The Enchanted April
“We shall be there in a minute,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said to herself,
holding on.
“We shall soon stop now,” Mrs. Wilkins said to herself, holding on.
They said nothing aloud, because nothing would have been heard above
the whip-cracking and the wheel-clattering and the boisterous inciting
noises Beppo was making at his horse.
Anxiously they strained their eyes for any sight of the beginning of
San Salvatore.
They had supposed and hoped that after a reasonable amount of village a
mediaeval archway would loom upon them, and through it they would drive
into a garden and draw up at an open, welcoming door, with light
streaming from it and those servants standing in it who, according to
the advertisement, remained.
Instead the fly suddenly stopped.
Peering out they could see they were still in the village street, with
small dark houses each side; and Beppo, throwing the reins over the
horse’s back as if completely confident this time that he would not go
any farther, got down off his box. At the same moment, springing as it
seemed out of nothing, a man and several half-grown boys appeared on
each side of the fly and began dragging out the suit-cases.
“No, no—San Salvatore, San Salvatore”—exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins, trying to
hold on to what suit-cases she could.
“_Sì, sì_—San Salvatore,” they all shouted, pulling.
“This _can’t_ be San Salvatore,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to Mrs.
Arbuthnot, who sat quite still watching her suit-cases being taken from
her with the same patience she applied to lesser evils. She knew she
could do nothing if these men were wicked men determined to have her
suit-cases.
“I don’t think it can be,” she admitted, and could not refrain from a
moment’s wonder at the ways of God. Had she really been brought here,
she and poor Mrs. Wilkins, after so much trouble in arranging it, so
much difficulty and worry, along such devious paths of prevarication
and deceit, only to be—
She checked her thoughts, and gently said to Mrs. Wilkins, while the
ragged youths disappeared with the suit-cases into the night and the
man with the lantern helped Beppo pull the rug off her, that they were
both in God’s hands; and for the first time on hearing this, Mrs.
Wilkins was afraid.
There was nothing for it but to get out. Useless to try to go on
sitting in the fly repeating San Salvatore. Every time they said it,
and their voices each time were fainter, Beppo and the other man merely
echoed it in a series of loud shouts. If only they had learned Italian
when they were little. If only they could have said, “We wish to be
driven to the door.” But they did not even know what door was in
Italian. Such ignorance was not only contemptible, it was, they now
saw, definitely dangerous. Useless, however, to lament it now. Useless
to put off whatever it was that was going to happen to them by trying
to go on sitting in the fly. They therefore got out.
The two men opened their umbrellas for them and handed them to them.
From this they received a faint encouragement, because they could not
believe that if these men were wicked they would pause to open
umbrellas. The man with the lantern then made signs to them to follow
him, talking loud and quickly, and Beppo, they noticed, remained
behind. Ought they to pay him? Not, they thought, if they were going to
be robbed and perhaps murdered. Surely on such an occasion one did not
pay. Besides, he had not after all brought them to San Salvatore. Where
they had got to was evidently somewhere else. Also, he did not show the
least wish to be paid; he let them go away into the night with no
clamour at all. This, they could not help thinking, was a bad sign. He
asked for nothing because presently he was to get so much.
They came to some steps. The road ended abruptly in a church and some
descending steps. The man held the lantern low for them to see the
steps.
“San Salvatore?” said Mrs. Wilkins once again, very faintly, before
committing herself to the steps. It was useless to mention it now, of
course, but she could not go down steps in complete silence. No
mediaeval castle, she was sure, was ever built at the bottom of steps.
Again, however, came the echoing shout—“_Sì, sì_—San Salvatore.”
They descended gingerly, holding up their skirts just as if they would
be wanting them another time and had not in all probability finished
with skirts for ever.
The steps ended in a steeply sloping path with flat stone slabs down
the middle. They slipped a good deal on these wet slabs, and the man
with the lantern, talking loud and quickly, held them up. His way of
holding them up was polite.
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Wilkins in a low voice to Mrs. Arbuthnot, “It is
all right after all.”
“We’re in God’s hands,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot again; and again Mrs.
Wilkins was afraid.
They reached the bottom of the sloping path, and the light of the
lantern flickered over an open space with houses round three sides. The
sea was the fourth side, lazily washing backwards and forwards on
pebbles.
“San Salvatore,” said the man pointing with his lantern to a black mass
curved round the water like an arm flung about it.
They strained their eyes. They saw the black mass, and on the top of it
a light.
“San Salvatore?” they both repeated incredulously, for where were the
suit-cases, and why had they been forced to get out of the fly?
“_Sì, sì_—San Salvatore.”
They went along what seemed to be a quay, right on the edge of the
water. There was not even a low wall here—nothing to prevent the man
with the lantern tipping them in if he wanted to. He did not, however,
tip them in. Perhaps it was all right after all, Mrs. Wilkins again
suggested to Mrs. Arbuthnot on noticing this, who this time was herself
beginning to think that it might be, and said no more about God’s
hands.
The flicker of the lantern danced along, reflected in the wet pavement
of the quay. Out to the left, in the darkness and evidently at the end
of a jetty, was a red light. They came to an archway with a heavy iron
gate. The man with the lantern pushed the gate open. This time they
went up steps instead of down, and at the top of them was a little path
that wound upwards among flowers. They could not see the flowers, but
the whole place was evidently full of them.
It here dawned on Mrs. Wilkins that perhaps the reason why the fly had
not driven them up to the door was that there was no road, only a
footpath. That also would explain the disappearance of the suit-cases.
She began to feel confident that they would find their suit-cases
waiting for them when they got up to the top. San Salvatore was, it
seemed, on the top of a hill, as a mediaeval castle should be. At a
turn of the path they saw above them, much nearer now and shining more
brightly, the light they had seen from the quay. She told Mrs.
Arbuthnot of her dawning belief, and Mrs. Arbuthnot agreed that it was
very likely a true one.
Once more, but this time in a tone of real hopefulness, Mrs. Wilkins
said, pointing upwards at the black outline against the only slightly
less black sky, “San Salvatore?” And once more, but this time
comfortingly, encouragingly, came back the assurance, “_Sì, sì_—San
Salvatore.”
They crossed a little bridge, over what was apparently a ravine, and
then came a flat bit with long grass at the sides and more flowers.
They felt the grass flicking wet against their stockings, and the
invisible flowers were everywhere. Then up again through trees, along a
zigzag path with the smell all the way of the flowers they could not
see. The warm rain was bringing out all the sweetness. Higher and
higher they went in this sweet darkness, and the red light on the jetty
dropped farther and farther below them.
The path wound round to the other side of what appeared to be a little
peninsula; the jetty and the red light disappeared; across the
emptiness on their left were distant lights.
“Mezzago,” said the man, waving his lantern at the lights.
“_Sì, sì_,” they answered, for they had by now learned “_sì, sì_”. Upon
which the man congratulated them in a great flow of polite words, not
one of which they understood, on their magnificent Italian; for this
was Domenico, the vigilant and accomplished gardener of San Salvatore,
the prop and stay of the establishment, the resourceful, the gifted,
the eloquent, the courteous, the intelligent Domenico. Only they did
not know that yet; and he did in the dark, and even sometimes in the
light, look, with his knife-sharp swarthy features and swift, panther
movements, very like somebody wicked.
They passed along another flat bit of path, with a black shape like a
high wall towering above them on their right, and then the path went up
again under trellises, and trailing sprays of scented things caught at
them and shook raindrops on them, and the light of the lantern
flickered over lilies, and then came a flight of ancient steps worn
with centuries, and then another iron gate, and then they were inside,
though still climbing a twisting flight of stone steps with old walls
on either side like the walls of dungeons, and with a vaulted roof.
At the top was a wrought-iron door, and through it shone a flood of
electric light.
“_Ecco_,” said Domenico, lithely running up the last few steps ahead
and pushing the door open.
And there they were, arrived; and it was San Salvatore; and their
suit-cases were waiting for them; and they had not been murdered.
They looked at each other’s white faces and blinking eyes very
solemnly.
It was a great, a wonderful moment. Here they were, in their mediaeval
castle at last. Their feet touched its stones.
Mrs. Wilkins put her arm round Mrs. Arbuthnot’s neck and kissed her.
“The first thing to happen in this house,” she said softly, solemnly,
“shall be a kiss.”
“Dear Lotty,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“Dear Rose,” said Mrs. Wilkins, her eyes brimming with gladness.
Domenico was delighted. He liked to see beautiful ladies kiss. He made
them a most appreciative speech of welcome, and they stood arm in arm,
holding each other up, for they were very tired, blinking smilingly at
him, and not understanding a word.
Chapter 6
When Mrs. Wilkins woke next morning she lay in bed a few minutes before
getting up and opening the shutters. What would she see out of her
window? A shining world, or a world of rain? But it would be beautiful;
whatever it was would be beautiful.
She was in a little bedroom with bare white walls and a stone floor
and sparse old furniture. The beds—there were two—were made of iron,
enamelled black and painted with bunches of gay flowers. She lay
putting off the great moment of going to the window as one puts off
opening a precious letter, gloating over it. She had no idea what time
it was; she had forgotten to wind up her watch ever since, centuries
ago, she last went to bed in Hampstead. No sounds were to be heard in
the house, so she supposed it was very early, yet she felt as if she
had slept a long while—so completely rested, so perfectly content.
She lay with her arms clasped round her head thinking how happy she
was, her lips curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself:
adorable condition. She had not been in a bed without Mellersh once
now for five whole years; and the cool roominess of it, the freedom
of one’s movements, the sense of recklessness, of audacity, in giving
the blankets a pull if one wanted to, or twitching the pillows more
comfortably! It was like the discovery of an entirely new joy.
Mrs. Wilkins longed to get up and open the shutters, but where she was
was really so very delicious. She gave a sigh of contentment, and went
on lying there looking round her, taking in everything in her room, her
own little room, her very own to arrange just as she pleased for this