The Enchanted April | Page 5

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 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.