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Page 64
And so Mrs. Wilkins was; for her doubts as to whether she had had
time to become steady enough in serenity to go on being serene in
Mellersh's company when she had it uninterruptedly right round the
clock, had gone by the middle of the week, and she felt that nothing
now could shake her. She was ready for anything. She was firmly
grafted, rooted, built into heaven. Whatever Mellersh said or did, she
would not budge an inch out of heaven, would not rouse herself a single
instant to come outside it and be cross. On the contrary, she was
going to pull him up into it beside her, and they would sit comfortably
together, suffused in light, and laugh at how much afraid of him she
used to be in Hampstead, and at how deceitful her afraidness had made
her. But he wouldn't need much pulling. He would come in quite
naturally after a day or two, irresistibly wafted on the scented
breezes of that divine air; and there he would sit arrayed in stars,
thought Mrs. Wilkins, in whose mind, among much other d�bris, floated
occasional bright shreds of poetry. She laughed to herself a little at
the picture of Mellersh, that top-hatted, black-coated, respectable
family solicitor, arrayed in stars, but she laughed affectionately,
almost with a maternal pride in how splendid he would look in such fine
clothes. "Poor lamb," she murmured to herself affectionately. And
added, "What he wants is a thorough airing."
This was during the first half of the week. By the beginning of
the last half, at the end of which Mr. Wilkins arrived, she left off
even assuring herself that she was unshakeable, that she was permeated
beyond altering by the atmosphere, she no longer thought of it or
noticed it; she took it for granted. If one may say so, and she
certainly said so, not only to herself but also to Lady Caroline, she
had found her celestial legs.
Contrary to Mrs. Fisher's idea of the seemly--but of course
contrary; what else would one expect of Mrs. Wilkins?--she did not go
to meet her husband at Messago, but merely walked down to the point
where Beppo's fly would leave him and his luggage in the street of
Castagneto. Mrs. Fisher disliked the arrival of Mr. Wilkins, and was
sure that anybody who could have married Mrs. Wilkins must be at least
of an injudicious disposition, but a husband, whatever his disposition,
should be properly met. Mr. Fisher had always been properly met.
Never once in his married life had he gone unmet at a station, nor had
he ever not been seen off. These observances, these courtesies,
strengthened the bonds of marriage, and made the husband feel he could
rely on his wife's being always there. Always being there was the
essential secret for a wife. What would have become of Mr. Fisher if
she had neglected to act on this principle she preferred not to think.
Enough things became of him as it was; for whatever one's care in
stopping up, married life yet seemed to contain chinks.
But Mrs. Wilkins took no pains. She just walked down the hill
singing--Mrs. Fisher could hear her--and picked up her husband in the
street as casually as if he were a pin. The three others, still in
bed, for it was not nearly time to get up, heard her as she passed
beneath their windows down the zigzag path to meet Mr. Wilkins, who was
coming by the morning train, and Scrap smiled, and Rose sighed, and
Mrs. Fisher rang her bell and desired Francesca to bring her her
breakfast in her room. All three had breakfast that day in their
rooms, moved by a common instinct to take cover.
Scrap always breakfasted in bed, but she had the same instinct
for cover, and during breakfast she made plans for spending the whole
day where she was. Perhaps, though, it wouldn't be as necessary that
day as the next. That day, Scrap calculated, Mellersh would be
provided for. He would want to have a bath, and having a bath at San
Salvatore was an elaborate business, a real adventure if one had a hot
one in the bathroom, and it took a lot of time. It involved the
attendance of the entire staff--Domenico and the boy Giuseppe coaxing
the patent stove to burn, restraining it when it burnt too fiercely,
using the bellows to it when it threatened to go out, relighting it
when it did go out; Francesca anxiously hovering over the tap
regulating its trickle, because if it were turned on too full the water
instantly ran cold, and if not full enough the stove blew up inside and
mysteriously flooded the house; and Costanza and Angela running up and
down bringing pails of hot water from the kitchen to eke out what the
tap did.
This bath had been put in lately, and was at once the pride and
the terror of the servants. It was very patent. Nobody quite
understood it. There were long printed instructions as to its right
treatment hanging on the wall, in which the work pericoloso recurred.
When Mrs. Fisher, proceeding on her arrival to the bathroom, saw this
word, she went back to her room again and ordered a sponge-bath
instead; and when the other found what using the bathroom meant, and
how reluctant the servants were to leave them alone with the stove, and
how Francesca positively refused to, and stayed with her back turned
watching the tap, and how the remaining servants waited anxiously
outside the door till the bather came safely out again, they too had
sponge-baths brought into their rooms instead.
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