VII
The next morning's sunshine dispersed the black mood of the nightbefore; but enough of Colville's self-disgust remained to determine himnot to let his return to Florence be altogether vain, or his sojourn soidle as it had begun being. The vague purpose which he had cherished ofstudying the past life and character of the Florentines in theirarchitecture shaped itself anew in the half-hour which he gave himselfover his coffee; and he turned it over in his mind with that mountingjoy in its capabilities which attends the contemplation of any sort ofartistic endeavour. No people had ever more distinctly left the impressof their whole temper in their architecture, or more sharplydistinguished their varying moods from period to period in their palacesand temples. He believed that he could not only supply that briefhistorical sketch of Florence which Mrs. Bowen had lamented the want of,but he could make her history speak an unintelligible, an unmistakeabletongue in every monument of the past, from the Etruscan wall at Fiesoleto the cheap, plain, and tasteless shaft raised to commemorate ItalianUnity in the next piazza. With sketches from his own pencil,illustrative of points which he could not otherwise enforce, he couldmake such a book on Florence as did not exist, such a book as no one hadyet thought of making. With this object in his mind, making and keepinghim young, he could laugh with any one who liked at the vanity of themiddle-aged Hoosier who had spoiled a set in the Lancers at MadameUccelli's party; he laughed at him now alone, with a wholly impersonalsense of his absurdity.
After breakfast he went without delay to Viesseux's reading-room, toexamine his catalogue, and see what there was in it to his purpose.While he was waiting his turn to pay his subscription, with the peoplewho surrounded the proprietor, half a dozen of the acquaintances he hadmade at Mrs. Bowen's passed in and out. Viesseux's is a place wheresooner or later you meet every one you know among the foreign residentsat Florence; the natives in smaller proportion resort there too; andColville heard a lady asking for a book in that perfect Italian whichstrikes envy to the heart of the stranger sufficiently versed in thelanguage to know that he never shall master it. He rather rejoiced inhis despair, however, as an earnest of his renewed intellectual life.Henceforth his life would be wholly intellectual. He did not regret hislittle excursion into society; it had shown him with dramatic sharpnesshow unfit for it he was.
"Good _morning_!" said some one in a bland undertone full of a pleasantrecognition of the claims to quiet of a place where some others werespeaking in their ordinary tones.
Colville looked round on the Rev. Mr. Waters, and took his friendlyhand. "Good morning--glad to see you," he answered.
"Are you looking for that short Florentine history for Mrs. Bowen'slittle girl?" asked Mr. Waters, inclining his head slightly for thereply. "She mentioned it to me."
By day Colville remarked more distinctly that the old gentleman wasshort and slight, with a youthful eagerness in his face surviving ongood terms with the grey locks that fell down his temples from under thebrim of his soft felt hat. With the boyish sweetness of his looksblended a sort of appreciative shrewdness, which pointed his smilinglips slightly aslant in what seemed the expectation rather than theintention of humour.
"Not exactly," said Colville, experiencing a difficulty in withholdingthe fact that in some sort he was just going to write a short Florentinehistory, and finding a certain pleasure in Mrs. Bowen's havingremembered that he had taken an interest in Effie's reading. He had asudden wish to tell Mr. Waters of his plan, but this was hardly the timeor place.
They now found themselves face to face with the librarian, and Mr.Waters made a gesture of waiving himself in Colville's favour.
"No, no!" said the latter; "you had better ask. I am going to put thisgentleman through rather an extended course of sprouts."
The librarian smiled with the helplessness of a foreigner, who knows hisinterlocutor's English, but not the meaning of it.
"Oh, I merely wanted to ask," said Mr. Waters, addressing the librarian,and explaining to Colville, "whether you had received that book onSavonarola yet. The German one."
"I shall see," said the librarian, and he went upon a quest that kepthim some minutes.
"You're not thinking of taking Savonarola's life, I suppose?" suggestedColville.
"Oh no. Villari's book has covered the whole ground for ever, it seemsto me. It's a wonderful book. You've read it?"
"Yes. It's a thing that makes you feel that, after all, the Italianshave only to make a real effort in any direction, and they go ahead ofeverybody else. What biography of the last twenty years can compare withit?"
"You're right, sir--you're right," cried the old man enthusiastically."They're a gifted race, a people of genius."
"I wish for their own sakes they'd give their minds a little togeneralship," said Colville, pressed by the facts to hedge somewhat."They did get so badly smashed in their last war, poor fellows."
"Oh, I don't think I should like them any better if they were bettersoldiers. Perhaps the lesson of noble endurance that they've given ourtimes is all that we have the right to demand of them in the way ofheroism; no one can say they lack courage. And sometimes it seems to methat in simply outgrowing the different sorts of despotism that hadfastened upon them, till their broken bonds fell away without positiveeffort on their part, they showed a greater sublimity than if they hadviolently conquered their freedom. Most nations sink lower and lowerunder tyranny; the Italians grew steadily more and more civilised, morenoble, more gentle, more grand. It was a wonderful spectacle--like ahuman soul perfected through suffering and privation. Every period oftheir history is full of instruction. I find my ancestral puritanismparticularly appealed to by the puritanism of Savonarola."
"Then Villari hasn't satisfied you that Savonarola wasn't a Protestant?"
"Oh yes, he has. I said his puritanism. Just now I'm interested injustifying his failure to myself, for it's one of the things in historythat I've found it hardest to accept. But no doubt his puritanic statefell because it was dreary and ugly, as the puritanic state always hasbeen. It makes its own virtues intolerable; puritanism won't let you seehow good and beautiful the Puritans often are. It was inevitable thatSavonarola's enemies should misunderstand and hate him."
"You are one of the last men I should have expected to find among the_Arrabiati_," said Colville.
"Oh, there's a great deal to be said for the Florentine Arrabiati, aswell as for the English Malignants, though the Puritans in neither casewould have known how to say it. Savonarola perished because he wasexcessive. I am studying him in this aspect; it is fresh ground. It isvery interesting to inquire just at what point a man's virtues becomemischievous and intolerable."
These ideas interested Colville; he turned to them with relief from thesense of his recent trivialities; in this old man's earnestness he foundsupport and encouragement in the new course he had marked out forhimself. Sometimes it had occurred to him not only that he was too oldfor the interests of his youth at forty, but that there was no longertime for him to take up new ones. He considered Mr. Waters's grey hairs,and determined to be wiser. "I should like to talk these things overwith you--and some other things," he said.
The librarian came toward them with the book for Mr. Waters, who wasfumbling near-sightedly in his pocket-book for his card. "I shall bevery happy to see you at my room," he said. "Ah, thank you," he added,taking his book, with a simple relish as if it were something whosepleasantness was sensible to the touch. He gave Colville the scholar'sfar-off look as he turned to go: he was already as remote as thefifteenth century through the magic of the book, which he opened andbegan to read at once. Colville stared after him; he did not wish tocome to just that yet, either. Life, active life, life of his own day,called to him; he had been one of its busiest children: could he turnhis back upon it for any charm or use that was in the past? Again thatunnerving doubt, that paralysing distrust, beset him, and tempted him tocurse the day in which he had returned to this outworn Old World. Idleron its modern surface, or delver in its deep-hearted past
, could hereconcile himself to it? What did he care for the Italians of to-day, orthe history of the Florentines as expressed in their architecturalmonuments? It was the problems of the vast, tumultuous American life,which he had turned his back on, that really concerned him. Later hemight take up the study that fascinated yonder old man, but for thepresent it was intolerable.
He was no longer young, that was true; but with an ache of old regret hefelt that he had not yet lived his life, that his was a baffled destiny,an arrested fate. A lady came up and took his turn with the librarian,and Colville did not stay for another. He went out and walked down theLung' Arno toward the Cascine. The sun danced on the river, and bathedthe long line of pale buff and grey houses that followed its curve, andceased in the mist of leafless tree-tops where the Cascine began. It wasnot the hour of the promenade, and there was little driving; but thesidewalks were peopled thickly enough with persons, in groups, orsingly, who had the air of straying aimlessly up or down, with nopurpose but to be in the sun, after the rainy weather of the past week.There were faces of invalids, wistful and thin, and here and there aman, muffled to the chin, lounged feebly on the parapet and stared atthe river. Colville hastened by them; they seemed to claim him as one oftheir ailing and aging company, and just then he was in the humour ofbeing very young and strong.
A carriage passed before him through the Cascine gates, and drove downthe road next the river. He followed, and when it had got a little wayit stopped at the roadside, and a lady and little girl alighted, wholooked about and caught sight of him, and then obviously waited for himto come up with them. It was Imogene and Effie Bowen, and the young girlcalled to him: "We _thought_ it was you. Aren't you astonished to findus here at this hour?" she demanded, as soon as he came up, and gave himher hand. "Mrs. Bowen sent us for our health--or Effie's health--and Iwas just making the man stop and let us out for a little walk."
"My health is very much broken too, Miss Effie," said Colville. "Willyou let me walk with you?" The child smiled, as she did at Colville'sspeeches, which she apparently considered all jokes, but diplomaticallyreferred the decision to Imogene with an upward glance.
"We shall be very glad indeed," said the girl.
"That's very polite of you. But Miss Effie makes no effort to concealher dismay," said Colville.
The little girl smiled again, and her smile was so like the smile ofLina Ridgely, twenty years ago, that his next words were inevitablytinged with reminiscence.
"Does one still come for one's health to the Cascine? When I was inFlorence before, there was no other place if one went to look for itwith young ladies--the Cascine or the Boboli Gardens. Do they keep thefountain of youth turned on here during the winter still?"
"I've never seen it," said Imogene gaily.
"Of course not. You never looked for it. Neither did I when I was herebefore. But it wouldn't escape me now."
Since he had met them he had aged again, in spite of his resolutions tothe contrary; somehow, beside their buoyancy and bloom, the youth in hisheart faded.
Imogene had started forward as soon as he joined them, and Colville,with Effie's gloved hand stolen shyly in his, was finding it quiteenough to keep up with her in her elastic advance.
She wore a long habit of silk, whose fur-trimmed edge wandereddiagonally across her breast and down to the edge of her walking dress.To Colville, whom her girlish slimness in her ball costume had puzzledafter his original impressions of Junonian abundance, she did not somuch dwindle as seem to vanish from the proportions his visions hadassigned her that first night when he saw her standing before themirror. In this outdoor avatar, this companionship with the sun andbreeze, she was new to him again, and he found himself searching hisconsciousness for his lost acquaintance with her, and feeling as if heknew her less and less. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very distinctiveindividuality; perhaps at her age no woman has, but waits for it to cometo her through life, through experience. She was an expression of youth,of health, of beauty, and of the moral loveliness that comes from afortunate combination of these; but beyond this she was elusive in a waythat seemed to characterise her even materially. He could not makeanything more of the mystery as he walked at her side, and he wentthinking--formlessly, as people always think--that with the child orwith her mother he would have had a community of interest and feelingwhich he lacked with this splendid girlhood! he was both too young andtoo old for it; and then, while he answered this or that to Imogene'stalk aptly enough, his mind went back to the time when this mystery wasno mystery, or when he was contemporary with it, and if he did notunderstand it, at least accepted it as if it wore the most natural thingin the world. It seemed a longer time now since it had been in his worldthan it was since he was a child.
"Should you have thought," she asked, turning her face back toward him,"that it would be so hot in the sun to-day? _Oh_, that beautiful river!How it twists and writhes along! Do you remember that sonnet ofLongfellow's--the one he wrote in Italian about the Ponte Vecchio, andthe Arno twisting like a dragon underneath it? They say that Hawthorneused to live in a villa just behind the hill over there; we're going tolook it up as soon as the weather is settled. Don't you think his booksare perfectly fascinating?"
"Yes," said Colville; "only I should want a good while to say it."
"_I_ shouldn't!" retorted the girl. "When you've said fascinating,you've said everything. There's no other word for them. Don't you liketo talk about the books you've read?"
"I would if I could remember the names of the characters. But I get themmixed up."
"Oh, _I_ never do! I remember the least one of them, and all they do andsay."
"I used to."
"It seems to me you _used_ to do everything."
"It seems to me as if I did."
"'I remember, when I think, That my youth was half divine.'"
"Oh, Tennyson--yes! _He's_ fascinating. Don't you think he'sfascinating?"
"Very," said Colville. He was wondering whether this were the kind oftalk that he thought was literary when he was a young fellow.
"How perfectly weird the 'Vision of Sin' is!" Imogene continued. "Don'tyou like _weird_ things?"
"Weird things?" Colville reflected. "Yes; but I don't see very much inthem any more. The fact is, they don't seem to come to anything inparticular."
"Oh, _I_ think they do! I've had dreams that I've lived on for days. Doyou ever have prophetic dreams?"
"Yes; but they never come true. When they do, I know that I didn't havethem."
"What _do_ you mean?"
"I mean that we are all so fond of the marvellous that we can't trustourselves about any experience that seems supernatural. If a ghostappeared to me I should want him to prove it by at least two otherreliable, disinterested witnesses before I believed my own account ofthe matter."
"Oh!" cried the girl, half puzzled, half amused. "Then of course youdon't believe in ghosts?"
"Yes; I expect to be one myself some day. But I'm in no hurry to minglewith them."
Imogene smiled vaguely, as if the talk pleased her, even when it mockedthe fancies and whims which, after so many generations that haveindulged them, she was finding so fresh and new in her turn.
"Don't you like to walk by the side of a river?" she asked, increasingher eager pace a little. "I feel as if it were bearing me along."
"I feel as if I were carrying it," said Colville. "It's as fatiguing aswalking on railroad ties."
"Oh, that's too bad!" cried the girl. "How can you be so prosaic? Shouldyou ever have believed that the sun could be so hot in January? And lookat those ridiculous green hillsides over the river there! Don't you likeit to be winter when it _is_ winter?"
She did not seem to have expected anything from Colville but animpulsive acquiescence, but she listened while he defended the mildweather. "I think it's very well for Italy," he said. "It has alwaysseemed to me--that is, it seems to me now for the first time, but onehas to begin the other way--as if the seasons here had worn themselvesout like the turbule
nt passions of the people. I dare say the winter wasmuch fiercer in the times of the Bianchi and Neri."
"Oh, how delightful! Do you really believe that?"
"No, I don't know that I do. But I shouldn't have much difficulty inproving it, I think, to the sympathetic understanding."
"I wish you would prove it to mine. It sounds so pretty, I'm sure itmust be true."
"Oh, then, it isn't necessary. I'll reserve my arguments for Mrs.Bowen."
"You had better. She isn't at all romantic. She says it's very well forme she isn't--that her being matter-of-fact lets me be as romantic as Ilike."
"Then Mrs. Bowen isn't as romantic as she would like to be if she hadn'tcharge of a romantic young lady?"
"Oh, I don't say that. Dear me! I'd no idea it _could_ be so hot inJanuary." As they strolled along beside the long hedge of laurel, thecarriage slowly following them at a little distance, the sun beat strongupon the white road, blotched here and there with the black irregularshadows of the ilexes. The girl undid the pelisse across her breast,with a fine impetuosity, and let it swing open as she walked. Shestopped suddenly. "Hark! What bird was that?"
"'It was the nightingale, and not the lark,'" suggested Colville lazily.
"Oh, _don't_ you think _Romeo and Juliet_ is divine?" demanded Imogene,promptly dropping the question of the bird.
"I don't know about Romeo," returned Colville, "but it's sometimesoccurred to me that Juliet was rather forth-putting."
"You _know_ she wasn't. It's my favourite play. I could go every night.It's perfectly amazing to me that they can play anything else."
"You would like it five hundred nights in the year, like _Hazel Kirke_?That would be a good deal of Romeo, not to say Juliet."
"They ought to do it out of respect to Shakespeare. Don't you likeShakespeare?"
"Well, I've seen the time when I preferred Alexander Smith," saidColville evasively.
"Alexander Smith? Who in the world is Alexander Smith?"
"How recent you are! Alexander Smith was an immortal who flourishedabout the year 1850."
"That was before I was born. How could I remember him? But I don't feelso very recent for all that."
"Neither do I, this morning," said Colville. "I was up at one ofPharaoh's balls last night, and I danced too much."
He gave Imogene a droll glance, and then bent it upon Effie's discreetface. The child dropped her eyes with a blush like her mother's, havingfirst sought provisional counsel of Imogene, who turned away. He rightlyinferred that they all had been talking him over at breakfast, and hebroke into a laugh which they joined in, but Imogene said nothing inrecognition of the fact.
With what he felt to be haste for his relief she said, "Don't you hateto be told to read a book?"
"I used to--quarter of a century ago," said Colville, recognising thatthis was the way young people talked, even then.
"Used to?" she repeated. "Don't you now?"
"No; I'm a great deal more tractable now. I always say that I shall getthe book out of the library. I draw the line at buying. I still hate tobuy a book that people recommend."
"What kind of books do you like to buy?"
"Oh, no kind. I think we ought to get all our books out of the library."
"Do you never like to talk in earnest?"
"Well, not often," said Colville. "Because, if you do, you can't saywith a good conscience afterward that you were only in fun."
"Oh! And do you always like to talk so that you can get out of thingsafterward?"
"No. I didn't say that, did I?"
"Very nearly, I should think."
"Then I'm glad I didn't quite."
"I like people to be outspoken--to say everything they think," said thegirl, regarding him with a puzzled look.
"Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite," answered Colville. "Isay a great deal more than I think."
She looked at him again with envy, with admiration, qualifying herperplexity. They had come to a point where some moss-grown,weather-beaten statues stood at the corners of the road that traversedthe bosky stretch between the avenues of the Cascine. "Ah, how beautifulthey are!" he said, halting, and giving himself to the rapture that ablackened garden statue imparts to one who beholds it from thevantage-ground of sufficient years and experience.
"Do you remember that story of Heine's," he resumed, after a moment, "ofthe boy who steals out of the old castle by moonlight, and kisses thelips of the garden statue, fallen among the rank grass of the ruinousparterres? And long afterward, when he looks down on the sleep of thedying girl where she lies on the green sofa, it seems to him that sheand that statue are the same?"
"Oh!" deeply sighed the young girl. "No, I never read it. Tell me whatit is. I _must_ read it."
"The rest is all talk--very good talk; but I doubt whether it wouldinterest you. He goes on to talk of a great many things---of the wayBellini spoke French, for example. He says it was bloodcurdling,horrible, cataclysmal. He brought out the poor French words and brokethem upon the wheel, till you thought the whole world must give way witha thunder-crash. A dead hush reigned in the room; the women did not knowwhether to faint or fly; the men looked down at their pantaloons, andtried to realise what they had on."
"Oh, how perfectly delightful! how shameful!" cried the girl. "I _must_read it. What is it in? What is the name of the story?"
"It isn't a story," said Colville. "Did you ever see anything lovelierthan these statues?"
"No," said Imogene. "_Are_ they good?"
"They are much better than good--they are the very worst rococo."
"What makes you say they are beautiful, then?"
"Why, don't you see? They commemorate youth, gaiety, brilliant, joyouslife. That's what that kind of statues was made for--to look on at rich,young, beautiful people and their gallantries; to be danced before byfine ladies and gentlemen playing at shepherd and shepherdesses; to bedriven past by marcheses and contessinas flirting in carriages; to behung with scarfs and wreaths; to be parts of eternal _fetes champetres_.Don't you see how bored they look? When I first came to Italy I shouldhave detested and ridiculed their bad art; but now they'reexquisite--the worse, the better."
"I don't know what in the world you _do_ mean," said Imogene, laughinguneasily.
"Mrs. Bowen would. It's a pity Mrs. Bowen isn't here with us. MissEffie, if I lift you up to one of those statues, will you kindly ask itif it doesn't remember a young American signor who was here just beforethe French Revolution? I don't believe it's forgotten me."
"No, no," said Imogene. "It's time we were walking back. Don't you likeScott!" she added. "I should think you would if you like those romanticthings. I used to like Scott so _much_. When I was fifteen I wouldn'tread anything but Scott. Don't you like Thackeray? Oh, he's so_cynical_! It's perfectly delightful."
"Cynical?" repeated Colville thoughtfully. "I was looking into _TheNewcomes_ the other day, and I thought he was rather sentimental."
"Sentimental! Why, what an idea! That is the strangest thing I everheard of. Oh!" she broke in upon her own amazement, "don't you thinkBrowning's 'Statue and the Bust' is splendid? Mr. Morton read it tous--to Mrs. Bowen, I mean."
Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morton's, he did not know justwhy; then his pique was lost in sarcastic recollection of the time whenhe too used to read poems to ladies. He had read that poem to LinaRidgely and the other one.
"Mrs. Bowen asked him to read it," Imogene continued.
"Did she?" asked Colville pensively.
"And then we discussed it afterward. We had a long discussion. And thenhe read us the 'Legend of Pornic,' and we had a discussion about that.Mrs. Bowen says it was real gold they found in the coffin; but I thinkit was the girl's 'gold hair.' I don't know which Mr. Morton thought.Which do you? Don't you think the 'Legend of Pornic' is splendid?"
"Yes, it's a great poem, and deep," said Colville. They had come to aplace where the bank sloped invitingly to the river. "Miss Effie," heasked, "wouldn't you like to go do
wn and throw stones into the Arno?That's what a river is for," he added, as the child glanced towardImogene for authorisation, "to have stones thrown into it."
"Oh, let us!" cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I don't want tothrow stones into it, but to get near it--to get near to any bit ofnature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!" She stood and watchedColville skim stones over the current. "When you stand by the shore of aswift river like this, or near a railroad train when it comes whirlingby, don't you ever have a morbid impulse to fling yourself forward?"
"Not at my time of life," said Colville, stooping to select a flatstone. "Morbid impulses are one of the luxuries of youth." He threw thestone, which skipped triumphantly far out into the stream. "That wasbeautiful, wasn't it, Miss Effie?"
"Lovely!" murmured the child.
He offered her a flat pebble. "Would you like to try one?"
"It would spoil my gloves," she said, in deprecating refusal.
"Let _me_ try it!" cried Imogene. "I'm not afraid of my gloves."
Colville yielded the pebble, looking at her with the thought of howintoxicating he should once have found this bit of wilful _abandon_, butfeeling rather sorry for it now. "Oh, perhaps not?" he said, laying hishand upon hers, and looking into her eyes.
She returned his look, and then she dropped the pebble and put her handback in her muff, and turned and ran up the bank. "There's the carriage.It's time we should be going." At the top of the bank she became amirror of dignity, a transparent mirror to his eye. "Are you going backto town, Mr. Colville?" she asked, with formal state. "We could set youdown anywhere!"
"Thank you, Miss Graham. I shall be glad to avail myself of your verykind offer. Allow me." He handed her ceremoniously to the carriage; hehanded Effie Bowen even more ceremoniously to the carriage, holding hishat in one hand while he offered the other. Then he mounted to the seatin front of them. "The weather has changed," he said.
Imogene hid her face in her muff, and Effie Bowen bowed hers againstImogene's shoulder.
A sense of the girl's beauty lingered in Colville's thought all day, andrecurred to him again and again; and the ambitious intensity andenthusiasm of her talk came back in touches of amusement and compassion.How divinely young it all was, and how lovely! He patronised it from aheight far aloof.
He was not in the frame of mind for the hotel table, and he went tolunch, at a restaurant. He chose a simple trattoria, the first he cameto, and he took his seat at one of the bare, rude tables, where thejoint saucers for pepper and salt, and a small glass for toothpicks,with a much-scraped porcelain box for matches, expressed an uncorruptedFlorentinity of custom. But when he gave his order in offhand Italian,the waiter answered in the French which waiters get together for thetraveller's confusion in Italy, and he resigned himself to whateverchance of acquaintance might befall him. The place had a companionablesmell of stale tobacco, and the dim light showed him on the walls of aspace dropped a step or two lower, at the end of the room, a variety ofsketches and caricatures. A waiter was laying a large table in thisspace, and when Colville came up to examine the drawings he jostled him,with due apologies, in the haste of a man working against time formasters who will brook no delay. He was hurrying still when a party ofyoung men came in and took their places at the table, and began to roughhim for his delay. Colville could recognise several of them in thevigorous burlesques on the walls, and as others dropped in the grotesqueportraitures made him feel as if he had seen them before. They alltalked at once, each man of his own interests, except when they joinedin a shout of mockery and welcome for some new-comer. Colville, at his_risotto_, almost the room's length away, could hear what they thought,one and another, of Botticelli and Michelangelo; of old Piloty's thingsat Munich; of the dishes they had served to them, and of the quality ofthe Chianti; of the respective merits of German and Italian tobacco; ofwhether Inglehart had probably got to Venice yet; of the personal habitsof Billings, and of the question whether the want of modelling inSimmons's nose had anything to do with his style of snoring; of theoverrated colouring of some of those Venetian fellows; of the delicacyof Mino da Fiesole, and of the genius of Babson's tailor. Babson wasthere to defend the cut of his trousers, and Billings and Simmons werepresent to answer for themselves at the expense of the pictures of thosewho had called their habits and features into question. When it came tothis all the voices joined in jolly uproar. Derision and denial brokeout of the tumult, and presently they were all talking quietly of areception which some of them were at the day before. Then Colville heardone of them saying that he would like a chance to paint some lady whosename he did not catch, and "She looks awfully sarcastic," one of theyoung fellows said.
"They say she _is_," said another. "They say she's awfullyintellectual."
"Boston?" queried a third.
"No, Kalamazoo. The centre of culture is out there now."
"She knows how to dress, anyhow," said the first commentator. "I wonderwhat Parker would talk to her about when he was painting her. He's neverread anything but Poe's 'Ullalume.'"
"Well, that's a good subject--'Ullalume.'"
"I suppose she's read it?"
"She's read 'most everything, they say."
"What's an Ullalume, anyway, Parker?"
One of the group sprang up from the table and drew on the wall what helabelled "An Ullalume." Another rapidly depicted Parker in the moment ofsketching a young lady; her portrait had got as far as the eyes and nosewhen some one protested: "Oh, hello! No personalities."
The draughtsman said, "Well, all right!" and sat down again.
"Hall talked with her the most. What did she say, Hall?"
"Hall can't remember words in three syllables, but he says it was mightybrilliant and mighty deep."
"They say she's a niece of Mrs. Bowen's. She's staying with Mrs. Bowen."
Then it was the wisdom and brilliancy and severity of Imogene Grahamthat these young men stood in awe of! Colville remembered how the mindsof girls of twenty had once dazzled him. "And yes," he mused, "she musthave believed that we were talking literature in the Cascine. CertainlyI should have thought it an intellectual time when I was at that age,"he owned to himself with forlorn irony.
The young fellows went on to speak of Mrs. Bowen, whom it seemed theyhad known the winter before. She had been very polite to them; theypraised her as if she were quite an old woman.
"But she must have been a very pretty girl," one of them put in.
"Well, she has a good deal of style yet."
"Oh yes, but she never could have been a beauty like the other one."
On her part, Imogene was very sober when she met Mrs. Bowen, though shehad come in flushed and excited from the air and the morning'sadventure. Mrs. Bowen was sitting by the fire, placidly reading; a vaseof roses on the little table near her diffused the delicate odour ofwinter roses through the room; all seemed very still and dim, and ofanother time, somehow.
Imogene kept away from the fire, sitting down, in the provisionalfashion of women, with her things on; but she unbuttoned her pelisse andflung it open. Effie had gone to her room.
"Did you have a pleasant drive?" asked Mrs. Bowen.
"Very," said the girl.
"Mr. Morton brought you these roses," continued Mrs. Bowen.
"Oh," said Imogene, with a cold glance at them.
"The Flemmings have asked us to a party Thursday. There is to bedancing."
"The Flemmings?"
"Yes." As if she now saw reason to do so, Mrs. Bowen laid the book facedownward in her lap. She yawned a little, with her hand on her mouth."Did you meet any one you knew?"
"Yes; Mr. Colville." Mrs. Bowen cut her yawn in half. "We got out towalk in the Cascine, and we saw him coming in at the gate. He came upand asked if he might walk with us."
"Did you have a pleasant walk?" asked Mrs. Bowen, a breath more chillilythan she had asked if they had a pleasant drive.
"Yes, pleasant enough. And then we came back and went down the riverbank, and he skipped
stones, and we took him to his hotel."
"Was there anybody you knew in the Cascine?"
"Oh no; the place was a howling wilderness. I never saw it so deserted,"said the girl impatiently. "It was terribly hot walking. I thought Ishould burn up."
Mrs. Bowen did not answer anything; she let the book lie in her lap.
"What an odd person Mr. Colville is!" said Imogene, after a moment."Don't you think he's very different from other gentlemen?"
"Why?"
"Oh, he has such a peculiar way of talking."
"What peculiar way?"
"Oh, I don't know. Plenty of the young men I see talk cynically, and Ido sometimes myself--desperately, don't you know. But then I know verywell we don't mean anything by it."
"And do you think Mr. Colville does? Do you think he talks cynically?"
Imogene leaned back in her chair and reflected. "No," she returnedslowly, "I can't say that he does. But he talks lightly, with a kind oftouch and go that makes you feel that he has exhausted all feeling. Hedoesn't parade it at all. But you hear between the words, don't youknow, just as you read between the lines in some kinds of poetry. Ofcourse it's everything in knowing what he's been through. He's perfectlyunaffected; and don't you think he's good?"
"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "In his way."
"But he sees through you. Oh, quite! Nothing escapes him, and prettysoon he lets out that he has seen through you, and then you feel so_flat_! Oh, it's perfectly intoxicating to be with him. I would give theworld to talk as he does."
"What was your talk all about?"
"Oh, I don't know. I suppose it would have been called ratherintellectual."
Mrs. Bowen smiled infinitesimally. But after a moment she said gravely,"Mr. Colville is very much older than you. He's old enough to be yourfather."
"Yes, I know that. You feel that he feels old, and it's perfectlytragical. Sometimes when he turns that slow, dull, melancholy look onyou, he seems a thousand years old."
"I don't mean that he's positively old," said Mrs. Bowen. "He's only oldcomparatively."
"Oh yes; I understand that. And I don't mean that he really seems athousand years old. What I meant was, he seems a thousand years off, asif he were still young, and had got left behind somehow. He seems to beon the other side of some impassable barrier, and you want to get overthere and help him to our side, but you can't do it. I suppose histalking in that light way is merely a subterfuge to hide his feeling, tomake him forget."
Mrs. Bowen fingered the edges of her book. "You mustn't let your fancyrun away with you, Imogene," she said, with a little painful smile.
"Oh, I _like_ to let it run away with me. And when I get such a subjectas Mr. Colville, there's no stopping. I can't stop, and I don't _wish_to stop. Shouldn't you have thought that he would have been perfectlycrushed at the exhibition he made of himself in the Lancers last night?He wasn't the least embarrassed when he met me, and the only allusion hemade to it was to say that he had been up late, and had danced too much.Wasn't it wonderful he could do it? Oh, if _I_ could do that!"
"I wish he could have avoided the occasion for his bravado," said Mrs.Bowen.
"I think I was a little to blame, perhaps," said the girl. "I beckonedhim to come and take the vacant place."
"I don't see that that was an excuse," returned Mrs. Bowen primly.
Imogene seemed insensible to the tone, as it concerned herself; it onlyapparently reminded her of something. "Guess what Mr. Colville said,when I had been silly, and then tried to make up for it by being verydignified all of a sudden?"
"I don't know. How had you been silly?"
The servant brought in some cards. Imogene caught up the pelisse whichshe had been gradually shedding as she sat talking to Mrs. Bowen, andran out of the room by another door.
They did not recur to the subject. But that night, when Mrs. Bowen wentto say good night to Effie, after the child had gone to bed, shelingered.
"Effie," she said at last, in a husky whisper, "what did Imogene say toMr. Colville to-day that made him laugh?"
"I don't know," said the child. "They kept laughing at so many things."
"Laughing?"
"Yes; he laughed. Do you mean toward the last, when he had been throwingstones into the river?"
"It must have been then."
The child stretched herself drowsily. "Oh I couldn't understand it all.She wanted to throw a stone in the river, but he told her she had betternot. But that didn't make _him_ laugh. She was so very stiff justafterward that he said the weather had changed, and that made _us_laugh."
"Was that all?"
"We kept laughing ever so long. I never saw any one like Mr. Colville.How queerly the fire shines on your face! It gives you such a beautifulcomplexion."
"Does it?"
"Yes, lovely." The child's mother stooped over and kissed her. "You'rethe prettiest mamma in the world," she said, throwing her arms round herneck. "Sometimes I can't tell whether Imogene is prettier or not, butto-night I'm certain you are. Do you like to have me think that?"
"Yes--yes. But don't pull me down so; you hurt my neck. Good night."
The child let her go. "I haven't said my prayer yet, mamma. I wasthinking."
"Well, say it now, then," said the mother gently.
When the child had finished she turned upon her cheek. "Good night,mamma."
Mrs. Bowen went about the room a little while, picking up its prettydisorder. Then she sat down in a chair by the hearth, where a log wasstill burning. The light of the flame flickered upon her face, and threwupon the ceiling a writhing, fantastic shadow, the odious caricature ofher gentle beauty.