“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 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,
