It began in a Woman’s Club in London on a February afternoon—an uncomfortable
club, and a miserable afternoon—when Mrs. Wilkins, who had come down from
Hampstead to shop and had lunched at her club, took up The Times from
the table in the smoking-room, and running her listless eye down the Agony
Column saw this: To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle
on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April.
Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times. That was its conception; yet, as in the case of many another, the conceiver was
unaware of it at the moment. So entirely unaware was Mrs. Wilkins that her April for that year had then and
there been settled for her that she dropped the newspaper with a gesture that
was both irritated and resigned, and went over to the window and stared
drearily out at the dripping street. Not for her were mediaeval castles, even those that are specially described as
small. Not for her the shores in April of the Mediterranean, and the wistaria
and sunshine. Such delights were only for the rich. Yet the advertisement had
been addressed to persons who appreciate these things, so that it had been,
anyhow, addressed too to her, for she certainly appreciated them; more than
anybody knew; more than she had ever told. But she was poor. In the whole world
she possessed of her very own only ninety pounds, saved from year to year, put
by carefully pound by pound, out of her dress allowance. She had scraped this
sum together at the suggestion of her husband as a shield and refuge against a
rainy day. Her dress allowance, given her by her father, was £100 a year, so
that Mrs. Wilkins’s clothes were what her husband, urging her to save, called
modest and becoming, and her acquaintance to each other, when they spoke of her
at all, which was seldom for she was very negligible, called a perfect sight. Mr. Wilkins, a solicitor, encouraged thrift, except that branch of it which got
into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called it bad housekeeping. But
for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated into Mrs. Wilkins’s clothes and
spoilt them, he had much praise. “You never know,” he said, “when there will be
a rainy day, and you may be very glad to find you have a nest-egg. Indeed we
both may.” Looking out of the club window into Shaftesbury Avenue—hers was an economical
club, but convenient for Hampstead, where she lived, and for Shoolbred’s, where
she shopped—Mrs. Wilkins, having stood there some time very drearily, her
mind’s eye on the Mediterranean in April, and the wistaria, and the enviable
opportunities of the rich, while her bodily eye watched the really extremely
horrible sooty rain falling steadily on the hurrying umbrellas and splashing
omnibuses, suddenly wondered whether perhaps this was not the rainy day
Mellersh—Mellersh was Mr. Wilkins—had so often encouraged her to prepare for,
and whether to get out of such a climate and into the small mediaeval castle
wasn’t perhaps what Providence had all along intended her to do with her
savings. Part of her savings, of course; perhaps quite a small part. The
castle, being mediaeval, might also be dilapidated, and dilapidations were
surely cheap. She wouldn’t in the least mind a few of them, because you didn’t
pay for dilapidations which were already there; on the contrary—by reducing the
price you had to pay they really paid you. But what nonsense to think of it . .
. She turned away from the window with the same gesture of mingled irritation and
resignation with which she had laid down The Times, and crossed the room
towards the door with the intention of getting her mackintosh and umbrella and
fighting her way into one of the overcrowded omnibuses and going to Shoolbred’s
on her way home and buying some soles for Mellersh’s dinner—Mellersh was
difficult with fish and liked only soles, except salmon—when she beheld Mrs.
Arbuthnot, a woman she knew by sight as also living in Hampstead and belonging
to the club, sitting at the table in the middle of the room on which the
newspapers and magazines were kept, absorbed, in her turn, in the first page of
The Times. Mrs. Wilkins had never yet spoken to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who belonged to one of the
various church sets, and who analysed, classified, divided and registered the
poor; whereas she and Mellersh, when they did go out, went to the parties of
impressionist painters, of whom in Hampstead there were many. Mellersh had a
sister who had married one of them and lived up on the Heath, and because of
this alliance Mrs. Wilkins was drawn into a circle which was highly unnatural
to her, and she had learned to dread pictures. She had to say things about
them, and she didn’t know what to say. She used to murmur, “Marvellous,” and
feel that it was not enough. But nobody minded. Nobody listened. Nobody took
any notice of Mrs. Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not noticed at
parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her
face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy. And if
one’s clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, thought Mrs.
Wilkins, who recognised her disabilities, what, at parties, is there left of
one? Also she was always with Wilkins, that clean-shaven, fine-looking man, who gave
a party, merely by coming to it, a great air. Wilkins was very respectable. He
was known to be highly thought of by his senior partners. His sister’s circle
admired him. He pronounced adequately intelligent judgments on art and artists.
He was pithy; he was prudent; he never said a word too much, nor, on the other
hand, did he ever say a word too little. He produced the impression of keeping
copies of everything he said; and he was so obviously reliable that it often
happened that people who met him at these parties became discontented with
their own solicitors, and after a period of restlessness extricated themselves
and went to Wilkins. Naturally Mrs. Wilkins was blotted out. “She,” said his sister, with something
herself of the judicial, the digested, and the final in her manner, “should
stay at home.” But Wilkins could not leave his wife at home. He was a family
solicitor, and all such have wives and show them. With his in the week he went
to parties, and with his on Sundays he went to church. Being still fairly
young—he was thirty-nine—and ambitious of old ladies, of whom he had not yet
acquired in his practice a sufficient number, he could not afford to miss
church, and it was there that Mrs. Wilkins became familiar, though never
through words, with Mrs. Arbuthnot. She saw her marshalling the children of the poor into pews. She would come in
at the head of the procession from the Sunday School exactly five minutes
before the choir, and get her boys and girls neatly fitted into their allotted
seats, and down on their little knees in their preliminary prayer, and up again
on their feet just as, to the swelling organ, the vestry door opened, and the
choir and clergy, big with the litanies and commandments they were presently to
roll out, emerged. She had a sad face, yet she was evidently efficient. The
combination used to make Mrs. Wilkins wonder, for she had been told by
Mellersh, on days when she had only been able to get plaice, that if one were
efficient one wouldn’t be depressed, and that if one does one’s job well one
becomes automatically bright and brisk. About Mrs. Arbuthnot there was nothing bright and brisk, though much in her way
with the Sunday School children that was automatic; but when Mrs. Wilkins,
turning from the window, caught sight of her in the club she was not being
automatic at all, but was looking fixedly at one portion of the first page of
The Times, holding the paper quite still, her eyes not moving. She was
just staring; and her face, as usual, was the face of a patient and
disappointed Madonna. Obeying an impulse she wondered at even while obeying it, Mrs. Wilkins, the
shy and the reluctant, instead of proceeding as she had intended to the
cloakroom and from thence to Schoolbred’s in search of Mellersh’s fish,
stopped at the table and sat down exactly opposite Mrs. Arbuthnot, to whom
she had never yet spoken in her life. It was one of those long, narrow refectory tables, so that they were quite
close to each other. Mrs. Arbuthnot, however, did not look up. She continued to gaze, with eyes
that seemed to be dreaming, at one spot only of The Times. Mrs. Wilkins watched her a minute, trying to screw up courage to speak to her.
She wanted to ask her if she had seen the advertisement. She did not know why
she wanted to ask her this, but she wanted to. How stupid not to be able to
speak to her. She looked so kind. She looked so unhappy. Why couldn’t two
unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of
life by a little talk—real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would
have liked, what they still tried to hope? And she could not help thinking that
Mrs. Arbuthnot, too, was reading that very same advertisement. Her eyes were on
the very part of the paper. Was she, too, picturing what it would be like—the
colour, the fragrance, the light, the soft lapping of the sea among little hot
rocks? Colour, fragrance, light, sea; instead of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the
wet omnibuses, and the fish department at Shoolbred’s, and the Tube to
Hampstead, and dinner, and to-morrow the same and the day after the same and
always the same . . . Suddenly Mrs. Wilkins found herself leaning across the table. “Are you reading
about the mediaeval castle and the wistaria?” she heard herself asking. Naturally Mrs. Arbuthnot was surprised; but she was not half so much surprised
as Mrs. Wilkins was at herself for asking. Mrs. Arbuthnot had not yet to her knowledge set eyes on the shabby, lank,
loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with its small freckled face
and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a smashed-down wet-weather hat, and
she gazed at her a moment without answering. She was reading about the
mediaeval castle and the wistaria, or rather had read about it ten minutes
before, and since then had been lost in dreams—of light, of colour, of
fragrance, of the soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks . . . “Why do you ask me that?” she said in her grave voice, for her training of and
by the poor had made her grave and patient. Mrs. Wilkins flushed and looked excessively shy and frightened. “Oh, only
because I saw it too, and I thought perhaps—I thought somehow—” she stammered. Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, her mind being used to getting people into lists and
divisions, from habit considered, as she gazed thoughtfully at Mrs. Wilkins,
under what heading, supposing she had to classify her, she could most properly
be put. “And I know you by sight,” went on Mrs. Wilkins, who, like all the shy, once
she was started plunged on, frightening herself to more and more speech by the
sheer sound of what she had said last in her ears. “Every Sunday—I see you
every Sunday in church—” “In church?” echoed Mrs. Arbuthnot. “And this seems such a wonderful thing—this advertisement about the
wistaria—and—” Mrs. Wilkins, who must have been at least thirty, broke off and wriggled in her
chair with the movement of an awkward and embarrassed schoolgirl. “It seems so wonderful,” she went on in a kind of burst, “and—it is such
a miserable day . . .” And then she sat looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot with the eyes of an imprisoned dog. “This poor thing,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose life was spent in helping and
alleviating, “needs advice.” She accordingly prepared herself patiently to give it. “If you see me in church,” she said, kindly and attentively, “I suppose you
live in Hampstead too?” “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its long thin neck
drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead bowed her, “Oh yes.” “Where?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed, naturally first
proceeded to collect the facts. But Mrs. Wilkins, laying her hand softly and caressingly on the part of The
Times where the advertisement was, as though the mere printed words of it
were precious, only said, “Perhaps that’s why this seems so wonderful.” “No—I think that’s wonderful anyhow,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, forgetting
facts and faintly sighing. “Then you were reading it?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, her eyes going dreamy again. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” murmured Mrs. Wilkins. “Wonderful,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Her face, which had lit up, faded into
patience again. “Very wonderful,” she said. “But it’s no use wasting one’s time
thinking of such things.” “Oh, but it is,” was Mrs. Wilkins’s quick, surprising reply; surprising
because it was so much unlike the rest of her—the characterless coat and skirt,
the crumpled hat, the undecided wisp of hair straggling out. “And just the
considering of them is worth while in itself—such a change from Hampstead—and
sometimes I believe—I really do believe—if one considers hard enough one gets
things.” Mrs. Arbuthnot observed her patiently. In what category would she, supposing
she had to, put her? “Perhaps,” she said, leaning forward a little, “you will tell me your name. If
we are to be friends”—she smiled her grave smile—“as I hope we are, we had
better begin at the beginning.” “Oh yes—how kind of you. I’m Mrs. Wilkins,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t
expect,” she added, flushing, as Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, “that it conveys
anything to you. Sometimes it—it doesn’t seem to convey anything to me either.
But”—she looked round with a movement of seeking help—“I am Mrs.
Wilkins.” She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious
twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pugdog’s tail.
There it was, however. There was no doing anything with it. Wilkins she was and
Wilkins she would remain; and though her husband encouraged her to give it on
all occasions as Mrs. Mellersh-Wilkins she only did that when he was within
earshot, for she thought Mellersh made Wilkins worse, emphasising it in the way
Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasises the villa. When first he suggested she should add Mellersh she had objected for the above
reason, and after a pause—Mellersh was much too prudent to speak except after a
pause, during which presumably he was taking a careful mental copy of his
coming observation—he said, much displeased, “But I am not a villa,” and looked
at her as he looks who hopes, for perhaps the hundredth time, that he may not
have married a fool. Of course he was not a villa, Mrs. Wilkins assured him; she had never supposed
he was; she had not dreamed of meaning . . . she was only just thinking . . . The more she explained the more earnest became Mellersh’s hope, familiar to him
by this time, for he had then been a husband for two years, that he might not
by any chance have married a fool; and they had a prolonged quarrel, if that
can be called a quarrel which is conducted with dignified silence on one side
and earnest apology on the other, as to whether or no Mrs. Wilkins had intended
to suggest that Mr. Wilkins was a villa. “I believe,” she had thought when it was at last over—it took a long
while—“that anybody would quarrel about anything when they’ve not
left off being together for a single day for two whole years. What we both need
is a holiday.” “My husband,” went on Mrs. Wilkins to Mrs. Arbuthnot, trying to throw some
light on herself, “is a solicitor. He—” She cast about for something she could
say elucidatory of Mellersh, and found: “He’s very handsome.” “Well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot kindly, “that must be a great pleasure to you.” “Why?” asked Mrs. Wilkins. “Because,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little taken aback, for constant intercourse
with the poor had accustomed her to have her pronouncements accepted without
question, “because beauty—handsomeness—is a gift like any other, and if it is
properly used—” She trailed off into silence. Mrs. Wilkins’s great grey eyes were fixed on her,
and it seemed suddenly to Mrs. Arbuthnot that perhaps she was becoming
crystallised into a habit of exposition, and of exposition after the manner of
nursemaids, through having an audience that couldn’t but agree, that would be
afraid, if it wished, to interrupt, that didn’t know, that was, in fact, at her
mercy. But Mrs. Wilkins was not listening; for just then, absurd as it seemed, a
picture had flashed across her brain, and there were two figures in it sitting
together under a great trailing wistaria that stretched across the branches of
a tree she didn’t know, and it was herself and Mrs. Arbuthnot—she saw them—she
saw them. And behind them, bright in sunshine, were old grey walls—the
mediaeval castle—she saw it—they were there . . . She therefore stared at Mrs. Arbuthnot and did not hear a word she said. And
Mrs. Arbuthnot stared too at Mrs. Wilkins, arrested by the expression on her
face, which was swept by the excitement of what she saw, and was as luminous
and tremulous under it as water in sunlight when it is ruffled by a gust of
wind. At this moment, if she had been at a party, Mrs. Wilkins would have been
looked at with interest. They stared at each other; Mrs. Arbuthnot surprised, inquiringly, Mrs. Wilkins
with the eyes of some one who has had a revelation. Of course. That was how it
could be done. She herself, she by herself, couldn’t afford it, and wouldn’t be
able, even if she could afford it, to go there all alone; but she and Mrs.
Arbuthnot together . . . She leaned across the table. “Why don’t we try and get it?” she whispered. Mrs. Arbuthnot became even more wide-eyed. “Get it?” she repeated. “Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, still as though she were afraid of being overheard.
“Not just sit here and say How wonderful, and then go home to Hampstead without
having put out a finger—go home just as usual and see about the dinner and the
fish just as we’ve been doing for years and years and will go on doing for
years and years. In fact,” said Mrs. Wilkins, flushing to the roots of her
hair, for the sound of what she was saying, of what was coming pouring out,
frightened her, and yet she couldn’t 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, and I expect so have you, and this is the
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. 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 now
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 it 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 longing, 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 biassed and
incomplete views 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 come
out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely apparently blowing her nose
with it, and then, blinking her eyes very quickly once or twice, looked at Mrs.
Arbuthnot with a quivering air of half humble, half frightened apology, and
smiled. “Will you believe,” she whispered, trying to steady her mouth, evidently
dreadfully ashamed of herself, “that I’ve never spoken to any one before in my
life like this? I can’t think, I simply don’t know, what has come over me.” “It’s the advertisement,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, nodding gravely. “Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, dabbing furtively at her eyes, “and us both being
so—”—she blew her nose again a little—“miserable.”