Page 379 - lady-chatterlys-lover

of sickness.
They left the car in Mestre, in a garage, and took the
regular steamer over to Venice. It was a lovely summer af-
ternoon, 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 pave-
ment on either side, and looping bridges, that run straight,
at right-angles to the Grand Canal. The two women sat un-
der 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 Hil-
da, in her curious hushed voice, that made her Italian sound
so foreign.
’Ah! Twenty days!’ said the man. There was a pause. Af-
ter which he asked: ‘Do the signore want a gondolier for the

Lady Chatterly’s Lover