the address near the Brompton Oratory where the owner
lived, presented them to him, waiving her right to pay only half. And when he
saw her, and her parted hair and soft dark eyes and sober apparel, and heard
her grave voice, he told her not to bother about writing round for those
references. “It’ll be all right,” he said, scribbling a receipt for the rent. “Do sit down,
won’t you? Nasty day, isn’t it? You’ll find the old castle has lots of
sunshine, whatever else it hasn’t got. Husband going?” Mrs. Arbuthnot, unused to anything but candour, looked troubled at this
question and began to murmur inarticulately, and the owner at once concluded
that she was a widow—a war one, of course, for other widows were old—and that
he had been a fool not to guess it. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning red right up to his fair hair. “I didn’t
mean—h’m, h’m, h’m—” He ran his eye over the receipt he had written. “Yes, I think that’s all
right,” he said, getting up and giving it to her. “Now,” he added, taking the
six notes she held out and smiling, for Mrs. Arbuthnot was agreeable to look
at, “I’m richer, and you’re happier. I’ve got money, and you’ve got San
Salvatore. I wonder which is best.” “I think you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot with her sweet smile. He laughed and opened the door for her. It was a pity the interview was over.
He would have liked to ask her to lunch with him. She made him think of his
mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting, besides having the
attraction of not being his mother or his nurse. “I hope you’ll like the old place,” he said, holding her hand a minute at the
door. The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was reassuring; it was
the sort of hand, he thought, that children would like to hold in the dark. “In
April, you know, it’s simply a mass of flowers. And then there’s the sea. You
must wear white. You’ll fit in very well. There are several portraits of you
there.” “Portraits?” “Madonnas, you know. There’s one on the stairs really exactly like you.” Mrs. Arbuthnot smiled and said good-bye and thanked him. Without the least
trouble and at once she had got him placed in his proper category: he was an
artist and of an effervescent temperament. She shook hands and left, and he wished she hadn’t. After she was gone he
supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only because she
would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as soon have insisted
on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that grave, sweet lady. Rose Arbuthnot. Her letter, making the appointment, lay on the table. Pretty name. That difficulty, then, was overcome. But there still remained the other one,
the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs, and especially
on Mrs. Wilkins’s, which was in size, compared with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s, as the
egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in its turn was overcome by the
vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins, revealing to her the steps to be taken for
its overcoming. Having got San Salvatore—the beautiful, the religious name,
fascinated them—they in their turn would advertise in the Agony Column of
The Times, and would inquire after two more ladies, of similar desires
to their own, to join them and share the expenses. At once the strain of the nest-eggs would be reduced from half to a quarter.
Mrs. Wilkins was prepared to fling her entire egg into the adventure, but she
realised that if it were to cost even sixpence over her ninety pounds her
position would be terrible. Imagine going to Mellersh and saying, “I owe.” It
would be awful enough if some day circumstances forced her to say, “I have no
nest-egg,” but at least she would be supported in such a case by the knowledge
that the egg had been her own. She therefore, though prepared to fling her last
penny into the adventure, was not prepared to fling into it a single farthing
that was not demonstrably her own; and she felt that if her share of the rent
was reduced to fifteen pounds only, she would have a safe margin for the other
expenses. Also they might economise very much on food—gather olives off their
own trees and eat them, for instance, and perhaps catch fish. Of course, as they pointed out to each other, they could reduce the rent to an
almost negligible sum by increasing the number of sharers; they could have six
more ladies instead of two if they wanted to, seeing that there were eight
beds. But supposing the eight beds were distributed in couples in four rooms,
it would not be altogether what they wanted, to find themselves shut up at
night with a stranger. Besides, they thought that perhaps having so many would
not be quite so peaceful. After all, they were going to San Salvatore for peace
and rest and joy, and six more ladies, especially if they got into one’s
bedroom, might a little interfere with that. However, there seemed to be only two ladies in England at that moment who had
any wish to join them, for they had only two answers to their advertisement. “Well, we only want two,” said Mrs. Wilkins, quickly recovering, for she had
imagined a great rush. “I think a choice would have been a good thing,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “You mean because then we needn’t have had Lady Caroline Dester.” “I didn’t say that,” gently protested Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We needn’t have her,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Just one more person would help us a
great deal with the rent. We’re not obliged to have two.” “But why should we not have her? She seems really quite what we want.” “Yes—she does from her letter,” said Mrs. Wilkins doubtfully. She felt she would be terribly shy of Lady Caroline. Incredible as it may seem,
seeing how they get into everything, Mrs. Wilkins had never come across any
members of the aristocracy. They interviewed Lady Caroline, and they interviewed the other applicant, a
Mrs. Fisher. Lady Caroline came to the club in Shaftesbury Avenue, and appeared to be wholly
taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from everybody she had
ever known. When she saw the club, and Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Wilkins, she
was sure that here was exactly what she wanted. She would be in Italy—a place
she adored; she would not be in hotels—places she loathed; she would not be
staying with friends—persons she disliked; and she would be in the company of
strangers who would never mention a single person she knew, for the simple
reason that they had not, could not have, and would not come across them. She
asked a few questions about the fourth woman, and was satisfied with the
answers. Mrs. Fisher, of Prince of Wales Terrace. A widow. She too would be
unacquainted with any of her friends. Lady Caroline did not even know where
Prince of Wales Terrace was. “It’s in London,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Is it?” said Lady Caroline. It all seemed most restful. Mrs. Fisher was unable to come to the club because, she explained by letter,
she could not walk without a stick; therefore Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins
went to her. “But if she can’t come to the club how can she go to Italy?” wondered Mrs.
Wilkins, aloud. “We shall hear that from her own lips,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. From Mrs. Fisher’s lips they merely heard, in reply to delicate questioning,
that sitting in trains was not walking about; and they knew that already.
Except for the stick, however, she appeared to be a most desirable
fourth—quiet, educated, elderly. She was much older than they or Lady
Caroline—Lady Caroline had informed them she was twenty-eight—but not so old as
to have ceased to be active-minded. She was very respectable indeed, and still
wore a complete suit of black though her husband had died, she told them,
eleven years before. Her house was full of signed photographs of illustrious
Victorian dead, all of whom she said she had known when she was little. Her
father had been an eminent critic, and in his house she had seen practically
everybody who was anybody in letters and art. Carlyle had scowled at her;
Matthew Arnold had held her on his knee; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on
the length of her pig-tail. She animatedly showed them the photographs, hung
everywhere on her walls, pointing out the signatures with her stick, and she
neither gave any information about her own husband nor asked for any about the
husbands of her visitors; which was the greatest comfort. Indeed, she seemed to
think that they also were widows, for on inquiring who the fourth lady was to
be, and being told it was a Lady Caroline Dester, she said, “Is she a widow
too?” And on their explaining that she was not, because she had not yet been
married, observed with abstracted amiability, “All in good time.” But Mrs. Fisher’s very abstractedness—and she seemed to be absorbed chiefly in
the interesting people she used to know and in their memorial photographs, and
quite a good part of the interview was taken up by reminiscent anecdote of
Carlyle, Meredith, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, and a host of others—her very
abstractedness was a recommendation. She only asked, she said, to be allowed to
sit quiet in the sun and remember. That was all Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins
asked of their sharers. It was their idea of a perfect sharer that she should
sit quiet in the sun and remember, rousing herself on Saturday evenings
sufficiently to pay her share. Mrs. Fisher was very fond, too, she said, of
flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end with her father at Box Hill— “Who lived at Box Hill?” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on Mrs. Fisher’s
reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who had actually been
familiar with all the really and truly and undoubtedly great—actually seen
them, heard them talking, touched them. Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some surprise. Mrs.
Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly of Mrs. Fisher’s
reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs. Arbuthnot would take her away and
she wouldn’t have heard half, had already interrupted several times with
questions which appeared ignorant to Mrs. Fisher. “Meredith of course,” said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. “I remember a particular
week-end”—she continued. “My father often took me, but I always remember this
week-end particularly—” “Did you know Keats?” eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins. Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had been
unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare. “Oh of course—how ridiculous of me!” cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing scarlet.
“It’s because”—she floundered—“it’s because the immortals somehow still seem
alive, don’t they—as if they were here, going to walk into the room in another
minute—and one forgets they are dead. In fact one knows perfectly well that
they’re not dead—not nearly so dead as you and I even now,” she assured Mrs.
Fisher, who observed her over the top of her glasses. “I thought I saw Keats the other day,” Mrs. Wilkins incoherently
proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher’s look over the top of her glasses. “In
Hampstead—crossing the road in front of that house—you know—the house where he
lived—” Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going. Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them. “I really thought I saw him,” protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing for
belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour passed over her
face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs. Fisher’s glasses and the
steady eyes looking at her over their tops. “I believe I did see him—he
was dressed in a—” Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice said they
would be late for lunch. It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references. She had no wish to
find herself shut up for four weeks with somebody who saw things. It is true
that there were three sitting-rooms, besides the garden and the battlements at
San Salvatore, so that there would be opportunities of withdrawal from Mrs.
Wilkins; but it would be disagreeable to Mrs. Fisher, for instance, if Mrs.
Wilkins were suddenly to assert that she saw Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was dead;
let him remain so. She had no wish to be told he was walking about the garden.
The only reference she really wanted, for she was much too old and firmly
seated in her place in the world for questionable associates to matter to her,
was one with regard to Mrs. Wilkins’s health. Was her health quite normal? Was
she an ordinary, everyday, sensible woman? Mrs. Fisher felt that if she were
given even one address she would be able to find out what she needed. So she
asked for references, and her visitors appeared to be so much taken aback—Mrs.
Wilkins, indeed, was instantly sobered—that she added, “It is usual.” Mrs. Wilkins found her speech first. “But,” she said, “aren’t we the ones who
ought to ask for some from you?” And this seemed to Mrs. Arbuthnot too the right attitude. Surely it was they
who were taking Mrs. Fisher into their party, and not Mrs. Fisher who was
taking them into it? For answer Mrs. Fisher, leaning on her stick, went to the writing-table and in
a firm hand wrote down three names and offered them to Mrs. Wilkins, and the
names were so respectable, more, they were so momentous, they were so nearly
august, that just to read them was enough. The President of the Royal Academy,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Governor of the Bank of England—who would
dare disturb such personages in their meditations with inquiries as to whether
a female friend of theirs was all she should be? “They have known me since I was little,” said Mrs. Fisher—everybody seemed to
have known Mrs. Fisher since or when she was little. “I don’t think references are nice things at all between—between ordinary
decent women,” burst out Mrs. Wilkins, made courageous by being, as she felt,
at bay; for she very well knew that the only reference she could give without
getting into trouble was Shoolbred, and she had little confidence in that, as
it would be entirely based on Mellersh’s fish. “We’re not business people. We
needn’t distrust each other—” And Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with a dignity that yet was sweet, “I’m afraid
references do bring an atmosphere into our holiday plan that isn’t quite what
we want, and I don’t think we’ll take yours up or give you any ourselves. So
that I suppose you won’t wish to join us.” And she held out her hand in good-bye. Then Mrs. Fisher, her gaze diverted to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who inspired trust and
liking even in Tube officials, felt that she would be idiotic to lose the
opportunity of being in Italy in the particular conditions offered, and that
she and this calm-browed woman between them would certainly be able to curb the
other one when she had her attacks. So she said, taking Mrs. Arbuthnot’s
offered hand, “Very well. I waive references.” She waived references. The two as they walked to the station in Kensington High Street could not help
thinking that this way of putting it was lofty. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot,
spendthrift of excuses for lapses, thought Mrs. Fisher might have used other
words; and Mrs. Wilkins, by the time she got to the station, and the walk and
the struggle on the crowded pavement with other people’s umbrellas had warmed
her blood, actually suggested waiving Mrs. Fisher. “If there is any waiving to be done, do let us be the ones who waive,” she said
eagerly. But Mrs. Arbuthnot, as usual, held on to Mrs. Wilkins; and presently, having
cooled down in the train, Mrs. Wilkins announced that at San Salvatore Mrs.
Fisher would find her level. “I see her finding her level there,” she said, her
eyes very bright. Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, sitting with her quiet hands folded, turned over in
her mind how best she could help Mrs. Wilkins not to see quite so much; or at
least, if she must see, to see in silence.