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Page 13
But Mrs. Fisher's very abstractedness--and she seemed to be
absorbed chiefly in the interesting people she used to know and in
their memorial photographs, and quite a good part of the interview was
taken up by reminiscent anecdote of Carlyle, Meredith, Matthew Arnold,
Tennyson, and a host of others--her very abstractedness was a
recommendation. She only asked, she said, to be allowed to sit quiet
in the sun and remember. That was all Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins
asked of their sharers. It was their idea of a perfect sharer that she
should sit quiet in the sun and remember, rousing herself on Saturday
evenings sufficiently to pay her share. Mrs. Fisher was very fond,
too, she said, of flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end
with her father at Box Hill--
"Who lived at Box Hill?" interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on
Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who
had actually been familiar with all the really and truly and
undoubtedly great--actually seen them, heard them talking, touched
them.
Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some
surprise. Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly
of Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs.
Arbuthnot would take her away and she wouldn't have heard half, had
already interrupted several times with questions which appeared
ignorant to Mrs. Fisher.
"Meredith of course," said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. "I
remember a particular week-end"--she continued. "My father often took
me, but I always remember this week-end particularly--"
"Did you know Keats?" eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.
Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she
had been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare.
"Oh of course--how ridiculous of me!" cried Mrs. Wilkins,
flushing scarlet. "It's because"--she floundered--"it's because the
immortals somehow still seem alive, don't they--as if they were here,
going to walk into the room in another minute--and one forgets they are
dead. In fact one knows perfectly well that they're not dead--not
nearly so dead as you and I even now," she assured Mrs. Fisher, who
observed her over the top of her glasses.
"I thought I saw Keats the other day," Mrs. Wilkins incoherently
proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher's look over the top of her glasses.
"In Hampstead--crossing the road in front of that house--you know--the
house where he lived--"
Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going.
Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them.
"I really thought I saw him," protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing
for belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour
passed over her face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs.
Fisher's glasses and the steady eyes looking at her over their tops. "I
believe I did see him--he was dressed in a--"
Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice
said they would be late for lunch.
It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references. She
had no wish to find herself shut up for four weeks with somebody who
saw things. It is true that there were three sitting-rooms, besides
the garden and the battlements at San Salvatore, so that there would be
opportunities of withdrawal from Mrs. Wilkins; but it would be
disagreeable to Mrs. Fisher, for instance, if Mrs. Wilkins were
suddenly to assert that she saw Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was dead; let
him remain so. She had no wish to be told he was walking about the
garden. The only reference she really wanted, for she was much too old
and firmly seated in her place in the world for questionable associates
to matter to her, was one with regard to Mrs. Wilkins's health. Was
her health quite normal? Was she an ordinary, everyday, sensible
woman? Mrs. Fisher felt that if she were given even one address she
would be able to find out what she needed. So she asked for
references, and her visitors appeared to be so much taken aback--Mrs.
Wilkins, indeed, was instantly sobered--that she added, "It is usual."
Mrs. Wilkins found her speech first. "But," she said "aren't we
the ones who ought to ask for some from you?"
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