I felt rather sore at the fact that this afternoon I had to start on my northern career across Europe in a dusty train, with the knowledge that Francis would be here, still cool and clean, in the sea, while the smuts poured in on to the baked red velvet of my carriage, and that here he would remain, while I, dutiful and busy, saw the sooty skies of the town on the Thames, which seemed a most deplorable place of residence. Some of this soreness oozed into my words.
"Your conscience is very kind to you," I said. "It tells you that it is of the highest importance that you should live in this adorable island and spend your day exactly as you choose."
"But if it said I should go back to England, and sweep a crossing in—what's the name of that foul street with a paddock on one side of it?—Oh, yes, Piccadilly—sweep a crossing in Piccadilly, I should certainly go!" said he.
Unfortunately for purposes of argument, I knew that this was true.
"I know you would," I said, "but on the day of departure you must excuse my being jealous of such a well-ordered conscience. Oh, Francis, how bleak the white cliffs of our beloved England will look! Sometimes I really wish Heaven hadn't commanded, and that Britain had remained at the bottom of the azure main instead of arising from out of it. How I shall hate the solemn, self-sufficient faces of the English. English faces always look as if they knew they were right, and they generally are, which makes it worse. A quantity of them together are so dreadful, large and stupid and proper and rich and pompous, like rows of well-cooked hams. Italian faces are far nicer; they're a bed of pansies, all enjoying the sun and nodding to each other. I don't want to go to England! Oh, not to be in England now that July's here! I wish you would come, too. Take a holiday from being good, and doing what your conscience tells you, and spending your days exactly as you like. Come and eat beef and beer, and feel the jolly north-east wind and the rain and the mud and the fogs, and all those wonderful influences that make us English what we are!"
Francis laughed.
"It all sounds very tempting, very tempting indeed," he said. "But I shall resist. The fact is I believe I've ceased to be English. It's very shocking, for I suppose a lack of patriotism is one of the most serious lacks you can have. But I've got it. Even your sketch of England doesn't arouse any thrill in me. Imagine if war was possible between England and Italy. Where would my sympathies really be? I know quite well, but I shan't tell you."
The daily tourist steamer, the same that in a few hours' time would take me away, came churning round the point, going to the Marina, where it would lie at anchor till four o'clock. It was obviously crammed with passengers—Germans, probably, for the most part, and the strains of the "Watch by the Rhine" played by the ship's band (cornet, violin and bombardon) came fatly across the water to us. Francis got up.
"Sorry, but it's time to swim back and dress," he said. "There's the steamer."
"There's the cart for Tyburn," said I mournfully.