Eustace and Hilda (68 page)

“Palazzo Sfortunato,” he said, indicating the building at Eustace's back. “Bel palazzo. Gottico. Grande. Magnifico. Palazzi barocchi, brutti, pesanti. Vuol vedere l'entrata?”

“He says, would you like to see the hentrance?” offered the second gondolier.

Gratefully Eustace followed Silvestro through the great doorway into the cool dusk of the entrata. It went the length of the house and corresponded, he saw, to the two great galleries above. High overhead the huge rough beams made strong transverse lines. Along one wall stood various stone objects hard to identify—fragments, perhaps, from groups of statuary. Otherwise the hall was empty, with a vast emptiness too stately to seem forlorn, except that in the corner nearest the door there was a quantity of gear, stacked on trestles or spread on the floor: oars, cushions, chairs, carpets, the supplementary furnishings of the gondola; and a large humped construction like a howdah, forbiddingly black.

To this heterogeneous yet characteristic collection Silvestro led Eustace, and paused impressively before it.

“Tutta questa roba è mia,” he said.

The pride in his voice had explained his meaning to Eustace even before he heard, coming from behind him, the other gondolier's rendering of what he said.

“He says that hall these goods hare his.” The addition of several aspirates gave an overwhelming force to the word ‘his.'

Eustace turned and saw the interpreter standing in the doorway, obviously too shy to come in without invitation; but the invitation was not given.

“Questo,” said Silvestro, indicating the black domed object and stroking it, “è il felze.” He paused impressively, clearly hoping that Erminio would come forward with a translation. But, nettled perhaps at not being asked in, Erminio held his peace.

“Costa molto,” Silvestro proceeded, “costa più di sei mila lire.”

Remembering Stephen's injunction, Eustace tried to turn this figure into pounds; but all he could do was to look suitably astonished.

“E così pesante,” Silvestro continued, “che al solito ci occorre due uomini per portarlo. Soltanto io posso portarlo senza aiuto.” As Eustace looked puzzled, Silvestro broke off, waiting for the voice from the door. At last, when it still did not come, he looked round irritably.

“Par cossa ti non parla?” he demanded.

Thus appealed to, Erminio found his tongue. “He says the felze is so heavy that usually we must have two men to carry hit. Only he can carry hit without help.” He spoke with a hint of scepticism, but Silvestro ignored it and looked at Eustace to see the effect of the announcement. Satisfied with the result, he proceeded:

“La gran parte dei gondolieri sono troppo poveri per tenere il felze, Soltanto io e mio fratello Giambattista, noi lo teniamo.”

Again there was a pause. When Erminio still proved recalcitrant, Silvestro said, “Ti xe sordomuto?” Taxed with being a deaf-mute, Erminio said with obvious unwillingness:

“He tells that the great part of the gondoliers are too poor to keep the felze. Only he and his brother, John the Baptist, they keep hit.”

Pleased at having made his point Silvestro re-introduced Eustace to the felze, and was opening its door with much empressement to reveal the silk-lined interior, when Erminio cried, “Attention! viene la Contessa!”

All in a moment, and before Eustace had begun to hear the footsteps on the stairs, Silvestro doffed his air of grandeur and darted to the door. Eustace followed more slowly, but with a distinct feeling of having been caught out in something. When he reached the door the gondoliers were already in the boat. He turned round.

Lady Nelly was coming down the stairs, followed at ritual intervals by the major-domo, the footman, and her maid. The footman carried the picnic basket, but each was well laden with provisions for the journey. Lady Nelly's clothes, of many shades between fawn and cream, seemed to float in the air, and she herself, ample though she was, seemed to float with them. Eustace went forward to meet her.

“Ah! so you're here!” she said, as if that made everything all right. “I was afraid you were going to be late.”

“Is that why you sent up to fetch me?” asked Eustace, aware, to his great surprise, that his grievance was beginning to ebb.

“So they came, did they?” Pausing at the door, Lady Nelly embraced her retainers, who had also paused, with a glance of affectionate commendation. “I wasn't sure they would. Were you scared?” she asked, smiling. “I wish I'd seen your face.”

“Well, I was a little startled,” said Eustace. “You see, it was only half-past eleven and I——”

“Don't trouble to tell me,” said Lady Nelly, moving out into the sunshine. “I know what a bore explanations are. You had forgotten all about it, you were so immersed in your work. I thought you would be, that's why I sent to remind you. I've known a great many great writers,” she went on, “and none of them had any sense of time, not one.” Eustace was trying to see himself among the great writers when she turned to him and said, “What's the time now?”

“It's half-past twelve,” said Eustace.

“Is it really? So late! What a good thing I jogged your memory! Now, don't let's waste another minute. En voiture!”

In the combined effort to help Lady Nelly into the gondola Eustace found himself left out, so great was the general zeal to perform this rite. She seemed to be lowered into the boat with silken chains. Following her across the ironing-board drawbridge, he watched all the patting and smoothing with which, like some large pale bird, she was brought to rest. Indeed, everyone moved with exaggerated care, as if carrying a box of explosives into the presence of a helpless invalid. Eustace found himself turning round and round like a dog before he ventured to sit down beside her. The plumped-out cushion subsided under his weight with a soft sigh. But they were not off yet. Lady Nelly bethought herself of several things she had forgotten and which Silvestro, in ringing tones of command, demanded of the despised indoor servants. Then the awning had to be put up. Eustace tried to help, but his very diffident intervention seemed to throw the process completely out of gear and he was adjured with many soft-popping negatives to rest tranquil. Meanwhile a crowd had gathered; the parapet was topped by a line of faces looking down with critical or admiring eyes. Silvestro paid no more attention to them than does a lion to the riff-raff behind the bars. At last the tugging and grunting ceased, the linen curtains were in place, and Silvestro's face, very red and heated, appeared suddenly between them, giving the effect, as it so often did, of an awful nearness.

“Santa Rosa, Signora Contessa?”

“Si, Santa Rosa, Silvestro.”

“Santa Rosa, sa?” shouted Silvestro to Erminio, in a tone that ruled out all other destinations.

T
HEY TIED
up at a post, with the lagoon on one side and on the other an island of which Eustace could see, by twitching the curtain, a confused coast-line of hedges, vines, and vegetables, and a rather tumble-down pink cottage, weather-stained and peeling here and there, but well filled, to judge by the number of children who thronged its water-front and stared with Latin fixity.

“Ecco Santa Rosa,” said Silvestro. “Grande città,” he added humorously. Its smallness certainly made a vivid contrast with the great bulk of Venice that, beginning a mile or so from where they sat, swung away to the right, an horizon in itself, compared to which the real horizon, visible to Eustace if he leaned forward, looked disappointingly low and flat.

“Now for our luncheon,” said Lady Nelly. Produced from a three-decker Thermos and laid on a table which held them wedged in their places, the luncheon was a delectable meal. But Eustace was soon in trouble with his spaghetti.

“You look like Laocoon,” said Lady Nelly, “except that he was afraid of being eaten, and you are afraid to eat. Try one at a time.”

Feeling like an inexperienced shark that must turn over to bite, Eustace made another attempt to take the bait. The manœuvre gave him a contortionist's view of Lady Nelly's face, such as Tintoretto might have chosen.

“What would Edie Staveley say,” said Lady Nelly, “if she saw us now!”

Eustace came up to breathe.

“Do you suppose she ever goes for a picnic?”

“Not alone with a young man; that would be against her principles.”

Eustace took a sip of his white wine. The fresh, faintly salty taste delighted him. But he wished he was not contravening Lady Staveley's principles. Anyone else's principles seemed better founded than his own.

“I suppose she is very strict,” he said.

“She's very conventional,” said Lady Nelly, “and that means doing things in a certain way. It's the technique of living, as practised by the experts. It may not take you very far, but you'll always feel you are on the right road, and in good company. I recommend it to you, Eustace. But perhaps there's no need.”

Eustace was not quite sure how to take this.

“I certainly don't like getting into a row,” he muttered.

“Being conventional won't save you from that,” said Lady Nelly. “But it's a different kind of row, and people will be on your side as long as they believe that in spirit you still toe the line. You needn't be afraid that you won't be able to do a great many things that you want to do. Only you have to do them in a certain way.”

“Secretly, I suppose,” said Eustace, privately horrified at the idea of a sin not committed, and proclaimed, on the housetops.

“Well, according to recognised rules, and one is that people don't mind about something that isn't forced on their notice.”

“No—o,” said Eustace, still obsessed by the idea that if there must be impropriety it should be as public as possible.

“Venice was very gay just before the war,” said Lady Nelly. “I remember a party at Murano. There, on the right.” She pulled back her curtain, and Eustace saw, duplicated in the water, the roofs and towers of a long island. “We went over in gondolas—there weren't many launches then—and after supper there was a dance and some of the ladies of the party danced with the gondoliers. Well, that made a very bad impression on the more old-fashioned Venetians; and one old girl, Contessa Loredan, was heard to say, ‘On peut coucher avec un gondolier, si on le désire; mais on ne danse pas avec lui.'”

Eustace turned scarlet.

“Have I shocked the boy?” said Lady Nelly. “I'm afraid I have. But you see what convention means. After that, no one dared to dance with a gondolier.”

Eustace withdrew his eyes from Silvestro, who was busying himself with the kitchen arrangements in the forepart of the boat; he looked as if his dancing days were over, but you couldn't be sure; he was a kind of sailor, and sailors were agile and sure-footed.

“Don't imagine that you'll be made a witness of such scenes staying with me,” said Lady Nelly. “When we go to Murano, it will be to look at the glass factory. That's a most blameless sight —I expect my sister-in-law saw it when she came here for her honeymoon.”

“Venice is a great place for honeymoons, isn't it?” said Eustace. He saw a picture of Dick and Hilda floating by in a gondola.

“It used to be,” said Lady Nelly. “But I fancy the rhythm here is too slow for modern love. Perfect for friendship, of course. To be really up-to-date you'd have to spend your honeymoon in an aeroplane.”

Eustace decided to take a plunge.

“Do you think that's how Dick will spend his?”

At this moment Silvestro came up to change the plates. He returned with chicken in an aluminium container. While he handed it there was only one preoccupation—to make oneself as small as possible. Eustace and Lady Nelly writhed outwards. When they came together again Lady Nelly said, “It wasn't just greed—I couldn't speak to you
through
Silvestro. You were asking me about Dick, weren't you?”

“Oh, he just passed through my mind.”

“He sometimes passes through mine,” said Lady Nelly. “Not intentionally, and not to stay, of course: I shouldn't flatter myself. But I believe he's fond of you.”

“Oh, do you think so?” said Eustace. “I thought it was Hilda that he liked.”

Lady Nelly turned to him.

“Dick's peculiar,” she said. “I mean, he's peculiar underneath all the mystery-man stuff. He isn't the kind of man that women understand.”

“He seems to like them,” said Eustace.

“Oh yes, he does, he does. But on his terms, not ours. I don't think he's got much to offer to a woman, you know, Eustace.”

“He has Anchorstone,” said Eustace.

Lady Nelly looked at him.

“Anchorstone's a nice little place, and I dare say plenty of girls would be glad to have it, but I wasn't thinking of that. When I said ‘offer' I really meant ‘give.' He hasn't much to give a woman.”

“What kind of things hasn't he?”

“The kind of things women value—gentleness, affection, continual small attentions, fussing about after them, you know. We like to be always in someone's thoughts. And we like men to be rather helpless, at any rate in some ways, and incomplete, and even a little ridiculous and pathetic. Not irritatingly so, of course, but women aren't repelled by weakness in the way that some men are.”

Eustace considered this, to him, novel picture of a woman's man.

“Dick certainly isn't any of those things.”

“No. I admit he's attractive, but he doesn't give, he takes.”

“But I thought women liked that.”

“Some do, of course, but not for long if they have any spirit. Imagine being the wife of our oarsman here!”

“Is he married?”

“Oh yes, he has a large family. I'm godmother to one.”

“You wouldn't like someone you were fond of to marry Dick?” Eustace said.

“Oh, I don't say that. But she'd have to be a special kind of woman, I think, with an elastic nature.”