‘How tiresome for both of you,’ Lady Henry said. ‘Should we say eight o’clock?’

16

‘Why,’ wrote Lavinia, ‘when I meet the most charming people in the world should I feel like a fish out of water? The kindness of the de Wintons goes over my head. I feel like a black figure silhouetted against a sunset. The blackness is my will. I have altogether too much of it. This morning I thought it had died. My life seemed dislocated; I did the things I dislike most without minding them at all. Three hours I tramped Venice to find a propitiatory shawl for Mrs. Evans. Malice governed my choice at the last; she will look a fright in it; but as I went from one shop to another, ordering its entire stock to be laid before me, and then going away without buying, I did not feel wretched and distressed, as I used to do. I didn’t mind what happened. If I had been struck by lightning I shouldn’t have changed colour. Things came to me mechanically, but not in any order or with any sense of choice. Volition was stilled. The de Wintons roused it. They did everything they could to draw me out, to draw me back to their level, their world where I once was, where all desires are at an equipoise, where one wants a thing moderately and forgets it directly one can’t get it; where one can leave one’s spiritual house, as the dove left the ark, and return to it at will. While they talked, appealing to me now and then, weaving into one fabric the separate threads of our lives, finding common interests, common acquaintances, a hundred similarities of opinion and as many dissimilarities, that should have been just as binding, drawing us together until it seemed our whole existence had passed within a few yards of each other, I felt in the midst of the exquisite witchcraft that each lasso they threw over me dissolved like a rope of sand, leaving me somewhere much lower than the angels, alone with my ungovernable will. It frightenes me; I cannot escape it; I cannot find my way back to that region where diversity is real and inclination nibbles at a million herbs and forgets the wolf, will, that watches him. Emilio is nothing to me; he is the planetary sign, the constellation under which my will is free to do me harm. I have devised a remedy. Cannot I in thought identify myself with the outside world, the world that sees with unimplicated eye Lavinia Johnstone going about her business—notes a feather in her hat as she stands on the terrace, sees her apparently deep in conversation with a rough-looking man, jots down her arrival in a newspaper, thinks she’ll be gone in a week, wonders why she doesn’t change her clothes oftener, decides after all not to trouble to speak to her? Then I should recover my sense of proportion; I should matter as little to myself as I do to the world.

‘I write like a pagan. Perhaps my disorder is more common-place: it is the natural outcome of doing a number of wrong things, letting myself get out of hand. Sin is the reason of my failure with the de Wintons. The Kolynopulos’ monster, what exactly is it? It’s no use going to Mamma to get rid of it, she said so. I begin to wish that Elizabeth would come.’

Next morning the doctor was due. Lavinia stayed in to hear his report. Each time she sought the sunshine of the terrace she found Emilio there. His presence wounded her; his recognitions, formal and full at first, diminished with each encounter and then ceased. ‘He has behaved badly to me,’ she thought, injured and yet glad of the injury. Though he avoided her and grudged her his company, he could not take away from her the fact that he, Emilio, acting responsibly with her image in his mind, had wronged her. It was a kind of personal relation, the only one, most likely, she would have. She looked at him again. The sun shone full upon his brown neck. Surely such exposure was dangerous? Suddenly he looked up. With her hand she made a little sweeping motion behind her head. The gondolier smiled, clutched his sailor’s collar with both hands and comically pressed it up to his ears, then let it fall. He pointed to the sun, shook his head slowly with an expression of contempt, smiled once more and smoothed away the creases in his collar. The Kolynopulos’ monster at last came out of hiding and swam into view. Mechanically Lavinia put out her hand and took a telegram from the waiter’s tray.

Earnestly advise Miss Perkins leave Venice immediately. Alas cannot join you. Writing. Elizabeth.

Lavinia crunched up the blue paper and threw it towards the canal. It was a feeble throw, the wind bore it back; so she took it to the balustrade and hurled it with all her might. It fluttered towards Emilio who made as though to catch it; but it fell short of him, and she could see it, just below the water, stealthily uncurling.

The handwriting of Lavinia’s diary that night was huddled and uncouth, unlike her usual elegant script. She had been searching Venice, apparently, for a guide to conduct, or some theological work with a practical application.

‘Of course,’ she wrote, ‘it’s only a Frenchman’s view and one can’t put much faith in them. I thought, if the will is corrupt, that is enough to damn you. Try to thwart the will, try to control it, try to reform it: I have tried. Faith without works is dead: that is the creed of the Roman Church and leads to indulgences. If one has faith it follows that one performs the acts of faith. They are nothing in themselves, have no value except to illustrate one’s faith. Why do them? Because one can’t help it. If the tree is good, so must the fruit be. And if evil? Need it be altogether evil? There’s a danger in arguing from analogy; metaphors conceal truth. But suppose the tree is evil, at any one time; would it be logical to say: “You’re a bad tree; if you don’t bear fruit you’ll still be bad, only not so bad”? The barren fig-tree was cursed for its barrenness, not for the quality of its fruit; it may have deliberately refrained from having figs, because it knew they would be bad, and it didn’t want to be known by its fruit. What I mean is, if the will is corrupt it will produce corrupt acts, and there is no virtue in refraining from any particular act, because everything you do will be wrong, wrong before you do it, wrong when you first think of it, wrong because you think it. But this man makes a distinction. To want to do wrong without doing it is concupiscence: it is in the nature of sin, but not sin. Isn’t this a quibble? And it’s cold comfort to be told that abstinence is concupiscence, and is in the nature of sin. I wish I could ask someone. After all, it’s an academic point: I can settle it which way I like, it commits me to nothing. However I argue it I shall still believe that the act does make a difference; if I wanted to throw myself off the Woolworth building, and didn’t, it would not be the same as if I wanted to and did.’

‘Well, he evidently means us to get out,’ said Lady Henry, looking doubtfully at the deserted campo.

Emilio was offering his arm.

Lord Henry strode ashore without availing himself of the hand-rail; but his wife and Lavinia accepted its aid in their transit. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you touch those fellows at your own risk.’

‘Nonsense, Henry,’ his wife protested. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, plague, pestilence, dirt, disease,’ Lord Henry answered.

‘My dear, does he look like it? He will outlive us all. Henry is secretly jealous of our gondolier,’ she said, turning to Lavinia. ‘Don’t you think him an Adonis?’

‘He is a genial-looking brigand,’ said her husband. ‘I was asking Miss Johnstone,’ Lady Henry remarked. ‘This is a matter for feminine eyes. I dote upon him.’ She turned her candid eyes upon her husband with an exquisite pretence of languor.

‘Well,’ he gently growled, ‘what about this palace? I don’t see it.’