Eustace and Hilda (73 page)

Jasper's features corrugated round his monocle.

“He didn't say he wasn't.”

Eustace felt increasingly uneasy.

“Of course he wouldn't contradict you. He's too well brought up. He always tries to spare the feelings of his elders, as you must have noticed.”

“You make him sound very insincere, and me very old.”

“I was only defending him from the charge of being contradictious,” said Lady Nelly.

“Good Heavens! I should never have accused him of that.”

“You don't know him as I do,” said Lady Nelly. “I've had to tame you, haven't I, Eustace, and break you of your habit of saying no, and of always looking for flies in the ointment?”

“You've certainly made me like a lot that I didn't when I came,” Eustace said.

“Is that necessarily a good thing?”

“Yes, I have widened his sympathies. You couldn't say as much, could you, Jasper? Can you honestly tell me, Eustace, that in all the conversations you've had with Jasper you've ever come away liking anyone or anything better?”

“Well, him,” said Eustace.

“Very prettily said. But as I was walking down the Piazza I could see disillusion turning your features to brass. You were looking absolutely hag-ridden, almost suicidal. If I hadn't turned up in the nick of time, you would have gone home and thrown that book into the canal.”

Eustace gave a nervous cough.

“I dare say he would have thanked me afterwards,” Jasper said. “But all women are alike. You can't be happy until you've made some wretched man do something he'd far rather not do.”

“I simply don't know what you're talking about,” said Lady Nelly, shaking her head. “It sounds like an insult, and if Eustace was a dog I'd set him on you. I suppose you'd say that was making him do something he didn't want to, but you'd be wrong, wouldn't he, Eustace?”

“My fingers are itching to get at him,” said Eustace.

“Thank you,” said Lady Nelly. “Now, Jasper, I'll pay for our drinks, to save you from doing something you don't want to.”

“I don't want to be put in the wrong,” grumbled Jasper, feeling in his pockets.

Lady Nelly beckoned the waiter.

“No, let me, this time,” she said. “You like being in the wrong really, just as much as Eustace hates it. And to show you forgive me, come in our boat to the Redentore to-morrow.”

Jasper's eyes clouded with irritation.

“How can I come, Nelly,” he said, “when you ask me at such short notice? I promised Laura weeks ago that I'd go with her party.”

“Oh, how unlucky I am,” cried Lady Nelly. “But perhaps you wouldn't have enjoyed it. Harry Morecambe is coming with his newly married wife. You don't like honeymoon couples, do you?”

Jasper shrugged his shoulders.

“Does anyone? And where should I have sat—on the floor?”

“Oh, we would have found a little niche for you,” said Lady Nelly.

“Thank you, I shall be better off among the untitled guests in Laura's fourth boat. But perhaps you're not taking Eustace? You'll make him stay behind, to write his book?”

“I shall make him do nothing he doesn't want to,” said Lady Nelly. “It will be a long, tiring evening, and if he prefers to write, I shan't stand in his way.”

At the Luna they separated, Jasper having declined the offer of a ride.

When Eustace and Lady Nelly were in the gondola she turned to him and said, “I did my best for you, Eustace, but you'll really have to get on with that book.”

The words so lightly spoken took hold of Eustace's mind and continued to reverberate. He spent the afternoon in desultory fashion on the Zattere, watching the construction of the bridge of boats. He had grown to love the long, eventful promenade with its swarms of children. The well-to-do walked sedately with their nurses, who wore clothes so bright and billowy they might have been crinolines; the others screamed and shouted, and many of them were in and out of the water all the time, climbing out on to the nondescript line of boats moored to the bank. Their thin brown bodies gleamed in the sun. On ordinary days a stream of traffic, including the largest liners, passed up and down the Canal, and the water was always broken, but to-day the bridge of boats was holding it up. Only in the middle, where the span was still incomplete, could it pass through. Eustace's mind, which liked completeness, was worried by the gap. Far away, on the opposite shore, the cold grey front of the Redentore church, the plainest possible statement of a church, impassively received the arc of the bridge that started at its foot.

Eustace had a special reason for wanting to be out of the house this afternoon. Lord and Lady Morecambe were arriving, they had telegraphed to say so, and Eustace envisaged with sadness the change impending in his routine. Clever as Lady Nelly was at dividing her attention without appearing to lessen it, there would now be jokes, smiles, gifts of sympathy and understanding, that were not meant for him. He would have to adapt himself. Nothing would be the same or look the same; the bridge to felicity would be broken, like the bridge to the Redentore. She would see him, he felt, through the indifferent, perhaps hostile eyes of her other guests, and he would have to modify his vision of her to allow for these competing presences. The fortnight's idyll was over.

All the more necessary, then, that he should have something else to think about, some private mental sanctum to retire to; and what better could there be than the writing of his book that she had enjoined on him, the book that ‘all Venice' believed him to be writing? But what could he write about? Picking his way through the children, Eustace reviewed the possibilities. In his life he had written a great many essays and some longer papers. The ‘Nineteenth-century Mystics' had taken three-quarters of an hour to read. That was the limit of his knowledge of any subject: after six thousand words it petered out.

But he was here to read, not write; and he had read quite a lot. Oh, why had Lady Nelly imposed this task on him? Merely to gratify an idle whim? He could not even be sure she meant it seriously. Perhaps she wanted to make him sound more interesting to her friends. If so, Eustace did not blame her; he was aware that he had few qualifications for being the cavalier servente of a lady of fashion. Nor could he feel resentful if she chose to make him sail under false colours, since he had none of his own. How wonderful it would be (his mind grown suddenly optimistic told him) if he could really write a book, and justify the claim she had made for him!

‘Didn't you know, Eustace Cherrington wrote his masterpiece when he was staying with Lady Nelly Staveley in Venice? Who was Lady Nelly Staveley? Oh, she was an Edwardian grande dame almost forgotten now, of course, but it was in her house that Eustace Cherrington wrote——(title to be supplied later). Yes, there's a tablet on the wall of the Palazzo Contarini Falier commemorating him, just as there is on the Vendramin, where Wagner breathed his last. How proud she must have been to sponsor such a marvellous piece of writing! Well, of course he dedicated it to her—she will go down to posterity on the fly-leaf of——'

A cold fit followed these sanguine imaginings, but no diminution in his sense of obligation. Conscience, as usual, was content to say he must, but would not tell him how. Indeed, it perversely enumerated all the obstacles, just as though the writing of the book was to be a punishment for some past sin.

‘You're in for a horrible time,' it whispered gloatingly. ‘It's all your fault: you ought to have said, at once, the moment Lady Nelly said you were writing a book. “No, Lady Nelly. That is a mistake. I am not.”' ‘I couldn't have said that,' protested Eustace's apologist, always a feeble ally. ‘I couldn't have snubbed her in front of all those people.'

‘You should have,' said the Voice implacably. ‘Your silence gave consent to the lie. Lady Nelly belongs to the smart world, where they think nothing of telling lies, and just because you want to seem to belong to it, which you never will, you have adopted some of their worst qualities. You won't be able to write the book, but I shall give you no rest until you do.' ‘You're being very unreasonable,' said Eustace's ally in a faint voice. ‘If I can't write a book, I can't. Lady Nelly was only joking when she said I was. Her friends know that quite well. They don't take her seriously—they don't really think I am writing a book.' ‘Oh yes, they do,' said the Voice. ‘First they asked themselves, “Who is this strange young man that Nelly has got hold of? Is it quite correct for him to be staying with her alone in Venice? And if it isn't, surely she could have found someone more interesting? She must be hard up, poor dear.” But when she told them you were writing a book they said, “Of course, that explains everything. She is simply doing a kindness to a young man of genius, as she has often done be-fore. Now we understand. All we are waiting for now is to see the book.”'

‘Well, let them go on waiting,' said Eustace's protagonist defiantly, ‘if it pleases Lady Nelly.
I
didn't say I was writing a book. They'll soon forget about it; and if they don't they'll never find out that I'm not.'

‘Don't be so sure,' said Conscience. ‘Already more than once you've nearly given yourself away. You'll have to keep a watch on your tongue, and some day you'll make a slip and everything will come out. Then they'll say, “We knew it all along. It isn't the first time Nelly's taken us in. He's not a writer at all—he's just a young man she has picked up somewhere—Heaven knows who he is or what he does or what they do. He's just a little impostor whom we've received and entertained as one of ourselves. These rich Englishwomen come out here and think they can do anything they like because we're foreigners. Well, we shall know what to do now. We shall cut him, of course, and we shan't ask her to any more parties. When we see her at Florian's we shan't join her table as we used to (those English people think they can get away with murder by paying for a few drinks), we shall go to Lavena's or the Quadri, and she will be left sitting alone and wondering what's happened. They'll soon find out in England, of course, and if there're any decent people left there they'll let her know what it feels like to be a pariah. She'll never be able to come to Venice again, that's one comfort.”'

Eustace looked round. The sun, which was not supposed to sympathise with the moods of human beings, had in this case broken his rule and withdrawn behind a cloud—a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, the first cloud Eustace seemed to have seen in Venice. The bridge had made no progress during his reverie: the gap was as wide as ever. He imagined someone trying to walk across it in the dark and falling head-long into the water.

Impelled by something stronger than himself, Eustace turned away from the busy thoroughfare of the Zattere. Soon the twin portals ushered him into the Campo San Barnabà, with its noble church, which impressed him more each time he saw it. Then the bridge of the footprints—the Ponte dei Pugni, where the rival factions used to take their stand; to-day no one barred his way. He almost wished they would. He crossed the Campo Santa Margherita and gave a grateful glance at its veteran companile, defaced with cinema hoardings; skirted the vast red church of the Frari, so much too big for the space round it, and pressed on through narrow streets till he came to the Campo San Polo, a magnificent expanse in which his spirit, too, was wont to enlarge itself after the constricting pressure of the alleys. But to-day he hurried through, trying to remember which turning would bring him to the Palazzo Sfortunato.

Sfortunato! The name that once seemed so meaningless now sounded like a knell. There was no gondola at the riva and the door was shut. Giacinto, who opened it, said the Countess had taken her guests to the Piazza. So they had arrived, the heralds of the new régime; the plans which neither began nor ended in Eustace were already afoot. Should he join them at the Piazza for tea? Giacinto had no instructions. Would they be coming back for tea? Giacinto did not know.

Four o'clock on a broiling afternoon in July was not the most hopeful moment to begin a book; but Eustace did not hesitate. Without a book at his back he could no longer face Lady Nelly, her friends, or the world at large. Without a book to cover him he felt spiritually naked, morally indecent, a hypocrite, a liar. He opened an exercise book, turned over the pages on which he had made notes, and on the first plain one wrote:

CHAPTER ONE

Immediately he felt much better; and suddenly he remembered that his conscience was a casuist; for all its ingenuity in tormenting him it often looked no farther than the letter of the law. Chapter One.

Perhaps it would demand no more than that? Eustace waited a moment to take, as it were, his moral temperature. The fever had sensibly abated, but it was still there, demanding sacrifice. Everyone, it was said, could write one book; and that was a novel, presumably about the writer.

‘Eh bien, cher Shairington, comment va votre livre?' ‘ça marche, Comtesse, ça marche.' ‘Et vous y parlez de notre chère Venise, n'est-ce pas?' ‘Ah! non, Comtesse, je n'aurais jamais le courage de traiter un sujet aussi ardu.' ‘Comment! Vous ne parlez point de Venise?' (Point de Venise, that was ambiguous: she might be talking about lace.) ‘Non, hèlas!' ‘Qu'écrivez-vous donc?' ‘J'écris un roman.' ‘Un roman à clef, alors? Vous y mettrez tous les gens que vous avez vus chez Lady Nelly? Ce sera très drôle!' ‘Non, Comtesse, je n'y parle que de moi.' ‘De vous? Mon Dieu! Ce sera un sujet peu intéressant.'

Eustace blushed with mortification and again tried to break the news, this time in English, which seemed a less wounding language.

‘Well, Eustace, so you didn't take my advice after all. Everyone says you are writing a book. May I for once be more inquisitive than Lady Nelly, and ask what kind of book?' ‘Of course you may, Jasper; it's a novel.' ‘Oh dear, that's even worse than I feared. Not a novel about Venice, I hope.' ‘No, it's about a country house in England.' ‘My dear boy, must you? Is Galsworthy your model, or Henry James?' ‘Well, perhaps Henry James.' ‘I was afraid you'd say that. And who are you putting into your country house?' ‘Well, the heir to the estate has just married a very beautiful girl; he had seen her playing with some poor children in the park when he was riding in the Row.' ‘Was she poor too?' ‘Well, not as poor as they were, but much poorer than him.' ‘I'm glad somebody wasn't poor —I don't like reading about poor people. Why was she playing with them?' ‘Because she thought they looked lonely.' ‘I don't like the opening very much, but go on.'