The Enchanted April, Chapter Two

Enjoy the deepening story of Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot, two lonely ladies who meet by chance and decide to investigate the possibility of staying at a medieval castle together for a month in Italy. Written by Elizabeth von Armin.

Transcript

Hello there,

It's Mandy here.

Great to have you with me for tonight's reading,

Which is Chapter 2 of The Enchanted April.

So do go ahead and make yourself really comfortable and I'll begin.

The Enchanted April,

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 exactly 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 didn't make it solely to comfort Mrs Wilkins,

She made it because of her own strange longing for the medieval castle.

This was very disturbing.

As 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 that we shall find the conditions impossible and even if they were not,

Probably by tomorrow,

We shan't 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 this she didn't 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 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 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 love-making.

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' 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 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 care.

I can't imagine,

He said to her as they parted,

Speaking irritably,

For he was irritated,

Both by the audience and by her.

I can't imagine what these people are coming to.

Nothing seems to move them.

Perhaps they need a holiday,

Suggested Mrs Arbuthnot.

An unsatisfactory strange 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 medieval castle should already have been taken by someone else,

And the whole thing must be settled,

But her courage failed her.

Suppose her prayer were to be answered.

No,

She couldn't do 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 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.

He wrote them regularly,

Every year,

About 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'd 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 Dubarry 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 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 secret reasons of her sadness.

The more the memoir 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 Dubarry,

Montespan,

Pompadour,

Nino de Lancelot,

And even of Lerned Matenon,

The poor with a 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,

Or steer,

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 always 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 didn't come back at all.

Sometimes she didn't 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.

He seemed very happy.

Life,

She often thought,

However much one tabulated,

Was yet a mystery.

There were always some people it was impossible 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 early painful attempts to hold him up to the point from which they had hand in hand so splendidly started,

Attempts in which she herself had 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 never 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 he used to be,

As he had seemed to her to be 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 are both quite old,

She would think wistfully to be continued.

Reviews

Fell asleep quickly! Will need to listen again! Thank you Mandy🌟🕊️

Oh the hypocrisy of men and religion! Thanks Mandy 🙏🏻

I’m enjoying every chapter again as I await the next one - thank you for this story! 😃🙏

Enjoying this tale and remincing of my visit to Hampstead Heath in 1987, looking forward to her adventures and hopefully she gets the opportunity to endure beautiful Italy.