The Enchanted April
wish to find herself shut up for four weeks with somebody who saw
things. It is true that there were three sitting-rooms, besides the
garden and the battlements at San Salvatore, so that there would be
opportunities of withdrawal from Mrs. Wilkins; but it would be
disagreeable to Mrs. Fisher, for instance, if Mrs. Wilkins were
suddenly to assert that she saw Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was dead; let
him remain so. She had no wish to be told he was walking about the
garden. The only reference she really wanted, for she was much too old
and firmly seated in her place in the world for questionable associates
to matter to her, was one with regard to Mrs. Wilkins’s health. Was her
health quite normal? Was she an ordinary, everyday, sensible woman?
Mrs. Fisher felt that if she were given even one address she would be
able to find out what she needed. So she asked for references, and her
visitors appeared to be so much taken aback—Mrs. Wilkins, indeed, was
instantly sobered—that she added, “It is usual.”
Mrs. Wilkins found her speech first. “But,” she said, “aren’t we the
ones who ought to ask for some from you?”
And this seemed to Mrs. Arbuthnot too the right attitude. Surely it was
they who were taking Mrs. Fisher into their party, and not Mrs. Fisher
who was taking them into it?
For answer Mrs. Fisher, leaning on her stick, went to the writing-table
and in a firm hand wrote down three names and offered them to Mrs.
Wilkins, and the names were so respectable, more, they were so
momentous, they were so nearly august, that just to read them was
enough. The President of the Royal Academy, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Governor of the Bank of England—who would dare
disturb such personages in their meditations with inquiries as to
whether a female friend of theirs was all she should be?
“They have known me since I was little,” said Mrs. Fisher—everybody
seemed to have known Mrs. Fisher since or when she was little.
“I don’t think references are nice things at all between—between
ordinary decent women,” burst out Mrs. Wilkins, made courageous by
being, as she felt, at bay; for she very well knew that the only
reference she could give without getting into trouble was Shoolbred,
and she had little confidence in that, as it would be entirely based on
Mellersh’s fish. “We’re not business people. We needn’t distrust each
other—”
And Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with a dignity that yet was sweet, “I’m afraid
references do bring an atmosphere into our holiday plan that isn’t
quite what we want, and I don’t think we’ll take yours up or give you
any ourselves. So that I suppose you won’t wish to join us.”
And she held out her hand in good-bye.
Then Mrs. Fisher, her gaze diverted to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who inspired
trust and liking even in Tube officials, felt that she would be idiotic
to lose the opportunity of being in Italy in the particular conditions
offered, and that she and this calm-browed woman between them would
certainly be able to curb the other one when she had her attacks. So
she said, taking Mrs. Arbuthnot’s offered hand, “Very well. I waive
references.”
She waived references.
The two as they walked to the station in Kensington High Street could
not help thinking that this way of putting it was lofty. Even Mrs.
Arbuthnot, spendthrift of excuses for lapses, thought Mrs. Fisher might
have used other words; and Mrs. Wilkins, by the time she got to the
station, and the walk and the struggle on the crowded pavement with
other people’s umbrellas had warmed her blood, actually suggested
waiving Mrs. Fisher.
“If there is any waiving to be done, do let us be the ones who waive,”
she said eagerly.
But Mrs. Arbuthnot, as usual, held on to Mrs. Wilkins; and presently,
having cooled down in the train, Mrs. Wilkins announced that at San
Salvatore Mrs. Fisher would find her level. “I see her finding her
level there,” she said, her eyes very bright.
Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, sitting with her quiet hands folded, turned
over in her mind how best she could help Mrs. Wilkins not to see quite
so much; or at least, if she must see, to see in silence.
Chapter 4
It had been arranged that Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins, travelling
together, should arrive at San Salvatore on the evening of March
31st—the owner, who told them how to get there, appreciated their
disinclination to begin their time in it on April 1st—and Lady Caroline
and Mrs. Fisher, as yet unacquainted and therefore under no obligations
to bore each other on the journey, for only towards the end would they
find out by a process of sifting who they were, were to arrive on the
morning of April 2nd. In this way everything would be got nicely ready
for the two who seemed, in spite of the equality of the sharing, yet to
have something about them of guests.
There were disagreeable incidents towards the end of March, when Mrs.
Wilkins, her heart in her mouth and her face a mixture of guilt, terror
and determination, told her husband that she had been invited to Italy,
and he declined to believe it. Of course he declined to believe it.
Nobody had ever invited his wife to Italy before. There was no
precedent. He required proofs. The only proof was Mrs. Arbuthnot, and
Mrs. Wilkins had produced her; but after what entreaties, what
passionate persuading! Mrs. Arbuthnot had not imagined she would have
to face Mr. Wilkins and say things to him that were short of the truth,
and it brought home to her what she had for some time suspected, that
she was slipping more and more away from God.
Indeed, the whole of March was filled with unpleasant, anxious moments.
It was an uneasy month. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s conscience, made
super-sensitive by years of pampering, could not reconcile what she was
doing with its own high standard of what was right. It gave her little
peace. It nudged her at her prayers. It punctuated her entreaties for
divine guidance with disconcerting questions, such as, “Are you not a
hypocrite? Do you really mean that? Would you not, frankly, be
disappointed if that prayer were granted?”
The prolonged wet, raw weather was on the side too of her conscience,
producing far more sickness than usual among the poor. They had
bronchitis; they had fevers; there was no end to the distress. And here
she was going off, spending precious money on going off, simply and
solely to be happy. One woman. One woman being happy, and these piteous
multitudes . . .
She was unable to look the vicar in the face. He did not know, nobody
knew, what she was going to do, and from the very beginning she was
unable to look anybody in the face. She excused herself from making
speeches appealing for money. How could she stand up and ask people for
money when she herself was spending so much on her own selfish
pleasure? Nor did it help her or quiet her that, having actually told
Frederick, in her desire to make up for what she was squandering, that
she would be grateful if he would let her have some money, he instantly
gave her a cheque for £100. He asked no questions. She was scarlet. He
looked at her a moment and then looked away. It was a relief to
Frederick that she should take some money. She gave it all immediately
to the organisation she worked with, and found herself more tangled in
doubts than ever.
Mrs. Wilkins, on the contrary, had no doubts. She was quite certain
that it was a most proper thing to have a holiday, and altogether right
and beautiful to spend one’s own hard-collected savings on being happy.
“Think how much nicer we shall be when we come back,” she said to Mrs.
Arbuthnot, encouraging that pale lady.
No, Mrs. Wilkins had no doubts, but she had fears; and March was for
her too an anxious month, with the unconscious Mr. Wilkins coming back
daily to his dinner and eating his fish in the silence of imagined
security.
Also things happen so awkwardly. It really is astonishing, how
awkwardly they happen. Mrs. Wilkins, who was very careful all this
month to give Mellersh only the food he liked, buying it and hovering
over its cooking with a zeal more than common, succeeded so well that
Mellersh was pleased; definitely pleased; so much pleased that he began
to think that he might, after all, have married the right wife instead
of, as he had frequently suspected, the wrong one. The result was that
on the third Sunday in the month—Mrs. Wilkins had made up her trembling
mind that on the fourth Sunday, there being five in that March and
it being on the fifth of them that she and Mrs. Arbuthnot were to
start, she would tell Mellersh of her invitation—on the third Sunday,
then, after a very well-cooked lunch in which the Yorkshire pudding
had melted in his mouth and the apricot tart had been so perfect that
he ate it all, Mellersh, smoking his cigar by the brightly burning
fire the while hail gusts banged on the window, said: “I am thinking
of taking you to Italy for Easter.” And paused for her astounded and
grateful ecstasy.
None came. The silence in the room, except for the hail hitting the
windows and the gay roar of the fire, was complete. Mrs. Wilkins could
not speak. She was dumbfounded. The next Sunday was the day she had
meant to break her news to him, and she had not yet even prepared the
form of words in which she would break it.
Mr. Wilkins, who had not been abroad since before the war, and was
noticing with increasing disgust, as week followed week of wind and
rain, the peculiar persistent vileness of the weather, had slowly
conceived a desire to get away from England for Easter. He was doing
very well in his business. He could afford a trip. Switzerland was
useless in April. There was a familiar sound about Easter in Italy. To
Italy he would go; and as it would cause comment if he did not take his
wife, take her he must—besides, she would be useful; a second person
was always useful in a country whose language one did not speak for
holding things, for waiting with the luggage.
He had expected an explosion of gratitude and excitement. The absence
of it was incredible. She could not, he concluded, have heard. Probably
she was absorbed in some foolish day-dream. It was regrettable how
childish she remained.
He turned his head—their chairs were in front of the fire—and looked at
her. She was staring straight into the fire, and it was no doubt the
fire that made her face so red.
“I am thinking,” he repeated, raising his clear, cultivated voice and
speaking with acerbity, for inattention at such a moment was
deplorable, “of taking you to Italy for Easter. Did you not hear me?”
Yes, she had heard him, and she had been wondering at the extraordinary
coincidence—really most extraordinary—she was just going to tell him
how—how she had been invited—a friend had invited her—Easter,
too—Easter was in April, wasn’t it?—her friend had a—had a house
there.
In fact Mrs. Wilkins, driven by terror, guilt and surprise, had been
more incoherent if possible than usual.
It was a dreadful afternoon. Mellersh, profoundly indignant, besides
having his intended treat coming back on him like a blessing to roost,
cross-examined her with the utmost severity. He demanded that she
refuse the invitation. He demanded that, since she had so outrageously
accepted it without consulting him, she should write and cancel her
acceptance. Finding himself up against an unsuspected, shocking rock of
obstinacy in her, he then declined to believe she had been invited to
Italy at all. He declined to believe in this Mrs. Arbuthnot, of whom
till that moment he had never heard; and it was only when the gentle
creature was brought round—with such difficulty, with such a desire on
her part to throw the whole thing up rather than tell Mr. Wilkins less
than the truth—and herself endorsed his wife’s statements that he was