The Enchanted April
one blessed month, her room bought with her own savings, the fruit of
her careful denials, whose door she could bolt if she wanted to, and
nobody had the right to come in. It was such a strange little room, so
different from any she had known, and so sweet. It was like a cell.
Except for the two beds, it suggested a happy austerity. “And the name
of the chamber,” she thought, quoting and smiling round at it, “was
Peace.”
Well, this was delicious, to lie there thinking how happy she was, but
outside those shutters it was more delicious still. She jumped up,
pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but
one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.
“_Oh!_” cried Mrs. Wilkins.
All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet.
The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring.
Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour,
were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom
of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle
rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and
violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great
black sword.
She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she
alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up
to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair.
Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered
like a flock of white birds on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how
beautiful. Not to have died before this . . . to have been allowed to
see, breathe, feel this. . . . She stared, her lips parted. Happy?
Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one
describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it
was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as
though she were washed through with light. And how astonishing to feel
this sheer bliss, for here she was, not doing and not going to do a
single unselfish thing, not going to do a thing she didn’t want to do.
According to everybody she had ever come across she ought at least to
have twinges. She had not one twinge. Something was wrong somewhere.
Wonderful that at home she should have been so good, so terribly good,
and merely felt tormented. Twinges of every sort had there been her
portion; aches, hurts, discouragements, and she the whole time being
steadily unselfish. Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it
behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.
She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked. She was
stripped, and exulting. And there, away in the dim mugginess of
Hampstead, was Mellersh being angry.
She tried to visualise Mellersh, she tried to see him having breakfast
and thinking bitter things about her; and lo, Mellersh himself began to
shimmer, became rose-colour, became delicate violet, became an
enchanting blue, became formless, became iridescent. Actually Mellersh,
after quivering a minute, was lost in light.
“_Well_,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, staring, as it were, after him. How
extraordinary not to be able to visualise Mellersh; and she who used to
know every feature, every expression of his by heart. She simply could
not see him as he was. She could only see him resolved into beauty,
melted into harmony with everything else. The familiar words of the
General Thanksgiving came quite naturally into her mind, and she found
herself blessing God for her creation, preservation, and all the
blessings of this life, but above all for His inestimable Love; out
loud; in a burst of acknowledgment. While Mellersh, at that moment
angrily pulling on his boots before going out into the dripping
streets, was indeed thinking bitter things about her.
She began to dress, choosing clean white clothes in honour of the
summer’s day, unpacking her suit-cases, tidying her adorable little
room. She moved about with quick, purposeful steps, her long thin body
held up straight, her small face, so much puckered at home with effort
and fear, smoothed out. All she had been and done before this morning,
all she had felt and worried about, was gone. Each of her worries
behaved as the image of Mellersh had behaved, and dissolved into colour
and light. And she noticed things she had not noticed for years—when
she was doing her hair in front of the glass she noticed it, and
thought, “Why, what pretty stuff.” For years she had forgotten she had
such a thing as hair, plaiting it in the evening and unplaiting it in
the morning with the same hurry and indifference with which she laced
and unlaced her shoes. Now she suddenly saw it, and she twisted it
round her fingers before the glass, and was glad it was so pretty.
Mellersh couldn’t have seen it either, for he had never said a word
about it. Well, when she got home she would draw his attention to it.
“Mellersh,” she would say, “look at my hair. Aren’t you pleased you’ve
got a wife with hair like curly honey?”
She laughed. She had never said anything like that to Mellersh yet, and
the idea of it amused her. But why had she not? Oh yes—she used to be
afraid of him. Funny to be afraid of anybody; and especially of one’s
husband, whom one saw in his more simplified moments, such as asleep,
and not breathing properly through his nose.
When she was ready she opened her door to go across to see if Rose, who
had been put the night before by a sleepy maidservant into a cell
opposite, were awake. She would say good-morning to her, and then she
would run down and stay with that cypress tree till breakfast was
ready, and after breakfast she wouldn’t so much as look out of a window
till she had helped Rose get everything ready for Lady Caroline and
Mrs. Fisher. There was much to be done that day, settling in, arranging
the rooms; she mustn’t leave Rose to do it alone. They would make it
all so lovely for the two to come, have such an entrancing vision ready
for them of little cells bright with flowers. She remembered she had
wanted Lady Caroline not to come; fancy wanting to shut some one out of
heaven because she thought she would be shy of her! And as though it
mattered if she were, and as though she would be anything so
self-conscious as shy. Besides, what a reason. She could not accuse
herself of goodness over that. And she remembered she had wanted not to
have Mrs. Fisher either, because she had seemed lofty. How funny of
her. So funny to worry about such little things, making them important.
The bedrooms and two of the sitting-rooms at San Salvatore were on the
top floor, and opened into a roomy hall with a wide glass window at the
north end. San Salvatore was rich in small gardens in different parts
and on different levels. The garden this window looked down on was made
on the highest part of the walls, and could only be reached through the
corresponding spacious hall on the floor below. When Mrs. Wilkins came
out of her room this window stood wide open, and beyond it in the sun
was a Judas tree in full flower. There was no sign of anybody, no sound
of voices or feet. Tubs of arum lilies stood about on the stone floor,
and on a table flamed a huge bunch of fierce nasturtiums. Spacious,
flowery, silent, with the wide window at the end opening into the
garden, and the Judas tree absurdly beautiful in the sunshine, it
seemed to Mrs. Wilkins, arrested on her way across to Mrs. Arbuthnot,
too good to be true. Was she really going to live in this for a whole
month? Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went
along, snatching at little bits of it when she came across it—a patch
of daisies on a fine day in a Hampstead field, a flash of sunset
between two chimney pots. She had never been in definitely, completely
beautiful places. She had never been even in a venerable house; and
such a thing as a profusion of flowers in her rooms was unattainable to
her. Sometimes in the spring she had bought six tulips at Shoolbred’s,
unable to resist them, conscious that Mellersh if he knew what they had
cost would think it inexcusable; but they had soon died, and then there
were no more. As for the Judas tree, she hadn’t an idea what it was,
and gazed at it out there against the sky with the rapt expression of
one who sees a heavenly vision.
Mrs. Arbuthnot, coming out of her room, found her there like that,
standing in the middle of the hall staring.
“Now what does she think she sees now?” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot.
“We _are_ in God’s hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to her, speaking
with extreme conviction.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Arbuthnot quickly, her face, which had been covered
with smiles when she came out of her room, falling. “Why, what has
happened?”
For Mrs. Arbuthnot had woken up with such a delightful feeling of
security, of relief, and she did not want to find she had not after all
escaped from the need of refuge. She had not even dreamed of Frederick.
For the first time for years she had been spared the nightly dream that
he was with her, that they were heart to heart, and its miserable
awakening. She had slept like a baby, and had woken up confident; she
had found there was nothing she wished to say in her morning prayer
except Thank you. It was disconcerting to be told she was after all in
God’s hands.
“I hope nothing has happened?” she asked anxiously.
Mrs. Wilkins looked at her a moment, and laughed. “How funny,” she
said, kissing her.
“What is funny?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, her face clearing because Mrs.
Wilkins laughed.
“We are. This is. Everything. It’s all so wonderful. It’s so funny and
so adorable that we should be in it. I daresay when we finally reach
heaven—the one they talk about so much—we shan’t find it a bit more
beautiful.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot relaxed to smiling security again. “Isn’t it divine?”
she said.
“Were you ever, ever in your life so happy?” asked Mrs. Wilkins,
catching her by the arm.
“No,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Nor had she been; not ever; not even in her
first love-days with Frederick. Because always pain had been close at
hand in that other happiness, ready to torture with doubts, to torture
even with the very excess of her love; while this was the simple
happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that
asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.
“Let’s go and look at that tree close,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t
believe it can only be a tree.”
And arm in arm they went along the hall, and their husbands would not
have known them their faces were so young with eagerness, and together
they stood at the open window, and when their eyes, having feasted on
the marvellous pink thing, wandered farther among the beauties of the
garden, they saw sitting on the low wall at the east edge of it, gazing
out over the bay, her feet in lilies, Lady Caroline.
They were astonished. They said nothing in their astonishment, but
stood quite still, arm in arm, staring down at her.
She too had on a white frock, and her head was bare. They had had no
idea that day in London, when her hat was down to her nose and her furs
were up to her ears, that she was so pretty. They had merely thought
her different from the other women in the club, and so had the other
women themselves, and so had all the waitresses, eyeing her sideways
and eyeing her again as they passed the corner where she sat talking;
but they had had no idea she was so pretty. She was exceedingly pretty.
Everything about her was very much that which it was. Her fair hair was
very fair, her lovely grey eyes were very lovely and grey, her dark
eyelashes were very dark, her white skin was very white, her red mouth
was very red. She was extravagantly slender—the merest thread of a