Bui!
That was a good one, and a collision at this perilous corner providentially averted. Emilio and the coal man, carboniere, or whatever it is, have words, but without much ill-feeling, to judge from their faces. Emilio would look cross at any time, or is it savage, perhaps, or just stern, incorruptible, fearless, conscious of his Northern blood? He must be descended from the Visigoths I suppose; hence the colouring. How wonderfully he manages the gondola, taking it round these corners as cleanly as if it had a bend in its back. And here we are at the hotel.
The Splendid and Royal came into view, blinking behind its sun-blinds; and the servants, seeing with whom they had to deal, formed a circle on the steps, advertising their anxiety that Mrs. Johnstone should make a successful landing. Even Emilio came down into the hold to give her his arm, stretching it out stiff at an odd impersonal angle, as though it was a bit of ship’s furniture. The strength of her clasp left upon his skin a milky stain which faded even as Lavinia, bowed with books and rugs, momentarily laid her hand there. How cool it was, with all that sunshine stored up in it. She heard her mother’s voice, raised to the pitch of indignant non-comprehension that had served her so well in life.
‘Emilio wants, Emilio who?’
‘Emilio Varagnolo, Madam, your gondolier.’
‘Well, and what does he want?’
‘He wants to be paid.’
‘Lavinia,’ said her mother, ‘you’re always wool-gathering. Here, give him this.’
But “this,” in all its eloquent parsimony, with all its air of making the foreigner, in his own territory, pay, was precisely what Lavinia could not give him. Already she had suffered much from those uncomfortable partings, from those muttered curses and black looks which were the certain outcome of giving Italians nothing but their due. In this case, it was less than what was due. Mrs. Johnstone’s blameless desire that people should not get the better of her generally ended, Lavinia knew, in her getting the better of them. Wondering by how much she should increase the fare she looked across and met the eyes of the gondolier, which also seemed to wonder. Hastily she pulled some notes out and, scarcely stopping to count them, walked down the little gangway and put them into his outstretched hand. What she had neglected to do, he did most thoroughly. With an absorption that might have amused her he reckoned up the sum, and, finding it tally with his expectations, or perhaps even rise to his hopes, he acknowledged her generosity with a dazzling smile and a magnificent salute. All the vitality of which she had been conscious, and whose application to alien activities she had vaguely resented, was suddenly released, let loose upon her in a flood. She shivered and turned away, only to be recalled.
‘Madame! Signorina!’
‘What is it?’ Lavinia asked.
‘Emilio wants to know if he shall return in the afternoon.’ Instead of answering, Lavinia walked back to the steps. Emilio still wore his smile.
‘Venga qui alle due,-alle due e mezzo,’ she said.
‘Va bene,’ Signorina,’ he answered, and was gone.
2
‘I told the gondolier to come at half-past two,’ Lavinia casually mentioned to her mother at luncheon.
‘What gondolier, dear?’ asked Mrs. Johnstone.
‘The one we had this morning.’
‘Well, we don’t want to encourage the man.’
‘How do you mean, “encourage”, Mamma?’ Lavinia mildly enquired.
‘I mean what I say,’ said Mrs. Johnstone without attempting further elucidation.
‘Then,’ pursued Lavinia, ‘we shall be able to see La Madonna dell’ Orto and all those churches on the Northern fringe.’
‘Which day are they for?’ demanded Mrs. Johnstone, suspicion leaping into her voice.
‘They are not all for a day,’ confessed Lavinia, reluctantly admitting the inferior status of the churches on the Northern fringe. ‘Tourists often neglect Sant’ Alvise, though it is a gem and well repays a visit, the guide book says.’
‘We are not tourists, whatever it may be,’ remarked Mrs. Johnstone.
‘And,’ continued Lavinia, momentarily elated by the success of her ruse, ‘it contains the pseudo-Carpaccios, a notable instance, Mr. Arrantoff says, of Ruskin’s faulty a priori method and want of true critical sense.’
‘Then I am sure I don’t want to see them,’ Mrs. Johnstone declared. ‘And who is Mr. Arrantoff, anyhow?’
‘He is quite modern,’ said Lavinia feebly.
‘All the more reason that he should be wrong,’ her mother asserted. ‘Ruskin was nearer Carpaccio’s date, wasn’t he?’
‘He wasn’t contemporary,’ said Lavinia.
‘Perhaps not, but no doubt he had the tradition,’ Mrs. Johnstone retorted. ‘In most cases, as you have told me more times than I can count, the tradition is all we have to go on. Ruskin went on it, I go on it, and you will, if you are sensible. But I am afraid sense is not your strong point, Lavinia. There’s something I want to talk to you about. Remind me.’
‘Can’t you talk to me about it now?’ Lavinia asked.
‘I don’t want everyone in the room to hear me,’ her mother replied, raising her voice as though to justify her misgivings. Several people at neighbouring tables turned round in surprise. ‘You see,’ Mrs. Johnstone commented complacently, ‘I was right. They can hear. It will do in the gondola.’
They parted; Mrs. Johnstone to rest, Lavinia to read. The first four volumes of Richardson’s masterpiece had yielded little but irritation. Why, she had asked herself a hundred times, if Clarissa really wanted to leave Lovelace, didn’t she go? She wasn’t a prisoner, but on she stayed, groaning, complaining, fainting, making scenes, when she might have walked out of the front door any hour in the twenty-four. Instead of which she tried to match her wits against the contrivances of a cad, hoping ultimately to charm him into a respectable citizen. But to-day Lavinia found herself more tolerant of Clarissa’s voluntary bondage. Where, after all, could Miss Harlowe have gone? Would it be an agreeable home-coming for her, Lavinia, if after a parallel behaviour and a parallel experience she returned to the parental roof? Mrs. Johnstone was not usually tender towards animals, but surely, on that occasion, she could be counted upon to spare the life of the fatted calf. ‘Never, my dear Lavinia,’ she affectionately admonished herself, let any situation get the upper hand of you.’ She sighed, realizing from past experience how improbable it was that any situation would put itself to the trouble. ‘Not that I should welcome it,’ she added, in an access of distaste. ‘No Lovelaces for me.’ She took up her coffee, which was growing cold, and looking over the brim of the cup she saw Emilio. He had arrived long before his time and was sitting on the low, carved chair, a luxury found only in the best gondolas, reading a newspaper. She watched his hands moving among the sheets, opening and closing. The thought that he could read gave her pleasure, such pleasure as might come from observing an unlooked-for accomplishment in one’s own child. She wished he would lean back against the cushions and make himself comfortable: after all, it was his gondola. They cost seven thousand lire, a large sum for a poor man; and yet, as people who keep lodgings must let their best rooms to strangers and live in holes and corners themselves, so he, perhaps, had a scruple about taking the easiest seat. Warm and seductive, an humanitarian mood was visiting her, when the gondolier folded his paper, glanced up, and saw her. His face, she fancied, was friendly behind its glitter, he waved his hat and made a pretty show of activity; but when, in some confusion, she signed to him that she was not ready, he settled down to his paper again. Lavinia also returned to her book, but what she read did not hold her attention; the fact that she knew how to read didn’t provide her with a solace, nor Emilio, to judge from his abstraction, with food for pleasurable thought. The dumb show in which she had taken part a moment since repeated itself before the ready auditorium of her mind; she saw his face alight with recognition; she tried to visualize his expression, penetrating, impatient, interrogatory, expectant. He looked as though any moment you might do something that would delight him. Why had she not done it? And yet what could she have done? She had an uneasy feeling that in the exchange of gestures she had not acquitted herself as she should have done, had missed an opportunity. ‘Perhaps I can repair the error,’ she thought, moving to a chair directly opposite the gondola, A smile rewarded her and she saw to it that this time her own greeting should not lack warmth.