VI
It was so long since Colville had been at a dancing party that Mrs.Bowen's offer to take him to Madame Uccelli's had first struck his senseof the ludicrous. Then it had begun to flatter him; it implied that hewas still young enough to dance if he would, though he had stipulatedthat they were not to expect anything of the kind from him. He likedalso the notion of being seen and accepted in Florentine society as theold friend of Mrs. Bowen's, for he had not been long in discovering thather position in Florence was, among the foreign residents, ratherauthoritative. She was one of the very few Americans who were asked toItalian houses, and Italian houses lying even beyond the neutral groundof English-speaking intermarriages. She was not, of course, asked to thegreat Princess Strozzi ball, where the Florentine nobility appeared inthe mediaeval pomp--the veritable costumes--of their ancestors; only arich American banking family went, and their distinction was spoken ofunder the breath; but any glory short of this was within Mrs. Bowen'sreach. So an old lady who possessed herself of Colville the night beforehad told him, celebrating Mrs. Bowen at length, and boasting of heracceptance among the best English residents, who, next after thenatives, seem to constitute the social ambition of Americans living inItalian cities.
It interested him to find that some geographical distinctions which arefading at home had quite disappeared in Florence. When he was therebefore, people from quite small towns in the East had made pretty LinaRidgely and her friend feel the disadvantage of having come from theWestern side of an imaginary line; he had himself been at the painsalways to let people know, at the American watering-places where hespent his vacations, that though presently from Des Vaches, Indiana, hewas really born in Rhode Island; but in Florence it was not at allnecessary. He found in Mrs. Bowen's house people from Denver, Chicago,St. Louis, Boston, New York, and Baltimore, all meeting as of apparentlythe same civilisation, and whether Mrs. Bowen's own origin was, likethat of the Etruscan cities, lost in the mists of antiquity, or whethershe had sufficiently atoned for the error of her birth by subsequentresidence in the national capital and prolonged sojourn in New York, itseemed certainly not to be remembered against her among her Easternacquaintance. The time had been when the fact that Miss Graham came fromBuffalo would have gone far to class her with the animal from which hernative city had taken its name; but now it made no difference, unless itwas a difference in her favour. The English spoke with the same vaguerespect of Buffalo and of Philadelphia; and to a family of realBostonians Colville had the courage to say simply that he lived in DesVaches, and not to seek to palliate the truth in any sort. If he wishedto prevaricate at all, it was rather to attribute himself to Mrs.Bowen's city in Ohio.
She and Miss Graham called for him with her carriage the next night,when it was time to go to Madame Uccelli's.
"This gives me a very patronised and effeminate feeling," said Colville,getting into the odorous dark of the carriage, and settling himself uponthe front seat with a skill inspired by his anxiety not to tear any ofthe silken spreading white wraps that inundated the whole interior."Being come for by ladies!" They both gave some nervous joyful laughs,as they found his hand in the obscurity, and left the sense of a glovedpressure upon it. "Is this the way you used to do in Vesprucius, Mrs.Bowen?"
"Oh no, indeed!" she answered. "The young gentlemen used to find outwhether I was going, and came for me with a hack, and generally, if theweather was good, we walked home."
"That's the way we still do in Des Vaches. Sometimes, as a tremendousjoke, the ladies come for us in leap-year. How do you go to balls inBuffalo, Miss Graham? Or, no; I withdraw the embarrassing question."Some gleams from the street lamps, as they drove along, struck inthrough the carriage windows, and flitted over the ladies' faces andwere gone again. "Ah! this is very trying. Couldn't you stop him at thenext corner, and let me see how radiant you ladies really are? I may bein very great danger; I'd like to know just how much."
"It wouldn't be of any use," cried the young girl gaily. "We're allwrapped up, and you couldn't form any idea of us. You must wait, and letus burst upon you when we come out of the dressing-room at MadameUccelli's."
"But then it may be too late," he urged. "Is it very far?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's ridiculously far. It's outside the RomanGate. I don't see why people live at that distance."
"In order to give the friends you bring the more pleasure of yourcompany, Mrs. Bowen."
"Ah! that's very well. But you're not logical."
"No," said Colville; "you can't be logical and complimentary at the sametime. It's too much to ask. How delicious your flowers are!" The ladieseach had a bouquet in her hand, which she was holding in addition to herfan, the edges of her cloak, and the skirt of her train.
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "we are so much obliged to you for them."
"Why, I sent you _no flowers_," said Colville, startled into untimelyearnest.
"Didn't you?" triumphed Mrs. Bowen. "I thought gentlemen always sentflowers to ladies when they were going to a ball with them. They usedto, in Columbus."
"And in Buffalo they always do," Miss Graham added.
"Ah! they don't in Des Vaches," said Colville. They tried to mystify himfurther about the bouquets; they succeeded in being very gay, and inmaking themselves laugh a great deal. Mrs. Bowen was even livelier thanthe young girl.
Her carriage was one of the few private equipages that drove up toMadame Uccelli's door; most people had not even come in a _remise_, but,after the simple Florentine fashion, had taken the little cabs, whichstretched in a long line up and down the way; the horses had let theirweary heads drop, and were easing their broken knees by extending theirforelegs while they drowsed; the drivers, huddled in their great-coats,had assembled around the doorway to see the guests alight, with thatamiable, unenvious interest of the Italians in the pleasure of others.The deep sky glittered with stars; in the corner of the next villagarden the black plumes of some cypresses blotted out their space amongthem.
"_Isn't_ it Florentine?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, giving the hand whichColville offered in helping her out of the carriage a little vividpressure, full of reminiscence and confident sympathy. A flush of youthwarmed his heart; he did not quail even when the porter of the villaintervened between her and her coachman, whom she was telling when tocome back, and said that the carriages were ordered for three o'clock.
"Did you ever sit up so late as that in Des Vaches?" asked Miss Grahammischievously.
"Oh yes; I was editor of a morning paper," he explained. But he did notlike the imputation of her question.
Madame Uccelli accepted him most hospitably among her guests when he waspresented. She was an American who had returned with her Italian husbandto Italy, and had long survived him in the villa which he had built withher money. Such people grow very queer with the lapse of time. MadameUccelli's character remained inalienably American, but her manners andcustoms had become largely Italian; without having learned the languagethoroughly, she spoke it very fluently, and its idioms marked herPhiladelphia English. Her house was a menagerie of all thenationalities; she was liked in Italian society, and there were manyItalians; English-speaking Russians abounded; there were many genuineEnglish, Germans, Scandinavians, Protestant Irish, American Catholics,and then Americans of all kinds. There was a superstition of herexclusiveness among her compatriots, but one really met every one theresooner or later; she was supposed to be a convert to the religion of herlate husband, but no one really knew what religion she was of, probablynot even Madame Uccelli herself. One thing you were sure of at herhouse, and that was a substantial supper; it is the example of suchresident foreigners which has corrupted the Florentines, though manynative families still hold out against it.
The dancing was just beginning, and the daughter of Madame Uccelli, whospoke both English and Italian much better than her mother, came forwardand possessed herself of Miss Graham, after a polite feint of pressingMrs. Bowen to let her find a partner for her.
Mrs. Bowen cooed a gracious refu
sal, telling Fanny Uccelli that she knewvery well that she never danced now. The girl had not much time forColville; she welcomed him, but she was full of her business of startingthe dance, and she hurried away without asking him whether she shouldintroduce him to some lady for the quadrille that was forming. Hermother, however, asked him if he would not go out and get himself sometea, and she found a lady to go with him to the supper-room. This ladyhad daughters whom apparently she wished to supervise while they weredancing, and she brought Colville back very soon. He had to stand by thesofa where she sat till Madame Uccelli found him and introduced him toanother mother of daughters. Later he joined a group formed by thefather of one of the dancers and the non-dancing husband of a dancingwife. Their conversation was perfunctory; they showed one another thatthey had no pleasure in it.
Presently the father went to see how his daughter looked while dancing;the husband had evidently no such curiosity concerning his wife; andColville went with the father, and looked at Miss Graham. She was verybeautiful, and she obeyed the music as if it were her breath; her facewas rapt, intense, full of an unsmiling delight, which shone in her darkeyes, glowing like low stars. Her _abandon_ interested Colville, andthen awed him; the spectacle of that young, unjaded capacity forpleasure touched him with a profound sense of loss. Suddenly Imogenecaught sight of him, and with the coming of a second look in her eyesthe light of an exquisite smile flashed over her face. His heart was inhis throat.
"_Your_ daughter?" asked the fond parent at his elbow. "That is mineyonder in red."
Colville did not answer, nor look at the young lady in red. The dancewas ceasing; the fragments of those kaleidoscopic radiations weredispersing themselves; the tormented piano was silent.
The officer whom Imogene had danced with brought her to Mrs. Bowen, andresigned her with the regulation bow, hanging his head down before himas if submitting his neck to the axe. She put her hand in Colville'sarm, where he stood beside Mrs. Bowen. "Oh, _do_ take me to getsomething to eat!"
In the supper-room she devoured salad and ices with a childish joy inthem. The place was jammed, and she laughed from her corner atColville's struggles in getting the things for her and bringing them toher. While she was still in the midst of an ice, the faint note of thepiano sounded. "Oh, they're beginning again. It's the Lancers!" shesaid, giving him the plate back. She took his arm again; she almostpulled him along on their return.
"Why don't _you_ dance?" she demanded mockingly.
"I would if you'd let me dance with you."
"Oh, that's impossible! I'm engaged ever so many deep." She dropped hisarm instantly at sight of a young Englishman who seemed to be lookingfor her. This young Englishman had a zeal for dancing that wasunsparing; partners were nothing to him except as a means of dancing;his manner expressed a supreme contempt for people who made theslightest mistake, who danced with less science or less conscience thanhimself. "I've been looking for you," he said, in a tone of cold rebuke,without looking at her. "We've been waiting."
Colville wished to beat him, but Imogene took his rebuke meekly, andmurmured some apologies about not hearing the piano before. He hurriedher off without recognising Colville's existence in any way.
The undancing husband of the dancing wife was boring himself in acorner; Colville decided that the chances with him were better than withthe fond father, and joined him, just as a polite officer came up andentreated him to complete a set. "Oh, I never danced in my life," hereplied; and then he referred the officer to Colville. "Don't _you_dance?"
"I used to dance," Colville began, while the officer stood lookingpatiently at him. This was true. He used to dance the Lancers, too, andvery badly, seventeen years before. He had danced it with Lina Ridgelyand the other one, Mrs. Milbury. His glance wandered to the vacant placeon the floor; it was the same set which Miss Graham was in; she smiledand beckoned derisively. A vain and foolish ambition fired him. "Oh yes,I can dance a little," he said.
A little was quite enough for the eager officer. He had Colville apartner in an instant, and the next he was on the floor.
"Oh, what fun!" cried Miss Graham; but the fun had not really begun yet.
Colville had forgotten everything about the Lancers. He walked roundlike a bear in a pen: he capered to and fro with a futile absurdity;people poked him hither and thither; his progress was attended byrending noises from the trains over which he found his path. He smiledand cringed, and apologised to the hardening faces of the dancers: evenMiss Graham's face had become very grave.
"This won't do," said the Englishman at last, with cold insolence. Hedid not address himself to any one; he merely stopped; they all stopped,and Colville was effectively expelled the set; another partner was foundfor his lady, and he wandered giddily away. He did not know where toturn; the whole room must have seen what an incredible ass he had madeof himself, but Mrs. Bowen looked as if she had not seen.
He went up to her, resolved to make fun of himself at the first sign shegave of being privy to his disgrace. But she only said, "Have you foundyour way to the supper-room yet?"
"Oh yes; twice," he answered, and kept on talking with her and MadameUccelli. After five minutes or so something occurred to Colville. "Have_you_ found the way to the supper-room yet, Mrs. Bowen?"
"No!" she owned, with a small, pathetic laugh, which expressed a certainphysical faintness, and reproached him with insupportable gentleness forhis selfish obtuseness.
"Let me show you the way," he cried.
"Why, I _am_ rather hungry," said Mrs. Bowen, taking his arm, with apatient arrangement first of her fan, her bouquet, and her train, andthen moving along by his side with a delicate footed pace, whichinsinuated and deprecated her dependence upon him.
There were only a few people in the supper-room, and they had itpractically to themselves. She took a cup of tea and a slice of butteredbread, with a little salad, which she excused herself from eatingbecause it was the day after her headache. "I shouldn't have thought you_were_ hungry, Mrs. Bowen," he said, "if you hadn't told me so," and herecalled that, as a young girl, her friend used to laugh at her forhaving such a butterfly appetite; she was in fact one of those women whogo through life the marvels of such of our brutal sex as observe theethereal nature of their diet. But in an illogical revulsion of feeling.Colville, who was again cramming himself with all the solids and fluidsin reach, and storing up a vain regret against the morrow, preferred herdelicacy to the magnificent rapacity of Miss Graham: Imogene had passedfrom salad to ice, and at his suggestion had frankly reverted to saladagain and then taken a second ice, with the robust appetite of perfecthealth and perfect youth. He felt a desire to speak against her to Mrs.Bowen, he did not know why and he did not know how; he veiled hisfeeling in an open attack. "Miss Graham has just been the cause of myplaying the fool, with her dancing. She dances so superbly that shemakes you want to dance too--she made me feel as if I _could_ dance."
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "it was very kind of you to complete the set. Isaw you dancing," she added, without a glimmer of guilty consciousnessin her eyes.
It was very sweet, but Colville had to protest. "Oh no; you didn't seeme _dancing_; you saw me _not dancing_. I am a ruined man, and I leaveFlorence to-morrow; but I have the sad satisfaction of reflecting that Idon't leave an unbroken train among the ladies of that set. And I havemade one young Englishman so mad that there is a reasonable hope of hisnot recovering."
"Oh no; you _don't_ think of going away for that!" said Mrs. Bowen, notheeding the rest of his joking.
"Well, the time has been when I have left Florence for loss," saidColville, with the air of preparing himself to listen to reason.
"You mustn't," said Mrs. Bowen briefly.
"Oh, very well, then, I won't," said Colville whimsically, as if thatsettled it.
Mrs. Bowen would not talk of the matter any more; he could see that withher kindness, which was always more than her tact, she was striving toget away from the subject. As he really cared for it no longer, thismade him persist in
clinging to it; he liked this pretty woman's beingkind to him. "Well," he said finally, "I consent to stay in Florence oncondition that you suggest some means of atonement for me which I canalso make a punishment to Miss Graham."
Mrs. Bowen did not respond to the question of placating and punishingher _protegee_ with sustained interest. They went back to MadameUccelli, and to the other elderly ladies in the room that opened byarchways upon the dancing-room.
Imogene was on the floor, dancing not merely with unabated joy, but witha zest that seemed only to freshen from dance to dance. If she left thedance, it was to go out on her partner's arm to the supper-room.Colville could not decently keep on talking to Mrs. Bowen the wholeevening; it would be too conspicuous; he devolved from frump to frump;he bored himself; he yawned in his passage from one of these mothers orfathers to another. The hours passed; it was two o'clock; Imogene wasgoing out to the supper-room again. He was taking out his watch. She sawhim, and "Oh, don't!" she cried, laughing, as she passed.
The dancing went on; she was waltzing now in the interminable german.Some one had let down, a window in the dancing-room, and he was feelingit in his shoulder. Mrs. Bowen, across the room, looked heroicallypatient, but weary. He glanced, down at the frump on the sofa near, andrealised that she had been making a long speech to him, which, he couldsee from her look, had ended in some sort of question.
Three o'clock came, and they had to wait till the german was over. Hefelt that Miss Graham was behaving badly, ungratefully, selfishly; onthe way home in the carriage he was silent from utter boredom andfatigue, but Mrs. Bowen was sweetly sympathetic with the girl's rapture.Imogene did not seem to feel his moodiness; she laughed, she joked, shetold a number of things that happened, she hummed the air of the lastwaltz. "Isn't it divine?" she asked. "Oh! I feel as if I could dance fora week." She was still dancing; she gave Colville's foot an accidentaltap in keeping time on the floor of the carriage to the tune she washumming. No one said anything about a next meeting when they parted atthe gate of Palazzo Pinti, and Mrs. Bowen bade her coachman driveColville to his hotel. But both the ladies' voices called good-night tohim as he drove away. He fancied a shade of mocking in Miss Graham'svoice.
The great outer door of the hotel was locked, of course, and the poorlittle porter kept Colville thumping at it some time before he unlockedit, full of sleepy smiles and apologies. "I'm sorry to wake you up,"said Colville kindly.
"It is my duty," said the porter, with amiable heroism. He dischargedanother duty by lighting a whole new candle, which would be set down toColville's account, and went before him to his room, up the wide stairs,cold in their white linen path, and on through the crooked corridorshaunted by the ghosts of extinct _tables d'hote_, and full of goblinshadows. He had recovered a noonday suavity by the time he reachedColville's door, and bowed himself out, after lighting the candleswithin, with a sweet plenitude of politeness, which Colville, even inhis gloomy mood, could not help admiring in a man in his shirt sleeves,with only one suspender up.
If there had been a fire, Colville would have liked to sit down beforeit, and take an account of his feelings, but the atmosphere of abed-chamber in a Florentine hotel at half-past three o'clock on a wintermorning is not one that invites to meditation; and he made haste to getinto bed, with nothing clearer in his mind than a shapeless sense ofhaving been trifled with. He ought not to have gone to a dancing party,to begin with, and then he certainly ought not to have attempted todance; so far he might have been master of the situation, and wasresponsible for it; but he was, over and above this, aware of not havingwished to do either, of having been wrought upon against his convictionsto do both. He regarded now with supreme loathing a fantastic purposewhich he had formed while tramping round on those women's dresses, ofprivately taking lessons in dancing, and astonishing Miss Graham at thenext ball where they met. Miss Graham? What did he care for that child?Or Mrs. Bowen either, for the matter of that? Had he come four thousandmiles to be used, to be played with, by them? At this point Colville wasaware of the brutal injustice of his mood. They were ladies, both ofthem, charming and good, and he had been a fool; that was all. It wasnot the first time he had been a fool for women. An inexpressiblebitterness for that old wrong, which, however he had been used to laughat it and despise it, had made his life solitary and barren, poured uponhis soul; it was as if it had happened to him yesterday.
A band of young men burst from one of the narrow streets leading intothe piazza and straggled across it, letting their voices flare out uponthe silence, and then drop extinct one by one. A whole world of fadedassociations flushed again in Colville's heart. This was Italy; this wasFlorence; and he execrated the hour in which he had dreamed ofreturning.
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