Bella and Wedderburn travel through Europe and the Mediterranean

Bella Baxter and Duncan Wedderburn’s European and Mediterranean journey turns an apparent honeymoon into an increasingly unequal expedition. Duncan recounts it in a letter to Godwin Bysshe Baxter: while he imagines himself the reckless seducer, Bella takes charge of their movements, outlasts his efforts to control the pace, and finally pays for his return to Glasgow. The journey’s central reversal is physical as well as romantic: the man who sets out expecting to direct their life together becomes the exhausted passenger she guides from place to place.

An Elopement Disguised as a Honeymoon

Duncan’s account begins with the circumstances that shape the trip. He had been invited to Godwin Bysshe Baxter’s home on business, fallen in love with Bella, plotted with her, and eloped. Though they were not married, they travelled through Europe and around the Mediterranean in the character of husband and wife. Duncan believed that marriage would follow, and says he arranged a passport that described them as married to make their continental honeymoon easier. He also planned to begin the honeymoon after a civil contract had been signed, with a registrar waiting for them at Kilmarnock.

That expectation collapses before they reach their planned stop. On the train, Bella tells Duncan that she cannot marry him because she is engaged to someone else—not in the past, as he assumes, but in the future. She nevertheless embraces him, and he arranges for the guard to give them a first-class carriage to themselves. The train’s scheduled stops—Kilmarnock, Dumfries, Carlisle, Leeds, and stations north of Watford Junction—recede from his attention as he concentrates on their intimacy. His account makes the discrepancy plain: the journey has the outward form of a honeymoon, but no marriage secures the future he has imagined for it.

Duncan’s retrospective description also changes the role he assigns himself. Before the journey, he had understood their affair through a Faustian analogy, casting himself as the respectable man corrupted by desire. In his letter to Baxter, he reverses that interpretation and presents Bella as the forceful figure in their melodrama. The reversal is part of his self-explanation, not an objective verdict: the reader encounters the trip through the letter of a man trying to revise his earlier account of what happened.

Bella Takes the Lead

In Duncan’s recollection, Bella’s practical command of the journey emerges as clearly as her energy. When he says he wants to go abroad, she asks which part they should visit first. He chooses Amsterdam, then falls asleep. By the time she wakes him, she has gone to a Thomas Cook agency with his wallet, arranged an afternoon boat to The Hague, paid the hotel bill, packed their bags, and taken them to the foyer. Duncan’s dressing case and a fresh suit are all that remain for him to deal with.

The pair’s daily routine soon settles into a pattern that favours Bella’s stamina and leaves Duncan disoriented. He describes his active hours as taking place at night, while Bella does not sleep; during the day he dozes or is guided from one destination to another. Before leaving London, he had anticipated that he might be overwhelmed by this pace. On the boat to The Hague, he decided to reverse their positions by exhausting Bella, relying on willpower and repeated cups of strong black coffee.

He then hurried her by train, riverboat, and cab through crowded hotels, theatres, museums, racecourses, and casinos. They covered four countries in a week. Duncan hoped that the whirl of daytime travel would leave Bella unconscious at night; instead, he says, he repeatedly fell into bed and woke to find himself again caught up in their sexual relationship. His account presents the attempt to master the itinerary as self-defeating: the more relentlessly he drives them through the day, the less strength he has to meet the demands he expects the nights to bring.

Collapse and Reversal of Care

The journey’s pace culminates in Venice. Duncan says he collapsed and rolled down the steps of San Giorgio Maggiore into the lagoon. Thinking he was drowning, he felt relief; he then woke in bed with Bella, seasick, aboard a first-class ship cruising the Mediterranean. Bella responds by forbidding further casinos and café dancing and declaring that she will act as his doctor, ordering complete rest except when they are together.

From that point until his escape, Duncan describes himself as a helpless plaything. The reversal is not simply that Bella plans the travel while he follows: after his collapse, she also determines when he rests and what activities must stop. By remaining prone during the day, he slowly recovers some strength. His own account gives the journey a physical measure—coffee, sleeplessness, collapse, seasickness, and gradual recovery—rather than presenting it as an uninterrupted romantic adventure.

Paris and the Return to Glasgow

In Paris, Duncan seeks religious counsel and describes his weariness with Bella. A priest cannot absolve him, but advises him to marry her and return home, leave her and return home, or face damnation; he also recommends that Duncan take instruction in the Catholic faith after returning to Glasgow. Duncan leaves the encounter feeling that a burden has lifted. Back at the hotel, he tells Bella he must return to Glasgow to work and cannot take her unless she returns as his wife. Bella accepts his departure without protest and says she wants to see more of Paris.

Bella packs Duncan’s things and gives him money for his fare. When he asks whether that is all, she explains that it is all that remains of his money, but offers to provide more. She then unpicks the lining of her travelling coat, takes out £500 in Bank of England notes, and gives them to him. Duncan reports that she described the money as payment for the fun he had given her and said that God had provided it because she had expected this outcome. The concealed cash makes her provision both practical and decisive: the traveller who had tried to manage Bella’s movements leaves with his return fare supplied by her.

The journey ends not with the marriage Duncan had planned, but with their separation in Paris and his solitary return to his mother’s home in Glasgow. Its account remains shaped by his letter to Baxter, in which he first describes the elopement as a scandal that would make him appear villainous, then recasts himself as the deceived party. The movement across Europe and the Mediterranean thus doubles as a change in his story about himself: his confidence in directing the trip gives way to exhaustion, dependence, and a departure made possible by Bella’s money.