The four, however, were so much preoccupied by their own conversation that they ate it without noticing how good it was. Even Mrs Fisher – she who in such matters was manly – did not notice. The entire excellent cooking was to her as though it were not, which shows how much she must have been stirred.
She was stirred. It was that Mrs Wilkins. She was enough to stir anybody. And she was undoubtedly encouraged by Lady Caroline, who, in her turn, was no doubt influenced by the Chianti.
Mrs Fisher was very glad there were no men present, for they certainly would have been foolish about Lady Caroline. She was precisely the sort of young woman to unbalance them – especially, Mrs Fisher recognized, at that moment. Perhaps it was the Chianti momentarily intensifying her personality, but she was undeniably most attractive, and there were few things Mrs Fisher disliked more than having to look on while sensible, intelligent men, who the moment before were talking seriously and interestingly about real matters, became merely foolish and simpering – she had seen them actually simpering – just because in walked a bit of bird-brained beauty. Even Mr Gladstone, that great, wise statesman, whose hand had once rested for an unforgettable moment solemnly on her head, would have, she felt, on perceiving Lady Caroline left off talking sense and horribly embarked on badinage.
“You see,” Mrs Wilkins said – a silly trick that, with which she mostly began her sentences; Mrs Fisher each time wished to say, “Pardon me – I do not see, I hear”, but why trouble? – “You see,” said Mrs Wilkins, leaning across towards Lady Caroline, “we arranged, didn’t we, in London, that if any of us wanted to we could each invite one guest. So now I’m doing it.”
“I don’t remember that,” said Mrs Fisher, her eyes on her plate.
“Oh yes, we did – didn’t we, Rose?”
“Yes – I remember,” said Lady Caroline. “Only it seemed so incredible that one could ever want to. One’s whole idea was to get away from one’s friends.”
“And one’s husbands.”
Again that unseemly plural. But how altogether unseemly, thought Mrs Fisher. Such implications. Mrs Arbuthnot clearly thought so too, for she had turned red.
“And family affection,” said Lady Caroline – or was it the Chianti speaking? Surely it was the Chianti.
“And the want of family affection,” said Mrs Wilkins – what a light she was throwing on her home life and real character.
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” said Lady Caroline. “I’d stay with that. It would give one room.”
“Oh no, no – it’s dreadful,” cried Mrs Wilkins. “It’s as if one had no clothes on.”
“But I like that,” said Lady Caroline.
“Really—” said Mrs Fisher.
“It’s a divine feeling, getting rid of things,” said Lady Caroline, who was talking altogether to Mrs Wilkins and paid no attention to the other two.
“Oh, but in a bitter wind to have nothing on and know there never will be anything on and you are going to get colder and colder till at last you die of it – that’s what it was like, living with somebody who didn’t love one.”
These confidences, thought Mrs Fisher… and no excuse whatever for Mrs Wilkins, who was making them entirely on plain water. Mrs Arbuthnot, judging from her face, quite shared Mrs Fisher’s disapproval; she was fidgeting.
“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 bedclothes 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 onto 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 affectation to be christened Mellersh – was, it seemed, Mrs Wilkins’s husband, and therefore 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 fewer 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 enquire – “And they two shall be one flesh”?* Clearly also, then, one room. But Mrs Fisher did not enquire. She did not care even to allude to such texts to someone 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 monopolize 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.”
&n
bsp; “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.”
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 mealtimes. 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 Enchanted April Page 13