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Page 101
"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 far-away 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 the 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 be 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 Fredrick, 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.
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