‘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.’
‘Gondoliere,’ called Lady Henry, ‘Dove il palazzo Labia?’ She waved her hand to the grey buildings and the cloudy skies. Emilio climbed out of the boat.
‘See how helpful he is,’ she commented. ‘He knows exactly what I mean.’ Walking, Emilio always looked like an upright torpedo, as though he had been released by a mechanical contrivance and would knock down the first obstacle he met, or explode.
‘We were fortunate to get him,’ she continued. ‘We only hold him by a legal fiction; we couldn’t hire him, he has been too popular, poor fellow, all the summer, and no doubt fears the stilettos of his friends. I tried my utmost, Henry, didn’t I, to shake his resolution. I spoke in every tongue, but he was deaf to them all. So we re-engage him at the end of each ride, which does just as well, and salves his troublesome conscience. To-morrow, alas, we must go.’
They had gone down a passage and reached a door, the sullen solidity of which was impaired by the decay and neglect of centuries. Emilio pulled at the rusty bell and listened.
‘Do you think,’ Lavinia said suddenly, ‘you could ask him to be our gondolier, Mamma’s and mine, when you’ve finished with him? Just for two days; we leave on Friday.’