Chapter 10, The Enchanted April By Elizabeth Von Arnim

Chapter 10, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim written in 1922, was inspired by a trip to the Italian Riviera.
Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot are captivated by an advertisement in The Times. "To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small medieval castle on the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April..."

Read by Brita Benson

Transcript

The Enchanted April Chapter 10 There was no way of getting into or out of the top garden at San Salvatore,

Except through the two glass doors,

Unfortunately side by side,

Of the dining room and the hall.

A person in the garden who wished to escape unseen could not,

For the person to be escaped from would be met on the way.

It was a small,

Oblong garden and concealment was impossible.

What trees there were,

The Judas tree,

The tamarisk,

The umbrella pine,

Grew close to the low parapets.

Rose bushes gave no real cover.

One step to the right or left of them and the person wishing to be private was discovered.

Only in the northwest corner was a little place jutting out from the great wall,

A kind of excrescence or loop,

No doubt used in old distrustful days for observation,

Where it was possible to sit really unseen,

Because between it and the house was a thick clump of Daphne.

Scrap,

After glancing around to see that no one was looking,

Got up and carried her chair to this place,

Stealing away as carefully on tiptoe as those who steal whose purpose is sin.

There was another excrescence on the wall just like it at the northeast corner,

But this,

Though the view from it was almost more beautiful,

For from it you could see the bay and the lovely mountains behind Mersagul,

Was exposed.

No bushes grew near it,

Nor had it any shade.

The northwest loop then was where she would sit,

And she settled into it,

And nesting her head in her cushion and putting her feet comfortably on the parapet,

From whence they appeared to the villagers on the piazza below as two white doves,

Thought that now indeed she would be safe.

Mrs.

Fisher found her there,

Guided by the smell of her cigarette.

The incautious Scrap had not thought of that.

Mrs.

Fisher did not smoke herself,

And all the more distinctly could she smell the smoke of others.

The virile scent met her directly,

She went out into the garden from the dining room after lunch,

In order to have her coffee.

She had bidden Francesca to set the coffee in the shade of the house,

Just outside the glass door,

And when Mrs.

Wilkins,

Seeing a table being carried there,

Reminded her very officiously and tactlessly,

Mrs.

Fisher considered,

And Lady Caroline wanted to be alone,

She retorted,

And with what proprietary,

That the garden was for everybody.

Into it accordingly she went,

And was immediately aware that Lady Caroline was smoking.

She said to herself,

These modern young women,

And proceeded to find her,

Her stick,

Now that the lunch was over.

Being no longer the hindrance to action that it was before her meal had been securely,

As Browning once said,

Surely it was Browning,

Yes,

She remembered how much diverted she had been,

Roped in.

Nobody diverted her now,

Reflected Mrs.

Fisher,

Making straight for the clump of Daphne.

The world had grown very dull,

And had almost entirely lost its sense of humour.

Probably they still had their jokes,

These people,

In fact,

She knew they did,

For punch still went on,

But how differently it went on,

And what jokes.

Thackeray,

In his inimitable way,

Would have made mincemeat of this generation.

How much it needed the tonic properties of that astringent pen,

It was of course unaware.

It no longer even held him,

At least,

So she had been informed,

In any particular esteem.

Well,

She could not give it eyes to see and ears to hear,

And a heart to understand,

But she could and would give it,

Represented and united in the form of Lady Caroline,

A good dose of honest medicine.

I hear you're not well,

She said,

Standing in the narrow entrance of the loop and looking down with the inflexible face of one who is determined to do good at the motionless and apparently sleeping scrap.

Mrs.

Fisher had a deep voice,

Very like a man's,

For she had been overtaken by that strange masculinity that sometimes pursues a woman during the last lapse of her life.

Scrap tried to pretend that she was asleep,

But if she had been her cigarette,

She wouldn't have held it in her fingers,

But would have been lying on the ground.

She forgot this,

Mrs.

Fisher did not,

And coming inside the loop,

Sat down on a narrow stone seat built out of the wall.

For a little she could sit on it,

For a little,

Till the chill began to penetrate.

She contemplated the figure before her,

Undoubtedly a pretty creature,

And one that would have had the success at Farringford.

Strange how easily even the greatest men were moved by exteriors.

She had seen with her own eyes Tennyson turn away from everybody,

Turn positively,

His back on the crowd of eminent people assembled to do him honour,

And withdraw to the window with a young person nobody had ever heard of,

Who had been brought there by accident,

And who has won an only merit.

If it be a merit,

That which is conferred by chance was beauty.

Beauty.

All over before you can turn around.

An affair,

One might almost say,

Of minutes.

Well,

While it lasted,

It did seem able to do what it liked with men,

Even husbands were not immune.

There had been passages in life of Mrs.

Fisher.

"'I expect the journey has upset you,

' she said in her deep voice.

"'What you need is a good dose of some simple medicine.

I shall ask Dominico if there's any such thing in the village as castor oil.

' Scrap opened her eyes and looked straight at Mrs.

Fisher.

"'Ah,

' said Mrs.

Fisher,

"'I knew you were not asleep.

If you had been,

You would not have let your cigarette fall to the ground.

' Scrap threw her cigarette over the parapet.

"'Waste,

' said Mrs.

Fisher.

"'I don't like smoking for women,

But I still less like waste.

' "'What does one do with people like this?

' Scrap asked herself,

Her eyes fixed on Mrs.

Fisher,

In what felt to her an indignant stare,

But appeared to Mrs.

Fisher as really charming docility.

"'Now,

If you take my advice,

' said Mrs.

Fisher,

Touched,

"'and not neglect what may very well turn into an illness.

We are in Italy,

You know,

And one has to be careful.

You ought to begin with to go to bed.

' "'I never go to bed,

' snapped Scrap,

And it sounded as moving,

As forlorn as that line spoken years and years ago by an actress playing the part of poor Joe in a dramatised version of Bleak House.

"'I'm always moving on,

' said poor Joe in this play,

Urged to do so by a policeman,

And Mrs.

Fisher,

Then a girl,

Had laid her head on the red velvet parapet of the front row of the dress circle and wept aloud.

It was wonderful,

Scrap's voice.

It had given her in the ten years since she came out all the triumphs that intelligence and wit can have,

Because it made whatever she said seem memorable.

She ought,

With a throat formation like that,

To have been a singer,

But in every kind of music Scrap was dumb except this one music of the speaking voice.

And what a fascination,

What a spell lay in that!

Such was the loveliness of her face,

And the beauty of her colouring,

That there was not a man into whose eyes,

At the sight of her,

There did not leap a flame of intensest interest.

But when he heard her voice,

The flame in that man's eyes was caught and fixed.

It was the same with every man,

Educated and uneducated,

Old,

Young,

Desirable themselves or undesirable.

Men of her own world,

And bus conductors,

Generals and tommies.

During the war she had had a perplexing time,

Bishops equally with vergers.

Round about her confirmation,

Startling occurrences had taken place,

Wholesome and unwholesome,

Rich and penniless,

Brilliant or idiotic,

And it made no difference at all what they were,

Or how long,

And securely married.

Into the eyes of every one of them,

When they saw her,

Leapt this flame,

And when they heard her,

It stayed there.

Scrap had had enough of this look.

It only led to difficulties.

At first it had delighted her,

She'd been excited,

Triumphant,

To be apparently incapable of doing or saying the wrong thing,

To be applauded,

Listened to,

Petted,

Adored,

Wherever she went,

And when she came home to find nothing there either but the most indulgent proud fondness,

Why,

How extremely pleasant,

And so easy to.

No preparation necessary for this achievement,

No hard work,

Nothing to learn.

She need take no trouble.

She had only to appear and presently say something.

But gradually,

Experiences gathered round her,

After all,

She had to take trouble,

She had to make efforts,

Because she discovered with astonishment and rage,

She had to defend herself.

That look,

That leaping look,

Meant that she was going to be grabbed at.

Some of those who had it were more humble than others,

Especially if they were young,

But they all,

According to their several ability,

Grabbed.

And she,

Who had entered the world so jauntily,

With her head in the air and the compliance of confidence in anybody whose hair was grey,

Began to distrust and then to dislike,

And soon to shrink away from,

And presently to be indignant.

Sometimes it was just as if she didn't belong to herself,

Wasn't her own at all,

But was regarded as a universal thing,

A sort of beauty of all work,

Really men.

And she found herself involved in queer,

Vague quarrels,

Being curiously hated,

Really women.

And when the war came,

And she flung herself into it,

Along with everybody else,

It finished her,

Really,

Generals.

The war finished scrap.

It killed the one man she felt safe with,

Whom she would have married,

And it finally disgusted her with love.

Since then she had been embittered,

She was struggling as angrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp caught in honey.

Just as desperately did she try to unstick her wings,

It gave her no pleasure to outdo other women.

She didn't want their tiresome men.

What could one do with men,

When one had got them?

None of them were taught to have anything but the things of love,

And how foolish and fatiguing that became after a bit.

It was as though a healthy person,

With a normal hunger,

Was given nothing more,

Whatever,

To eat but sugar.

Love,

Love,

The very word made her want to slap somebody.

Why should I love you?

Why should I?

She would ask,

Amused,

Amazed,

Sometimes when somebody was trying,

Somebody was always trying to propose to her,

But she never got a real answer,

Only further incoherence.

A deep cynicism took hold of unhappy scrap.

Her inside grew hoary with disillusionment,

While her gracious and charming outside continued to make the world more beautiful.

What had the future in it for her?

She would not be able,

After such a preparation,

To take hold of it.

She was fit for nothing.

She had wasted all this time being beautiful.

Presently,

She wouldn't be beautiful,

And what then?

Scrap didn't know what then,

And it appalled her to wonder even.

Tired as she was of being conspicuous,

She was used at least to that.

She had never known anything else.

And to become inconspicuous,

To fade,

To grow shabby and dim,

Would probably be most painful.

At once she began what years and years of it there would be.

Imagine thought scrap,

Having one's life end,

The wrong end.

Imagine being old for two or three times as long as being young.

Stupid,

Stupid.

Everything was stupid.

There wasn't a thing she wanted to do.

There were thousands of things she didn't want to do.

Avoidance,

Silence,

Invisibility,

If possible,

Unconsciousness.

These negations were all she asked for at the moment.

And here,

Even here,

She was not allowed a minute's peace.

And this absurd woman must come pretending,

Merely because she wanted to exercise power,

And make her go to bed,

And make her hideous,

Drink castor oil,

That she thought she was ill.

I'm sure,

Said Mrs Fisher,

Who felt the cold of the stone beginning to come through,

And knew that she could not sit much longer.

You'll do what is reasonable.

Your mother would wish.

Have you a mother?

A faint wonder came into Scrap's eyes.

Have you a mother?

If anybody had a mother,

It was Scrap.

It had not occurred to her that there could be people who'd never heard of her mother.

She was one of the major Marchionesses,

There being,

As no one knew better than Scrap,

Marchionesses and Marchionesses,

And had held high position at court.

Her father,

Too,

In his day,

Had been most prominent.

His day was a little over,

Poor dear,

Because in the war,

He had made some important mistakes.

And besides,

He was grown old now.

Still,

There he was,

An excessively well-known person.

How restful,

How extraordinarily restful to have found someone who had never heard of any of her lot,

Or at least had not yet connected her with them.

She began to like Mrs Fisher.

Perhaps the originals didn't know anything about her either.

When she first wrote to them and signed her name,

The great name of Dester,

Which twisted in and out of the English dictionary like a bloody thread,

For its bearers constantly killed,

And she had taken it for granted that they would know who she was,

And at the interview in Shaftesbury Avenue,

She was sure they did know,

Because they hadn't asked,

As otherwise would have,

For references.

Scrap began to cheer up.

If nobody at San Salvatore had ever heard of her,

If for a whole month she could shed herself,

Get away from everything connected with herself,

Be allowed really to forget the clinging and the clogging and all the noise,

Why,

Perhaps,

She might make something of herself after all.

She might really think,

Really clear up her mind,

Really come to some conclusion.

"'What I want to do here,

' she said,

Leaning forward in her chair and clasping her hands round her knees and looking up at Mrs Fisher,

Whose seat was higher than hers,

Almost with animation.

So much pleased was she that Mrs Fisher knew nothing about her.

"'Is to come to a conclusion,

That's all.

It isn't much to want,

Is it?

Just that,

' she gazed at Mrs Fisher and thought that almost any conclusion would do.

The great thing was to get hold of something,

Catch something tight,

Cease to drift.

' Mrs Fisher's little eyes surveyed her.

"'I should say,

' she said,

"'that what a young woman like you wants is a husband and children.

' "'Well,

That's one of the things I'm going to consider,

' said Scrap,

Amiably.

"'But I don't think it would be a conclusion.

' "'And meanwhile,

' said Mrs Fisher,

Getting up,

For the cold of the stone was now through,

"'I shouldn't trouble my head if I were you with such considerings and conclusions.

"'Women's head weren't made for thinking,

I assure you.

You should go to bed and get well.

' "'I am well,

' said Scrap.

"'Then why did you send a message that you were ill?

' "'I didn't.

' "'Then I've had all the trouble of coming out here for nothing.

' "'But wouldn't you prefer coming out and finding me well than coming out and finding me ill?

' asked Scrap,

Smiling.

Even Mrs Fisher was caught by the smile.

"'Well,

You're a pretty creature,

' she said,

Forgivingly.

"'It's a pity you weren't born fifty years ago.

My friends would have liked looking at you.

' "'I'm very glad I wasn't,

' said Scrap.

"'I dislike being looked at.

' "'Absurd,

' said Mrs Fisher,

Growing stern again.

"'That's what you're made for,

Young women like you.

"'For what else?

Pray.

"'And I assure you that if my friends had looked at you,

"'you would have been looked at by some very great people.

' "'I dislike very great people,

' said Scrap,

Frowning.

"'There had been an incident quite recently.

' "'What I dislike,

' said Mrs Fisher,

Now as cold as the stone she'd got up from,

"'is the pose of the young,

Modern woman.

"'It seems to me pitiful,

Positively pitiful in its silliness.

' And her stick crunching the pebbles,

She walked away.

"'That's all right,

' Scrap said to herself,

Dropping back into her comfortable position,

With her head in the cushion and her feet on the parapet.

"'If only people would go away,

She didn't,

In the least mine.

"'Why they went.

'" "'Don't you think,

Darling,

Scrap is growing a little,

Just a little peculiar?

' her mother had asked her father,

A short time before the latest peculiarity of the flight to San Salvatore,

Uncomfortably struck by the very odd things Scrap said,

And the way she had taken to slinking out of reach whenever she could,

And avoiding everybody except,

Such a sign of age,

Quite young men,

Almost boys.

"'Eh,

What,

Peculiar?

' "'Well,

Let her be peculiar if she likes.

"'A woman with her looks can be damned thing she pleases.

' She was,

Was the infatuated answer.

"'I do let her,

' said her mother meekly,

"'and indeed,

If she did not,

What difference would it make?

' Mrs.

Fisher was sorry that she had bothered Lady Caroline.

She went along the hall towards her private sitting room,

And her stick,

As she went,

Struck the stone floor with a vigour in harmony with her feelings.

Sheer silliness,

These poses!

She had no patience with them,

Unable to be or do anything of themselves.

The young of the present generation tried to achieve the reputation for cleverness by decreeing all that was obviously great and obviously good,

And by praising everything,

However obviously bad,

That was different.

"'Apes,

' thought Mrs.

Fisher,

Roused.

"'Apes,

Apes!

' And in her sitting room,

She found more apes,

Or,

What seemed to her,

In her present mood,

More.

For there was Mrs.

R.

Bufnot,

Placidly drinking coffee,

While at the writing table,

The writing table she already looked upon as sacred,

Using her pen,

Her own pen,

Bought for her own hand,

Alone from the Prince of Wales Terrace,

Sat Mrs.

Wilkins writing,

At the table,

In her room,

With her pen.

"'Isn't this a delightful place?

' said Mrs.

R.

Bufnot cordially.

"'We've just discovered it!

' "'I'm writing to Mellush,

' said Mrs.

Wilkins,

Turning her head,

And also cordially,

As though Mrs.

Fisher thought she cared a straw for who she was writing to,

And anyone she knew who a person she called Mellush was.

"'He'll want to know,

' said Mrs.

Wilkins,

Optimism induced by her surroundings,

"'that I've got here safely.

'