"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. That hand, that rather
sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the
table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play
cards; only that, and nothing more.
I withdraw, stealthily.
Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where
jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring
the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue
background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town
will draw - not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of
building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman
travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in
Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and
dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of
lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities
of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns,
wood-towns - how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up
and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to
disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb
to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound.
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