Eustace and Hilda (82 page)

Eustace never knew when his turn was coming or if it would come at all; but suddenly she said, “I suppose you hate being here?” and when he said, “Oh no, why should I?” she said, “Most of us do,” which was almost the only direct reply he heard her make.

In contrast to these sharp angularities of appearance and behaviour, these word-pellets like bursts of machine-gun fire, how soft and rounded and unemphatic seemed Lady Nelly, a rose-bush in a jungle of strelitzias. Like a queen she could afford to be amiable and gracious: that was where she scored. And she was being particularly amiable and gracious at this moment to Count Andrea di Monfalcone who sat at her right hand and seemed highly though not humbly sensible of the honour. If not so large and striking as Countess Loredan's good companion, he was even better looking, and he was a Count. The Count of No Account, Jasper had called him. Eustace didn't suppose that Lady Nelly was likely to be dazzled by his title; but all the same he had it, and she didn't have to explain to the world that he was an author or an Olympic hurdler. He was an aristocrat, he fitted in, and no doubt there were countless (if countless was the word) fine shades of understanding that she had with him that she could not have with Eustace. And as a rival, which Eustace increasingly felt him to be, he had the tremendous advantage that his time was all his own; he could devote himself to Lady Nelly, heart and soul, as he was doing now without having to snap back to an exercise book, like a strip of tired elastic, or even propel himself over an avenue of hurdles. As he watched them together Eustace recognised many small deviations from her usual manner, which he had imagined were for him alone. They were wonderfully unmarked, perhaps only visible to a jealous eye—the more frequent turn of the head, the longer look, the tiny movement of the hands in his direction, as of a flower's petals turning to the sun.

Lady Morecambe had the Count's cold shoulder; she was being engaged, at a distance, by a gaunt, satanic-looking man, well-known as a heartbreaker. His technique, at a first encounter, was to fasten on his quarry a fixed, challenging look from his lustreless, lamp-black eyes—a look that, by ignoring those it met in transit, seemed to annihilate the onlookers and enclose the two of them in an electric solitude. Across it, his intimate, indignant voice seemed to be accusing her of disobeying some rule of life he had drawn up for her.

He spoke rapidly, in French. Lady Morecambe turned on him her shallow, puzzled, gazelle-like eyes, while her husband, opposite her, who had understood, watched her with malicious amusement, until Countess Loredan called out, “Tais-toi, Cherubino, you're being a bore.” Having silenced him, she said, “What a pity you are going away.” There was nothing to indicate that this remark was meant for Eustace, but as no one answered he felt it must be.

A chord of memory sounded in him; someone had said this to him before. “I didn't know I was,” he said. “Why, had you heard that I am?” Countess Loredan turned on Lady Nelly and the Count the incriminating searchlight of her stare and said, “Eh bien, vous ne le regretterez pas, peutêtre.”

Eustace felt he minded very much; suddenly he thought he had the solution. “Oh, you must mean Lord and Lady Morecambe; they're going to-morrow, worse luck.” But the Countess had turned away and was talking to someone else, leaving Eustace baffled and disturbed.

Did Lady Nelly want him to go? he wondered. It would be aw-ful to outstay his welcome. But only a few days ago she wouldn't hear of his leaving. She had even ordered a costume for him for the ball. His eyes travelled round the Piazza. It was a feast-day, and from the tiers of windows on the right (he had his back to St. Mark's) hung carpets and tapestries of crimson and pale green. They were in shadow, but the front of St. Mark's was fast recovering the opalescent glow which it lost under the glare of the strident midday sun. Florian's at this hour got all the sunlight. The thronged tables made an oblong continent of humanity, except that round theirs—the tables that composed their party—flowed a circular channel which turned them into an island. Along this channel the waiters flitted with eyes more watchful and smiles more deferential than they kept for casual customers; and those casual customers, it seemed to Eustace, who were eating and drinking in a sober, self-contained fashion, cast curious and envious glances in their direction when a burst of laughter went up or Countess Loredan's voice, like a ship announcing its departure, filled the air. What a riot of broken meats, ices, cakes, sandwiches; tea, coffee, chocolate, spoons, forks, cups, glasses, napkins, all in danger of slipping off, but all staying on, all touched, used, broached, emptied of the freshness which they had when they came gleaming from the kitchens, poised on the waiter's back-turned hands, level with their smiling eyes.

There was much scraping of chairs as Lady Nelly rose, much bowing and shaking and kissing of hands, and a respectful silence fell on the surrounding tables. With an invisible gesture Lady Nelly gathered the Morecambes and the Count of Monfalcone round her. Eustace fancied that the orbit of her unspoken invitation did not include him, and he fell into step beside Jasper.

“You're not going away, are you?” said Jasper. “Somebody said you might be.”

“Well, not quite yet,” said Eustace uneasily. “I think they must have meant the Morecambes.”

“People never stay,” complained Jasper. “Just as you begin to get used to them they go. What do you make of Monfalcone?”

Eustace said he was all right.

“Such a puppy,” grumbled Jasper. “And in my opinion no more a Count than I am. Still, I suppose Nelly knows her own business best.”

They had reached the landing-stage of the Luna; the grizzled head of Silvestro and the blond head of Erminio appeared above the parapet.

“Oh, that wonderful boat,” said Jasper sourly. “Mind you let me see your manuscript before you go.” He hurried off.

Eustace followed the others, and arrived just in time to see Silvestro, his shoulders hunched in distaste, ushering the Count into the gondola. Looking over the balustrade, he saw the four seats already occupied. “Come on, we'll make room for you!” Lord Morecambe had called out; but Eustace said no, he'd like a walk. They still pressed him, the Count was particularly insistent, but Eustace shook his head and marched away, his mind full of that sweet soreness which comes of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

He had meant to walk straight back, arriving triumphantly before they did. But when he got into the Via Venti-due Marzo his steps began to flag. Not for the first time the crumbling, florid front of the church of San Moisé claimed his attention. Ruskin had loaded it with obloquy: in his eyes it was frivolous, ignoble, immoral. Eustace was determined to like it: half one's pleasure in Venice was lost if one could not stomach the rococo and the baroque. But this evening, as he stood on the little bridge and watched the pigeons strutting to and fro, hardly visible among the swags, cornucopias, and swing-boat forms whose lateral movement seemed to rock the church from side to side, his interest was not in the morality or otherwise of the tormented stonework, but in the state of mind of people to whom such exuberance of spirit was as natural as the air they breathed. Never a hint, in all that aggregation of masonry, of diffidence or despondency, no suggestion of a sad, tired mind finding its only expression in a stretch of blank wall.

Turning back to the sober little street which had all the look of a cul-de-sac but was not, he wandered on. To his left rose the rich, reserved buildings of banks, converted palaces, no doubt. In the narrow space they seemed to attain to skyscraper altitude. The Banca Itala-Americana-Britannica-Francese was his. He peered through its gilded portcullis. How deferentially they treated him when he leaned on their mahogany counters! His modest letter of credit had long since expired, but since then nearly fifty pounds of Miss Fothergill's money (blessed be her name) had been conjured up for him by those darkly smiling, suave young men. No doubt that he had lived more intensely during the flush of those transactions, but the glow had faded now, along with the general glow of Venice, which he was so soon to lose.

One after another he passed the tall, narrow openings of alleys that were conduits to the Grand Canal; the last had a sign hanging from it, gold letters on a black ground, ‘To the Splendide and Royal Hotel.' He had taken the hint, and here he was.

G
IVE ME
another Clover Club, please, Tonino,” he said, and while the barman was mixing it he looked round the room.

It was not the rush hour yet; there were two or three people who had been there when he came, and on one of the windowseats, looking out, a woman who must have come in since, unnoticed by him. As though she felt the interest in his look she got up and walked to the bar. She was thin and brittle-looking, and very pretty. Her frosty blue eyes moved restlessly; her clothes were fashionable but not expensive, and she brought a strong whiff of scent with her. “The same again, Tonino,” she said, and he replied, “Just a moment, Signora Alberic.”

Pricked anew by the name, Eustace stared at her with a curiosity franker than good manners allowed; and she, who had been drumming with her fingers on the woodwork of the bar, returned his gaze with more warmth of recognition than the occasion warranted. A sensation went through Eustace like none he had known, and he heard himself say, “Good-evening.”

“Good-evening,” said Mrs. Alberic. Her intonation, like her look, suggested that Eustace was not a complete stranger. Glass in hand, she took half a step towards him. Automatically Eustace rode and moved the vacant chair a few inches in her direction. They both sat down. The lady's hands ceased to fidget, and her eyes grew steadier under her plucked, raised eyebrows.

Obscurely feeling there was some move he ought to make, Eustace said:

“Excuse me, but I thought I remembered your name.”

“Did you?” she said. “I'm trying to forget it.”

Her smiling eyes saved Eustace from feeling snubbed, but did not help him to think of something to say.

“And for a moment,” he told her, not quite truthfully, “I thought I'd met you before.”

“Did you?” she said again. “Perhaps you have. It doesn't matter, does it?”

Seeming half amused, half impatient, she waited for him to go on.

“Have you been long in Venice?” said Eustace, and stopped, for he remembered having seen the date of her arrival in the book.

“It might be any time,” she answered. “But I shouldn't think it's more than a week.”

“Is this a comfortable hotel?”

“More comfortable than I can afford, I'm afraid. More comfortable than the hotel in Bombay.”

“Oh, you come from India?”

“Yes, thank God. You're not staying here, are you?”

“In Venice?”

“I meant, in this hotel?”

“No, I'm staying in a p—in a house.”

“Oh, you've a house of your own? Lucky man. I thought I hadn't seen you about. Is it far from here?”

“About twenty minutes' walk,” said Eustace, answering the second part of her question.

“Is your house a show-place? What they call a palazzo? I'm not much of a sight-seer, I'm afraid. I've never been inside one. Draughty old bird-cages, aren't they?”

“This one isn't.”

“You make me curious. Do you ever take people over it?”

“Well, you see, it doesn't belong to me. I'm just staying there, with Lady Nelly Staveley, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, are you?” Mrs. Alberic paused, and her measuring eye put Eustace in a new perspective. “The old girl whose pictures you see in the paper?”

“Yes,” said Eustace stiffly.

“Well, in that case I won't ask you to show me over. Is it fun there, or is it deadly?”

“Oh, great fun, great fun.” With some vague idea of banishing the look of disappointment on Mrs. Alberic's face, Eustace added, “At least, it was.”

“Not so much fun now?”

“Not quite.” Feeling disloyal, he none the less had to say it.

“So you were just having a quiet drink to get away from it all? I don't blame you.”

Her air of sympathy gave Eustace a pleasant feeling of being hardly used.

“Well, that was the idea.”

“Does she keep you on a string?”

Eustace knew that his grievance against Lady Nelly was that she wasn't holding the string tightly enough. But he answered:

“She is rather inclined to.”

“If you're feeling fed up, should we dine together in some quiet little place? I'm at a loose end to-night.”

This step seemed revolutionary to Eustace. “What excuse shall I make?”

“Ring her up and say you've met an old friend.”

Eustace looked at her. Cocktails and conversation had put a flush into her cheeks. Her china-blue eyes were alight with pleasure instead of shifty with restlessness. He now felt that her features, as well as her name, recalled something to him.

He struggled with himself. He had heard some of Lady Nelly's Anglo-American friends complain that their guests in Venice used their houses like an hotel; but he had never absented himself from a single meal at the Palazzo Sfortunato. Perhaps Lady Nelly would be glad if he did; he remembered Juvenal's warning about repeated cabbage. Perhaps she would feel freer if he was not there. And it would be an adventure to take this strange lady out to dinner.

Smiling at her, he said to the barman, “Can I use your telephone, Tonino?”

He felt very dashing.

“Sairtainly, Signor Shairington.”

The Countess was out, the major-domo told him; she was “fuori in gondola.” But Lord Morecambe was in. Would Eustace like to speak to him? Eustace shrank from Lord Morecambe's jocularity and the highly coloured account of his absence that he would pass on to Lady Nelly. So he asked the major-domo to give her a message. His Italian went a little haltingly. “Un amico?” queried the man. “No, un'amica,” said Eustace, resolute in truthfulness, and wondering whether there was any nuance attached to the Italian for female friend.