Synopses & Reviews
INITIATION - 1448 - PART I CHAPTER I - SIR NEVIL FLANNING w as doing at least thee things at once, in the private dining-room of the Hotel Emanuele in the Via Veneto in the City of Rome. He was eating an excellent luncheon, he was observing his fellow-guests, and he was giving as much attention to Mrs. Bessingtons conversation as that lady required. It cannot be said that Mrs. Bessington was easy to talk to in fact, that was an impossible feat. He had tried it in the first days of his acquaintance with her, and even now, when he forgot, tried it still. But he had found that she neither needed his remarks, nor even wished for them all she required was silence, noddings of the head, and very occasional assents or monosyllabic questions. She did all the rest. It was a little stupefying at first to be pelted with such an interminable torrent of words he had at first resisted a little, seriously believing that she might possibly wish to hear what he had to say then he had grown a little impatient and then the divine gift of hu mour had saved him and henceforth- except, as has been said, when he forgot-he sat still, now marvelling at the spate of talk that flowed forth so sedately, now deliberately thinking about other things, now, occasionally, playing a sort of intellectual solitaire which consisted in counting her full-stops- there had only been five during the whole of the curried-egg course, from the moment she took up her fork to the moment she laid it down again-and once, with an exquisite joy, switching her on to the Marchioness Daly, his hostess, who sat on his left, and whose horse-power, so to speak, very nearly, but not quite, rivalled Mrs. Bessingtonys. He believed that she wastalking now about a cousin of hers who lived in Corfu but he was not sure. If it was not she, it was Selva, the actress, who was in Rome just now. Certainly a female cousin had been mentioned a while ago, and so had Corfu but an aunt had shot up from the horizon once or twice, and he was not certain therefore as to which occupied the place of honour at present. A Scotch maid of hers too--called RZacPherson - not the Scotch maid she had now, but another one-had certainly been spoken of but it surely could not be she who was now curtseying to the late King of Greece and tripping over her train as she did so. lNost interesting, said Sir Nevill, bringing his eyes back from their excursion. How very-Y Y Ah but thats not the end, pursued Mrs. Bessington, undismaped. It was a fortnight after that no, it couldnt have been that fortnight, because I know she caught influenza from having to waitabout for the carriage, and was laid up for three weeks it must have been . . . 99 She was off again and once more the young man began to look gingerly about him. . S f. . . He could not. quite make out his hostess. He had a lamentable habit of pigeon-holing his new acquaintances. and each pigeon-hole had a little label over it, with a sort of inscription. Into these, then, he was accustomed to place people. At first he had been inclined, in view of their common possession of an almost infinite store of words and opinions on every subject, to place the Papal hZarchioness and Mrs. Bessington together. They both talked unceasingly they both wore a glassy expression - of inattention when anyone compelled them to listen in return. The encounter between the two had been a glorious experience he had been stung bythe splendour of the prospect and had wondered which would win. It was the ancient dilemma of striking impenetrable armour with a sword that could pierce everything...