The Enchanted April · Chapter 14 (2/2)

In the train he had selected the words of his greeting, going over them with care⁠—some slight expression of his gratification in meeting one of whom he, in common with the whole world, had heard⁠—but of course put delicately, very delicately; some slight reference to her distinguished parents and the part her family had played in the history of England⁠—made, of course, with proper tact; a sentence or two about her eldest brother Lord Winchcombe, who had won his V.C. in the late war under circumstances which could only cause⁠—he might or might not add this⁠—every Englishman’s heart to beat higher than ever with pride, and the first steps towards what might well be the turning-point in his career would have been taken.

And here he was⁠ ⁠… no, it was too terrible, what could be more terrible? Only a towel on, water running off his legs, and that exclamation. He knew at once the lady was Lady Caroline⁠—the minute the exclamation was out he knew it. Rarely did Mr. Wilkins use that word, and never, never in the presence of a lady or a client. While as for the towel⁠—why had he come? Why had he not stayed in Hampstead? It would be impossible to live this down.

But Mr. Wilkins was reckoning without Scrap. She, indeed, screwed up her face at the first flash of him on her astonished sight in an enormous effort not to laugh, and having choked the laughter down and got her face serious again, she said as composedly as if he had had all his clothes on, “How do you do.”

What perfect tact. Mr. Wilkins could have worshipped her. This exquisite ignoring. Blue blood, of course, coming out.

Overwhelmed with gratitude he took her offered hand and said “How do you do,” in his turn, and merely to repeat the ordinary words seemed magically to restore the situation to the normal. Indeed, he was so much relieved, and it was so natural to be shaking hands, to be conventionally greeting, that he forgot he had only a towel on and his professional manner came back to him. He forgot what he was looking like, but he did not forget that this was Lady Caroline Dester, the lady he had come all the way to Italy to see, and he did not forget that it was in her face, her lovely and important face, that he had flung his terrible exclamation. He must at once entreat her forgiveness. To say such a word to a lady⁠—to any lady, but of all ladies to just this one⁠ ⁠…

“I’m afraid I used unpardonable language,” began Mr. Wilkins very earnestly, as earnestly and ceremoniously as if he had had his clothes on.

“I thought it most appropriate,” said Scrap, who was used to damns.

Mr. Wilkins was incredibly relieved and soothed by this answer. No offence, then, taken. Blue blood again. Only blue blood could afford such a liberal, such an understanding attitude.

“It is Lady Caroline Dester, is it not, to whom I am speaking?” he asked, his voice sounding even more carefully cultivated than usual, for he had to restrain too much pleasure, too much relief, too much of the joy of the pardoned and the shriven from getting into it.

“Yes,” said Scrap; and for the life of her she couldn’t help smiling. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t meant to smile at Mr. Wilkins, not ever; but really he looked⁠—and then his voice on the top of the rest of him, oblivious of the towel and his legs, and talking just like a church.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Mr. Wilkins, with the ceremony of the drawing-room. “My name is Mellersh-Wilkins.”

And he instinctively held out his hand a second time at the words.

“I thought perhaps it was,” said Scrap, a second time having hers shaken and a second time unable not to smile.

He was about to proceed to the first of the graceful tributes he had prepared in the train, oblivious, as he could not see himself, that he was without his clothes, when the servants came running up the stairs and, simultaneously, Mrs. Fisher appeared in the doorway of her sitting-room. For all this had happened very quickly, and the servants away in the kitchen, and Mrs. Fisher pacing her battlements, had not had time on hearing the noise to appear before the second handshake.

The servants when they heard the dreaded noise knew at once what had happened, and rushed straight into the bathroom to try and staunch the flood, taking no notice of the figure on the landing in the towel, but Mrs. Fisher did not know what the noise could be, and coming out of her room to inquire stood rooted on the doorsill.

It was enough to root anybody. Lady Caroline shaking hands with what evidently, if he had had clothes on, would have been Mrs. Wilkins’s husband, and both of them conversing just as if⁠—

Then Scrap became aware of Mrs. Fisher. She turned to her at once. “Do let me,” she said gracefully, “introduce Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. He has just come. This,” she added, turning to Mr. Wilkins, “is Mrs. Fisher.”

And Mr. Wilkins, nothing if not courteous, reacted at once to the conventional formula. First he bowed to the elderly lady in the doorway, then he crossed over to her, his wet feet leaving footprints as he went, and having got to her he politely held out his hand.

“It is a pleasure,” said Mr. Wilkins in his carefully modulated voice, “to meet a friend of my wife’s.”

Scrap melted away down into the garden.