The Enchanted April | Page 9

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.
For Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had no money of her own, was obliged to live
on the proceeds of Frederick's activities, and her very nest-egg was the
fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin. The way Frederick made
his living was one of the standing distresses of her life. He wrote
immensely popular memoirs, regularly, every year, of the mistresses of
kings. There were in history numerous kings who had had mistresses,
and there were still more numerous mistresses who had had kings; so
that he had been able to publish a book of memoirs during each year of
his married life, and even so there were greater further piles of these
ladies waiting to be dealt with. Mrs. Arbuthnot was helpless. Whether
she liked it or not, she was obliged to live on the proceeds. He gave her
a dreadful sofa once, after the success of his Du Barri memoir, with

swollen cushions and soft, receptive lap, and it seemed to her a
miserable thing that there, in her very home, should flaunt this
re-incarnation of a dead old French sinner.
Simply good, convinced that morality is the basis of happiness, the fact
that she and Frederick should draw their sustenance from guilt,
however much purged by the passage of centuries, was one of the
secret reasons of her sadness. The more the memoired lady had
forgotten herself, the more his book about her was read and the more
free-handed he was to his wife; and all that he gave her was spent, after
adding slightly to her nest-egg--for she did hope and believe that some
day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and then
Frederick would need supporting--on helping the poor. The parish
flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior of
the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and
even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the
money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. She
could do no more. She had tried in days gone by to think the situation
out, to discover the exact right course for her to take, but had found it,
as she had found Frederick, too difficult, and had left it, as she had left
Frederick, to God. Nothing of this money was spent on her house or
dress; those remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere. It was the
poor who profited. Their very boots were stout with sins. But how
difficult it had been. Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance, prayed
about it to exhaustion. Ought she perhaps to refuse to touch the money,
to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which were its source?
But then what about the parish's boots? She asked the vicar what he
thought, and through much delicate language, evasive and cautious, it
did finally appear that he was for the boots.
At least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began his terrible
successful career--he only began it after their marriage; when she
married him he had been a blameless official attached to the library of
the British Museum--to publish the memoirs under another name, so
that she was not publicly branded. Hampstead read the books with glee,
and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst. Frederick was almost
unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead. He never went to any of its

gatherings. Whatever it was he did in the way of recreation was done in
London, but he never spoke of what he did or whom he saw; he might
have been perfectly friendless for any mention he ever made of friends
to his wife. Only the vicar knew where the money for the parish came
from, and he regarded it, he told Mrs. Arbuthnot, as a matter of honour
not to mention it.
And at least her little house was not haunted by the loose lived ladies,
for Frederick did his work away from home. He had two rooms near
the British Museum, which was the scene of his exhumations, and there
he went every morning, and he came back long after his wife was
asleep. Sometimes he did not come back at all. Sometimes she did not
see him for several days together. Then he would suddenly appear at
breakfast, having let himself in with his latchkey the night before, very
jovial and good-natured and free-handed and glad if she would allow
him to give her something--a well-fed man, contented with the world; a
jolly, full-blooded, satisfied man. And she was always gentle, and
anxious that his coffee should be as he liked it.
He seemed very happy.