Chapter 4

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.