It had been arranged that Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins, travelling together,
should arrive at San Salvatore on the evening of March 31st—the owner, who told
them how to get there, appreciated their disinclination to begin their time in
it on April 1st—and Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher, as yet unacquainted and
therefore under no obligations to bore each other on the journey, for only
towards the end would they find out by a process of sifting who they were, were
to arrive on the morning of April 2nd. In this way everything would be got
nicely ready for the two who seemed, in spite of the equality of the sharing,
yet to have something about them of guests. There were disagreeable incidents towards the end of March, when Mrs. Wilkins,
her heart in her mouth and her face a mixture of guilt, terror and
determination, told her husband that she had been invited to Italy, and he
declined to believe it. Of course he declined to believe it. Nobody had ever
invited his wife to Italy before. There was no precedent. He required proofs.
The only proof was Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Wilkins had produced her; but after
what entreaties, what passionate persuading! Mrs. Arbuthnot had not imagined
she would have to 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, that
she was slipping more and more away from God. Indeed, the whole of March was filled with unpleasant, anxious moments. It was
an uneasy month. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s conscience, made super-sensitive by years of
pampering, could not reconcile what she was doing with its own high standard of
what was right. It gave her little peace. It nudged her at her prayers. It
punctuated her entreaties for divine guidance with disconcerting questions,
such as, “Are you not a hypocrite? Do you really mean that? Would you not,
frankly, be disappointed if that prayer were granted?” The prolonged wet, raw weather was on the side too of her conscience, 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, and these 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 she was unable to look
anybody in the face. She excused herself from making speeches appealing for
money. How could she stand up and ask people for money when she herself was
spending so much on her own selfish pleasure? Nor did it help her or quiet her
that, having actually told Frederick, in her desire to make up for what she was
squandering, that she would be grateful if he would let her have some money, he
instantly gave her a cheque for £100. He asked no questions. She was scarlet.
He looked at her a moment and then looked away. It was a relief to Frederick
that she should take some money. She gave it all immediately to the
organisation she worked with, and found herself more tangled in doubts than
ever. Mrs. Wilkins, on the contrary, had no doubts. She was quite certain that it was
a most proper thing to have a holiday, and altogether right and beautiful to
spend one’s own hard-collected savings on being happy. “Think how much nicer we shall be when we come back,” she said to Mrs.
Arbuthnot, encouraging that pale lady. No, Mrs. Wilkins had no doubts, but she had fears; and March was for her too an
anxious month, with the unconscious Mr. Wilkins coming back daily to his dinner
and eating his fish in the silence of imagined security. Also things happen so awkwardly. It really is astonishing, how awkwardly they
happen. Mrs. Wilkins, who was very careful all this month to give Mellersh only
the food he liked, buying it and hovering over its cooking with a zeal more
than common, succeeded so well that Mellersh was pleased; definitely pleased; so
much pleased that he began to think that he might, after all, have married the
right wife instead of, as he had frequently suspected, the wrong one. The
result was that on the third Sunday in the month—Mrs. Wilkins had made up her
trembling mind that on the fourth Sunday, there being five in that March and it
being on the fifth of them that she and Mrs. Arbuthnot were to start, she would
tell Mellersh of her invitation—on the third Sunday, then, after a very
well-cooked lunch in which the Yorkshire pudding had melted in his mouth and
the apricot tart had been so perfect that he ate it all, Mellersh, smoking his
cigar by the brightly burning fire the while hail gusts banged on the window,
said: “I am thinking of taking you to Italy for Easter.” And paused for her
astounded and grateful ecstasy. None came. The silence in the room, except for the hail hitting the windows and
the gay roar of the fire, was complete. Mrs. Wilkins could not speak. She was
dumbfounded. The next Sunday was the day she had meant to break her news to
him, and she had not yet even prepared the form of words in which she would
break it. Mr. Wilkins, who had not been abroad since before the war, and was noticing
with increasing disgust, as week followed week of wind and rain, the peculiar
persistent vileness of the weather, had slowly conceived a desire to get away
from England for Easter. He was doing very well in his business. He could
afford a trip. Switzerland was useless 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 take his wife, take her he must—besides, she would be useful; a
second person was always useful in a country whose language one did not speak
for holding things, for waiting with the luggage. He had expected an explosion of gratitude and excitement. The absence of it was
incredible. She could not, he concluded, have heard. Probably she was absorbed
in some foolish day-dream. It was regrettable how childish she remained. He turned his head—their chairs were in front of the fire—and looked at her.
She was staring straight into the fire, and it was no doubt the fire that made
her face so red. “I am thinking,” he repeated, raising his clear, cultivated voice and speaking
with acerbity, for inattention at such a moment was deplorable, “of taking you
to Italy for Easter. Did you not hear me?” Yes, she had heard him, and she had been wondering at the extraordinary
coincidence—really most extraordinary—she was just going to tell him how—how
she had been invited—a friend had invited her—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, had been 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 to roost, cross-examined her
with the utmost severity. He demanded that she refuse the invitation. He
demanded that, since she had so outrageously accepted it without consulting
him, she should write and cancel her acceptance. Finding himself up against an
unsuspected, shocking rock of obstinacy in her, he then declined to believe she
had been 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 only when
the gentle creature was brought round—with such difficulty, with such a desire
on her part to throw the whole thing up rather than tell Mr. Wilkins less than
the truth—and herself endorsed his wife’s statements that he was able to give
them credence. He could not but believe Mrs. Arbuthnot. She produced the
precise effect on him that she did on Tube officials. She hardly needed to say
anything. But that made no difference to her conscience, which knew and would
not let her forget that she had given him an incomplete impression. “Do you,”
asked her conscience, “see any real difference between an incomplete impression
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 30th they 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 on murmuring as
they walked up and down the platform at Victoria, having arrived there an hour
before they need have, “and that’s why we feel as though we’re doing wrong.
We’re brow-beaten—we’re not any longer real human beings. Real human beings
aren’t ever as good as we’ve been. Oh”—she clenched her thin hands—“to
think that we ought to be so happy 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,” she inquired of Mrs. Arbuthnot indignantly, “except for once
want to go away 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 her
assumption that Frederick was as indignant as Mellersh over the departure of
his wife, whereas Frederick did not even know his wife had gone. Mrs. Arbuthnot, always silent about him, had said nothing of this to Mrs.
Wilkins. Frederick went too deep into her heart for her to talk about him. He
was having an extra bout of work finishing another of those dreadful books, and
had been away practically continually the last few weeks, and was away when she
left. Why should she tell him beforehand? Sure as she so miserably was that he
would have no objection to anything she did, she merely wrote him a note and
put it on the hall-table ready for him if and when he should come home. She
said she was going for a month’s holiday as she needed a rest and she had not
had one for so long, and that Gladys, the efficient parlourmaid, had orders to
see to his comforts. She did not say where she was going; there was no reason
why she should; he would not be interested, he would not care. The day was wretched, blustering and wet; the crossing was atrocious, and they
were very sick. But after having been very sick, just to arrive at Calais and
not be sick was happiness, and it was there that the real splendour of what
they were doing first began to warm their benumbed spirits. It got hold of Mrs.
Wilkins first, and spread from her like a rose-coloured flame over her pale
companion. Mellersh at Calais, where they restored themselves with soles
because of Mrs. Wilkins’s desire to eat a sole Mellersh wasn’t having—Mellersh
at Calais had already begun to dwindle and seem less important. None of the
French porters knew him; not a single official at Calais cared a fig for
Mellersh. In Paris there was no time to think of him because their train was
late and they only just caught the Turin train at the Gare de Lyons; and by the
afternoon of the next day when they got into Italy, England, Frederick,
Mellersh, the vicar, the poor, Hampstead, the club, Shoolbred, everybody and
everything, the whole inflamed sore dreariness, had faded to the dimness of a
dream.