Eustace and Hilda (72 page)
Authors: L.P. Hartley
As he carried it out Eustace looked with pleasure at a few threads of silken fringe peeping out of the paper. But why, he wondered, had he chosen scarlet? Blue was Hilda's colour; yet for this shawl, as for her new dress, he had felt impelled to choose scarlet. The thought of Hilda as the Scarlet Woman, or even as the wearer of the Scarlet Letter, made him smile.
He drifted onwards with the throng, the thickest he had known in Venice, occasionally glancing up to see whether the church of San Salvatore lurked in ambush. It was not a Gothic church, he knew, and non-Gothic churches sometimes wore a very unecclesiastical aspect; hardly to be mistaken for a shop, but quite easily for a Hall of Justice or a Government office. Nothing at all to his purpose rewarded his view; but the goal could not be far offâhe was now in the Merceria San Salvador, which surely must be Venetian for Salvatore. How beautifully the letters were printed! The absolute roundness of the O was especially satisfying. Now he was attracted by a jeweller's window, discreetly garnished, not overcrowded as the others tended to be. He would just ask the price of some of those watches.
There was a very lovely one, a wrist-watch, with an octagonal face set in a circle of gold, not at all expensive for a gold watch, only 2,000 lire. It would be much more useful to a lady than his own rather epicene watch which Lady Nelly had set her heart on; Minney should have it, dear Minney; and she shouldn't wait until his deathâshe should have it now. Why wait, when he would almost certainly outlive her? He had not seen her for several years. When Barbara had outgrown her ministrations, which happened much sooner than it had in his case, she had of course taken another situation, and another after that: her occupation demanded that she should pass along. For many years she had paid them occasional visits, always bringing with her the special sense of security that Eustace had found with no one else. Gradually, he did not quite know why, the visits had been discontinued, and his only communications with her were at Christmas and their several birthdays; but how delightful it would be to revive them, and what better prelude to the resumption of their old relationship than the gift of a gold watch?
âDearest Minney,âThis is just a little present to help you to catch the train to Anchorstoneââ' How silly; to Willesden, of course, but it made no difference. âI've promised the other to Lady Nelly Staveley. She took such a fancy to it, I didn't think you'd mind.' Eustace's heart began to beat rather painfully, as it always did at the imminence of a purchase greater than he felt he ought to afford. âBut Stephenâit isn't really very much, and think of the pleasure it will give her to have it, and me to see her again. After all these years, I couldn't just write to her out of the blue and ask her to come. A present would thaw any strangeness that may have gathered between us. Oh yes, it's true I've managed to get on without her, and she's managed to get on without a watchââ'
There was a tremendous report. Startled, Eustace looked up to see all the clocks in the shop pointing accusing hands to midday. Begging the jeweller to keep the watch till he came again, Eustace rushed out. Directly in front, almost hanging over him, was a severe classical façade; in the open doorway, surmounted by a low stone pediment, a dark-red curtain swung slowly to and fro. The church had occurred. But it was too late to see the Titians; he was due in the Piazza, and Lady Nelly did not like to be kept waiting.
The same report startled Lady Nelly, but she was not in the Piazza, she was in her sitting-room, reading a letter.
Dearest Nelly,
I was very glad to hear you are so comfortably settled in Venice. It's such years since I took a furnished house, and then it was always from someone we all knewâMoira, or Betty, or Joan Cargill. I don't know how I should feel about taking a house abroad, especially when you say it probably doesn't belong to its real owners, but to an antiquaire who may sell it at any moment! Don't you feel rather insecure? And the servants. I know some people like foreign servants, but I should never feel I could quite trust them as I do our dear Crosby and the others who have been with us so many years. But you always had an adventurous spirit!
Well, Dick's birthday is over and I feel relieved in more ways than one. (And in case he should forget to thank you, let me tell you how pleased he was with your congratulations.) The dear boy was in fine feather most of the time, and I think he thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many old faces (we sat down eighteen to dinner, just think of it!).
Since the war, and since he's been so much in the East, and then what John calls stumping the country, he's grown a little restless, and I think it was a pleasure to him to realise that his old friends hadn't, and were ready and anxious to take things up where they had been left offâyou know what I mean. And Monica is a tower of strength, with such
reserves
of good nature and common sense.
Miss Cherrington was there, of course. In your letter you didn't seem to think that Dick took such a serious interest in her as I thought he did, and that perhaps, granted his rather peculiar temperament, it might be no bad thing if he did ask her to marry him. (I'm sure she still would, even now.) I agree that they have certain qualities and interests in common, but I felt, and feel more than ever now, that it is just those things that would be the dangerâI mean their both being so headstrong and uncompromising and anxious to get things done without regard to ways and means. That wouldn't matter so much if they had been brought up in the same world, but I'm afraid that speaking a different language they would never find the right thing to say to each other or compose the little differences that can be smoothed over by the kind of word you're used to hearing. You'll think me snobbishâI express myself badly, and I know that times have changed and marriages more unsuitable than this happen every day. But as an instance of what I mean: on the last evening of the party Miss Cherrington wore a red dressâmy dear, there was nothing really
against
it, it would have looked all right on the stage, I dare say, but it wasn't right for Anchorstone. Dick, you know, notices anything of that sort perhaps more than you or I would, and I happened to hear him say to her (he thought they were alone), “That dress of yours, Hilda, will set the Thames on fire. Did you choose it yourself, or did you send someone round the corner for it?” She said, “Why, don't you like it?” And he said, “Only behind a fire-guard,” or something like that. Well, Monica would just have laughed, but Miss Cherrington was thoroughly upset and looked like a thundercloud. I was afraid she would burst into tears later in the evening when they were playing charades and got a little excited and merry, as young people will. Poor girl, she has no gift for being anything but herself. Dick isn't much of an actor, but he likes to see things go, and I could tell he was irritated by the way Miss Cherrington wouldn't play up and seemed stiff and awkward with the others who were all trying to be nice to her. I expect he felt she would be a handicap on any occasion that didn't involve life or death.
I must say she was quite different when she arrived, much more self-confident, so perhaps it was the red dress that turned the scale. What odd things we have to be thankful to. She left by an early trainâI believe, though I don't knowâwithout saying good-bye to Dick. He was in my room at the time; he came in to talk to me, a thing he seldom does.
Please remember me to Mr. Cherrington and thank him for his excessively kind messages. I dare say you are finding him a useful element in your parties; he is certainly more adaptable than his sister. If he should mention us, say we are old-fashioned people who jog along in the same rut and are not smart or amusing or clever or very rich (though I imagine he knows that now), and that Dick, au fond, is rather like usâ
not
the sort of man to make a girl of his sister's type happy. Indeed, I'm not sure he hasn't made her rather unhappy already. I wish he was more careful of other people's feelings. Naturally we don't want a repetition of the kind of thing that happened more than once when he was much younger. I'm sure he is sensible enough to see the folly of that now, but I've felt anxious ever since Miss Cherrington came to the houseâwhich is partly why I shall be thankful to have the situation âliquidated' (as those dreadful Russians say) as soon as possible.
Fondest love, dear Nelly, from your affectionate
EDIE.
Lady Nelly sat a moment in thought, and a tiny cloud troubled the weather of her face, erstwhile so lovely and so temperate.
Slowly she tore the letter in pieces, and remembering her overdue appointment with Eustace, collected what she needed for the Piazza and walked downstairs to the waiting gondola.
Meanwhile Eustace was installed at Florian's and had ordered a white vermouth from Lady Nelly's favourite waiter. He had hurried and perspiration dripped from him on to the ancient pavement. But his disappointment at missing the Titians was more than counter-balanced by his satisfaction at not being late for Lady Nelly. Apart from the risk of incurring her divine displeasure (he had never experienced it, so it had the terror of the unknown), he especially did not want to miss this rendezvous. Quite possibly it was one of the last he would have with her alone, for to-day or to-morrow she was expecting guests for the Feast of the Redeemer. To-morrow night, so everyone assured him, that much-heralded festival was really to take place; already he felt excited about it, but he wished that he and Lady Nelly could have had it to themselves, undiluted by the society of Lord and Lady Morecambe, whoever they were. (Eustace's rather vicarious acquaintance with titles now enabled him to think of them almost disrespectfully.) True, they were not staying for long, and being on their honeymoon, would probably be much together; but they were to be succeeded by others, in fact, by an endless series of guests whose arrivals and departures, and the impetus those occasions would give to conversations in which he could take no real part, would disturb the rhythm of his life with Lady Nelly.
He had set his chair where he could see her coming, and was watching so intently the portal on the left side of the Piazza that he did not hear a footstep behind him.
“Well, Eustace,” said a slightly querulous, well-bred voice. “All alone?”
“I was,” said Eustace, rising to shake hands with Jasper Bentwich. “But I'm not now. And Lady Nelly's coming in a minute.”
“In a minute, in a minute,” repeated Jasper irritably, giving the chair that Eustace offered him a housemaid's look before deigning to sit down. “The world is stagnant with people waiting for that woman. And yet she doesn't like to be kept waiting herself.”
“Oh well,” said Eustace. “It's different for her.”
“Why is it different?”
“She has her own time, like summer,” Eustace said. “But I did have to run to get here.”
Jasper turned a critical monocle on him. “You look a little heated,” he said. “Never hurryâit only makes dogs run after you and bark.” In his oatmeal-coloured suit he looked as cool as a refrigerator. “And it's so unbecoming.” He looked at Eustace again.
“âLa fretta che l'onestade ad ogni atto dismaga'âMust I translate?”
“Please.”
“âThe haste that takes the goodness out of every action.' You know your Dante?”
“I'm afraid not.”
“Virginia Woolf is right. You young people never read. It makes you so difficult to talk to. But you do write. How's the book going?”
Eustace could not meet his eye.
“Not as I should like,” he muttered.
“Venice is no place to work in,” said Jasper. “It's much too articulate. Why trouble to think, when everything you see thinks for you and at you, and says what it thinks so much better than you could? I always advise people not to write in Venice. They try to compete with the place, and that's fatal. The only thing to do in Venice is nothing. Still, as you've begun, you'd better go on.”
“Yes,” said Eustace, uncomfortably.
“Only yesterday,” Jasper went on, “Laura Loredan, tiresome woman, roared at me half-way across the Piazza, âOn dit que le chef d'Åuvre de Monsieur Cherrington sera réussi.'”
“Oh dear,” Eustace groaned.
“Why âOh dear'? Do you mind all Venice knowing that you're writing a book? She's taken quite a fancy to you. She still thinks you're a tennis champion, of course.”
“Oh, but I told her I wasn't.”
“A tennis champion who's writing a book. You'll have to dedicate it to her.”
Eustace's conscience, which throughout the conversation had been swelling with protest to the displacement and damage of his other mental organs, now demanded utterance.
“Well, Jasper, to tell you the truthââ”
“My dear fellow, I never want to hear the truth,” said Jasper, “especially when it's volunteered to meâÅuf sur le plat. Ah, here's Nelly.”
Quicker than Eustace's, his eye had seen the creamy-white galleon breasting the ripples of heat that flickered up from the pavement.
“Nelly, your guest tells me he has been making headway with his book.”
“Oh!” said Eustace.
Lady Nelly was helped into a chair.
“Yes, Jasper, isn't it splendid? And I take all the credit. I won't let him go to the Lido, I've kept him out of the Wideawake Bar, I've done everything that an Egeria should. He will owe his fame entirely to me.”
“And to Laura. She's been blowing his trumpet.”
“Dear Laura, she's a past-mistress of that instrument.”
“Well, I've been advising him not to write.”
“Oh, Jasper, how could you, undoing all my good work.”
“Too many people have written about Venice already.”
“How do you know he is writing about Venice?” said Lady Nelly placidly, giving Eustace a neutral look. “Did he tell you he was?”
