The girl’s eyes kindled with rapture. “Then let us never speak of it again. I was going to say something, but now I won’t say it.”
“Yes, say it.”
“No; it will make you think that I am anxious on my own account about appearances before people.”
“You poor child, I shall never think you are anxious on your own account about anything. What were you going to say?”
“Oh, nothing! It was only — are you invited to the Phillipses’ fancy ball?”
“Yes,” said Colville, silently making what he could of the diversion, “I believe so.”
“And are you going — did you mean to go?” she asked timidly.
“Good heavens, no! What in the world should I do at another fancy ball? I walked about with the airy grace of a bull in a china shop at the last one.”
Imogene did not smile. She faintly sighed. “Well, then, I won’t go either.”
“Did you intend to go?”
“Oh no!”
“Why, of course you did, and it’s very right you should. Did you want me to go?”
“It would bore you.”
“Not if you’re there.” She gave his hand a grateful pressure. “Come, I’ll go, of course, Imogene. A fancy ball to please you is a very different thing from a fancy ball in the abstract.”
“Oh, what nice things you say! Do you know, I always admired your compliments? I think they’re the most charming compliments in the world.”
“I don’t think they’re half so pretty as yours; but they’re more sincere.”
“No, honestly. They flatter, and at the same time they make fun of the flattery a little; they make a person feel that you like them, even while you laugh at them.”
“They appear to be rather an intricate kind of compliment — sort of salsa agradolce affair — tutti frutti style — species of moral mayonnaise.”
“No — be quiet! You know what I mean. What were we talking about? Oh! I was going to say that the most fascinating thing about you always was that ironical way of yours.”
“Have I an ironical way? You were going to tell me something more about the fancy ball.”
“I don’t care for it. I would rather talk about you.”
“And I prefer the ball. It’s a fresher topic — to me.”
“Very well, then. But this I will say. No matter how happy you should be, I should always want you to keep that tone of persiflage. You’ve no idea how perfectly intoxicating it is.”
“Oh yes, I have. It seems to have turned the loveliest and wisest head in the world.”
“Oh, do you really think so? I would give anything if you did.”
“What?”
“Think I was pretty,” she pleaded, with full eyes. “Do you?”
“No, but I think you are wise. Fifty per cent, of truth — it’s a large average in compliments. What are you going to wear?”
“Wear? Oh! At the ball! Something Egyptian, I suppose. It’s to be an Egyptian ball. Didn’t you understand that?”
“Oh yes. But I supposed you could go in any sort of dress.”
“You can’t. You must go in some Egyptian character.”
“How would Moses do? In the bulrushes, you know. You could be Pharaoh’s daughter, and recognise me by my three hats. And toward the end of the evening, when I became very much bored, I could go round killing Egyptians.”
“No, no. Be serious. Though I like you to joke, too. I shall always want you to joke. Shall you, always?”
“There may be emergencies when I shall fail — like family prayers, and grace before meat, and dangerous sickness.”
“Why, of course. But I mean when we’re together, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t?”
“Oh, at such times I shall certainly joke.”
“And before people, too! I won’t have them saying that it’s sobered you — that you used to be very gay, and now you’re cross, and never say anything.”
“I will try to keep it up sufficiently to meet the public demand.”
“And I shall want you to joke me, too. You must satirise me. It does more to show me my faults than anything else, and it will show other people how perfectly submissive I am, and how I think everything you do is just right.”
“If I were to beat you a little in company, don’t you think it would serve the same purpose?”
“No, no; be serious.”
“About joking?”
“No, about me. I know that I’m very intense, and you must try to correct that tendency in me.”
“I will, with pleasure. Which of my tendencies are you going to correct?”
“You have none.”
“Well, then, neither have you. I’m not going to be outdone in civilities.”
“Oh, if people could only hear you talk in this light way, and then know what I know!”
Colville broke out into a laugh at the deep sigh which accompanied these words. As a whole, the thing was grotesque and terrible to him, but after a habit of his, he was finding a strange pleasure in its details.
“No, no,” she pleaded. “Don’t laugh. There are girls that would give their eyes for it.”
“As pretty eyes as yours?”
“Do you think they’re nice?”
“Yes, if they were not so mysterious.”
“Mysterious?”
“Yes, I feel that your eyes can’t really be as honest as they look. That was what puzzled me about them the first night I saw you.”
“No — did it, really?”
“I went home saying to myself that no girl could be so sincere as that Miss Graham seemed.”
“Did you say that?”
“Words to that effect.”
“And what do you think now?”
“Ah, I don’t know. You had better go as the Sphinx.”
Imogene laughed in simple gaiety of heart.
“How far we’ve got from the ball!” she said, as if the remote excursion were a triumph. “What shall we really go as?”
“Isis and Osiris.”
“Weren’t they gods of some kind?”
“Little one-horse deities — not very much.”
“It won’t do to go as gods of any kind. They’re always failures. People expect too much of them.”
“Yes,” said Colville. “That’s human nature under all circumstances. But why go to an Egyptian ball at all?”
“Oh, we must go. If we both stayed away it would make talk at once, and my object is to keep people in the dark till the very last moment. Of course it’s unfortunate your having told Mrs. Amsden that you were going away, and then telling her just after you came back with me that you were going to stay. But it can’t be helped now. And I don’t really care for it. But don’t you see why I want you to go to all these things?”
“All these things?”
“Yes, everything you’re invited to after this. It’s not merely for a blind as regards ourselves now, but if they see that you’re very fond of all sorts of gaieties, they will see that you are — they will understand — —”
There was no need for her to complete the sentence. Colville rose. “Come, come, my dear child,” he said, “why don’t you end all this at once? I don’t blame you. Heaven knows I blame no one but myself! I ought to have the strength to break away from this mistake, but I haven’t. I couldn’t bear to see you suffer from pain that I should give you even for your good. But do it yourself, Imogene, and for pity’s sake don’t forbear from any notion of sparing me. I have no wish except for your happiness, and now I tell you clearly that no appearance we can put on before the world will deceive the world. At the end of all our trouble I shall still be forty — —”
She sprang to him and put her hand over his mouth. “I know what you’re going to say, and I won’t let you say it, for you’ve promised over and over again not to speak of that any more. Oh, do you think I care for the world, or what it will think or say?”
“Yes, very much.”
“That shows how
little you understand me. It’s because I wish to defy the world—”
“Imogene! Be as honest with yourself as you are with me.”
“I am honest.”
“Look me in the eyes, then.”
She did so for an instant, and then hid her face on his shoulder.
“You silly girl,” he said. “What is it you really do wish?”
“I wish there was no one in the world but you and me.”
“Ah, you’d find it very crowded at times,” said Colville sadly. “Well, well,” he added, “I’ll go to your fandangoes, because you want me to go.”
“That’s all I wished you to say,” she replied, lifting her head, and looking him radiantly in the face. “I don’t want you to go at all! I only want you to promise that you’ll come here every night that you’re invited out, and read to Mrs. Bowen and me.”
“Oh, I can’t do that,” said Colville; “I’m too fond of society. For example, I’ve been invited to an Egyptian fancy ball, and I couldn’t think of giving that up.”
“Oh, how delightful you are! They couldn’t any of them talk like you.”
He had learned to follow the processes of her thought now. “Perhaps they can when they come to my age.”
“There!” she exclaimed, putting her hand on his mouth again, to remind him of another broken promise. “Why can’t you give up the Egyptian ball?”
“Because I expect to meet a young lady there — a very beautiful young lady.”
“But how shall you know her if she’s disguised?”
“Why, I shall be disguised too, you know.”
“Oh, what delicious nonsense you do talk! Sit down here and tell me what you are going to wear.”
She tried to pull him back to the sofa. “What character shall you go in?”
“No, no,” he said, resisting the gentle traction. “I can’t; I have urgent business down-town.”
“Oh! Business in Florence!”
“Well, if I stayed, I should tell you what disguise I’m going to the ball in.”
“I knew it was that. What do you think would be a good character for me?”
“I don’t know. The serpent of old Nile would be pretty good for you.”
“Oh, I know you don’t think it!” she cried fondly. She had now let him take her hand, and he stood holding it at arm’s-length. Effie Bowen came into the room. “Good-bye,” said Imogene, with an instant assumption of society manner.
“Good-bye,” said Colville, and went out.
“Oh, Mr. Colville!” she called, before he got to the outer door.
“Yes,” he said, starting back.
She met him midway of the dim corridor. “Only to—” She put her arms about his neck and sweetly kissed him.
Colville went out into the sunlight feeling like some strange, newly invented kind of scoundrel — a rascal of such recent origin and introduction that he had not yet had time to classify himself and ascertain the exact degree of his turpitude. The task employed his thoughts all that day, and kept him vibrating between an instinctive conviction of monstrous wickedness and a logical and well-reasoned perception that he had all the facts and materials for a perfectly good conscience. He was the betrothed lover of this poor child, whose affection he could not check without a degree of brutality for which only a better man would have the courage. When he thought of perhaps refusing her caresses, he imagined the shock it would give her, and the look of grief and mystification that would come into her eyes, and he found himself incapable of that cruel rectitude. He knew that these were the impulses of a white and loving soul; but at the end of all his argument they remained a terror to him, so that he lacked nothing but the will to fly from Florence and shun her altogether till she had heard from her family. This, he recalled, with bitter self-reproach was what had been his first inspiration; he had spoken of it to Mrs. Bowen, and it had still everything in its favour except that it was impossible.
Imogene returned to the salotto, where the little girl was standing with her face to the window, drearily looking out; her back expressed an inner desolation which revealed itself in her eyes when Imogene caught her head between her hands, and tilted up her face to kiss it.
“What is the matter, Effie?” she demanded gaily.
“Nothing.”
“Oh yes, there is.”
“Nothing that you will care for. As long as he’s pleasant to you, you don’t care what he does to me.”
“What has he done to you?”
“He didn’t take the slightest notice of me when I came into the room. He didn’t speak to me, or even look at me.”
Imogene caught the little grieving, quivering face to her breast “He is a wicked, wicked wretch! And I will give him the awfulest scolding he ever had when he comes here again. I will teach him to neglect my pet. I will let him understand that if he doesn’t notice you, he needn’t notice me. I will tell you, Effie — I’ve just thought of a way. The next time he comes we will both receive him. We will sit up very stiffly on the sofa together, and just answer Yes, No, Yes, No, to everything he says, till he begins to take the hint, and learns how to behave himself. Will you?”
A smile glittered through the little girl’s tears; but she asked, “Do you think it would be very polite?”
“No matter, polite or not, it’s what he deserves. Of course, as soon as he begins to take the hint, we will be just as we always are.”
Imogene despatched a note, which Colville got the next morning, to tell him of his crime, and apprise him of his punishment, and of the sweet compunction that had pleaded for him in the breast of the child. If he did not think he could help play the comedy through, he must come prepared to offer Effie some sort of atonement.
It was easy to do this: to come with his pockets full of presents, and take the little girl on his lap, and pour out all his troubled heart in the caresses and tendernesses which would bring him no remorse. He humbled himself to her thoroughly, and with a strange sincerity in the harmless duplicity, and promised, if she would take him back into favour, that he would never offend again. Mrs. Bowen had sent word that she was not well enough to see him; she had another of her headaches; and he sent back a sympathetic and respectful message by Effie, who stood thoughtfully at her mother’s pillow after she had delivered it, fingering the bouquet Colville had brought her, and putting her head first on this side, and then on that to admire it.
“I think Mr. Colville and Imogene are much more affectionate than they used to be,” she said.
Mrs. Bowen started up on her elbow. “What do you mean, Effie?”
“Oh, they’re both so good to me.”
“Yes,” said her mother, dropping back to her pillow. “Both?”
“Yes; he’s the most affectionate.”
The mother turned her face the other way. “Then he must be,” she murmured.
“What?” asked the child.
“Nothing. I didn’t know I spoke.”
The little girl stood a while still playing with her flowers. “I think Mr. Colville is about the pleasantest gentleman that comes here. Don’t you, mamma?”
“Yes.”
“He’s so interesting, and says such nice things. I don’t know whether children ought to think of such things, but I wish I was going to marry some one like Mr. Colville. Of course I should want to be tolerably old if I did. How old do you think a person ought to be to marry him?”
“You mustn’t talk of such things, Effie,” said her mother.
“No; I suppose it isn’t very nice.” She picked out a bud in her bouquet, and kissed it; then she held the nosegay at arm’s-length before her, and danced away with it.
XVII
In the ensuing fortnight a great many gaieties besides the Egyptian ball took place, and Colville went wherever he and Imogene were both invited. He declined the quiet dinners which he liked, and which his hearty appetite and his habit of talk fitted him to enjoy, and accepted invitations to all sorts of evenings and At Homes, where dancing occu
pied a modest corner of the card, and usurped the chief place in the pleasures. At these places it was mainly his business to see Imogene danced with by others, but sometimes he waltzed with her himself, and then he was complimented by people of his own age, who had left off dancing, upon his vigour. They said they could not stand that sort of thing, though they supposed, if you kept yourself in practice, it did not come so hard. One of his hostesses, who had made a party for her daughters, told him that he was an example to everybody, and that if middle-aged people at home mingled more in the amusements of the young, American society would not be the silly, insipid, boy-and-girl affair that it was now. He went to these places in the character of a young man, but he was not readily accepted or recognised in that character. They gave him frumps to take out to supper, mothers and maiden aunts, and if the mothers were youngish, they threw off on him, and did not care for his talk.
At one of the parties Imogene seemed to become aware for the first time that the lapels of his dress-coat were not faced with silk.
“Why don’t you have them so?” she asked. “All the other young men have. And you ought to wear a boutonnière.”
“Oh, I think a man looks rather silly in silk lapels at my—” He arrested himself, and then continued: “I’ll see what the tailor can do for me. In the meantime, give me a bud out of your bouquet.”
“How sweet you are!” she sighed. “You do the least thing so that it is ten times as good as if any one else did it.”
The same evening, as he stood leaning against a doorway, behind Imogene and a young fellow with whom she was beginning a quadrille, he heard her taking him to task.
“Why do you say ‘Sir’ to Mr. Colville?”
“Well, I know the English laugh at us for doing it, and say it’s like servants; but I never feel quite right answering just ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to a man of his age.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 281