“It looks quite wonderfully expensive and smart now,” said Lilly.
“Expensive and smart, eh! Ha-ha-ha! Well, it cost me a hundred and twenty francs to have it turned, and I found that expensive enough. Well, now, come — ” here Argyle’s voice took on a new gay cheer. “A whiskey and soda, Lilly? Say when! Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You’re going to have double that. You’re no lily of the valley here, remember. Not with me. Not likely. Siamo nel paradiso, remember.”
“But why should we drink your whiskey? Tea would do for us just as well.”
“Not likely! Not likely! When I have the pleasure of your company, my boy, we drink a glass of something, unless I am utterly stripped. Say when, Aaron.”
“When,” said Aaron.
Argyle at last seated himself heavily in a small chair. The sun had left the loggia, but was glowing still on Giotto’s tower and the top of the cathedral facade, and on the remoter great red-tiled dome.
“Look at my little red monthly rose,” said Argyle. “Wonderful little fellow! I wouldn’t have anything happen to him for the world. Oh, a bacchic little chap. I made Pasquale wear a wreath of them on his hair. Very becoming they were, very. — Oh, I’ve had a charming show of flowers. Wonderful creatures sunflowers are.” They got up and put their heads over the balcony, looking down on the square below. “Oh, great fun, great fun. — Yes, I had a charming show of flowers, charming. — Zinnias, petunias, ranunculus, sunflowers, white stocks — oh, charming. Look at that bit of honeysuckle. You see the berries where his flowers were! Delicious scent, I assure you.”
Under the little balcony wall Argyle had put square red-tiled pots, all round, and in these still bloomed a few pansies and asters, whilst in a corner a monthly rose hung flowers like round blood-drops. Argyle was as tidy and scrupulous in his tiny rooms and his balcony as if he were a first-rate sea-man on a yacht. Lilly remarked on this.
“Do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me? Oh, I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it. We all end that way. Age makes old maids of us all. And Tanny is all right, you say? Bring her to see me. Why didn’t she come today?”
“You know you don’t like people unless you expect them.”
“Oh, but my dear fellow! — You and Tanny; you’d be welcome if you came at my busiest moment. Of course you would. I’d be glad to see you if you interrupted me at any crucial moment. — I am alone now till August. Then we shall go away together somewhere. But you and Tanny; why, there’s the world, and there’s Lilly: that’s how I put it, my boy.”
“All right, Argyle. — Hoflichkeiten.”
“What? Gar keine Hoflichkeiten. Wahrhaftiger Kerl bin ich. — When am I going to see Tanny? When are you coming to dine with me?”
“After you’ve dined with us — say the day after tomorrow.”
“Right you are. Delighted — . Let me look if that water’s boiling.” He got up and poked half himself inside the bedroom. “Not yet. Damned filthy methylated spirit they sell.”
“Look,” said Lilly. “There’s Del Torre!”
“Like some sort of midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can’t stand it, I tell you. I can’t stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe’s got the smother-fly in these infernal shoddy militarists.”
“Del Torre’s coming out of it as soon as he can,” said Lilly.
“I should think so, too.”
“I like him myself — very much. Look, he’s seen us! He wants to come up, Argyle.”
“What, in that uniform! I’ll see him in his grandmother’s crinoline first.”
“Don’t be fanatical, it’s bad taste. Let him come up a minute.”
“Not for my sake. But for yours, he shall,” Argyle stood at the parapet of the balcony and waved his arm. “Yes, come up,” he said, “come up, you little mistkafer — what the Americans call a bug. Come up and be damned.”
Of course Del Torre was too far off to hear this exhortation. Lilly also waved to him — and watched him pass into the doorway far below.
“I’ll rinse one of these glasses for him,” said Argyle.
The Marchese’s step was heard on the stone stairs: then his knock.
“Come in! Come in!” cried Argyle from the bedroom, where he was rinsing the glass. The Marchese entered, grinning with his curious, half courteous greeting. “Go through — go through,” cried Argyle. “Go on to the loggia — and mind your head. Good heavens, mind your head in that doorway.”
The Marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the abrupt steps on to the loggia. — There he greeted Lilly and Aaron with hearty handshakes.
“Very glad to see you — very glad, indeed!” he cried, grinning with excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering Lilly’s hand with both his own gloved hands. “When did you come to Florence?”
There was a little explanation. Argyle shoved the last chair — it was a luggage stool — through the window.
“All I can do for you in the way of a chair,” he said.
“Ah, that is all right,” said the Marchese. “Well, it is very nice up here — and very nice company. Of the very best, the very best in Florence.”
“The highest, anyhow,” said Argyle grimly, as he entered with the glass. “Have a whiskey and soda, Del Torre. It’s the bottom of the bottle, as you see.”
“The bottom of the bottle! Then I start with the tail-end, yes!” He stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and grinned a wide, gnome-like grin.
“You made that start long ago, my dear fellow. Don’t play the ingenue with me, you know it won’t work. Say when, my man, say when!”
“Yes, when,” said Del Torre. “When did I make that start, then?”
“At some unmentionably young age. Chickens such as you soon learn to cheep.”
“Chickens such as I soon learn to cheap,” repeated Del Torre, pleased with the verbal play. “What is cheap, please? What is TO CHEAP?”
“Cheep! Cheep!” squeaked Argyle, making a face at the little Italian, who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool. “It’s what chickens say when they’re poking their little noses into new adventures — naughty ones.”
“Are chickens naughty? Oh! I thought they could only be good!”
“Featherless chickens like yourself, my boy.”
“Oh, as for featherless — then there is no saying what they will do. — ” And here the Marchese turned away from Argyle with the inevitable question to Lilly:
“Well, and how long will you stay in Florence?”
Lilly did not know: but he was not leaving immediately.
“Good! Then you will come and see us at once....”
Argyle rose once more, and went to make the tea. He shoved a lump of cake — or rather panetone, good currant loaf — through the window, with a knife to cut it.
“Help yourselves to the panetone,” he said. “Eat it up. The tea is coming at once. You’ll have to drink it in your glasses, there’s only one old cup.”
The Marchese cut the cake, and offered pieces. The two men took and ate.
“So you have already found Mr. Sisson!” said Del Torre to Lilly.
“Ran straight into him in the Via Nazionale,” said Lilly.
“Oh, one always runs into everybody in Florence. We are all already acquainted: also with the flute. That is a great pleasure.”
“So I think. — Does your wife like it, too?”
“Very much, indeed! She is quite eprise. I, too, shall have to learn to play it.”
“And run the risk of spoiling the shape of your mouth — like Alcibiades.”
“Is there a risk? Yes! Then I shan’t play it. My mouth is too beautiful. — But Mr. Sisson has not spoilt his mouth.”
“Not yet,” said Lilly. “Give him time.”
“Is he also afraid — like Alcibiades?”
“Are you, Aaron?” said Lilly.
�
�What?”
“Afraid of spoiling your beauty by screwing your mouth to the flute?”
“I look a fool, do I, when I’m playing?” said Aaron.
“Only the least little bit in the world,” said Lilly. “The way you prance your head, you know, like a horse.”
“Ah, well,” said Aaron. “I’ve nothing to lose.”
“And were you surprised, Lilly, to find your friend here?” asked Del Torre.
“I ought to have been. But I wasn’t really.”
“Then you expected him?”
“No. It came naturally, though. — But why did you come, Aaron? What exactly brought you?”
“Accident,” said Aaron.
“Ah, no! No! There is no such thing as accident,” said the Italian. “A man is drawn by his fate, where he goes.”
“You are right,” said Argyle, who came now with the teapot. “A man is drawn — or driven. Driven, I’ve found it. Ah, my dear fellow, what is life but a search for a friend? A search for a friend — that sums it up.”
“Or a lover,” said the Marchese, grinning.
“Same thing. Same thing. My hair is white — but that is the sum of my whole experience. The search for a friend.” There was something at once real and sentimental in Argyle’s tone.
“And never finding?” said Lilly, laughing.
“Oh, what would you? Often finding. Often finding. And losing, of course. — A life’s history. Give me your glass. Miserable tea, but nobody has sent me any from England — ”
“And you will go on till you die, Argyle?” said Lilly. “Always seeking a friend — and always a new one?”
“If I lose the friend I’ve got. Ah, my dear fellow, in that case I shall go on seeking. I hope so, I assure you. Something will be very wrong with me, if ever I sit friendless and make no search.”
“But, Argyle, there is a time to leave off.”
“To leave off what, to leave off what?”
“Having friends: or a friend, rather: or seeking to have one.”
“Oh, no! Not at all, my friend. Not at all! Only death can make an end of that, my friend. Only death. And I should say, not even death. Not even death ends a man’s search for a friend. That is my belief. You may hang me for it, but I shall never alter.”
“Nay,” said Lilly. “There is a time to love, and a time to leave off loving.”
“All I can say to that is that my time to leave off hasn’t come yet,” said Argyle, with obstinate feeling.
“Ah, yes, it has. It is only a habit and an idea you stick to.”
“Indeed, it is no such thing. Indeed, it is no such thing. It is a profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief.”
“An obstinate persistency, you mean,” said Lilly.
“Well, call it so if it pleases you. It is by no means so to me.” There was a brief pause. The sun had left the cathedral dome and the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow.
“But can a man live,” said the Marchese, “without having something he lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he may get?”
“Impossible! Completely impossible!” said Argyle. “Man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.”
“He bores me with his seeking,” said Lilly. “He should learn to possess himself — to be himself — and keep still.”
“Ay, perhaps so,” said Aaron. “Only — ”
“But my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same thing. Never really himself. — Apart from this he is a tram-driver or a money-shoveller or an idea-machine. Only in the state of love is he really a man, and really himself. I say so, because I know,” said Argyle.
“Ah, yes. That is one side of the truth. It is quite true, also. But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love. Never less himself, than then.”
“Maybe! Maybe! But what could be better? What could be better than to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself. Ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can’t shake me in it. Never in that. Never in that.”
“Yes, Argyle,” said Lilly. “I know you’re an obstinate love-apostle.”
“I am! I am! And I have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals which I never transgress. Never transgress. And never abandon.”
“All right, then, you are an incurable love-maker.”
“Pray God I am,” said Argyle.
“Yes,” said the Marchese. “Perhaps we are all so. What else do you give? Would you have us make money? Or do you give the centre of your spirit to your work? How is it to be?”
“I don’t vitally care either about money or my work or — ” Lilly faltered.
“Or what, then?”
“Or anything. I don’t really care about anything. Except that — ”
“You don’t care about anything? But what is that for a life?” cried the Marchese, with a hollow mockery.
“What do YOU care for?” asked Lilly.
“Me? I care for several things. I care for my wife. I care for love. And I care to be loved. And I care for some pleasures. And I care for music. And I care for Italy.”
“You are well off for cares,” said Lilly.
“And you seem to me so very poor,” said Del Torre.
“I should say so — if he cares for nothing,” interjaculated Argyle. Then he clapped Lilly on the shoulder with a laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha! — But he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking Lilly’s shoulder. “He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don’t try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds,” said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering.
“A man can’t live,” said the Italian, “without an object.”
“Well — and that object?” said Lilly.
“Well — it may be many things. Mostly it is two things. — love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art — many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many things outside the self.”
“I have had only one objective all my life,” said Argyle. “And that was love. For that I have spent my life.”
“And the lives of a number of other people, too,” said Lilly.
“Admitted. Oh, admitted. It takes two to make love: unless you’re a miserable — ”
“Don’t you think,” said Aaron, turning to Lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you’re not after money, and can’t fit yourself into a job — you’ve got to, you’ve got to try and find something else — somebody else — somebody. You can’t really be alone.”
“No matter how many mistakes you’ve made — you can’t really be alone — ?” asked Lilly.
“You can be alone for a minute. You can be alone just in that minute when you’ve broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn’t to be borne. But you can’t keep on being alone. No matter how many tunes you’ve broken free, and feel, thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you’ve felt this — it wears off every time, and you begin to look again — and you begin to roam round. And even if you won’t admit it to yourself, still you are seeking — seeking. Aren’t you? Aren’t you yourself seeking?”
“Oh, that’s another matter,” put in Argyle. “Lilly is happily married and on the shelf. With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so — RATHER! But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent me to hell. But I didn’t forswear love, when I forswore marriage and woman. Not by ANY means.”
“Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?” asked the Marchese. “Do you seek nothing?”
“We married men who haven’t left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said Lilly. “Aren’t we perfec
tly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?”
“Ah, yes, yes!” said the Marchese. “But now we are not speaking to the world. Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.”
“And what have we there?” said Lilly.
“Well — shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?”
“Yes. But what is the something?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the Italian.
“But why should it? Is that the nature of love?” said Lilly.
“I don’t know. Truly. I don’t know. — But perhaps it is in the nature of love — I don’t know. — But I tell you, I love my wife — she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother. — And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage. — But wait. Nothing has changed — the love has not changed: it is the same. — And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not — ”
“Why should you be?” said Lilly.
“Yes — and it is not even happiness,” said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish — but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don’t know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life — and yet we love each other, and we must not separate — Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m in the same dilemma myself. — But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?”
“Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you. — Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand? — You know — supposing I go to a woman — supposing she is my wife — and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well. I do not feel like it. She puts me off — till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am — but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don’t want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me — till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me — and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know. — I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me — because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing — worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving. — If I say to her, she says it is not true — not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know — ”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 331
