She
moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom
will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds
me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his
long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily
remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out."
But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni - those that
were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour?
Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep
the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health.
Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope
deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be
found anywhere else?
Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things
one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by
accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at
your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her
seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The
fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she
describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine
frankness - ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge
of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She
will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be
de trop.
This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion - my health and
happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world;
was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet
fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been
useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without
trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old
palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight.
Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my
arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an
hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged
upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing
cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays
cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps
the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds
firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky
fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to
feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes.
"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please
listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with
your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches.
Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays?
The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...."
She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks
the girl in Italian:
"What was the name of that place?"
"That place - - "
"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my
skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white
macaroni?"
"Soriano in Cimino."
"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram
from here every morning. They can put you up."
A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and
self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms,
imbibing their strange Oriental spirit - not your vulgar Orient, but
something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know,
of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at
self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French
official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol - another
unsuccessful venture.
Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an
earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her
into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly
persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has
she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old
roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will
find it. She possesses that fatal craving - the craving for disinterested
affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom
affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and
therefore desirable above all else - desirable, and how seldom attained!
The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She
looks up, but only her eyes reply.
"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?"
That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she
always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she
never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of
her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the
sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an
ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to
dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same
time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things.
