‘I could never have married Stephen, but I didn’t mean to be cruel to him,’ she wrote. ‘I don’t know what came over me. At the time there seemed nothing else to say; but on reflection I can think of a dozen things I might have said, all without wounding him. And he has such deep feelings, like most unselfconscious people, whose interest in a subject blinds them to the fact that they may be boring others with it. He really cares for me, and I ought to have been flattered by his enthusiasm and zeal for my improvement, instead of wanting him to let me go to the devil my own way. Is that where I am bound? I detected a whiff of brimstone this evening and I’m not sure whether the room is clear of it yet. I wasn’t really angry with him; that’s where he has the advantage over me; I was exasperated and unnerved, whereas he is now plunged, I fear, into real old-fashioned misery, the sort that keeps you awake at nights and is too hard and too heavy to yield to soft analysis. Well, I am awake, too. But that’s because I worry about myself: I am so concerned with self-justification that I whittle away the shame I ought to feel, externalizing it and nibbling bits off it until I grow interested and quite proud of it. If I had a proper nature, instead of this putty-soft putty-coloured affair, my relations towards people would fall into their right places, and not need readjustment at the hands of my sensibility. No one knows where they are with me, because they really aren’t anywhere; I am forever making up my mind about myself.

‘There, I have succeeded in my discreditable design: I feel easier. But that doesn’t mean I am worse than those who don’t know in what direction to aim their self-reproaches. Why should stupidity be held the mark of a fine nature? I am not the more bad because I realize where my badness lies. But I do dread to-morrow, with Stephen going away hurt, the Evanses piqued, Mother unwell, and only the Kolynopulos to fall back on—and Emilio, of course. I had almost forgotten him.’

10

Lavinia’s misgivings were not unfounded. In the morning, still keeping her bed, Mrs. Johnstone had an audience first of Stephen, then of the Evanses, and, finally, of her daughter, who had gone for refuge and solace to a hairdresser’s, where she let herself, half unwillingly, be the subject of successive and extremely time-taking remedial processes, each one imposed upon her with a peculiar affront. It was depressing, this recital of her hair’s shortcomings; dry, brittle, under-nourished, split at the ends, it seemed only to stay on, as the buildings of Venice were said to stand, out of politeness. Ploughed, harrowed, sown and reaped, Lavinia’s scalp felt like a battlefield. A proposal to exacerbate it further she resisted.

‘Does Madam want to lose all her hair?’

‘No, you idiot, of course I don’t.’

Through a film of soapy water Lavinia’s eyes tried to blaze; they smarted instead.

‘I might just as well cry,’ she thought, and seeing the woeful image in the mirror she shed a few tears which didn’t show in the general mess.

She appeared before her mother with a false air of freshness.

‘Who was it tired her head and was thrown out of a window?’ asked Mrs. Johnstone, glaring from the bed.

It is my lot to have to answer stupid questions, Lavinia thought.

‘Jezebel, that much-married woman,’ she replied.

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ Mrs. Johnstone contradicted her. ‘She married once; it was the only respectable thing she did.’

‘The Psalms say she was all glorious within until she married. Later it says, “So long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel”—I forget what.’

‘Lavinia!’

A long silence followed. Miss Johnstone, regardless of her prototype’s defenestration, leaned out of the window. Her own bedroom opened on to an interior court: it must be pleasant to have a room with a view.

‘Lavinia,’ said her mother at last, ‘I don’t think Venice is doing you any good. You’ve sent Ste away broken-hearted; you’ve offended the Evanses, you’ve made me ill; and now you address your own mother in the language of the market-place.’

‘The language of the Bible,’ interposed Lavinia.

‘You’ll go to the agency now and book places for us in the Orient express. “We’ll start to-morrow, or Friday at the latest.’

‘The Wagons-Lits Company, like the churches,’ said Lavinia, ‘closes between twelve and two.’ The impulse to profanity was new to her, and as she left her mother’s room she regarded the intruder with dismay, an emotion soon overpowered by the realization that in a few hours’ time she would have to leave Venice. During her solitary luncheon she scoured her mind for a device to circumvent her marching-orders; all the way to the Piazza she asked herself, ‘Is there no way out?’ She could think of none.

It was the clerk at the counter who, all involuntarily, for he could never willingly have been helpful in his life, showed her the way.

‘When do you want to go?’ he said, when Lavinia, squashed, elbowed and pounded, at last reached him.

Lavinia pondered. She did not want to go at all. What was the effect, psychologically, of saying you wanted something that you passionately did not want? Did it do you any good? How did the will, thwarted, revenge itself? Where did its energy go, since it was incompressible and must find an outlet somewhere? It might assert itself in some very extravagant fashion. When she spoke, it was with her lips only.

‘To-morrow,’ she said.

You can’t go to-morrow,’ the man replied, his face lighting up with a joy that, contrasted with the ordinary cast of his features, seemed almost innocent.

Lavinia’s lips moved again. She would give Providence its chance.

‘Friday?’

‘Full up, Friday,’ said the man, again as though the congestion of the train afforded him immense satisfaction. ‘But you can go—’

‘Stop,’ said Lavinia, running her fingers over the counter and pausing at the third finger of her right hand. ‘Will you give me two tickets to Paris for Friday week?’

She walked back, as though in a dream, straight to her mother’s room. All the petulance had gone from her manner, and she felt, as she saw Mrs. Johnstone propped on the pillows, with so much that made her formidable either left out or undone, that she could wait upon her mother for ever.

‘I am very sorry, Mamma,’ she said, ‘but all the sleeping-cars to Paris are reserved till next Friday week. So I took tickets for then. I hope you don’t mind, and I think it’s for the best; you really aren’t fit to travel.’

‘If I’m fit to stay here I’m fit for anything,’ Mrs. Johnstone replied. You’re sure you went to the right place, Lavinia?’

‘Certain, Mamma.’

‘Well, I don’t imagine it will be much pleasure for you to stay,’ Mrs. Johnstone remarked, as though Lavinia were a scapegoat for the sins of the railway company, and that was a comfort.