It was about two of the afternoon in the last week of May, and this
sudden heat wave which had spread southward over Europe had reached
Venice, making it more than ever a place to dream and be still in and
less than ever a place to see sights in. So at any rate thought its
foreign visitors, for the Grand Canal even and the more populous of the
waterways were empty of pleasure-seeking and church-inspecting traffic,
and but little even of the mercantile or more necessary sort was on the
move. Here and there a barge laden with coke and wood fuel was being
punted heavily upstream, clinging as far as might be to the side of the
canal, where it would feel less of the tide that was strongly setting
seaward, or here another carrying the stacked-up furniture of some
migratory household passed down midstream so as to get the full aid and
current of the tide avoided by the other. But apart from such traffic
and the passage of the gray half-empty steamers that churned and
troubled the water at regular intervals, sending the wash of their
slanting waves against the walls of the white palaces, and making the
moored and untenanted gondolas slap the water with sudden hollow
complaints, and grind their sides uneasily against the restraining
_pali_, there was but little stir of movement or passage. No lounger
hung about on the steps of the iron bridge, and the sellers of fruit,
picture postcards, and tobacco had taken their wares into the narrow
strip of shade to the north of the Accademia, and waited, unexpectant of
business, till the cool of the later hours should bring the _forestieri_
into the street again.
Even the native population shunned the glare of the sun, and preferred,
if it was necessary to go from one place to another, to seek the deep
shadows of the narrow footways rather than face the heat and glare of
the canals, and the boatmen in charge of the public ferries had moored
their craft in the shade if possible, or, with heads sheltered beneath
their discarded coats, passed the long siesta-hour with but little fear
of interruption or call on their services. The domes and towers of the
town glittered jewel-like against the deep blue of the sky, and their
outlines trembled in the quiver of the reverberating air. On the north
side of the Grand Canal the southward-facing houses dozed behind
lattices closed to keep out the glare and the heat, and the air was
still and noiseless but for the staccato chiding of the swallows which
pursued their swift and curving ways with nothing of their speed abated.
Over the horizon hung a purplish haze of heat, so that the edge of the
sea melted indistinguishably into the sky, and Alps and Euganean hills
alike were invisible.
Dora had lunched alone to-day, for Claude had gone to Milan to meet his
father and mother, who were coming out for a fortnight and would arrive
this evening; and at the present moment she was looking out from the
window of her _sala_ on to the lower stretch of the Grand Canal, which,
as her intimacy with it deepened, seemed ever to grow more inexplicably
beautiful. The flat which they occupied was on the south side of the
canal, and though no doubt it would have left the room cooler to have
closed all inlet of the baked air, she preferred to have the windows
open, and lean out to command a larger view of the beloved waterway.
Deep into her heart had the magic of the city of waters entered, a thing
incomparable and incommunicable. She only knew that when she was away
from Venice the thought of it caused her to draw long breaths, which
hung fluttering in her throat; that when she was in it her eyes were
never satisfied with gazing or herself with being soaked in it. She
loved what was splendid in it, and what was sordid, what was small and
what was great, its sunshine, its shadows, its moonlight, the pleasant
Italian folk, and whether she sat in the jewelled gloom of St. Mark’s or
shot out with the call of her gondolier from some dark waterway into the
blaze of ivory moonlight on the Grand Canal below the Rialto, or whether
the odour of roasting coffee or the frying of fish came to her as she
passed some little _caffe ristorante_ in the maze of mean streets that
lie off the Merceria, or whether she lay floating at ease in the warm
sustaining water of the Lido, or watched in the church of St. Georgio
the mystic wreaths of spirits and archangels assembled round the table
of the Last Supper, peopling the beamed ceiling of the Upper Chamber and
mingling mistlike in the smoke of the lamp with which it was lit--she
knew that it was Venice, the fact of Venice, that lay like a gold thread
through these magical hours, binding them together, a circle of perfect
pearls.
Two threads indeed ran through them all: they were doubly strong, for
it was in Venice last autumn that she and Claude had passed three weeks
of honeymoon and with the glory of the place was mingled the glory of
her lover. It was that perhaps that gave to details and such sights and
sounds as were not remarkable in themselves their ineffaceable
character. It was because she and Claude had wandered, pleased to find
themselves momentarily lost, in the high-eaved labyrinths of narrow
streets, that the dingy little interiors, the _trattorias_ with their
smell of spilt wine, and their vine-leaf-stoppered bottles, their sharp
savour of cooking and sawdust-sprinkled floors were things apart from
anything that could be seen or perceived in any other town in the world.
A spire of valerian sprouted from mouldering brickwork, the reflection
of a marble lion’s head on snow-white cornice quivered in the gray-green
water below, little sideway-scuttling crabs bustled over the gray mud of
the lagoons, bent on private and oblique errands of their own, seagulls
hovered at the edge of the retiring water; gray-stemmed _pali_ with
black heads leaned together, marking the devious course of deep-dug
channels; there came a cry of “_Stali_” and a gondola with high-arching
neck (some beautiful black swan) shot out of a canal by the bridge where
they lingered, and these sights and sounds, trivial in themselves, were
stamped in her mind with the royal mint-mark that belonged to those
weeks when she and Claude were in Venice after their marriage. Her
emotion had streamed from her, soaking them with it: they were part of
Venice, part of herself, and so wholly hers.
Some seal had been set on those things then that could never be melted
out. It was Claude who had set it there, and he had so imprinted that
seal upon Venice that to her now all that was Venice had the memory of
her honeymoon upon it like a hallmark on silver. That time had been a
score of divine days, luminous with the southern sun, warm with
stillness or clement wind, and yet made vigorous with the youth and
freshness of the immortal sea. And here, six months afterward, she had
returned with Claude to spend a month of late May and early June before
the weeks of London. In the autumn she had come home under the
enchantment and by way of a neat Christmas present Mr. Osborne had
prospectively given her the rent, the journey, the expenses of food and
wine, the servants and their journeys and their wages of a month, “or
call it five weeks, my dear, and you won’t find me pulling you up
short,” he had said, “of that house on the Grand Canal that took your
fancy, Palazzo ---- but there, I’ve no head for foreign names. You leave
London, you do, with your maid and your cook, and your housemaid and
what not, and don’t forget Claude, hey? or he’ll be quarrelling with
you, and me taking his side too, though its only my fun. And you take a
few English servants with you, as you can fall back upon, and you send
me in a bill for all the tickets and the wages, and your living bills,
and your gondolas, and that’s my Christmas present to you. Don’t you
bother, but make yourself comfortable. You go as you please, as we used
to say, for a month, or call it five weeks, and enjoy yourself, and let
me know how much it’s all stood you in. I shouldn’t wonder if Mrs. O.
and I didn’t come and join you, oh, not to make you uncomfortable, no
fear, but to take another piazza, ah, palazzo you call it, and have a
look at the Italians, and see what’s to be seen.”
Dora had an excellent aural memory, and as she sat at her window to-day,
watching the flickering reflection in the water of the sunstruck houses
opposite, she could almost hear Mr. Osborne’s voice saying these
hospitable and free-handed things. But they did not get between her and
her memory of the weeks in October. She was aware that during the last
six months she had seen things differently to the way in which they were
presented to her during those weeks, but it was not Venice that had
altered. It was still Venice “as per last October,” as her father-in-law
might have said.
They had rowed out to Malamocco one day, and another they had gone to
Torcello, the ancient mother of Venice, and she had found there a sort
of tenderness for the earlier and now ruined and fevered town, just
as--just as she found a tenderness for her husband’s mother. Torcello
was the beginning of the magic, from Torcello the creation of what she
so loved had come. On another day they had taken dinner out on to the
great lagoon, had tied up to a clump of hoary gray-headed _pali_,
notching the _ferro_ of their gondola into the disc of the setting sun.
Then some tide had slowly swung them a little sideways, so that they
still faced toward the brightness of the West, long after the sun had
gone, and the glory of its departing had been infused into and flooded
the heavens. A great cumulus cloud reared itself out of the western
horizon, in tower and pinnacle of ineffable rose, with transparent
aqueous blue dwelling in the folds of it and at the base of it lay the
campaniles and roofs of Venice. And Claude had been beside her, he whose
beauty intoxicated her, so that she interpreted all he said or did
through the medium of that. He had often yawned at things that engrossed
her, he had often felt that long lingering before certain pictures was
tedious, but his reason for it had ever been the same, and the reason
was an intoxicating one. Then pictures and campaniles absorbed her, and
in consequence he, so he complained, got the less of her. “Put me down
in Clapham Junction,” he had said once, “and if I find you there I
shan’t ask for Venice. Tintoret. Yes, No. 20 is by Tintoret. How did you
guess? I see no label on the frame: they should have them all labelled.
What a handsome frame!”
On another day, the only one on which the halcyon weather had played
them a trick, they had gone out in the morning to Burano, rowing at full
tide over the shadows and water of oily calm, with above them a sky that
was turquoise, but for a few pale combed wisps of cloud. Northward it
had been very clear, and the white range of snow mountains so sharp cut
that it seemed that even on an autumn day they could row across and
ascend those cliffs of white. Then--Claude had noticed it first--a great
tattered edge of gray vapour streamed southward off the Alps, and spread
with the swiftness of spilt water along the floor, in pool and
promontory of vapour over the northern heavens. He and she had been
talking Italian in ridiculous fashion to their head gondolier, and now
Claude pointed dramatically northward and said, “Curioso cloudo.” On
which all the gaiety and laziness of that child of the south vanished,
and he and his _poppe_ put the boat about and rowed top speed for
Venice. They had come in expectation of fine weather, with no _felse_,
but before they were halfway home a squall of prodigious wind and
blinding rain struck them, and for an hour she and Claude nestled close
beneath one mackintosh, hearing the squeal of the wind, the buffet of
the rain, and by degrees the gradual rising of waves. They made a bolt
for it across the last open water between San Michele and Venice,
narrowly escaping being swamped.
Somehow to Dora now, that seemed the best of all the days. The gondola
was three inches deep in savage spray-blown water. She knew there was
danger of some sort abroad, when they had already started, and had gone
too far in the maniac wind that descended on them to get back, but
crouching beneath the one mackintosh with Claude, with the rain
streaming in from a hundred points, and with the danger of capsize
imminent, she found a glory and triumph in the moment, which, indeed,
was independent, or almost so, of Venice, and was pure Claude. He had
lit a cigarette, after succeeding in striking a match with infinite
trouble, saying, “Now for the last smoke this side the grave,” and Dora
found a sublimity of sangfroid in this remark. But at that time all he
said or did was golden: he gilded all things for her.
In those days she was incapable of criticism with regard to anything
that concerned him, for to her, lover of beauty as she was, his beauty,
which now was a possession of hers, was a thing of dazzling and blinding
quality. It blinded her still, but it must be supposed that the
enthrallment of it was quite absolute no longer, since now, at any rate,
she knew it was that which had taken the very command and control of
herself out of her hands. She was in love with him, that was perfectly
true, but it was with his beauty (an inextricable part of him) that she
was in love. And now, to-day, as she leaned out of her window over the
summer stillness, she found that she was beginning to be able to look
undazzled at him, to see the qualities and nature of her husband as they
were themselves, not as they had appeared to her in the early months of
her marriage, when she could not see him at all except through the
enchanted haze which surrounded him. Before she married him she had been
able to do as she did to-day, to know that at times something (trivial
it always was, as when he spoke of some woman as a “handsome lady”) made
her check suddenly. But when they were married, when he and his
wonderful beauty were hers, and she was his, that power of criticism had
altogether left her, and it was only with a sort of incredulous wonder
that she could remember that she had ever been capable of it. To-day,
now that he was absent, for she had not seen him for over twenty-four
hours, she for the first time consciously registered the fact that the
power of judgment and criticism as regards him had come back to her.
Dora drew herself in from her leaning out of the window, and settled
herself in a chair. This discovery rather startled her. Insignificant as
it might sound, if she had described it to May Franklin or some other
friend, it seemed to herself to be indicative of some essential and
radical change in her relation to her husband. And it concerned itself
not with the present only and with the future, but reached back into the
past, so that a hundred little scenes and memories bore a different
aspect to her now from that which they had hitherto borne. It had been
enchanting to her, for instance, that he had said he would as soon be at
Clapham Junction as at Venice, provided she was with him. At the time
she had only thrilled with ecstatic wonder that she could be so much to
him: now she made the comment that he did not really care for Venice.
That was a pity; it was a defect in him, that he was indifferent to the
exquisite beauties with which he was surrounded. She had not seen that
before. It made him, so to speak, have no part in her Venice, which,
strangely enough, he had created for her. It was as if a father
disowned, did not recognize his own child.
Dora had no desire to pursue this train of thought, for there was
something vaguely uncomfortable at the back of it at which she did not
wish to look closer. So she mentally brushed it aside, and, a thing that
was a daily if not an hourly habit of hers, took her mind back to the
first days in which they had been together, and let it float her slowly
down the enchanted weeks that had followed till it landed her at the
present day again. Such retrospect had, indeed, passed out of the range
of voluntary thought: it was like the pillow on which her mind, when at
rest, instinctively reposed itself. After Venice they had wandered a
week or two longer in North Italy, until toward the end of October a
foretaste of winter caught them on the Italian lakes, and they had
started for home, arriving there at the beginning of November. They had
but passed through London, spending a couple of days at Claude’s little
flat in Mount Street, and had then gone down to Grote for the first big
pheasant shoot of the year. She found both her mother and Austell there.
Dora was essentially appreciative of all the delightful things in life
which can only be obtained by abundant money, and hitherto very few of
these had been within her reach. True, she was sensible enough to enjoy
pictures that were not hers, to look at beautiful things exposed for the
public in museums and art collections; but she did not belong to that
slightly unreal class of enthusiasts who say that as long as they are
able to see fine pictures and fine statues they get from them all the
pleasure which such things are capable of giving. Nor again was she
deficient in her appreciation of comfort, and she knew that it was
infinitely nicer to telephone from the flat at Mount Street, as they had
done on the two evenings they were there, and get a box at the theatre,
than getting seats at the back of the dress circle, or, if times were
exceptionally bad, having an egg with her tea and taking her humble
place in the _queue_ for the pit. She was humorist enough and of a
sufficiently observant type to find entertainment of a kind while
waiting in the _queue_, but it seemed to her insincere to say that you
preferred going to a theatre in such mode. Similarly, though you had
such a beautiful view and got so much air on the top of a motor bus that
such a mode of progression along the London streets was quite enjoyable,
it was really far more enjoyable to have your own motor, though your
outlook was not from so elevated a perch and there was probably not
quite so much air. And she was perfectly aware that she took the keenest
pleasure in all the ease and comfort with which she had been surrounded
since her engagement. Pierre Loti, as she had once quoted to May
Franklin, had said that it was exquisite to be poor, but for herself she
found it (having had long experience of poverty) much more exquisite to
be rich. But there were things about that shooting week, in spite of her
newly awakened love and her newly found opulence, which was in such
resounding evidence there, which gave her bad moments: moments when she
was between bitterness and laughter, nearer perhaps to laughter than the
other, but to laughter in which bitterness would have found the
reflection, at any rate, of itself.
A rather ponderous plan, evolved by the geniality and kindness of her
father-in-law, underlay that week. He had been in London for the inside
of one of the days that she and Claude had stopped in town after their
return from Venice, _en route_ for Grote, and had lunched with her.
Claude had been out: Uncle Alf had sent for him--rather peremptorily, so
it seemed to Dora--to come down to Richmond, and since Uncle Alf was
purseholder for them both, and had intimated that he wished to see him
on matters connected with the purse, the invitation had the authority of
a command. Consequently she and Mr. Osborne lunched alone.
“And you look rarely, my dear,” her father-in-law had said, giving her a
loud smacking kiss. “Claude seems to agree with you, bless his heart and
yours, for there is nothing like being married, is there, when all’s
said and done, provided you find him as your heart points out to you?
And you’ll give old Dad a bit of lunch, and leave to smoke his cigar
with you afterward, and tell him about Venice. My dear, I’ve looked
forward to your return with that boy of mine, so as never was, and I’m
blessed if I don’t believe Mrs. O. wouldn’t be jealous of you if it
wasn’t that you were his wife. But she thinks nought’s too good for
Claude, even if it’s you. She says I run on about you like a clock that
won’t stop striking! and I dare say she’s in the right of it.”
It was not very easy to “tell” Mr. Osborne about Venice, because it was
hard to think of any common ground on which he and Venice might
conceivably meet and appreciate each other, but the description seemed
to satisfy him, for it was largely “Claude and I.” And what satisfied
him even more was the evident happiness of the girl: she was in love
with life, with love and with Claude and with beautiful things. Claude
he had given her, beautiful things he could give her, and he asked if it
was possible to pick up a Tintoret or two. Then came the plan, unfolded
to her with almost boisterous enjoyment.
“Mrs. O. and I have put our heads together,” he said, “and I’m her
ambassador, accredited, don’t they say? by her, and with authority to
put propositions before you. Well, it’s just this: when that dear boy
and you come down to Grote to-morrow, we want you to be master and
mistress of the house, and Mrs. O. and me and Per and all the rest of
them to be your guests. It’ll be for you to say what time we breakfast,
and to see cook, and Claude will arrange the shoots, and give us a glass
of wine after dinner if he thinks it won’t hurt us, and it’ll be found
it won’t, if he sticks to the cellar as I’ve laid down for myself and of
which I’ll give him the key. It’ll give you a sort of lesson, like, my
dear, as to how to make your guests comfortable, as I’ll be bound you
will.”
It required no gifts of perception whatever to be able to appreciate the
kindness and affection of that speech, and Dora did them full justice.
At the same time she could not help being conscious of many little
jerks. She remembered also the party there had been at Grote shortly
after her engagement, wondered if the same sort of gathering would be
assembling again, and tried to think of herself as hostess to Mrs.
Price, Lady Ewart, and Mrs. Per. They were really very terrible people,
and on this occasion of her home-coming with Claude it was beyond all
question that the badinage would be of the most superlative order. She
remembered with fatal distinctness how her mother-in-law had alluded to
Mrs. Per, before Dora met her, as very superior, and it seemed to her
that no long and conscientious analysis of character could have arrived
at a report so definitely and completely true as was the verdict
conveyed by those two words. Yet she had married Claude, she loved
Claude: to accept the burden of this honour was clearly one of the
obligations entailed upon her, for it was Mr. Osborne’s wish, his very
kindly wish, backed and originated by his wife, and there was no shadow
of excuse to shelter under for declining it. So her pause before
replying was not greater than could be well filled by the smile with
which she greeted the proposal.
“Ah, but how dear of you,” she said cordially, “but we shall make all
kinds of mistakes. Are you sure you and Mrs. Osborne are willing to
risk our making a hash of your party? I shall probably forget most
things, and Claude will complete it by forgetting the remainder.”
Mr. Osborne laughed.
“My dear, you fill my plate with that hash, and I’ll ask for more,” he
said. “I’ll send up my plate twice for that hash, hey? That’s capital,
and it will give Mrs. O. a bit of a rest, for she’s a little overdone.
Indeed, I was thinking of putting off the party, but she wouldn’t hear
of it. And there’s another thing, my dear. Couldn’t you manage to call
me ‘Dad,’ as the boys do? It isn’t in nature that you should call
Claude’s father Mr. Osborne. I know it’s a favour to ask, like, but you
and me hit it off from the first, didn’t we? You was the right wife for
Claude, and no mistake.”
That met with a far more spontaneous response from Dora. There was
affection, kindness, as always, in what he said, but there was more than
that now--namely, a pathos of a very touching kind, in his making a
favour of so simple a request. Dora was ashamed of not having complied
with it before it was asked.
“Why, of course,” she said. “Dad, Dad, doesn’t it come naturally? And if
you talk such nonsense, Dad, about its being a favour, I shall--I shall
call Claude Mr. Osborne Junior.”
He patted her hand gently.
“Thank you, my dear, thank you,” he said. “Mrs. Per calls me Mr.
Osborne, as you’ve often heard, and I don’t know that with her somehow
that I want her to call me different. But I know with people like you,
born in another rank of life, that’s not the custom. You make pet names
and what not, not that I ask that. But I should feel it as a favour, my
dear, I should indeed, if you felt you could manage to say ‘Dad’ like
the boys do.”
Dora held up a reproachful forefinger.
“Now, I warn you, Dad,” she said. “In one moment Claude shall be called
what I said he should be.”
“Then not a word more about it. Well, give my love to that rascal who’s
got so much more than he deserves, bless him, and we expect you both
to-morrow. Gone to see Uncle Alf, has he? Poor old Alf: a mass of
lumbago he was when I saw him two days ago. And acid? I should scarce
have thought that anyone could have felt so unkind. And a beautiful day
it was, too, with the sun shining, and all nature, as you may say,
rejoicing--all but poor old Alf, God bless him. But Claude always does
him more good than a quart of liniment, or embrocation either, though
what he spends on doctors’ stuff is beyond all telling.”
Such was Mr. Osborne’s plan, and, as has been said, the accomplishment
of it gave Dora some rather bad moments. The party was terrifically
ill-assorted: Lady Ewart, Mrs. Price, and one or two more like them and
their husbands, being balanced against her mother and Austell, the
Hungarian ambassador and his wife, and several others of that particular
world in which both Mr. and Mrs. Osborne so much wished to be at home.
Dora, in consequence, was positively tossed and gored by unremitting
dilemma. She was obliged to make herself what she would have called both
cheap and vulgar in order to convey at all to the Prices and Ewarts that
particular pitch of cordiality to which they were accustomed. Alderman
Price, for instance, habitually declined a second helping, not because
he did not want (and intend) to have it, but because good manners made
him say “No” the first time and “Yes” the second. As for asking for
more, as Austell did, he would not have considered that any kind of
behaviour. He was used to be pressed or “tempted,” and Dora had to press
and tempt him--a thing which, though she would have been delighted if he
had eaten a whole haunch of venison, she found difficult to do
naturally. You had to call the footman back (Mrs. Osborne did it quite
easily), and get him to put Mr. Price’s plate aside, and wait till he
had given the affair a second thought. Then he said, “Well, I don’t know
as if----” and the matter was brought to a triumphant conclusion. Yet it
was not easy to manage if the procedure was new to you. Or, again, his
wife particularly liked a glass of port after dinner, which after all
was a completely innocent desire, but her gentility was such that she
would never have thought of accepting it when it was casually offered
her, but every night it had to be accepted in order to oblige Dora. Mrs.
Osborne, before giving up the reins of government to her
daughter-in-law, had imparted this diplomatic instruction, and Dora had
been subsequently assured that her pressing and tempting was held to be
the perfection of hospitality.
The flow of badinage, too, that went on incessantly from morning till
night, and was almost exclusively matrimonial in character, was
difficult to live up to, for whatever she or Claude did was construed by
Mr. Osborne or Sir Thomas (with whom Dora, so she was assured by Lady
Ewart, had become a favourite) into having some connubial bearing. If,
as happened one day, Claude drove Mrs. Price home from the shooting,
Lady Ewart, with an inflamed and delighted countenance, told Dora that
she wouldn’t wonder if they lost their way, and said the motor had
broken down, to explain their coming in late. Or again Dora was
pompously asked by Sir Thomas, on a morning of streaming wet, when no
shooting was possible, to have a game of billiards, and accepting this
proposal was expected to be immensely amused by the suggestion that
Claude would be found hiding in the window seat, to hear what went on.
The joke was all-embracing; if she spoke to Claude somebody wondered
(audibly) what she was saying; if she spoke to anyone else, it was,
again audibly, imagined that Claude was looking jealous. And if, for the
moment, she did not speak to anybody, wonder was expressed as to what
was on her mind.
All this was trivial enough in itself, and, as she well knew, oceans and
continents of kindliness lay behind it. Her guests--this section of them
at any rate--were pleased and well entertained as far as her part was
concerned, and were charmed with her. But during all those seven
stricken days--for the party was of the most hospitable order, and
embraced a complete week--she had to nail a brave face, so to speak,
over her own, and set her teeth inside the smiling mouth. The Prices and
the Ewarts had come here to enjoy themselves, and clearly they did. But
there was a certain thick-skinned robustness which was necessary to
anyone who had to enter into the spirit of their enjoyment. Had the
party consisted entirely of Ewarts and Prices and “Pers,” Dora would
have found her own conduct an affair of infinitely less difficulty. As
it was, her mother and Austell were there, and some six or seven more of
her own world who looked on with faint smiles at such times as humour
was particularly abundant, and, to do the barest justice to it, it must
be said that it seemed unfailingly ubiquitous. One night Sir Thomas had
taken Madame Kodjek, the wife of the Hungarian ambassador, into dinner,
and in an unusual pause in the conversation Dora had heard her say in
her faint silvery voice: “How very amusing, Sir Thomas. What fun you
must have in Sheffield.” Then she turned her back on him, put a barrier
of a white elbow on the table between him and her, and talked to Dora
herself, three places off, for the rest of dinner--a thing which, as Sir
Thomas’s indignant face silently testified, was conduct to which he was
unaccustomed. Clearly such breach of ordinary manners was a thing
unheard of in Sheffield. Dora, halfway between giggles and despair at
the incident, had not, though longing to know, the heart to ask Mimi
afterward what was the particular incident that made her conclude that
life in Sheffield was so humorous an affair; but Sir Thomas had confided
in his favourite that he thought the Baroness a very haughty lady and
without any sense of what was due “to the gentleman who took you in to
dinner.”
It had been difficult, therefore, to steer a course, and, as in the case
of those wandering channels in the lagoons, there were here no friendly
groups of _pali_ to guide her. She had to guess her way, turn her helm
swiftly this way and that, to avoid running aground. Had she not been
Dora Osborne she would, if she had found herself in a house party of
this description, have had entrancing bedroom talks to Mimi and others
about Sir Thomas and the Ewarts, and--the Osbornes. Such talks would not
have been unkindly; she would have seen, even as she saw now, that all
manner of excellent qualities underlay the irredeemable vulgarity, and,
a thing more difficult in her present position, she would have seen the
humorous side of affairs. But, as it was, she could not have any bedroom
talks at all of this description. Indeed, Mimi and others pointedly
avoided, as they were bound to do, any mention of these other guests
from the amiable desire not to say things that would embarrass her. Dora
had married an Osborne, and by that act had joined another circle. True,
she had not in the least left her own, but she had taken on, by
necessity, the relations and friends of her husband. Indeed, looking at
the transaction as a whole, there was not one of her friends who did not
think she had done right, and few who did not a little envy her. There
were some slight inconveniences in marrying into such a family, but they
weighed very light indeed if balanced against the consequent advantages,
and it was the business of her friends to minimize these disadvantages
for her, pretend that Sir Thomas made no particular impression on them,
and be deaf to Dora’s insidiousness in getting Mrs. Price to have her
glass of port. And the advantages were so great: she had gained
superabundant wealth in exchange for crippling poverty, the Osbornes’
house was now one to which everybody of any sense, and many of no
sense, went, if they were so fortunate as to be asked, and, above all,
she had married that charming and quiet Adonis of a husband, who looked
anyhow leagues away from and above his effusive parents.
And Claude? During all this week Dora had been filled with an almost
ecstatic admiration of him. He took the place corresponding to that
which she herself so difficultly occupied, with perfect ease and
success, and without apparent effort. To Mrs. Price’s most outrageous
sallies he found a reply that convulsed her with laughter, or made her,
as the case might be, call him a “naughty man,” and the thing seemed to
be no trouble to him. And for the time, anyhow, such replies gave her no
jerks, or, if they did, they were jerks of relief. “I shall warn Sir
Thomas, Lady Ewart,” he would say, “and you will find yourself watched,”
and without pause or hint of discomfiture continue a Bach conversation
with Madame Kodjek.
Dora had set herself with a heartfelt enthusiasm to study and find out
the secret of this wonderful performance, and she came to the conclusion
that it was consummate tact grafted on to a nature as kindly as his
father’s or mother’s that produced this perfect flower of behaviour. And
the tact--a rare phenomenon rather, for tact implies the tactician, the
pleasant schemer--was apparently unconscious. At least if it was
conscious, it was Claude’s delightful modesty that disclaimed the
knowledge of it. One evening she had a word with him about it.
“Darling, I don’t know how you manage,” she said, “and oh, Claude, I
wish you would teach me. Everyone’s delighted with you, and you do it
all so easily. How can you flirt--yes, darling, flirt--with Mrs. Price
one moment and without transition talk to Mimi on the other side?”
“Oh, the Price woman isn’t so bad,” said he. “She’s a kind old soul
really, and if you chaff her a bit she asks no more.”
He had come in to see her before going down to the smoking room again,
where the best cigars in England were, so to speak, on tap, and where
Per and Sir Thomas, between the cigars, a little brandy and soda, and
the recollections of their prowess among the pheasants during the day,
always sat up late. In Mr. Osborne’s house it was one of the rules of
honour that the host should express a wish to sit up later than any of
his guests, or wait at any rate till they all had yawned before
proposing retirement, and Claude, after this cheerful remark about Mrs.
Price, turned to leave the room again. Dora knew what was expected of
him and suddenly rebelled.
“Surely you can leave them to drink and smoke and turn out the lights,”
she said. “Do stop and talk to me. I have sent Hendon away, and who is
to brush my hair? Besides, I want to talk. I’ve got better right to talk
to you than Sir Thomas has. Oh, Claude, teach me: you are yourself all
the time, and yet you can say things to Mrs. Price, which, if it wasn’t
you----”
Dora broke off. He had unpinned the tiara, which was one of his father’s
many wedding gifts to her, and which she wore, knowing it was a
ludicrous thing to do in the country, because it pleased him, and next
moment her hair, unpinned also by a movement or two of his deft fingers,
fell in cataracts round her face.
“I don’t see the trouble,” he said. “Lady Ewart isn’t your sort,
darling, but it’s you who are so clever. It’s you who manage so well,
not me. Why, she said only to-day that she was quite jealous of you, for
Sir Thomas thought such a lot of you, though of course that was only her
chaff. And they say he’ll be in the running for a peerage at the next
birthday honours.”
For the moment Dora was silent; simply she could not speak. She saw in
the looking glass in front of her, looking over his shoulder, that face
which to her was the most beautiful thing in the world, and
simultaneously she heard what that beautiful mouth said. For that
instant her mind was divided: it could not choose between beauty and the
hopelessness of what was said. As if anybody cared who was made a peer,
or as if a peerage conferred not only nobility but a single ounce of
breeding! As if a problematic Lord Ewart could be for that reason even a
shade more tolerable than a Sir Thomas of the same name! What could it
matter, except to guards and railway porters who might count on a rather
larger tip? And then the greater potency of her lover’s face absorbed
her, and she lifted up her hands and drew it down to her. “Ah, well,
what does it all matter?” she said, “so long as there’s you and me? But
go down, dear, if you think you had better, and be sure to yawn a great
deal, so that they won’t sit up very late.”
But after he had gone she wondered whether she guessed the reason why
Claude made himself appropriate so easily to Lady Ewart and Mrs. Price.
Was it simply because he found no difficulty in doing so? Was not his
cleverness, his tact, shown rather in the fact that he could talk to
Mimi appropriately? And it was at that moment, as she remembered now,
that a certain trouble, vague and distant as yet, and couched in the
innermost recesses and darkness of her mind, began to stir. She scarcely
then knew what it was: she knew only that there was veiled trouble
somewhere.
After this week of the shooting party, she and Claude had returned to
town, still occupying the flat in Mount Street, where they remained till
Christmas, with week-ends in the country. Most of these had been passed
at the houses of Dora’s friends, and it could not but please and gratify
her to find how Claude was welcomed and liked, so that, if at Grote
there had been trouble astir, it was still again. He did all the usual
things better than the average: he shot well, he played golf
excellently, he was a quiet and reliable partner at bridge, he talked
pleasantly, always got up when a woman entered the room, and always
opened the door for her to leave it. Such accomplishments did not, it is
true, reach down very far below the surface, but a young man, if he
happens to be quite exceptionally good-looking and has such things at
his fingers’ ends, will generally be a welcome guest. Dora had never
actually wanted comforting with regard to him, but it pleased her to see
that he took his place easily and naturally. For the rest, he was busy
enough, for in view of the next general election he was nursing a
suburban constituency, which promised well. He spoke with fluency and
good sense, he was making an excellent impression in public, and he
earned a considerable personal popularity in the domestic circles of
his voters. And in this connection Dora had another uncomfortable
moment.
As was frankly admitted between them, she could help him a good deal
here, and she often went down with him and made innumerable calls at
West Brentworth on miles of detached and semi-detached villas. It was an
advantage beyond doubt, in this sort of place, that Claude had married a
girl of “title,” and Lady Dora Osborne, or, as she was more generally
addressed, Lady Osborne, charmed a large section of constituents not
only because she was delightful, but because her brother was the Earl
and her mother the Countess. There was no use in denying or failing to
make the most of this adventitious advantage, and Dora made the most of
it by being completely natural, and entering with zest into the
questions of board-wages and the iniquities of tweenies. She could do
that with knowledge and experience to back her, since such minutiæ had
formed a very real part of her life up to the time of her marriage, and
her mother was an adept in getting the most out of those who were so
fortunate as to be the recipients of the somewhat exiguous wages. She
could speak about beer money and the use of coals when the household was
on board-wages with point and accuracy, and it charmed West Brentworth
to find that Lady Osborne was not “too high” to take interest in such
matters. At other houses, however, there reigned a more aristocratic
tone: there would be a peerage and a copy of the _World_ on the table,
and a marked unconsciousness of the existence of anybody who was not a
baronet. There the parties for Newmarket were discussed, and Mrs.
Sandford, pouring out tea, and “tempting” Lady Osborne to a second cup,
would say that the whole world seemed to have been in town lately, and
was Lady Osborne dining at the Carlton two nights ago when so many
distinguished people were there?
Upon which would ensue a very enlightened conversation. Mrs. Sandford
knew quite well that the Earl of Wendover was Dora’s first cousin, and
the Viscount Bramley her second cousin (for that came out of the
peerage) and what a beautiful terrace there was at Bramley (for that
came out of _Country Life_).
Then--and this was the uncomfortable moment--she and Claude got into
their motor, having made the last call, and started for town. Claude
said, “What a superior woman Mrs. Sandford seems to be.”
All these things, and others of which these were typical, Dora thought
over as she sat in the window of her _sala_ looking over the Grand Canal
on that baking afternoon in June when Claude had gone to Milan to meet
his father and mother. They were all trivial enough, each at any rate
was trivial; but to-day she wondered whether there was an addition sum
to be done with regard to them. Each, if she took them singly, might be
disregarded, just as half-pennies have no official status on cheques and
are not treated seriously. But did they add up to something, to
something that could not be disregarded?
She did not know, and, very wisely, forebore to conjecture. Besides, the
gross heat of the day was subsiding, and a little breeze had begun to
stir; below the window Giovanni had already finished the toilet of the
gondola, and was putting in the tea basket, since she had said she would
have tea out on the lagoon. Venice called to her, beckoned her away from
thoughts where something sombre or agitating might lie concealed, into
the sunlight and splendour of the day.