The Enchanted April | Page 8

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