The Enchanted April
But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write to her
husband and say “Come.” The Wilkins _ménage_, however pompous Mellersh
might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a healthier, more
natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to Mellersh and would get
an answer. She couldn’t write to Frederick, for only too well did she
know he wouldn’t answer. At least, he might answer—a hurried scribble,
showing how much bored he was at doing it, with perfunctory thanks for
her letter. But that would be worse than no answer at all; for his
handwriting, her name on an envelope addressed by him, stabbed her
heart. Too acutely did it bring back the letters of their beginnings
together, the letters from him so desolate with separation, so aching
with love and longing. To see apparently one of these very same letters
arrive, and open it and find:
Dear Rose—Thanks for letter. Glad you’re having a good time. Don’t
hurry back. Say if you want any money. Everything going splendidly
here.—Yours,
Frederick.
—no, it couldn’t be borne.
“I don’t think I’ll come down to the village with you to-day,” she
said, looking up at Lotty with eyes suddenly gone dim. “I think I want
to think.”
“All right,” said Lotty, at once starting off briskly down the path.
“But don’t think too long,” she called back over her shoulder. “Write
and invite him at once.”
“Invite whom?” asked Rose, startled.
“Your husband.”
Chapter 12
At the evening meal, which was the first time the whole four sat round
the dining-room table together, Scrap appeared.
She appeared quite punctually, and in one of those wrappers or
tea-gowns which are sometimes described as ravishing. This one really
was ravishing. It certainly ravished Mrs. Wilkins, who could not take
her eyes off the enchanting figure opposite. It was a shell-pink
garment, and clung to the adorable Scrap as though it, too, loved her.
“What a beautiful dress!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins eagerly.
“What—this old rag?” said Scrap, glancing down at it as if to see which
one she had got on. “I’ve had it a hundred years.” And she concentrated
on her soup.
“You must be very cold in it,” said Mrs. Fisher, thin-lipped; for it
showed a great deal of Scrap—the whole of her arms, for instance, and
even where it covered her up it was so thin that you still saw her.
“Who—me?” said Scrap, looking up a moment. “Oh, no.”
And she continued her soup.
“You mustn’t catch a chill, you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, feeling
that such loveliness must at all costs be preserved unharmed. “There’s
a great difference here when the sun goes down.”
“I’m quite warm,” said Scrap, industriously eating her soup.
“You look as if you had nothing at all on underneath,” said Mrs.
Fisher.
“I haven’t. At least, hardly anything,” said Scrap, finishing her soup.
“How very imprudent,” said Mrs. Fisher, “and how highly improper.”
Whereupon Scrap stared at her.
Mrs. Fisher had arrived at dinner feeling friendly towards Lady
Caroline. She at least had not intruded into her room and sat at her
table and written with her pen. She did, Mrs. Fisher had supposed, know
how to behave. Now it appeared that she did not know, for was this
behaving, to come dressed—no, undressed—like that to a meal? Such
behaviour was not only exceedingly improper but also most
inconsiderate, for the indelicate creature would certainly catch a
chill, and then infect the entire party. Mrs. Fisher had a great
objection to other people’s chills. They were always the fruit of
folly; and then they were handed on to her, who had done nothing at all
to deserve them.
“Bird-brained,” thought Mrs. Fisher, sternly contemplating Lady
Caroline. “Not an idea in her head except vanity.”
“But there are no men here,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “so how can it be
improper? Have you noticed,” she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who
endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, “how difficult it is to be
improper without men?”
Mrs. Fisher neither answered her nor looked at her; but Scrap looked at
her, and did that with her mouth which in any other mouth would have
been a faint grin. Seen from without, across the bowl of nasturtiums,
it was the most beautiful of brief and dimpled smiles.
She had a very alive sort of face, that one, thought Scrap, observing
Mrs. Wilkins with a dawn of interest. It was rather like a field of
corn swept by lights and shadows. Both she and the dark one, Scrap
noticed, had changed their clothes, but only in order to put on silk
jumpers. The same amount of trouble would have been enough to dress
them properly, reflected Scrap. Naturally they looked like nothing on
earth in the jumpers. It didn’t matter what Mrs. Fisher wore; indeed,
the only thing for her, short of plumes and ermine, was what she did
wear. But these others were quite young still, and quite attractive.
They really definitely had faces. How different life would be for them
if they made the most of themselves instead of the least. And yet—Scrap
was suddenly bored, and turned away her thoughts and absently ate
toast. What did it matter? If you did make the best of yourself, you
only collected people round you who ended by wanting to grab.
“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 to her 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 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?”