The Enchanted April, Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Of course Mrs. Arbuthnot was not miserable--how could she be, sheasked herself, when God was taking care of her?--but she let that passfor the moment unrepudiated, because of her conviction that here wasanother fellow-creature in urgent need of her help; and not just bootsand blankets and better sanitary arrangements this time, but the moredelicate help of comprehension, of finding the exact right words.

  The exact right words, she presently discovered, after tryingvarious ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to befound in placing oneself unreservedly in God's hands--to meet all thesewords Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the momentat least, till one had had more time, difficult to answer--the exactright words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer theadvertisement. Non-committal. Mere inquiry. And what disturbed Mrs.Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not make it solely tocomfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longingfor the mediaeval castle.

  This was very disturbing. There she was, accustomed to direct,to lead, to advise, to support--except Frederick; she long since hadlearned to leave Frederick to God--being led herself, being influencedand thrown off her feet, by just an advertisement, by just anincoherent stranger. It was indeed disturbing. She failed tounderstand her sudden longing for what was, after all, self-indulgence,when for years no such desire had entered her heart.

  "There's no harm in simply asking," she said in a low voice, asif the vicar and the Savings Bank and all her waiting and dependentpoor were listening and condemning.

  "It isn't as if it committed us to anything," said Mrs. Wilkins,also in a low voice, but her voice shook.

  They got up simultaneously--Mrs. Arbuthnot had a sensation of surprisethat Mrs. Wilkins should be so tall--and went to a writing-table, andMrs. Arbuthnot wrote to Z, Box 1000, The Times, for particulars. Sheasked for all particulars, but the only one they really wanted was theone about the rent. They both felt that it was Mrs. Arbuthnot whoought to write the letter and do the business part. Not only was sheused to organizing and being practical, but she also was older, andcertainly calmer; and she herself had no doubt too that she was wiser.Neither had Mrs. Wilkins any doubt of this; the very way Mrs. Arbuthnotparted her hair suggested a great calm that could only proceed fromwisdom.

  But if she was wiser, older and calmer, Mrs. Arbuthnot's newfriend nevertheless seemed to her to be the one who impelled.Incoherent, she yet impelled. She appeared to have, apart from herneed of help, an upsetting kind of character. She had a curiousinfectiousness. She led one on. And the way her unsteady mind leapedat conclusions--wrong ones, of course; witness the one that she, Mrs.Arbuthnot, was miserable--the way she leaped at conclusions wasdisconcerting.

  Whatever she was, however, and whatever her unsteadiness, Mrs.Arbuthnot found herself sharing her excitement and her longing; andwhen the letter had been posted in the letter-box in the hall andactually was beyond getting back again, both she and Mrs. Wilkins feltthe same sense of guilt.

  "It only shows," said Mrs. Wilkins in a whisper, as they turnedaway from the letter-box, "how immaculately good we've been all ourlives. The very first time we do anything our husbands don't knowabout we feel guilty."

  "I'm afraid I can't say I've been immaculately good," gentlyprotested Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little uncomfortable at this fresh exampleof successful leaping at conclusions, for she had not said a word abouther feeling of guilt.

  "Oh, but I'm sure you have--I see you being good--and that's whyyou're not happy."

  "She shouldn't say things like that," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. "Imust try and help her not to."

  Aloud she said gravely, "I don't know why you insist that I'm nothappy. When you know me better I think you'll find that I am. And I'msure you don't mean really that goodness, if one could attain it, makesone unhappy."

  "Yes, I do," said Mrs. Wilkins. "Our sort of goodness does. Wehave attained it, and we are unhappy. There are miserable sorts ofgoodness and happy sorts--the sort we'll have at the mediaeval castle,for instance, is the happy sort."

  "That is, supposing we go there," said Mrs. Arbuthnotrestrainingly. She felt that Mrs. Wilkins needed holding on to."After all, we've only written just to ask. Anybody may do that. Ithink it quite likely we shall find the conditions impossible, and evenif they were not, probably by to-morrow we shall not want to go."

  "I see us there," was Mrs. Wilkins's answer to that.

  All this was very unbalancing. Mrs. Arbuthnot, as she presentlysplashed though the dripping streets on her way to a meeting she was tospeak at, was in an unusually disturbed condition of mind. She had,she hoped, shown herself very calm to Mrs. Wilkins, very practical andsober, concealing her own excitement. But she was reallyextraordinarily moved, and she felt happy, and she felt guilty, and shefelt afraid, and she had all the feelings, though this she did notknow, of a woman who was come away from a secret meeting with herlover. That, indeed, was what she looked like when she arrived late onher platform; she, the open-browed, looked almost furtive as her eyesfell on the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuadethem to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of theHampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributionsthemselves. She looked as though she were hiding somethingdiscreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expressionof candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind ofsuppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a moreworldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of recent andprobably impassioned lovemaking.

  Beauty, beauty, beauty . . . the words kept ringing in her ears asshe stood on the platform talking of sad things to the sparsely attendedmeeting. She had never been to Italy. Was that really what her nest-eggwas to be spent on after all? Though she couldn't approve of theway Mrs. Wilkins was introducing the idea of predestination into herimmediate future, just as if she had no choice, just as if to struggle,or even to reflect, were useless, it yet influenced her. Mrs.Wilkins's eyes had been the eyes of a seer. Some people were likethat, Mrs. Arbuthnot knew; and if Mrs. Wilkins had actually seen her atthe mediaeval castle it did seem probable that struggling would be awaste of time. Still, to spend her nest-egg on self-indulgence-- Theorigin of this egg had been corrupt, but she had at least supposed itsend was to be creditable. Was she to deflect it from its intendeddestination, which alone had appeared to justify her keeping it, andspend it on giving herself pleasure?

  Mrs. Arbuthnot spoke on and on, so much practiced in the kind ofspeech that she could have said it all in her sleep, and at the end ofthe meeting, her eyes dazzled by her secret visions, she hardly noticedthat nobody was moved in any way whatever, least of all in the way ofcontributions.

  But the vicar noticed. The vicar was disappointed. Usually hisgood friend and supporter Mrs. Arbuthnot succeeded better than this.And, what was even more unusual, she appeared, he observed, not even tomind.

  "I can't imagine," he said to her as they parted, speakingirritably, for he was irritated both by the audience and by her, "whatthese people are coming to. Nothing seems to move them."

  "Perhaps they need a holiday," suggested Mrs. Arbuthnot; anunsatisfactory, a queer reply, the vicar thought.

  "In February?" he called after her sarcastically.

  "Oh no--not till April," said Mrs. Arbuthnot over her shoulder.

  "Very odd," thought the vicar. "Very odd indeed." And he wenthome and was not perhaps quite Christian to his wife.

  That night in her prayers Mrs. Arbuthnot asked for guidance. Shefelt she ought really to ask, straight out and roundly, that themediaeval castle should already have been taken by some one else andthe whole thing thus be settled, but her courage failed her. Supposeher prayer were to be answered? No; she couldn't ask it; she couldn'trisk it. And after all--she almost pointed this out to God--if shespent her present nest-egg on a holiday she could quite soon accumulateanother. Frederick pressed money on her; and it would only mean, whileshe rolled up a s
econd egg, that for a time her contributions to theparish charities would be less. And then it could be the next nest-eggwhose original corruption would be purged away by the use to which itwas finally put.

  For Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had no money of her own, was obliged tolive on the proceeds of Frederick's activities, and her very nest-eggwas the fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin. The way Frederickmade his living was one of the standing distresses of her life. Hewrote immensely popular memoirs, regularly, every year, of themistresses of kings. There were in history numerous kings who had hadmistresses, and there were still more numerous mistresses who had hadkings; so that he had been able to publish a book of memoirs duringeach year of his married life, and even so there were greater furtherpiles of these ladies waiting to be dealt with. Mrs. Arbuthnot washelpless. Whether she liked it or not, she was obliged to live on theproceeds. He gave her a dreadful sofa once, after the success of hisDu Barri memoir, with swollen cushions and soft, receptive lap, and itseemed to her a miserable thing that there, in her very home, shouldflaunt this re-incarnation of a dead old French sinner.

  Simply good, convinced that morality is the basis of happiness,the fact that she and Frederick should draw their sustenance fromguilt, however much purged by the passage of centuries, was one of thesecret reasons of her sadness. The more the memoired lady hadforgotten herself, the more his book about her was read and the morefree-handed he was to his wife; and all that he gave her was spent,after adding slightly to her nest-egg--for she did hope and believethat some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, andthen Frederick would need supporting--on helping the poor. The parishflourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior ofthe ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and evenof learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the moneywas passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. She could dono more. She had tried in days gone by to think the situation out, todiscover the exact right course for her to take, but had found it, asshe had found Frederick, too difficult, and had left it, as she hadleft Frederick, to God. Nothing of this money was spent on her houseor dress; those remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere. Itwas the poor who profited. Their very boots were stout with sins. Buthow difficult it had been. Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance,prayed about it to exhaustion. Ought she perhaps to refuse to touchthe money, to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which wereits source? But then what about the parish's boots? She asked thevicar what he thought, and through much delicate language, evasive andcautious, it did finally appear that he was for the boots.

  At least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began histerrible successful career--he only began it after their marriage; whenshe married him he had been a blameless official attached to thelibrary of the British Museum--to publish the memoirs under anothername, so that she was not publicly branded. Hampstead read the bookswith glee, and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst.Frederick was almost unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead. He neverwent to any of its gatherings. Whatever it was he did in the way ofrecreation was done in London, but he never spoke of what he did orwhom he saw; he might have been perfectly friendless for any mention heever made of friends to his wife. Only the vicar knew where the moneyfor the parish came from, and he regarded it, he told Mrs. Arbuthnot,as a matter of honour not to mention it.

  And at least her little house was not haunted by the loose livedladies, for Frederick did his work away from home. He had two roomsnear the British Museum, which was the scene of his exhumations, andthere he went every morning, and he came back long after his wife wasasleep. Sometimes he did not come back at all. Sometimes she did notsee him for several days together. Then he would suddenly appear atbreakfast, having let himself in with his latchkey the night before,very jovial and good-natured and free-handed and glad if she wouldallow him to give her something--a well-fed man, contented with theworld; a jolly, full-blooded, satisfied man. And she was alwaysgentle, and anxious that his coffee should be as he liked it.

  He seemed very happy. Life, she often thought, however much onetabulated was yet a mystery. There were always some people it wasimpossible to place. Frederick was one of them. He didn't seem tobear the remotest resemblance to the original Frederick. He didn'tseem to have the least need of any of the things he used to say were soimportant and beautiful--love, home, complete communion of thoughts,complete immersion in each other's interests. After those earlypainful attempts to hold him up to the point from which they had handin hand so splendidly started, attempts in which she herself had gotterribly hurt and the Frederick she supposed she had married wasmangled out of recognition, she hung him up finally by her bedside asthe chief subject of her prayers, and left him, except for those,entirely to God. She had loved Frederick too deeply to be able now todo anything but pray for him. He had no idea that he never went out ofthe house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like alittle echo of finished love, round that once dear head. She didn'tdare think of him as he used to be, as he had seemed to her to be inthose marvelous first days of their love-making, of their marriage.Her child had died; she had nothing, nobody of her own to lavishherself on. The poor became her children, and God the object of herlove. What could be happier than such a life, she sometimes askedherself; 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.