The Enchanted April | Page 5

stop, "I see no end to it. There is no end to it. So that there
ought to be a break, there ought to be intervals--in everybody's interests.
Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a
little, because we would come back so much nicer. You see, after a bit
everybody needs a holiday."
"But--how do you mean, get it?" asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"Take it," said Mrs. Wilkins.
"Take it?"
"Rent it. Hire it. Have it."
"But--do you mean you and I?"
"Yes. Between us. Share. Then it would only cost half, and you look
so--you look exactly as if you wanted it just as much as I do--as if you
ought to have a rest--have something happy happen to you."
"Why, but we don't know each other."
"But just think how well we would if we went away together for a
month! And I've saved for a rainy day--look at it--"
"She is unbalanced," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot; yet she felt strangely
stirred.
"Think of getting away for a whole month--from everything--to
heaven--"
"She shouldn't say things like that," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. "The
vicar--" Yet she felt strangely stirred. It would indeed be wonderful to
have a rest, a cessation.

Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with the
poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority of
the explainer, "But then, you see, heaven isn't somewhere else. It is
here and now. We are told so."
She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to help
and enlighten the poor. "Heaven is within us," she said in her gentle
low voice. "We are told that on the very highest authority. And you
know the lines about the kindred points, don't you--"
"Oh yes, I know them," interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.
"The kindred points of heaven and home," continued Mrs. Arbuthnot,
who was used to finishing her sentences. "Heaven is in our home."
"It isn't," said Mrs. Wilkins, again surprisingly.
Mrs. Arbuthnot was taken aback. Then she said gently, "Oh, but it is. It
is there if we choose, if we make it."
"I do choose, and I do make it, and it isn't," said Mrs. Wilkins.
Then Mrs. Arbuthnot was silent, for she too sometimes had doubts
about homes. She sat and looked uneasily at Mrs. Wilkins, feeling more
and more the urgent need to getting her classified. If she could only
classify Mrs. Wilkins, get her safely under her proper heading, she felt
that she herself would regain her balance, which did seem very
strangely to be slipping all to one side. For neither had she had a
holiday for years, and the advertisement when she saw it had set her
dreaming, and Mrs. Wilkins's excitement about it was infectious, and
she had the sensation, as she listened to her impetuous, odd talk and
watched her lit-up face, that she was being stirred out of sleep.
Clearly Mrs. Wilkins was unbalanced, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had met the
unbalanced before--indeed she was always meeting them--and they had
no effect on her own stability at all; whereas this one was making her
feel quite wobbly, quite as though to be off and away, away from her
compass points of God, Husband, Home and Duty--she didn't feel as if

Mrs. Wilkins intended Mr. Wilkins to come too--and just for once be
happy, would be both good and desirable. Which of course it wasn't;
which certainly of course it wasn't. She, also, had a nest-egg, invested
gradually in the Post Office Savings Bank, but to suppose that she
would ever forget her duty to the extent of drawing it out and spending
it on herself was surely absurd. Surely she couldn't, she wouldn't ever
do such a thing? Surely she wouldn't, she couldn't ever forget her poor,
forget misery and sickness as completely as that? No doubt a trip to
Italy would be extraordinarily delightful, but there were many
delightful things one would like to do, and what was strength given to
one for except to help one not to do them?
Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great
four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on
these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head resting on
them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being awakened out
of so simple and untroublesome a condition. Therefore it was that she
searched with earnestness for a heading under which to put Mrs.
Wilkins, and in this way illumine and steady her own mind; and sitting
there looking at her uneasily after her last remark, and feeling herself
becoming more and more unbalanced and infected, she decided pro tem,
as the vicar