“But didn’t he?” asked Lady Caroline — every bit as shamelessly unreticent as Mrs. Wilkins.
“Mellersh? He showed no signs of it.”
“Delicious,” murmured Lady Caroline.
“Really—” said Mrs. Fisher.
“I didn’t think it was at all delicious. I was miserable. And now, since I’ve been here, I simply stare at myself being miserable. As miserable as that. And about Mellersh.”
“You mean he wasn’t worth it.”
“Really—” said Mrs. Fisher.
“No, I don’t. I mean I’ve suddenly got well.”
Lady Caroline, slowly twisting the stem of her glass in her fingers, scrutinized the lit-up face opposite.
“And now I’m well I find I can’t sit here and gloat all to myself. I can’t be happy, shutting him out. I must share. I understand exactly what the Blessed Damozel felt like.”
“What was the Blessed Damozel?” asked Scrap.
“Really—” said Mrs. Fisher; and with such emphasis this time that Lady Caroline turned to her.
“Ought I to know?” she asked. “I don’t know any natural history. It sounds like a bird.”
“It is a poem,” said Mrs. Fisher with extraordinary frost.
“Oh,” said Scrap.
“I’ll lend it to you,” said Mrs. Wilkins, over whose face laughter rippled.
“No,” said Scrap.
“And its author,” said Mrs. Fisher icily, “though not perhaps quite what one would have wished him to be, was frequently at my father’s table.”
“What a bore for you,” said Scrap. “That’s what mother’s always doing — inviting authors. I hate authors. I wouldn’t mind them so much if they didn’t write books. Go on about Mellersh,” she said, turning to Mrs. Wilkins.
“Really—” said Mrs. Fisher.
“All those empty beds,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
“What empty beds?” asked Scrap.
“The ones in this house. Why, of course they each ought to have somebody happy inside them. Eight beds, and only four people. It’s dreadful, dreadful to be so greedy and keep everything just for oneself. I want Rose to ask her husband out too. You and Mrs. Fisher haven’t got husbands, but why not give some friend a glorious time?”
Rose bit her lip. She turned red, she turned pale. If only Lotty would keep quiet, she thought. It was all very well to have suddenly become a saint and want to love everybody, but need she be so tactless? Rose felt that all her poor sore places were being danced on. If only Lotty would keep quiet . . .
And Mrs. Fisher, with even greater frostiness than that with which she had received Lady Caroline’s ignorance of the Blessed Damozel, said, “There is only one unoccupied bedroom in this house.”
“Only one?” echoed Mrs. Wilkins, astonished. “Then who are in all the others?”
“We are,” said Mrs. Fisher.
“But we’re not in all the bedrooms. There must be at least six. That leaves two over, and the owner told us there were eight beds — didn’t he Rose?”
“There are six bedrooms,” said Mrs. Fisher; for both she and Lady Caroline had thoroughly searched the house on arriving, in order to see which part of it they would be most comfortable in, and they both knew that there were six bedrooms, two of which were very small, and in one of these small ones Francesca slept in the company of a chair and a chest of drawers, and the other, similarly furnished, was empty.
Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot had hardly looked at the house, having spent most of their time out-of-doors gaping at the scenery, and had, in the agitated inattentiveness of their minds when first they began negotiating for San Salvatore, got into their heads that the eight beds of which the owner spoke were the same as eight bedrooms; which they were not. There were indeed eight beds, but four of them were in Mrs. Wilkins’s and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s rooms.
“There are six bedrooms,” repeated Mrs. Fisher. “We have four, Francesca has the fifth, and the sixth is empty.”
“So that,” said Scrap, “However kind we feel we would be if we could, we can’t. Isn’t it fortunate?”
“But then there’s only room for one?” said Mrs. Wilkins, looking round at the three faces.
“Yes — and you’ve got him,” said Scrap.
Mrs. Wilkins was taken aback. This question of the beds was unexpected. In inviting Mellersh she had intended to put him in one of the four spare-rooms that she imagined were there. When there were plenty of rooms and enough servants there was no reason why they should, as they did in their small, two-servanted house at home, share the same one. Love, even universal love, the kind of love with which she felt herself flooded, should not be tried. Much patience and self-effacement were needed for successful married sleep. Placidity; a steady faith; these too were needed. She was sure she would be much fonder of Mellersh, and he not mind her nearly so much, if they were not shut up together at night, if in the morning they could meet with the cheery affection of friends between whom lies no shadow of differences about the window or the washing arrangements, or of absurd little choked-down resentments at something that had seemed to one of them unfair. Her happiness, she felt, and her ability to be friends with everybody, was the result of her sudden new freedom and its peace. Would there be that sense of freedom, that peace, after a night shut up with Mellersh? Would she be able in the morning to be full towards him, as she was at that moment full, of nothing at all but loving-kindness? After all, she hadn’t been very long in heaven. Suppose she hadn’t been in it long enough for her to have become fixed in blandness? And only that morning what an extraordinary joy it had been to find herself alone when she woke, and able to pull the bed-clothes any way she liked!
Francesca had to nudge her. She was so much absorbed that she did not notice the pudding.
“If,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, distractedly helping herself, “I share my room with Mellersh I risk losing all I now feel about him. If on the other hand I put him in the one spare-room, I prevent Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline from giving somebody a treat. True they don’t seem to want to at present, but at any moment in this place one or the other of them may be seized with a desire to make somebody happy, and then they wouldn’t be able to because of Mellersh.”
“What a problem,” she said aloud, her eyebrows puckered.
“What is?” asked Scrap.
“Where to put Mellersh.”
Scrap stared. “Why, isn’t one room enough for him?” she asked.
“Oh yes, quite. But then there won’t be any room left at all — any room for somebody you may want to invite.”
“I shan’t want to,” said Scrap.
“Or you,” said Mrs. Wilkins to Mrs. Fisher. “Rose, of course, doesn’t count. I’m sure she would like sharing her room with her husband. It’s written all over her.”
“Really—” said Mrs. Fisher.
“Really what?” asked Mrs. Wilkins, turning hopefully to her, for she thought the word this time was the preliminary to a helpful suggestion.
It was not. It stood by itself. It was, as before, mere frost.
Challenged, however, Mrs. Fisher did fasten it on to a sentence. “Really am I to understand,” she asked, “that you propose to reserve the one spare-room for the exclusive use of your own family?”
“He isn’t my own family,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “He’s my husband. You see—”
“I see nothing,” Mrs. Fisher could not this time refrain from interrupting — for what an intolerable trick. “At the most I hear, and that reluctantly.”
But Mrs. Wilkins, as impervious to rebuke as Mrs. Fisher had feared, immediately repeated the tiresome formula and launched out into a long and excessively indelicate speech about the best place for the person she called Mellersh to sleep in.
Mellersh — Mrs. Fisher, remembering the Thomases and Johns and Alfreds and Roberts of her day, plain names that yet had all become glorious, thought it sheer affection to be christened Mellersh — was, it seemed, Mrs. Wilkins’s husband, and ther
efore his place was clearly indicated. Why this talk? She herself, as if foreseeing his arrival, had had a second bed put in Mrs. Wilkins’s room. There were certain things in life which were never talked about but only done. Most things connected with husbands were not talked about; and to have a whole dinner-table taken up with a discussion as to where one of them should sleep was an affront to the decencies. How and where husbands slept should be known only to their wives. Sometimes it was not known to them, and then the marriage had less happy moments; but these moments were not talked about either; the decencies continued to be preserved. At least, it was so in her day. To have to hear whether Mr. Wilkins should or should not sleep with Mrs. Wilkins, and the reasons why he should and the reasons why he shouldn’t, was both uninteresting and indelicate.
She might have succeeded in imposing propriety and changing the conversation if it had not been for Lady Caroline. Lady Caroline encouraged Mrs. Wilkins, and threw herself into the discussion with every bit as much unreserve as Mrs. Wilkins herself. No doubt she was impelled on this occasion by Chianti, but whatever the reason there it was. And, characteristically, Lady Caroline was all for Mr. Wilkins being given the solitary spare-room. She took that for granted. Any other arrangement would be impossible, she said; her expression was, Barbarous. Had she never read her Bible, Mrs. Fisher was tempted to inquire — And they two shall be one flesh? Clearly also, then, one room. But Mrs. Fisher did not inquire. She did not care even to allude to such texts to some one unmarried.
However, there was one way she could force Mr. Wilkins into his proper place and save the situation: she could say she herself intended to invite a friend. It was her right. They had all said so. Apart from propriety, it was monstrous that Mrs. Wilkins should want to monopolise the one spare-room, when in her own room was everything necessary for her husband. Perhaps she really would invite somebody — not invite, but suggest coming. There was Kate Lumley, for instance. Kate could perfectly afford to come and pay her share; and she was of her own period and knew, and had known, most of the people she herself knew and had known. Kate, of course, had only been on the fringe; she used to be asked only to the big parties, not to the small ones, and she still was only on the fringe. There were some people who never got off the fringe, and Kate was one. Often, however, such people were more permanently agreeable to be with than the others, in that they remained grateful.
Yes; she might really consider Kate. The poor soul had never married, but then everybody could not expect to marry, and she was quite comfortably off — not too comfortably, but just comfortably enough to pay her own expenses if she came and yet be grateful. Yes; Kate was the solution. If she came, at one stroke, Mrs. Fisher saw, would the Wilkinses be regularized and Mrs. Wilkins be prevented from having more than her share of the rooms. Also, Mrs. Fisher would save herself from isolation; spiritual isolation. She desired physical isolation between meals, but she disliked that isolation which is of the spirit. Such isolation would, she feared, certainly be hers with these three alien-minded young women. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot was, owing to her friendship with Mrs. Wilkins, necessarily alien-minded. In Kate she would have a support. Kate, without intruding on her sitting-room, for Kate was tractable, would be there at meals to support her.
Mrs. Fisher said nothing at the moment; but presently in the drawing-room, when they were gathered round the wood fire — she had discovered there was no fireplace in her own sitting-room, and therefore she would after all be forced, so long as the evenings remained cool, to spend them in the other room — presently, while Francesca was handing coffee round and Lady Caroline was poisoning the air with smoke, Mrs. Wilkins, looking relieved and pleased, said: “Well, if nobody really wants that room, and wouldn’t use it anyhow, I shall be very glad if Mellersh may have it.”
“Of course he must have it,” said Lady Caroline.
Then Mrs. Fisher spoke.
“I have a friend,” she said in her deep voice; and sudden silence fell upon the others.
“Kate Lumley,” said Mrs. Fisher.
Nobody spoke.
“Perhaps,” continued Mrs. Fisher, addressing Lady Caroline, “you know her?”
No, Lady Caroline did not know Kate Lumley; and Mrs. Fisher, without asking the others if they did, for she was sure they knew no one, proceeded. “I wish to invite her to join me,” said Mrs. Fisher.
Complete silence.
Then Scrap said, turning to Mrs. Wilkins, “That settles Mellersh, then.”
“It settles the question of Mr. Wilkins,” said Mrs. Fisher, “although I am unable to understand that there should ever have been a question, in the only way that is right.”
“I’m afraid you’re in for it, then,” said Lady Caroline, again to Mrs. Wilkins. “Unless,” she added, “he can’t come.”
But Mrs. Wilkins, her brow perturbed — for suppose after all she were not yet quite stable in heaven? — could only say, a little uneasily, “I see him here.”
Chapter 13
The uneventful days — only outwardly uneventful — slipped by in floods of sunshine, and the servants, watching the four ladies, came to the conclusion there was very little life in them.
To the servants San Salvatore seemed asleep. No one came to tea, nor did the ladies go anywhere to tea. Other tenants in other springs had been far more active. There had been stir and enterprise; the boat had been used; excursions had been made; Beppo’s fly was ordered; people from Mezzago came over and spent the day; the house rang with voices; even sometimes champagne had been drunk. Life was varied, life was interesting. But this? What was this? The servants were not even scolded. They were left completely to themselves. They yawned.
Perplexing, too, was the entire absence of gentlemen. How could gentlemen keep away from so much beauty? For, added up, and even after the subtraction of the old one, the three younger ladies produced a formidable total of that which gentlemen usually sought.
Also the evident desire of each lady to spend long hours separated from the other ladies puzzled the servants. The result was a deathly stillness in the house, except at meal-times. It might have been as empty as it had been all the winter, for any sounds of life there were. The old lady sat in her room, alone; the dark-eyed lady wandered off alone, loitering, so Domenico told them, who sometimes came across her in the course of his duties, incomprehensibly among the rocks; the very beautiful fair lady lay in her low chair in the top garden, alone; the less, but still beautiful fair lady went up the hills and stayed up them for hours, alone; and every day the sun blazed slowly round the house, and disappeared at evening into the sea, and nothing at all had happened.
The servants yawned.
Yet the four visitors, while their bodies sat — that was Mrs. Fisher’s — or lay — that was Lady Caroline’s — or loitered — that was Mrs. Arbuthnot’s — or went in solitude up into the hills — that was Mrs. Wilkins’s — were anything but torpid really. Their minds were unusually busy. Even at night their minds were busy, and the dreams they had were clear, thin, quick things, entirely different from the heavy dreams of home. There was that in the atmosphere of San Salvatore which produced active-mindedness in all except the natives. They, as before, whatever the beauty around them, whatever the prodigal seasons did, remained immune from thoughts other than those they were accustomed to. All their lives they had seen, year by year, the amazing recurrent spectacle of April in the gardens, and custom had made it invisible to them. They were as blind to it, as unconscious of it, as Domenico’s dog asleep in the sun.
The visitors could not be blind to it — it was too arresting after London in a particularly wet and gloomy March. Suddenly to be transported to that place where the air was so still that it held its breath, where the light was so golden that the most ordinary things were transfigured — to be transported into that delicate warmth, that caressing fragrance, and to have the old grey castle as the setting, and, in the distance, the serene clear hills of Perugini’s backgrounds, was an astonishing contrast. Even Lady Caro
line, used all her life to beauty, who had been everywhere and seen everything, felt the surprise of it. It was, that year, a particularly wonderful spring, and of all the months at San Salvatore April, if the weather was fine, was best. May scorched and withered; March was restless, and could be hard and cold in its brightness; but April came along softly like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched.
Mrs. Wilkins, we have seen, responded to it instantly. She, so to speak, at once flung off all her garments and dived straight into glory, unhesitatingly, with a cry of rapture.
Mrs. Arbuthnot was stirred and touched, but differently. She had odd sensations — presently to be described.
Mrs. Fisher, being old, was of a closer, more impermeable texture, and offered more resistance; but she too had odd sensations, also in their place to be described.
Lady Caroline, already amply acquainted with beautiful houses and climates, to whom they could not come quite with the same surprise, yet was very nearly as quick to react as Mrs. Wilkins. The place had an almost instantaneous influence on her as well, and of one part of this influence she was aware: it had made her, beginning on the very first evening, want to think, and acted on her curiously like a conscience. What this conscience seemed to press upon her notice with an insistence that startled her — Lady Caroline hesitated to accept the word, but it would keep on coming into her head — was that she was tawdry.
She must think that out.
The morning after the first dinner together, she woke up in a condition of regret that she should have been so talkative to Mrs. Wilkins the night before. What had made her be, she wondered. Now, of course, Mrs. Wilkins would want to grab, she would want to be inseparable; and the thought of a grabbing and an inseparableness that should last four weeks made Scrap’s spirit swoon within her. No doubt the encouraged Mrs. Wilkins would be lurking in the top garden waiting to waylay her when she went out, and would hail her with morning cheerfulness. How much she hated being hailed with morning cheerfulness — or indeed, hailed at all. She oughtn’t to have encouraged Mrs. Wilkins the night before. Fatal to encourage. It was bad enough not to encourage, for just sitting there and saying nothing seemed usually to involve her, but actively to encourage was suicidal. What on earth had made her? Now she would have to waste all the precious time, the precious, lovely time for thinking in, for getting square with herself, in shaking Mrs. Wilkins off.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 279