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Page 8
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.
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