“I got here yesterday morning,” she said, looking up at them and smiling. She really was bewitching. She had everything, even a dimple.
“It’s a great pity,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling back, “because we were going to choose the nicest room for you.”
“Oh, but I’ve done that,” said Lady Caroline. “At least, I think it’s the nicest. It looks two ways—I adore a room that looks two ways, don’t you? Over the sea to the west, and over this Judas tree to the north.”
“And we had meant to make it pretty for you with flowers,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
“Oh, Domenico did that. I told him to directly I got here. He’s the gardener. He’s wonderful.”
“It’s a good thing, of course,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot a little hesitatingly, “to be independent, and to know exactly what one wants.”
“Yes, it saves trouble,” agreed Lady Caroline.
“But one shouldn’t be so independent,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “as to leave no opportunity for other people to exercise their benevolences on one.”
Lady Caroline, who had been looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot, now looked at Mrs. Wilkins. That day at that queer club she had had merely a blurred impression of Mrs. Wilkins, for it was the other one who did all the talking, and her impression had been of somebody so shy, so awkward that it was best to take no notice of her. She had not even been able to say goodbye properly, doing it in an agony, turning red, turning damp. Therefore she now looked at her in some surprise; and she was still more surprised when Mrs. Wilkins added, gazing at her with the most obvious sincere admiration, speaking indeed with a conviction that refused to remain unuttered, “I didn’t realise you were so pretty.”
She stared at Mrs. Wilkins. She was not usually told this quite so immediately and roundly. Abundantly as she was used to it—impossible not to be after twenty-eight solid years—it surprised her to be told it with such bluntness, and by a woman.
“It’s very kind of you to think so,” she said.
“Why, you’re lovely,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Quite, quite lovely.”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot pleasantly, “you make the most of it.”
Lady Caroline then stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Oh yes,” she said. “I make the most of it. I’ve been doing that ever since I can remember.”
“Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling and raising a warning forefinger, “it won’t last.”
Then Lady Caroline began to be afraid these two were originals. If so, she would be bored. Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted on being original, who came and buttonholed her and kept her waiting while they were being original. And the one who admired her—it would be tiresome if she dogged her about in order to look at her. What she wanted of this holiday was complete escape from all she had had before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being dogged, wasn’t contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a medieval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed such timid creatures, even the dark one—she couldn’t remember their names—that day at the club, that she had felt it quite safe to be very friendly. Here they had come out of their shells; already; indeed, at once. There was no sign of timidity about either of them here. If they had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very first contact, unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon her, and then goodbye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days, lying unmolested in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not being spoken to, not waited on, not grabbed at and monopolised, but just recovering from the fatigue, the deep and melancholy fatigue, of the too much.
Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady Caroline had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two reasons: first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order to pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she judged it likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want to arrive with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why for a single moment she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs. Fisher.
But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to get to San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and she and Lady Caroline had after all travelled together. As early as Calais they began to suspect it; in Paris they feared it; at Modane they knew it; at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to Castagneto in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching the back of the other the whole way. But when the road suddenly left off at the church and the steps, further evasion was impossible; and faced by this abrupt and difficult finish to their journey there was nothing for it but to amalgamate.
Because of Mrs. Fisher’s stick Lady Caroline had to see about everything. Mrs. Fisher’s intentions, she explained from her fly when the situation had become plain to her, were active, but her stick prevented their being carried out. The two drivers told Lady Caroline boys would have to carry the luggage up to the castle, and
