The Enchanted April

by Elisabeth Von Arnim

  Were they the same goldfish? She did not know. Perhaps, like carp, they outlived everybody. Perhaps, on the other hand, behind the deep-sea vegetation provided for them at the bottom, they had from time to time as the years went by withdrawn and replaced themselves. Were they or were they not, she sometimes wondered, contemplating them between the courses of her solitary meals, the same goldfish that had that day been there when Carlyle – how well she remembered it – angrily strode up to them in the middle of some argument with her father that had grown heated, and striking the glass smartly with his fist had put them to flight, shouting as they fled, “Och, ye deaf deevils! Och ye lucky deaf deevils! Ye can’t hear anything of the blasted, blethering, doddering, glaikit fool-stuff yer maister talks, can ye?” Or words to that effect.

  Dear, great-souled Carlyle. Such natural gushings forth, such true freshness, such real grandeur. Rugged, if you will – yes, undoubtedly sometimes rugged, and startling in a drawing room, but magnificent. Who was there now to put beside him? Who was there to mention in the same breath? Her father, than whom no one had had more flair, said: “Thomas is immortal.” And here was this generation, this generation of puniness, raising its little voice in doubts, or, still worse, not giving itself the trouble to raise it at all, not – it was incredible, but it had been thus reported to her – even reading him. Mrs Fisher did not read him either, but that was different. She had read him – she had certainly read him. Of course she had read him. There was Teufelsdröck – she quite well remembered a tailor called Teufelsdröck. So like Carlyle to call him that.* Yes, she must have read him, though naturally details escaped her.

  The gong sounded. Lost in reminiscence Mrs Fisher had forgotten time, and hastened to her bedroom to wash her hands and smooth her hair. She did not wish to be late and set a bad example, and perhaps find her seat at the head of the table taken. One could put no trust in the manners of the younger generation, especially not in those of that Mrs Wilkins.

  She was, however, the first to arrive in the dining room. Francesca in a white apron stood ready with an enormous dish of smoking hot, glistening macaroni, but nobody was there to eat it.

  Mrs Fisher sat down, looking stern. Lax, lax.

  ‘Serve me,’ she said to Francesca, who showed a disposition to wait for the others.

  Francesca served her. Of the party she liked Mrs Fisher least – in fact, she did not like her at all. She was the only one of the four ladies who had not yet smiled. True she was old, true she was unbeautiful, true she therefore had no reason to smile, but kind ladies smiled, reason or no. They smiled – not because they were happy, but because they wished to make happy. This one of the four ladies could not, then, Francesca decided, be kind; so she handed her the macaroni – being unable to hide any of her feelings – morosely.

  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. No chasing round the plate, no slidings off the fork, no subsequent protrusions of loose ends – just one dig, one whisk, one thrust, one gulp, and lo, yet another poet had been nourished.

  “Shall I go and seek the young lady?” asked Francesca, unable any longer to look on at good macaroni being cut with a knife.

  Mrs Fisher came out of her reminiscent reflections with difficulty. “She knows lunch is at half-past twelve,” she said. “They all know.”

  “She may be asleep,” said Francesca. “The other ladies are farther away, but this one is not far away.”

  “Beat the gong again then,” said Mrs Fisher.

  What manners, she thought; what, what manners. It was not a hotel, and considerations were due. She must say she was surprised at Mrs Arbuthnot, who had not looked like somebody unpunctual. Lady Caroline, too – she had seemed amiable and courteous, whatever else she might be. From the other one, of course, she expected nothing.

  Francesca fetched the gong, and took it out into the garden and advanced, beating it as she advanced, close up to Lady Caroline, who, still stretched in her low chair, waited till she had done, and then turned her head and in the sweetest tones poured forth what appeared to be music but was really invective.

  Francesca did not recognize the liquid flow as invective – how was she to when it came out sounding like that? And with her face all smiles, for she could not but smile when she looked at this young lady, she told her the macaroni was getting cold.

  “When I do not come to meals it is because I do not wish to come to meals,” said the irritated Scrap, “and you will not in future disturb me.”

  “Is she ill?” asked Francesca, sympathetic but unable to stop smiling. Never, never had she seen hair so beautiful. Like pure flax – like the hair of northern babes. On such a little head only blessing could rest, on such a little head the nimbus of the holiest saints could fitly be placed.

  Scrap shut her eyes and refused to answer. In this she was injudicious, for its effect was to convince Francesca, who hurried away full of concern to tell Mrs Fisher that she was indisposed. And Mrs Fisher, being prevented, she explained, from going out to Lady Caroline herself because of her stick, sent the two others instead, who had come in at that moment heated and breathless and full of excuses, while she herself proceeded to the next course, which was a very well-made omelette, bursting most agreeably at both its ends with young green peas.

  “Serve me,” she directed Francesca, who again showed a disposition to wait for the others.

  “Oh, why won’t they leave me alone – oh, why won’t they leave me alone?” Scrap asked herself when she heard more scrunchings on the little pebbles which took the place of grass, and therefore knew someone else was approaching.

  She kept her eyes tight shut this time. Why should she go in to lunch if she didn’t want to? This wasn’t a private house – she was in no way tangled up in duties towards a tiresome hostess. For all practical purposes San Salvatore was a hotel, and she ought to be let alone to eat or not to eat exactly as if she really had been in an hotel.

  But the unfortunate Scrap could not just sit still and close her eyes without rousing that desire to stroke and pet in her beholders with which she was only too familiar. Even the cook had patted her. And now a gentle hand – how well she knew and how much she dreaded gentle hands – was placed on her forehead.

  “I’m afraid you’re not well,” said a voice that was not Mrs Fisher’s, and therefore must belong to one of the originals.

  “I have a headache,” murmured Scrap. Perhaps it was best to say that – perhaps it was the shortest cut to peace.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Mrs Arbuthnot softly, for it was her hand being gentle.

  “And I,” said Scrap to h
erself, “who thought if I came here I would escape mothers.”

  “Don’t you think some tea would do you good?” asked Mrs Arbuthnot tenderly.

  Tea? The idea was abhorrent to Scrap. In this heat to be drinking tea in the middle of the day…

  “No,” she murmured.

  “I expect what would really be best for her,” said another voice, “is to be left quiet.”

  How sensible, thought Scrap, and raised the eyelashes of one eye just enough to peep through and see who was speaking.

  It was the freckled original. The dark one, then, was the one with the hand. The freckled one rose in her esteem.

  “But I can’t bear to think of you with a headache and nothing being done for it,” said Mrs Arbuthnot. “Would a cup of strong black coffee?…”

  Scrap said no more. She waited, motionless and dumb, till Mrs Arbuthnot should remove her hand. After all, she couldn’t stand there all day, and when she went away she would have to take her hand with her.

  “I do think,” said the freckled one, “that she wants nothing except quiet.”

  And perhaps the freckled one pulled the one with the hand by the sleeve, for the hold on Scrap’s forehead relaxed, and after a minute’s silence, during which no doubt she was being contemplated – she was always being contemplated – the footsteps began to scrunch the pebbles again, and grew fainter, and were gone.

  “Lady Caroline has a headache,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, re-entering the dining room and sitting down in her place next to Mrs Fisher. “I can’t persuade her to have even a little tea, or some black coffee. Do you know what aspirin is in Italian?”

  “The proper remedy for headaches,” said Mrs Fisher firmly, “is castor oil.”

  “But she hasn’t got a headache,” said Mrs Wilkins.

  “Carlyle,” said Mrs Fisher, who had finished her omelette and had leisure, while she waited for the next course, to talk, “suffered at one period terribly from headaches, and he constantly took castor oil as a remedy. He took it, I should say, almost to excess, and called it, I remember, in his interesting way, the oil of sorrow. My father said it coloured for a time his whole attitude to life, his whole philosophy. But that was because he took too much. What Lady Caroline wants is one dose, and one only. It is a mistake to keep on taking castor oil.”

  “Do you know the Italian for it?” asked Mrs Arbuthnot.

  “Ah, that I’m afraid I don’t. However, she would know. You can ask her.”

  “But she hasn’t got a headache,” repeated Mrs Wilkins, who was struggling with the macaroni. “She only wants to be let alone.”

  They both looked at her. The word “shovel” crossed Mrs Fisher’s mind in connection with Mrs Wilkins’s actions at that moment.

  “Then why should she say she has?” asked Mrs Arbuthnot.

  “Because she is still trying to be polite. Soon she won’t try, when the place has got more into her – she’ll really be it. Without trying. Naturally.”

  “Lotty, you see,” explained Mrs Arbuthnot, smiling to Mrs Fisher, who sat waiting with a stony patience for her next course, delayed because Mrs Wilkins would go on trying to eat the macaroni, which must be less worth eating than ever now that it was cold, “Lotty, you see, has a theory about this place—”

  But Mrs Fisher had no wish to hear any theory of Mrs Wilkins’s.

  “I am sure I don’t know,” she interrupted, looking severely at Mrs Wilkins, “why you should assume Lady Caroline is not telling the truth.”

  “I don’t assume – I know,” said Mrs Wilkins.

  “And pray how do you know?” asked Mrs Fisher icily, for Mrs Wilkins was actually helping herself to more macaroni, offered her officiously and unnecessarily a second time by Francesca.

  “When I was out there just now I saw inside her.”

  Well, Mrs Fisher wasn’t going to say anything to that – she wasn’t going to trouble to reply to downright idiocy. Instead she sharply rapped the little table-gong by her side, though there was Francesca standing at the sideboard, and said, for she would wait no longer for her next course, “Serve me.”

  And Francesca – it must have been wilful – offered her the macaroni again.

  10

  There was no way of getting into or out of the top garden at San Salvatore except through the two glass doors, unfortunately side by side, of the dining room and the hall. A person in the garden who wished to escape unseen could not – for the person to be escaped from would be met on the way. It was a small, oblong garden, and concealment was impossible. What trees there were – the Judas tree, the tamarisk, the umbrella pine – grew close to the low parapets. Rose bushes gave no real cover: one step to the right or left of them, and the person wishing to be private was discovered. Only in the north-west corner was a little place jutting out from the great wall, a kind of excrescence or loop, no doubt used in the old distrustful days for observation, where it was possible to sit really unseen, because between it and the house was a thick clump of daphne.

  Scrap, after glancing round to see that no one was looking, got up and carried her chair into this place, stealing away as carefully on tiptoe as those steal whose purpose is sin. There was another excrescence on the walls just like it at the north-east corner, but this – though the view from it was almost more beautiful, for from it you could see the bay and the lovely mountains behind Mezzago – was exposed. No bushes grew near it, nor had it any shade. The north-west loop then was where she would sit, and she settled into it, and nestling her head in her cushion and putting her feet comfortably on the parapet, from whence they appeared to the villagers on the piazza below as two white doves, thought that now indeed she would be safe.

  Mrs Fisher found her there, guided by the smell of her cigarette. The incautious Scrap had not thought of that. Mrs Fisher did not smoke herself, and all the more distinctly could she smell the smoke of others. The virile smell met her directly she went out into the garden from the dining room after lunch in order to have her coffee. She had bidden Francesca set the coffee in the shade of the house just outside the glass door, and when Mrs Wilkins, seeing a table being carried there, reminded her, very officiously and tactlessly, Mrs Fisher considered, that Lady Caroline wanted to be alone, she retorted – and with what propriety – that the garden was for everybody.

  Into it accordingly she went, and was immediately aware that Lady Caroline was smoking. She said to herself, “These modern young women,” and proceeded to find her; her stick, now that lunch was over, being no longer the hindrance to action that it was before her meal had been securely, as Browning once said – surely it was Browning? Yes, she remembered how much diverted she had been – roped in.

  Nobody diverted her now, reflected Mrs Fisher, making straight for the clump of daphne – the world had grown very dull, and had entirely lost its sense of humour. Probably they still had their jokes, these people – in fact she knew they did, for Punch still went on; but how differently it went on, and what jokes. Thackeray, in his inimitable way, would have made mincemeat of this generation. Of how much it needed the tonic properties of that astringent pen, it was, of course, unaware. It no longer even held him – at least, so she had been informed – in any particular esteem. Well, she could not give it eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to understand, but she could and would give it, represented and united in the form of Lady Caroline, a good dose of honest medicine.

  “I hear you are not well,” she said, standing in the narrow entrance of the loop and looking down with the inflexible face of one who is determined to do good at the motionless and apparently sleeping Scrap.

  Mrs Fisher had a deep voice, very like a man’s, for she had been overtaken by that strange masculinity that sometimes pursues a woman during the last laps of her life.

  Scrap tried to pretend that she was asleep, but if she had been, her cigarette would not have been held in her fingers but would h
ave been lying on the ground.

  She forgot this. Mrs Fisher did not, and coming inside the loop, sat down on a narrow stone seat built out of the wall. For a little she could sit on it – for a little, till the chill began to penetrate.

  She contemplated the figure before her. Undoubtedly a pretty creature, and one that would have had a success at Farringford.* Strange how easily even the greatest men were moved by exteriors. She had seen with her own eyes Tennyson turn away from everybody – turn, positively, his back on a crowd of eminent people assembled to do him honour, and withdraw to the window with a young person nobody had ever heard of, who had been brought there by accident and whose one and only merit – if it be a merit, that which is conferred by chance – was beauty. Beauty! All over before you can turn round. An affair, one might almost say, of minutes. Well, while it lasted it did seem able to do what it liked with men. Even husbands were not immune. There had been passages in the life of Mr Fisher…

  “I expect the journey has upset you,” she said in her deep voice. “What you want is a good dose of some simple medicine. I shall ask Domenico if there is such a thing in the village as castor oil.”

  Scrap opened her eyes and looked straight at Mrs Fisher.

  “Ah,” said Mrs Fisher. “I knew you were not asleep. If you had been, you would have let your cigarette fall to the ground.”

  Scrap threw the cigarette over the parapet.

  “Waste,” said Mrs Fisher. “I don’t like smoking for women, but I still less like waste.”