The Enchanted April
going up with the six ten pound notes in her hand-bag to the address
near the Brompton Oratory where the owner lived, presented them to him,
waiving her right to pay only half. And when he saw her, and her parted
hair and soft dark eyes and sober apparel, and heard her grave voice,
he told her not to bother about writing round for those references.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, scribbling a receipt for the rent. “Do
sit down, won’t you? Nasty day, isn’t it? You’ll find the old castle
has lots of sunshine, whatever else it hasn’t got. Husband going?”
Mrs. Arbuthnot, unused to anything but candour, looked troubled at this
question and began to murmur inarticulately, and the owner at once
concluded that she was a widow—a war one, of course, for other widows
were old—and that he had been a fool not to guess it.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning red right up to his fair hair. “I
didn’t mean—h’m, h’m, h’m—”
He ran his eye over the receipt he had written. “Yes, I think that’s
all right,” he said, getting up and giving it to her. “Now,” he added,
taking the six notes she held out and smiling, for Mrs. Arbuthnot was
agreeable to look at, “I’m richer, and you’re happier. I’ve got money,
and you’ve got San Salvatore. I wonder which is best.”
“I think you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot with her sweet smile.
He laughed and opened the door for her. It was a pity the interview was
over. He would have liked to ask her to lunch with him. She made him
think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting,
besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.
“I hope you’ll like the old place,” he said, holding her hand a minute
at the door. The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was
reassuring; it was the sort of hand, he thought, that children would
like to hold in the dark. “In April, you know, it’s simply a mass of
flowers. And then there’s the sea. You must wear white. You’ll fit in
very well. There are several portraits of you there.”
“Portraits?”
“Madonnas, you know. There’s one on the stairs really exactly like
you.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot smiled and said good-bye and thanked him. Without the
least trouble and at once she had got him placed in his proper
category: he was an artist and of an effervescent temperament.
She shook hands and left, and he wished she hadn’t. After she was gone
he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only
because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as
soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that
grave, sweet lady.
Rose Arbuthnot.
Her letter, making the appointment, lay on the table.
Pretty name.
That difficulty, then, was overcome. But there still remained the other
one, the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs,
and especially on Mrs. Wilkins’s, which was in size, compared with Mrs.
Arbuthnot’s, as the egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in
its turn was overcome by the vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins,
revealing to her the steps to be taken for its overcoming. Having got
San Salvatore—the beautiful, the religious name, fascinated them—they
in their turn would advertise in the Agony Column of _The Times_, and
would inquire after two more ladies, of similar desires to their own,
to join them and share the expenses.
At once the strain of the nest-eggs would be reduced from half to a
quarter. Mrs. Wilkins was prepared to fling her entire egg into the
adventure, but she realised that if it were to cost even sixpence over
her ninety pounds her position would be terrible. Imagine going to
Mellersh and saying, “I owe.” It would be awful enough if some day
circumstances forced her to say, “I have no nest-egg,” but at least she
would be supported in such a case by the knowledge that the egg had
been her own. She therefore, though prepared to fling her last penny
into the adventure, was not prepared to fling into it a single farthing
that was not demonstrably her own; and she felt that if her share of
the rent was reduced to fifteen pounds only, she would have a safe
margin for the other expenses. Also they might economise very much on
food—gather olives off their own trees and eat them, for instance, and
perhaps catch fish.
Of course, as they pointed out to each other, they could reduce the
rent to an almost negligible sum by increasing the number of sharers;
they could have six more ladies instead of two if they wanted to,
seeing that there were eight beds. But supposing the eight beds were
distributed in couples in four rooms, it would not be altogether what
they wanted, to find themselves shut up at night with a stranger.
Besides, they thought that perhaps having so many would not be quite
so peaceful. After all, they were going to San Salvatore for peace and
rest and joy, and six more ladies, especially if they got into one’s
bedroom, might a little interfere with that.
speech first
However, there seemed to be only two ladies in England at that moment
who had any wish to join them, for they had only two answers to their
advertisement.
“Well, we only want two,” said Mrs. Wilkins, quickly recovering, for
she had imagined a great rush.
“I think a choice would have been a good thing,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“You mean because then we needn’t have had Lady Caroline Dester.”
“I didn’t say that,” gently protested Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“We needn’t have her,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Just one more person would
help us a great deal with the rent. We’re not obliged to have two.”
“But why should we not have her? She seems really quite what we want.”
“Yes—she does from her letter,” said Mrs. Wilkins doubtfully.
She felt she would be terribly shy of Lady Caroline. Incredible as it
may seem, seeing how they get into everything, Mrs. Wilkins had never
come across any members of the aristocracy.
They interviewed Lady Caroline, and they interviewed the other
applicant, a Mrs. Fisher.
Lady Caroline came to the club in Shaftesbury Avenue, and appeared to
be wholly taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from
everybody she had ever known. When she saw the club, and Mrs.
Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Wilkins, she was sure that here was exactly what
she wanted. She would be in Italy—a place she adored; she would not be
in hotels—places she loathed; she would not be staying with
friends—persons she disliked; and she would be in the company of
strangers who would never mention a single person she knew, for the
simple reason that they had not, could not have, and would not come
across them. She asked a few questions about the fourth woman, and was
satisfied with the answers. Mrs. Fisher, of Prince of Wales Terrace. A
widow. She too would be unacquainted with any of her friends. Lady
Caroline did not even know where Prince of Wales Terrace was.
“It’s in London,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“Is it?” said Lady Caroline.
It all seemed most restful.
Mrs. Fisher was unable to come to the club because, she explained by
letter, she could not walk without a stick; therefore Mrs. Arbuthnot
and Mrs. Wilkins went to her.
“But if she can’t come to the club how can she go to Italy?” wondered
Mrs. Wilkins, aloud.
“We shall hear that from her own lips,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
From Mrs. Fisher’s lips they merely heard, in reply to delicate
questioning, that sitting in trains was not walking about; and they
knew that already. Except for the stick, however, she appeared to be a
most desirable fourth—quiet, educated, elderly. She was much older than
they or Lady Caroline—Lady Caroline had informed them she was
twenty-eight—but not so old as to have ceased to be active-minded. She
was very respectable indeed, and still wore a complete suit of black
though her husband had died, she told them, eleven years before. Her
house was full of signed photographs of illustrious Victorian dead, all
of whom she said she had known when she was little. Her father had been
an eminent critic, and in his house she had seen practically everybody
who was anybody in letters and art. Carlyle had scowled at her; Matthew
Arnold had held her on his knee; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on
the length of her pig-tail. She animatedly showed them the photographs,
hung everywhere on her walls, pointing out the signatures with her
stick, and she neither gave any information about her own husband nor
asked for any about the husbands of her visitors; which was the
greatest comfort. Indeed, she seemed to think that they also were
widows, for on inquiring who the fourth lady was to be, and being told
it was a Lady Caroline Dester, she said, “Is she a widow too?” And on
their explaining that she was not, because she had not yet been
married, observed with abstracted amiability, “All in good time.”
But Mrs. Fisher’s very abstractedness—and she seemed to be absorbed
chiefly in the interesting people she used to know and in their
memorial photographs, and quite a good part of the interview was taken
up by reminiscent anecdote of Carlyle, Meredith, Matthew Arnold,
Tennyson, and a host of others—her very abstractedness was a
recommendation. She only asked, she said, to be allowed to sit quiet in
the sun and remember. That was all Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins
asked of their sharers. It was their idea of a perfect sharer that she
should sit quiet in the sun and remember, rousing herself on Saturday
evenings sufficiently to pay her share. Mrs. Fisher was very fond, too,
she said, of flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end with
her father at Box Hill—
“Who lived at Box Hill?” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on Mrs.
Fisher’s reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who had
actually been familiar with all the really and truly and undoubtedly
great—actually seen them, heard them talking, touched them.
Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some surprise.
Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly of Mrs.
Fisher’s reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs. Arbuthnot would
take her away and she wouldn’t have heard half, had already interrupted
several times with questions which appeared ignorant to Mrs. Fisher.
“Meredith of course,” said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. “I remember a
particular week-end”—she continued. “My father often took me, but I
always remember this week-end particularly—”
“Did you know Keats?” eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.
Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had
been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare.
“Oh of course—how ridiculous of me!” cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing
scarlet. “It’s because”—she floundered—“it’s because the immortals
somehow still seem alive, don’t they—as if they were here, going to
walk into the room in another minute—and one forgets they are dead. In
fact one knows perfectly well that they’re not dead—not nearly so dead
as you and I even now,” she assured Mrs. Fisher, who observed her over
the top of her glasses.
“I thought I _saw_ Keats the other day,” Mrs. Wilkins incoherently
proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher’s look over the top of her glasses.
“In Hampstead—crossing the road in front of that house—you know—the
house where he lived—”
Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going.
Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them.
“I _really_ thought I saw him,” protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing for
belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour passed
over her face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs. Fisher’s
glasses and the steady eyes looking at her over their tops. “I believe
I _did_ see him—he was dressed in a—”
Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice said
they would be late for lunch.
It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references. She had no