Chapter 11

The sweet smells that were everywhere in San Salvatore were alone enough to produce concord.  They came into the sitting-room from the flowers on the battlements, and met the ones from the flowers inside the room, and almost, thought Mrs. Wilkins, could be seen greeting each other with a holy kiss.  Who could be angry in the middle of such gentlenesses?  Who could be acquisitive, selfish, in the old rasped London way, in the presence of this bounteous beauty?

Yet Mrs. Fisher seemed to be all three of these things.

There was so much beauty, so much more than enough for every one, that it did appear to be a vain activity to try and make a corner in it.

Yet Mrs. Fisher was trying to make a corner in it, and had railed off a portion for her exclusive use.

Well, she would get over that presently; she would get over it inevitably, Mrs. Wilkins was sure, after a day or two in the extraordinary atmosphere of peace in that place.

Meanwhile she obviously hadn’t even begun to get over it.  She stood looking at her and Rose with an expression that appeared to be one of anger.  Anger.  Fancy.  Silly old nerve-racked London feelings, thought Mrs. Wilkins, whose eyes saw the room full of kisses, and everybody in it being kissed, Mrs. Fisher as copiously as she herself and Rose.

“You don’t like us being in here,” said Mrs. Wilkins, getting up and at once, after her manner, fixing on the truth.  ’Why?”

“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Fisher leaning on her stick, “you could have seen that it is my room.”

“You mean because of the photographs,” said Mrs. Wilkins.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was a little red and surprised, got up too.

“And the notepaper,” said Mrs. Fisher.  “Notepaper with my London address on it.  That pen—­”

She pointed.  It was still in Mrs. Wilkins’s hand.

“Is yours.  I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Wilkins, laying it on the table.  And she added smiling, that it had just been writing some very amiable things.

“But why,” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who found herself unable to acquiesce in Mrs. Fisher’s arrangements without at least a gentle struggle, “ought we not to be here?  It’s a sitting-room.”

“There is another one,” said Mrs. Fisher.  “You and your friend cannot sit in two rooms at once, and if I have no wish to disturb you in yours I am unable to see why you should wish to disturb me in mine.”

“But why—­” began Mrs. Arbuthnot again.

“It’s quite natural,” Mrs. Wilkins interrupted, for Rose was looking stubborn; and turning to Mrs. Fisher she said that although sharing things with friends was pleasant she could understand that Mrs. Fisher, still steeped in the Prince of Wales Terrace attitude to life, did not yet want to, but that she would get rid of that after a bit and feel quite different.  “Soon you’ll want us to share,” said Mrs. Wilkins reassuringly.  “Why, you may even get so far as asking me to use your pen if you knew I hadn’t got one.”