Queen Lucia | Page 5

path of broken paving-stones, for she had lingered for a sad moment
at Perdita's empty border.
"Lucia mia!" he exclaimed. "Ben arrivata! So you walked from the
station?"
"Si, Peppino, mio caro," she said. "Sta bene?"
He kissed her and relapsed into Shakespeare's tongue, for their Italian,
though firm and perfect as far as it went, could not be considered as

going far, and was useless for conversational purposes, unless they
merely wanted to greet each other, or to know the time. But it was
interesting to talk Italian, however little way it went.
"Molto bene," said he, "and it's delightful to have you home again. And
how was London?" he asked in the sort of tone in which he might have
enquired after the health of a poor relation, who was not likely to
recover. She smiled rather sadly.
"Terrifically busy about nothing," she said. "All this fortnight I have
scarcely had a moment to myself. Lunches, dinners, parties of all kinds;
I could not go to half the gatherings I was bidden to. Dear good South
Kensington! Chelsea too!"
"Carissima, when London does manage to catch you, it is no wonder it
makes the most of you," he said. "You mustn't blame London for that."
"No, dear, I don't. Everyone was tremendously kind and hospitable;
they all did their best. If I blame anyone, I blame myself. But I think
this Riseholme life with its finish and its exquisiteness spoils one for
other places. London is like a railway-junction: it has no true life of its
own. There is no delicacy, no appreciation of fine shades.
Individualism has no existence there; everyone gabbles together,
gabbles and gobbles: am not I naughty? If there is a concert in a private
house--you know my views about music and the impossibility of
hearing music at all if you are stuck in the middle of a row of
people--even then, the moment it is over you are whisked away to
supper, or somebody wants to have a few words. There is always a
crowd, there is always food, you cannot be alone, and it is only in
loneliness, as Goethe says, that your perceptions put forth their flowers.
No one in London has time to listen: they are all thinking about who is
there and who isn't there, and what is the next thing. The exquisite
present, as you put it in one of your poems, has no existence there: it is
always the feverish future."
"Delicious phrase! I should have stolen that gem for my poor poems, if
you had discovered it before."

She was too much used to this incense to do more than sniff it in
unconsciously, and she went on with her tremendous indictment.
"It isn't that I find fault with London for being so busy," she said with
strict impartiality, "for if being busy was a crime, I am sure there are
few of us here who would escape hanging. But take my life here, or
yours for that matter. Well, mine if you like. Often and often I am alone
from breakfast till lunch-time, but in those hours I get through more
that is worth doing than London gets through in a day and a night. I
have an hour at my music not looking about and wondering who my
neighbours are, but learning, studying, drinking in divine melody. Then
I have my letters to write, and you know what that means, and I still
have time for an hour's reading so that when you come to tell me lunch
is ready, you will find that I have been wandering through Venetian
churches or sitting in that little dark room at Weimar, or was it Leipsic?
How would those same hours have passed in London?
"Sitting perhaps for half an hour in the Park, with dearest Aggie
pointing out to me, with thrills of breathless excitement, a woman who
was in the divorce court, or a coroneted bankrupt. Then she would drag
me off to some terrible private view full of the same people all staring
at and gabbling to each other, or looking at pictures that made poor me
gasp and shudder. No, I am thankful to be back at my own sweet
Riseholme again. I can work and think here."
She looked round the panelled entrance-hall with a glow of warm
content at toeing at home again that quite eclipsed the mere physical
heat produced by her walk from the station. Wherever her eyes fell,
those sharp dark eyes that resembled buttons covered with shiny
American cloth, they saw nothing that jarred, as so much in London
jarred. There were bright brass jugs on the window sill, a bowl of
pot-pourri on the black table in the centre, an oak settee by the open
fireplace, a