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Page 78
Having done it, Rose wished she hadn't. He wouldn't come. He
wouldn't bother to answer. And if he did answer, it would just be
giving some reason which was not true, and about being too busy to get
away; and all that had been got by writing to him would be that she
would be more unhappy than before.
What things one did when one was idle. This resurrection of
Frederick, or rather this attempt to resurrect him, what was it but the
result of having nothing whatever to do? She wished she had never come
away on a holiday. What did she want with holidays? Work was her
salvation; work was the only thing that protected one, that kept one
steady and one's values true. At home in Hampstead, absorbed and busy,
she had managed to get over Frederick, thinking of him latterly only
with the gentle melancholy with which one thinks of some one once loved
but long since dead; and now this place, idleness in this soft place,
had thrown her back to the wretched state she had climbed so carefully
out of years ago. Why, if Frederick did come she would only bore him.
Hadn't she seen in a flash quite soon after getting to San Salvatore
that that was really what kept him away from her? And why should she
suppose that now, after such a long estrangement, she would be able not
to bore him, be able to do anything but stand before him like a
tongue-tied idiot, with all the fingers of her spirit turned into
thumbs? Besides, what a hopeless position, to have as it were to
beseech: Please wait a little--please don't be impatient--I think
perhaps I shan't be a bore presently.
A thousand times a day Rose wished she had let Frederick alone.
Lotty, who asked her every evening whether she had sent her letter yet,
exclaimed with delight when the answer at last was yes, and threw her
arms round her. "Now we shall be completely happy!" cried the
enthusiastic Lotty.
But nothing seemed less certain to Rose, and her expression
became more and more the expression of one who has something on her
mind.
Mr. Wilkins, wanting to find out what it was, strolled in the sun
in his Panama hat, and began to meet her accidentally.
"I did not know," said Mr. Wilkins the first time, courteously
raising his hat, "that you too liked this particular spot." And he sat
down beside her.
In the afternoon she chose another spot; and she had not been in
it half an hour before Mr. Wilkins, lightly swinging his cane, came
round the corner.
"We are destined to meet in our rambles," said Mr. Wilkins
pleasantly. And he sat down beside her.
Mr. Wilkins was very kind, and she had, she saw, misjudged him in
Hampstead, and this was the real man, ripened like fruit by the
beneficent sun of San Salvatore, but Rose did want to be alone. Still,
she was grateful to him for proving to her that though she might bore
Frederick she did not bore everybody; if she had, he would not have sat
talking to her on each occasion till it was time to go in. True he
bored her, but that wasn't anything like so dreadful as if she bored
him. Then indeed her vanity would have been sadly ruffled. For not
that Rose was not able to say her prayers she was being assailed by
every sort of weakness: vanity, sensitiveness, irritability, pugnacity
--strange, unfamiliar devils to have coming crowding on one and taking
possession of one's swept and empty heart. She had never been vain or
irritable or pugnacious in her life before. Could it be that San
Salvatore was capable of opposite effects, and the same sun that
ripened Mr. Wilkins made her go acid?
The next morning, so as to be sure of being alone, she went down,
while Mr. Wilkins was still lingering pleasantly with Mrs. Fisher over
breakfast, to the rocks by the water's edge where she and Lotty had sat
the first day. Frederick by now had got her letter. To-day, if he
were like Mr. Wilkins, she might get a telegram from him.
She tried to silence the absurd hope by jeering at it. Yet--if
Mr. Wilkins had telegraphed, why not Frederick? The spell of San
Salvatore lurked even, it seemed, in notepaper. Lotty had not dreamed
of getting a telegram, and when she came in at lunch-time there it was.
It would be too wonderful if when she went back at lunch-time she found
one there for her too. . .
Rose clasped her hands tight round her knees. How passionately
she longed to be important to somebody again--not important on
platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately
important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to
know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with
people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to
oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to
come to one--oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!
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