Eustace saw the envelope at once. It lay where his letters were always laid, beside the fragment from Anchorstone on his writing-table. (Notwithstanding Lady Nelly’s threat, he still inhabited his old room.) He stared at the untidy, masculine handwriting. Hilda had written, as she sometimes did, in indelible pencil, a habit he deplored, it was so impersonal, suggesting a communication from a shop or from the Income Tax. And, as often happened, the envelope seemed to have got wet, for the writing had run and left ugly violet smears. It was not a plain envelope, but one of the kind sold by the post office, already stamped; and she had forgotten to add the extra penny for foreign postage, so there was, alongside the postmark, a dirty, hostile-looking imprint announcing a fine of two lire. The whole thing bespoke haste, misplaced economy, and a total disregard of appearances.
Eustace picked up the envelope and turned it over. It had collected some dirt on the other side too. His heart began to thump violently. If he read the letter now, he might not be able to eat his dinner. But neither would he if he did not read it; the mere thought of food told him his appetite was quite gone. He swayed a little and sat down, the envelope still in his hand. He wondered if the purport of the letter would seep by psychic channels through his fingers; but to his mind, usually so fertile in images, no image came. Yet why should he feel nervous? True, Hilda never wrote, but she would write to acknowledge his gift to the clinic. But a thought struck him and he withdrew his thumb from the half-torn flap. The letter could not be an answer, for he had only sent the telegram this morning. Besides, the gift was to be anonymous. He could think of no explanation of this letter from Hilda, who never wrote letters, and his heart thudded its dismay.
Eustace took the flask from his pocket and stood it upright; the golden brandy winked at him through its peep-hole in the snakeskin leather. He loosened the stopper, fetched a glass from his bedside, and put his thumb back in the envelope. The letter was a mere slip in the middle, written on thin, common paper, carelessly folded; the ink showed through. He smoothed out the creases. There was no date or address.
Dearest E. [he read],
I’ve had a bad time, but it’s over, thank God. I didn’t write, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t have known what to say. You may have heard something. But it’s all right now, everything’s all right. I know you wanted me to be happy. I haven’t been, but I shall be now. I found this post office still open, so I thought I’d write and tell you, to save you worrying. They must think I look pretty funny in this get-up. It’s too late to go back to the clinic, and Aunt Sarah wouldn’t understand if I turned up there, but I shall find some place. I don’t mind where I am now. It’s a bit awkward about the clinic, but I shall patch that up. I’ll explain when you get back—talking’s so much easier.
Enjoy yourself with Lady Nelly.
Love and blessings,
H.
Eustace’s first reaction was one of pure and uncontrollable relief. He jumped up from his chair and paced the room, feeling lighter with every step; all his nervous processes began to minister once more to the comfort of his mind and body. Then he re-read the letter, whose grimy state seemed to make it doubly precious. He felt as if the end and epitome of his life’s effort lay in that single sheet. Gradually his mind detached itself from its ecstasy and made some objective comments. Yes, Hilda had changed. The endearments, the blessings, the adjuration to enjoy himself, the contraction of her name to its initial, they were all new, in letter and in spirit. Somewhere she had learned the meaning of them, and the use. E to H, he had written on the sand; it was H to E now.
12. THE LARVA
THE DAYS that followed were languid with sirocco. The weather broke, as it often did in September; masses of cloud piled themselves up and hung, huge fists and fingers of vapour, motionless over the city, bringing out all that was grey and sullen in the roofs and walls of Venice. Looking down from his window, Eustace could see puddles and the shiny black of umbrellas, oilskins, sou’westers, and goloshes. The wind blew in sudden gusts, and the creepers, the virginia and wistaria which swarmed up the sides of the houses, writhed and shivered convulsively. Even in the Grand Canal untamed billows slapped against the gondola and sometimes splashed into it; visits on foot to the Piazza were diversified with sudden dashes to take cover.
Eustace had the almost unique experience of seeing Lady Nelly hurry and even get sprinkled with a few drops of rain. Then without warning the sun would come out, and Venice would once again put on its summer look, enhanced by a million sparkles from every dripping surface. And all the time the heat reigned unabated; indeed, increased towards evening when the sirocco, just when it was needed most, would die away, leaving behind all the lassitude of its presence without the stimulus of its movement. Indoors, the walls sweated and ran with salty damp, and the mosquitoes redoubled their attack; take what precautions he might, Eustace passed every night in close confinement with at least one watchful and agile foe.
He lay awake, but in an exultation of wakefulness, his thoughts radiant with the rainbow promise of glorious things to come. His imagination did not have to specify them: their shapes nestled against him, all curves and comfort. If he thought of Hilda’s bad time, he thought of it as a conflict between her loyalty to the clinic and someone from outside—well, Dick. Dick was not used to being said no to. He might easily cut up rough.
‘I’m sorry, Dick, but I’m afraid I can’t dine with you this evening. I’ve got to stay in and work. They don’t like me to go out so often as it is. You see, the clinic can’t get on without me.’ ‘Oh, damn the clinic. It’s always the clinic. I tell you, I’m getting jealous. I believe you’ve got someone down there who interests you.’ ‘Oh, nonsense, Dick, of course I haven’t. Who could there possibly be?’ ‘What about the fellow I met with you last week—can’t remember his name—a lawyer chap?’
In spite of her agitation Hilda smiled. ‘Oh, Stephen Hilliard, he’s our family solicitor. Hilliard, Lampeter and Hilliard. Aren’t they your solicitors too?’ ‘Well, come to think of it, they are. But what’s he doing down there?’ ‘He comes to see me on business. ‘Business, what sort of business?’ ‘Oh, business to do with the clinic.’ ‘It didn’t look like that sort of business to me.’ ‘Oh, Dick, please don’t be jealous. He’s a most serious young man; he thinks of nothing but stocks and shares and cutting down expenses. He’s a friend of Eustace’s. I’m just his client.’ ‘A friend of Eustace’s, is he? What a lot of friends your brother seems to have. He doesn’t leave much to chance, does he? I suppose he’d like you to marry this Stephen Hilliard?’ ‘Oh, Dick, how can you say such a thing? Of course Eustace is very popular, he has crowds of friends, more than I like, really. He’s a friend of yours, too. I should never have met you but for him.’ ‘Yes, I owe him that. But he’s a cunning little devil, though you wouldn’t think so to look at him.’ ‘Well, aren’t you glad he is?’ ‘Perhaps I am, but so no doubt is this fellow Hilliard.’ ‘Oh, please, Dick, don’t say any more about him. He simply takes an interest in me for Eustace’s sake. Now do believe me.’
‘Very well, but are you coming out with me this evening? I’ve ordered a table at the Ritz.’ ‘Oh, Dick, I’ve told you I can’t. I went out with you three times last week. They don’t like it. They complained about it at the last Board Meeting.’ ‘Well, I can only say the time’s getting near when you’ll have to choose between me and the clinic.’ ‘Oh, don’t say that, Dick. You know I can’t decide, yet.’ ‘Look here, Hilda, I’m tired of being kept on tenterhooks. You don’t care how miserable you make me. Do you want me to go down on my knees? You’ll have to say yes or no.’ ‘I can’t, Dick, not without asking Eustace. He’s the head of the family, you know.’ ‘Eustace!—I know what his answer would be. Now for the last time—are you coming out with me to-night, or aren’t you?’ ‘Oh, Dick, how can you be so cruel?’
Hilda’s bad time did not end there. Eustace delighted in making the bad worse. It went on at the Ritz in scenes that grew stormier with each reconstruction. Bo
ttles of champagne trickled into the glass through Hilda’s unwilling fingers; oceans of tears were shed; recriminations, loaded with love, flew across the table beside the mirror. The happiness of two lifetimes hung in the balance. Then, when all hope seemed dead, came the final plea: the appeal to their dear love for Eustace, the yielding, and the reconciliation. When that was reached, Eustace fell asleep.
The attainment of happiness now seemed to Eustace not only possible but certain; and the happiness he imagined for Dick and Hilda he now possessed himself. Indeed, by no other means could he have possessed it, for it only existed for him mirrored in another. But the tinder would light at someone else’s taper, and he had only to look at Hilda’s letter, which he now carried with him to the exclusion of all others, to feel the glow of bliss stealing over him. Though this high-pressure system from England had no counterpart in the Venetian weather, it changed the climate of his mind, and all at once the happy ending to his story, which had been halted for weeks outside the reach of his sorrowful imaginings, like a train with the signals against it, now steamed slowly towards him, pride in its port and triumph on its brow.
Before, every paragraph that set out confidently in the major ended crestfallen in the minor key. All the projects started by the lord and lady of the manor for the greater glory of Little Athens had come to naught; envious tongues traduced their authors; inertia, stupidity, and ridicule met them everywhere. Their failure made them suspicious of each other, and the flame of love which had enveloped them dwindled to a flicker that must be watched and guarded from extinction. Now the sunshine of happy endeavour had returned, and the manorial family, growing ever larger but never oppressed by the burdensome domesticity that haunted Tolstoy’s mind, played under the grey-green foliage of the park, or danced along the village street, while children ran out from every door to swell their numbers; and sometimes, in a tubby old boat with the paint flaking off and squashy sun-blisters on its sides, they would float down the little river, over the bright pebbles, past the trim gardens whose lawns bordered the stream; and the same children with their mothers in afternoon dresses and their fathers in shirt-sleeves smoking pipes, would hurry down to greet them, holding on to the boat, and perhaps throwing a rose or two into it, and so on till the gardens ended, and the cleft between the sand-dunes appeared, which led to the sea, and it was time to come back.
The moon was rising, the children had gone to bed, and there was to be an entertainment in the garden of the Hall: a play, perhaps a Greek play. By now the villagers were quite up to that. One by one they filed through the gap in the hedge that screened the flower-garden, pacing slowly across the Chinese Chippendale bridge; the footlights glowing softly on their downcast faces, on their draperies that clung to them in woe, to enact the tragedy of Antigone, most pitiable of heroines, while the audience, rich and poor alike in evening dress, looked on, some sitting on chairs and benches, some perched on the brown-pink stones of the ruined chapel.... But no, it must be something gay to match his mood, not Antigone, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, perhaps, with the Lady of the Manor as Titania. ‘I’m much too old for the part,’ she had protested gaily. ‘But as you all say I must, and it needs no acting, I will. And Harry has promised to be Bottom, so you’ll all have a good laugh.’
So the evening proceeds towards the inevitable refreshments, which even now those of the servants who are not watching the play are laying out on the long table in the Great Hall.
Under these cloudy symbols, Eustace’s mind, like a mobile lightning conductor, hurried to and fro trying to tap the energy overhead.
There was a knock at the door, and he looked up from his task. “Avanti!” After some fumbling at the handle the door opened, and Simmonds, Lady Nelly’s English maid, came in, carrying a long cardboard box. She was like the negation of a personality, her presence was so self-effacing. “Her ladyship asked me to give you this,” she said, handing him the box with an air so lugubrious she might have been offering him a coffin; “and she told me to say to be sure to be at the Piazza at half-past four.”
“She told me five o’clock,” exclaimed Eustace. “Perhaps she’s changed her mind.”
“That’s what her ladyship said,” replied the maid, with absolute finality in her tone.
“Please tell her I’ll be there,” said Eustace, and the woman melted from the room, hardly seeming to displace the air.
The box had Fortuny’s name on it. Eustace untied the string and lifted the lid. What he saw beneath the uncrumpled tissue-paper startled him. Twisted into a tight coil, as if wrung out to dry, lay the blue and silver of Hilda’s dress. The heavy pleats, close-ribbed like a ploughed field, looked darker than he remembered. He knew he could never fold the dress again, so he contented himself with letting his fingers run along those grooves and ridges, so tightly drawn that he could feel their pressure. Yet what power for expansion did those pleats imply, what undreamed-of potentialities of movement for Hilda, the new Hilda! What an escape from the prison of her clinical clothes, the blue-black uniform that constricted all her movements! She could dance, she could fly, in this.
So encouraged, so fortified, it did not take Eustace long to ring down the curtain on the last act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Eating was troublesome to describe; its pleasures, when dilated on, were always slightly repellent. Eustace left the actors and their audience streaming across the lawn towards the gilded gateway into the courtyard. The door of the Great Hall stood open; artificial light poured through, contending with the moonlight; within was the gleam of silver dishes, the dull, rich glow of gold foil on the champagne bottles. Let the feasting, which all were to enjoy, be left to our imaginations.
Sweating from heat, exertion, excitement, triumph, Eustace laid down his pen. How unlikely it had seemed, a few days ago, that the story would ever be finished! Of course it was terribly unsophisticated; he would have to go through it with a disenchanted eye and pepper it with ironical comments. But meanwhile he could relax and try to recapture the sensations of Gibbon, freed from his eighteen years’ task. Yet could he? It was already four o’clock by the most optimistic of his watches. Lady Nelly would never be there: he might find a moment to rush into the jeweller’s which was just under the clock, and get his own watch and Minney’s made more time-serving. In this mood he could face the most sour-faced shopkeeper.
With a last admiring look at the completed manuscript, he crammed the watches into his pocket, hastily snatched up two handkerchiefs, made a blind semicircle round the room in desperate search for objects indispensable to the Piazza that he might have forgotten, and ran downstairs. Crossing the salone he saw several men in baize aprons walking about, eyeing the heavy furniture and giving one of the larger pieces a trial lift. Only then did he remember that the regatta, and the ball, were to take place to-morrow.
He was mistaken in thinking Lady Nelly would not be at the trysting-place. Hastening diagonally into the Piazza, reckless of the proverbial ill-luck attending such a manœuvre, he saw her sitting, pale and ample, in her accustomed place at Florian’s. Whether she saw him he could not tell, for she never recognised any-one at a distance. Half a dozen tables had been added to hers; she sat alone in the middle of a large clearing, of which she seemed quite unconscious, bordered at a respectful distance by the thick jungle of tea-drinkers whom this brilliant interval in the bad weather had tempted into the open. The sun was slanting now; it threw a long shadow in front of Eustace—but how hot it shone. He stopped for a moment to dry his face and make those little improvements in the set of his clothes without which neither he nor any other man cared to venture into the presence of Lady Nelly. Her waiter saw him, bowed, smiled, and led him up to her. She looked at him thoughtfully before she smiled. The waiter held a chair for him.
“So you got my message,” she said. She spoke slowly and as if unwilling to part with the words. “I wanted to see you before the crowd comes. I haven’t seen much of you these last few days.”
“It was the book, you know,” sa
id Eustace guiltily. “But I finished it this afternoon.”
“You finished it?” Wonder dawned in Lady Nelly’s misty amethyst eyes and lifted her voice above its usual pitch. “But how marvellous. I’ve never known anyone finish a book before. Will you dedicate it to me?”
“Of course,” said Eustace fervently. “But it will never be published, you know.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, it’s much too romantic, for one thing.”
“I shan’t believe it exists unless you let me read it. Will you?”
“Yes—er—I——”
“You’re blushing,” said Lady Nelly. “What have you been up to? I don’t trust you authors. Have you put me into it?”
“Oh no,” said Eustace.
“But it is about real people? You may as well tell me, for I shall be sure to find out.”