The Enchanted April

Chapter 2

Mrs. Arbuthnot had long been accustomed to comforting others—finding the right words, leading, advising, supporting. But when she tried her usual remedies on the woman who had poured out her troubles to her, she found her own words returning to her strangely hollow. Living for others, prayer, placing oneself in God’s hands—none of these touched the real problem. The right words, she discovered almost against her will, were the suggestion that there was no harm in simply answering an advertisement for a mediaeval castle in Italy.

This unsettled her deeply. She had made the suggestion not only to help Mrs. Wilkins, but because she herself longed for that castle. For years no such desire had stirred in her; she was a woman who directed, not one who was led. Yet here she was, half-led, half-pulled by the incoherent yearning of a stranger. “There’s no harm in simply asking,” she murmured, as though the vicar, the Savings Bank, and all her waiting poor were listening and condemning.

Mrs. Wilkins, who was taller than she had seemed, also lowered her voice, and together they went to a writing-table. Mrs. Arbuthnot composed the letter to Z, Box 1000, The Times, requesting particulars. She asked for everything, but the only figure they truly wanted was the rent. Mrs. Arbuthnot felt it was she who ought to manage the practical details—she was the older, the calmer, the wiser; even the way she parted her hair suggested a great and settled wisdom. Yet she also recognized that Mrs. Wilkins, incoherent and unsteady as she was, somehow impelled. Her mind leaped at conclusions—wrong ones, like the conclusion that Mrs. Arbuthnot was miserable—and that infectious longing spread.

When the letter dropped into the box in the hall and was beyond recall, both women felt the same sudden guilt. “It only shows,” whispered Mrs. Wilkins, “how immaculately good we’ve been all our lives.” Mrs. Wilkins declared she could see Mrs. Arbuthnot being good, and that was why she was not happy. There were, she insisted, miserable sorts of goodness and happy sorts—the sort they would have at the mediaeval castle was the happy sort. Mrs. Arbuthnot reminded her that they had only written to ask; the conditions might be impossible. “I see us there,” was Mrs. Wilkins’s only answer, and her eyes had the look of a seer.

Splashing through the dripping streets to a meeting in Hampstead, Mrs. Arbuthnot was uncommonly stirred. She tried to appear calm and practical, but her eyes were dazzled by secret visions. Beauty, beauty, beauty—the words kept ringing in her ears as she tried to persuade a sparse, wooden-faced audience to give to the relief of the Hampstead poor. She had never been to Italy. Was her nest-egg truly to be spent on such a self-indulgent thing?

The vicar noticed that she was not her usual self. He was disappointed. “I can’t imagine what these people are coming to. Nothing seems to move them.” Mrs. Arbuthnot, almost without thinking, suggested, “Perhaps they need a holiday.” “In February?” he called after her, sarcastically. “Oh no—not till April,” she answered over her shoulder, and went on her way.

That night, on her knees, she tried to pray. She felt she ought to ask, outright, that the castle should already have been taken by someone else, and the whole matter settled. But her courage failed her—suppose her prayer were answered? And after all, she reasoned with God, if she spent this nest-egg she could accumulate another; it would only mean her contributions to parish charities would be smaller for a time, and the next egg would have its corruption purged by the same good use.

For the egg itself was corrupt in its origin. Mrs. Arbuthnot had no money of her own. She was obliged to live on the proceeds of Frederick’s career—a career he had taken up only after their marriage, when he had been a blameless official in the British Museum library. He now wrote immensely popular memoirs of the mistresses of kings: Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l’Enclos, learned Maintenon. Once, after the success of his Du Barri memoir, he had given her a dreadful sofa with swollen cushions—a miserable re-incarnation, she thought, of a dead old French sinner, flaunted in her very home.

She had at least persuaded him to publish under another name. The vicar alone knew, and he regarded it as a point of honour to keep silent. The parish flourished because of the ill-behaviour of those long-dead ladies. The poor were the filter through which the money was passed and came out, she hoped, purified. When she had once asked the vicar what she ought to do about touching the money, through much delicate language it had finally appeared that he was for the boots.

Frederick himself she never saw by day. He had two rooms near the British Museum, returning long after she was asleep. Sometimes he did not come back at all. Then he would suddenly appear at breakfast—jovial, free-handed, glad to give her something, a well-fed man contented with the world. And she was always gentle, and anxious that his coffee should be as he liked it.

She had loved him too deeply to do anything now but pray for him. Their child had died; she had nobody of her own to lavish herself on. The poor became her children, and God the object of her love. What could be happier than such a life, she sometimes asked herself; but her face, and particularly her eyes, continued sad. “Perhaps when we’re old . . . perhaps when we are both quite old . . .” she would think wistfully.