I could have died sooner than speak the words that I was dying to speak, ask the question I was dying to ask.
I called assiduously at the Palazzo Zacchinelli, and my aunt bade me to dinner a good deal, and then one afternoon every week she used to drive with Rosalys on the Pincian. There was one afternoon every week when all Rome drove on the Pincian; was it Saturday? At any rate, you may be very sure I did not let such opportunities escape me for getting a bow and a smile from my cousin. Sometimes she would leave the carriage and join me, while Aunt Elizabeth, with Sandro in her lap, drove on, round and round the consecrated circle; and we would stroll together in the winding alleys, or stand by the terrace and look off over the roofs of the city, and watch the sunset blaze and fade behind St. Peter’s. You know that unexampled view—the roofs of Rome spread out beneath you like the surface of a troubled sea, and the dome of St. Peter’s, an island rising in the distance, and the sunset sky behind it. We would stand there in silence perhaps, at most saying very little, while the sunset burned itself out; and for one of us, at least, it was a moment of ineffable, impossible enchantment. She was so near to me—so near, the slender figure in the pretty frock, with the dark hair, and the captivating hat, and the furs; with her soft glowing eyes, with her exquisite fragrance of girlhood; she was so near to me, so alone with me, despite the crowd about us, and I loved her so! Oh, why couldn’t I tell her? Why couldn’t she divine it? People said that women always knew by intuition when men were in love with them. Why couldn’t Rosalys divine that I loved her, how I loved her, and make me a sign, and so enable me to speak?
Presently—and all too soon—she would return to the carriage, and drive away with Aunt Elizabeth; and I, in the lugubrious twilight, would descend the great marble Spanish staircase (a perilous path, amongst models and beggars and other things) to the Piazza, and seek out Jack Everett at the Caffé Greco. Thence he and I would go off to dine together somewhere, condoling with each other upon our ill-starred passions. After dinner, pulling our hats over our eyes, two desperately tragic forms, we would set ourselves upon the traces of d’.vignac and Kônig and Father Flynn, determined to forget our sorrows in an evening of dissipation, saying regretfully, “These are the evil courses to which the love of woman has reduced us—a couple of the best-meaning fellows in Christendom, and surely born for better ends.” When we were children (hasn’t Kenneth Grahame written it for us in a golden book?) we played at conspirators and pirates. When we were a little older, and Byron or Musset had superseded Fenimore Cooper, some of us found there was an unique excitement to be got from the game of Blighted Beings.
Oh, why couldn’t I tell her? Why couldn’t she divine it, and make me an encouraging sign?
But, of course, in the end I did tell her. It was on the night of my birthday. I had dined at the Palazzo Zacchinelli, and with the dessert a great cake was brought in and set before me. A number of little red candles were burning round it, and embossed upon it in frosting was this device:
A birthday-piece
From Rosalys,
Wishing birthdays more in plenty
To her cousin “nearly twenty.”