II
Colville had readied this point in that sarcastic study of his owncondition of mind for the advantage of his late readers in the_Post-Democrat-Republican_, when he was aware of a polite rustling ofdraperies, with an ensuing well-bred murmur, which at once ignored him,deprecated intrusion upon him, and asserted a common right to theprospect on which he had been dwelling alone. He looked round with aninstinctive expectation of style and poise, in which he was notdisappointed. The lady, with a graceful lift of the head and a veryerect carriage, almost Bernhardtesque in the backward fling of hershoulders and the strict compression of her elbows to her side, waspointing out the different bridges to the little girl who was with her.
"That first one is the Santa Trinita, and the next is the Carraja, andthat one quite down by the Cascine is the iron bridge. The Cascine youremember--the park where we were driving--that clump of woods there----"
A vagueness expressive of divided interest had crept into the lady'stone rather than her words. Colville could feel that she was waiting forthe right moment to turn her delicate head, sculpturesquely defined byits toque, and steal an imperceptible glance at him: and heinvoluntarily afforded her the coveted excuse by the slight noise hemade in changing his position in order to be able to go away as soon ashe had seen whether she was pretty or not. At forty-one the question isstill important to every man with regard to every woman.
"Mr. Colville!"
The gentle surprise conveyed in the exclamation, without time forrecognition, convinced Colville, upon a cool review of the facts, thatthe lady had known him before their eyes met.
"Why, Mrs. Bowen!" he said.
She put out her round, slender arm, and gave him a frank clasp of hergloved hand. The glove wrinkled richly up the sleeve of her dresshalf-way to her elbow. She bent on his face a demand for just whatquality and degree of change he found in hers, and apparently shesatisfied herself that his inspection was not to her disadvantage, forshe smiled brightly, and devoted the rest of her glance to an electricsummary of the facts of Colville's physiognomy; the sufficiently goodoutline of his visage, with its full, rather close-cut, drabbish-brownbeard and moustache, both shaped a little by the ironical self-conscioussmile that lurked under them; the non-committal, rather weary-lookingeyes; the brown hair, slightly frosted, that showed while he stood withhis hat still off. He was a little above the middle height, and if itmust be confessed, neither his face nor his figure had quite preservedtheir youthful lines. They were both much heavier than when Mrs. Bowensaw them last, and the latter here and there swayed beyond the strictbounds of symmetry. She was herself in that moment of life when, to themiddle-aged observer, at least, a woman's looks have a charm which iswanting to her earlier bloom. By that time her character has wroughtitself more clearly out in her face, and her heart and mind confront youmore directly there. It is the youth of her spirit which has come to thesurface.
"I should have known you anywhere," she exclaimed, with friendlypleasure in seeing him.
"You are very kind," said Colville. "I didn't know that I had preservedmy youthful beauty to that degree. But I can imagine it--if you say so,Mrs. Bowen."
"Oh, I assure you that you have!" she protested; and now she begangently to pursue him with one fine question after another about himself,till she had mastered the main facts of his history since they had lastmet. He would not have known so well how to possess himself of hers,even if he had felt the same necessity; but in fact it had happened thathe had heard of her from time to time at not very long intervals. Shehad married a leading lawyer of her Western city, who in due time hadgone to Congress, and after his term was out had "taken up hisresidence" in Washington, as the newspapers said, "in his elegantmansion at the corner of & Street and Idaho Avenue." After that heremembered reading that Mrs. Bowen was going abroad for the education ofher daughter, from which he made his own inferences concerning hermarriage. And "You knew Mr. Bowen was no longer living?" she said, withfit obsequy of tone.
"Yes, I knew," he answered, with decent sympathy.
"This is my little Effie," said Mrs. Bowen after a moment; and now thechild, hitherto keeping herself discreetly in the background, cameforward and promptly gave her hand to Colville, who perceived that shewas not so small as he had thought her at first; an effect of infancyhad possibly been studied in the brevity of her skirts and theimmaturity of her corsage, but both were in good taste, and really tothe advantage of her young figure. There was reason and justice in herbeing dressed as she was, for she really was not so old as she looked bytwo or three years; and there was reason in Mrs. Bowen's carrying in thehollow of her left arm the India shawl sacque she had taken off and hungthere; the deep cherry silk lining gave life to the sombre tintsprevailing in her dress, which its removal left free to express all thegrace of her extremely lady-like person. Lady-like was the word for Mrs.Bowen throughout--for the turn of her head, the management of her armfrom the elbow, the curve of her hand from wrist to finger-tips, thesmile, subdued, but sufficiently sweet, playing about her little mouth,which was yet not too little, and the refined and indefinite perfumewhich exhaled from the ensemble of her silks, her laces, and her gloves,like an odorous version of that otherwise impalpable quality which womencall style. She had, with all her flexibility, a certain charmingstiffness, like the stiffness of a very tall feather.
"And have you been here a great while?" she asked, turning her headslowly toward Colville, and looking at him with a little difficulty shehad in raising her eyelids; when she was younger the glance that shylystole from under the covert of their lashes was like a gleam ofsunshine, and it was still like a gleam of paler sunshine.
Colville, whose mood was very susceptible to the weather, brightened inthe ray. "I only arrived last night," he said, with a smile.
"How glad you must be to get back! Did you ever see Florence morebeautiful than it was this morning?"
"Not for years," said Colville, with another smile for her prettyenthusiasm. "Not for seventeen years at the least calculation."
"Is it so many?" cried Mrs. Bowen, with lovely dismay. "Yes, it is," shesighed, and she did not speak for an appreciable interval.
He knew that she was thinking of that old love affair of his, to whichshe was privy in some degree, though he never could tell how much; andwhen she spoke he perceived that she purposely avoided speaking of acertain person, whom a woman of more tact or of less would have insistedupon naming at once. "I never can believe in the lapse of time when Iget back to Italy; it always makes me feel as young as when I left itlast."
"I could imagine you'd never left it," said Colville.
Mrs. Bowen reflected a moment. "Is that a compliment?"
"I had an obscure intention of saying something fine; but I don't thinkI've quite made it out," he owned.
Mrs. Bowen gave her small, sweet smile. "It was very nice of you to try.But I haven't really been away for some time; I've taken a house inFlorence, and I've been here two years. Palazzo Pinti, Lung' Arno dellaZecca. You must come and see me. Thursdays from four till six."
"Thank you," said Colville.
"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Bowen, remotely preparing to offer her hand inadieu, "that Effie and I broke in upon some very important cogitationsof yours." She shifted the silken burden off her arm a little, and thechild stirred from the correct pose she had been keeping, and smiledpolitely.
"I don't think they deserve a real dictionary word like that," saidColville. "I was simply mooning. If there was anything definite in mymind, I was wishing that I was looking down on the Wabash in Dos Vaches,instead of the Arno in Florence."
"Oh! And I supposed you must be indulging all sorts of historicalassociations with the place. Effie and I have been walking through theVia de' Bardi, where Romola lived, and I was bringing her back over thePonte Vecchio, so as to impress the origin of Florence on her mind."
"Is that what makes Miss Effie hate it?" asked Colville, looking at thechild, whose youthful resemblance to her mother was in all things soperfect
that a fantastic question whether she could ever have had anyother parent swept through him. Certainly, if Mrs. Bowen were to marryagain, there was nothing in this child's looks to suggest the idea of apredecessor to the second husband.
"Effie doesn't hate any sort of useful knowledge," said her mother halfjestingly. "She's just come to me from school at Vevay."
"Oh, then, I think she might," persisted Colville. "Don't you hate theorigin of Florence a little?" he asked of the child.
"I don't know enough about it," she answered, with a quick look ofquestion at her mother, and checking herself in a possibly indiscreetsmile.
"Ah, that accounts for it," said Colville, and he laughed. It amused himto see the child referring even this point of propriety to her mother,and his thoughts idled off to what Mrs. Bowen's own untrammelledgirlhood must have been in her Western city. For her daughter there wereto be no buggy rides, or concerts, or dances at the invitation of youngmen; no picnics, free and unchaperoned as the casing air; no sitting onthe steps at dusk with callers who never dreamed of asking for hermother; no lingering at the gate with her youthful escort home from theball--nothing of that wild, sweet liberty which once made Americangirlhood a long rapture. But would she be any the better for herprivations, for referring not only every point of conduct, but everythought and feeling, to her mother? He suppressed a sigh for theinevitable change, but rejoiced that his own youth had fallen in theearlier time, and said, "You will hate it as soon as you've read alittle of it."
"The difficulty is to read a little of Florentine history. I can't findanything in less than ten or twelve volumes," said Mrs. Bowen. "Effieand I were going to Viesseux's Library again, in desperation, to see ifthere wasn't something shorter in French."
She now offered Colville her hand, and he found himself very reluctantto let it go. Something in her looks did not forbid him, and when shetook her hand away, he said, "Let me go to Viesseux's with you, Mrs.Bowen, and give you the advantage of my unprejudiced ignorance in thechoice of a book on Florence."
"Oh, I was longing to ask you!" said Mrs. Bowen frankly. "It is reallysuch a serious matter, especially when the book is for a young person.Unless it's very dry, it's so apt to be--objectionable."
"Yes," said Colville, with a smile at her perplexity. He moved off downthe slope of the bridge with her, between the jewellers' shops, and felta singular satisfaction in her company. Women of fashion alwaysinterested him; he liked them; it diverted him that they should takethemselves seriously. Their resolution, their suffering for their ideal,such as it was, their energy in dressing and adorning themselves, thepains they were at to achieve the trivialities they passed their livesin, were perpetually delightful to him. He often found them people ofgreat simplicity, and sometimes of singularly good sense; their frequentvein of piety was delicious.
Ten minutes earlier he would have said that nothing could have been lesswelcome to him than this encounter, but now he felt unwilling to leaveMrs. Bowen.
"Go before, Effie," she said; and she added, to Colville, "How veryFlorentine all this is! If you dropped from the clouds on this spotwithout previous warning, you would know that you were on the PonteVecchio, and nowhere else."
"Yes, it's very Florentine," Colville assented. "The bridge is very wellas a bridge, but as a street I prefer the Main Street Bridge at DesVaches. I was looking at the jewellery before you came up, and I don'tthink it's pretty, even the old pieces of peasant jewellery. Why dopeople come here to look at it? If you were going to buy something for afriend, would you dream of coming here for it?"
"Oh _no_!" replied Mrs. Bowen, with the deepest feeling.
They quitted the bridge, and turning to the left, moved down the streetwhich with difficulty finds space between the parapet of the river andthe shops of the mosaicists and dealers in statuary cramping it on theother hand.
"Here's something distinctively Florentine too," said Colville. "Thesetable-tops, and paper-weights, and caskets, and photograph frames, andlockets, and breast-pins; and here, this ghostly glare of undersizedPsyches and Hebes and Graces in alabaster."
"Oh, you mustn't think of any of them!" Mrs. Bowen broke in with horror."If your friend wishes you to get her something characteristicallyFlorentine, and at the same time very tasteful, you must go--"
Colville gave a melancholy laugh. "My friend is an abstraction, Mrs.Bowen, without sex or any sort of entity."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Bowen. Some fine drops had begun to sprinkle thepavement. "What a ridiculous blunder! It's raining! Effie, I'm afraid wemust give up your book for to-day. We're not dressed for damp weather,and we'd better hurry home as soon as possible." She got promptly intothe shelter of a doorway, and gathered her daughter to her, while sheflung her sacque over her shoulder and caught her draperies from theground for the next movement. "Mr. Colville, will you please stop thefirst closed carriage that comes in sight?"
A figure of _primo tenore_ had witnessed the manoeuvre from the box ofhis cab; he held up his whip, and at a nod from Colville he droveabreast of the doorway, his broken-kneed, tremulous little horse gay inbrass-mounted harness, and with a stiff turkey feather stuck upright atone ear in his head-stall.
Mrs. Bowen had no more scruple than another woman in stopping travel andtraffic in a public street for her convenience. She now entered into abrisk parting conversation with Colville, such as ladies love, blockingthe narrow sidewalk with herself, her daughter, and her open carriagedoor, and making people walk round her cab, in the road, which they didmeekly enough, with the Florentine submissiveness to the pretensions ofany sort of vehicle. She said a dozen important things that seemed tohave just come into her head, and, "Why, how stupid I am!" she calledout, making Colville check the driver in his first start, after she hadgot into the cab. "We are to have a few people tonight. If you have noengagement, I should be so glad to have you come. Can't you?"
"Yes, I can," said Colville, admiring the whole transaction and theparties to it with a passive smile.
After finding her pocket, she found that her card-case was not in it,but in the purse she had given Effie to carry; but she got her addressat last, and gave it to Colville, though he said he should remember itwithout. "Any time between nine and eleven," she said. "It's so nice ofyou to promise!"
She questioned him from under her half-lifted eyelids, and he added,with a laugh, "I'll come!" and was rewarded with two pretty smiles, justalike, from mother and daughter, as they drove away.
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