“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 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 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
