“Hilda is much more go-ahead than I am,” said Eustace. “I expect she’s really one of the reasons why I’m not.”
He was astonished to hear himself say this, and had there been such an invention as a word-eraser he would have at once applied it.
“Tell me a little about yourself,” said Lady Nelly. “We’ve talked far too much about me. I’m such a threadbare subject.” She smiled at him. “So far, all I’ve heard about you is praise. Now I want to hear the other side.”
Eustace took another sip. The room was perfectly quiet save for an occasional encouraging crackle from the quite unnecessary log fire, which, despite the rivalry of the lamps around them, flickered on the oyster-coloured satin of Lady Nelly’s dress and gleamed in miniature flames on the pearls in her necklace. The invitation to unburden himself was like a gift handed to him on a silver tray; to reject it would be churlish, and an unexampled snub, for no one, he felt sure, had ever refused Lady Nelly anything.
The sentences did not come easily at first. Eustace had no idea in what guise he wanted to appear to his listener—he tried to confine himself to the facts, but the facts must seem such small beer to her, with her totally different range of experience. He tried to make them sound more impressive than they were; then he was ashamed of himself, and adopted a lighter tone, with an ironical edge to it, as if he well knew that these things were mere nothings, the faintest pattering of rain-drops on the spacious roofs of Whaplode. But he thought she did not like this; once or twice she gently queried his estimate of events and pushed him back into the reality of his own feeling. Eustace shrank from being taken seriously; he liked to think he did not matter, for then the disappointment he was fated to cause would not matter either. His ingrained moral outlook demanded that there should be a villain of the piece, and the bent of his mind made him accept that rôle; but it was distasteful to him, sitting there talking, not to a confessor, not to Stephen, but to an unknown grande dame whom he should be entertaining with light, after-dinner conversation, while in the next room his host and hostess were playing bridge, and in the billiard-room, down some passages, beyond the housekeeper’s room, where people were taken when they were hurt, Hilda and Dick Staveley and some others were laughing and perhaps screaming over a rough, dangerous game, which he hadn’t wanted to play. It didn’t seem suitable, the tremolo, the throb in the voice, the whine (could it be?), the tendency to unbosom himself, the undeclared request for absolution from this august yet melting presence beside him on the sofa.
The feeling that while he appeared to shoulder the blame himself he was inferentially casting it upon others was also distasteful to him. To undress in public was bad enough; to strip beyond the verge of decency people who were not there to answer for themselves was worse. Yet Lady Nelly’s face, which had as many expressions as the moon in a cloud-swept sky, as many glimmerings as her own pearls in the fire-light, did not seem to be accusing him of spiritual indelicacy; and surely, he thought, she should be a judge of that, she should know, better almost than anyone, when taste was being offended against. But of course if she did know she would never show it; he almost wished she would get up, drawing the oyster-coloured satin round her, and say, ‘Enough of this washing of your soiled, discoloured cotton, Mr. Cherrington. It displeases me; it disgusts me; I don’t want to hear any more. I regret having suggested that I should call you by your Christian name. Please consider the suggestion withdrawn. I am going to say good-night to my host and hostess. You can carry your confessions into the billiard-room, or anywhere else you like. Good-bye.’ But nothing of the sort happened; nor could Eustace afterwards remember by what gradations, and in response to what promptings, he was released from the downward drag of diffidence and the heady preenings of self-conceit, and stabilised more or less at his own level.
“Well,” said Lady Nelly at length, “you have Boswellised yourself. I believe that for all your air of shyness you really love hearing the sound of your own voice. You must never pretend to be tongue-tied again.”
Her sunlit irony was more precious than praise, and Eustace, who in the reaction from his recital had begun to be flooded with self-distrust, took heart.
“Now I think we ought to do something practical,” Lady Nelly went on. “Perhaps you don’t think me practical, but I am.” Her smile began, and died away almost at birth; flower-like, it could show every stage of fulfilment between the bud and the full-blown. “You said you didn’t find it very easy to work when you were at home?”
Eustace felt that he had said too much.
“I didn’t quite mean that.”
Lady Nelly brushed this aside.
“I was reading between the lines. Now what I’m going to propose is this. I’ve taken a house in Venice for July and August and September: it’s very old, fifteenth century, so you’d feel quite at home. Why don’t you take your courage in both hands and join me? It’s just the place for a literary man—Byron, Ruskin, Browning, D’Annunzio, they all loved Venice. You could have a room to yourself and work till your eyes dropped out. No noise of traffic—just the soothing plash of the gondoliers’ oars. I should keep everyone from you and only allow myself to see you at the rarest intervals. Some Marco or Tito would be posted at your door with his finger on his lips. When inspiration flagged you could come out and stroll on the Piazza or bathe on the Lido. I shall have a capanna there and a motor-boat to take us to and fro. Motor-boats hardly existed in my Venice, and I don’t like the idea of them, but the Venetians are mad about them, I hear, and we must be in the fashion. Now don’t say ‘no’ at once, as I see you were going to, but just think it over quietly, and I shall have a little talk with your sister. I’m sure she’ll agree with me that it’s the right thing for you—and even if it isn’t, it’s the right thing for me,” she finished up.
“Oh!” breathed Eustace, and was silent. The room grew indistinct, and suddenly his mind was spanned by the arch of the Bridge of Sighs, with a palace and a prison on each hand—one of Byron’s lapses from flawless syntax. “But would you want me there all that time?” he said, his mind jumping, as was its habit, to the temporal factor. Then he remembered that Lady Nelly had said nothing about how long she wanted him to stay, and blushed. But she made things easy for him: it seemed to be her mission to make things easy for people.
“Don’t imagine I shall try to keep you against your will,” she said, with so completely the air of answering his question that for a moment he thought she had. “The door will always be open for the prisoner to walk out, or dive out”—and with a comical little gesture she sketched the beginning of a header. “But I hope you’ll give the treatment a good trial first.” For a moment she fell into abstraction, then her smile recalled her to herself. “I can see I have made you miserable,” she said. “You look just as if you were being led to execution. Let’s go and see what the fives-players are doing.”
She piloted him down a long passage. At the bends stood wooden halberdiers on platforms, wild-eyed and moustachioed, with lanterns in their disengaged hands. The light fell on more prosaic objects—a stuffed pike in a glass case, a weather gauge, a miniature chest of drawers, labelled, perhaps for birds’ eggs. Presently they heard the sharp thud of a ball rebounding from a padded, springy surface; the scurry of footsteps, and then a loud crash and a burst of laughter.
“This is the moment for us to go in,” said Lady Nelly.
Eustace never forgot the scene. Dick was groping under a sofa for the ball; he straightened himself up as they came in. Both he and Antony had taken their coats off and pulled up their shirt-sleeves as far as they would go, which in Dick’s case was not very far above his thick strong wrists. Anne looked quite another person, but the greatest change was in Hilda. Disarranged though it was, with much of the stiffness gone out of it, and crumpled here and there, her dress now seemed to belong to her. The essential Hilda was visible through all her alien finery and raised to a higher power than usual; she electrified the room. All the players turned bright excited e
yes on Lady Nelly and Eustace, as though they were visitors from another world who could not immediately be got into focus.
“Brilliantly timed, Aunt Nelly,” said Dick. “A moment sooner and you would have stopped a fast one. It got the door just where your head was. Why didn’t you send in Eustace as a shield?”
As he spoke Lady Nelly’s curious power of subduing an atmosphere to the pressure, which meant the relaxation, of her own began to penetrate the room. At its touch the players, feeling the hot fit of the game die down in them, also felt awkward and uncouth, as though they had been caught turning cart-wheels in the ante-chamber of Cleopatra. Strenuousness seemed improper in her presence. Slightly ashamed, they turned away and tried to regain their poise; Hilda gave herself a pat or two; Dick, following Antony’s lead, pulled down his shirt-cuffs and looked round for his coat.
“Oh, what are you doing?” cried Lady Nelly, with an older person’s dread of being thought a kill-joy. “Eustace and I came to see the game. Please strip and start again. I can’t bear to see gladiators in evening dress.”
“It was the end of the game,” said Dick; “but to please Aunt Nelly we’ll stage an exhibition match. Seconds out of the ring.”
The four players took up their positions at the table, while Lady Nelly and Eustace watched from a raised sofa at the side.
Without appreciating the fine points of the game, Eustace was at once conscious of the different methods of the players. Anne was sure and steady: she got back everything she could, but did not tire herself by trying for impossibilities. Antony did not hit hard, but his reactions were so quick that nothing took him by surprise, and when he got his opponent out of position, his soft shot that hugged the cushion was deadly. Dick concentrated, it seemed to Eustace, on doing the thing that would most surprise his opponents, regardless of its being the best thing to do in the circumstances. His activity was amazing, his stride put a girdle round the table, and he hit so hard that the ball sometimes leapt the cushion and struck the panelling with a tremendous crash, at which Hilda’s eyes gleamed. She made wild sweeps at the ball, sometimes missing it altogether. She played clumsily, but as if her life depended on it; she seemed unable to shorten her stride or get herself where she wanted; but she had a natural eye, and scored with several long shots into the pocket.
Eustace applauded furtively, but he couldn’t catch her attention; between the rallies she didn’t talk as the others did, but kept her eyes fixed on the table and her hands ready for the next shot. They were red and bruised, but she didn’t seem to notice and never flinched from a hard one. She had taken off her wrist-watch, Eustace was relieved to see.
The game went fairly evenly, with Anne and Antony always a little ahead. Then Dick and Hilda, with a tremendous output of energy, managed to draw level. To Dick, Eustace realised, all this display of animal spirits was part of the game, just as his exhortations to Hilda were, and his constant barracking of his opponents. He hated to let things take their course; he must turn the most humdrum happening into an occasion, with plumes and banners and sideshows. Beneath it all he remained cool and detached; but Hilda drank the excitement like wine, it possessed her completely.
“Game-ball all,” was called, and the players went into conclave.
“Shall we play it out?” said Dick, “or shall we have sudden death? I vote for sudden death.”
They agreed to sudden death, and when they went to their posts they all, Anne and Antony included, looked as if they were facing a crisis in their lives.
“Don’t they look funny?” murmured Lady Nelly, but Eustace could not bring himself to say yes.
The rally was a long one and furiously contested. At last a really noble recovery from Hilda struggled to the end of the table; Antony was there as though by magic and touched the ball against the cushion; Dick came down like a whirlwind to reach it before it stopped. On the way he charged the table, which shuddered through all its length. The impact undoubtedly prolonged for a split second the ball’s run. Dick was on to it in a trice, and the crash as the ball struck the panelling drowned the room in noise; but it had stopped, Eustace was certain; it was dead before he reached it.
“How was that?” he demanded of the company.
“Antony and I think it was dead, Dick,” said Anne firmly.
“You couldn’t possibly see, Anne, from where you were. What do you think, Antony?”
“Well,” said Antony, “I’m not unbiased, of course, but I thought it was dead.”
“Let’s appeal to the gallery.” Dick’s voice rang with confidence. “What’s your verdict, Aunt Nelly?”
“I haven’t one,” said Lady Nelly. “I’ve been too busy admiring you all.”
“Eustace?” said Dick, on a rising note of hopefulness, and as though the decision had already been given in his favour.
Eustace drew a long breath. How cruel to leave the casting-vote to him. He felt as though it would alter the whole course of history.
“Well,” he said, “it was a very, very near thing, but I thought you were just too late.”
Dick’s brow darkened.
“Lookers-on see most of the game, eh?”
“I thought so, too,” said Hilda suddenly.
Dick’s face cleared as though by magic, and he was all bonhomie again.
“That settles it,” he said. “You’re all against me, even my partner, whom I trusted. Never mind, we had a good game, didn’t we? Next time you’ll have to take a hand, Eustace—won’t he, Hilda?”
“I’m afraid it’s too energetic for him,” said Hilda. Nervous, she spoke more emphatically than she meant to. “You see, he has a weak heart.”
Eustace was relieved that nobody looked at him.
“Well, so long as it’s in the right place,” said Dick carelessly, dismissing Eustace’s heart. But Lady Nelly turned to him and said:
“Venice is just the place for a tired heart. No hills, no billiard-fives, no excitements. Just a few bridges to cross between getting up and going to bed. To-morrow I shall talk it over with your sister,” she said, rising from the sofa. “Thank you all for the thrilling entertainment. But look at your poor hands!”
“Shall we have a hand inspection?” said Dick, spreading his hands out on the billiard-table. “Put yours there, next mine, Hilda, and then yours, Anne, and yours, Antony.”
Obediently they lined up and pressed their hands on the table as if for ‘Up Jenkins,’ while Lady Nelly leaned over their bent heads to make her report.
“Well, Antony’s hands are black and yellow,” she said judicially; “Anne’s are black and blue, Miss Cherrington’s hands I won’t attempt to describe—my dear, why did you use such beautiful hands for such a purpose?—but there’s nothing at all wrong with Dick’s—they must be made of leather.”
“Do you think Hilda’s require immediate attention?” Dick asked as he put on his coat. “She’d better fall out and report sick in the housekeeper’s room. I know where the surgical stores are kept.”
“I shouldn’t let him try, if I were you, Miss Cherrington,” said Anne, “he’s much better at killing than curing.”
“Oh, really, Anne, and I’ve been a brother to you all these years,” said Dick. “I should ask you to help if I didn’t know you fainted at the sight of sticking-plaster.”
Standing in the shadow of the doorway, Eustace managed to possess himself of one of Hilda’s hands. To his surprise, she did not snatch it away; she let it lie in his. But before he had time to look, another hand closed over Hilda’s, and Dick said, in a serious voice, “Bad show, I’m afraid. Better let me see what I can do—don’t you think so, Eustace?”
Lady Nelly answered for him.
“You’ve done quite enough already. If you come to my room, Miss Cherrington, I’ll give you something of mine. It’s guaranteed to heal anything, from a broken heart downwards.”
“Or upwards,” said Dick, with a gusty sigh. “Hands are more in my department than hearts, Aunt Nelly.”
“The pr
oper place for the hand is on the heart,” said Aunt Nelly lightly. “Come along, Miss Cherrington.”
They returned to the drawing-room, but it was empty, and the bridge players had gone to bed. There was a chorus of good-nights at the foot of the staircase.
“I’ll turn the lights out, Antony,” Eustace heard Dick say, as the others were drifting up. “And here’s what I owe you on the evening.” He took something from his pocket.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter, Dick,” said Antony.
“Yes, it does,” said Dick, “I should have claimed it from you. Good-night, Antony; good-night, Eustace.”
Antony and Eustace walked across the courtyard. The moon shone through a slight haze, the night was deliciously warm. The sense of privacy and relaxation that Eustace always enjoyed with Antony came like balm after the varied and tumultuous impressions of the evening.
“Did you and Dick have a bet on the game?” Eustace asked.
“Yes, he always likes a stake,” said Antony. “He would have had something on if we’d been playing Postman’s Knock.”
As they reached their doorway, which reminded Eustace of the entrance to a college staircase, Antony said, “I think I maligned Dick to you. He isn’t so bad. He was really rather fun this evening.”
“I was surprised that he called Hilda by her Christian name,” said Eustace, turning on the light to go into his room. “When did he begin to do that?”
“He said he couldn’t teach her the game unless he did,” said Antony. “He made quite a thing about it. You don’t mind, do you?”
Eustace thought a moment.
“No, not at all. I felt a little funny when he said it. I don’t know why.”
“He’s not a bad sort of chap,” said Antony. “Of course, he doesn’t want one to know what he’s really like. All that patter is a kind of smoke-screen. I think he was really sorry about your sister’s hands.”
“He seemed to be,” said Eustace. “I didn’t see them properly.”
He remembered that his good-night to Hilda had been a mere conventional salute. All the evening he had been trying to get a special message through to her, and always, it seemed, she had been looking the other way.