Part 11
The carriage was at the door when I ran upstairs to get a pin for my veil, and there, on the dressing-table, I found all the writing things I had collected two days before, my hair-pins, brush and comb, and powder-box. James said they could not all go in his pocket, so I carried them under my arm, intending to repack my dressing-case in the train.
James’s account of our journey contains much that is unfair and exaggerated. He says, for instance, that during the long night journey from Calais to Rome I showed want of consideration for the comfort of our fellow-passengers. The train was very crowded; we could not have a sleeping compartment to ourselves, so it was arranged that Louise and I and a strange lady should be huddled together in one dog’s-hole of a place, and James would join a man’s party in the next.
The lady who dangled a pair of fat, booted ankles above my head possessed an over-anxious husband; therefore, I suppose, she had a surname, but I never discovered it. To me she was, and always will be, “Georgie.” We had settled down for the night in considerable irritability, and the atmosphere of hell, when the door was pushed gently open.
“Georgie, my dear, are you all right?” inquired a timid little voice.
Georgie, who was determined to enjoy everything and look on the bright side, said, “Yes, thank you, dear,” in a crisp voice, and composed herself to sleep. Presently there was a knock at the door.
“Georgie, my dear, would you care for a little chocolate?”
Dear, good-natured Georgie had already begun to sleep; I heard her quite distinctly. But she awoke--out of that first blissful state, just imagine! and with all the discomfort of sleeping in her stockings and everything--and gratefully accepted the chocolate.
Next time there was a knock I nearly choked myself in efforts for politeness. I longed to say, “Go away. I will give Georgie a pocket-handkerchief, and the nut-crackers, and some Balsam of Peru when she wakes.” Fortunately, Georgie was breathing so loudly that even he understood that for the moment all the husbands in Christendom could not improve her condition, and, therefore, retired for some hours. The crisis was next morning. Anyone who has travelled knows how easy it is to mislay anything, however large, in a sleeping berth. If you put a hippopotamus under your pillow at night, it will be gone in the morning. My hair-pins, side-combs, hat, waistband, and shoes were all rescued from different parts of the train by Louise, but my jewellery I was determined not to part with. I put my watch, rings, and ear-rings into my purse, and put the purse into a travelling-case which I strapped to the rack by my side. It was there in the morning when I awoke, and remained there while I dressed. I then unfastened the strap, and laid the case on the bed for a moment, while I pinned my hat. I looked round and it was gone. I threw the bedclothes into the passage and shook them; I took off the mattress and turned it; Louise and I took her bed to pieces and threw it also into the passage. My condition was desperate. In a quarter of an hour we should be at the end of our journey, and the train would disappear into an everlasting nowhere, carrying the beloved companions of my life embedded in its ugly, screaming, joggling anatomy. Some shameless, painted, French official’s wife would eventually wear my darlings on her fingers, and dangling from her ears. I could never get any more, because they were James’s wedding presents. Life and happiness were blotted from my imagination.
“Georgie, my dear,” said the little voice at that moment, “can you come down?”
A small step-ladder scraped gently across my shins. “Pardon me, one moment,” I was requested, and there was Georgie’s plump little kid leg dangling in front of my nose once more. That was the crisis!
“Oh, damn Georgie,” I cried. “Go away, I’ve lost my bag.”
The little kid leg drew up hurriedly into its place, and dear, kind, shocked Georgie peered down upon me from above. Her over-anxious husband had fled, and was, I suppose, sipping a little cold water in the lavatory in order to pull himself together after “such an exhibition.”
“If I stay in this beastly train for a thousand years and pick it to pieces myself with a pair of nail-scissors, I will find that thing,” I said.
“My dear, don’t upset yourself,” urged Georgie. “Shall I not call your husband?”
The venturesome little boot was longing to get down, for the train was nearly at its destination, but, in my agitation, I forgot that I had overturned its only means of escape.
When James came in and picked up the bag from behind the hold-all, I felt inclined to take Georgie in my arms and lift her down, but there was so little room in the compartment that I decided to smile at her instead, and say I “had found my bag, thank you,” leaving her where she was. I tactfully withdrew to the corridor and made no sign, even when I heard the pattering feet and consolatory “Georgie, my dear,” close behind the door of our den.
James has a passion for sight-seeing, which I do not share. As soon as I know that there is anything to be seen I no longer want to see it. To have an alert, smiling man come up and say, “You want spik English; you come with me,” gives me another sort of Mrs. Simpson. She is a lively, early-breakfast Mrs. Simpson, full of exclamation points. She replies at once: “Ach! you spik English! that is capital! Rosbif! Goddam! I come vis you,” and off they go in ecstasies.
An English guide who takes one over a ruin has a certain dreary charm. One can go to sleep and dream happily while he grinds away: “This portion of the Castle was erected in 1647. Notice the remains of moat and transept with traces of fine oriel window in memory of the seventh Lord. During the encounter with the rebellious forces Oliver Cromwell took possession of the east wing, when the enemy was repulsed with great loss. The marks on the bastion show remains of staircase leading to the old ’all which was reserved for the use of the ladies of the family during time of siege. In the museum will be seen famous portrait of wife of the tenth Earl, destroyed by fire in the year 1754--come along there, please, and mind your heads.”
But, in Rome, if you escape from one voluble tormentor you fall into the hands of a dozen worse, and there are the reverent, industrious sight-seers with red books, mixed up among the irreverent ones with walking-sticks.
“On the right hand, and a little to the left, are the famous baths of Caracalla,” may be heard from behind one pillar. “Note the exquisite workmanship of the masonry, and the height of the columns leading to the Peplon or outer court of the Vestal Virgins.”
From the other side of the same pillar comes a voice like a saw cutting through wood.
“Here, you, Sparghetti, Antonio, what’s your name? Was there any charge, can you tell me, for mixed bathing in those days? Bagno melange, Caracalla’s time, how much, eh?”
James understands pictures, and enjoys them. I tested my own taste in these matters, but did not force the experiment in any way. As soon as I became quite certain that I did not like pictures, I waited for him outside, dabbling my fingers in the water (it was in Venice that I definitely made up my mind), and enjoying the smells. Perhaps it was indigestion from eating too much Italian food, but the Tintorettos got on my nerves from their invariable suggestion of vermicelli. There were acres of canvas representing nude figures falling in hundreds from great heights. Some of them may have been climbing up, but the places were so dark that it was not easy to see the difference; anyhow, vermicelli being thrown into the air or vermicelli falling into a pan look pretty much alike. So I stayed outside and forgot all about the Day of Judgment.
The longer I live, the more I believe in Adam and Eve. Good gains nothing by comparison with evil. There is no pleasure like ignorance in fine weather, and the most illuminating conversation is no gain to those who are able to “go into a field and make a noise like a turnip.”
I know few people with whom I can go abroad without bringing on an attack of Mrs. Simpson. From the guides with their “You want spik English, you come with me,” and the waiters who seek favour with promises of “Rosbif” or “Nice hammonekks,” to our kind foreign friends who ask us whether we are not missing the fog and would we like brandy in our tea?--it is evident that Mrs. Simpson has set her mark upon every continent. Mrs. Simpson abroad is different from the furniture-remover’s goddess. She is timid to the verge of idiocy, and bold where reticence would be more graceful; she is always unmarried, except in such cases where she has a male creature attached to her by such a tie as unites a pair of frogs. She is fabulously rich, and so devoid of discrimination in what she buys that it would be ill-bred in shopkeepers to practise deception on her were it not that she does not believe in God; and, therefore, it is right that good persons should have her money before she is removed to hell.
People of other countries, who have lived or stayed in England or have made English friends abroad, know nothing of this Mrs. Simpson; she is a product of the foreign railways and hotels, like the American whom we all know by sight and hearsay but who is unrecognised by his own countrymen. All the same, it was a long time before I could enjoy myself anywhere out of England without feeling the spell cast upon my spirit by the dreary, woebegone, helpless mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, who wandered away to their bedrooms in single file between meals, were always blocking up the bureau, asking questions about baths and the English services, and who stared at one another in the lifts, and talked in undertones at their little tables. There was one couple, in an hotel in Rome, who made conversation to each other for a week on what I judged from their faces to be such subjects as mausoleums, dentists, cold cream, and muffins. At last the husband said something really amusing--I heard it with great pleasure--to which his wife made a grimace and said: “Really, dear, you are quite beyond me altogether.”
Henry--I remember that was his name--ought not to have stood it, but he did. He ought to have slapped her, and kicked over the table and left the room for ever. I should have rejoiced, more than I can say, on account of the blow that it would have given, in every town in Baedeker, to the continental Mrs. Simpson.
I paid dearly for my rashness in leaving the shores of England. When I returned the sword had fallen.
Mullins had been saving steadily during the past years, and Ruth had undertaken to marry him in the spring. Much as she disliked being interfered with, she disliked still more being left to herself; but whether marriage forms any solution to this dilemma, it will be for her to decide. I shall encourage the young Mullinses if there are any, remembering always that a wife and mother cannot give notice.
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