A cold fit followed these sanguine imaginings, but no diminution in his sense of obligation. Conscience, as usual, was content to say he must, but would not tell him how. Indeed, it perversely enumerated all the obstacles, just as though the writing of the book was to be a punishment for some past sin.
‘You’re in for a horrible time,’ it whispered gloatingly. ‘It’s all your fault: you ought to have said, at once, the moment Lady Nelly said you were writing a book. “No, Lady Nelly. That is a mistake. I am not.”’ ‘I couldn’t have said that,’ protested Eustace’s apologist, always a feeble ally. ‘I couldn’t have snubbed her in front of all those people.’
‘You should have,’ said the Voice implacably. ‘Your silence gave consent to the lie. Lady Nelly belongs to the smart world, where they think nothing of telling lies, and just because you want to seem to belong to it, which you never will, you have adopted some of their worst qualities. You won’t be able to write the book, but I shall give you no rest until you do.’ ‘You’re being very unreasonable,’ said Eustace’s ally in a faint voice. ‘If I can’t write a book, I can’t. Lady Nelly was only joking when she said I was. Her friends know that quite well. They don’t take her seriously—they don’t really think I am writing a book.’ ‘Oh yes, they do,’ said the Voice. ‘First they asked themselves, “Who is this strange young man that Nelly has got hold of? Is it quite correct for him to be staying with her alone in Venice? And if it isn’t, surely she could have found someone more interesting? She must be hard up, poor dear.” But when she told them you were writing a book they said, “Of course, that explains everything. She is simply doing a kindness to a young man of genius, as she has often done be-fore. Now we understand. All we are waiting for now is to see the book.”’
‘Well, let them go on waiting,’ said Eustace’s protagonist defiantly, ‘if it pleases Lady Nelly. I didn’t say I was writing a book. They’ll soon forget about it; and if they don’t they’ll never find out that I’m not.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Conscience. ‘Already more than once you’ve nearly given yourself away. You’ll have to keep a watch on your tongue, and some day you’ll make a slip and everything will come out. Then they’ll say, “We knew it all along. It isn’t the first time Nelly’s taken us in. He’s not a writer at all—he’s just a young man she has picked up somewhere—Heaven knows who he is or what he does or what they do. He’s just a little impostor whom we’ve received and entertained as one of ourselves. These rich Englishwomen come out here and think they can do anything they like because we’re foreigners. Well, we shall know what to do now. We shall cut him, of course, and we shan’t ask her to any more parties. When we see her at Florian’s we shan’t join her table as we used to (those English people think they can get away with murder by paying for a few drinks), we shall go to Lavena’s or the Quadri, and she will be left sitting alone and wondering what’s happened. They’ll soon find out in England, of course, and if there’re any decent people left there they’ll let her know what it feels like to be a pariah. She’ll never be able to come to Venice again, that’s one comfort.”’
Eustace looked round. The sun, which was not supposed to sympathise with the moods of human beings, had in this case broken his rule and withdrawn behind a cloud—a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, the first cloud Eustace seemed to have seen in Venice. The bridge had made no progress during his reverie: the gap was as wide as ever. He imagined someone trying to walk across it in the dark and falling head-long into the water.
Impelled by something stronger than himself, Eustace turned away from the busy thoroughfare of the Zattere. Soon the twin portals ushered him into the Campo San Barnabà, with its noble church, which impressed him more each time he saw it. Then the bridge of the footprints—the Ponte dei Pugni, where the rival factions used to take their stand; to-day no one barred his way. He almost wished they would. He crossed the Campo Santa Margherita and gave a grateful glance at its veteran companile, defaced with cinema hoardings; skirted the vast red church of the Frari, so much too big for the space round it, and pressed on through narrow streets till he came to the Campo San Polo, a magnificent expanse in which his spirit, too, was wont to enlarge itself after the constricting pressure of the alleys. But to-day he hurried through, trying to remember which turning would bring him to the Palazzo Sfortunato.
Sfortunato! The name that once seemed so meaningless now sounded like a knell. There was no gondola at the riva and the door was shut. Giacinto, who opened it, said the Countess had taken her guests to the Piazza. So they had arrived, the heralds of the new régime; the plans which neither began nor ended in Eustace were already afoot. Should he join them at the Piazza for tea? Giacinto had no instructions. Would they be coming back for tea? Giacinto did not know.
Four o’clock on a broiling afternoon in July was not the most hopeful moment to begin a book; but Eustace did not hesitate. Without a book at his back he could no longer face Lady Nelly, her friends, or the world at large. Without a book to cover him he felt spiritually naked, morally indecent, a hypocrite, a liar. He opened an exercise book, turned over the pages on which he had made notes, and on the first plain one wrote:
CHAPTER ONE
Immediately he felt much better; and suddenly he remembered that his conscience was a casuist; for all its ingenuity in tormenting him it often looked no farther than the letter of the law. Chapter One.
Perhaps it would demand no more than that? Eustace waited a moment to take, as it were, his moral temperature. The fever had sensibly abated, but it was still there, demanding sacrifice. Everyone, it was said, could write one book; and that was a novel, presumably about the writer.
‘Eh bien, cher Shairington, comment va votre livre?’ ‘ça marche, Comtesse, ça marche.’ ‘Et vous y parlez de notre chère Venise, n’est-ce pas?’ ‘Ah! non, Comtesse, je n’aurais jamais le courage de traiter un sujet aussi ardu.’ ‘Comment! Vous ne parlez point de Venise?’ (Point de Venise, that was ambiguous: she might be talking about lace.) ‘Non, hèlas!’ ‘Qu’écrivez-vous donc?’ ‘J’écris un roman.’ ‘Un roman à clef, alors? Vous y mettrez tous les gens que vous avez vus chez Lady Nelly? Ce sera très drôle!’ ‘Non, Comtesse, je n’y parle que de moi.’ ‘De vous? Mon Dieu! Ce sera un sujet peu intéressant.’
Eustace blushed with mortification and again tried to break the news, this time in English, which seemed a less wounding language.
‘Well, Eustace, so you didn’t take my advice after all. Everyone says you are writing a book. May I for once be more inquisitive than Lady Nelly, and ask what kind of book?’ ‘Of course you may, Jasper; it’s a novel.’ ‘Oh dear, that’s even worse than I feared. Not a novel about Venice, I hope.’ ‘No, it’s about a country house in England.’ ‘My dear boy, must you? Is Galsworthy your model, or Henry James?’ ‘Well, perhaps Henry James.’ ‘I was afraid you’d say that. And who are you putting into your country house?’ ‘Well, the heir to the estate has just married a very beautiful girl; he had seen her playing with some poor children in the park when he was riding in the Row.’ ‘Was she poor too?’ ‘Well, not as poor as they were, but much poorer than him.’ ‘I’m glad somebody wasn’t poor —I don’t like reading about poor people. Why was she playing with them?’ ‘Because she thought they looked lonely.’ ‘I don’t like the opening very much, but go on.’
‘It was a very beautiful house, but at first she did not take to the idea of living there.’ ‘I imagine his parents were dead.’ ‘Well, not to begin with, but they were both killed in a motor accident.’ ‘That seems rather summary.’ ‘Well, it does happen, doesn’t it?’ ‘Had they been against the marriage?’ ‘Well, in a sense, yes. You see they would have liked him to marry a rich girl.’ ‘I see. What happened when their opposition was removed?’ ‘I haven’t quite got up to that yet, but my idea was a kind of gradual and progressive interchange of their good qualities—I mean, he would become more sympathetic in his outlook, kinder to cripples and so on, and she would lose so
me of the self-sufficiency which had hitherto made strangers, quite unjustly, a little afraid of her. He would become more aware of the moral, and she of the actual world. Of course they would be a very decorative pair, which his parents were not, though they were very good people in their way. But they had always been a little behind the times——’
‘Excuse me, but who had?’ ‘I’m sorry, I meant his parents. They were not exactly proud, you know, but they thought a good deal about their pedigree, which was a very old one, and they weren’t in touch with the latest developments and were rather apart from the people round them.‘ ‘What developments, in Heaven’s name?’ ‘Well, social and political and cultural—they hadn’t contributed much, you understand, to the spiritual life of the district, though of course they had been very generous to it financially.’ ‘Why of course? You seem to use words very loosely. Do you know you’ve begun every sentence with “well” so far? When I was at the Lycée des Beaux-Arts at Lausanne they used to say “What’s the good of a well without any water?”’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Talking makes one careless. My prose style is much more formal.’ ‘I should hope so. But what happened when your hero’s parents succumbed?’ ‘Oh, then he and she got to work and organised the neighbourhood, and built a kind of theatre in the village, which was called after them, of course, and they had plays and concerts and lectures, and that part of the county became quite famous, and was called “Little Athens” by some people.’ ‘Was it, indeed? And in what county have you laid your scene?’ ‘Well, I thought of Norfolk. But when the idea caught on it would spread to other places and perhaps be the beginning of a new kind of civilisation.’
There was no answer; the sense of the presence of Eustace’s interlocutor grew dim, and Eustace thought he must have gone away. But presently his rasping voice was heard again.
‘Is that all? Do you leave them there, Pericles and Aspasia, co-educating in Little Athens?’ ‘Oh, they would have children, of course, who wouldn’t have to go through what they had—I mean, in the way of making mistakes, and taking the wrong path, and having temperaments at odds with what they really wanted. They would find everything ready for them, so to speak, and start being happy straight away.’ ‘In fact, you would be describing the dawn of the Golden Age?’ ‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I should try to get the feeling of light into the book, gradually spreading, you know, until finally it enveloped everything, so that everything shone of itself, in the way it sometimes does here.’ ‘But as you describe the book, there would be no darkness, only this appalling daylight growing stronger till everyone had to wear blue spectacles or go blind?’ ‘Oh, it wouldn’t go quite like that—you see, there would be some shadows at the beginning—obstacles to the marriage, and so on, and then the parents being killed, and perhaps some other setbacks as well—I haven’t quite decided. No, I should try to give the effect of the light growing out of darkness.’ ‘Would there be any limit to the rise in temperature?’ the Voice asked. ‘Should you stop at a hundred, or go on to boiling-point?’
‘Oh,’ said Eustace, ‘you’re ragging me, but I should try to get the effect of light without too much heat.’ ‘It would certainly be the first meteorological novel, but I can’t see,’ said the Voice, ‘that it would be strikingly original in other ways. And I don’t think you’ve got the material for a novel. A short story, perhaps, a long short story, the kind no publisher will take.’ ‘Still, it would be a book, wouldn’t it? I should be able to say I was writing a book?’ ‘Well, I suppose so,’ said the Voice grudgingly. ‘But it seems such a funny thing to want to say.’
The grey-green lacquer of the cabinet above the writing-table was cool to look at, but Eustace felt his damp hand sticking to the blotting-paper. Never mind, he had written three pages and the book was in being. But how hot he was. He found himself longing for the cool shadows of Hyde Park, and the elms and plane trees of Rotten Row under which Lord Anchorstone was exercising his horse. That name had got to be changed, but it would serve for the moment. His lordship had just espied the beautiful girl surrounded by a group of grubby, pale-faced children, and was wondering what impression it would make on the other riders, many of them his friends, if he suddenly pulled up, leapt off his horse, led it towards the child-girt maiden, and got into conversation with her.
‘Excuse me, but don’t you find those children a frightful nuisance? Wouldn’t you like me to send them away?’ ‘Oh no, thank you; you see, they have no one else to look after them.’ ‘Well, suppose you made them run a race to the Serpentine and back, wouldn’t that be a good plan?’ ‘But what should I do meanwhile?’ ‘Here’s a seat, you can talk to me.’ ‘But your horse?’ (Eustace’s imagination was haunted by this quadruped, as difficult to dispose of as a body in a murder story.) ‘Oh, my groom will take it. I’ve ridden enough for this afternoon.’ ‘You’re very kind, Mr.——?’ ‘Anchorstone.’
She does not find out about his title till later, but the discovery makes his suit no easier, for she is a proud girl and inclined to be suspicious of a noble name. Henry James wouldn’t have begun a novel in that way, but Meredith might have. Jasper Bentwich hadn’t liked the opening, but he didn’t feel drawn to honeymoon couples. Eustace was reminded of Lord and Lady Morecambe. It was nearly half-past five and he must take the plunge. Perhaps they would still be having tea in the Piazza.
But voices reached him from the other end of the great sala, and as he rounded the column two figures rose to their feet. One was a tall, fair man wearing a navy-blue coat over white flannels, the other a thin girl with high, wide cheekbones, and very large, rather shallow-set eyes under hair that was almost black.
“Here’s our author,” said Lady Nelly from her chair. “Mr. Eustace Cherrington—Lady Morecambe, Lord Morecambe. All beginnings have to be formal, don’t they?”
The couple smiled amiably at Eustace. “We looked for you,” Lady Nelly said, “and I nearly sent a deputation to your room, but you were nowhere to be found. Silvestro disclosed that you had been seen walking rapidly in the direction of the Zattere. He was sure you had an appointment to keep.”
“I only went to see the bridge being built,” said Eustace.
“We must take his word for it, mustn’t we? And may we know what you did after that?”
Blushing with triumph Eustace replied, “I came back and wrote my book.”
5. THE FEAST OF THE REDEEMER
COMING down at eight o’clock the next evening, Eustace found Lord Morecambe alone. Sitting in a high-backed chair upholstered in worn crimson velvet, he was fanning himself with a white silk handkerchief.
“God, I am tired,” he said, “after all that sight-seeing. And now we’ve got to be out all night. If we asked for a whisky and soda do you think they’d know what it was?”
“We could try,” said Eustace cautiously.
“Ring the bell, then, there’s a good fellow; I don’t know where it is.”
Not unwilling to air his knowledge of the domestic arrangements of the palace, Eustace rang.
“Now you’ll have to speak to him,” said Lord Morecambe. “You’re the Italian scholar.”
“They don’t always come,” said Eustace, but in this case they did and the drink was not slow in following.
“That makes the place look more like home, doesn’t it?” said Lord Morecambe, contemplating the tray and its accompaniments with an approving eye. He was quite right, Eustace thought; the square-cut, glittering decanter shed its yellow beams far and wide like an English deed in an Italian world.
“No one would tell me what the word means,” said Lord Morecambe, raising his glass, “but here’s to the Redentore.” Noticing Eustace’s hesitation, he added, “Don’t say it if you’d rather not.”
Strongly feeling that he would rather not, and hoping Lord Morecambe’s ignorance was genuine, Eustace drank in silence.
“You know those candles we got in the church this morning,” Lord Morecambe went on, “they’re supposed to do all kinds of things for
us, but I put more faith in this, don’t you?”
“Well——” Eustace began, uneasily.
“Don’t say so if you don’t think so. Some believe in one kind of spirit, some in another. This won’t make a very good foundation for champagne, by the way. That is, if the old girl’s going to give us champagne.”
Eustace flinched at this reference to Lady Nelly.
“She said she was.”
Lord Morecambe refilled his glass.
“Good—we couldn’t have got through the evening without it. And talking of champagne reminds me that I saw Dick Staveley the other night. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? I was dining at the Ritz, a thing I seldom do, and he was there with a damned pretty girl. The champagne made me think of it.”
Eustace took a gulp of whisky and coughed. “Do you know who she was?”
“No, and that surprised me, for I know most of his girl-friends.”
“Did she look as if she was enjoying herself?” Eustace asked.
“She looked—well, excited,” Lord Morecambe said. “So did Dick, and I don’t wonder,” he chuckled.
Eustace drew his breath with difficulty. “Was she dark or fair?”
“More dark than fair, and she had the most marvellous skin and eyes like stars.”
“Was she drinking champagne too?” Eustace asked.
“She kept putting her hand over the glass, but I dare say some trickled in between her fingers.”
Eustace had never been to the Ritz, but he tried to envisage the scene.
“I was with some people,” Lord Morecambe said, “but I couldn’t help seeing, because there was a looking-glass straight in front of me and they were reflected in it.”
“Was he being nice to her?” Eustace said.