The Enchanted April

The Enchanted April, by
Elizabeth von Arnim

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Title: The Enchanted April
Author: Elizabeth von Arnim

Release Date: July 29, 2005 [eBook #16389] [Date last updated:
August 27, 2006]
Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
ENCHANTED APRIL***
E-text prepared by Manette Rothermel

THE ENCHANTED APRIL

by
ELIZABETH VON ARNIM

It began in a Woman's Club in London on a February afternoon--an
uncomfortable club, and a miserable afternoon--when Mrs. Wilkins,
who had come down from Hampstead to shop and had lunched at her
club, took up The Times from the table in the smoking-room, and
running her listless eye down the Agony Column saw this:
To Those Who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval
Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let furnished for
the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The
Times.
That was its conception; yet, as in the case of many another, the
conceiver was unaware of it at the moment.
So entirely unaware was Mrs. Wilkins that her April for that year had
then and there been settled for her that she dropped the newspaper with
a gesture that was both irritated and resigned, and went over to the
window and stared drearily out at the dripping street.
Not for her were mediaeval castles, even those that are specially
described as small. Not for her the shores in April of the Mediterranean,
and the wisteria and sunshine. Such delights were only for the rich. Yet
the advertisement had been addressed to persons who appreciate these
things, so that it had been, anyhow addressed too to her, for she
certainly appreciated them; more than anybody knew; more than she
had ever told. But she was poor. In the whole world she possessed of
her very own only ninety pounds, saved from year to year, put by
carefully pound by pound, out of her dress allowance. She had scraped
this sum together at the suggestion of her husband as a shield and
refuge against a rainy day. Her dress allowance, given her by her father,
was £100 a year, so that Mrs. Wilkins's clothes were what her husband,
urging her to save, called modest and becoming, and her acquaintance

to each other, when they spoke of her at all, which was seldom for she
was very negligible, called a perfect sight.
Mr. Wilkins, a solicitor, encouraged thrift, except that branch of it
which got into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called it bad
housekeeping. But for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated into Mrs.
Wilkins's clothes and spoilt them, he had much praise. "You never
know," he said, "when there will be a rainy day, and you may be very
glad to find you have a nest-egg. Indeed we both may."
Looking out of the club window into Shaftesbury Avenue--hers was an
economical club, but convenient for Hampstead, where she lived, and
for Shoolbred's, where she shopped--Mrs. Wilkins, having stood there
some time very drearily, her mind's eye on the Mediterranean in April,
and the wisteria, and the enviable opportunities of the rich, while her
bodily eye watched the really extremely horrible sooty rain falling
steadily on the hurrying umbrellas and splashing omnibuses, suddenly
wondered whether perhaps this was not the rainy day
Mellersh--Mellersh was Mr. Wilkins--had so often encouraged her to
prepare for, and whether to get out of such a climate and into the small
mediaeval castle wasn't perhaps what Providence had all along
intended her to do with her savings. Part of her savings, of course;
perhaps quite a small part. The castle, being mediaeval, might also be
dilapidated, and dilapidations were surely cheap. She wouldn't in the
least mind a few of them, because you didn't pay for dilapidations
which were already there, on the contrary--by reducing the price you
had to pay they really paid you. But what nonsense to think of it . . .
She turned away from the window with the same gesture of mingled
irritation and resignation with which she had laid down The Times, and
crossed the room towards the door with the intention of getting her
mackintosh and umbrella and fighting her way into one of the
overcrowded omnibuses and going to Shoolbred's on her way home and
buying some soles for Mellersh's dinner--Mellersh was difficult with
fish and liked only soles, except salmon--when she beheld Mrs.
Arbuthnot, a woman she knew by sight