The Enchanted April

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 medieval 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 medieval 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 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—”

“And the name of the chamber,” she thought, quoting and smiling round at it, “was Peace.”

Well, this was delicious, to lie there thinking how happy she was, but outside those shutters it was more delicious still. She jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Wilkins.

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

It was very well cooked, but Mrs. Fisher had never cared for macaroni, especially not this long, worm-shaped variety. She found it difficult to eat⁠—slippery, wriggling off her fork, making her look, she felt, undignified when, having got it as she supposed into her mouth, ends of it yet hung out. Always, too, when she ate it she was reminded of Mr. Fisher. He had during their married life behaved very much like macaroni. He had slipped, he had wriggled, he had made her feel undignified, and when at last she had got him safe, as she thought, there had invariably been little bits of him that still, as it were, hung out.

Francesca from the sideboard watched Mrs. Fisher’s way with macaroni gloomily, and her gloom deepened when she saw her at last take her knife to it and chop it small.

Mrs. Fisher really did not know how else to get hold of the stuff. She was aware that knives in this connection were improper, but one did finally lose patience. Macaroni was never allowed to appear on her table in London. Apart from its tiresomeness she did not even like it, and she would tell Lady Caroline not to order it again. Years of practice, reflected Mrs. Fisher, chopping it up, years of actual living in Italy, would be necessary to learn the exact trick. Browning managed macaroni wonderfully. She remembered watching him one day when he came to lunch with her father, and a dish of it had been ordered as a compliment to his connection with Italy. Fascinating, the way it went in.

Mr. Wilkins got into the bath, turned off the tap, and the stove blew up, exactly as the printed instructions said it would. It blew up, fortunately, only in its inside, but it blew up with a terrific noise, and Mr. Wilkins leapt out of the bath and rushed to the door, and only the instinct born of years of training made him snatch up a towel as he rushed.

Scrap, halfway across the landing on her way out of doors, heard the explosion.

“Good heavens,” she thought, remembering the instructions, “there goes Mr. Wilkins!”

And she ran towards the head of the stairs to call the servants, and as she ran, out ran Mr. Wilkins clutching his towel, and they ran into each other.

“That damned bath!” cried Mr. Wilkins, perhaps for the only time in his life forgetting himself; but he was upset.

Mr. Wilkins, imperfectly concealed in his towel, his shoulders exposed at one end and his legs at the other, and Lady Caroline Dester, to meet whom he had swallowed all his anger with his wife and come out to Italy.