Eustace and Hilda

  “Why, yes, I remember. The old lady who left you the legacy. You see, Eustace, old ladies have their uses. The young ones are nice to look at, but they never die, they only fade away. What a lovely watch. You couldn’t get one like that now. She must have had great taste.”

  “I think she had,” said Eustace. “I hadn’t seen much to judge by, in those days.”

  “Well, she had a taste for you, so you mustn’t be sceptical about her taste in general. That blue enamel line is so chic, I think. And the sapphire starting-handle, what a pet.”

  “Oh, you mean the key.” Eustace was delighted. “Once when I thought I was going to die,” he said reminiscently, “I made a will and left the watch to my old nurse.” He smiled at the recollection.

  “Next time you think of dying,” said Lady Nelly, “I hope you’ll leave your watch to me. Unlike your old lady, I want to be left things, not to leave them. Now you must put it away before I get my clutches on it.”

  Curiously elated by her appreciation of his property, Eustace returned the watch to his pocket. It did not occur to him that she might be praising it in order to please him and to redress a little in his favour the unequal balance of their material possessions.

  “Oh, but we never saw what time it was!” Lady Nelly cried. “I’m glad, because now I shall see your treasure again.”

  Nothing loath, Eustace produced his time-piece.

  “It certainly is my favourite watch,” said Lady Nelly, looking at it covetously. “The only thing about it I don’t like is the time it tells. Half-past three. We must be off. Silvestro!”

  “Pronti, Signora Contessa.”

  “I like being called Contessa,” said Lady Nelly. “How I wish I was one. I’m just a courtesy countess.”

  To the sound of cautious footwork and much deep breathing the gondola, like the Royal George, heeled over on to Eustace’s side, and Silvestro’s white trousers filled the gap between the side-curtains. A moment later a grunt and a thump announced that he was in the hold. The forward curtains parted, and his face appeared with its harvest-moon effect of almost unbearable proximity.

  “Why does he always seem so close?” murmured Lady Nelly. “He’s like the Cheshire cat, in reverse.” Aloud she said: “Torniamo, Silvestro.”

  “Va bene, Signora Contessa.”

  They started on the homeward journey. As the sun was now not quite so hot, and a little breeze had sprung up, grateful enough, though it troubled the reflections, Lady Nelly had had the awning taken down, and Eustace had a full view of the Laguna Morta. The island of Murano lay on their right; divided from it by a narrow strait were the lofty, well-kept pink walls and sorrowful cypresses of the cemetery. At this distance no sound could reach them from either island, nor was any movement visible; yet to Eustace the cemetery struck a deeper note of silence, as if the stir of life was not only absent but unimaginable there.

  Uneasily he reviewed his conversation with Lady Nelly. She did not try to revive it, so he felt no obligation to. How enjoyable it had been. But Eustace took himself to task for his share in the dialogue. He had allowed it to centre upon his own concerns, himself and the people he knew; he had given Lady Nelly no opening to talk about herself and her friends, surely a more interesting topic. She would think him an ill-bred egoist, a provincial unable to realise the importance of the world outside his own back-yard, the world of Whaplode, compared to which even the world of Anchorstone was as a planet to a fixed star. Supposing he had been privileged to hold converse with Shakespeare? A dialogue began to take shape in Eustace’s mind: it went something like this.

  ‘Good-morning, Shakespeare. Glad to see you. Kind of you to remember your promise to introduce me to the Mermaid. Let me see if there’s anyone I know. Oh yes, there’s Beaumont and Fletcher playing darts. I met them once. I adore “The Maid’s Tragedy,” don’t you?’

  ‘A lovely and moving piece of work.’

  ‘And “Philaster” too! So sylvan and sunshiny—or did someone say that about “The Beggar’s Bush”?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The dear fellows excel themselves whenever they write.’

  ‘I wonder what they are writing now?’

  ‘They tell me it’s called “A King and No King.” Such a good title, I think. Wouldn’t wonder if it turns out to be their masterpiece.’

  ‘Didn’t you once have a hand in one of Fletcher’s plays?’

  ‘Well, I did put a few lines into “Henry VIII” one morning when Fletcher had a hangover.’

  ‘How wonderful for you. Beaumont is a gentleman, isn’t he? I mean, he doesn’t have to write for money?’

  ‘Yes, lucky fellow, he writes for the pure love of the thing.’

  ‘I wonder where he lives?’

  ‘At Anchorstone Hall, in Norfolk.’

  ‘What a divine house. Where do you live, I wonder?’

  ‘At a place called Whaplode.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of that. But what a lot those two have done for poetry, haven’t they? I adore their weak endings.’

  ‘More than their strong ones?’

  ‘Um—well, yes. Oh, look, isn’t that John Webster? I met him once, too, but he didn’t speak to me.’

  ‘He’s not very talkative. But what a good playwright. When I saw his “White Devil” I just threw down my pen.’

  ‘I don’t wonder. I’d give anything to have a word with him.’

  ‘You shall. I’ll introduce you—now, if you like.’

  ‘Thank you—but first, isn’t that Peele? We used to play together as children. What a joy his “Arraignment of Paris” is. Didn’t he once write something rather rude about you?’

  ‘No, that was Greene. Don’t tell anyone, but they’ve both been dead for some years. You have missed an experience and so have they, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do see. But what luck to have you with me! You’re such a wonderful guide to the dramatic world.’

  ‘Always glad to be of use [bowing]. Now that Webster’s fortified himself with another tankard, shall I take you over to him?’

  ‘Oh, do. It will be the most marvellous moment of my life.’

  Stung by mortification into wakefulness, Eustace looked up. They were following a serpentine channel marked by rough wooden posts tipped with pitch, visible, if one stood up, as a dark blue streak in the paler water of the lagoon. Already, to Eustace’s distress —for he disliked estuaries—the mud flats were peeping through in places. Soon they were crossing a much wider channel, too deep for posts, almost a river; he could hear the current gurgling against the boat, carrying it out of its course. Then the posts wound into view again, and the gondola followed under the long wall of the Arsenal, a huge pink rampart stained white with salty sweat. Other islands appeared on their right—Burano, to whose inhabitants Silvestro made some slighting reference, and far away, high in the haze, Torcello and the pine trees of San Francesco del Deserto. Silvestro stopped rowing to announce them, as though they were celebrities arriving at a party. Straight ahead a long garden wall stretched into the lagoon, trees overhung it; a water-gate gave the impression of depths of green within, restful to the eye besieged with pink and blue.

  Suddenly, where no opening in the left-hand bastion seemed possible, an opening appeared; into it they swung, leaving the lagoon behind them. Eustace stood up to take a last look at it, framed in the aperture. By comparison the canal seemed lightless and confined and noisy; washing hung out in festoons; long window boxes sported innumerable aspidistras (the patron plant of Venice, Lady Nelly had called it) in somewhat garish pots; canaries lustily gave tongue, and the people on the pavement greeted or admonished each other raucously across great distances.

  Another turn brought two huge palaces, standing cornerwise to each other. Both had pitifully come down in the world: one had shutters painted on its walls with curtains and fashionable people peering through; faded as it was, the mural deceit took Eustace in for a moment and shocked his northern sense of architectural s
traight dealing. Now the houses, to his relief (for Eustace felt a shrinking, akin to terror, from anything shabby or neglected), were more presentable, though the campanile of the big church on the left was leaning almost perilously over the canal. Eustace looked forward to the moment when they should have passed it.

  Soon his eye was drawn by the sunlight at the end of the canal. Above and below the slender bridge that spanned it, the sunshine was at its glorious and exciting game, playing with the blue and white in the water and the blue and white in the sky, gathering into itself and giving out again all the confused movement of the two elements. The moment before they reached the bridge was tense with the radiance waiting to receive them, and when they shot through it into the sparkling water of the great basin, heaving under them with a deep-sea strength of purpose, Eustace felt the illumination pierce him like a pang.

  Relaxed and happy Eustace had only a casual eye for the man-made splendours of the Grand Canal, exhibiting themselves with serene self-confidence, an epic procession, but a pageant without drama.

  They had tea in the lower gallery, now known to Eustace as the salone. It had the distinction, unique in Venice, of being L-shaped, the L being made structurally possible by a column supporting an arch.

  Eustace had not lost the sense of borrowed glory which he had always felt when in the presence of a record; and he gazed at the column with an awe disproportionate to its intrinsic interest. When tea was over Lady Nelly dismissed him to his work. She was firm about it.

  “You must work and I must rest,” she said. “That is what the world expects of us. Remember we start for Jasper Bentwich’s at eight-fifteen. Don’t be late, or I shall send a deputation for you.” She smiled. “But I was forgetting you had that lovely watch. Couldn’t you give it me now? I don’t want you to die, and still more I don’t want to have to wait until you die—oh, and Eustace,” she called after him, “don’t forget that you were terribly tired after the journey yesterday.”

  “Was I?” said Eustace.

  “Well, I told Jasper you were, so that we could get out of dining with him. Does that shock you?”

  “Oh no, Lady Nelly.”

  “Then remember you were absolutely dead-beat. Perhaps you’d better say you had a slight heart attack.”

  “I won’t quite say that,” said Eustace, fearing Fate might somehow contrive to take him at his word. “But I can honestly say I was tired.”

  “Be honest, then. Only, just a word of warning. You must manage to like Jasper. He’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

  “I’m sure I shall,” said Eustace with confidence, as he took his leave.

  Instead of working, however, he wrote a letter to Hilda. The letter would be in time to catch her before she went to Anchorstone, and he wanted to give her some advice. But the advice would not take shape in his mind. Twinkling with plus and minus signs, black spots before the mind’s eye, it kept cancelling itself out, and he began to wonder if he really knew what he meant to say. In any case it would probably be unwise to say it, for Hilda’s reactions to his suggestions were nearly always contrary, and the expedient of saying the opposite of what he meant (a logical ruse, but one that seldom worked) depended upon knowing what he meant to say. So he embarked on a description of his first day in Venice, hoping that would lead naturally to a discussion of Hilda’s rôle at Dick’s birthday-party.

  But even here he was handicapped, for Hilda did not care for the sight or smell of flesh-pots, and what had the day been but a succession of flesh-pots, some indeed grosser than others, but all tainted with luxury and self-indulgence. He would describe the buildings of Venice, for whose sumptuousness, after all, he was in no way to blame. Moreover, some of them were very shabby and probably unhygienic, housing children with rickets, whose strength had all gone into their lungs. How they shouted!

  So far, Eustace reflected, his letter might have been written by a sanitary inspector or a representative of the N.S.P.C.C. detailed to spy on child welfare in Italy. Surely he could do better than that. If only he could be a little ironical, many fresh topics would be thrown open to him. But Hilda did not like irony; to her it was a form of shirking, and writing to her Eustace was often conscious of being a shirker. He was apt to slip from one sorry pose to another, which was unfair between two people who loved each other, and strange, because he did not feel self-conscious when he was with her. But his pen created a literary personality with whom he felt she was out of sympathy. He would turn to something practical.

  Lady Nelly has taken a great fancy to the watch Miss Fothergill gave me. I ought to give it to her, she has done so much for me, hasn’t she? [he knew that Hilda wouldn’t feel she had]. But I don’t want to part with it just yet, so I’m leaving it to her in my will! Don’t laugh. I had promised it to Minney, but I think she’ll understand if I give her another: there are some quite good jewellers’ shops here. I may have to ask you to send me out some more money, though. [Hilda ought not to mind that: in her different way she was more extravagant than he was.] Of course I haven’t got my will with me, but I think a written statement does as well. You see how practical I am, setting my affairs in order! [The touch of irony would have been better left out, but Eustace did not like to refer to his possible demise except in a playful spirit.]

  [Now for it.]

  Lady Nelly seemed to think that you and Dick have a lot in common, so I’m very glad you decided to go to his birthday-party. Isn’t it sad—I could have been there too, only Lady Nelly made a muddle about dates. [A morbid obligation to candour made Eustace put this in.] She says that Dick isn’t really very fond of parties and so on—so you have that in common too, though perhaps it won’t be much consolation at a party! By the way, there’ll be a good many parties here, I understand, later on when Lady Nelly’s other guests arrive —I shan’t mind them as much as you would! Lady Nelly thought that to be a lot with Dick one would have to be rather elastic. Do you remember those exercises we used to do in the dancing class in the Town Hall at Anchorstone, bending and stretching and so on? You were always much better at them than I was. In fact, you won a prize.

  I wish I were going to be with you—not that I should be any help, or that you need any. I shall often think of you and wonder what you’re doing and where you are. You always had a much better sense of direction than I have! I could never have found you in all those passages—but I expect you know them by heart. Don’t ever feel that people are against you—it’s just that they’re strange and know each other better than they know us. Lady Nelly said that they’d probably been waiting for someone like you—I don’t quite know what she meant.

  Give my love to Dick if you think he would like it, and say I’m looking forward to basking on the Lido. (We talked about that.) I can’t quite see him doing it, or you either for that matter, you both like active things. I know you enjoy taking risks, so I won’t vex you by asking you not to.

  I had a nice letter from Stephen saying how much he had enjoyed dining at Willesden, and a lot of jokes, you know, at my expense, and praise of you. He seems really interested in the clinic, and would like to help you in business matters if you will let him. Isn’t it amusing that Aunt Sarah has taken such a fancy to him?

  Well, dearest Hilda, that is all for the moment. I think I shall be able to do quite a lot of work, so don’t let anyone imagine I’m wasting my time—and of course being in Venice is an education for a literary man! Lady Nelly says she will introduce me to everyone as her literary friend.

  Enjoy yourself at the party. Love and blessings,

  EUSTACE.

  Eustace looked at his watch, in which he now held only a life interest. With the reproachful look of a tried servant promised to someone else, it said, seven o’clock. There was a knock at the door and Giacinto came in.

  “Permesso, signore?” he asked softly, a secret smile under his sleek silky eyebrows.

  “Oh yes,” said Eustace, always ready to let anybody do anything. Giacinto brought out his dress clothes f
rom the serpentine-fronted walnut chest of drawers and laid them on the bed; then put his dressing-gown on the chair and his bedroom slippers and evening shoes beside them. Delightful ritual; Eustace felt that he was being stroked.

  “Desidera altro, signore?” asked Giacinto, his voice honeyed with solicitude. “Do you require anything else?”

  For the second time that day Eustace had been directly asked whether he needed anything to complete his happiness, but for the fiftieth he felt that the cup was already full.

  While he was in his bath he had an afterthought, and coming back he found there was still time to act on it. Clad only in his bath-towel, for the golden heat seemed to eliminate all risk of chill, he wrote a postscript to his letter to Hilda.

  Please wear your red dress one evening—I’m sure it suits you, and those lacy dark-red shoes look so nice with it. [Eustace prided himself on being able to match things: his eye was less certain of a contrast in colours.] I know you like blue best, but the change to red would be a sign of elasticity, wouldn’t it? Though I expect you know better than I do what Dick likes.

  Just as he was finishing the postscript a tremendous clangour of bells began. Eustace looked out and saw that the light was fading from the sky; the uproar was a farewell to the day, a welcome to the night.

  His twilit journey with Lady Nelly through the little canals was resonant with it, a jangle sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, not easy to talk through, impossible to think against.

  Dominated by this background, as exciting to the nerves as it was deadening to the mind, the clatter of footsteps and the ring of voices on the pavement above them sounded subdued. Street lights began to come out, as yet hardly visible in the evening glow. The bells seemed to hold the last energy of daylight; when they stopped the night was already there.

  The Bentwich palace was unimpressive outside: it seemed to belong to the slum from which it rose. In spite of Lady Nelly’s encomiums Eustace felt he was dropping a tier in the architectural hierarchy. They walked up a long rather narrow flight of stairs to find themselves in a dim but splendid vestibule which had, Eustace at once saw, achieved a more personal and considered perfection than the much larger rooms in Lady Nelly’s palace. He stood behind her while she, with her air of finding every-thing arranged to suit her, confronted herself for a moment in a long mirror from which all the brighter tones of quicksilver had long since vanished, and Eustace saw a Lady Nelly painted by an old master, simplified and meant for the centuries, not for the moment.