" 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. In fact," said Mrs. Wilkins, flushing to the roots of her hair(...), "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 interest. 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."
(......)
"She shouldn't say things like that," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. "The vicar ---" Yet she felt strangely stirred. (...)
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. Wilkinson 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. Wilkinson, 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. Wilkinson.
Britta says: Every year in April, I read "The Enchanted April", or at least watch the beautiful DVD. Elizabeth von Arnim is one of my favourite authors: she has such fine irony and draws her characters deadly with the stroke of a fine brush.
E.g:
"Mr. Wilkinson, 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 spoil them, he had much praise. (...)"
"Mrs. Fisher was unable to come to the club because, she explained by letter, she could not walk without a stick (...)
Her father had been an eminent critic, and in his house she had seen practically everybody who was anybody in letters and art. Carlyle had scowled at her; Matthew Arnold had held her on his knees; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on the length of her pig-tail. (...)
" Who lived at Box Hill?" interrupted Mrs. Wilkins (...)
Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some surprise. (...)
"Meredith of course," said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. "I remember a particular week-end" - she continued. (...)
"Did you know Keats?" eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.
Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare."
Britta knows some - most often elderly - people who use the excuse of their "stick" often - even if they don't own one - as Mrs. Fisher who likes to be served upon...
