The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim


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Page 2

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?"

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 12:37