Chapter 2, The Enchanted April By Elizabeth Von Arnim

Chapter 2, 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 2 Read by Britta Benson 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 were presently discovered after trying various ones about living for others and prayer and 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,

To 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 medieval castle.

This was very disturbing.

There she was,

Accustomed to direct,

To lead,

To advise,

To support,

Except Frederick.

She had long since 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 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 organising and being practical,

But she was also 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 real 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,

Yet she 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,

Witnessed that the one that she,

Mrs.

Arbuthnot,

Was miserable,

The way she leapt to 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 letterbox 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 letterbox,

How immaculately 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 feelings 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're insistent that I'm not happy.

When you know me better than I think you'll find that I am.

And I'm sure you don't really mean 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 medieval 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 just written to ask.

Anybody may do that.

I think it quite likely we shall find the conditions impossible.

And even if they're not,

Probably by tomorrow we shall not want to go.

I see us there,

Was Mrs.

Wilkins' answer to that.

All this was very unbalancing.

Mrs.

Arbuthnot,

As she presently splashed through 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 she did not know,

Of a woman who has 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 upon the staring wooden faces sitting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of the Hampstead pool,

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 candour 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,

Yet influenced her.

Mrs Wilkins' 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 medieval 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 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 practised 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,

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 really ought to ask,

Straight out and roundly,

That the medieval castle should already have been taken by someone else and the whole thing thus 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 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 the time her contributions to the parish charities would be less,

And then it would 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 those standing distresses of her life.

He wrote immensely popular memoirs,

Regularly,

Every year,

Of the mistresses of the 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 great 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 Barry memoir,

With swollen cushions and soft,

Receptive lap,

And it seemed to her a miserable thing that there,

In her very home,

Should taunt this reincarnation 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 great 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 someday 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 behaviour of the ladies Du Barry,

Montespan,

Pompadour,

Ninon,

Delors,

And even of learned Mantenon,

The poor were the filter through which the money was passed,

To come out,

Mrs.

Arbuthnot-Hote,

Purified.

She could do no more.

She had tried in days gone by to think of the situation out,

To discover the exact right cause 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.

Thones remained,

Except for the great sofa.

Ostia.

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 much delicate language,

Evasive and cautious,

It did finally appear that he was for the boots.

At least she had persuaded Frederick when he first began his terrible successful career.

He only began it after their marriage.

When she married him,

He'd been a blameless official attached to the library of the British Museum to publish the memoirs under another name so that it 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 those loose-lipped 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 here he went every morning and came back to his wife when she 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 the 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 just as he liked it.

He seemed very happy.

Life,

She often thought,

However much one tabulated,

Was yet a mystery.

There was always some people it was possible to place.

Frederick was one of them.

He didn't seem to bear the remotest resemblance to the original Frederick.

He didn't seem to have the least need of any of the things he used to say were so important and beautiful.

Love,

Home,

Complete communion of thoughts,

Complete immersion in each other's interests.

After those painful attempts to hold him up to the point from which he and they had hand in hand so splendidly started,

Attempts in which she herself got terribly hurt and the Frederick she supposed she had married was mangled out of recognition,

She hung him up finally by her bedside as the chief subject of her prayers and left him,

Except for those,

Entirely to God.

She had loved Frederick too deeply to be able now to do anything but pray for him.

He had no idea that he even went out of the house without her blessing going with him too,

Hovering like a little echo of finished love round that once dear head.

She didn't dare think of him as she used to be.

He had seemed to her in those marvellous first days of their lovemaking,

Of their marriage.

Her child had died,

She had nothing,

Nobody of her own to lavish herself on.

The poor became her children and God the object of her love.

What could be happier than such a life,

She sometimes asked herself,

But her face and particularly her eyes continued sad.

Perhaps when we're old,

Perhaps when we're both quite old,

She would think wistfully.