The Enchanted April
“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 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 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 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