Leslie Hartley: The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘My dear!’ protested Mrs. Kolynopulo, still quivering like a jelly.

‘You forget, my pretty,’ her husband reproved her, ‘that Miss Johnstone has been properly brought up.’

‘Oh dear, you Boston girls, you ingénues!’ Mrs. Kolynopulo sighed. ‘Ask us another time.’

But Lavinia had had a revulsion. ‘May my tongue rot if I do,’ she thought, and to change the subject she asked their immediate destination.

‘To see the glass made,’ Mr. Kolynopulo replied. ‘Venetian glass, what?’

‘Yes, Venetian, of course,’ Lavinia repeated helplessly.

‘Well, isn’t it one of the recognized sights? We’ve seen the prison and the pigeons.’

‘Oh, perfectly recognized,’ Lavinia almost too heartily agreed. ‘I see the posters and the man with the leaflets.’

They disembarked.

On their return they found Mrs. Johnstone seated under an awning, a rug across her knees, a bitter-looking cordial at her elbow. The chair beside her was occupied by a mound of American newspapers, and in front of her another chair supported her work—a box of silks and a vast oval frame within which the features of a sylvan scene had begun to disclose themselves. A pale green fountain rose into the air, whose jet, symmetrically bifurcated, played upon a formal cluster of lambs in one corner and a rose-red rock in the other.

The Kolynopulos approached as near as the barricade permitted. Mrs. Johnstone did not dismantle it, nor did she rise.

‘I’m glad you took Lavinia to the glass-factory,’ she observed, when the conventional expressions of sympathy had exhausted themselves. ‘I could never get her to go. She won’t take any interest in trade processes, though I often ask her where she’d be without them.’

‘We should still have each other,’ said Lavinia.

‘Of course we should, darling,’ Mrs. Johnstone remarked, greatly pleased. ‘What more do we want?’ The question hung in the air until the retirement of the Kolynopulos, bowing and smiling, seemed to have answered it.

‘Oh, Mamma,’ said Lavinia, much concerned. ‘I did not know you were ill.’

‘You might have done,’ her mother replied. ‘I told you.’

‘Yes,’ conceded Lavinia, ‘but—’

‘You are right in a way,’ admitted Mrs. Johnstone. ‘It came on afterwards. Providence would not have me a liar. All the same, I don’t like your new friends, Lavinia.’

‘Nor do I, altogether,’ Lavinia confessed.

‘Then why let them take you out?’

‘Well, we can’t both have headaches, for our own sakes,’ Lavinia obscurely replied.

‘It’s not necessary to have them more than once, and mine could have served for both of us, if you’d let it,’ Mrs. Johnstone answered. ‘You don’t understand, Lavinia. Undesirable acquaintances may be kept off in a variety of ways. You saw how I did it just now.’

‘But that was very crude, Mamma, you must own, and may have wounded them.’

‘If so, I shall have struck oil.’ Mrs. Johnstone paused to appreciate her joke. ‘No; it’s like this. You cannot be too careful. Our station in life is associated with a certain point of view and a certain standard of conduct. Once you get outside it, anything may happen to you. People like that may easily put ideas into your head, and then it’ll be no good coming to me to get them out.’

‘Would it be any good going to them?’ In vision Lavinia saw her mind as an aquarium, in which a couple of unattractive minnows, the gift of the Kolynopulos, eluded Mrs. Johnstone’s unpractised hand.

‘You’d probably find them more sympathetic,’ her mother replied. ‘But they couldn’t help you, any more than you can help me to get rid of this chill, though you may be said to have given it me, since I caught it bathing with you. But I think you might stay in this afternoon and try.’

After luncheon Lavinia excused herself from accompanying the Kolynopulos on their visit to the Arsenal.

In her diary she wrote:

‘Poor Mamma, she hasn’t the least notion of what is meant by individualism. She has read Emerson because he was a connection of ours; but she won’t cast her bantling on the rocks, as he advised. The Kolynopulos may be carelessly moulded, they are certainly not roughhewn, and they are well above the surface; indeed, they set out to attract all eyes; it would be a silly ship that went aground on them. How can it make any difference to one’s soul, that inviolable entity, whom one meets? Milton could not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue. I welcome whatever little trials the Ks. see fit to put mine to. I have summed them up; I know their tricks and their manners; I can look after myself. When their conversation becomes disagreeable, I can always change the subject, as I did this morning. They thought they were working upon my curiosity, whereas all the time I was leading them on. But, to be quite honest (though why I should say that I don’t know, since this diary is a record of my most intimate thoughts) I wouldn’t have gone with them, but for Emilio. What a contrast he is to them. No wonder people congratulated them, as they might congratulate a toad on its jewel. It must be irksome for him to propel such people about. I hope he distinguishes between us; I hope he knows I only go in their gondola on his account. Do I really want him to know that? Perhaps not; but if you like anyone you can’t rest till they know you like them. I didn’t realize I liked him until Mrs. Kolynopulo said everyone did; then I saw that they must, and the thought gave me great pleasure. I believe I could stay in Venice for ever. Certainly when the Ks. depart (which is in five days now) I shall engage him. And so to bed, “pillowed on a pleasure”, to quote F. W. H. Myers.

‘Monday.—I am a little uneasy about Mamma. If I hadn’t gone to Torcello (and it takes the best part of the day by gondola) she would have stayed in. She didn’t want me to go, and perhaps I ought not to have gone; it is dull for her being alone; but she needn’t feel so strongly about the Kolynopulos: they are quite amusing in their way, and she might just as well have come with us. Now she has a temperature again, nothing much. I offered to sit up with her the first part of the night, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Too late for the Evanses and Stephen to call now; I am glad, rather, that they couldn’t get rooms at this hotel. Another scene with Mamma about Stephen. She thinks that if I don’t marry him I’ll never marry anyone; it is hard for us to make new friends, the choice is so small. The proximity of Amelia goads her into saying more than she means. I told her that Stephen meant nothing to me; since I had been at Venice he had ceased to exist for me. She asked why Venice had made any difference. I couldn’t tell her about Emilio, who is the real reason—not that I am in love with him—Heavens! but my thoughts turn on him in a special way; they run on oiled wheels, and if I try to think about Stephen at the same time the reverie breaks up, most painfully. I owe Stephen nothing. He lectures me and domineers over me and the sight of him recalls scenes of my childhood I would much rather forget. The fact that he has loved me for ten years only exasperates me; it is a thought outside my scheme, I don’t know how to deal with it. Sufficient unto the day: to-morrow will settle all. Pray heaven he may have fallen in love with Amelia.’

But he hadn’t. Lavinia found him, when she came down next morning, sitting in an arm-chair which he scarcely seemed to touch, poring over a map. He had been waiting an hour, he said, and had already seen her mother, who was much better.

‘Yes, a good deal better,’ said Lavinia, who had also seen her.