The Enchanted April
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.
Chapter 5
It was cloudy in Italy, which surprised them. They had expected
brilliant sunshine. But never mind: it was Italy, and the very clouds
looked fat. Neither of them had ever been there before. Both gazed out
of the windows with rapt faces. The hours flew as long as it was
daylight, and after that there was the excitement of getting nearer,
getting quite near, getting there. At Genoa it had begun to rain—Genoa!
Imagine actually being at Genoa, seeing its name written up in the
station just like any other name—at Nervi it was pouring, and when at
last towards midnight, for again the train was late, they got to
Mezzago, the rain was coming down in what seemed solid sheets. But it
was Italy. Nothing it did could be bad. The very rain was
different—straight rain, falling properly on to one’s umbrella; not
that violently blowing English stuff that got in everywhere. And it did
leave off; and when it did, behold the earth would be strewn with
roses.
Mr. Briggs, San Salvatore’s owner, had said, “You get out at Mezzago,
and then you drive.” But he had forgotten what he amply knew, that
trains in Italy are sometimes late, and he had imagined his tenants
arriving at Mezzago at eight o’clock and finding a string of flys to
choose from.
The train was four hours late, and when Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins
scrambled down the ladder-like high steps of their carriage into the
black downpour, their skirts sweeping off great pools of sooty wet
because their hands were full of suit-cases, if it had not been for the
vigilance of Domenico, the gardener at San Salvatore, they would have
found nothing for them to drive in. All ordinary flys had long since
gone home. Domenico, foreseeing this, had sent his aunt’s fly, driven
by her son his cousin; and his aunt and her fly lived in Castagneto,
the village crouching at the feet of San Salvatore, and therefore,
however late the train was, the fly would not dare come home without
containing that which it had been sent to fetch.
Domenico’s cousin’s name was Beppo, and he presently emerged out of the
dark where Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins stood, uncertain what to do
next after the train had gone on, for they could see no porter and they
thought from the feel of it that they were standing not so much on a
platform as in the middle of the permanent way.
Beppo, who had been searching for them, emerged from the dark with a
kind of pounce and talked Italian to them vociferously. Beppo was a
most respectable young man, but he did not look as if he were,
especially not in the dark, and he had a dripping hat slouched over one
eye. They did not like the way he seized their suit-cases. He could not
be, they thought, a porter. However, they presently from out of his
streaming talk discerned the words San Salvatore, and after that they
kept on saying them to him, for it was the only Italian they knew, as
they hurried after him, unwilling to lose sight of their suit-cases,
stumbling across rails and through puddles out to where in the road a
small, high fly stood.
Its hood was up, and its horse was in an attitude of thought. They
climbed in, and the minute they were in—Mrs. Wilkins, indeed, could
hardly be called in—the horse awoke with a start from its reverie and
immediately began going home rapidly; without Beppo; without the
suit-cases.
Beppo darted after him, making the night ring with his shouts, and
caught the hanging reins just in time. He explained proudly, and as it
seemed to him with perfect clearness, that the horse always did that,
being a fine animal full of corn and blood, and cared for by him,
Beppo, as if he were his own son, and the ladies must not be alarmed—he
had noticed they were clutching each other; but clear, and loud, and
profuse of words though he was, they only looked at him blankly.
He went on talking, however, while he piled the suit-cases up round
them, sure that sooner or later they must understand him, especially as
he was careful to talk very loud and illustrate everything he said with
the simplest elucidatory gestures, but they both continued only to look
at him. They both, he noticed sympathetically, had white faces,
fatigued faces, and they both had big eyes, fatigued eyes. They were
beautiful ladies, he thought, and their eyes, looking at him over the
tops of the suit-cases watching his every movement—there were no
trunks, only numbers of suit-cases—were like the eyes of the Mother of
God. The only thing the ladies said, and they repeated it at regular
intervals, even after they had started, gently prodding him as he sat
on his box to call his attention to it, was, “San Salvatore?”
And each time he answered vociferously, encouragingly, “_Sì, sì_—San
Salvatore.”
“We don’t _know_ of course if he’s taking us there,” said Mrs.
Arbuthnot at last in a low voice, after they had been driving as it
seemed to them a long while, and had got off the paving-stones of the
sleep-shrouded town and were out on a winding road with what they could
just see was a low wall on their left beyond which was a great black
emptiness and the sound of the sea. On their right was something close
and steep and high and black—rocks, they whispered to each other; huge
rocks.
“No—we don’t _know_,” agreed Mrs. Wilkins, a slight coldness passing
down her spine.
They felt very uncomfortable. It was so late. It was so dark. The road
was so lonely. Suppose a wheel came off. Suppose they met Fascisti, or
the opposite of Fascisti. How sorry they were now that they had not
slept at Genoa and come on the next morning in daylight.
“But that would have been the first of April,” said Mrs. Wilkins, in a
low voice.
“It is that now,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot beneath her breath.
“So it is,” murmured Mrs. Wilkins.
They were silent.
Beppo turned round on his box—a disquieting habit already noticed, for
surely his horse ought to be carefully watched—and again addressed them
with what he was convinced was lucidity—no _patois_, and the clearest
explanatory movements.
How much they wished their mothers had made them learn Italian when
they were little. If only now they could have said, “Please sit round
the right way and look after the horse.” They did not even know what
horse was in Italian. It was contemptible to be so ignorant.
In their anxiety, for the road twisted round great jutting rocks, and
on their left was only the low wall to keep them out of the sea should
anything happen, they too began to gesticulate, waving their hands at
Beppo, pointing ahead. They wanted him to turn round again and face his
horse, that was all. He thought they wanted him to drive faster; and
there followed a terrifying ten minutes during which, as he supposed,
he was gratifying them. He was proud of his horse, and it could go very
fast. He rose in his seat, the whip cracked, the horse rushed forward,
the rocks leaped towards them, the little fly swayed, the suit-cases
heaved, Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins clung. In this way they
continued, swaying, heaving, clattering, clinging, till at a point near
Castagneto there was a rise in the road, and on reaching the foot of
the rise the horse, who knew every inch of the way, stopped suddenly,
throwing everything in the fly into a heap, and then proceeded up at
the slowest of walks.
Beppo twisted himself round to receive their admiration, laughing with
pride in his horse.
There was no answering laugh from the beautiful ladies. Their eyes,
fixed on him, seemed bigger than ever, and their faces against the
black of the night showed milky.
But here at least, once they were up the slope, were houses. The rocks
left off, and there were houses; the low wall left off, and there were
houses; the sea shrunk away, and the sound of it ceased, and the
loneliness of the road was finished. No lights anywhere, of course,
nobody to see them pass; and yet Beppo, when the houses began, after
looking over his shoulder and shouting “Castagneto” at the ladies, once
more stood up and cracked his whip and once more made his horse dash
forward.