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 recognized, 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?"
"Yes--I remember," said Lady Caroline. "Only it seemed so incredible that one could every 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 gla.s.s in her fingers, scrutinized 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 Sc.r.a.p.
"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 Sc.r.a.p.
"I"ll lend it to you," said Mrs. Wilkins, over whose face laughter rippled.
"No," said Sc.r.a.p.
"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."