Chapter 17
On the first day of the third week at San Salvatore, Rose Arbuthnot finally wrote to her husband Frederick. To prevent herself from hesitating, she gave the letter to Domenico to post. The moment it was gone she wished she hadn’t. He wouldn’t come; he wouldn’t even answer, or if he did it would be some polite falsehood. What good was this resurrection of Frederick but the product of idleness? At home in Hampstead, busy and absorbed, she had managed to get over him. This soft place had thrown her back into the state she had climbed so carefully out of years ago.
Mr. Wilkins, suspecting something on her mind, kept “accidentally” meeting her. She wanted to be alone, but was grateful for proof she didn’t bore everybody. So as to be sure of solitude, she slipped down one morning to the rocks by the sea where she and Lotty had sat the first day. All morning she sat beneath the pine-tree, longing passionately to be important to somebody again — privately important, just to one person. Oh, how dreadfully one wanted to be precious.
Coming up at half-past twelve, she lingered among the camellias so as not to reach her disappointment too quickly. Mr. Wilkins, waiting in the doorway, told her a telegram had come. Bright and burning, Youth flashed down on Rose. She flew up the steps and was tearing it open before he had finished his sentence. She and Frederick, they were going to be, again, at last —
But her face went slowly white as she read: Am passing through on way to Rome. May I pay my respects this afternoon? Thomas Briggs. The owner of San Salvatore. “I’m going to have a visitor,” she managed, walking away murmuring about lunch.
Briggs, jogging along from Mezzago, was hoping the dark-eyed lady would grasp that all he wanted was to see her, not his house. He had been thinking of her since that day in London — Rose Arbuthnot, mild and milky and motherly in the best sense. Arriving, he was struck afresh by her resemblance to the early-Italian Madonna on the staircase. When she came down in white, he asked her to take off her hat so he could compare. “Have you come to compare me with my original?” she asked, half amused.
They set off for a walk. Briggs, incapable of concealments, had not got them halfway to the lighthouse before he told her of the impression she had made in London. Rose, pleased, smiled; smiling, she became more attractive than ever. If Frederick were listening, perhaps he would see she wasn’t such a hopeless bore. Briggs told her he was an orphan, an only child, with a warm domestic disposition, thinking of marrying. San Salvatore wanted a wife in it. “It’s so like coming home,” he laughed. “To one’s family.”
Back for tea, Briggs’s easy warmth worked its magic on Mrs. Fisher too. She bloomed into such playful benignity that before tea was over she addressed him as “my dear boy.” Rose felt a stab of penitence: how horrid she had been to Mrs. Fisher. Lotty, returning from her picnic, saw at once what had happened and impulsively kissed Mrs. Fisher on the cheek. A queer little trickle of warmth filtered through the old woman’s frozen defences. When Briggs learned there was a fourth hostess, he wondered if he ought to have Lady Caroline’s invitation too. But there, coming out of the dark doorway into the brightness of the sunset, was the daughter of the Droitwiches herself — that which he had not in his life yet seen but only dreamed of, his ideal of absolute loveliness.
Chapter 19
The afternoon had been so tranquil at San Salvatore, with the four ladies taking tea among the flowers and the daphne bushes, that nothing seemed capable of disturbing it. Yet when Mr. Wilkins, balancing his sentences with the cultured pleasure of a man who enjoys the sound of his own voice, presented Mr. Briggs to Lady Caroline, all that peace shattered in a single breath. Briggs had come down from the village on foot, full of cheerful chatter, ready to be agreeable; but the moment Scrap said “How do you do,” something in him was overthrown. He became silent, solemn, and clammy at the temples. He dropped the teaspoon as he handed her her cup, fumbled the macaroons until one rolled on the ground, and could not drag his eyes from her face for an instant.
Scrap saw at once what she was dealing with. The symptoms were all there, only too familiar: the fixed stare, the clumsy devotion, the trembling eagerness of a man on the brink of becoming what she privately called a “grabber.” A deep melancholy invaded her. Her rest-cure, so carefully begun, was in danger of being destroyed in a single afternoon. She cast about desperately for an escape, and caught at the thought of Kate Lumley, that mythical friend who was supposed to be arriving at any moment. If Kate were expected immediately, then Briggs could hardly stay. But Mrs. Fisher, with an oddly placid voice, said no, Kate was not expected today, and Mr. Wilkins helpfully pointed out that Briggs was only waiting for Scrap’s seal of approval before accepting the other three ladies’ invitation to spend the night in what was, after all, his own house. Kate, it seemed, had never married anybody and was in no particular hurry.
Scrap, recognising she could not in decency refuse entirely, smiled at Briggs—a smile that betrayed the dimple and made his eyes more fixed than ever—and gave her reluctant consent. “Then of course I join in the invitation,” she said, with what sounded to Briggs like the most divine cordiality. He stammered something, flushing scarlet, and Scrap turned her head away, only to discover that her profile was, if anything, more devastating than her full face.
Across the garden, Mr. Wilkins was already diagnosing the situation. If there had been any understanding between Briggs and Mrs. Arbuthnot, he reflected, there was now going to be trouble of a different kind—trouble in which Briggs, impelled by passion and beauty, would aspire to the daughter of the Droitwiches, who would naturally repel him, leaving poor Rose in the cold. “Well, I’m their man,” he concluded with comfortable foresight.
Mrs. Fisher, observing the collapse of the once-charming Briggs, felt the April dampness chilling her old bones and the sight of his enthralled face gave her pain. She went inside to order his room prepared, almost laying a motherly hand on his fair head as she passed. Scrap finished her cigarette and rose too. She would not sit there to gratify Mr. Briggs’s desire to stare; she would have liked her corner behind the daphne bushes and the cool moist evening, but if she stayed he would follow her. The old familiar tyranny had begun again. Her holiday of peace and liberation was interrupted—perhaps over.
The original text of this work is in the public domain. This page focuses on a guided summary article, reading notes, selected quotes, and visual learning materials for educational purposes.