第98章

And the trip was really quite nice.Only Connie kept saying to herself:Why don't I really care!Why am I never really thrilled?How awful,that I don't really care about the landscape any more!But I don't.It's rather awful.I'm like Saint Bernard,who could sail down the lake of Lucerne without ever noticing that there were even mountain and green water.Ijust don't care for landscape any more.Why should one stare at it?Why should one?I refuse to.

No,she found nothing vital in France or Switzerland or the Tyrol or Italy.She just was carted through it all.And it was all less real than Wragby.Less real than the awful Wragby!She felt she didn't care if she never saw France or Switzerland or Italy again.They'd keep.Wragby was more real.

As for people!people were all alike,with very little difference.They all wanted to get money out of you:or,if they were travellers,they wanted to get enjoyment,perforce,like squeezing blood out of a stone.Poor mountains!

poor landscape!it all had to be squeezed and squeezed and squeezed again,to provide a thrill,to provide enjoyment.What did people mean,with their simply determined enjoying of themselves?

No!said Connie to herself I'd rather be at Wragby,where I can go about and be still,and not stare at anything or do any performing of any sort.

This tourist performance of enjoying oneself is too hopelessly humiliating:

it's such a failure.

She wanted to go back to Wragby,even to Clifford,even to poor crippled Clifford.He wasn't such a fool as this swarming holidaying lot,anyhow.

But in her inner consciousness she was keeping touch with the other man.She mustn't let her connexion with him go:oh,she mustn't let it go,or she was lost,lost utterly in this world of riff-raffy expensive people and joy-hogs.Oh,the joy-hogs!Oh 'enjoying oneself'!Another modern form of sickness.

They left the car in Mestre,in a garage,and took the regular steamer over to Venice.It was a lovely summer afternoon,the shallow lagoon rippled,the full sunshine made Venice,turning its back to them across the water,look dim.

At the station quay they changed to a gondola,giving the man the address.

He was a regular gondolier in a white-and-blue blouse,not very good-looking,not at all impressive.

'Yes!The Villa Esmeralda!Yes!I know it!I have been the gondolier for a gentleman there.But a fair distance out!'

He seemed a rather childish,impetuous fellow.He rowed with a certain exaggerated impetuosity,through the dark side-canals with the horrible,slimy green walls,the canals that go through the poorer quarters,where the washing hangs high up on ropes,and there is a slight,or strong,odour of sewage.

But at last he came to one of the open canals with pavement on either side,and looping bridges,that run straight,at right-angles to the Grand Canal.The two women sat under the little awning,the man was perched above,behind them.

'Are the signorine staying long at the Villa Esmeralda?'he asked,rowing easy,and 'wiping his perspiring face with a white-and-blue handkerchief.

'Some twenty days:we are both married ladies,'said Hilda,in her curious hushed voice,that made her Italian sound so foreign.

'Ah!Twenty days!'said the man.There was a pause.After which he asked:

'Do the signore want a gondolier for the twenty days or so that they will stay at the Villa Esmeralda?Or by the day,or by the week?'

Connie and Hilda considered.In Venice,it is always preferable to have one's own gondola,as it is preferable to have one's own car on land.

'What is there at the Villa?what boats?'

'There is a motor-launch,also a gondola.But--'The but meant:

they won't be your property.

'How much do you charge?'

It was about thirty shillings a day,or ten pounds a week.

'Is that the regular price?'asked Hilda.

'Less,Signora,less.The regular price--'

The sisters considered.

'Well,'said Hilda,'come tomorrow morning,and we will arrange it.

What is your name?'

His name was Giovanni,and he wanted to know at what time he should come,and then for whom should he say he was waiting.Hilda had no card.

Connie gave him one of hers.He glanced at it swiftly,with his hot,southern blue eyes,then glanced again.

'Ah!'he said,lighting up.'Milady!Milady,isn't it?'

'Milady Costanza!'said Connie.

He nodded,repeating:'Milady Costanza!'and putting the card carefully away in his blouse.

The Villa Esmeralda was quite a long way out,on the edge of the lagoon looking towards Chioggia.It was not a very old house,and pleasant,with the terraces looking seawards,and below,quite a big garden with dark trees,walled in from the lagoon.

Their host was a heavy,rather coarse Scotchman who had made a good fortune in Italy before the war,and had been knighted for his ultrapatriotism during the war.His wife was a thin,pale,sharp kind of person with no fortune of her own,and the misfortune of having to regulate her husband's rather sordid amorous exploits.He was terribly tiresome with the servants.

But having had a slight stroke during the winter,he was now more manageable.

The house was pretty full.Besides Sir Malcolm and his two daughters,there were seven more people,a Scotch couple,again with two daughters;a young Italian Contessa,a widow;a young Georgian prince,and a youngish English clergyman who had had pneumonia and was being chaplain to Sir Alexander for his health's sake.The prince was penniless,good-looking,would make an excellent chauffeur,with the necessary impudence,and basta!The Contessa was a quiet little puss with a game on somewhere.The clergyman was a raw simple fellow from a Bucks vicarage:luckily he had left his wife and two children at home.And the Guthries,the family of four,were good solid Edinburgh middle class,enjoying everything in a solid fashion,and daring everything while risking nothing.

Connie and Hilda ruled out the prince at once.The Guthries were more or less their own sort,substantial,hut boring:and the girls wanted husbands.