awareness, I guess that Stanford just wasn’t holding his plate out. So I hope you’re both coming this afternoon?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” answered Ned. “Ken’s going. But Julia and I both went on Tuesday.”
She expressed her disappointment with flattering exaggeration, and asked if we had enjoyed Verona.
“Very much,” answered Ned. “Graziella wasn’t able to come with us, so Julia acted as guide.”
“Oh, I wish I’d been with you,” she said. “I think Julia’d be a just marvellous guide.”
“Oh yes,” he said, with great demureness, “she is. Excellent. She takes one to all the places one ought to go to. And sometimes,” he added, with even greater demureness, “to places one ought not to go to.” And thinking, no doubt, that this could not be improved on as an exit line, he excused himself from our company and left the terrace.
I was still not able to write to you immediately of the Phenomenon of the Recurring Major, for Marylou persuaded me to go with her on a shopping expedition. It seemed to me that on the Rialto she had already acquired in wholesale quantities every form of merchandise that Venice offers to the discerning tourist; but she assured me that this was not the case.
As a result of this diversion, it was not until midday that I was able to return here and write to you of my disquieting experience. Even now, I have not escaped interruption. My secluded corner of the terrace has been taken over for the purpose of an assignation. I am left exposed to enquiry from all the tourists who pass to and fro in the lobby of the Cytherea and for some reason look on me as a likely source of information: three large German matrons, wearing identical straw hats, have asked me the way to the ladies’; an earnest young Englishman has asked me to point out the house where Byron lived; a party of French schoolgirls have asked me which
Before going to lunch, I shall have to return to my room to get the guide book to Verona — having confessed to Marylou that it was the foundation of my success there, I felt obliged by courtesy to offer it to her for this afternoon’s excursion. I have explained to her that it is Ragwort’s and she must be very careful of it.
On leaving my room again, I shall be circumspect but not fearful. Writing to you has persuaded me to look on the bright side: I now realize that to see the Major when he isn’t really there must at least be preferable to seeing him when he is really there. If, however, there is any repetition of the Phenomenon, I shall report it forthwith by way of postscript.
Terrace of the Cytherea.
Friday evening.
Men, Selena, are very odd creatures — I shall never understand them. There seems to be in their conduct no reason or consistency of purpose — they are blown like feathers this way and that on every changing breeze of mood and fancy, so that it is quite impossible to predict, on any rational basis, what they will do next. Delightful, of course, in some ways, but confusing. Take, merely as an example, the enchanting Ned, with whom I should have said this morning that there was not the slightest chance — well, I will tell you everything, just as it happened.
Having returned to my room to fetch the guide book to Verona, I left it again without misadventure — that is to say, without seeing the Major in fact or fantasy: I concluded with relief that the affliction had been temporary. Coming downstairs again, I found myself crossing the bridge back to the main part of the hotel only a few paces behind Ned and Kenneth. As seemed natural in the circumstances, I said “hello” to them, patting Ned on the elbow — a gesture, I think, of no greater intimacy than one Art Lover might in good fellowship show towards another.
Ned’s reaction to this was most extraordinary. He turned round towards me very sharply and violently, almost as if preparing to defend himself against some physical attack, and said, in a tone of disproportionate ill-temper, “For God’s sake, Julia, don’t do that.” This seemed an absurdly exaggerated response: he could hardly suppose that I would choose such a time and place for an improper advance; besides, his reaction was more appropriate to an attack on his life than on his virtue.
“Dear me,” said Ragwort. “How very interesting. We can assume, I suppose, that the young man would not immediately have realized who it was who had touched him on the elbow?”
“Certainly,” said Selena. “And when a man seems at lunchtime to be in fear of his life and is found murdered before dinner, one is disposed to think that there must be some connection.”
I apologized for having startled him.
“Don’t take any notice,” said Kenneth, evidently embarrassed by Ned’s abruptness. “He’s just started worrying about tomorrow’s flight. He gets very nervous about flying, don’t you, Ned?”
“Yes,” said his friend. “Yes, horribly, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Julia — I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Looking at him more closely, I was inclined to believe that this was indeed the reason for his curious behaviour, rather than anything specifically to do with me. He was very pale and showed every sign of nervousness. I noticed with great distress that the perfection of his chin was marred by a strip of adhesive plaster.
“Ned,” I cried, unable to conceal my anguish at this aesthetic catastrophe, “what have you done to your face?”
“My hand was shaking so much I cut myself shaving,” he said. “Isn’t it silly? Do I look very awful?”
“No, no,” I said, “no, of course not.”
I filled the time it took us to reach the dining-room with reassurance and compliment; but Ned’s nervousness seemed unabated — I noticed that he ate no lunch and even spilt some of his wine. Still, though concluding that there had been nothing personal in his response to my greeting on the bridge, I would not have given a lira for my chances of further success with him.
Graziella arrived, as we were finishing lunch, to round up in time for a two o’clock departure those Art Lovers who were going to Verona — that is to say, Kenneth and the two Americans. Kenneth hesitated, and seemed to be asking Ned if he minded being left alone; but eventually, patting him on the shoulder and suggesting that he should lie down for a while, he followed Graziella out of the dining-room. Ned and I were the only Art Lovers remaining — Eleanor and the Major had been absent from lunch. Coming over to my table, Ned suggested that we should have coffee together on the terrace.
“Well,” I said, as we drank our coffee, “this is our last afternoon in Venice — how are you proposing to spend it?”
“I’m still not feeling terribly well,” he answered. “I think I’d better do as Kenneth says — take a siesta.”
“What a pity,” I said, “that you won’t allow me to share it.” I entertained, as I have said, no hope of getting anywhere with this suggestion — I made it rather as a matter of form, not wishing Ned to think that the strip of adhesive plaster so detracted from his appearance that I could easily refrain from making an advance.
And for all the world as if he knew no better than a young man brought up to serve breakfasts rather than tax assessments, as if no wounding remarks had been made about obligations which he was happy to forget, as if my approach on the bridge had been a matter for satisfaction rather than alarm—“Why not?” he answered.
Men, Selena, are very odd.
We returned across the bridge to the annexe, smiled on again by the pretty chambermaids, and went, this time, to Ned’s room rather than mine.
If he felt any modest reluctance to yield again so soon and with so little intervening commentary on his soul and intellect, it was, I am bound to say, most admirably dissimulated, for he devoted himself to the enterprise with great energy and apparent enthusiasm. To such an extent, indeed, that if I were the woman to call a truce with the Revenue — but never let it be said. Such exertion, in the heat of a Venetian afternoon, ends unhealthfully in sleeping between damp sheets. Ah Selena, when in our age I complain of my rheumatics, remind me how pleasantly I earned them.
When I woke up it was past six o’clock. Ned, lying beside me, still looked so peacefully asleep that tender- heartedness prevented me from waking him. Not wanting him to think, however, that I valued him so little as to leave entirely without ceremony, I scribbled my name and address and a few discreet words of affection on the inside cover of my Finance Act and left it, by way of souvenir, on the table beside the bed.
After this, having washed and changed for dinner, I came down to the terrace to write to you of the oddness of men. I am back in my usual corner: the vine or similar shrub has thus protected me from any obligation to converse with Eleanor or the Major, both of whom have returned to the annexe in the past half-hour — they have
