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 wisteria 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 wisteria, 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, “marvelous,”
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
recognized 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 had, 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.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 wisteria?” 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 wisteria, 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; lunged 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
wisteria—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 is 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, emphasizing it in the way
Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasizes 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 crystallized 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 wisteria 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.
“
The
kindred points of heaven and home,” continued Mrs. Arbuthnot, who
was used to finishing her sentences. “Heaven is in our
home.”
“
It
isn’t,” said Mrs. Wilkins, again surprisingly.Mrs.
Arbuthnot was taken aback. Then she said gently, “Oh, but it is. It
is there if we choose, if we make it.”
“
I
do choose, and I do make it, and it isn’t,” said Mrs.
Wilkins.Then
Mrs. Arbuthnot was silent, for she too sometimes had doubts about
homes. She sat and looked uneasily at Mrs. Wilkins, feeling more
and
more the urgent need to getting her classified. If she could only
classify Mrs. Wilkins, get her safely under her proper heading, she
felt that she herself would regain her balance, which did seem very
strangely to be slipping all to one side. For neither had she had a
holiday for years, and the advertisement when she saw it had set
her
dreaming, and Mrs. Wilkins’s excitement about it was infectious,
and she had the sensation, as she listened to her impetuous, odd
talk
and watched her lit-up face, that she was being stirred out of
sleep.Clearly
Mrs. Wilkins was unbalanced, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had met the
unbalanced before—indeed she was always meeting them—and they had
no effect on her own stability at all; whereas this one was making
her feel quite wobbly, quite as though to be off and away, away
from
her compass points of God, Husband, Home and Duty—she didn’t feel
as if Mrs. Wilkins intended Mr. Wilkins to come too—and just for
once be happy, would be both good and desirable. Which of course it
wasn’t; which certainly of course it wasn’t. She, also, had a
nest-egg, invested gradually in the Post Office Savings Bank, but
to
suppose that she would ever forget her duty to the extent of
drawing
it out and spending it on herself was surely absurd. Surely she
couldn’t, she wouldn’t ever do such a thing? Surely she wouldn’t,
she couldn’t ever forget her poor, forget misery and sickness as
completely as that? No doubt a trip to Italy would be
extraordinarily
delightful, but there were many delightful things one would like to
do, and what was strength given to one for except to help one not
to
do them?Steadfast
as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great four
facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on
these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head
resting on them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being
awakened out of so simple and untroublesome a condition. Therefore
it
was that she searched with earnestness for a heading under which to
put Mrs. Wilkins, and in this way illumine and steady her own mind;
and sitting there looking at her uneasily after her last remark,
and
feeling herself becoming more and more unbalanced and infected, she
decided pro tem,
as the vicar said at meetings, to put her under the heading Nerves.
It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the
category
Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs.
Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final
categories, having on more than one occasion discovered with dismay
that she had made a mistake; and how difficult it had been to get
them out again, and how crushed she had been with the most terrible
remorse.Yes.
Nerves. Probably she had no regular work for others, thought Mrs.
Arbuthnot; no work that would take her outside herself. Evidently
she
was rudderless—blown about by gusts, by impulses. Nerves was almost
certainly her category, or would be quite soon if no one helped
her.
Poor little thing, thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, her own balance
returning
hand in hand with her compassion, and unable, because of the table,
to see the length of Mrs. Wilkins’s legs. All she saw was her
small, eager, shy face, and her thin shoulders, and the look of
childish longing in her eyes for something that she was sure was
going to make her happy. No; such things didn’t make people happy,
such fleeting things. Mrs. Arbuthnot had learned in her long life
with Frederick—he was her husband, and she had married him at
twenty and was not thirty-three—where alone true joys are to be
found. They are to be found, she now knew, only in daily, in
hourly,
living for others; they are to be found only—hadn’t she over and
over again taken her disappointments and discouragements there, and
come away comforted?—at the feet of God.Frederick
had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself early to
the
feet of God. From him to them had been a short though painful step.
It seemed short to her in retrospect, but it had really taken the
whole of the first year of their marriage, and every inch of the
way
had been a struggle, and every inch of it was stained, she felt at
the time, with her heart’s blood. All that was over now. She had
long since found peace. And Frederick, from her passionately loved
bridegroom, from her worshipped young husband, had become second
only
to God on her list of duties and forbearances. There he hung, the
second in importance, a bloodless thing bled white by her prayers.
For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting
happiness.
She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything
that
would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again
long, desiring . . .
“
I’d
like so much to be friends,” she said earnestly. “Won’t you
come and see me, or let me come to you sometimes? Whenever you feel
as if you wanted to talk. I’ll give you my address”—she
searched in her handbag—“and then you won’t forget.” And she
found a card and held it out.Mrs.
Wilkins ignored the card.
“
It’s
so funny,” said Mrs. Wilkins, just as if she had not heard her,
“But I see
us both—you and me—this April in the mediaeval castle.”Mrs.
Arbuthnot relapsed into uneasiness. “Do you?” she said, making an
effort to stay balanced under the visionary gaze of the shining
grey
eyes. “Do you?”
“
Don’t
you ever see things in a kind of flash before they happen?” asked
Mrs. Wilkins.
“
Never,”
said Mrs. Arbuthnot.She
tried to smile; she tried to smile the sympathetic yet wise and
tolerant smile with which she was accustomed to listen to the
necessarily biased and incomplete view of the poor. She didn’t
succeed. The smile trembled out.
“
Of
course,” she said in a low voice, almost as if she were afraid the
vicar and the Savings Bank were listening, “it would be most
beautiful—most beautiful—”
“
Even
if it were wrong,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “it would only be for a
month.”
“
That—”
began Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite clear as to the reprehensibleness of
such
a point of view; but Mrs. Wilkins stopped her before she could
finish.
“
Anyhow,”
said Mrs. Wilkins, stopping her, “I’m sure it’s wrong to go on
being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can see
you’ve been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy”—
Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest—“and I—I’ve done
nothing but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a
girl,
and I don’t believe anybody loves me a bit—a bit—the
b-better—and I long— oh, I long—for something else—something
else—”Was
she going to cry? Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely uncomfortable and
sympathetic. She hoped she wasn’t going to cry. Not there. Not in
that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.But
Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that
wouldn’t come out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely
apparently blowing her nose with it, and then, blinking her eyes
very
quickly once or twice, looked at Mrs. Arbuthnot with a quivering
air
of half humble, half frightened apology, and smiled.
“
Will
you believe,” she whispered, trying to steady her mouth, evidently
dreadfully ashamed of herself, “that I’ve never spoken to any one
before in my life like this? I can’t think, I simply don’t know,
what has come over me.”
“
It’s
the advertisement,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, nodding
gravely.
“
Yes,”
said Mrs. Wilkins, dabbing furtively at her eyes, “and us both
being so—”—she blew her nose again a little—“miserable.”
Chapter 2
Of
course Mrs. Arbuthnot was not miserable—how could she be, she asked
herself, when God was taking care of her?—but she let that pass for
the moment unrepudiated, because of her conviction that here was
another fellow-creature in urgent need of her help; and not just
boots and blankets and better sanitary arrangements this time, but
the more delicate help of comprehension, of finding the exact right
words.
The
exact right words, she presently discovered, after trying various
ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be found
in placing oneself unreservedly in God’s hands—to meet all these
words Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the
moment at least, till one had had more time, difficult to
answer—the
exact right words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to
answer the advertisement. Non-committal. Mere inquiry. And what
disturbed Mrs. Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not
make it solely to comfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her
own strange longing for the mediaeval castle.
This
was very disturbing. There she was, accustomed to direct, to lead,
to
advise, to support—except Frederick; she long since had learned to
leave Frederick to God—being led herself, being influenced and
thrown off her feet, by just an advertisement, by just an
incoherent
stranger. It was indeed disturbing. She failed to understand 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, as if the vicar and the Savings Bank and all her
waiting and dependent poor 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 surprise
that Mrs. Wilkins should be so tall—and went to a writing-table,
and Mrs. Arbuthnot wrote to Z, Box 1000,
The Times, for
particulars. She asked for all particulars, but the only one they
really wanted was the one about the rent. They both felt that it
was
Mrs. Arbuthnot who ought to write the letter and do the business
part. Not only was she used to organizing and being practical, but
she also was older, and certainly calmer; and she herself had no
doubt too that she was wiser. Neither had Mrs. Wilkins any doubt of
this; the very way Mrs. Arbuthnot parted her hair suggested a great
calm that could only proceed from wisdom.
But
if she was wiser, older and calmer, Mrs. Arbuthnot’s new friend
nevertheless seemed to her to be the one who impelled. Incoherent,
she yet impelled. She appeared to have, apart from her need of
help,
an upsetting kind of character. She had a curious infectiousness.
She
led one on. And the way her unsteady mind leaped at
conclusions—wrong
ones, of course; witness the one that she, Mrs. Arbuthnot, was
miserable—the way she leaped at conclusions was
disconcerting.
Whatever
she was, however, and whatever her unsteadiness, Mrs. Arbuthnot
found
herself sharing her excitement and her longing; and when the letter
had been posted in the letter-box in the hall and actually was
beyond
getting back again, both she and Mrs. Wilkins felt the same sense
of
guilt.
“
It
only shows,” said Mrs. Wilkins in a whisper, as they turned away
from the letter-box, “how immaculately good we’ve been all our
lives. The very first time we do anything our husbands don’t know
about we feel guilty.”
“
I’m
afraid I can’t say I’ve been immaculately good,” gently
protested Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little uncomfortable at this fresh
example of successful leaping at conclusions, for she had not said
a
word about her feeling of guilt.
“
Oh,
but I’m sure you have—I
see you being
good—and that’s why you’re not happy.”
“
She
shouldn’t say things like that,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “I
must try and help her not to.”
Aloud
she said gravely, “I don’t know why you insist that I’m not
happy. When you know me better I think you’ll find that I am. And
I’m sure you don’t mean really that goodness, if one could attain
it, makes one unhappy.”
“
Yes,
I do,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “Our sort of goodness does. We have
attained it, and we are unhappy. There are miserable sorts of
goodness 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. Arbuthnot restrainingly. She
felt that Mrs. Wilkins needed holding on to. “After all, we’ve
only written just to ask. Anybody may do that. I think it quite
likely we shall find the conditions impossible, and even if 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 presently
splashed
though the dripping streets on her way to a meeting she was to
speak
at, was in an unusually disturbed condition of mind. She had, she
hoped, shown herself very calm to Mrs. Wilkins, very practical and
sober, concealing her own excitement. But she was really
extraordinarily moved, and she felt happy, and she felt guilty, and
she felt afraid, and she had all the feelings, though this she did
not know, of a woman who was come away from a secret meeting with
her
lover. That, indeed, was what she looked like when she arrived late
on her platform; she, the open-browed, looked almost furtive as her
eyes fell on the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and
persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs
of
the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed
contributions
themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something
discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear
expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a
kind
of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a
more
worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of recent and
probably impassioned lovemaking.
Beauty,
beauty, beauty . . . the words kept ringing in her ears as she
stood
on the platform talking of sad things to the sparsely attended
meeting. She had never been to Italy. Was that really what her
nest-egg was to be spent on after all? Though she couldn’t approve
of the way Mrs. Wilkins was introducing the idea of predestination
into her immediate 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
like that, Mrs. Arbuthnot knew; and if Mrs. Wilkins had actually
seen
her at the mediaeval castle it did seem probable that struggling
would be a waste of time. Still, to spend her nest-egg on
self-indulgence— The origin of this egg had been corrupt, but she
had at least supposed its end was to be creditable. Was she to
deflect it from its intended destination, which alone had appeared
to
justify her keeping it, and spend it on giving herself
pleasure?
Mrs.
Arbuthnot spoke on and on, so much practiced in the kind of speech
that she could have said it all in her sleep, and at the end of the
meeting, her eyes dazzled by her secret visions, she hardly noticed
that nobody was moved in any way whatever, least of all in the way
of
contributions.
But
the vicar noticed. The vicar was disappointed. Usually his good
friend and supporter Mrs. Arbuthnot succeeded better than this.
And,
what was even more unusual, she appeared, he observed, not even to
mind.
“
I
can’t imagine,” he said to her as they parted, speaking
irritably, for he was irritated both by the audience and by her,
“what these people are coming to.
Nothing seems to
move them.”
“
Perhaps
they need a holiday,” suggested Mrs. Arbuthnot; an unsatisfactory,
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 went home
and was not perhaps quite Christian to his wife.
That
night in her prayers Mrs. Arbuthnot asked for guidance. She felt
she
ought really to ask, straight out and roundly, that the mediaeval
castle should already have been taken by some one else and the
whole
thing thus be settled, but her courage failed her. Suppose her
prayer
were to be answered? No; she couldn’t ask it; she couldn’t risk
it. And after all—she almost pointed this out to God—if she spent
her present nest-egg on a holiday she could quite soon accumulate
another. Frederick pressed money on her; and it would only mean,
while she rolled up a second egg, that for a time her contributions
to the parish charities would be less. And then it could be the
next
nest-egg whose original corruption would be purged away by the use
to
which it was finally put.
For
Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had no money of her own, was obliged to live on
the proceeds of Frederick’s activities, and her very nest-egg was
the fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin. The way Frederick
made his living was one of the standing distresses of her life. He
wrote immensely popular memoirs, regularly, every year, of the
mistresses of kings. There were in history numerous kings who had
had
mistresses, and there were still more numerous mistresses who had
had
kings; so that he had been able to publish a book of memoirs during
each year of his married life, and even so there were greater
further
piles of these ladies waiting to be dealt with. Mrs. Arbuthnot was
helpless. Whether she liked it or not, she was obliged to live on
the
proceeds. He gave her a dreadful sofa once, after the success of
his
Du Barri memoir, with swollen cushions and soft, receptive lap, and
it seemed to her a miserable thing that there, in her very home,
should flaunt 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 from guilt,
however much purged by the passage of centuries, was one of the
secret reasons of her sadness. The more the memoired lady had
forgotten herself, the more his book about her was read and the
more
free-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 believe
that some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and
then Frederick would need supporting—on helping the poor. The
parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the
ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de
l’Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter
through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot
hoped, purified. She could do no more. She had tried in days gone
by
to think the situation out, to discover the exact right course for
her to take, but had found it, as she had found Frederick, too
difficult, and had left it, as she had left Frederick, to God.
Nothing of this money was spent on her house or dress; those
remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere. It was the poor
who profited. Their very boots were stout with sins. But how
difficult it had been. Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance, prayed
about it to exhaustion. Ought she perhaps to refuse to touch the
money, to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which were
its
source? But then what about the parish’s boots? She asked the vicar
what he thought, and through much delicate language, evasive and
cautious, it did finally appear that he was for the boots.
At
least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began his terrible
successful career—he only began it after their marriage; when she
married him he had been a blameless official attached to the
library
of the British Museum—to publish the memoirs under another name, so
that she was not publicly branded. Hampstead read the books with
glee, and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst.
Frederick
was almost unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead. He never went to
any
of its gatherings. Whatever it was he did in the way of recreation
was done in London, but he never spoke of what he did or whom he
saw;
he might have been perfectly friendless for any mention he ever
made
of friends to his wife. Only the vicar knew where the money for 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 lived
ladies,
for Frederick did his work away from home. He had two rooms near
the
British Museum, which was the scene of his exhumations, and there
he
went every morning, and he came back long after his wife was
asleep.
Sometimes he did not come back at all. Sometimes she did not see
him
for several days together. Then he would suddenly appear at
breakfast, having let himself in with his latchkey the night
before,
very jovial and good-natured and free-handed and glad if she would
allow him to give her something—a well-fed man, contented with the
world; a jolly, full-blooded, satisfied man. And she was always
gentle, and anxious that his coffee should be as he liked
it.