XIII
Mrs. Bowen sat before the hearth in her _salon_, with her hands fallenin her lap. At thirty-eight the emotions engrave themselves more deeplyin the face than they do in our first youth, or than they will when wehave really aged, and the pretty woman looked haggard.
Imogene came in, wearing a long blue robe, flung on as if with desperatehaste; her thick hair fell crazily out of a careless knot, down herback. "I couldn't sleep," she said, with quivering lips, at the sight ofwhich Mrs. Bowen's involuntary smile hardened. "Isn't it eleven yet?"she added, with a glance at the clock. "It seems years since I went tobed."
"It's been a long day," Mrs. Bowen admitted. She did not ask Imogene whyshe could not sleep, perhaps because she knew already, and was toohonest to affect ignorance.
The girl dropped into a chair opposite her, and began to pull herfingers through the long tangle of her hair, while she drew her breathin sighs that broke at times on her lips; some tears fell down hercheeks unheeded. "Mrs. Bowen," she said, at length, "I should like toknow what right we have to drive any one from Florence? I should thinkpeople would call it rather a high-handed proceeding if it were known."
Mrs. Bowen met this feebleness promptly. "It isn't likely to be known.But we are not driving Mr. Colville away."
"He is going."
"Yes; he said he would go."
"Don't you believe he will go?"
"I believe he will do what he says."
"He has been very kind to us all; he has been as _good!_"
"No one feels that more than I," said Mrs. Bowen, with a slight tremorin her voice. She faltered a moment. "I can't let you say those thingsto me, Imogene."
"No; I know it's wrong. I didn't know what I was saying. Oh, I wish Icould tell what I ought to do! I wish I could make up my mind. Oh, Ican't let him go--_so_. I--I don't know what to think any more. Once itwas clear, but now I'm not sure; no, I'm not sure."
"Not sure about what?"
"I think I am the one to go away, if any one."
"You know you can't go away," said Mrs. Bowen, with weary patience.
"No, of course not. Well, I shall never see any one like him."
Mrs. Bowen made a start in her chair, as if she had no longer the powerto remain quiet, but only placed herself a little more rigidly in it.
"No," the girl went on, as if uttering a hopeless reverie. "He madeevery moment interesting. He was always thinking of us--he never thoughtof himself. He did as much for Effie as for any one; he tried just ashard to make himself interesting to her. He was unselfish. I have seenhim at places being kind to the stupidest people. You never caught himchoosing out the stylish or attractive ones, or trying to shine atanybody's expense. Oh, he's a true gentleman--I shall always say it. Howdelicate he was, never catching you up, or if you said a foolish thing,trying to turn it against you. No, never, never, never! Oh dear! Andnow, what can he think of me? Oh, how frivolous and fickle and selfishhe must think me!"
"Imogene!" Mrs. Bowen cried out, but quelled herself again.
"Yes," pursued the girl, in the same dreary monotone, "he thinks Icouldn't appreciate him because he was old. He thinks that I cared forhis not being handsome! Perhaps--perhaps----" She began to catch herbreath in the effort to keep back the sobs that were coming. "Oh, Ican't bear it! I would rather die than let him think it--such a thing asthat!" She bent her head aside, and cried upon the two hands with whichshe clutched the top of her chair.
Mrs. Bowen sat looking at her distractedly. From time to time she seemedto silence a word upon her lips, and in fact she did not speak.
Imogene lifted her head at last, and softly dried her eyes. Then, as shepushed her handkerchief back into the pocket of her robe, "What sort oflooking girl was that other one?"
"That other one?"
"Yes; you know what I mean: the one who behaved so badly to him before."
"Imogene!" said Mrs. Bowen severely, "this is nonsense, and I can't letyou go on so. I might pretend not to know what you mean; but I won't dothat; and I tell you that there is no sort of likeness--ofcomparison----"
"No, no," wailed the girl, "there _is_ none. I feel that. She hadnothing to warn her--he hadn't suffered then; he was young; he was ableto bear it--you said it yourself, Mrs. Bowen. But now--_now_, what willhe do? He could make fun of that, and not hate her so much, because shedidn't know how much harm she was doing. But I did; and what can hethink of me?"
Mrs. Bowen looked across the barrier between them, that kept her fromtaking Imogene into her arms, and laughing and kissing away her craze,with cold dislike, and only said, "You know whether you've reallyanything to accuse yourself of, Imogene. I can't and won't consider Mr.Colville in the matter; I _didn't_ consider him in what I said to-day.And I tell you again that I will not interfere with you in the slightestdegree beyond appearances and the responsibility I feel to your mother.And it's for you to know your own mind. You are old enough. I will dowhat you say. It's for you to be sure that you wish what you say."
"Yes," said Imogene huskily, and she let an interval that was long tothem both elapse before she said anything more. "Have I always done whatyou thought best, Mrs. Bowen?"
"Yes, I have never complained of you."
"Then why can't you tell me now what you think best?"
"Because there is nothing to be done. It is all over."
"But if it were not, would you tell me?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I--couldn't."
"Then I take back my promise not to write to Mr. Colville. I am going toask him to stay."
"Have you made up your mind to that, Imogene?" asked Mrs. Bowen, showingno sign of excitement, except to take a faster hold of her own wristswith the slim hands in which she had caught them.
"Yes."
"You know the position it places you in?"
"What position?"
"Has he offered himself to you?"
"No!" the girl's face blazed.
"Then, after what's passed, this is the same as offering yourself tohim."
Imogene turned white. "I must write to him, unless you forbid me."
"Certainly I shall not forbid you." Mrs. Bowen rose and went to herwriting-desk. "But if you have fully made up your mind to this step, andare ready for the consequences, whatever they are----" She stopped,before sitting down, and looked back over her shoulder at Imogene.
"Yes," said the girl, who had also risen.
"Then I will write to Mr. Colville for you, and render the proceeding aslittle objectionable as possible."
Imogene made no reply. She stood motionless while Mrs. Bowen wrote.
"Is this what you wished?" asked the latter, offering the sheet:----
"Dear Mr. Colville,--I have reasons for wishing to recall my consent toyour going away. Will you not come and lunch with us to-morrow, and tryto forget everything that has passed during a few days?
"Yours very sincerely,
"Evalina Bowen."
"Yes, that will do," gasped Imogene.
Mrs. Bowen rang the bell for the porter, and stood with her back to thegirl, waiting for him at the salon door. He came after a delay thatsufficiently intimated the lateness of the hour. "This letter must go atonce to the Hotel d'Atene," said Mrs. Bowen peremptorily.
"You shall be served," said the porter, with fortitude.
As Mrs. Bowen turned, Imogene ran toward her with clasped hands. "Oh,how merciful--how good----"
Mrs. Bowen shrank back. "Don't touch me, Imogene, please!"
It was her letter which Colville found on his table and read by thestruggling light of his newly acquired candle. Then he sat down andreplied to it.
"Dear Mrs. Bowen,--I know that you mean some sort of kindness by me, andI hope you will not think me prompted by any poor resentment indeclining to-morrow's lunch. I am satisfied that it is best for me togo; and I am ashamed not to be gone already. But a ridiculous accidenthas kept me, and when I came in and found your note I was just going towrite and ask your patience wi
th my presence in Florence till Mondaymorning.
"Yours sincerely, THEODORE COLVILLE."
He took his note down to the porter, who had lain down again in hislittle booth, but sprang up with a cheerful request to be commanded.Colville consulted him upon the propriety of sending the note to PalazzoPinti at once, and the porter, with his head laid in deprecation uponone of his lifted shoulders, owned that it was perhaps the very leastlittle bit in the world late.
"Send it the first thing in the morning, then," said Colville.
Mrs. Bowen received it by the servant who brought her coffee to theroom, and she sent it without any word to Imogene. The girl cameinstantly back with it. She was fully dressed, as if she had been up along time, and she wore a very plain, dull dress, in which one of herown sex might have read the expression of a potential self-devotion.
"It's just as I wish it, Mrs. Bowen," she said, in a low key ofimpassioned resolution. "_Now_, my conscience is at rest. And you havedone this for me, Mrs. Bowen!" She stood timidly with the door in herhand, watching Mrs. Bowen's slight smile; then, as if at some sign init, she flew to the bed and kissed her, and so fled out of the roomagain.
Colville slept late, and awoke with a vague sense of self-reproach,which faded afterward to such poor satisfaction as comes to us from theconsciousness of having made the best of a bad business; some pangs ofsofter regret mixed with this. At first he felt a stupid obligation tokeep indoors, and he really did not go out till after lunch. Thesunshine had looked cold from his window, and with the bright fire whichhe found necessary in his room, he fancied a bitterness in the guststhat caught up the dust in the piazza, and blew it against the line ofcabs on the other side; but when he got out into the weather he foundthe breeze mild and the sun warm. The streets were thronged with people,and at all the corners there were groups of cloaked and overcoatedtalkers, soaking themselves full of the sunshine. The air throbbed, asalways, with the sound of bells, but it was a mellower and opener soundthan before, and looking at the purple bulk of one of those hills whichseem to rest like clouds at the end of each avenue in Florence, Colvillesaw that it was clear of snow. He was going up through Via Cavour tofind Mr. Waters and propose a walk, but he met him before he had gothalf-way to San Marco.
The old man was at a momentary stand-still, looking up at the RiccardiPalace, and he received Colville with apparent forgetfulness of anythingodd in his being still in Florence. "Upon the whole," he said, withoutpreliminary of any sort, as Colville turned and joined him in walkingon, "I don't know any homicide that more distinctly proves the futilityof assassination as a political measure than that over yonder." Henodded his head sidewise toward the palace as he shuffled actively alongat Colville's elbow.
"You might say that the moment when Lorenzino killed Alessandro was themost auspicious for a deed of that kind. The Medici had only recentlybeen restored; Alessandro was the first ruler in Florence, who had worna title; no more reckless, brutal, and insolent tyrant ever lived, andhis right, even such as the Medici might have, to play the despot wasinvolved in the doubt of his origin; the heroism of the great siegeought still to have survived in the people who withstood the forces ofthe whole German Empire for fifteen months; it seems as if the takingoff of that single wretch should have ended the whole Mediceandomination; but there was not a voice raised to second the homicide'sappeal to the old love of liberty in Florence. The Medici party wereable to impose a boy of eighteen upon the most fiery democracy that everexisted, and to hunt down and destroy Alessandro's murderer at theirleisure. No," added the old man thoughtfully, "I think that the friendsof progress must abandon assassination as invariably useless. Thetrouble was not that Alessandro was alive, but that Florence was dead.Assassination always comes too early or too late in any popularmovement. It may be," said Mr. Waters, with a carefulness to do justiceto assassination which made Colville smile, "that the modern scientificspirits may be able to evolve something useful from the principle, butconsidering the enormous abuses and perversions to which it is liable, Iam very doubtful of it--very doubtful."
Colville laughed. "I like your way of bringing a fresh mind to all thesequestions in history and morals, whether they are conventionally settledor not. Don't you think the modern scientific spirit could evolvesomething useful out of the old classic idea of suicide?"
"Perhaps," said Mr. Waters; "I haven't yet thought it over. The worstthing about suicide--and this must always rank it below politicalassassination--is that its interest is purely personal. No man everkills himself for the good of others."
"That's certainly against it. We oughtn't to countenance such anabominably selfish practice. But you can't bring that charge againsteuthanasy. What have you to say of that?"
"I have heard one of the most benevolent and tender-hearted men I everknew defend it in cases of hopeless suffering. But I don't know that Ishould be prepared to take his ground. There appears to be something sosacred about human life that we must respect it even in spite of theprayers of the sufferer who asks us to end his irremediable misery."
"Well," said Colville, "I suspect we must at least class murder with theballet as a means of good. One might say there was still some virtue inthe primal, eldest curse against bloodshed."
"Oh, I don't by any means deny those things," said the old man, with theair of wishing to be scrupulously just. "Which way are you walking?"
"Your way, if you will let me," replied Colville. "I was going to yourhouse to ask you to take a walk with me."
"Ah, that's good. I was reading of the great siege last night, and Ithought of taking a look at Michelangelo's bastions. Let us go together,if you don't think you'll find it too fatiguing."
"I shall be ashamed to complain if I do."
"And you didn't go to Rome after all?" said Mr. Waters.
"No; I couldn't face the landlord with a petition so preposterous asmine. I told him that I found I had no money to pay his bill till I hadseen my banker, and as he didn't propose that I should send him theamount back from Rome, I stayed. Landlords have their limitations; theyare not imaginative, as a class."
"Well, a day more will make no great difference to you, I suppose," saidthe old man, "and a day less would have been a loss to me. I shall missyou."
"Shall you, indeed?" asked Colville, with a grateful stir of the heart."It's very nice of you to say that."
"Oh no. I meet few people who are willing to look at life objectivelywith me, and I have fancied some such willingness in you. What I chieflymiss over here is a philosophic lift in the human mind, but probablythat is because my opportunities of meeting the best minds are few, andmy means of conversing with them are small. If I had not the whole pastwith me, I should feel lonely at times."
"And is the past such good company always?".
"Yes, in a sense it is. The past is humanity set free from circumstance,and history studied where it was once life is the past rehumanised."
As if he found this rarefied air too thin for his lungs, Colville madesome ineffectual gasps at response, and the old man continued: "What Imean is that I meet here the characters I read of, and commune with thembefore their errors were committed, before they had condemned themselvesto failure, while they were still wise and sane, and still active andvital forces."
"Did they all fail? I thought some of the bad fellows had a pretty fairworldly success?"
"The blossom of decay."
"Oh! what black pessimism!"
"Not at all! Men fail, but man succeeds. I don't know what it all means,or any part of it; but I have had moods in which it seemed as if thewhole, secret of the mystery were about to flash upon me. Walking alongin the full sun, in the midst of men, or sometimes in the solitude ofmidnight, poring over a book, and thinking of quite other things, I havefelt that I had almost surprised it."
"But never quite?"
"Oh, it isn't too late yet."
"I hope you won't have your revelation before I get away from Florence,or I shall see them burning you here like the great _frate_."<
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They had been walking down the Via Calzioli from the Duomo, and now theycame out into the Piazza della Signoria, suddenly, as one always seemsto do, upon the rise of the old palace and the leap of its tower intothe blue air. The history of all Florence is there, with memories ofevery great time in bronze or marble, but the supreme presence is themartyr who hangs for ever from the gibbet over the quenchless fire inthe midst.
"Ah, they _had_ to kill him!" sighed the old man. "It has always been sowith the benefactors. They have always meant mankind more good than anyone generation can bear, and it must turn upon them and destroy them."
"How will it be with you, then, when you have read us 'the riddle of thepainful earth'?"
"That will be so simple that every one will accept it willingly andgladly, and wonder that no one happened to think of it before. And,perhaps, the world is now grown old enough and docile enough to receivethe truth without resentment."
"I take back my charge of pessimism," said Colville. "You are anoptimist of the deepest dye."
They walked out of the Piazza and down to the Lung' Arno, through thecorridor of the Uffizzi, where the illustrious Florentines stand inmarble under the arches, all reconciled and peaceful and equal at last.Colville shivered a little as he passed between the silent ranks of thestatues.
"I can't stand those fellows, to-day. They seem to feel such a smirksatisfaction at having got out of it all."
They issued upon the river, and he went to the parapet and looked downon the water. "I wonder," he mused aloud, "if it has the same Sundaylook to these Sabbathless Italians as it has to us."
"No; Nature isn't puritan," replied the old minister.
"Not at Haddam East Village?"
"No; there less than here; for she's had to make a harder fight for herlife there."
"Ah, then you believe in Nature--you're a friend of Nature?" askedColville, following the lines of an oily swirl in the current withindolent eye.
"Only up to a certain point." Mr. Waters seemed to be patient of anydirection which the other might be giving the talk. "Nature is a savage.She has good impulses, but you can't trust her altogether."
"Do you know," said Colville, "I don't think there's very much of herleft in us after we reach a certain point in life? She drives us on at agreat pace for a while, and then some fine morning we wake up and findthat Nature has got tired of us and has left us to taste and conscience.And taste and conscience are by no means so certain of what they wantyou to do as Nature was."
"Yes," said the minister, "I see what you mean." He joined Colville inleaning on the parapet, and he looked out on the river as if he saw hismeaning there. "But by the time we reach that point in life most of ushave got the direction which Nature meant us to take, and there's nolonger any need of her driving us on."
"And what about the unlucky fellows who haven't got the direction, orhaven't kept it?"
"They had better go back to it."
"But if Nature herself seemed to change her mind about you?"
"Ah, you mean persons of weak will. They are a great curse to themselvesand to everybody else."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Colville. "I've seen cases in which astrong will looked very much more like the devil."
"Yes, a perverted will. But there can be no good without a strong will.A weak will means inconstancy. It means, even in good, good attemptedand relinquished, which is always a terrible thing, because it is sureto betray some one who relied upon its accomplishment."
"And in evil? Perhaps the evil, attempted and relinquished, turns intogood."
"Oh, never!" replied the minister fervently. "There is something verymysterious in what we call evil. Apparently it has infinitely greaterforce and persistence than good. I don't know why it should be so. Butso it appears."
"You'll have the reason of that along with the rest of the secret whenyour revelation comes," said Colville, with a smile. He lifted his eyesfrom the river, and looked up over the clustering roofs beyond it to thehills beyond them, flecked to the crest of their purple slopes with thewhite of villas and villages. As if something in the beauty of thewonderful prospect had suggested the vision of its opposite, he said,dreamily, "I don't think I shall go to Rome to-morrow, after all. I willgo to Des Vaches! Where did you say you were walking, Mr. Waters? Ohyes! You told me. I will cross the bridge with you. But I couldn't standanything quite so vigorous as the associations of the siege thisafternoon. I'm going to the Boboli Gardens, to debauch myself with afinal sense of nerveless despotism, as it expressed itself in marbleallegory and formal alleys. The fact is that if I stay with you anylonger I shall tell you something that I'm too old to tell and you'retoo old to hear." The old man smiled, but offered no urgence or comment,and at the thither end of the bridge Colville said hastily, "Good-bye.If you ever come to Des Vaches, look me up."
"Good-bye," said the minister. "Perhaps we shall meet in Florenceagain."
"No, no. Whatever happens, that won't."
They shook hands and parted. Colville stood a moment, watching theslight bent figure of the old man as he moved briskly up the Via de'Bardi, turning his head from, side to side, to look at the palaces as hepassed, and so losing himself in the dim, cavernous curve of the street.As soon as he was out of sight, Colville had an impulse to hurry afterhim and rejoin him; then he felt like turning about and going back tohis hotel.
But he shook himself together into the shape of resolution, howeverslight and transient. "I must do _something_ I intended to do," he said,between his set teeth, and pushed on up through the Via Guicciardini. "Iwill go to the Boboli because I _said_ I would."
As he walked along, he seemed to himself to be merely crumbling away inthis impulse and that, in one abortive intent and another. What did itall mean? Had he been his whole life one of these weak wills which are acurse to themselves and others, and most a curse when they mean thebest? Was that the secret of his failure in life? But for many years hehad seemed to succeed, to be as other men were, hard, practical men; hehad once made a good newspaper, which was certainly not a dream ofromance. Had he given that up at last because he was a weak will? Andnow was he running away from Florence because his will was weak? Hecould look back to that squalid tragedy of his youth, and see that amore violent, a more determined man could have possessed himself of thegirl whom he had lost. And now would it not be more manly, if morebrutal, to stay here, where a hope, however fleeting, however fitful, ofwhat might have been, had revisited him in the love of this young girl?He felt sure, if anything were sure, that something in him, in spite oftheir wide disparity of years, had captured her fancy, and now, in hisabasement, he felt again the charm of his own power over her. They wereno farther apart in years than many a husband and wife; they would growmore and more together; there was youth enough in his heart yet; and whowas pushing him away from her, forbidding him this treasure that he hadbut to put out his hand and make his own? Some one whom through all histhoughts of another he was trying to please, but whom he had madefinally and inexorably his enemy. Better stay, then, something said tohim; and when he answered, "I will," something else reminded him thatthis also was not willing but unwilling.