“Well, in a way. It’s about——” Eustace broke off in confusion.
“Does it end happily?”
“Yes.”
To his mingled disappointment and relief Lady Nelly let the subject drop. Her face became thoughtful again. “Talking of endings, have you seen the paper?”
“No,” said Eustace, surprised.
“I thought you hadn’t,” said Lady Nelly, and stirred her tea-cup. “Why,” she said, “how neglectful I am. I haven’t given you any tea. And now it’s getting cold. Will you have a cup of this while they bring you some more?”
Eustace accepted thirstily. Watching her pour the tea out, he added, “You were going to tell me some news.”
“Oh yes,” said Lady Nelly. “I have the paper here. Some of it, the part that matters. I got Simmonds to cut it out for me.”
She fumbled with the clasp of her bag and pulled out a newspaper cutting She was on the point of handing it to him when she changed her mind.
“Is it good news?” Eustace asked. He knew now that it wasn’t.
“Rather disappointing. My nephew Dick is engaged to Monica.”
“Monica?” repeated Eustace stupidly.
“Yes, you remember her, the Sheldon girl. A nice, homespun creature, but I never thought he’d marry her.”
“Nor did I,” muttered Eustace. He looked away from Lady Nelly to the passers-by, and marvelled that they walked to and fro so unconcernedly.
“Perhaps he won’t,” said Lady Nelly. She laughed shortly. “I see that he’s leaving England almost immediately.”
“Leaving England?” repeated Eustace.
“Yes, for the Middle East, and no letters will be forwarded. It doesn’t sound as if he was very fond of her.”
“Perhaps he’s not very fond of anyone,” said Eustace.
Lady Nelly was silent for a few moments, then she said, “I expect you are thinking of your sister. So am I.”
Eustace felt her link her thoughts to his.
“But”—gently she disengaged them—“apart from the suffering —and we don’t know, do we?—such an experience has its value.”
“I suppose it has,” said Eustace doubtfully.
“Yes, it breaks the crust—you know what I mean—and lets the song pour out. I’ve never regretted any experience that I’ve had. But I’ve regretted a good many that I’ve missed.”
Lady Nelly had never spoken so intimately to Eustace before. He had imagined that her privileged position made her somehow superior to experience, untouchable. Remembering the years with her dipsomaniac husband, he suddenly felt ashamed and looked at her with a new attention and respect. Moreover, she didn’t think of him simply as a kind of plaything, as he had always believed she must, but as someone to confide in.
“Your sister will still wear her dress, I hope,” Lady Nelly went on, “and enjoy it as much and more than if—than if, well, let’s be frank—she had never met my nephew. She may not think so now, for truths, however undeniable, don’t soothe sore hearts. But she will.”
“You think so?” said Eustace, won to hopefulness, despite himself.
“I’m sure. I admired your sister. I thought she had a very fine nature—but it was a dark room, wasn’t it, when you weren’t there, and will be brighter with the daylight let in, even if the windows are broken. Not that I’m defending Dick. He’s been very naughty, and I’m not at all pleased with him.”
Eustace wondered how she knew that Dick had been naughty.
“But I’m not sure he was the right man for your sister. He appealed to her sense of danger, didn’t he? But he’s destructive really, an enemy of happiness, anyway where women are concerned. I shouldn’t want to be in Monica’s shoes. He was your friend originally, wasn’t he? He’s very unlike you. Did you like him?”
“I had a kind of hero-worship for him as a boy,” said Eustace.
“Freddie always said he was a natural gaol-bird and would end on the gallows. All right for a gallop, but no good as a stable companion.”
Eustace remembered how he had always wanted Hilda to go riding with Dick.
“You’re not really worrying, are you?” said Lady Nelly. She turned on him her slow, veiled glance.
“Not so much as I was a few minutes ago,” said Eustace, trying to smile.
“Because if you could see your sister now I’m sure she’d say something like this: ‘Well, Eustace, it’s been a most interesting experiment. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but looking back I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. No, I’m not in black or anything of that sort; I’ve not drawn down the blinds, quite the contrary. I’ve got a luncheon engagement, but I shall be delighted to dine with you, and I’m going down to the country from Saturday till Monday.’”
Contemplating this picture, Eustace felt immensely relieved but at the same time a little sad.
“You think she may not want to see me very much?” he said.
“No, I mean she won’t have time to. You see, these last months will have opened so many doors. And do you suppose the young men who have seen her about with Dick will easily forget her?”
Eustace who, as between him and Hilda, had always thought of himself as the worldling, now saw her disappearing into haunts of fashion where he could not follow her.
“She will expect the same of you, you know,” said Lady Nelly. “She’ll realise that you have a path apart from hers. She’ll love to see you, of course, always; but hasn’t the time come for you to go your separate ways?”
Eustace said nothing.
“Don’t think me interfering,” said Lady Nelly. “And I can’t talk, can I, having kept you here against your will the whole summer? Calypso isn’t in it with me. Still, she gave Ulysses something, didn’t she? She was a stage on his journey to Penelope. She kept his mind from turning too much on one object. The analogy doesn’t work out, I’m afraid; but I like to think of you both stepping out, not on identical or even on parallel courses, but each finding your own way and making your own mistakes and your own separate bargains with life. I believe this summer may have helped towards that.” She gave him an interrogative look. “Your sister will find you a well-known author with a long, dubious Continental past to which she doesn’t hold the key, and you will see her as a woman who has—who has—well, found an emotional outlet suited to her age, her beauty, her vitality, and put all her natural gifts to the use for which they were meant. Have I spoken too plainly?”
“No,” said Eustace. He was walking along a bright sunlit road, and on another, just visible across some fields and lit by the same sun, he could see Hilda, striding purposefully towards a destination of her own.
“But much too prosily,” said Lady Nelly. “I can’t think what’s come over me. There’s something about you, Eustace, that makes people want to talk to you for your good. You have a lecturable face. You pay too much attention. You must be a terrible temptation to any sister. Did you say to yourself, as you heard me droning on, the hands are Nelly’s hands but the voice is the voice of Hilda?”
Eustace laughed, and at that moment a piercing cry made them both start.
“DARLING!” Countess Loredan, in black and white and purple, was bearing down on them. “Darling,” she repeated on a rather lower note. “Darling Nelly! Et Eustache aussi. The guilty pair. Ah, could you have seen yourselves as I saw you! We Italians can never get used to your English freedom, it still shocks us. Comment allez-vous, mon petit?” Sitting down beside him, she opened her tremendous eyes at Eustace, making him feel quite faint. “He does not look well at all, you keep him up too late! Et le livre, ça marche?”
“He has finished it,” said Lady Nelly.
“Feenished it!” exclaimed Countess Loredan, drawing herself backwards and upwards and fixing Eustace with a look of consternation. “Jasper, Grotrian, Trudi, Giulia, Andy, he has finished his book!”
Eustace looked up and saw that the whole tea-party had arrived, and were staring down at him.
“W
hy is that a matter for surprise, Laura?” said Jasper’s voice, brittle with exasperation. “Authors often finish their books.”
“But not as often as they begin them!” cried the Countess triumphantly and with a significant look at Jasper who, as she knew, had started several books without bringing them to completion.
“It’s something to know when to stop,” growled Jasper.
At once they began to crowd round Eustace, murmuring congratulations in several languages. He tried to answer their smiles, singly and collectively, but they were not content with that, they wanted to shake hands, so he rose to his feet while hand after hand reached out to his—large hands with signet rings, small hands sparkling with diamonds, brown hands, white hands, hands negligent and hands enthusiastic. The passers-by stopped and stared; the rest of Florian’s crowded clientèle looked up from their tea, their coffee, their vermouth, and their ices, and one or two stood up to discover what was going on. Only the pigeons, it seemed to Eustace, remained unimpressed by his triumph. Last of all Lady Nelly too rose and dropped him a little curtsy which delighted everyone. Then there was a fluttering of dresses, a scraping of chairs on the pavement, and the party settled into its seats.
“But what will he do now?” demanded Countess Loredan, appealing to the company. “How will he occupy himself, I ask you? E finita la commedia!”
Eustace began to feel extremely ill-at-ease. “He will have to take to hurdling,” said Jasper crossly.
“But how can he?” The Countess sublimely ignored this ill-natured thrust at her good companion, and spoke with outraged reasonableness. “How can he? He has a weak heart! He would die!” She looked at Eustace as though daring him to deny this. “Even Nino Buoncompagno, who is so strong, has been ordered to rest by his doctor.”
“Hurdling is not the only way of tiring the heart,” said Jasper darkly.
“Ah, who are you to speak of the heart? What do you know about it?” rejoined the Countess. “His heart is all in his chairs and tables,” she told them. “It is covered with paint and lacquer and veneer, and inlaid with brass and ebony. It is, how do you say?—a museum piece. It does not beat, like the heart of our little Eustace here.”
Eustace felt himself again becoming the focus of attention.
“I thought you said his heart was weak,” said Jasper, studying his well-shaped finger-nails.
“For athletic pastimes yes,” said the Countess. “But not for loving.”
“How do you know?” asked Jasper.
“I have eyes, have I not?” the Countess demanded, opening those tremendous orbs to an almost unbearable extent. “Is it not plain in his face? I will not ask dear Nelly, that would be indiscreet. I will ask Giulia. Giulia!” she screamed, “stop talking and listen to me. Ne vois-tu pas les vrais traits de Cupidon in Cherrington’s face?”
Countess Dorsoduro lifted her beautiful, bored, expressionless mask, and her heavily bistred eyes flickered over Eustace’s. She said something, but it was inaudible.
“What did you say?” thundered Countess Loredan.
“I said, ‘What’s the use of a heart?’”
Countess Loredan drew the long breath that was her signal for battle, but for once words failed her, and she let it go. But she would not leave her adversary in possession of the field.
“He shall tell us,” she said, turning to Eustace. “He is a writer. Tell Giulia what use a heart is.”
They all looked at him, and Eustace’s mind became a blank.
“Say for breaking purposes,” hissed Jasper, from under cover of the Countess’s upflung chin.
While he was debating he became aware of a presence behind him striving mutely but powerfully to make itself felt. He looked round into Silvestro’s immitigable nearness. “Per lei, signore,” said the gondolier, tendering him a green envelope.
Never in his life had Eustace been more grateful for an interruption. He was saved. “A telegram,” he said to Lady Nelly. “May I read it?”
“But of course.”
Silvestro swaggered off.
The hubbub of voices went on round Eustace. Countess Dorsoduro’s question had started a fruitful topic.
“Grotrian has a big heart.”
“Of course, he is a big man.”
“Ninetta Castelforte takes a very small size in hearts.”
“Oh, a child’s.”
“Where do you think Cherubino’s heart is?”
“Not in the right place.”
“Nonsense, Andy. I’m a heart-specialist, and I know.”
“Lady Nelly,” said Eustace in a low voice, “I’ve had some bad news, I think I shall have to go.”
Lady Nelly bent towards him.
“What do you say, my dear boy? I can’t hear in all this din.”
Eustace tried to raise his voice.
“I’ve had some bad news——”
“Ginetta has a small, square, highly-coloured heart.”
“No, not coloured, with spots on it, like dice.”
Eustace gave up trying to make himself heard, and put the telegram into Lady Nelly’s hand.
“Oh dear, wait till I find my spectacles.”
While Lady Nelly was looking in her bag Eustace read the telegram again:
HAVE YOU HAD MY LETTER STOP HILDA ASKING FOR YOU STOP PLEASE COME STOP
SARAH CHERRINGTON
Lady Nelly put on her spectacles and took the slip of paper from Eustace. As she held it in front of her her head drooped slightly and all the expression went out of her face
“What will you do?” she said, giving him back the telegram.
“I think I’d better go and pack.”
“You may say what you like,” a voice said, “but for me hearts are always trumps.”
“Have you had the letter?” asked Lady Nelly.
“No.”
“It may explain things. Don’t be in too much of a hurry. And don’t bother to say good-bye to them. I’ll do that for you.”
Eustace thanked her.
“We can talk later on.”
Noiselessly Eustace slid from his chair and was threading his way through the tables out into the central space when he heard steps behind him. It was Jasper.
“Whither away?” he said.
“I’m afraid I’ve got to get back,” mumbled Eustace.
“Meet me at the Wideawake at seven,” Jasper said, “I’ve something I want to say to you.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t,” Eustace said. “You see, I——”
“No excuses accepted,” said Jasper, and turned on his heel.
Eustace hurried on with uneven steps, sometimes breaking into a run, and shouldering aside loiterers with a hasty ‘con permesso.’ Now he was in the Via Venti-due Marzo, under the shadow of the Banks, a straight run. A sharp turn to the left, then the Oyster Bridge, a trifling obstacle. It was a race with time, and though no thoughts that he recognised as his were in his head, the habit of dramatising his progress still clung to him. How gloomy the Campo San Maurizio looked under the lowering sky. A few gondoliers were lounging on a bench by their traghetto. He would need the traghetto later on, to cross the Grand Canal. He felt in his pockets for the symbolic lira. Not a coin; only a hundred-lira note. Could he beg a ride? No, not after all his foolish and ostentatious munificence; besides, he would not have time to give them the fare afterwards. That meant he must cross the Accademia Bridge—one of the two hills in Venice. He would have to slow down for that. He entered the Campo San Stefano. The great open space calmed him a little. There were the steps of the bridge, far away on his left. If he took them at a run he would perhaps feel them less, and gain time too.
At the top he stopped, panting, and clung to the iron balustrade. What was the use of a heart? Countess Dorsoduro had asked. Well, it was useful for climbing bridges. He looked over the parapet. How slow the traffic moved along the Grand Canal! Must he hurry so? Yes, because Hilda was asking for him. She had never asked for him before.
But Lady Nelly had tol
d him not to be in too much of a hurry. She hadn’t been thinking of his heart: she meant in a hurry about leaving Venice. She said Aunt Sarah’s letter would explain things. Lady Nelly was a woman who had faced many crises compared to which this one of Eustace’s was but a small affair. She was a woman of the world and understood the proper value of events: she did not see them in a distorting mirror. A blue rift appeared in the masses of grey above him and was reflected in the tormented water of the canal. His spirits rose in sympathy. Lady Nelly had counselled him not to be in a hurry to leave Venice; she thought his way and Hilda’s ought to part. She thought it would be best for both of them. Their true destinies lay apart from each other. He would be a famous author and she would be—not the future Lady Staveley, but a woman who had put all her natural gifts to the use for which they were meant. A complete person, as he would be.
The thought comforted him, but all the same he ran down the steps, and the impetus of his charge carried him past the Accademia and on to the two little flower shops, smelling so sweetly of tuberoses. Here the train slowed up as trains are entitled to, and on an impulse he stopped, and with the note bought some tuberoses for Lady Nelly. She was surrounded by them, of course, but these would be her own. To-morrow evening the whole house would be decorated with them for the ball; but he wouldn’t see that. Hilda was asking for him.
But why shouldn’t he stay for one day more? Hilda couldn’t be really ill; she had written to tell him she was quite all right. When was that? Eustace tried to recall the day, but the days settled on his mind and melted into each other like snowflakes on a window. To-morrow Antony was coming; Antony would know what he ought to do. Antony could tell by tradition exactly how serious it was to be crossed in love. The seriousness varied with the circumstances. Dick had once got into trouble for having a love-affair with a girl of good family—a young girl. Hilda was not young in that sense, nor was she of good family; perhaps it was not so serious in the eyes of the world. Eustace tried to see through the eyes of the world. A girl in her late twenties, a Miss Cherrington, a nobody—we cannot blame him too much. Three out of ten for fidelity, perhaps. But had she had a love-affair? The answer to that lay in the abyss, and Eustace dare not look. But turning away from the abyss, and shutting one’s eyes to it—if experience was so valuable, and psychologists, as well as Lady Nelly, said it was—hadn’t Hilda gained enormously? Was she not a room into which the light now poured, even though the windows were broken?
Eustace and Hilda Page 69