Eustace and Hilda (75 page)

“He's homesick for that Bay of his,” said Lady Nelly. “He hungers for its mud. Ah, here come some civilised drinks. Vermouth, Héloise?”

“With very great pleasure.”

“Hail, Columbia,” said Lady Nelly, giving Lord Morecambe a quelling look. “Now we must start. Eustace, have you got everything? He always forgets something, you know, and has to go back for it. You won't want that overcoat.”

All eyes turned on Eustace.

“I've got some things in the pockets,” he said.

“What
can
he have? Look, they're positively bulging. And what's that squalid-looking bundle under your chair?”

“My bathing-suit,” said Eustace, who hoped it hadn't been seen. “Don't we have to bathe when it's all over?”

“We don't
have
to,” said Lady Nelly. “I shan't, for one. But you won't bathe in a muffler, surely?”

“I thought it might turn cold,” said Eustace. As the others had risen he rose too, and began to load himself up. Lord Morecambe, who had no encumbrances of any kind, helped him.

“Why, you look like the Michelin Man!” said Lady Nelly.

Eustace glanced ruefully at his swollen surfaces, and then at Héloise and Lady Nelly. How perfectly, in their different ways, they had guarded against the tricks of the climate. No hint of congestion in the pale full figure or the dark slender one; yet the wrap and the fur somehow banished the threat of cold, just as the silk and the chiffon welcomed the reality of heat. All situations could be met, and on their own terms, thought Eustace, if only one knew how. But he would never master the gradations between a bathing-suit and an overcoat.

The quarter-moon was resting on the roofs of the palaces as they came out into the Grand Canal. The shadows stretching half-way across divided the canal, almost theatrically, into a light area and a dark one, so that there seemed to be two processions going side by side; one a string of lanterns with black shapes following them, the other brilliantly lit, the details of each boat distinctly visible, though the lamps they carried were pale and feeble. But the noise on both sides was the same, laughter and singing and festive shouts, and the plangent thrum of mandolines—a heady, expectant sound.

Silvestro's gondola seemed to attract the moonlight. Eustace remembered his prima-donna's gift for visibility. The sun followed him about by day, and he had to have his place in the moon by night. From where Eustace sat, on a little gilt chair side by side with Lord Morecambe, perched up as though they were playing a duet, he could only see the upward-curving poop of the gondola and Erminio's white figure outlined against the pallid sky. The young gondolier stared ahead with a look so intent as to be almost agonised. They overtook several boats, for Silvestro could not endure another craft to keep abreast of his; and then, with a warning shout, they turned to the right into the moonless darkness of a side canal. Here the traffic was so thick around them that they could almost hear their neighbours breathe; and Silvestro, disregarding professional etiquette, kept bending down to fend them off with his hand. To accept the pace of the crowd and drift with it was abhorrent to him. A few minutes of this awkward bumpy progress brought them to a bridge. They passed under and were out on the broad water of the Giudecca Canal.

Here, though they themselves were still in shadow, they had the moonlight again; the great expanse of water was dotted with boats to its farther shore, and as they went on the boats grew thicker. Many were lashed together. A man with a flagon in his hand leaned over and filled a glass in his neighbour's boat. The men flitted like shadows between the pale dresses of the women. They moved about, the women sat still; Eustace had glimpses of copper-coloured faces, each the fragment of a smile.

Hugging the bank, Silvestro pressed on. His purposefulness contrasted with the care-free mood of the revellers round him, yet somehow enhanced it. All along the fondamenta boats were moored, and as they drew nearer to the bridge Eustace saw that every available roadstead had been taken. Where would they go? Suddenly there was a seething of waters, and the gondola, pulled back on its haunches, stopped in the middle of its private storm. An urgent whisper from Silvestro, and the boat on their left loosened itself from a post and slid away into the darkness. Silvestro manœuvred his gondola into its place.

“Well played, our side,” said Lord Morecambe, who was quicker than Eustace to take in the meaning of this exchange. “I suppose he had the fellow there keeping the place for him. Now we're in the Grand Stand, all set for the big race. Cherrington writes books: he can be our bookie.”

“Sh!” cried both ladies at once.

The place was indeed well chosen, and Silvestro had disposed the gondola so that the reclining ladies and their upright escorts opposite had only to turn their heads to see the church of the Redentore. Silvery and expectant, looking larger than by day, it met them almost full-face. Behind them the moon sent a track across the water which, continually broken by the dark forms of boats, made nevertheless a ribbon of light between them and the church where it gloriously terminated; and on their left the bridge, which had also gained in impressiveness since the morning, made an angle with the line of moonlight, a slender black-and-white V whose apex was the church. In both directions people were crowding across the bridge. Eustace could hear their voices and the shuffle of their feet, and see them descend, slow-moving and tiny, on to the space in front of the great church. Up the steps they went until the shadow of the high doorway, thrown inwards, effaced them as they crossed the threshold.

Beyond the noise of voices, the snatches of music, the swing-ing of paper lanterns, the tilting and dipping of sterns and bows, the church in its grey immensity stood motionless and silent. Now that Eustace was growing accustomed to the light he saw that the façade was faintly flood-lit by the lamps at its base, a wash of gold had crept along the silver. Yet how stern were the uncompromising straight lines, drawn like a diagram against the night; how intimidating the shadows behind the buttresses which supported roof and dome. The church drew his eyes to it with a promise which was almost threatening, so powerfully did it affect his mind.

They had finished supper, they had eaten the duck, the mulberries and the mandarins, the traditional fare of the feast, and were sitting with their champagne glasses in front of them on the white tablecloth when the first rocket went up. Eustace heard the swish like the hissing intake of a giant breath, and his startled nerves seemed to follow its flight. Then with a soft round plop the knot of tension broke, and the core of fiery green dissolved into single stars which floated down with infinite languor towards the thousands of upturned faces. A ripple of delight went through the argosy of pleasure-seekers. Night rushed back into the heavens; the moon, now low down behind the houses, tried to resume her sway; but Nature's spell was broken, everyone was keyed up for the next ascent. Soon it came, bursting into an umbrella of white and crimson drops that almost reached the water before they died, and were reflected in the table-cloth. For a time, at irregular intervals, single rockets continued to go up; then there was a concerted swish, a round of popping as though scores of corks were being drawn, and arc upon arc of colour blotted out the sky. The infant stars burst from their matrix and, still borne aloft by the impetus of their ascent, touched the summit of their flight, brushed the floor of Heaven and then fell back appeased. The lift and spring in the air all around him was like an intoxication to Eustace, and he glanced at the others to see if they shared it.

“Good show,” said Lord Morecambe. “A bit old-fashioned, of course, but good considering.”

“Considering what, my dear?” asked Lady Nelly.

“I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I saw some Italian shooting on the Isonzo, and I'm surprised they're so handy with fireworks. Of course, the sky's a big target, and doesn't hit back.”

“I wish you would try not to see things always in terms of bloodshed,” said Lady Nelly. “Couldn't you stop him, Héloise?”

“I do try to make him think of something else,” said Lady Morecambe.

“Darling Héloise, I think of you all the time,” her husband said, and put his hand on hers.

Eustace was touched by this gesture, which he attributed to the liberating influence of the fireworks, and wondered how Lady Nelly would respond to a caress from him. Perhaps the same impulse was felt in all the hundreds of little boats that gently rocked beneath their lanterns on the windless, unfretted water; perhaps every heart sent up a rocket to its objective in the empyrean of love. The thought pleased Eustace, and he tried to make the symbol more exact. Viewless, perceptible only by the energy, the winged whizz of its flight, desire started up through the formless darkness of being; its goal reached, it burst into flower—a flower of light that transfigured everything around it; having declared and made itself manifest, it dropped back released and fulfilled, and then at a moment that one could never fore-see, it died, easily, gently, as unregretted as a match that a man blows out when it has shown him something more precious than itself.

Silvestro and Erminio had finished their supper and were disposed upon the poop—Erminio upright and slender at the back, Silvestro accommodating his bulk horizontally to the curves and planes, the projections and recesses, of which the rear end of the gondola was so bewilderingly composed. Catching Eustace's eye, he pivoted monumentally upon his elbow and said:

“Piace ai signori la mostra pirotecnica?”

“What does he say?” said Lord Morecambe.

“He wants to know if we are pleased with the pyrotechnics,” said Eustace.

“What long words they use,” said Lord Morecambe. “Why couldn't he have said fireworks? Tell him we're enjoying it very much, but the ladies want to know when it'll be over.”

“Oh, don't say that, Mr. Cherrington,” said Héloise. “It would hurt his feelings terribly. I've never been so happy in my life. I should like to stay here all night—wouldn't you, Lady Nelly?”

“Perhaps not quite all night,” said Lady Nelly, “though I'm loving it too. What time is it, Eustace?”

Eustace took out his watch. A burst of ice-blue stars were reflected in the glass, hiding the hands. When they died out he said, “Just about one.”

“Long past Héloise's bedtime,” said Lord Morecambe. “Look, even the moon's worn out from sight-seeing.”

Eustace noticed for the first time that the moon had set, and this realisation made the night suddenly seem much darker.

Silvestro, still holding the acrobatic pose on his elbow, spoke again. “Sono contenti i signori?”

“Don't keep him waiting for an answer,” said Lord Morecambe. “It's rude, and besides, you might get knifed. Let's hear you give him a vote of thanks, Cherrington, in your best Italian.”

“Please say it's heavenly, Mr. Cherrington,” said Lady Morecambe.

“I wouldn't, Cherrington; it might sound blasphemous to him. You never know with foreigners. Say it's fair to medium.”

Eustace glanced at Lady Nelly, who was obviously enjoying his embarrassment.

“Say we couldn't be happier, but we remember he has to get up early, and we're ready to go back as soon as he is.”

“Truckling to them,” muttered Lord Morecambe.

Eustace cleared his throat.

“La Contessa dice che siamo contentissimi,” he began. “Ma ricordando che loro due debbono alzarsi ben presto——”

“Bravo!” cried Lord Morecambe. “He's a regular Wop.”

“Ma, signore,” protested Silvestro, without giving Eustace time to finish, and swivelling round so as to impend portentously over the heads of Héloise and Lady Nelly, “loro dovrebbero aspettare la fine della mostra, perchè stasera abbiamo una novità, qualcosa di raro, unica si può dire, uno spettacolo veramente tremendo, mai ancora visto alla festa del Redentore, mai, mai. Sarebbe un disastro perderlo, sicuro.”

Evidently afraid that Silvestro's appeal might fall on deaf ears, Erminio, pressing forward as far as he dared, translated it.

“He says you ought to await the finish of the show, because tonight we have something most hextraordinary, a novelty, a thing unique, never seen before at the Feast of the Redeemer. Hit would be a disaster to lose hit, sure thing.”

“Yers,” said Silvestro, using the monosyllable to underline everything Erminio had said, and forgetting in his excitement to reprove him for showing off. “Il professore pirotecnico m'ha detto lui stesso che sarà roba fantastica, indimenticabile.”

“The pyrotechnic professor has told him hit will be fantastic stuff, hunforgettable,” said the interpreter, breathing gustily.

By now both gondoliers were on their feet and the gondola rocked from side to side.

“Well, tell us what it is,” said Lord Morecambe, “don't kill us with suspense.”

Too tactful to reply directly, Erminio passed the question to Silvestro, who spread out his hands and looked despairing and, so far as in him lay, pathetic.

“Non so, signore, non so neanche io. Sarà una sorpresa—una sorpresa molto, molto religiosa.”

Hardly were the words out of his mouth when Erminio said, “He does not know, not heven he. It will be a surprise, a very, very religious surprise.”

“In that case I think we must wait,” said Lady Nelly, and signified as much to the gondoliers, who subsided with deep sighs of thankfulness, as though they had successfully appealed for someone's life.

“What can it be?” said Lord Morecambe. “Anything religious could surprise me. Let's have a bet. Cherrington, your book, please.”

“Sh!” cried Héloise. “Look!”

Instinctively their eyes turned to the church. For several minutes there had been a lull in the fireworks and the nip of tension was in the air. Since the moon set the church had receded and grown indistinct: its outlines were lost in its vast bulk. Shadowy but solid, it seemed part of the substance of the night.