Eustace and Hilda (69 page)

“Dick seemed to be very concerned about Hilda when she hurt her hands playing billiard-fives.”

“Your sister Hilda? Yes, I noticed that. What a lovely creature she is. I don't wonder that he was attracted by her.”

A warm wave of happiness splashed over Eustace. “You thought he was?”

“Well, wasn't it obvious?”

“I wish I knew how she felt about him,” Eustace said.

“Hasn't she ever been in love?” asked Lady Nelly.

“No, not to my knowledge,” said Eustace.

They had finished the chicken, but still another plate came. Eustace took a peach from the basket Silvestro offered him. It had a deep, Italian complexion, robuster than an English peach. Silvestro filled their cups with coffee.

“Would she enjoy country life?” said Lady Nelly. “And seeing neighbours, and doing good works, and being rather dull?”

“She would enjoy the good works,” said Eustace eagerly. “She wouldn't be dull if she had them. And I think she would enjoy riding—she's always liked horses. That's part of country life, isn't it. She always liked running risks; she told me she loved the aeroplane. She doesn't care much about social life or casual acquaintances, but she would put up with them for Dick's sake, if she thought it was her duty.”

He hesitated to cut his peach, it looked so beautiful with the bloom fresh on it.

“Dick doesn't care for them either,” said Lady Nelly. “They seem to have a lot in common, don't they? Looks, aeroplanes, riding, risks, a distaste for the social round. Perhaps your sister is the girl we've all been looking for!”

Eustace thrilled at her words, and the lazy smile that accompanied them blended with the sweetness of the peach he had now begun to eat.

“Oh, but it seems too wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I can't really believe it. I've really wanted it all my life, you know, just this very thing to happen to Hilda!”

“What a matchmaker you are!” said Lady Nelly indulgently. “I believe you brought your sister down to Anchorstone all robed and garlanded for the sacrifice.”

“Well, I had to persuade her,” said Eustace. “She didn't want to come. I think she was afraid of meeting you all. She's always seemed to know what's best for both of us. If you knew how much I owed her! This is the only time she's done something for me, as it were—I mean, a considerable thing—against her own judgement, and really against her will. Perhaps she would never have known what it was to be in love if it hadn't been for me.”

“You think she is in love?” said Lady Nelly. “You didn't seem sure a moment ago.”

“I wasn't then,” Eustace confessed. “But with Dick and everything—oh, how could she not be!”

Lady Nelly drew a longer breath.

“She is going to his birthday-party, isn't she?”

“Yes,” said Eustace, “on the fifteenth—the same day as the Feast of the Redentore.”

“The same day?” said Lady Nelly vaguely—“are you quite sure?”

“I think you said the same day,” said Eustace, not wanting to seem too positive. “You asked me to come out earlier so as not to miss it.”

“I did, didn't I?” said Lady Nelly, as though reminding herself.

“But I'm never very good at dates. We'll ask Silvestro. I expect he's asleep.”

Turning round, Eustace peered between the curtain and the brass rod to which it was tied. Silvestro lay curled up on a bed of Procrustes, all gaps and slats; but perched on the very extremity of the gondola, with the expression of one resigned to taking a back seat, Erminio kept watch.

Eustace reported the situation. “Shall I ask Erminio?” he said.

“We must be careful,” said Lady Nelly. “It depends which Silvestro minds most: being woken up, or not being consulted. Try Erminio.”

Eustace was glad to be able to address Erminio in English.

Erminio, however, was too much taken by surprise to have his English ready.

As he was struggling to speak Silvestro opened his eyes, unfolded himself, sat up and growled a question. Battle was joined. “Oh dear,” said Lady Nelly, “they're quarrelling about the date. We should have asked Silvestro first. But I suspect Erminio's right, really. That's the worst of him.”

She listened. “I can only catch a word here and there, but Silvestro seems to be telling Erminio all his faults and Erminio keeps repeating with maddening persistency that the festa is always held on the third Sunday in July.”

By now the hubbub was dying down; Silvestro's explosive rejoinders grew rarer, then ceased, and Erminio, scrupulously restrained in triumph, said:

“Hit is day twenty.”

“There! you could have gone to Anchorstone after all,” said Lady Nelly. “What a monster I am to have brought you out here under false pretences. Can you ever forgive me?”

Eustace said he would try, but he did not manage to give the impression that the effort would be altogether easy.

“I
am
sorry,” said Lady Nelly. “But I dare say that in circumstances of that kind, the absence of a beloved and adoring brother might be a help rather than a hindrance. What do you think?”

Eustace could not but see the force of this, for the same idea had occurred to him.

“Of course,” Lady Nelly went on, almost wistfully, “you probably would have met a lot of charming girls there. I'm very fond of Anne myself, though she stays so much in the background. I thought that you and she rather hit it off.”

For some reason Eustace did not feel disposed to admit that there had been anything much between him and Anne.

“Youth,” said Lady Nelly, “is altogether charming, isn't it? Nothing takes its place. All those young people with their lives before them, bubbling over to tell each other things, sharing little jokes and the gossip of their day which it seems so vitally important to be au courant with, wildly excited to see how it's going to turn out between Dick and your sister—perhaps even, in an utterly engaging way, a little jealous.”

Eustace began to wonder whether the party would have been such fun for him, after all.

“I expect Monica would be there, too,” Lady Nelly went on. “She's an old flame of Dick's, you know. I thought you got on fairly well with her too, though she ought to have been rather suspicious of you, belonging as it were to the other camp. It isn't for lack of other offers that she's been faithful to Dick for so long. One reason why she's popular is that she doesn't mind being on the losing side. You don't either, do you, Eustace?”

“Well, I have to be on my own side,” said Eustace, “and that often loses.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Lady Nelly. “Youth is never really a loser, not with age, at any rate. Here in Venice I'm afraid you'll find us all harridans or frumps—for the moment, at any rate. Later on I hope to be able to offer you something more succulent. Meanwhile we shall all fasten on you like harpies. I don't think I shall dare to introduce you to Laura Loredan.”

“Will she expect me to dance with her?” asked Eustace.

“No, because I shall dress you up as a gondolier.”

Eustace blushed.

“You'll be safe as long as you're with me. I should rather like to see you in a white blouse with a sailor collar, and wearing a blue sash.”

“As long as you don't ask me to row the gondola,” said Eustace.

“Oh, I shall make no extravagant demands. But I can't help feeling glad, in a way, that I made that mistake about the dates and got you out here a day or two earlier. Of course, it was a mistake. You see, they don't even know the date themselves, so how was I to? You're not still angry with me?”

Quite sincerely Eustace protested that he was not.

“But at Anchorstone they will be,” said Lady Nelly. “Heigh-ho! I can see poor Edie searching frantically in her address book, and saying to herself, ‘How shall I find a substitute for that charming young man?'”

“Perhaps Antony will go,” said Eustace.

“Antony is
quite
delightful.” Lady Nelly's voice seemed to put Antony for ever in his place. “He's promised to come here, you know, later in the summer. But Edie suspects he finds them dull, and John says he talks too much.”

“I was afraid I talked too little,” said Eustace.

“You couldn't—I mean, my dear, from John's point of view, not from mine. That was one reason why he liked you. No, they won't have an easy job replacing you.”

Not without satisfaction, Eustace imagined the eligible bachelors of England being combed in vain to find a substitute for Eustace Cherrington.

“Now,” said Lady Nelly with sudden briskness, “we mustn't have any more mistakes. What time is it? Don't ask either of those ignorant men, unless you want to see a stand-up fight. I'm sure you've got a beautiful watch of your own.”

Eustace took out his gold watch and said expansively, “Miss Fothergill gave me this, the—the old lady I told you about.”

“Why, yes, I remember. The old lady who left you the legacy. You see, Eustace, old ladies have their uses. The young ones are nice to look at, but they never die, they only fade away. What a lovely watch. You couldn't get one like that now. She must have had great taste.”

“I think she had,” said Eustace. “I hadn't seen much to judge by, in those days.”

“Well, she had a taste for you, so you mustn't be sceptical about her taste in general. That blue enamel line is so chic, I think. And the sapphire starting-handle, what a pet.”

“Oh, you mean the key.” Eustace was delighted. “Once when I thought I was going to die,” he said reminiscently, “I made a will and left the watch to my old nurse.” He smiled at the recollection.

“Next time you think of dying,” said Lady Nelly, “I hope you'll leave your watch to me. Unlike your old lady, I want to be left things, not to leave them. Now you must put it away before I get my clutches on it.”

Curiously elated by her appreciation of his property, Eustace returned the watch to his pocket. It did not occur to him that she might be praising it in order to please him and to redress a little in his favour the unequal balance of their material possessions.

“Oh, but we never saw what time it was!” Lady Nelly cried. “I'm glad, because now I shall see your treasure again.”

Nothing loath, Eustace produced his time-piece.

“It certainly is my favourite watch,” said Lady Nelly, looking at it covetously. “The only thing about it I don't like is the time it tells. Half-past three. We must be off. Silvestro!”

“Pronti, Signora Contessa.”

“I like being called Contessa,” said Lady Nelly. “How I wish I was one. I'm just a courtesy countess.”

To the sound of cautious footwork and much deep breathing the gondola, like the Royal George, heeled over on to Eustace's side, and Silvestro's white trousers filled the gap between the side-curtains. A moment later a grunt and a thump announced that he was in the hold. The forward curtains parted, and his face appeared with its harvest-moon effect of almost unbearable proximity.

“Why does he always seem so close?” murmured Lady Nelly. “He's like the Cheshire cat, in reverse.” Aloud she said: “Torniamo, Silvestro.”

“Va bene, Signora Contessa.”

They started on the homeward journey. As the sun was now not quite so hot, and a little breeze had sprung up, grateful enough, though it troubled the reflections, Lady Nelly had had the awning taken down, and Eustace had a full view of the Laguna Morta. The island of Murano lay on their right; divided from it by a narrow strait were the lofty, well-kept pink walls and sorrowful cypresses of the cemetery. At this distance no sound could reach them from either island, nor was any movement visible; yet to Eustace the cemetery struck a deeper note of silence, as if the stir of life was not only absent but unimaginable there.

Uneasily he reviewed his conversation with Lady Nelly. She did not try to revive it, so he felt no obligation to. How enjoyable it had been. But Eustace took himself to task for his share in the dialogue. He had allowed it to centre upon his own concerns, himself and the people he knew; he had given Lady Nelly no opening to talk about herself and her friends, surely a more interesting topic. She would think him an ill-bred egoist, a provincial unable to realise the importance of the world outside his own back-yard, the world of Whaplode, compared to which even the world of Anchorstone was as a planet to a fixed star. Supposing he had been privileged to hold converse with Shakespeare? A dialogue began to take shape in Eustace's mind: it went something like this.

‘Good-morning, Shakespeare. Glad to see you. Kind of you to remember your promise to introduce me to the Mermaid. Let me see if there's anyone I know. Oh yes, there's Beaumont and Fletcher playing darts. I met them once. I adore “The Maid's Tragedy,” don't you?'

‘A lovely and moving piece of work.'

‘And “Philaster” too! So sylvan and sunshiny—or did someone say that about “The Beggar's Bush”?'

‘I'm not sure. The dear fellows excel themselves whenever they write.'

‘I
wonder
what they are writing now?'

‘They tell me it's called “A King and No King.” Such a good title, I think. Wouldn't wonder if it turns out to be their masterpiece.'

‘Didn't
you
once have a hand in one of Fletcher's plays?'

‘Well, I did put a few lines into “Henry VIII” one morning when Fletcher had a hangover.'

‘How wonderful for you. Beaumont is a gentleman, isn't he? I mean, he doesn't have to write for money?'

‘Yes, lucky fellow, he writes for the pure love of the thing.'

‘I wonder where he lives?'

‘At Anchorstone Hall, in Norfolk.'

‘What a divine house. Where do you live, I wonder?'

‘At a place called Whaplode.'

‘I'm afraid I haven't heard of that. But what a lot those two have done for poetry, haven't they? I adore their weak endings.'