Eustace and Hilda (81 page)

“Good news?” asked Lady Nelly, looking up from her book.

“Well, not altogether. It's about my sister Hilda.”

Lady Nelly put the book down, and turned on Eustace the dark glasses which somehow didn't disfigure her, for they were like shadows of her eyes.

“I hope your sister isn't ill.”

“Oh no, she isn't really ill, but she's had a kind of nervous attack. The doctors” (Eustace's use of the plural suggested an army of medical attendants) “don't seem to know what it is.”

“She seemed the incarnation of health,” mused Lady Nelly. “It made one feel well to look at her. But women have these little upsets. Being a man, you wouldn't know about them.”

At once Eustace felt easier in his mind about Hilda.

“Women don't always sail on an even keel,” Lady Nelly went on. “You'll learn that, Eustace. Little things, trifles light as air”—she waved her hand—“upset us. Sometimes we have headaches, sometimes we cry, and don't ourselves know the reason. Men wouldn't really want us to be different, or perhaps we should be.”

“Could you have a bilious attack?” asked Eustace dubiously.

“Oh, easily. Don't worry about your sister, Eustace, I'm sure it's only some feminine fussation. Perhaps she's been going about too much with my naughty nephew Dick. That might easily lead to a bilious attack.”

Eustace remembered the champagne at the Ritz; but he had never been certain it was Hilda Lord Morecambe saw.

“They don't mention Dick,” said Eustace.

Lady Nelly smiled. “I dare say not. Don't you sometimes not mention someone?”

“I often mention you, I'm afraid,” Eustace said.

“I ought to feel flattered, I do feel flattered. But if you told me you had never mentioned me to anyone, I should feel flattered too, in a different way. We are always looking for excuses to feel flattered. Am I telling you too many secrets about us?”

Eustace wondered if Dick often mentioned Hilda's name.

‘A very beautiful girl I know called Hilda Cherrington.' ‘Hilda Cherrington, a perfect stunner. You must meet her, old boy.' Or again: ‘Who was that lovely girl I saw you with last night, Dick? Who was she, you naughty old man?' ‘Oh, just a friend.' ‘Who was the charmer you were giving champagne to at the Ritz, Dick? Come on, out with it.' Silence; or perhaps a word and a blow. Which line of action would Hilda think the more flattering?

Eustace remembered with embarrassment that he hadn't answered Lady Nelly's question. She didn't repeat it, but went on:

“A little sympathy, you know, a little notice, a few extra attentions here and there, alleviate many of our worst symptoms. Especially when they come from whoever caused the symptoms. Sometimes, unconsciously of course, our symptoms are the reaction to what we imagine to be neglect—innocent reminders that we want to be cherished a little. So we lie about in picturesque attitudes and have our meals on a tray. And if these measures don't bring relief, we buy a new frock and try to think of someone who feels more kindly about us. Or am I being unfair to my sex?”

“Oh no,” said Eustace fervently. “You couldn't be.”

Lady Nelly picked up her book, but kept her eyes on Eustace.

“Well, that's my diagnosis. When you write to your sister write to her most affectionately (I'm sure you do), and give her my prescription, in your own words of course. Say you've seen a dress you think would suit her, and you look forward to seeing her wear it——”

“I have got her a shawl,” said Eustace.

“Get her a dress too. I'll help you to choose it.”

Eustace looked round anxiously at the occupants of the other two mattresses, drawn up side by side under a blue umbrella. Lady Nelly's glance followed his.

“Don't worry—they're sound asleep. Tell her to forget the clinic —cripples can't run away—and if you mention Dick, put him in a list with some others—you'll know who they are.”

Eustace could only think of Stephen. “You don't think I ought to go home?”

Lady Nelly's blue glasses brightened as they moved towards him.

“Oh dear, no. No. As a tonic, brothers are much more effective at a distance. Near to, they can't be impressed, they know too much. I never had one, but if I had, I shouldn't have wanted him about while I was—well, experimenting with my personality. Besides, I can't spare you. You must be here for the Regatta and the masked ball we're having in the evening. I couldn't let you miss that.”

“When is it to be?”

“Now don't trip me up over dates. I'm getting a wonderful costume for you. All Venice will go into raptures over it.”

“What is it?”

“A famous Venetian author, of course.”

“Who?”

“Ah, wait and see.”

She took her book up again, but with intention this time. Eustace fell into a reverie.

Wearing his mask, he moved through the great rooms of the Palazzo Sfortunato, while all around him whispered, ‘Look, there is the great Venetian author!' And others said, ‘No, it's only Eustace Cherrington.' But he couldn't pay attention to them because he was looking for Hilda. He knew she was there somewhere. On and on he went through rooms that were familiar to him, and others, leading off them, that were strange. At last he found her. In spite of her mask he knew her, because she was wearing a scarlet domino. But when he spoke to her she did not answer. He tried again and still she was silent. Then someone came up to him and said, ‘Don't you know, she can't speak?' Eustace said, ‘Of course she can, she's only pretending. All she wants is a little notice.' But the scarlet domino began to shrink away, and the voice said, ‘She can't speak to you as long as you're wearing that mask.' Eustace began to pull at his mask, but it would not come off, for it had grown into his face.

The stab of pain woke him. He knew at once what had happened: an insect had stung him, here on the Lido, in broad daylight. The others were asleep. At any moment Lady Nelly's regular breathing might mount into a snore.

All at once he thought of a scene for his story. If he waited too long the mood might pass. A confused, multiple ticking, more felt than heard, warned him to make haste.

Lady Nelly had the Morecambes to talk to and would be coming back herself in an hour or two. She wouldn't miss him. Raising himself stealthily from the mattress, he set off across the soft sand.

T
HE MONEY
came, to Eustace's relief, but it brought no message from Hilda. He was not seriously worried; she seldom wrote letters, and anyhow, no news was good news. Meanwhile, there was the dress to get, and the money to get it with. Lady Nelly had promised to help him choose it, and besides valuing her advice he wanted the cachet of her selection; he looked forward to saying, ‘Why not put on Lady Nelly's dress this evening?' and more publicly, ‘This is the dress Lady Nelly chose for Hilda. A Venetian model. Pretty, isn't it?'

But until he tried to get her to go shopping with him he hadn't realised how difficult it was to break into, divert, or even influence Lady Nelly's time-table. Flexible as it seemed when she controlled it, when he tried to make a loop in it for himself it was rigid as iron. The excuses with which she put him off were more graceful than many people's acceptances; she always managed to convey that there was nothing she would rather do. But she didn't do it; and after one or two direct requests had been shelved, Eustace felt a tender area growing round the subject that warned him off. She would remind him that he had his book to get on with; twice she said, “You know you told me on such and such an occasion” (when she had proposed some joint expedition) “that you couldn't spare the time from your book.” Eustace felt sure he had never said precisely that; and he didn't like to remind her that it was she who had always told him his work came first. Once she said, “You remember how you abandoned me on the Lido, you wicked fellow —I woke up and felt quite naked without my cavalier”—referring to the time when he had stolen back to the palazzo to write.

Eustace felt that insensibly his ‘book'—that mere embryo of a novelette—had come between them. It seemed unfair, because it was she who had made him write it. And even now he wasn't sure that she believed he was writing it. He would have liked to show her the fragment, now quite a respectable length. But she had not asked to see it; and though she so often forestalled his wishes, when they chimed in with hers, she could keep them endlessly frustrated if they didn't.

The worst of the thing was, even when he was not writing, the thought of the book still possessed him; its scenes and conversations haunted him; even when present in the body he was often absent in mind, and had to be asked the same question twice over before he could answer. This was not much fun for his companions, and Lady Nelly was not accustomed to being begged, however apologetically, to repeat what she had said. She did not care much for apologies, anyhow. He could not flatter himself that he was a lively companion. And behind his absorption in the book was another preoccupation. Should he be writing it at all? August was far advanced; the pile of books that he had brought out to read for Schools was still unread. No need to keep them in place with the broken relic from Anchorstone Hall: they never moved. Yet they oppressed his spirit with the downward drag of a hundred paper-weights even when, as now, he couldn't see them.

Now he could see an altogether more pleasing prospect—the bookshelves of bottles, the revolving fan, the stuccoed apotheosis on the ceiling, the two wide-apart windows commanding the Grand Canal, which gave such inexhaustible entertainment value to the Wideawake Bar; and perhaps most reassuring of all the pink, foaming Clover Club cocktail at his elbow. For once, just for once, he would exercise his privilege as Lady Nelly's guest and put it down to her account.

Not many minutes ago he had left her at the Piazza, where she had bidden him join her for tea. He had hoped to find her, not alone—that was too much to expect—but at any rate with no other escort than the Morecambes, who were leaving to-morrow. Eustace had become very much attached to them; he enjoyed in almost equal measure not being taken at all seriously by Lord Morecambe and very seriously indeed by his wife. As a rule Eustace flinched from being taken seriously—it meant a burden of responsibility laid on his future; but Lady Morecambe frankly regarded him as an arrived celebrity. She approved of him for what he was, not for what, after years of having his nose pressed to the grindstone, he might become. True, she was not very discriminating; she liked almost everybody, she admired almost everything, and she expressed her feelings with an absence of reserve or qualification which was a perpetual amusement to her husband. But Eustace found that attractive. Most of his friends at Oxford, and in a different way his own family (Barbara excepted), were critical and hard to please; they adopted a nil admirari attitude—his friends because they felt themselves custodians of a high æsthetic standard, Hilda and Miss Cherrington because they felt a similar obligation towards ethics. Lady Morecambe enthusiastically saluted the spirit of poetry whenever she saw it—and she professed to see it in Eustace. He really liked her, and the addresses of her parents and of several of her friends and relations were snugly tucked away in his pocket-book against the day when he should visit America.

The Morecambes were certainly there, on the Piazza, but he did not see them at first. The crowd which had gathered round Lady Nelly's table overflowed on to others. Eustace was reminded of the remark of a Venetian hostess: “I have only to hang out a ham and all Venice will flock to it.” They sat at every angle of leaning towards and away from; at every gradient from uprightness to sprawl. Sight-seeing had made Eustace familiar with pictures of the Last Supper: unsuitable as the parallel was, it sprang into his mind. But all these people had an air of careless smartness, of not minding what anyone thought of them, which quickly banished the comparison. Most of them Eustace knew, at any rate by sight; it was seeing them all together that was so intimidating, as if the essence of worldliness—an ingredient so agreeable in small quantities—had been poured with a lavish hand into a single dish.

They greeted him with varying degrees of elegant off-handedness, with an arm, a wrist, a finger, an eyebrow: and an unmistakable voice blared across the Piazza: “Ecco il piccolo Cherrington. Ben tornato! Comment va votre livre, mon petit?”—and without waiting for a word or a look from Lady Nelly, whose party it was, Countess Loredan with her voice, her short energetic arms and her parasol had made a gash next to her in the circle and installed Eustace there. On her other side glowered her attendant athlete, measuring Eustace with a hostile and surmounting eye, as though he was a hurdle that could easily be cleared. His clothes had a knife-edge cut: it seemed impossible that the human figure could expand and contract so suddenly as his did.

“Do not talk to him,” she commanded, for Eustace had made him a little bow. “He understands nothing; he's as stupid as a racehorse, aren't you, Nino?”

She made it sound like a compliment, but Nino was far from being mollified. She asked Eustace a great many questions without listening to the answers, and all at once turned away from him and began talking at the top of her voice to Jasper Bentwich, two tables away. He flashed an offended monocle at her and shouted back, “I can't hear a word you say, Laura.”

Eustace turned to his other neighbour, Countess Dorsoduro; she had a black-and-white dress, long black earrings, and her eyes were so heavily mascaraed they were like bruises in her face. She did not look at him when she spoke, and her remarks had no bearing on what he said: they scratched the silence with spindly, jagged lines that left no pattern behind. She darted from topic to topic as if playing Blindman's Buff with boredom. This was her technique with everyone, and Eustace did not resent it; and he admired the way she made it seem flat to finish a sentence and slavish to answer a question. He recognised her chic. Like Countess Loredan she spattered words in all directions, nick-names and esoteric reference to parties, bridge, plans, destinations; she never bothered to make herself clear, or hint at a context; even before she had seen the effect of what she said her eyes would close in boredom and open on some new target.