4

Every prospect in Venice gives the beholder a sense of unworthiness and of being born out of time; but Lavinia, arrived early on the terrace next morning, was scarcely at all conscious of inferiority. The sun was brilliant, the water as still as it would ever be. Incompatibilities did not trouble her. The great American cruiser moored at the side of the Bacino, leaning against the land, reassured her by its stability; the Trieste liner, stealthily revolving on itself, contrasted pleasantly with the small fry that looked purposeless and stationary, but were no doubt working hard to get out of the monster’s way. The island of St. Giorgio was evidently the work of a magician; every building fitted into the cliché that guide-books and tourists had agreed upon for it. ‘The Salute itself,’ thought Lavinia, looking her ancient enemy squarely in the face, ‘has a decorative quality, and decoration is something, though of course not the essence of art. Even that ruffianly-looking gondolier is improved by his crimson sash. Now, if Emilio had one—’ And pat to her thought Emilio appeared, cleaving his way towards her and dressed, not in the dingy weeds of yesterday, but in a white suit with a sky-blue scarf that lay like a lake upon his chest, and a sash that poured itself away in a cascade of flounces from the knot at his side.

Lavinia made up her mind quickly. Espying a high functionary she took her courage in both hands and addressed him. ‘Could she engage Emilio as Mrs. Johnstone’s private gondolier?’

The man’s manner, a disagreeable blend of insolence and servility, grew oilier and more offensive.

‘No, you cannot have him, he is already engaged; the lady and gentleman who went out with him last night have taken him from day to day.’

‘Oh,’ said Lavinia, suddenly listless. So this was the meaning of the fine apparel, the meaning of the gondola encrusted with gilt and dripping with fringes? She had been forestalled. Her eyes travelled over the sumptuous vessel and Emilio made her a little salute—the acknowledgment due to a late employer—without much heart in it. She could not go on standing where she was. Despondent she walked back to her chair. The balcony had become a cage, and the day was brilliant, she felt, in spite of her.

‘Lavinia!’

‘Yes, Mamma.’

‘You don’t look as though you had slept any too well. Did you?’ Tenderness and interest alike were absent from Mrs. Johnstone’s enquiry; its tone suggested both certainty and disapproval, and she went on, without waiting for a reply:

‘But I’ve got some good news for you, or what ought to be good news. I give you three guesses.’

Now play up, Lavinia.

‘The wordly Elizabeth Templeman is coming here from Rome?’

‘Wrong. She is still in bed with the chill she so foolishly caught wandering about the Coliseum after nightfall.’

‘The exchange?’

‘The exchange is two points worse. Really, Lavinia, you should know these things.’ Mrs. Johnstone could make even guessing dangerous.

Then it must be that Stephen isn’t—’

‘Isn’t! Is, and Monday too. With the Evanses. Now I ought to tell you that Amelia Fielder Evans—’

‘My rival?’

‘Amelia Fielder Evans,’ said Mrs. Johnstone warningly, ‘is a very determined woman.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Lavinia. ‘He certainly should be saved from her.’

‘Well, you can save him,’ Mrs. Johnstone observed, ‘and you can do it at dinner on Tuesday. Amelia will be tired from her journey. Now what?’

‘Should we bathe?’ suggested Lavinia.

‘Heavens! But I thought you wanted to go in a gondola. You are changeable, Lavinia.’

‘You have always wanted to see the Lido, Mamma.’

‘Very well, then.’

‘We’ll walk to the vaporetto. It’s not far.’

Off they went.

5

‘How brief is human happiness,’ Lavinia wrote that night in her diary. ‘My exaltation of yesterday has almost passed away. I loathed the Lido: all those khaki-coloured bodies lying about, half-interred in sand or sprawling over bridge tables, disgusted me inexpressibly. My Puritan blood stirred within me. Why must they make themselves so common? The people who hired our gondolier came out in the afternoon; they were among the worst, perfectly shameless. Mamma was surprised when I went up to speak to them, but one must be civil to people staying in the same hotel. You never know what you may want from them, as Elizabeth Templeman would say. When they heard who we were, they were impressed and showed it; they come from Pittsburg, their speech bewrayeth them. They offered to take us in their gondola whenever we liked. Mamma was for refusing and reproached me afterwards because I said we would. But are we not all God’s people? We live too much in a groove, and personalities are more interesting than places, as I have proved in many an essay. Still, even as they left my lips, the gracious words of consent surprised me. Strangers are my abhorrence and my instinct was to dislike these, with their name like a Greek toothpaste, Kolynopulo. America is a nation of hyphens and hybrids.

‘How discontented all this sounds. I must make a resolution against exclusiveness, a besetting sin. I have always meant to visit the poor, but Venice is not a good place to begin in. . . . How it would surprise Emilio if I turned up at his home, bringing a tract against profanity! The churches are plastered with notices begging the people not to disgrace the glorious language of Dante, Alfieri, Petrarch, etc. I have an idea what his home is like: it would be fun to see if it is a true one!’

6

‘Shame your mother couldn’t come,’ said Mr. Kolynopulo, assisting Lavinia, with more gallantry than was necessary, into his gorgeous gondola. ‘Does she often have headaches?’

Miss Johnstone wore a harassed air. ‘Venice doesn’t really suit her,’ she replied. ‘It’s the tiresome sirocco.’ She looked wistfully down the lagoon to where that climatic nuisance was wont to assert its presence with an unanswerable visibility; but the air had lost its fever, could not have been clearer. ‘The very heavens give me the lie,’ she thought; and aloud she said, ‘Oh! no, Mr. Kolynopulo, you must let me be selfish and sit here.’ To clinch the argument she sank into the half-way seat. ‘Venice depends so much on where you sit. Here I can see forwards and sideways and even backwards.’ Suiting the action to the word, she gazed earnestly at a point directly in their wake; her scrutiny also included Emilio, who did not return it, but stared angrily at the horizon.

‘Good-looking, isn’t he?’ remarked Mrs. Kolynopulo, indicating Emilio with her thumb.

Lavinia started.

‘I suppose he is. I never thought about it,’ she said.

‘Then you’re different from most,’ Mrs. Kolynopulo answered. ‘I guess he’s caused a flutter in many a female breast. We considered ourselves lucky to get him. We’ve been the subject of congratulation.’

‘Not from me,’ thought Lavinia, eyeing congratulation’s twin subjects with ill-concealed distaste.

‘Do you share the flutter?’ she presently enquired.

Bless you, no,’ replied his wife. ‘We’re married. We leave that sort of thing to the single ones.’

The slaves of matrimony exchanged affectionate looks and even, to Lavinia’s horror, kissed each other. She wanted to let the subject drop, but instead she asked:

‘What sort of thing?’

‘What sort of thing which, dear?’ Mrs. Kolynopulo playfully asked her.

‘What sort of thing do you . . . . . leave?’ said Lavinia, with an effort making her meaning clear.

Her temporary hosts looked archly at each other, then laughed long and loud.

‘My dear!’ protested Mrs. Kolynopulo, still quivering like a jelly.

‘You forget, my pretty,’ her husband reproved her, ‘that Miss Johnstone has been properly brought up.’