The Enchanted April

Capítulo 1

Chapter 1

It began in a Woman’s Club in London on a February afternoon—an

uncomfortable club, and a miserable afternoon—when Mrs. Wilkins, who

had come down from Hampstead to shop and had lunched at her club, took

up The Times from the table in the smoking-room, and running her

listless eye down the Agony Column saw this:

To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval

Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let

Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z,

Box 1000, The Times.

That was its conception; yet, as in the case of many another, the

conceiver was unaware of it at the moment.

So entirely unaware was Mrs. Wilkins that her April for that year had

then and there been settled for her that she dropped the newspaper with

a gesture that was both irritated and resigned, and went over to the

window and stared drearily out at the dripping street.

Not for her were mediaeval castles, even those that are specially

described as small. Not for her the shores in April of the

Mediterranean, and the wistaria and sunshine. Such delights were only

for the rich. Yet the advertisement had been addressed to persons who

appreciate these things, so that it had been, anyhow, addressed too

to her, for she certainly appreciated them; more than anybody knew;

more than she had ever told. But she was poor. In the whole world she

possessed of her very own only ninety pounds, saved from year to year,

put by carefully pound by pound, out of her dress allowance. She had

scraped this sum together at the suggestion of her husband as a shield

and refuge against a rainy day. Her dress allowance, given her by her

father, was £100 a year, so that Mrs. Wilkins’s clothes were what

her husband, urging her to save, called modest and becoming, and her

acquaintance to each other, when they spoke of her at all, which was

seldom for she was very negligible, called a perfect sight.

Mr. Wilkins, a solicitor, encouraged thrift, except that branch of it

which got into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called it bad

housekeeping. But for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated into Mrs.

Wilkins’s clothes and spoilt them, he had much praise. “You never

know,” he said, “when there will be a rainy day, and you may be very

glad to find you have a nest-egg. Indeed we both may.”

Looking out of the club window into Shaftesbury Avenue—hers was an

economical club, but convenient for Hampstead, where she lived, and for

Shoolbred’s, where she shopped—Mrs. Wilkins, having stood there some

time very drearily, her mind’s eye on the Mediterranean in April, and

the wistaria, and the enviable opportunities of the rich, while her

bodily eye watched the really extremely horrible sooty rain falling

steadily on the hurrying umbrellas and splashing omnibuses, suddenly

wondered whether perhaps this was not the rainy day Mellersh—Mellersh

was Mr. Wilkins—had so often encouraged her to prepare for, and whether

to get out of such a climate and into the small mediaeval castle wasn’t

perhaps what Providence had all along intended her to do with her

savings. Part of her savings, of course; perhaps quite a small part.

The castle, being mediaeval, might also be dilapidated, and

dilapidations were surely cheap. She wouldn’t in the least mind a few

of them, because you didn’t pay for dilapidations which were already

there; on the contrary—by reducing the price you had to pay they really

paid you. But what nonsense to think of it . . .

She turned away from the window with the same gesture of mingled

irritation and resignation with which she had laid down The Times,

and crossed the room towards the door with the intention of getting her

mackintosh and umbrella and fighting her way into one of the

overcrowded omnibuses and going to Shoolbred’s on her way home and

buying some soles for Mellersh’s dinner—Mellersh was difficult with

fish and liked only soles, except salmon—when she beheld Mrs.

Arbuthnot, a woman she knew by sight as also living in Hampstead and

belonging to the club, sitting at the table in the middle of the room

on which the newspapers and magazines were kept, absorbed, in her turn,

in the first page of The Times.

Mrs. Wilkins had never yet spoken to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who belonged to

one of the various church sets, and who analysed, classified, divided

and registered the poor; whereas she and Mellersh, when they did go

out, went to the parties of impressionist painters, of whom in

Hampstead there were many. Mellersh had a sister who had married one of

them and lived up on the Heath, and because of this alliance Mrs.

Wilkins was drawn into a circle which was highly unnatural to her, and

she had learned to dread pictures. She had to say things about them,

and she didn’t know what to say. She used to murmur, “Marvellous,” and

feel that it was not enough. But nobody minded. Nobody listened. Nobody

took any notice of Mrs. Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not

noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her

practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was

reluctant; she was shy. And if one’s clothes and face and conversation

are all negligible, thought Mrs. Wilkins, who recognised her

disabilities, what, at parties, is there left of one?

Also she was always with Wilkins, that clean-shaven, fine-looking man,

who gave a party, merely by coming to it, a great air. Wilkins was

very respectable. He was known to be highly thought of by his senior

partners. His sister’s circle admired him. He pronounced adequately

intelligent judgments on art and artists. He was pithy; he was prudent;

he never said a word too much, nor, on the other hand, did he ever

say a word too little. He produced the impression of keeping copies

of everything he said; and he was so obviously reliable that it often

happened that people who met him at these parties became discontented

with their own solicitors, and after a period of restlessness

extricated themselves and went to Wilkins.

Naturally Mrs. Wilkins was blotted out. “She,” said his sister, with

something herself of the judicial, the digested, and the final in her

manner, “should stay at home.” But Wilkins could not leave his wife at

home. He was a family solicitor, and all such have wives and show them.

With his in the week he went to parties, and with his on Sundays he

went to church. Being still fairly young—he was thirty-nine—and

ambitious of old ladies, of whom he had not yet acquired in his

practice a sufficient number, he could not afford to miss church, and

it was there that Mrs. Wilkins became familiar, though never through

words, with Mrs. Arbuthnot.

She saw her marshalling the children of the poor into pews. She would

come in at the head of the procession from the Sunday School exactly

five minutes before the choir, and get her boys and girls neatly fitted

into their allotted seats, and down on their little knees in their

preliminary prayer, and up again on their feet just as, to the swelling

organ, the vestry door opened, and the choir and clergy, big with the

litanies and commandments they were presently to roll out, emerged. She

had a sad face, yet she was evidently efficient. The combination used

to make Mrs. Wilkins wonder, for she had been told by Mellersh, on days

when she had only been able to get plaice, that if one were efficient

one wouldn’t be depressed, and that if one does one’s job well one

becomes automatically bright and brisk.

About Mrs. Arbuthnot there was nothing bright and brisk, though much in

her way with the Sunday School children that was automatic; but when

Mrs. Wilkins, turning from the window, caught sight of her in the club

she was not being automatic at all, but was looking fixedly at one

portion of the first page of The Times, holding the paper quite

still, her eyes not moving. She was just staring; and her face, as

usual, was the face of a patient and disappointed Madonna.

Obeying an impulse she wondered at even while obeying it, Mrs. Wilkins,

the shy and the reluctant, instead of proceeding as she had intended to

the cloakroom and from thence to Schoolbred’s in search of Mellersh’s

fish, stopped at the table and sat down exactly opposite Mrs.

Arbuthnot, to whom she had never yet spoken in her life.

It was one of those long, narrow refectory tables, so that they were

quite close to each other.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, however, did not look up. She continued to gaze, with

eyes that seemed to be dreaming, at one spot only of The Times.

Mrs. Wilkins watched her a minute, trying to screw up courage to speak

to her. She wanted to ask her if she had seen the advertisement. She

did not know why she wanted to ask her this, but she wanted to. How

stupid not to be able to speak to her. She looked so kind. She looked

so unhappy. Why couldn’t two unhappy people refresh each other on their

way through this dusty business of life by a little talk—real, natural

talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they still

tried to hope? And she could not help thinking that Mrs. Arbuthnot,

too, was reading that very same advertisement. Her eyes were on the

very part of the paper. Was she, too, picturing what it would be

like—the colour, the fragrance, the light, the soft lapping of the sea

among little hot rocks? Colour, fragrance, light, sea; instead of

Shaftesbury Avenue, and the wet omnibuses, and the fish department at

Shoolbred’s, and the Tube to Hampstead, and dinner, and to-morrow the

same and the day after the same and always the same . . .

Suddenly Mrs. Wilkins found herself leaning across the table. “Are you

reading about the mediaeval castle and the wistaria?” she heard herself

asking.

Naturally Mrs. Arbuthnot was surprised; but she was not half so much

surprised as Mrs. Wilkins was at herself for asking.

Mrs. Arbuthnot had not yet to her knowledge set eyes on the shabby,

lank, loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with its small

freckled face and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a

smashed-down wet-weather hat, and she gazed at her a moment without

answering. She was reading about the mediaeval castle and the

wistaria, or rather had read about it ten minutes before, and since

then had been lost in dreams—of light, of colour, of fragrance, of the

soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks . . .

“Why do you ask me that?” she said in her grave voice, for her training

of and by the poor had made her grave and patient.

Mrs. Wilkins flushed and looked excessively shy and frightened. “Oh,

only because I saw it too, and I thought perhaps—I thought somehow—”

she stammered.

Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, her mind being used to getting people into

lists and divisions, from habit considered, as she gazed thoughtfully

at Mrs. Wilkins, under what heading, supposing she had to classify her,

she could most properly be put.

“And I know you by sight,” went on Mrs. Wilkins, who, like all the shy,

once she was started plunged on, frightening herself to more and more

speech by the sheer sound of what she had said last in her ears. “Every

Sunday—I see you every Sunday in church—”

“In church?” echoed Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“And this seems such a wonderful thing—this advertisement about the

wistaria—and—”

Mrs. Wilkins, who must have been at least thirty, broke off and

wriggled in her chair with the movement of an awkward and embarrassed

schoolgirl.

“It seems so wonderful,” she went on in a kind of burst, “and—it is

such a miserable day . . .”

And then she sat looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot with the eyes of an

imprisoned dog.

“This poor thing,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose life was spent in

helping and alleviating, “needs advice.”

She accordingly prepared herself patiently to give it.

“If you see me in church,” she said, kindly and attentively, “I suppose

you live in Hampstead too?”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its long

thin neck drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead bowed

her, “Oh yes.”

“Where?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed, naturally

first proceeded to collect the facts.

But Mrs. Wilkins, laying her hand softly and caressingly on the part

of The Times where the advertisement was, as though the mere printed

words of it were precious, only said, “Perhaps that’s why this seems

so wonderful.”

“No—I think that’s wonderful anyhow,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, forgetting

facts and faintly sighing.

“Then you were reading it?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, her eyes going dreamy again.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” murmured Mrs. Wilkins.

“Wonderful,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Her face, which had lit up, faded

into patience again. “Very wonderful,” she said. “But it’s no use

wasting one’s time thinking of such things.”

“Oh, but it is,” was Mrs. Wilkins’s quick, surprising reply;

surprising because it was so much unlike the rest of her—the

characterless coat and skirt, the crumpled hat, the undecided wisp of

hair straggling out. “And just the considering of them is worth while

in itself—such a change from Hampstead—and sometimes I believe—I really

do believe—if one considers hard enough one gets things.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot observed her patiently. In what category would she,

supposing she had to, put her?

“Perhaps,” she said, leaning forward a little, “you will tell me your

name. If we are to be friends”—she smiled her grave smile—“as I hope we

are, we had better begin at the beginning.”

“Oh yes—how kind of you. I’m Mrs. Wilkins,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t

expect,” she added, flushing, as Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, “that it

conveys anything to you. Sometimes it—it doesn’t seem to convey

anything to me either. But”—she looked round with a movement of seeking

help—“I am Mrs. Wilkins.”

She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of

facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a

pugdog’s tail. There it was, however. There was no doing anything with

it. Wilkins she was and Wilkins she would remain; and though her

husband encouraged her to give it on all occasions as Mrs.

Mellersh-Wilkins she only did that when he was within earshot, for she

thought Mellersh made Wilkins worse, emphasising it in the way

Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasises the villa.

When first he suggested she should add Mellersh she had objected for

the above reason, and after a pause—Mellersh was much too prudent to

speak except after a pause, during which presumably he was taking a

careful mental copy of his coming observation—he said, much displeased,

“But I am not a villa,” and looked at her as he looks who hopes, for

perhaps the hundredth time, that he may not have married a fool.

Of course he was not a villa, Mrs. Wilkins assured him; she had never

supposed he was; she had not dreamed of meaning . . . she was only just

thinking . . .

The more she explained the more earnest became Mellersh’s hope,

familiar to him by this time, for he had then been a husband for two

years, that he might not by any chance have married a fool; and they

had a prolonged quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which is

conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the

other, as to whether or no Mrs. Wilkins had intended to suggest that

Mr. Wilkins was a villa.

“I believe,” she had thought when it was at last over—it took a long

while—“that anybody would quarrel about anything when they’ve not

left off being together for a single day for two whole years. What we

both need is a holiday.”

“My husband,” went on Mrs. Wilkins to Mrs. Arbuthnot, trying to throw

some light on herself, “is a solicitor. He—” She cast about for

something she could say elucidatory of Mellersh, and found: “He’s very

handsome.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot kindly, “that must be a great pleasure to

you.”

“Why?” asked Mrs. Wilkins.

“Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little taken aback, for constant

intercourse with the poor had accustomed her to have her pronouncements

accepted without question, “because beauty—handsomeness—is a gift like

any other, and if it is properly used—”

She trailed off into silence. Mrs. Wilkins’s great grey eyes were fixed

on her, and it seemed suddenly to Mrs. Arbuthnot that perhaps she was

becoming crystallised into a habit of exposition, and of exposition

after the manner of nursemaids, through having an audience that

couldn’t but agree, that would be afraid, if it wished, to interrupt,

that didn’t know, that was, in fact, at her mercy.

But Mrs. Wilkins was not listening; for just then, absurd as it seemed,

a picture had flashed across her brain, and there were two figures in

it sitting together under a great trailing wistaria that stretched

across the branches of a tree she didn’t know, and it was herself and

Mrs. Arbuthnot—she saw them—she saw them. And behind them, bright in

sunshine, were old grey walls—the mediaeval castle—she saw it—they

were there . . .

She therefore stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot and did not hear a word she

said. And Mrs. Arbuthnot stared too at Mrs. Wilkins, arrested by the

expression on her face, which was swept by the excitement of what she

saw, and was as luminous and tremulous under it as water in sunlight

when it is ruffled by a gust of wind. At this moment, if she had been

at a party, Mrs. Wilkins would have been looked at with interest.

They stared at each other; Mrs. Arbuthnot surprised, inquiringly, Mrs.

Wilkins with the eyes of some one who has had a revelation. Of course.

That was how it could be done. She herself, she by herself, couldn’t

afford it, and wouldn’t be able, even if she could afford it, to go

there all alone; but she and Mrs. Arbuthnot together . . .

She leaned across the table. “Why don’t we try and get it?” she

whispered.

Mrs. Arbuthnot became even more wide-eyed. “Get it?” she repeated.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, still as though she were afraid of being

overheard. “Not just sit here and say How wonderful, and then go home

to Hampstead without having put out a finger—go home just as usual and

see about the dinner and the fish just as we’ve been doing for years

and years and will go on doing for years and years. In fact,” said Mrs.

Wilkins, flushing to the roots of her hair, for the sound of what she

was saying, of what was coming pouring out, frightened her, and yet she

couldn’t stop, “I see no end to it. There is no end to it. So that

there ought to be a break, there ought to be intervals—in everybody’s

interests. Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be

happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer. You see,

after a bit everybody needs a holiday.”

“But—how do you mean, get it?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Take it,” said Mrs. Wilkins.

“Take it?”

“Rent it. Hire it. Have it.”

“But—do you mean you and I?”

“Yes. Between us. Share. Then it would only cost half, and you look

so—you look exactly as if you wanted it just as much as I do—as if you

ought to have a rest—have something happy happen to you.”

“Why, but we don’t know each other.”

“But just think how well we would if we went away together for a month!

And I’ve saved for a rainy day, and I expect so have you, and this is

the rainy day—look at it—”

“She is unbalanced,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot; yet she felt strangely

stirred.

“Think of getting away for a whole month—from everything—to heaven—”

“She shouldn’t say things like that,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “The

vicar—” Yet she felt strangely stirred. It would indeed be wonderful to

have a rest, a cessation.

Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with the

poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority of

the explainer, “But then, you see, heaven isn’t somewhere else. It is

here and now. We are told so.”

She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to help

and enlighten the poor. “Heaven is within us,” she said in her gentle

low voice. “We are told that on the very highest authority. And you

know the lines about the kindred points, don’t you—”

“Oh yes, I know them,” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.