There were a great number of people of the four nationalities that mostly consort in Italy. There were English and Americans and Russians and the sort of Italians resulting from the native intermarriages with them; here and there were Italians of pure blood, borderers upon the foreign life through a literary interest, or an artistic relation, or a matrimonial intention; here and there, also, the large stomach of a German advanced the bounds of the new empire and the new ideal of duty. There were no Frenchmen; one may meet them in more strictly Italian assemblages, but it is as if the sorrows and uncertainties of France in these times discouraged them from the international society in which they were always an infrequent element. It is not, of course, imaginable that as Frenchmen they have doubts of their merits, but that they have their misgivings as to the intelligence of others. The language that prevailed was English — in fact, one heard no other, — and the tea which our civilisation carries everywhere with it steamed from the cups in all hands. This beverage, in fact, becomes a formidable factor in the life of a Florentine winter. One finds it at all houses, and more or less mechanically drinks it.
“I am turning out a terrible tea toper,” said Colville, stirring his cup in front of the old lady whom his relations to the ladies at Palazzo Pinti had interested so much. “I don’t think I drink less than ten cups a day; seventy cups a week is a low average for me. I’m really beginning to look down at my boots a little anxiously.”
Mrs. Amsden laughed. She had not been in America for forty years, but she liked the American way of talking better than any other. “Oh, didn’t you hear about Inglehart when he was here? He was so good-natured that he used to drink all the tea people offered him, and then the young ladies made tea for him in his studio when they went to look at his pictures. It almost killed him. By the time spring came he trembled so that the brush flew out of his hands when he took it up. He had to hurry off to Venice to save his life. It’s just as bad at the Italian houses; they’ve learned to like tea.”
“When I was here before, they never offered you anything but coffee,” said Colville. “They took tea for medicine, and there was an old joke that I thought I should die of, I heard it so often about the Italian that said to the English woman when she offered him tea, ‘Grazie; sto bene.’”
“Oh, that’s all changed now.”
“Yes; I’ve seen the tea, and I haven’t heard the joke.”
The flavour of Colville’s talk apparently encouraged his companion to believe that he would like to make fun of their host’s paintings with her; but whether he liked them, or whether he was principled against that sort of return for hospitality, he chose to reply seriously to some ironical lures she threw out.
“Oh, if you’re going to be good,” she exclaimed, “I shall have nothing more to say to you. Here comes Mr. Thurston; I can make him abuse the pictures. There! You had better go away to a young lady I see alone over yonder, though I don’t know what you will do with one alone.” She laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch and lively, but that was now puckery and infirm — it is affecting to see these things in women — and welcomed the old gentleman who came up and superseded Colville.
The latter turned, with his cup still in his hand, and wandered about through the company, hoping he might see Mrs. Bowen among the groups peering at the pictures or solidly blocking the view in front of them. He did not find her, but he found Imogene Graham standing somewhat apart near a window. He saw her face light up at sight of him, and then darken again as he approached.
“Isn’t this rather an unnatural state of things?” he asked when he had come up. “I ought to be obliged to fight my way to you through successive phalanxes of young men crowding round with cups of tea outstretched in their imploring hands. Have you had some tea?”
“Thank you, no; I don’t wish any,” said the young girl, so coldly that he could not help noticing, though commonly he was man enough to notice very few things.
“How is Effie to-day?” he asked quickly.
“Oh, quite well,” said Imogene.
“I don’t see Mrs. Bowen,” he ventured further.
“No,” answered the girl, still very lifelessly; “I came with Mrs. Fleming.” She looked about the room as if not to look at him.
He now perceived a distinct intention to snub him. He smiled. “Have you seen the pictures? There are two or three really lovely ones.”
“Mrs. Fleming will be here in a moment, I suppose,” said Imogene evasively, but not with all her first coldness.
“Let us steal a march on her,” said Colville briskly. “When she comes you can tell her that I showed you the pictures.”
“I don’t know,” faltered the girl.
“Perhaps it isn’t necessary you should,” he suggested.
She glanced at him with questioning trepidation.
“The respective duties of chaperone and protégée are rather undefined. Where the chaperone isn’t there to command, the protégée isn’t there to obey. I suppose you’d know if you were at home?”
“Oh yes!”
“Let me imagine myself at a loan exhibition in Buffalo. Ah! that appeal is irresistible. You’ll come, I see.”
She hesitated; she looked at the nearest picture, then followed him to another. He now did what he had refused to do for the old lady who tempted him to it; he made fun of the pictures a little, but so amiably and with so much justice to their good points that the painter himself would not have minded his jesting. From time to time he made Imogene smile, but in her eyes lurked a look of uneasiness, and her manner expressed a struggle against his will which might have had its pathos for him in different circumstances, but now it only incited him to make her forget herself more and more; he treated her as one does a child that is out of sorts — coaxingly, ironically.
When they had made the round of the rooms Mrs. Fleming was not at the window where she had left Imogene; the girl detected the top of her bonnet still in the next room.
“The chaperone is never there when you come back with the protégée,” said Colville. “It seems to be the nature of the chaperone.”
Imogene turned very grave. “I think I ought to go to her,” she murmured.
“Oh no; she ought to come to you; I stand out for protégée’s rights.”
“I suppose she will come directly.”
“She sees me with you; she knows you are safe.”
“Oh, of course,” said the girl. After a constraint which she marked by rather a long silence, she added, “How strange a roomful of talking sounds, doesn’t it? Just like a great caldron boiling up and bubbling over. Wouldn’t you like to know what they’re all saying?”
“Oh, it’s quite bad enough to see them,” replied Colville frivolously.
“I think a company of gentlemen with their hats off look very queer, don’t you?” she asked, after another interval.
“Well, really,” said Colville, laughing, “I don’t know that the spectacle ever suggested any metaphysical speculations to me. I rather think they look queerer with their hats on.”
“Oh yes.”
“Though there is not very much to choose. We’re a queer-looking set, anyway.”
He got himself another cup of tea, and coming back to her, allowed her to make the efforts to keep up the conversation, and was not without a malicious pleasure in her struggles. They interested him as social exercises which, however abrupt and undexterous now, were destined, with time and practice, to become the finesse of a woman of society, and to be accepted, even while they were still abrupt and undexterous, as touches of character. He had broken up that coldness with which she had met him at first, and now he let her adjust the fragments as she could to the new situation. He wore that air of a gentleman who has been talking a long time to a lady, and who will not dispute her possession with a new-comer.
But no one came, though, as he cast his eyes carelessly over the company, he found that it had been increased by the accession of eight or ten young fellows, with a
refreshing light of originality in their faces, and little touches of difference from the other men in their dress.
“Oh, there are the Inglehart boys!” cried the girl, with a flash of excitement.
There was a sensation of interest and friendliness in the company as these young fellows, after their moment of social intimidation, began to gather round the pictures, and to fling their praise and blame about, and talk the delightful shop of the studio.
The sight of their fresh young faces, the sound of their voices, struck a pang of regret that was almost envy to Colville’s heart.
Imogene followed them with eager eyes. “Oh,” she sighed, “shouldn’t you like to be an artist?”
“I should, very much.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon; I forgot. I knew you were an architect.”
“I should say I used to be, if you hadn’t objected to my perfects and preterits.”
What came next seemed almost an accident.
“I didn’t suppose you cared for my objections, so long as I amused you.” She suddenly glanced at him, as if terrified at her own words.
“Have you been trying to amuse me?” he asked.
“Oh no. I thought — —”
“Oh, then,” said Colville sharply, “you meant that I was amusing myself with you?” She glanced at him in terror of his divination, but could not protest. “Has any one told you that?” he pursued, with sudden angry suspicion.
“No, no one,” began Imogene. She glanced about her, frightened. They stood quite alone where they were; the people had mostly wandered off into the other rooms. “Oh, don’t — I didn’t mean — I didn’t intend to say anything — —”
“But you have said something — something that surprises me from you, and hurts me. I wish to know whether you say it from yourself.”
“I don’t know — yes. That is, not —— Oh, I wish Mrs. Fleming — —”
She looked as if another word of pursuit would put it beyond her power to control herself.
“Let me take you to Mrs. Fleming,” said Colville, with freezing hauteur; and led the way where the top of Mrs. Fleming’s bonnet still showed itself. He took leave at once, and hastily parting with his host, found himself in the street, whirled in many emotions. The girl had not said that from herself, but it was from some woman; he knew that by the directness of the phrase and its excess, for he had noticed that women who liked to beat about the bush in small matters have a prodigious straightforwardness in more vital affairs, and will even call grey black in order clearly to establish the presence of the black in that colour. He could hardly keep himself from going to Palazzo Pinti.
But he contrived to go to his hotel instead, where he ate a moody dinner, and then, after an hour’s solitary bitterness in his room, went out and passed the evening at the theatre. The play was one of those fleering comedies which render contemptible for the time all honest and earnest intention, and which surely are a whiff from the bottomless pit itself. It made him laugh at the serious strain of self-question that had mingled with his resentment; it made him laugh even at his resentment, and with its humour in his thoughts, sent him off to sleep in a sottish acceptance of whatever was trivial in himself as the only thing that was real and lasting.
He slept late, and when Paolo brought up his breakfast, he brought with it a letter which he said had been left with the porter an hour before. A faint appealing perfume of violet exhaled from the note, and mingled with the steaming odours of the coffee and boiled milk, when Colville, after a glance at the unfamiliar handwriting of the superscription, broke the seal.
“DEAR MR. COLVILLE, — I don’t know what you will think of my writing to you, but perhaps you can’t think worse of me than you do already, and anything will be better than the misery that I am in. I have not been asleep all night. I hate myself for telling you, but I do want you to understand how I have felt. I would give worlds if I could take back the words that you say wounded you. I didn’t mean to wound you. Nobody is to blame for them but me; nobody ever breathed a word about you that was meant in unkindness.
“I am not ashamed of writing this, whatever you think, and I will sign my name in full. IMOGENE GRAHAM.”
Colville had commonly a good appetite for his breakfast, but now he let his coffee stand long un-tasted. There were several things about this note that touched him — the childlike simplicity and directness, the generous courage, even the imperfection and crudity of the literature. However he saw it afterward, he saw it then in its true intention. He respected that intention; through all the sophistications in which life had wrapped him, it awed him a little. He realised that if he had been younger he would have gone to Imogene herself with her letter. He felt for the moment a rush of the emotion which he would once not have stopped to examine, which he would not have been capable of examining. But now his duty was clear; he must go to Mrs. Bowen. In the noblest human purpose there is always some admixture, however slight, of less noble motive, and Colville was not without the willingness to see whatever embarrassment she might feel when he showed her the letter, and to invoke her finest tact to aid him in re-assuring the child.
She was alone in her drawing-room, and she told him in response to his inquiry for their health that Imogene and Effie had gone out to drive. She looked so pretty in the quiet house dress in which she rose from the sofa and stood, letting him come the whole way to greet her, that he did not think of any other look in her, but afterward he remembered an evidence of inner tumult in her brightened eyes.
He said, smiling, “I’m so glad to see you alone,” and this brought still another look into her face, which also he afterward remembered. She did not reply, but made a sound in her throat like a bird when it stirs itself for flight or song. It was a strange, indefinite little note, in which Colville thought he detected trepidation at the time, and recalled for the sort of expectation suggested in it. She stood waiting for him to go on.
“I have come to get you to help me out of trouble.”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Bowen, with a vague smile. “I always supposed you would be able to help yourself out of trouble. Or perhaps wouldn’t mind it if you were in it.”
“Oh yes, I mind it very much,” returned Colville, refusing her banter, if it were banter. “Especially this sort of trouble, which involves some one else in the discomfort.” He went on abruptly: “I have been held up to a young lady as a person who was amusing himself with her, and I was so absurd as to be angry when she told me, and demanded the name of my friend, whoever it was. My behaviour seems to have given the young lady a bad night, and this morning she writes to tell me so, and to take all the blame on herself, and to assure me that no harm was meant me by any one. Of course I don’t want her to be distressed about it. Perhaps you can guess who has been writing to me.”
Colville said all this looking down, in a fashion he had. When he looked up he saw a severity in Mrs. Bowen’s pretty face, such as he had not seen there before.
“I didn’t know she had been writing to you, but I know that you are talking of Imogene. She told me what she had said to you yesterday, and I blamed her for it, but I’m not sure that it wasn’t best.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Colville. “Perhaps you can tell me who put the idea into her head?”
“Yes; I did.”
A dead silence ensued, in which the fragments of the situation broken by these words revolved before Colville’s thought with kaleidoscopic variety, and he passed through all the phases of anger, resentment, wounded self-love, and accusing shame.
At last, “I suppose you had your reasons,” he said simply.
“I am in her mother’s place here,” she replied, tightening the grip of one little hand upon another, where she held them laid against the side of her waist.
“Yes, I know that,” said Colville; “but what reason had you to warn her against me as a person who was amusing himself with her? I don’t like the phrase; but she seems to have got it from you; I use it at third hand.”
“I don’t like the phrase either; I didn’t invent it.”
“You used it.”
“No; it wasn’t I who used it. I should have been glad to use another, if I could,” said Mrs. Bowen, with perfect steadiness.
“Then you mean to say that you believe I’ve been trifling with the feelings of this child?”
“I mean to say nothing. You are very much older; and she is a romantic girl, very extravagant. You have tried to make her like you.”
“I certainly have. I have tried to make Effie Bowen like me too.”
Mrs. Bowen passed this over in serenity that he felt was not far from contempt.
He gave a laugh that did not express enjoyment.
“You have no right to laugh!” she cried, losing herself a little, and so making her first gain upon him.
“It appears not. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do about this letter?”
“That is for you to decide.” She recovered herself, and lost ground with him in proportion.
“I thought perhaps that since you were able to judge my motives so clearly, you might be able to advise me.”
“I don’t judge your motives,” Mrs. Bowen began. She added suddenly, as if by an after-thought, “I don’t think you had any.”
“I’m obliged to you.”
“But you are as much to blame as if you had.”
“And perhaps I’m as much to blame as if I had really wronged somebody?”
“Yes.”
“It’s rather paradoxical. You don’t wish me to see her any more?”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 274