Why did her eyes rake him persistently? He didn"t know; he didn"t know anything.
Then Briggs leapt to his feet. What was the matter with Briggs?
Oh--yes--quite: she had come.
Frederick wiped his moustache and got up too. He was in for it now. Absurd, fantastic situation. Well, whatever happened he could only drift--drift, and look like an a.s.s to Lady Caroline, the most absolute as well as deceitful a.s.s--an a.s.s who was also a reptile, for she might well think he had been mocking her out in the garden when he said, no doubt in a shaking voice--fool and a.s.s--that he had come because he couldn"t help it; while as for what he would look like to his Rose--when Lady Caroline introduced him to her--when Lady Caroline introduced him as her friend whom she had invited in to dinner--well, G.o.d alone knew that.
He, therefore, as he got up wiped his moustache for the last time before the catastrophe.
But he was reckoning without Sc.r.a.p.
That accomplished and experienced young woman slipped into the chair Briggs was holding for her, and on Lotty"s leaning across eagerly, and saying before any one else could get a word in, "Just fancy, Caroline, how quickly Rose"s husband has got here!" turned to him without so much as the faintest shadow of surprise on her face, and held out her hand, and smiled like a young angel, and said, "and me late your very first evening."
The daughter of the Droitwiches...
Chapter 22
That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses--you could see these as plainly as in the day-time; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
The three younger women sat on the low wall at the end of the top garden after dinner, Rose a little apart from the others, and watched the enormous moon moving slowly over the place where Sh.e.l.ley had lived his last months just on a hundred years before. The sea quivered along the path of the moon. The stars winked and trembled. The mountains were misty blue outlines, with little cl.u.s.ters of lights shining through from little cl.u.s.ters of homes. In the garden the plants stood quite still, straight and unstirred by the smallest ruffle of air.
Through the gla.s.s doors the dining-room, with its candle-lit table and brilliant flowers--nasturtiums and marigolds that night--glowed like some magic cave of colour, and the three men smoking round it looked strangely animated figures seen from the silence, the huge cool calm of outside.
Mrs. Fisher had gone to the drawing-room and the fire. Sc.r.a.p and Lotty, their faces upturned to the sky, said very little and in whispers. Rose said nothing. Her face too was upturned. She was looking at the umbrella pine, which had been smitten into something glorious, silhouetted against stars. Every now and then Sc.r.a.p"s eyes lingered on Rose; so did Lotty"s. For Rose was lovely. Anywhere at that moment, among all the well-known beauties, she would have been lovely. n.o.body could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining.
Lotty bent close to Sc.r.a.p"s ear, and whispered. "Love," she whispered.
Sc.r.a.p nodded. "Yes," she said, under her breath.
She was obliged to admit it. You only had to look at Rose to know that here was Love.
"There"s nothing like it," whispered Lotty.
Sc.r.a.p was silent.
"It"s a great thing," whispered Lotty after a pause, during which they both watched Rose"s upturned face, "to get on with one"s loving.
Perhaps you can tell me of anything else in the world that works such wonders."
But Sc.r.a.p couldn"t tell her; and if she could have, what a night to begin arguing in. This was a night for--
She pulled herself up. Love again. It was everywhere. There was no getting away from it. She had come to this place to get away from it, and here was everybody in its different stages. Even Mrs.
Fisher seemed to have been brushed by one of the many feathers of Love"s wing, and at dinner was different--full of concern because Mr.
Briggs wouldn"t eat, and her face when she turned to him all soft with motherliness.
Sc.r.a.p looked up at the pine-tree motionless among stars. Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful...
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn"t want to grow sentimental.
Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one"s c.h.i.n.ks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings--feelings one couldn"t manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tired to protect herself from the eternities.
"I suppose," whispered Lotty, "Rose"s husband seems to you just an ordinary, good-natured, middle-aged man."
Sc.r.a.p brought her gaze down from the stars and looked at Lotty a moment while she focused her mind again.
"Just a rather red, rather round man," whispered Lotty.
Sc.r.a.p bowed her head.
"He isn"t," whispered Lotty. "Rose sees through all that.
That"s mere tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. She sees what we can"t see, because she loves him."
Always love.
Sc.r.a.p got up, and winding herself very tightly in her wrap moved away to her day corner, and sat down there alone on the wall and looked out across the other sea, the sea where the sun had gone down, the sea with the far-away dim shadow stretching into it which was France.
Yes, love worked wonders, and Mr. Arundel--she couldn"t at once get used to his other name--was to Rose Love itself; but it also worked inverted wonders, it didn"t invariably, as she well knew, transfigure people into saints and angels. Grievously indeed did it sometimes do the opposite. She had had it in her life applied to her to excess. If it had let her alone, if it had at least been moderate and infrequent, she might, she thought, have turned out a quite decent, generous-minded, kindly, human being. And what was she, thanks to this love Lotty talked so much about? Sc.r.a.p searched for a just description. She was a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster.
The gla.s.s doors of the dining-room opened, and the three men came out into the garden, Mr. Wilkins"s voice flowing along in front of them. He appeared to be doing all the talking; the other two were saying nothing.
Perhaps she had better go back to Lotty and Rose; it would be tiresome to be discovered and hemmed into the cul-de-sac by Mr. Briggs.
She got up reluctantly, for she considered it unpardonable of Mr.
Briggs to force her to move about like this, to force her out of any place she wished to sit in; and she emerged from the daphne bushes feeling like some gaunt, stern figure of just resentment and wishing that she looked as gaunt and stern as she felt; so would she have struck repugnance into the soul of Mr. Briggs, and been free of him.
But she knew she didn"t look like that, however hard she might try. At dinner his hand shook when he drank, and he couldn"t speak to her without flushing scarlet and then going pale, and Mrs. Fisher"s eyes had sought hers with the entreaty of one who asks that her only son may not be hurt.
How could a human being, thought Sc.r.a.p, frowning as she issued forth from her corner, how could a man made in G.o.d"s image behave so; and be fitted for better things she was sure, with his youth, his attractiveness, and his brains. He had brains. She had examined him cautiously whenever at dinner Mrs. Fisher forced him to turn away to answer her, and she was sure he had brains. Also he had character; there was something n.o.ble about his head, about the shape of his forehead--n.o.ble and kind. All the more deplorable that he should allow himself to be infatuated by a mere outside, and waste any of his strength, any of his peace of mind, hanging round just a woman-thing.
If only he could see right through her, see through all her skin and stuff, he would be cured, and she might go on sitting undisturbed on this wonderful night by herself.
Just beyond the daphne bushes she met Fredrick, hurrying.
"I was determined to find you first," he said, "before I go to Rose." And he added quickly, "I want to kiss your shoes."
"Do you?" said Sc.r.a.p, smiling. "Then I must go and put on my new ones. These aren"t nearly good enough."
She felt immensely well-disposed towards Frederick. He, at least, would grab no more. His grabbing days, so sudden and so brief, were done. Nice man; agreeable man. She now definitely liked him.
Clearly he had been getting into some sort of a tangle, and she was grateful to Lotty for stopping her in time at dinner from saying something hopelessly complicating. But whatever he had been getting into he was out of it now; his face and Rose"s face had the same light in them.
"I shall adore you for ever now," said Frederick.
Sc.r.a.p smiled. "Shall you?" she said.
"I adored you before because of your beauty. Now I adore you because you"re not only as beautiful as a dream but as decent as a man."
"When the impetuous young woman," Frederick went on, "the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose"s husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved to his friend."
"Did I?" said Sc.r.a.p, her enchanting dimple very evident.
"It"s the rarest, most precious of combinations," said Frederick, "to be a woman and have the loyalty of a man."