Chapter 10
There was no way of getting into or out of the top garden at SanSalvatore except through the two glass doors, unfortunately side byside, of the dining-room and the hall. A person in the garden whowished to escape unseen could not, for the person to be escaped fromcould be met on the way. It was a small, oblong garden, andconcealment was impossible. What trees there were--the Judas tree, thetamarisk, the umbrella-pine--grew close to the low parapets. Rosebushes gave no real cover; one step to right or left of them, and theperson wishing to be private was discovered. Only the north-westcorner was a little place jutting out from the great wall, a kind ofexcrescence or loop, no doubt used in the old distrustful days forobservation, where it was possible to sit really unseen, becausebetween it and the house was a thick clump of daphne.
Scrap, after glancing round to see that no one was looking, gotup and carried her chair into this place, stealing away as carefully ontiptoe as those steal whose purpose is sin. There was anotherexcrescence on the walls just like it at the north-east corner, butthis, though the view from it was almost more beautiful, for from ityou could see the bay and the lovely mountains behind Mezzago, wasexposed. No bushes grew near it, nor had it any shade. The north-westloop then was where she would sit, and she settled into it, andnestling her head in her cushion and putting her feet comfortably onthe parapet, from whence they appeared to the villagers on the piazzabelow as two white doves, thought that now indeed she would be safe.
Mrs. Fisher found her there, guided by the smell of hercigarette. The incautious Scrap had not thought of that. Mrs. Fisherdid not smoke herself, and all the more distinctly could she smell thesmoke of others. The virile smell met her directly she went out intothe garden from the dining-room after lunch in order to have hercoffee. She had bidden Francesca set the coffee in the shade of thehouse just outside the glass door, and when Mrs. Wilkins, seeing atable being carried there, reminded her, very officiously andtactlessly Mrs. Fisher considered, that Lady Caroline wanted to bealone, she retorted--and with what propriety--that the garden was foreverybody.
Into it accordingly she went, and was immediately aware that LadyCaroline was smoking. She said to herself, "These modern young women,"and proceeded to find her; her stick, now that lunch was over, being nolonger the hindrance to action that it was before her meal had beensecurely, as Browning once said--surely it was Browning? Yes, sheremembered how much diverted she had been--roped in.
Nobody diverted her now, reflected Mrs. Fisher, making straightfor the clump of daphne; the world had grown very dull, and hadentirely lost its sense of humour. Probably they still had theirjokes, these people--in fact she knew they did, for Punch still wenton but how differently it went on, and what jokes. Thackeray, in hisinimitable way, would have made mincemeat of this generation. Of howmuch it needed the tonic properties of that astringent pen it was ofcourse unaware. It no longer even held him--at least, so she had beeninformed--in any particular esteem. Well, she could not give it eyesto see and ears to hear and a heart to understand, but she could andwould give it, represented and united in the form of Lady Caroline, agood dose of honest medicine.
"I hear you are not well," she said, standing in the narrowentrance of the loop and looking down with the inflexible face of onewho is determined to do good at the motionless and apparently sleepingScrap.
Mrs. Fisher had a deep voice, very like a man's, for she had beenovertaken by that strange masculinity that sometimes pursues a womanduring the last laps of her life.
Scrap tried to pretend that she was asleep, but if she had beenher cigarette would not have been held in her fingers but would havebeen lying on the ground.
She forgot this. Mrs. Fisher did not, and coming inside theloop, sat down on a narrow stone seat built out of the wall. For alittle she could sit on it; for a little, till the chill began topenetrate.
She contemplated the figure before her. Undoubtedly a prettycreature, and one that would have had a success at Farringford.Strange how easily even the greatest men were moved by exteriors. Shehad seen with her own eyes Tennyson turn away from everybody--turn,positively, his back on a crowd of eminent people assembled to do himhonour, and withdraw to the window with a young person nobody had everheard of, who had been brought there by accident and whose one and onlymerit--if it be a merit, that which is conferred by chance--was beauty.Beauty! All over before you can turn round. An affair, one mightalmost say, of minutes. Well, while it lasted it did seem able to dowhat it liked with men. Even husbands were not immune. There had beenpassages in the life of Mr. Fisher . . .
"I expect the journey has upset you," she said in her deep voice."What you want is a good dose of some simple medicine. I shall askDomenico if there is such a thing in the village as castor oil."
Scrap opened her eyes and looked straight at Mrs. Fisher.
"Ah," said Mrs. Fisher, "I knew you were not asleep. If you hadbeen you would have let your cigarette fall to the ground."
"Waste," said Mrs. Fisher. "I don't like smoking for women, butI still less like waste."
"What does one do with people like this?" Scrap asked herself,her eyes fixed on Mrs. Fisher in what felt to her an indignant starebut appeared to Mrs. Fisher as really charming docility.
"Now you'll take my advice," said Mrs. Fisher, touched, "and notneglect what may very well turn into an illness. We are in Italy, youknow, and one has to be careful. You ought, to begin with, to go tobed."
"I never go to bed," snapped Scrap; and it sounded as moving, asforlorn, as that line spoken years and years ago by an actress playingthe part of Poor Jo in dramatized version of Bleak House--"I'm alwaysmoving on," said Poor Jo in this play, urged to do so by a policeman;and Mrs. Fisher, then a girl, had laid her head on the red velvetparapet of the front row of the dress circle and wept aloud.
It was wonderful, Scrap's voice. It had given her, in the tenyears since she came out, all the triumphs that intelligence and witcan have, because it made whatever she said seem memorable. She ought,with a throat formation like that, to have been a singer, but in everykind of music Scrap was dumb except this one music of the speakingvoice; and what a fascination, what a spell lay in that. Such was theliveliness of her face and the beauty of her colouring that there wasnot a man into whose eyes at the sight of her there did not leap aflame of intensest interest; but, when he heard her voice, the flame inthat man's eyes was caught and fixed. It was the same with every man,educated and uneducated, old, young, desirable themselves orundesirable, men of her own world and bus-conductors, generals andTommies--during the war she had had a perplexing time--bishops equallywith vergers--round about her confirmation startling occurrences hadtaken place--wholesome and unwholesome, rich and penniless, brilliantor idiotic; and it made no difference at all what they were, or howlong and securely married: into the eyes of every one of them, whenthey saw her, leapt this flame, and when they heard her it stayedthere.
Scrap had had enough of this look. It only led to difficulties.At first it had delighted her. She had been excited, triumphant. Tobe apparently incapable of doing or saying the wrong thing, to beapplauded, listened to, petted, adored wherever she went, and when shecame home to find nothing there either but the most indulgent proudfondness--why, how extremely pleasant. And so easy, too. Nopreparation necessary for this achievement, no hard work, nothing tolearn. She need take no trouble. She had only to appear, andpresently say something.
But gradually experiences gathered round her. After all, she hadto take trouble, she had to make efforts, because, she discovered withastonishment and rage, she had to defend herself. That look, thatleaping look, meant that she was going to be grabbed at. Some of thosewho had it were more humble than others, especially if they were young,but they all, according to their several ability, grabbed; and she whohad entered the world so jauntily, with her head in the air and thecompletest confidence in anybody whose hair was grey, began todistrust, and then to dislike, and soon to shrink away from, andpresently
to be indignant. Sometimes it was just as if she didn'tbelong to herself, wasn't her own at all, but was regarded as auniversal thing, a sort of beauty-of-all-work. Really men . . . Andshe found herself involved in queer vague quarrels, being curiouslyhated. Really women . . . And when the war came, and she flungherself into it along with everybody else, it finished her. Reallygenerals . . .
The war finished Scrap. It killed the one man she felt safewith, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her withlove. Since then she had been embittered. She was struggling asangrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp got caught in honey. Justas desperately did she try to unstick her wings. It gave her nopleasure to outdo other women; she didn't want their tiresome men.What could one do with men when one had got them? None of them wouldtalk to her of anything but the things of love, and how foolish andfatiguing that became after a bit. It was as though a healthy personwith a normal hunger was given nothing whatever to eat but sugar.Love, love . . . the very word made her want to slap somebody. "Whyshould I love you? Why should I?" she would ask amazed sometimes whensomebody was trying--somebody was always trying--to propose to her.But she never got a real answer, only further incoherence.
A deep cynicism took hold of the unhappy Scrap. Her inside grewhoary with disillusionment, while her gracious and charming outsidecontinued to make the world more beautiful. What had the future in itfor her? She would not be able, after such a preparation, to take holdof it. She was fit for nothing; she had wasted all this time beingbeautiful. Presently she wouldn't be beautiful, and what then? Scrapdidn't know what then, it appalled her to wonder even. Tired as shewas of being conspicuous she was at least used to that, she had neverknown anything else; and to become inconspicuous, to fade, to growshabby and dim, would probably be most painful. And once she began,what years and years of it there would be! Imagine, thought Scrap,having most of one's life at the wrong end. Imagine being old for twoor three times as long as being young. Stupid, stupid. Everything wasstupid. There wasn't a thing she wanted to do. There were thousandsof things she didn't want to do. Avoidance, silence, invisibility, ifpossible unconsciousness--these negations were all she asked for amoment; and here, even here, she was not allowed a minute's peace, andthis absurd woman must come pretending, merely because she wanted toexercise power and make her go to bed and make her--hideous--drinkcastor oil, that she thought she was ill.
"I'm sure," said Mrs. Fisher, who felt the cold of the stonebeginning to come through and knew she could not sit much longer,"you'll do what is reasonable. Your mother would wish--have you amother?"
A faint wonder came into Scrap's eyes. Have you a mother? Ifever anybody had a mother it was Scrap. It had not occurred to herthat there could be people who had never heard of her mother. She wasone of the major marchionesses--there being, as no one knew better thanScrap, marchionesses and marchionesses--and had held high positions atCourt. Her father, too, in his day had been most prominent. His daywas a little over, poor dear, because in the war he had made someimportant mistakes, and besides he was now grown old; still, there hewas, an excessively well-known person. How restful, howextraordinarily restful to have found some one who had never heard ofany of her lot, or at least had not yet connected her with them.
She began to like Mrs. Fisher. Perhaps the originals didn't knowanything about her either. When she first wrote to them and signed hername, that great name of Dester which twisted in and out of Englishhistory like a bloody thread, for its bearers constantly killed, shehad taken it for granted that they would know who she was; and at theinterview of Shaftesbury Avenue she was sure they did know, becausethey hadn't asked, as they otherwise would have, for references.
Scrap began to cheer up. If nobody at San Salvatore had everheard of her, if for a whole month she could shed herself, get rightaway from everything connected with herself, be allowed really toforget the clinging and the clogging and all the noise, why, perhapsshe might make something of herself after all. She might really think;really clear up her mind; really come to some conclusion.
"What I want to do here," she said, leaning forward in her chairand clasping her hands round her knees and looking up at Mrs. Fisher,whose seat was higher than hers, almost with animation, so much pleasedwas she that Mrs. Fisher knew nothing about her, "is to come to aconclusion. That's all. It isn't much to want, is it? Just that."
She gazed at Mrs. Fisher, and thought that almost any conclusionwould do; the great thing was to get hold of something, catch somethingtight, cease to drift.
Mrs. Fisher's little eyes surveyed her. "I should say," shesaid, "that what a young woman like you wants is a husband andchildren."
"Well, that's one of the things I'm going to consider," saidScrap amiably. "But I don't think it would be a conclusion."
"And meanwhile," said Mrs. Fisher, getting up, for the cold ofthe stone was now through, "I shouldn't trouble my head if I were youwith considerings and conclusions. Women's heads weren't made forthinking, I assure you. I should go to bed and get well."
"I am well," said Scrap.
"Then why did you send a message that you were ill?"
"I didn't."
"Then I've had all the trouble of coming out here for nothing."
"But wouldn't you prefer coming out and finding me well thancoming out and finding me ill?" asked Scrap, smiling.
Even Mrs. Fisher was caught by the smile.
"Well, you're a pretty creature," she said forgivingly. "It's apity you weren't born fifty years ago. My friends would have likedlooking at you."
"I'm very glad I wasn't," said Scrap. "I dislike being lookedat."
"Absurd," said Mrs. Fisher, growing stern again. "That's whatyou are made for, young women like you. For what else, pray? And Iassure you that if my friends had looked at you, you would have beenlooked at by some very great people."
"I dislike very great people," said Scrap, frowning. There hadbeen an incident quite recently--really potentates. . .
"What I dislike," said Mrs. Fisher, now as cold as that stone shehad got up from, "is the pose of the modern young woman. It seems tome pitiful, positively pitiful, in its silliness."
And, her stick crunching the pebbles, she walked away.
"That's all right," Scrap said to herself, dropping back into hercomfortable position with her head in the cushion and her feet on theparapet; if only people would go away she didn't in the least mind whythey went.
"Don't you think darling Scrap is growing a little, just alittle, peculiar?" her mother had asked her father a short time beforethat latest peculiarity of the flight to San Salvatore, uncomfortablystruck by the very odd things Scrap said and the way she had taken toslinking out of reach whenever she could and avoiding everybody except--such a sign of age--quite young men, almost boys.
"Eh? What? Peculiar? Well, let her be peculiar if she likes. Awoman with her looks can be any damned thing she pleases," was theinfatuated answer.
"I do let her," said her mother meekly; and indeed if she didnot, what difference would it make?
Mrs. Fisher was sorry she had bothered about Lady Caroline. Shewent along the hall towards her private sitting-room, and her stick asshe went struck the stone floor with a vigour in harmony with herfeelings. Sheer silliness, these poses. She had no patience withthem. Unable to be or do anything of themselves, the young of thepresent generation tried to achieve a reputation for cleverness bydecrying all that was obviously great and obviously good and bypraising everything, however obviously bad, that was different. Apes,thought Mrs. Fisher, roused. Apes. Apes. And in her sitting-roomshe found more apes, or what seemed to her in her present mood more,for there was Mrs. Arbuthnot placidly drinking coffee, while at thewriting-table, the writing-table she already looked upon as sacred,using her pen, her own pen brought for her hand alone from Prince ofWales Terrace, sat Mrs. Wilkins writing; at the table; in her room;with her pen.
"Isn't this a delightful place?" said Mrs. Arbuthnot cordially.
"We have just discovered it."
"I'm writing to Mellersh," said Mrs. Wilkins, turning her headand also cordially--as though, Mrs. Fisher thought, she cared a strawwho she was writing to and anyhow knew who the person she calledMellersh was. "He'll want to know," said Mrs. Wilkins, optimisminduced by her surroundings, "that I've got here safely."