‘What do you advise her to do? Of course Italians do emigrate, and it would be nicer for him to go as a private servant than settle in the Italian quarter at New York—a most horrible place. I was taken to see it once, with detectives all round me, pointing revolvers.

‘I do hope you are better.

       Affectionately,

              Lavinia Johnstone.’

Lavinia paused, thought for some time, then added a postscript.

‘Rome will soon be too hot to hold you; couldn’t you flee from the wrath to come and relieve my loneliness in Venice? I am staying till Friday, it is tedious with Mother in bed and no companion but Simonetta and her obsession.’

All the same, Lavinia thought, as she walked upstairs to her mother’s room, I hope she won’t come.

15

The mid-day gun boomed, but Lavinia did not hear it.

‘You mean he won’t come after all,’ she said.

The melancholy-looking concierge shook his head.

‘He came this morning at seven o’clock and said that he was very sorry, but he could not serve you. He could not hire himself to two families in turn; it would be unfair to the other gondoliers. They must have a chance.’

‘I am not a family,’ said Lavinia, with a touch of her old spirit.

‘No, mademoiselle,’ replied the concierge, looking so gravely at her that she wished she had been; her singularity sat heavily upon her. She returned to the terrace where she had been waiting the last two hours. Emilio, too, had arrived; more, he had found a fare. A woman was boarding the gondola. The gangway lurched a little as she crossed it and she turned, giving the man who followed her a smile full of apprehension and affection. She was as lovely as the day. Her companion lengthened his stride and caught her hand, and they stumbled into the gondola together, laughing at their awkwardness. The cluster of servants smiled; Emilio smiled; and Lavinia, charmed out of her wretchedness, smiled too. Into her mind came the Embarkation of St. Ursula; a vision of high hopes, adventure, beauty, pomp, in the morning of the world. Her smile grew wan as it lighted upon Emilio; she did not mean to recognize him, but he spread out his hands so disarmingly that the smile found its way back, flickered up again like a lamp that will burn a moment longer if you shake it.

‘Who is that?’ she asked at random of the servants who were still congratulating each other in a mysterious, vicarious way.

‘Lord Henry de Winton,’ someone said. ‘They are just married.’

Lavinia went up to her mother’s bedroom and stood in front of a pier-glass, studying her reflection.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Johnstone from the bed. ‘Am I not to see your face?’

‘I thought I would look at it myself,’ replied Lavinia.

‘Shall I tell you what you see there?’ asked her mother.

‘No,’ Lavinia answered, and added, ‘you can if you like.’

‘Tears,’ said Mrs. Johnstone.

‘I cry very easily,’ Lavinia excused herself.

‘As easily as a stone,’ her mother rejoined.

That, alas, was only too true. Jack-the-Giant-Killer made the cheese cry by a trick, but the pressure by which the giant squeezed tears out of his stone was genuine and Lavinia could still feel the clasp of his fingers. Emilio had deserted her; he had an instinct for what was gay, what was care-free, what was splendid; a kind of ethical snobbery, she reflected, fingering the pearls that reached to her waist. She was secretive, she wore a hang-dog air, she moved stealthily in her orbit; no wonder people avoided her. She was a liar and a cheat; scratch her and you would find not blood, but a mixture of private toxins. Whereas they went blithely on their way, wearing their happiness in public, anxious that everyone they met should share it. And they had taken Emilio from her—Emilio for whose sake, or at least on whose account, she had foregone her high ironical attitude, the attitude she had spent years in acquiring, which had preserved her from so much if it had given her so little. Her detachment, that had been the marvel of her friends, how could she hope to find it now, its porcelain fragments befouled by slime? Miserably she walked up and down, her inward unrest so intense that the malign or disturbing aspects of what she saw around her contributed nothing to it. Over and over again she traced the stages of her degradation. It began with the hunt for the smelling-bottle; it was still going on: the monster inherited from the Kolynopulos had not done growing yet. ‘Still,’ thought Lavinia, ‘if only I had engaged Emilio the first evening, I should have got what I wanted and been satisfied.’ She evoked the incident a dozen times, each time saying ‘yes,’ where before she had said ‘no,’ almost cheating herself into the belief that she could alter the past. Why had he not told her last night that a trades’ union scruple forbade him to enter her service? He must have thought it over, weighed her in the balance and found her wanting. How? Lavinia did not flinch from the mortification of this enquiry. She had overheard someone say she was not really beautiful. But how did her appearance affect the case? His appearance had affected it, but then, he was not hiring her. She did not look magnificent, not, like so many Americans, as if she was the principal visitor at Venice. The Johnstones never tried to look like that. He must have taken her meanness over the note at its face value, imagined she would always haggle over a lira. The irrelevance of this consideration, and its ironical inadequacy as the foundation of her sufferings, almost made her scream. But why, she thought, be so cynical? Emilio may not be a liar, if I am. Perhaps he did want to give the other gondoliers a chance. The benison of the thought stole through her, reinstating Emilio, reconciling her to herself. The reverie refreshed her like a sleep.

The servant who interrupted it, bringing her a card, looked as if he had been there a long while.

‘To introduce Lord Henry de Winton,’ she read, and underneath, the name of an old school-friend.

‘Tell him I shall be delighted to see him,’ said Lavinia.

He came soon after, his wife with him.

‘Ah, Miss Johnstone,’ she cried, taking Lavinia’s hand, ‘you can’t think what a pleasure it is to find you. You must overlook the shameless haste with which we take advantage of our introduction.’

‘We couldn’t help it, you know,’ her husband put in, smiling from one to the other. ‘We had such accounts of you.’

Lavinia had been for so long seeking rather than sought after that she didn’t know what to make of it.

‘I hope I shall live up to my reputation,’ was all she could think of to say.

If they were chilled they hardly showed it; they continued to look down upon Lavinia, kindling, melting and shining like angelic presences.

‘It’s hard on you, I own,’ said Lady Henry. ‘How much pleasanter for you to be like us with no reputation at all, not a rag!’ Repudiated virtue triumphed in her eyes; but her husband said:

‘You mustn’t scare Miss Johnstone. Remember we were warned not to shock her.’ They laughed infectiously; but a tiny dart pierced Lavinia’s soul and stuck there, quivering.

‘You mustn’t try me too far,’ she said, making an effort.

‘You’ll take the risk of dining with us, won’t you?’ Lord Henry begged. He spoke as if it were a tremendous favour, the greatest they could ask. ‘And your mother too.’

‘I should love to,’ said Lavinia. ‘Mamma, alas, is in bed.’

Instantly their faces changed, contracted into sympathy and concern.

‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Lady Henry murmured. ‘Perhaps you’d rather not.’

‘Oh, she’s not dying,’ Lavinia assured them, a faint irony in her tone, partly habitual, but partly, she was ashamed to realize, bitter.

They noticed it, for their eyebrows lifted even as their faces cleared.