Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with
meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies
embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence - it is what the ancients
blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased
an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good
words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded
out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us....
Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate
enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly
pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We
have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the
artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for
future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more
admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to
be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and
profess to feel that she has really cast a charm - a state of affairs
which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point.
Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and
person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a
joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a
man's most terrible experiences - volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the
landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear - were begun as
a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many
things in a joking way - especially in Northern countries, where it is
easy to joke unseen.
Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom
which has grown rather rusty in England.
Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require
constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not
correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at
command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use
them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we
should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath
away - the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of
rhetoric and will not be happy without it.
An English girl of her social standing - I lay stress upon the standing,
for it prescribes the conduct - an English girl would never listen to
such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would
ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be
seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system
which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a
siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps
ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the
wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured
stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be
written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to
be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and
only because I trembled too much, or too little - I forget which - on a
certain occasion.
I have heard those skilled in amatory matters say that the novice will
do well to confine his attentions to young girls, avoiding married women
or widows. They, the older ones, are a bad school - too prone to pardon
infractions of the code, too indulgent towards foreigners and males in
general. The girls are not so easily pleased; in fact (entre nous) they
are often the devil to propitiate. There is something remorseless about
them. They put you on your mettle. They keep you dangling. Quick-witted
and accustomed to all the niceties of love-badinage, they listen to
every word you have to say, pondering its possibly veiled signification.
Thus far and no further, they seem to imply. Yet each hour brings you
nearer the goal, if - if you obey the code. Weigh well your conduct
during the preliminary stage; remember you are dealing with a
professional in the finer shades of meaning. Presumption, awkwardness,
imprudence; these are the three cardinal sins, and the greatest of these
is imprudence. Be humble; be prepared.
Her best time for conversation, Ninetta tells me, is after luncheon,
when she is generally alone for a little while. At that hour therefore I
appear with a shirt or something that requires a button - would she mind?
The hotel people are so dreadfully understaffed just now - this war! - and
one really cannot live without shirts, can one? Would she mind very
much? Or perhaps in the evening ... is she more free in the evening?
Alas, no; never in the evenings; never for a single moment; never save
on religious festivals, one of which, she suddenly remembers, will take
place in a week or so.
This is innocent coquetry and perhaps said to test my self-restraint,
which is equal to the occasion. An impatient admirer might exclaim - -
"Ah, let us meet, then!"
- language which would be permissible after four meetings, and
appropriate after six; not after two. With submissive delicacy I reply
hoping that the may shine brightly, that she may have all the joy she
deserves and give her friends all the pleasure they desire. One of them,
assuredly, would be pained in his heart not to see her on that evening.
Could she guess who it is? Let her try to discover him tonight, when she
is just closing her eyes to sleep, all alone, and thinking about
things - -
There I leave it, for the present.
