The Enchanted April | Page 6

said at meetings, to put her under the heading Nerves. It
was just possible that she ought to go straight into the category Hysteria,
which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs. Arbuthnot
had learned not to hurry people into their final categories, having on
more than one occasion discovered with dismay that she had made a
mistake; and how difficult it had been to get them out again, and how
crushed she had been with the most terrible remorse.
Yes. Nerves. Probably she had no regular work for others, thought Mrs.
Arbuthnot; no work that would take her outside herself. Evidently she
was rudderless--blown about by gusts, by impulses. Nerves was almost
certainly her category, or would be quite soon if no one helped her.
Poor little thing, thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, her own balance returning
hand in hand with her compassion, and unable, because of the table, to
see the length of Mrs. Wilkins's legs. All she saw was her small, eager,
shy face, and her thin shoulders, and the look of childish longing in her

eyes for something that she was sure was going to make her happy. No;
such things didn't make people happy, such fleeting things. Mrs.
Arbuthnot had learned in her long life with Frederick--he was her
husband, and she had married him at twenty and was not
thirty-three--where alone true joys are to be found. They are to be
found, she now knew, only in daily, in hourly, living for others; they
are to be found only--hadn't she over and over again taken her
disappointments and discouragements there, and come away
comforted?--at the feet of God.
Frederick had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself
early to the feet of God. From him to them had been a short though
painful step. It seemed short to her in retrospect, but I had really taken
the whole of the first year of their marriage, and every inch of the way
had been a struggle, and every inch of it was stained, she felt at the time,
with her heart's blood. All that was over now. She had long since found
peace. And Frederick, from her passionately loved bridegroom, from
her worshipped young husband, had become second only to God on her
list of duties and forbearances. There he hung, the second in importance,
a bloodless thing bled white by her prayers. For years she had been able
to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that.
She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful
things, that might set her off again long, desiring . . .
"I'd like so much to be friends," she said earnestly. "Won't you come
and see me, or let me come to you sometimes? Whenever you feel as if
you wanted to talk. I'll give you my address"--she searched in her
handbag--"and then you won't forget." And she found a card and held it
out.
Mrs. Wilkins ignored the card.
"It's so funny," said Mrs. Wilkins, just as if she had not heard her, "But
I see us both--you and me--this April in the mediaeval castle."
Mrs. Arbuthnot relapsed into uneasiness. "Do you?" she said, making
an effort to stay balanced under the visionary gaze of the shining grey
eyes. "Do you?"

"Don't you ever see things in a kind of flash before they happen?"
asked Mrs. Wilkins.
"Never," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
She tried to smile; she tried to smile the sympathetic yet wise and
tolerant smile with which she was accustomed to listen to the
necessarily biased and incomplete view of the poor. She didn't succeed.
The smile trembled out.
"Of course," she said in a low voice, almost as if she were afraid the
vicar and the Savings Bank were listening, "it would be most
beautiful--most beautiful--"
"Even if it were wrong," said Mrs. Wilkins, "it would only be for a
month."
"That--" began Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite clear as to the reprehensibleness
of such a point of view; but Mrs. Wilkins stopped her before she could
finish.
"Anyhow," said Mrs. Wilkins, stopping her, "I'm sure it's wrong to go
on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can see
you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy"--
Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest--"and I--I've done nothing
but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a girl, and I don't
believe anybody loves me a bit--a bit--the b-better--and I long-- oh, I
long--for something else--something else--"
Was she going to cry? Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely uncomfortable
and sympathetic. She hoped she wasn't going to cry. Not there. Not in
that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.
But Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that
wouldn't