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Page 26
"I am in your hands," said Mrs. Fisher, sitting firmly in her
fly. "You must please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick."
And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and
along the quay, and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as
much obliged to walk slowly with Mrs. Fisher as if she were her own
grandmother.
"It's my stick," Mrs. Fisher complacently remarked at intervals.
And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where
seats were, and Lady Caroline, who would have liked to run on and get
to the top quickly, was forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs.
Fisher because of her stick, Mrs. Fisher told her how she had been on a
zigzag path once with Tennyson.
"Isn't his cricket wonderful?" said Lady Caroline absently.
"The Tennyson," said Mrs. Fisher, turning her head and observing
her a moment over her spectacles.
"Isn't he?" said Lady Caroline.
"And it was a path, too," Mrs. Fisher went on severely,
"curiously like this. No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise
curiously like this. And at one of the bends he turned and said to
me--I see him now turning and saying to me--"
Yes, Mrs. Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these
two up at the window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she
had got off the wall. All she need have done was to have waved her
hand, and waited till they came down and out into the garden to her.
So she ignored Mrs. Arbuthnot's remark and raised forefinger, and
said with marked coldness--at least, she tried to make it sound marked--
that she supposed they would be going to breakfast, and that she had
had hers; but it was her fate that however coldly she sent forth her
words they came out sounding quite warm and agreeable. That was
because she had a sympathetic and delightful voice, due entirely to
some special formation of her throat and the roof of her mouth, and
having nothing whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in
consequence ever believed they were being snubbed. It was most
tiresome. And if she stared icily it did not look icy at all, because
her eyes, lovely to begin with, had the added loveliness of very long,
soft, dark eyelashes. No icy stare could come out of eyes like that;
it got caught and lost in the soft eyelashes, and the persons stared at
merely thought they were being regarded with a flattering and exquisite
attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or definitely cross--
and who would not be sometimes in such a world?---she only looked so
pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means of
kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was
determined that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be
disagreeable or rude without being completely misunderstood.
"I had my breakfast in my room," she said, trying her utmost to
sound curt. "Perhaps I'll see you later."
And she nodded, and went back to where she had been sitting on
the wall, with the lilies being nice and cool round her feet.
Chapter 7
Their eyes followed her admiringly. They had no idea they had
been snubbed. It was a disappointment, of course, to find she had
forestalled them and that they were not to have the happiness of
preparing for her, of watching her face when she arrived and first saw
everything, but there was till Mrs. Fisher. They would concentrate on
Mrs. Fisher, and would watch her face instead; only, like everybody
else, they would have preferred to watch Lady Caroline's.
Perhaps, then, as Lady Caroline had talked of breakfast, they had
better begin by going and having it, for there was too much to be done
that day to spend any more time gazing at the scenery--servants to be
interviewed, the house to be gone through and examined, and finally
Mrs. Fisher's room to be got ready and adorned.
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