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Page 22
"How funny! But I mean to change all that. Bring your
friends to see me, and I will make them bring their people."
He looked at her rather hopelessly.
"Well, who are the principal people here? Who leads society?"
The governor of the prison, he supposed, and the
officers who assisted him.
"Well, are they married?"
"Yes."
"There we are. Do you know them?"
"Yes--in a way."
"I see," she exclaimed angrily. "They look down on you,
do they, poor boy? Wait!" He assented. "Wait! I'll soon
stop that. Now, who else is there?"
"The marchese, sometimes, and the canons of the
Collegiate Church."
"Married?"
"The canons--" he began with twinkling eyes.
"Oh, I forgot your horrid celibacy. In England they
would be the centre of everything. But why shouldn't I know
them? Would it make it easier if I called all round? Isn't
that your foreign way?"
He did not think it would make it easier.
"But I must know some one! Who were the men you were
talking to this afternoon?"
Low-class men. He could scarcely recollect their names.
"But, Gino dear, if they're low class, why did you talk
to them? Don't you care about your position?"
All Gino cared about at present was idleness and
pocket-money, and his way of expressing it was to exclaim,
"Ouf-pouf! How hot it is in here. No air; I sweat all
over. I expire. I must cool myself, or I shall never get
to sleep." In his funny abrupt way he ran out on to the
loggia, where he lay full length on the parapet, and began
to smoke and spit under the silence of the stars.
Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that
Continental society was not the go-as-you-please thing she
had expected. Indeed she could not see where Continental
society was. Italy is such a delightful place to live in if
you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite
luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not
on equality of income or character, but on the equality of
manners. In the democracy of the caffe or the street the
great question of our life has been solved, and the
brotherhood of man is a reality. But is accomplished at the
expense of the sisterhood of women. Why should you not make
friends with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train,
when you know and he knows that feminine criticism and
feminine insight and feminine prejudice will never come
between you? Though you become as David and Jonathan, you
need never enter his home, nor he yours. All your lives you
will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the
South, under which he will spit and swear, and you will drop
your h's, and nobody will think the worse of either.
Meanwhile the women--they have, of course, their house
and their church, with its admirable and frequent services,
to which they are escorted by the maid. Otherwise they do
not go out much, for it is not genteel to walk, and you are
too poor to keep a carriage. Occasionally you will take
them to the caffe or theatre, and immediately all your
wonted acquaintance there desert you, except those few who
are expecting and expected to marry into your family. It is
all very sad. But one consolation emerges--life is very
pleasant in Italy if you are a man.
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