The strange effect of this incident was that when they met that evening at dinner both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline had a singular feeling of secret understanding with Mr. Wilkins. He could not be to them as other men. He could not be to them as he would have been if they had met him in his clothes. There was a sense of broken ice; they felt at once intimate and indulgent; almost they felt to him as nurses do--as those feel who have a.s.sisted either patients or young children at their baths. They were acquainted with Mr. Wilkins"s legs.
What Mrs. Fisher said to him that morning in her first shock will never be known, but what Mr. Wilkins said to her in reply, when reminded by what she was saying of his condition, was so handsome in its apology, so proper in its confusion, that she had ended by being quite sorry for him and completely placated. After all, it was an accident, and n.o.body could help accidents. And when she saw him next at dinner, dressed, polished, spotless as to linen and sleek as to hair, she felt this singular sensation of a secret understanding with him and, added to it, of a kind of almost personal pride in his appearance, now that he was dressed, which presently extended in some subtle way to an almost personal pride in everything he said.
There was no doubt whatever in Mrs. Fisher"s mind that a man was infinitely preferable as a companion to a woman. Mr. Wilkins"s presence and conversation at once raised the standard of the dinner-table from that of a bear garden--yes, a bear garden--to that of a civilized social gathering. He talked as men talk, about interesting subjects, and, though most courteous to Lady Caroline, showed no traces of dissolving into simpers and idiocy whenever he addressed her. He was, indeed, precisely as courteous to Mrs. Fisher herself; and when for the first time at that table politics were introduced, he listened to her with the proper seriousness on her exhibiting a desire to speak, and treated her opinions with the attention they deserved. He appeared to think much as she did about Lloyd George, and in regard to literature he was equally sound. In fact there was real conversation, and he liked nuts. How he could have married Mrs. Wilkins was a mystery.
Lotty, for her part, looked on with round eyes. She had expected Mellersh to take at least two days before he got to this stage, but the San Salvatore spell had worked instantly. It was not only that he was pleasant at dinner, for she had always seen him pleasant at dinners with other people, but he had been pleasant all day privately--so pleasant that he had complimented her on her looks while she was brushing out her hair, and kissed her. Kissed her! And it was neither good-morning nor good-night.
Well, this being so, she would put off telling him the truth about her nest-egg, and about Rose not being his hostess after all, till next day. Pity to spoil things. She had been going to blurt it out as soon as he had had a rest, but it did seem a pity to disturb such a very beautiful frame of mind as that of Mellersh this first day.
Let him too get more firmly fixed in heaven. Once fixed he wouldn"t mind anything.
Her face sparkled with delight at the instantaneous effect of San Salvatore. Even the catastrophe of the bath, of which she had been told when she came in from the garden, had not shaken him. Of course all that he had needed was a holiday. What a brute she had been to him when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as it happened, was ever so much better, though not through any merit of hers. She talked and laughed gaily, not a shred of fear of him left in her, and even when she said, struck by his spotlessness, that he looked so clean that one could eat one"s dinner off him, and Sc.r.a.p laughed, Mellersh laughed too. He would have minded that at home, supposing that at home she had had the spirit to say it.
It was a successful evening. Sc.r.a.p, whenever she looked at Mr.
Wilkins, saw him in his towel, dripping water, and felt indulgent.
Mrs. Fisher was delighted with him. Rose was a dignified hostess in Mr. Wilkins"s eyes, quiet and dignified, and he admired the way she waived her right to preside at the head of the table--as a graceful compliment, of course, to Mrs. Fisher"s age. Mrs. Arbuthnot was, opined Mr. Wilkins, naturally retiring. She was the most retiring of the three ladies. He had met her before dinner alone for a moment in the drawing-room, and had expressed in appropriate language his sense of her kindness in wishing him to join her party, and she had been retiring. Was she shy? Probably. She had blushed, and murmured as if in deprecation, and then the others had come in. At dinner she talked least. He would, of course, become better acquainted with her during the next few days, and it would be a pleasure, he was sure.
Meanwhile Lady Caroline was all and more than all Mr. Wilkins had imagined, and had received his speeches, worked in skillfully between the courses, graciously; Mrs. Fisher was the exact old lady he had been hoping to come across all his professional life; and Lotty had not only immensely improved, but was obviously au mieux--Mr. Wilkins knew what was necessary in French--with Lady Caroline. He had been much tormented during the day by the thought of how he had stood conversing with Lady Caroline forgetful of his not being dressed, and had at last written her a note most deeply apologizing, and beseeching her to overlook his amazing, his incomprehensible obliviousness, to which she had replied in pencil on the back of the envelop, "Don"t worry." And he had obeyed her commands, and had put it from him. The result was he was now in great contentment. Before going to sleep that night he pinched his wife"s ear. She was amazed. These endearments ...
What is more, the morning brought no relapse in Mr. Wilkins, and he kept up to his high level through out the day, in spite of its being the first day of the second week, and therefore pay day.
It being pay day precipitated Lotty"s confession, which she had, when it came to the point, been inclined to put off a little longer.
She was not afraid, she dared anything, but Mellersh was in such an admirable humour--why risk clouding it just yet? When, however, soon after breakfast Costanza appeared with a pile of very dirty little bits of paper covered with sums in pencil, and having knocked at Mrs.
Fisher"s door and been sent away, and at Lady Caroline"s door and been sent away, and at Rose"s door and had no answer because Rose had gone out, she waylaid Lotty, who was showing Mellersh over the house, and pointed to the bits of paper and talked very rapidly and loud, and shrugged her shoulders a great deal, and kept on pointing at the bits of paper, Lotty remembered that a week had pa.s.sed without anybody paying anything to anyone, and that the moment had come to settle up.
"Does this good lady want something?" inquired Mr. Wilkins mellifluously.
"Money," said Lotty.
"Money?"
"It"s the housekeeping bills."
"Well, you have nothing to do with those," said Mr. Wilkins serenely.
"Oh yes, I have--"
And the confession was precipitated.
It was wonderful how Mellersh took it. One would have imagined that his sole idea about the nest-egg had always been that it should be lavished on just this. He did not, as he would have done at home, cross-examine her; he accepted everything as it came pouring out, about her fibs and all, and when she had finished and said, "You have every right to be angry, I think, but I hope you won"t be and will forgive me instead," he merely asked, "What can be more beneficial than such a holiday?"
Whereupon she put her arm through his and held it tight and said, "Oh, Mellersh, you really are too sweet!"--her face red with pride in him.
That he should so quickly a.s.similate the atmosphere, that he should at once become nothing but kindness, showed surely what a real affinity he had with good and beautiful things. He belonged quite naturally in this place of heavenly calm. He was--extraordinary how she had misjudged him--by nature a child of light. Fancy not minding the dreadful fibs she had gone in for before leaving home; fancy pa.s.sing even those over without comment. Wonderful. Yet not wonderful, for wasn"t he in heaven? In heaven n.o.body minded any of those done-with things, one didn"t even trouble to forgive and forget, one was much too happy. She pressed his arm tight in her grat.i.tude and appreciation; and though he did not withdraw his, neither did he respond to her pressure. Mr. Wilkins was of a cool habit, and rarely had any real wish to press.
Meanwhile, Costanza, perceiving that she had lost the Wilkinses"
ear had gone back to Mrs. Fisher, who at least understood Italian, besides being clearly in the servants" eyes the one of the party marked down by age and appearance to pay the bills; and to her, while Mrs.
Fisher put the final touches to her toilette, for she was preparing, by means of putting on a hat and veil and feather boa and gloves, to go for her first stroll in the lower garden--positively her first since her arrival--she explained that unless she was given money to pay the last week"s bills the shops of Castagneto would refuse credit for the current week"s food. Not even credit would they give, affirmed Costanza, who had been spending a great deal and was anxious to pay all her relations what was owed them and also to find out how her mistresses took it, for that day"s meals. Soon it would be the hour of colazione, and how could there be colazione without meat, without fish, without eggs, without--
Mrs. Fisher took the bills out of her hand and looked at the total; and she was so much astonished by its size, so much horrified by the extravagance to which it testified, that she sat down at her writing-table to go into the thing thoroughly.
Costanza had a very bad half-hour. She had not supposed it was in the English to be so mercenary. And then la Vecchia, as she was called in the kitchen, knew so much Italian, and with a doggedness that filled Costanza with shame on her behalf, for such conduct was the last one expected from the n.o.ble English, she went through item after item, requiring and persisting till she got them, explanations.
There were no explanations, except that Costanza had had one glorious week of doing exactly as she chose, of splendid unbridled licence, and that this was the result.
Costanza, having no explanations, wept. It was miserable to think she would have to cook from now on under watchfulness, under suspicion; and what would her relations say when they found the orders they received were whittled down? They would say she had no influence; they would despise her.
Costanza wept, but Mrs. Fisher was unmoved. In slow and splendid Italian, with the roll of the cantos of the Inferno, she informed her that she would pay no bills till the following week, and that meanwhile the food was to be precisely as good as ever, and at a quarter the cost.
Costanza threw up her hands.
Next week, proceeded Mrs. Fisher unmoved, if she found this had been so she would pay the whole. Otherwise--she paused; for what she would do otherwise she did not know herself. But she paused and looked impenetrable, majestic and menacing, and Costanza was cowed.
Then Mrs. Fisher, having dismissed her with a gesture, went in search of Lady Caroline to complain. She had been under the impression that Lady Caroline ordered the meals and therefore was responsible for the prices, but now it appeared that the cook had been left to do exactly as she pleased ever since they got there, which of course was simply disgraceful.
Sc.r.a.p was not in her bedroom, but the room, on Mrs. Fisher"s opening the door, for she suspected her of being in it and only pretending not to hear the knock, was still flowerlike from her presence.
"Scent," sniffed Mrs. Fisher, shutting it again; and she wished Carlyle could have had five minutes" straight talk with this young woman. And yet--perhaps even he--
She went downstairs to go into the garden in search of her, and in the hall encountered Mr. Wilkins. He had his hat on, and was lighting a cigar.
Indulgent as Mrs. Fisher felt towards Mr. Wilkins, and peculiarly and even mystically related after the previous morning"s encounter, she yet could not like a cigar in the house. Out of doors she endured it, but it was not necessary, when out of doors was such a big place, to indulge the habit indoors. Even Mr. Fisher, who had been, she should say, a man originally tenacious of habits, had quite soon after marriage got out of this one.
However, Mr. Wilkins, s.n.a.t.c.hing off his hat on seeing her, instantly threw the cigar away. He threw it into the water a great jar of arum lilies presumably contain, and Mrs. Fisher, aware of the value men attach to their newly-lit cigars, could not but be impressed by this immediate and magnificent amende honorable.
But the cigar did not reach the water. It got caught in the lilies, and smoked on by itself among them, a strange and depraved-looking object.
"Where are you going to, my prett--" began Mr. Wilkins, advancing towards Mrs. Fisher; but he broke off just in time.
Was it morning spirits impelling him to address Mrs. Fisher in the terms of a nursery rhyme? He wasn"t even aware that he knew the thing. Most strange. What could have put it, at such a moment, into his self-possessed head? He felt great respect for Mrs. Fisher, and would not for the world have insulted her by addressing her as a maid, pretty or otherwise. He wished to stand well with her. She was a woman of parts, and also, he suspected, of property. At breakfast they had been most pleasant together, and he had been struck by her apparent intimacy with well-known persons. Victorians, of course; but it was restful to talk about them after the strain of his brother-in-law"s Georgian parties on Hampstead Heath. He and she were getting on famously, he felt. She already showed all the symptoms of presently wishing to become a client. Not for the world would he offend her.
He turned a little cold at the narrowness of his escape.
She had not, however, noticed.
"You are going out," he said very politely, all readiness should she confirm his a.s.sumption to accompany her.
"I want to find Lady Caroline," said Mrs. Fisher, going towards the gla.s.s door leading into the top garden.
"An agreeable quest," remarked Mr. Wilkins, "May I a.s.sist in the search? Allow me--" he added, opening the door for her.
"She usually sits over in that corner behind the bushes," said Mrs. Fisher. "And I don"t know about it being an agreeable quest. She has been letting the bills run up in the most terrible fashion, and needs a good scolding."
"Lady Caroline?" said Mr. Wilkins, unable to follow such an att.i.tude. "What has Lady Caroline, if I may inquire, to do with the bills here?"
"The housekeeping was left to her, and as we all share alike it ought to have been a matter of honour with her--"
"But--Lady Caroline housekeeping for the party here? A party which includes my wife? My dear lady, you render me speechless. Do you not know she is the daughter of the Droitwiches?"
"Oh, is that who she is," said Mrs. Fisher, scrunching heavily over the pebbles towards the hidden corner. "Well, that accounts for it. The muddle that man Droitwich made in his department in the war was a national scandal. It amounted to misappropriation of the public funds."