Oh, such a shame.
What’s it all about anyhow?”
“I’ve wondered for a long time.”
“But why bring it to me?”
“I guess I’m the Black Death,” he said slowly.
“I don’t seem to bring people happiness any more.”
XXII
There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high- class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender’s bored:
“Si . . . Si . . . Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
Dick was always vividly conscious of his surroundings, while Collis Clay lived vaguely, the sharpest impressions dissolving upon a recording apparatus that had early atrophied, so the former talked and the latter listened, like a man sitting in a breeze.
Dick, worn away by the events of the afternoon, was taking it out on the inhabitants of Italy.
He looked around the bar as if he hoped an Italian had heard him and would resent his words.
“This afternoon I had tea with my sister-in-law at the Excelsior.
We got the last table and two men came up and looked around for a table and couldn’t find one.
So one of them came up to us and said, ‘Isn’t this table reserved for the Princess Orsini?’ and I said: ‘There was no sign on it,’ and he said:
‘But I think it’s reserved for the Princess Orsini.’
I couldn’t even answer him.”
“What’d he do?”
“He retired.”
Dick switched around in his chair.
“I don’t like these people.
The other day I left Rosemary for two minutes in front of a store and an officer started walking up and down in front of her, tipping his hat.”
“I don’t know,” said Collis after a moment.
“I’d rather be here than up in Paris with somebody picking your pocket every minute.”
He had been enjoying himself, and he held out against anything that threatened to dull his pleasure.
“I don’t know,” he persisted.
“I don’t mind it here.”
Dick evoked the picture that the few days had imprinted on his mind, and stared at it.
The walk toward the American Express past the odorous confectioneries of the Via Nationale, through the foul tunnel up to the Spanish Steps, where his spirit soared before the flower stalls and the house where Keats had died.
He cared only about people; he was scarcely conscious of places except for their weather, until they had been invested with color by tangible events.
Rome was the end of his dream of Rosemary.
A bell-boy came in and gave him a note.
“I did not go to the party,” it said. “I am in my room.
We leave for Livorno early in the morning.”
Dick handed the note and a tip to the boy.
“Tell Miss Hoyt you couldn’t find me.”
Turning to Collis he suggested the Bonbonieri.
They inspected the tart at the bar, granting her the minimum of interest exacted by her profession, and she stared back with bright boldness; they went through the deserted lobby oppressed by draperies holding Victorian dust in stuffy folds, and they nodded at the night concierge who returned the gesture with the bitter servility peculiar to night servants.
Then in a taxi they rode along cheerless streets through a dank November night.
There were no women in the streets, only pale men with dark coats buttoned to the neck, who stood in groups beside shoulders of cold stone.
“My God!” Dick sighed.
“What’s a matter?”
“I was thinking of that man this afternoon:
‘This table is reserved for the Princess Orsini.’
Do you know what these old Roman families are?
They’re bandits, they’re the ones who got possession of the temples and palaces after Rome went to pieces and preyed on the people.”
“I like Rome,” insisted Collis.
“Why won’t you try the races?”
“I don’t like races.”
“But all the women turn out—”