The Enchanted April (17 page)

“I've had the most wonderful day,” began Mrs. Wilkins, her eyes shining.

Scrap lowered hers. “Oh,” she thought, “she's going to gush.”

“As though anybody were interested in her day,” thought Mrs. Fisher, lowering hers also.

In fact, whenever Mrs. Wilkins spoke Mrs. Fisher deliberately cast down her eyes. Thus would she mark her disapproval. Besides, it seemed the only safe thing to do with her eyes, for no one could tell what the uncurbed creature would say next. That which she had just said, for instance, about men— addressed, too, to her—what could she mean? Better not conjecture, thought Mrs. Fisher; and her eyes, though cast down, yet saw Lady Caroline stretch out her hand to the Chianti flask and fill her glass again.

Again. She had done it once already, and the fish was only just going out of the room. Mrs. Fisher could see that the other respectable member of the party, Mrs. Arbuthnot, was noticing it too. Mrs. Arbuthnot was, she hoped and believed, respectable and well-meaning. It is true she also had invaded her sitting-room, but no doubt she had been dragged there by the other one, and Mrs. Fisher had little if anything against Mrs. Arbuthnot, and observed with approval that she only drank water. That was as it should be. So, indeed, to give her her dues, did the freckled one; and very right at their age. She herself drank wine, but with what moderation: one meal, one glass. And she was sixty-five, and might properly, and even beneficially, have had at least two.

“That,” she said to Lady Caroline, cutting right across what Mrs. Wilkins was telling them about her wonderful day and indicating the wine-glass, “is very bad for you.”

Lady Caroline, however, could not have heard, for she continued to sip, her elbow on the table, and listen to what Mrs. Wilkins was saying.

And what was it she was saying? She had invited somebody to come and stay? A man?

Mrs. Fisher could not credit her ears. Yet it evidently was a man, for she spoke of the person as he.

Suddenly and for the first time—but then this was most important—Mrs. Fisher addressed Mrs. Wilkins directly. She was sixty-five, and cared very little what sorts of women she happened to be with for a month, but if the women were to be mixed with men it was a different proposition altogether. She was not going to be made a cat's-paw of. She had not come out there to sanction by her presence what used in her day to be called fast behaviour. Nothing had been said at the interview in London about men; if there had been she would have declined, of course, to come.

“What is his name?” asked Mrs. Fisher, abruptly interposing.

Mrs. Wilkins turned to her with a slight surprise. “Wilkins,” she said.

“Wilkins?”

“Yes.”

“Your name?”

“And his.”

“A relation?”

“Not blood.”

“A connection?”

“A husband.”

Mrs. Fisher once more cast down her eyes. She could not talk to Mrs. Wilkins. There was something about the things she said…. “A husband.” Suggesting one of many. Always that unseemly twist to everything. Why could she not say “My husband”? Besides, Mrs. Fisher had, she herself knew not for what reason, taken both the Hampstead young women for widows. War ones. There had been an absence of mention of husbands at the interview which would not, she considered, be natural if such persons did after all exist. And if a husband was not a relation, who was? “Not blood.” What a way to talk. Why, a husband was the first of all relations. How well she remembered Ruskin—no, it was not Ruskin, it was the Bible that said a man should leave his father and mother and cleave only to his wife; showing that she became by marriage an even more than blood relation. And if the husband's father and mother were to be nothing to him compared to his wife, how much less than nothing ought the wife's father and mother be compared to her husband. She herself had been unable to leave her father and mother in order to cleave to Mr. Fisher because they were no longer, when she married, alive, but she certainly would have left them if they had been there to leave. Not blood, indeed. Silly talk.

The dinner was very good. Succulence succeeded succulence. Costanza had determined to do as she chose in the matter of cream and eggs the first week, and see what happened at the end of it when the bills had to be paid. Her experience of the English was that they were quiet about bills. They were shy of words. They believed readily. Besides, who was the mistress here? In the absence of a definite one, it occurred to Costanza that she might as well be the mistress herself. So she did as she chose about the dinner, and it was very good.

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 recognised, 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 sensiblé, 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 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, scrutinised 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 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 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.”