She sighed.
"You mustn"t sigh in heaven," said Mrs. Wilkins. "One doesn"t."
"I was thinking how one longs to share this with those one loves," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"You mustn"t long in heaven," said Mrs. Wilkins. "You"re supposed to be quite complete there. And it is heaven, isn"t it, Rose?
See how everything has been let in together--the dandelions and the irises, the vulgar and the superior, me and Mrs. Fisher--all welcome, all mixed up anyhow, and all so visibly happy and enjoying ourselves."
"Mrs. Fisher doesn"t seem happy--not visibly, anyhow," said Mrs.
Arbuthnot, smiling.
"She"ll begin soon, you"ll see."
Mrs. Arbuthnot said she didn"t believe that after a certain age people began anything.
Mrs. Wilkins said she was sure no one, however old and tough, could resist the effects of perfect beauty. Before many days, perhaps only hours, they would see Mrs. Fisher bursting out into every kind of exuberance. "I"m quite sure," said Mrs. Wilkins, "that we"ve got to heaven, and once Mrs. Fisher realizes that that"s where she is, she"s bound to be different. You"ll see. She"ll leave off being ossified, and go all soft and able to stretch, and we shall get quite--why, I shouldn"t be surprised if we get quite fond of her."
The idea of Mrs. Fisher bursting out into anything, she who seemed so particularly firmly fixed inside her b.u.t.tons, made Mrs.
Arbuthnot laugh. She condoned Lotty"s loose way of talking of heaven, because in such a place, on such a morning, condonation was in the very air. Besides, what an excuse there was.
And Lady Caroline, sitting where they had left her before breakfast on the wall, peeped over when she heard laughter, and saw them standing on the path below, and thought what a mercy it was they were laughing down there and had not come up and done it round her.
She disliked jokes at all times, but in the morning she hated them; especially close up; especially crowding in her ears. She hoped the originals were on their way out for a walk, and not on their way back from one. They were laughing more and more. What could they possibly find to laugh at?
She looked down on the tops of their heads with a very serious face, for the thought of spending a month with laughers was a grave one, and they, as though they felt her eyes, turned suddenly and looked up.
The dreadful geniality of those women...
She shrank away from their smiles and wavings, but she could not shrink out of sight without falling into the lilies. She neither smiled nor waved back, and turning her eyes to the more distant mountains surveyed them carefully till the two, tired of waving, moved away along the path and turned the corner and disappeared.
This time they both did notice that they had been met with, at least, unresponsiveness.
"If we weren"t in heaven," said Mrs. Wilkins serenely, "I should say we had been snubbed, but as n.o.body snubs anybody there of course we can"t have been."
"Perhaps she is unhappy," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"Whatever it is she is she"ll get over it here," said Mrs.
Wilkins with conviction.
"We must try and help her," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"Oh, but n.o.body helps anybody in heaven. That"s finished with.
You don"t try to be, or do. You simply are."
Well, Mrs. Arbuthnot wouldn"t go into that--not here, not to-day.
The vicar, she knew, would have called Lotty"s talk levity, if not profanity. How old he seemed from here; an old, old vicar.
They left the path, and clambered down the olive terraces, down and down, to where at the bottom the warm, sleepy sea heaved gently among the rocks. There a pine-tree grew close to the water, and they sat under it, and a few yards away was a fishing-boat lying motionless and green-bellied on the water. The ripples of the sea made little gurgling noises at their feet. They screwed up their eyes to be able to look into the blaze of light beyond the shade of their tree. The hot smell from the pine-needles and from the cushions of wild thyme that padded the s.p.a.ces between the rocks, and sometimes a smell of pure honey from a clump of warm irises up behind them in the sun, puffed across their faces. Very soon Mrs. Wilkins took her shoes and stockings off, and let her feet hang in the water. After watching her a minute Mrs. Arbuthnot did the same. Their happiness was then complete. Their husbands would not have known them. They left off talking. They ceased to mention heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.
Meanwhile Lady Caroline, on her wall, was considering her position.
The garden on the top of the wall was a delicious garden, but its situation made it insecure and exposed to interruptions. At any moment the others might come and want to use it, because both the hall and the dining-room had doors opening straight into it. Perhaps, thought Lady Caroline, she could arrange that it should be solely hers. Mrs. Fisher had the battlements, delightful with flowers, and a watch-tower all to herself, besides having s.n.a.t.c.hed the one really nice room in the house.
There were plenty of places the originals could go to--she had herself seen at least two other little gardens, while the hill the castle stood on was itself a garden, with walks and seats. Why should not this one spot be kept exclusively for her? She liked it; she liked it best of all. It had the Judas tree and an umbrella pine, it had the freesias and the lilies, it had a tamarisk beginning to flush pink, it had the convenient low wall to sit on, it had from each of its three sides the most amazing views--to the east the bay and mountains, to the north the village across the tranquil clear green water of the little harbour and the hills dotted with white houses and orange groves, and to the west was the thin thread of land by which San Salvatore was tied to the mainland, and then the open sea and the coast line beyond Genoa reaching away into the blue dimness of France. Yes, she would say she wanted to have this entirely to herself. How obviously sensible if each of them had their own special place to sit in apart. It was essential to her comfort that she should be able to be apart, left alone, not talked to. The others ought to like it best too. Why herd? One had enough of that in England, with one"s relations and friends--oh, the numbers of them!--pressing on one continually.
Having successfully escaped them for four weeks why continue, and with persons having no earthly claim on one, to herd?
She lit a cigarette. She began to feel secure. Those two had gone for a walk. There was no sign of Mrs. Fisher. How very pleasant this was.
Somebody came out through the gla.s.s doors, just as she was drawing a deep breath of security. Surely it couldn"t be Mrs. Fisher, wanting to sit with her? Mrs. Fisher had her battlements. She ought to stay on them, having s.n.a.t.c.hed them. It would be too tiresome if she wouldn"t, and wanted not only to have them and her sitting-room but to establish herself in this garden as well.
No; it wasn"t Mrs. Fisher, it was the cook.
She frowned. Was she going to have to go on ordering the food?
Surely one or other of those two waving women would do that now.
The cook, who had been waiting in increasing agitation in the kitchen, watching the clock getting nearer to lunch--time while she still was without knowledge of what lunch was to consist of, had gone at last to Mrs. Fisher, who had immediately waved her away. She then wandered about the house seeking a mistress, any mistress, who would tell her what to cook, and finding none; and at last, directed by Francesca, who always knew where everybody was, came out to Lady Caroline.
Dominica had provided this cook. She was Costanza, the sister of that one of his cousins who kept a restaurant down on the piazza. She helped her brother in his cooking when she had no other job, and knew every sort of fat, mysterious Italian dish such as the workmen of Castagneto, who crowded the restaurant at midday, and the inhabitants of Mezzago when they came over on Sundays, loved to eat. She was a fleshless spinster of fifty, grey-haired, nimble, rich of speech, and thought Lady Caroline more beautiful than anyone she had ever seen; and so did Domenico; and so did the boy Giuseppe who helped Domenico and was, besides, his nephew; and so did the girl Angela who helped Francesca and was, besides, Domenico"s niece; and so did Francesca herself. Domenico and Francesca, the only two who had seen them, thought the two ladies who arrived last very beautiful, but compared to the fair young lady who arrived first they were as candles to the electric light that had lately been installed, and as the tin tubs in the bedrooms to the wonderful new bathroom their master had had arranged on his last visit.
Lady Caroline scowled at the cook. The scowl, as usual, was transformed on the way into what appeared to be an intent and beautiful gravity, and Costanza threw up her hands and took the saints aloud to witness that here was the very picture of the Mother of G.o.d.
Lady Caroline asked her crossly what she wanted, and Costanza"s head went on one side with delight at the sheer music of her voice.
She said, after waiting a moment in case the music was going to continue, for she didn"t wish to miss any of it, that she wanted orders; she had been to the Signorina"s mother, but in vain.
"She is not my mother," repudiated Lady Caroline angrily; and her anger sounded like the regretful wail of a melodious orphan.
Costanza poured forth pity. She too, she explained, had no mother--
Lady Caroline interrupted with the curt information that her mother was alive and in London.
Costanza praised G.o.d and the saints that the young lady did not yet know what it was like to be without a mother. Quickly enough did misfortunes overtake one; no doubt the young lady already had a husband.
"No," said Lady Caroline icily. Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of husbands. And everybody was always trying to press them on her--all her relations, all her friends, all the evening papers. After all, she could only marry one, anyhow; but you would think from the way everybody talked, and especially those persons who wanted to be husbands, that she could marry at least a dozen.
Her soft, pathetic "No" made Costanza, who was standing close to her, well with sympathy.
"Poor little one," said Costanza, moved actually to pat her encouragingly on the shoulder, "take hope. There is still time."
"For lunch," said Lady Caroline freezingly, marveling as she spoke that she should be patted, she who had taken so much trouble to come to a place, remote and hidden, where she could be sure that among other things of a like oppressive nature pattings also were not, "we will have--"
Costanza became business-like. She interrupted with suggestions, and her suggestions were all admirable and all expensive.
Lady Caroline did not know they were expensive, and fell in with them at once. They sounded very nice. Every sort of young vegetables and fruits came into them, and much b.u.t.ter and a great deal of cream and incredible numbers of eggs. Costanza said enthusiastically at the end, as a tribute to this acquiescence, that of the many ladies and gentlemen she had worked for on temporary jobs such as this she preferred the English ladies and gentlemen. She more than preferred them--they roused devotion in her. For they knew what to order; they did not skimp; they refrained from grinding down the faces of the poor.
From this Lady Caroline concluded that she had been extravagant, and promptly countermanded the cream.
Costanza"s face fell, for she had a cousin who had a cow, and the cream was to have come from them both.
"And perhaps we had better not have chickens," said Lady Caroline.
Costanza"s face fell more, for her brother at the restaurant kept chickens in his back-yard, and many of them were ready for killing.