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Page 55
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 affection 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 unreserved 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.
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