Chapter 4
It had been arranged that Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins,traveling together, should arrive at San Salvatore on the evening ofMarch 31st--the owner, who told them how to get there, appreciatedtheir disinclination to begin their time in it on April 1st--and LadyCaroline and Mrs. Fisher, as yet unacquainted and therefore under noobligations to bore each other on the journey, for only towards the endwould they find out by a process of sifting who they were, were toarrive on the morning of April 2nd. In this way everything would begot nicely ready for the two who seemed, in spite of the equality ofthe sharing, yet to have something about them of guests.
There were disagreeable incidents towards the end of March, whenMrs. Wilkins, her heart in her mouth and her face a mixture of guilt,terror and determination, told her husband that she had been invited toItaly, and he declined to believe it. Of course he declined to believeit. Nobody had ever invited his wife to Italy before. There was noprecedent. He required proofs. The only proof was Mrs. Arbuthnot, andMrs. Wilkins had produced her; but after what entreaties, whatpassionate persuading! Mrs. Arbuthnot had not imagined she would haveto face Mr. Wilkins and say things to him that were short of the truth,and it brought home to her what she had for some time suspected, thatshe was slipping more and more away from God.
Indeed, the whole of March was filled with unpleasant, anxiousmoments. It was an uneasy month. Mrs. Arbuthnot's conscience, madesuper-sensitive by years of pampering, could not reconcile what she wasdoing with its own high standard of what was right. It gave her littlepeace. It nudged her at her prayers. It punctuated her entreaties fordivine guidance with disconcerting questions, such as, "Are you not ahypocrite? Do you really mean that? Would you not, frankly, bedisappointed if that prayer were granted?"
The prolonged wet, raw weather was on the side too of herconscience, producing far more sickness than usual among the poor.They had bronchitis; they had fevers; there was no end to the distress.And here she was going off, spending precious money on going off,simply and solely to be happy. One woman. One woman being happy, andthese piteous multitudes . . .
She was unable to look the vicar in the face. He did not know,nobody knew, what she was going to do, and from the very beginning shewas unable to look anybody in the face. She excused herself frommaking speeches appealing for money. How could she stand up and askpeople for money when she herself was spending so much on her ownselfish pleasure? Nor did it help her or quiet her that, havingactually told Frederick, in her desire to make up for what she wassquandering, that she would be grateful if he would let her have somemoney, he instantly gave her a cheque for L100. He asked no questions.She was scarlet. He looked at her a moment and then looked away. Itwas a relief to Frederick that she should take some money. She gave itall immediately to the organization she worked with, and found herselfmore tangled in doubts than ever.
Mrs. Wilkins, on the contrary, had no doubts. She was quitecertain that it was a most proper thing to have a holiday, andaltogether right and beautiful to spend one's own hard-collectedsavings on being happy.
"Think how much nicer we shall be when we come back," she said toMrs. Arbuthnot, encouraging that pale lady.
No, Mrs. Wilkins had no doubts, but she had fears; and March wasfor her too an anxious month, with the unconscious Mr. Wilkins comingback daily to his dinner and eating his fish in the silence of imaginedsecurity.
Also things happened so awkwardly. It really is astonishing, howawkwardly they happen. Mrs. Wilkins, who was very careful all thismonth to give Mellersh only the food he liked, buying it and hoveringover its cooking with a zeal more than common, succeeded so well theMellersh was pleased; definitely pleased; so much pleased that he beganto think that he might, after all, have married the right wife insteadof, as he had frequently suspected, the wrong one. The result was thaton the third Sunday in the month--Mrs. Wilkins had made up hertrembling mind that on the fourth Sunday, there being five in thatMarch and it being on the fifth of them that she and Mrs. Arbuthnotwere to start, she would tell Mellersh of her invitation--on the thirdSunday, then, after a very well-cooked lunch in which the Yorkshirepudding had melted in his mouth and the apricot tart had been soperfect that he ate it all, Mellersh, smoking his cigar by the brightlyburning fire the while hail gusts banged on the window, said "I amthinking of taking you to Italy for Easter." And paused for herastounded and grateful ecstasy.
None came. The silence in the room, except for the hail hittingthe windows and the gay roar of the fire, was complete. Mrs. Wilkinscould not speak. She was dumbfounded. The next Sunday was the day shehad meant to break her news to him, and she had not yet even preparedthe form of words in which she would break it.
Mr. Wilkins, who had not been abroad since before the war, andwas noticing with increasing disgust, as week followed week of wind andrain, the peculiar persistent vileness of the weather, and slowlyconceived a desire to get away from England for Easter. He was doingvery well in his business. He could afford a trip. Switzerland wasuseless in April. There was a familiar sound about Easter in Italy.To Italy he would go; and as it would cause comment if he did not takehis wife, take her he must--besides, she would be useful; a secondperson was always useful in a country whose language one did not speakfor holding things, for waiting with the luggage.
He had expected an explosion of gratitude and excitement. Theabsence of it was incredible. She could not, he concluded, have heard.Probably she was absorbed in some foolish day-dream. It wasregrettable how childish she remained.
He turned his head--their chairs were in front of the fire--andlooked at her. She was staring straight into the fire, and it was nodoubt the fire that made her face so red.
"I am thinking," he repeated, raising his clear, cultivated voiceand speaking with acerbity, for inattention at such a moment wasdeplorable, "of taking you to Italy for Easter. Did you not hear me?"
Yes, she had heard him, and she had been wondering at theextraordinary coincidence--really most extraordinary--she was justgoing to tell him how--how she had been invited--a friend had invitedher--Easter, too--Easter was in April, wasn't it?---her friend had a--had a house there.
In fact Mrs. Wilkins, driven by terror, guilt and surprise, hadbeen more incoherent if possible than usual.
It was a dreadful afternoon. Mellersh, profoundly indignant,besides having his intended treat coming back on him like a blessing toroost, cross-examined her with the utmost severity. He demanded thatshe refuse the invitation. He demanded that, since she had sooutrageously accepted it without consulting him, she should write andcancel her acceptance. Finding himself up against an unsuspected,shocking rock of obstinacy in her, he then declined to believe she hadbeen invited to Italy at all. He declined to believe in this Mrs.Arbuthnot, of whom till that moment he had never heard; and it was onlywhen the gentle creature was brought round--with such difficulty, withsuch a desire on her part to throw the whole thing up rather than tellMr. Wilkins less than the truth--and herself endorsed his wife'sstatements that he was able to give them credence. He could not butbelieve Mrs. Arbuthnot. She produced the precise effect on him thatshe did on Tube officials. She hardly needed to say anything. Butthat made no difference to her conscience, which knew and would not lether forget that she had given him an incomplete impression. "Do you,"asked her conscience, "see any real difference between an incompleteimpression and a completely stated lie? God sees none."
The remainder of March was a confused bad dream. Both Mrs.Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins were shattered; try as they would not to,both felt extraordinarily guilty; and when on the morning of the 30ththey did finally get off there was no exhilaration about the departure,no holiday feeling at all.
"We've been too good--much too good," Mrs. Wilkins kept onmurmuring as they walked up and down the platform at Victoria, havingarrived there an hour before they need have, "and that's why we feel asthough we're doing wrong. We're brow-beaten--we're not any longer realhuman beings. Real human beings are
n't ever as good as we've been.Oh"--she clenched her thin hands--"to think that we ought to be sohappy now, here on the very station, actually starting, and we're not,and it's being spoilt for us just simply because we've spoilt them!What have we done--what have we done, I should like to know," sheinquired of Mrs. Arbuthnot indignantly, "except for once want to goaway by ourselves and have a little rest from them?"
Mrs. Arbuthnot, patiently pacing, did not ask who she meant by them,because she knew. Mrs. Wilkins meant their husbands, persisting in herassumption that Frederick was as indignant as Mellersh over the departureof his wife, whereas Frederick did not even know his wife had gone.
Mrs. Arbuthnot, always silent about him, had said nothing of thisto Mrs. Wilkins. Frederick went too deep into her heart for her totalk about him. He was having an extra bout of work finishing anotherof those dreadful books, and had been away practically continually thelast few weeks, and was away when she left. Why should she tell himbeforehand? Sure as she so miserably was that he would have noobjection to anything she did, she merely wrote him a note and put iton the hall-table ready for him if and when he should come home. Shesaid she was going for a month's holiday as she needed a rest and shehad not had one for so long, and that Gladys, the efficientparlourmaid, had orders to see to his comforts. She did not say whereshe was going; there was no reason why she should; he would not beinterested, he would not care.
The day was wretched, blustering and wet; the crossing wasatrocious, and they were very sick. But after having been very sick,just to arrive at Calais and not be sick was happiness, and it wasthere that the real splendour of what they were doing first began towarm their benumbed spirits. It got hold of Mrs. Wilkins first, andspread from her like a rose-coloured flame over her pale companion.Mellersh at Calais, where they restored themselves with soles becauseof Mrs. Wilkins's desire to eat a sole Mellersh wasn't having--Mellershat Calais had already begun to dwindle and seem less important. Noneof the French porters knew him; not a single official at Calais cared afig for Mellersh. In Paris there was no time to think of him becausetheir train was late and they only just caught the Turin train at theGare de Lyons; and by the afternoon of the next day when they got intoItaly, England, Frederick, Mellersh, the vicar, the poor, Hampstead,the club, Shoolbred, everybody and everything, the whole inflamed soredreariness, had faded to the dimness of a dream.