“I suppose,” whispered Lotty, “Rose’s husband seems to you just an ordinary, good-natured, middle-aged man.”
Scrap brought her gaze down from the stars and looked at Lotty a moment while she focused her mind again.
“Just a rather red, rather round man,” whispered Lotty.
Scrap bowed her head.
“He isn’t,” whispered Lotty. “Rose sees through all that. That’s mere trimmings. She sees what we can’t see, because she loves him.”
Always love.
Scrap got up, and winding herself very tightly in her wrap moved away to her day corner, and sat down there alone on the wall and looked out across the other sea, the sea where the sun had gone down, the sea with the faraway dim shadow stretching into it which was France.
Yes, love worked wonders, and Mr. Arundel—she couldn’t at once get used to his other name—was to Rose Love itself; but it also worked inverted wonders, it didn’t invariably, as she well knew, transfigure people into saints and angels. Grievously indeed did it sometimes do the opposite. She had had it in her life applied to her to excess. If it had let her alone, if it had at least been moderate and infrequent, she might, she thought, have turned out a quite decent, generous-minded, kindly, human being. And what was she, thanks to this love Lotty talked so much about? Scrap searched for a just description. She was a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster.
The glass doors of the dining-room opened, and the three men came out into the garden, Mr. Wilkins’s voice flowing along in front of them. He appeared to be doing all the talking; the other two were saying nothing.
Perhaps she had better go back to Lotty and Rose; it would be tiresome to be discovered and hemmed into that cul-de-sac by Mr. Briggs.
She got up reluctantly, for she considered it unpardonable of Mr. Briggs to force her to move about like this, to force her out of any place she wished to sit in; and she emerged from the daphne bushes feeling like some gaunt, stern figure of just resentment and wishing that she looked as gaunt and stern as she felt; so would she have struck repugnance into the soul of Mr. Briggs, and been free of him. But she knew she didn’t look like that, however hard she might try. At dinner his hand shook when he drank, and he couldn’t speak to her without flushing scarlet and then going pale, and Mrs. Fisher’s eyes had sought hers with the entreaty of one who asks that her only son may not be hurt.
How could a human being, thought Scrap, frowning as she issued forth from her corner, how could a man made in God’s image behave so; and he fitted for better things she was sure, with his youth, his attractiveness, and his brains. He had brains. She had examined him cautiously whenever at dinner Mrs. Fisher forced him to turn away to answer her, and she was sure he had brains. Also he had character; there was something noble about his head, about the shape of his forehead—noble and kind. All the more deplorable that he should allow himself to be infatuated by a mere outside, and waste any of his strength, any of his peace of mind, hanging round just a woman-thing. If only he could see right through her, see through all her skin and stuff, he would be cured, and she might go on sitting undisturbed on this wonderful night by herself.
Just beyond the daphne bushes she met Frederick, hurrying.
“I was determined to find you first,” he said, “before I go to Rose.” And he added quickly, “I want to kiss your shoes.”
“Do you?” said Scrap, smiling. “Then I must go and put on my new ones. These aren’t nearly good enough.”
She felt immensely well-disposed towards Frederick. He, at least, would grab no more. His grabbing days, so sudden and so brief, were done. Nice man; agreeable man. She now definitely liked him. Clearly he had been getting into some sort of a tangle, and she was grateful to Lotty for stopping her in time at dinner from saying something hopelessly complicating. But whatever he had been getting into he was out of it now; his face and Rose’s face had the same light in them.
“I shall adore you forever now,” said Frederick.
Scrap smiled. “Shall you?” she said.
“I adored you before because of your beauty. Now I adore you because you’re not only as beautiful as a dream but as decent as a man.”
Scrap laughed. “Am I?” she said, amused.
“When the impetuous young woman,” Frederick went on, “the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose’s husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved to his friend.”
“Did I?” said Scrap, her enchanting dimple very evident.
“It’s the rarest, most precious of combinations,” said Frederick, “to be a woman and have the loyalty of a man.”
“Is it?” smiled Scrap, a little wistfully. These were indeed handsome compliments. If only she were really like that …
“And I want to kiss your shoes.”
“Won’t this save trouble?” she asked, holding out her hand.
He took it and swiftly kissed it, and was hurrying away again. “Bless you,” he said as he went.
“Where is your luggage?” Scrap called after him.
“Oh, Lord, yes—” said Frederick, pausing. “It’s at the station.”
“I’ll send for it.”
He disappeared through the bushes. She went indoors to give the order; and this is how it happened that Domenico, for the second time that evening, found himself journeying into Mezzago and wondering as he went.
Then, having made the necessary arrangements for the perfect happiness of these two people, she came slowly out into the garden again, very much absorbed in thought. Love seemed to bring happiness to everybody but herself. It had certainly got hold of everybody there, in its different varieties, except herself. Poor Mr. Briggs had been
