The Enchanted April
“It seems _so_ wonderful,” she went on in a kind of burst, “and—it is
such a miserable day . . .”
And then she sat looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot with the eyes of an
imprisoned dog.
“This poor thing,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose life was spent in
helping and alleviating, “needs advice.”
She accordingly prepared herself patiently to give it.
“If you see me in church,” she said, kindly and attentively, “I suppose
you live in Hampstead too?”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its long
thin neck drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead bowed
her, “Oh yes.”
“Where?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed, naturally
first proceeded to collect the facts.
But Mrs. Wilkins, laying her hand softly and caressingly on the part
of _The Times_ where the advertisement was, as though the mere printed
words of it were precious, only said, “Perhaps that’s why _this_ seems
so wonderful.”
“No—I think _that’s_ wonderful anyhow,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, forgetting
facts and faintly sighing.
“Then you _were_ reading it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, her eyes going dreamy again.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” murmured Mrs. Wilkins.
“Wonderful,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Her face, which had lit up, faded
into patience again. “Very wonderful,” she said. “But it’s no use
wasting one’s time thinking of such things.”
“Oh, but it _is_,” was Mrs. Wilkins’s quick, surprising reply;
surprising because it was so much unlike the rest of her—the
characterless coat and skirt, the crumpled hat, the undecided wisp of
hair straggling out. “And just the considering of them is worth while
in itself—such a change from Hampstead—and sometimes I believe—I really
do believe—if one considers hard enough one gets things.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot observed her patiently. In what category would she,
supposing she had to, put her?
“Perhaps,” she said, leaning forward a little, “you will tell me your
name. If we are to be friends”—she smiled her grave smile—“as I hope we
are, we had better begin at the beginning.”
“Oh yes—how kind of you. I’m Mrs. Wilkins,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t
expect,” she added, flushing, as Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, “that it
conveys anything to you. Sometimes it—it doesn’t seem to convey
anything to me either. But”—she looked round with a movement of seeking
help—“I _am_ Mrs. Wilkins.”
She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of
facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a
pugdog’s tail. There it was, however. There was no doing anything with
it. Wilkins she was and Wilkins she would remain; and though her
husband encouraged her to give it on all occasions as Mrs.
Mellersh-Wilkins she only did that when he was within earshot, for she
thought Mellersh made Wilkins worse, emphasising it in the way
Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasises the villa.
When first he suggested she should add Mellersh she had objected for
the above reason, and after a pause—Mellersh was much too prudent to
speak except after a pause, during which presumably he was taking a
careful mental copy of his coming observation—he said, much displeased,
“But I am not a villa,” and looked at her as he looks who hopes, for
perhaps the hundredth time, that he may not have married a fool.
Of course he was not a villa, Mrs. Wilkins assured him; she had never
supposed he was; she had not dreamed of meaning . . . she was only just
thinking . . .
The more she explained the more earnest became Mellersh’s hope,
familiar to him by this time, for he had then been a husband for two
years, that he might not by any chance have married a fool; and they
had a prolonged quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which is
conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the
other, as to whether or no Mrs. Wilkins had intended to suggest that
Mr. Wilkins was a villa.
“I believe,” she had thought when it was at last over—it took a long
while—“that _anybody_ would quarrel about _anything_ when they’ve not
left off being together for a single day for two whole years. What we
both need is a holiday.”
“My husband,” went on Mrs. Wilkins to Mrs. Arbuthnot, trying to throw
some light on herself, “is a solicitor. He—” She cast about for
something she could say elucidatory of Mellersh, and found: “He’s very
handsome.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot kindly, “that must be a great pleasure to
you.”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Wilkins.
“Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little taken aback, for constant
intercourse with the poor had accustomed her to have her pronouncements
accepted without question, “because beauty—handsomeness—is a gift like
any other, and if it is properly used—”
She trailed off into silence. Mrs. Wilkins’s great grey eyes were fixed
on her, and it seemed suddenly to Mrs. Arbuthnot that perhaps she was
becoming crystallised into a habit of exposition, and of exposition
after the manner of nursemaids, through having an audience that
couldn’t but agree, that would be afraid, if it wished, to interrupt,
that didn’t know, that was, in fact, at her mercy.
But Mrs. Wilkins was not listening; for just then, absurd as it seemed,
a picture had flashed across her brain, and there were two figures in
it sitting together under a great trailing wistaria that stretched
across the branches of a tree she didn’t know, and it was herself and
Mrs. Arbuthnot—she saw them—she saw them. And behind them, bright in
sunshine, were old grey walls—the mediaeval castle—she saw it—they
were there . . .
She therefore stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot and did not hear a word she
said. And Mrs. Arbuthnot stared too at Mrs. Wilkins, arrested by the
expression on her face, which was swept by the excitement of what she
saw, and was as luminous and tremulous under it as water in sunlight
when it is ruffled by a gust of wind. At this moment, if she had been
at a party, Mrs. Wilkins would have been looked at with interest.
They stared at each other; Mrs. Arbuthnot surprised, inquiringly, Mrs.
Wilkins with the eyes of some one who has had a revelation. Of course.
That was how it could be done. She herself, she by herself, couldn’t
afford it, and wouldn’t be able, even if she could afford it, to go
there all alone; but she and Mrs. Arbuthnot together . . .
She leaned across the table. “Why don’t we try and get it?” she
whispered.
Mrs. Arbuthnot became even more wide-eyed. “Get it?” she repeated.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, still as though she were afraid of being
overheard. “Not just sit here and say How wonderful, and then go home
to Hampstead without having put out a finger—go home just as usual and
see about the dinner and the fish just as we’ve been doing for years
and years and will go on doing for years and years. In fact,” said Mrs.
Wilkins, flushing to the roots of her hair, for the sound of what she
was saying, of what was coming pouring out, frightened her, and yet she
couldn’t stop, “I see no end to it. There is no end to it. So that
there ought to be a break, there ought to be intervals—in everybody’s
interests. Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be
happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer. You see,
after a bit everybody needs a holiday.”
“But—how do you mean, get it?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“Take it,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
“Take it?”
“Rent it. Hire it. Have it.”
“But—do you mean you and I?”
“Yes. Between us. Share. Then it would only cost half, and you look
so—you look exactly as if you wanted it just as much as I do—as if you
ought to have a rest—have something happy happen to you.”
“Why, but we don’t know each other.”
“But just think how well we would if we went away together for a month!
And I’ve saved for a rainy day, and I expect so have you, and this _is_
the rainy day—look at it—”
“She is unbalanced,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot; yet she felt strangely
stirred.
“Think of getting away for a whole month—from everything—to heaven—”
“She shouldn’t say things like that,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “The
vicar—” Yet she felt strangely stirred. It would indeed be wonderful to
have a rest, a cessation.
Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with the
poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority of
the explainer, “But then, you see, heaven isn’t somewhere else. It is
here and now. We are told so.”
She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to help
and enlighten the poor. “Heaven is within us,” she said in her gentle
low voice. “We are told that on the very highest authority. And you
know the lines about the kindred points, don’t you—”
“Oh yes, I know _them_,” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.
“The kindred points of heaven and home,” continued Mrs. Arbuthnot, who
was used to finishing her sentences. “Heaven is in our home.”
“It isn’t,” said Mrs. Wilkins, again surprisingly.
Mrs. Arbuthnot was taken aback. Then she said gently, “Oh, but it is.
It is there if we choose, if we make it.”
“I do choose, and I do make it, and it isn’t,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
Then Mrs. Arbuthnot was silent, for she too sometimes had doubts about
homes. She sat and looked uneasily at Mrs. Wilkins, feeling more and
more the urgent need to getting her classified. If she could only
classify Mrs. Wilkins, get her safely under her proper heading, she
felt that she herself would regain her balance, which did seem very
strangely to be slipping all to one side. For neither had she had a
holiday for years, and the advertisement when she saw it had set her
dreaming, and Mrs. Wilkins’s excitement about it was infectious, and
she had the sensation, as she listened to her impetuous, odd talk and
watched her lit-up face, that she was being stirred out of sleep.
Clearly Mrs. Wilkins was unbalanced, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had met the
unbalanced before—indeed she was always meeting them—and they had no
effect on her own stability at all; whereas this one was making her
feel quite wobbly, quite as though to be off and away, away from her
compass points of God, Husband, Home and Duty—she didn’t feel as if
Mrs. Wilkins intended Mr. Wilkins to come too—and just for once be
happy, would be both good and desirable. Which of course it wasn’t;
which certainly of course it wasn’t. She, also, had a nest-egg,
invested gradually in the Post Office Savings Bank, but to suppose that
she would ever forget her duty to the extent of drawing it out and
spending it on herself was surely absurd. Surely she couldn’t, she
wouldn’t ever do such a thing? Surely she wouldn’t, she couldn’t ever
forget her poor, forget misery and sickness as completely as that? No
doubt a trip to Italy would be extraordinarily delightful, but there
were many delightful things one would like to do, and what was strength
given to one for except to help one not to do them?
Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great
four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on
these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head resting
on them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being awakened out
of so simple and untroublesome a condition. Therefore it was that she
searched with earnestness for a heading under which to put Mrs.
Wilkins, and in this way illumine and steady her own mind; and sitting
there looking at her uneasily after her last remark, and feeling
herself becoming more and more unbalanced and infected, she decided
_pro tem_, as the vicar said at meetings, to put her under the heading
Nerves. It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the
category Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but
Mrs. Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final