She was glad to drive on. It was suddenly hot weather, so Hilda was going through Switzerland and over the Brenner, then through the Dolomites down to Venice. Hilda loved all the managing and the driving and being mistress of the show. Connie was quite content to keep quiet.
And the trip was really quite nice. Only Connie kept saying to herself: Why don’t I really care! Why am I never really thrilled? How awful, that I don’t really care about the landscape any more! But I don’t. It’s rather awful. I’m like Saint Bernard, who could sail down the lake of Lucerne without ever noticing that there were even mountains and green water. I just don’t care for landscape any more. Why should one stare at it? Why should one? I refuse to.
No, she found nothing vital in France or Switzerland or the Tyrol or Italy. She just was carted through it all. And it was all less real than Wragby. Less real than the awful Wragby! She felt she didn’t care if she never saw France or Switzerland or Italy again. They’d keep. Wragby was more real.
As for people! people were all alike, with very little differences. They all wanted to get money out of you: or, if they were travellers, they wanted to get enjoyment, perforce, like squeezing blood out of a stone. Poor mountains! poor landscape! it all had to be squeezed and squeezed again, to provide a thrill, to provide enjoyment. What did people mean, with their simply determined enjoying of themselves?
No! said Connie to herself. I’d rather be at Wragby, where I can go about and be still, and not stare at anything or do any performing of any sort. This tourist performance of enjoying oneself is too hopelessly humiliating: it’s such a failure.
She wanted to go back to Wragby, even to Clifford, even to poor crippled Clifford. He wasn’t such a fool as this swarming holidaying lot, anyhow.