These ideas interested Colville; he turned to them with relief from the sense of his recent trivialities; in this old man’s earnestness he found support and encouragement in the new course he had marked out for himself. Sometimes it had occurred to him not only that he was too old for the interests of his youth at forty, but that there was no longer time 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 over with you — and some other things,” he said.
The librarian came toward them with the book for Mr. Waters, who was fumbling near-sightedly in his pocket-book for his card. “I shall be very 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 whose pleasantness was sensible to the touch. He gave Colville the scholar’s far-off look as he turned to go: he was already as remote as the fifteenth century through the magic of the book, which he opened and began to read at once. Colville stared after him; he did not wish to come 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 turn his back upon it for any charm or use that was in the past? Again that unnerving doubt, that paralysing distrust, beset him, and tempted him to curse the day in which he had returned to this outworn Old World. Idler on its modern surface, or delver in its deep-hearted past, could he reconcile himself to it? What did he care for the Italians of to-day, or the history of the Florentines as expressed in their architectural monuments? It was the problems of the vast, tumultuous American life, which he had turned his back on, that really concerned him. Later he might take up the study that fascinated yonder old man, but for the present it was intolerable.
He was no longer young, that was true; but with an ache of old regret he felt 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 the Lung’ Arno toward the Cascine. The sun danced on the river, and bathed the long line of pale buff and grey houses that followed its curve, and ceased in the mist of leafless tree-tops where the Cascine began. It was not the hour of the promenade, and there was little driving; but the sidewalks were peopled thickly enough with persons, in groups, or singly, who had the air of straying aimlessly up or down, with no purpose 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 a man, muffled to the chin, lounged feebly on the parapet and stared at the river. Colville hastened by them; they seemed to claim him as one of their ailing and aging company, and just then he was in the humour of being very young and strong.
A carriage passed before him through the Cascine gates, and drove down the road next the river. He followed, and when it had got a little way it stopped at the roadside, and a lady and little girl alighted, who looked about and caught sight of him, and then obviously waited for him to come up with them. It was Imogene and Effie Bowen, and the young girl called to him: “We thought it was you. Aren’t you astonished to find us here at this hour?” she demanded, as soon as he came up, and gave him her hand. “Mrs. Bowen sent us for our health — or Effie’s health — and I was just making the man stop and let us out for a little walk.”
“My health is very much broken too, Miss Effie,” said Colville. “Will you let me walk with you?” The child smiled, as she did at Colville’s speeches, which she apparently considered all jokes, but diplomatically referred 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 conceal her dismay,” said Colville.
The little girl smiled again, and her smile was so like the smile of Lina Ridgely, twenty years ago, that his next words were inevitably tinged with reminiscence.
“Does one still come for one’s health to the Cascine? When I was in Florence before, there was no other place if one went to look for it with young ladies — the Cascine or the Boboli Gardens. Do they keep the fountain 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 here before. But it wouldn’t escape me now.”
Since he had met them he had aged again, in spite of his resolutions to the contrary; somehow, beside their buoyancy and bloom, the youth in his heart 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 quite enough to keep up with her in her elastic advance.
She wore a long habit of silk, whose fur-trimmed edge wandered diagonally across her breast and down to the edge of her walking dress. To Colville, whom her girlish slimness in her ball costume had puzzled after his original impressions of Junonian abundance, she did not so much dwindle as seem to vanish from the proportions his visions had assigned her that first night when he saw her standing before the mirror. In this outdoor avatar, this companionship with the sun and breeze, she was new to him again, and he found himself searching his consciousness for his lost acquaintance with her, and feeling as if he knew her less and less. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very distinctive individuality; perhaps at her age no woman has, but waits for it to come to her through life, through experience. She was an expression of youth, of health, of beauty, and of the moral loveliness that comes from a fortunate combination of these; but beyond this she was elusive in a way that seemed to characterise her even materially. He could not make anything more of the mystery as he walked at her side, and he went thinking — formlessly, as people always think — that with the child or with her mother he would have had a community of interest and feeling which he lacked with this splendid girlhood! he was both too young and too old for it; and then, while he answered this or that to Imogene’s talk aptly enough, his mind went back to the time when this mystery was no mystery, or when he was contemporary with it, and if he did not understand it, at least accepted it as if it wore the most natural thing in the world. It seemed a longer time now since it had been in his world than 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 of Longfellow’s — the one he wrote in Italian about the Ponte Vecchio, and the Arno twisting like a dragon underneath it? They say that Hawthorne used to live in a villa just behind the hill over there; we’re going to look it up as soon as the weather is settled. Don’t you think his books are 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 like to talk about the books you’ve read?”
“I would if I could remember the names of the characters. But I get them mixed up.”
“Oh, I never do! I remember the least one of them, and all they do and say.”
“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’s fascinating?”
“Very,” said Colville. He was wondering whether this were the kind of talk that he thought was literary when he was a young fellow.
“How perfectly weird the ‘Vision of Sin’ is!” Imogene continued. “Don’t you like weird things?”
“Weird things?” Colville reflected. “Yes; but I don’t see very much in them any more. The fact is, they don’t seem to come to anything in particular.”
“Oh, I think they do! I’ve had dreams that I’ve lived on
for days. Do you ever have prophetic dreams?”
“Yes; but they never come true. When they do, I know that I didn’t have them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we are all so fond of the marvellous that we can’t trust ourselves about any experience that seems supernatural. If a ghost appeared to me I should want him to prove it by at least two other reliable, disinterested witnesses before I believed my own account of the matter.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, half puzzled, half amused. “Then of course you don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Yes; I expect to be one myself some day. But I’m in no hurry to mingle with them.”
Imogene smiled vaguely, as if the talk pleased her, even when it mocked the fancies and whims which, after so many generations that have indulged 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, increasing her 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 as walking on railroad ties.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” cried the girl. “How can you be so prosaic? Should you ever have believed that the sun could be so hot in January? And look at those ridiculous green hillsides over the river there! Don’t you like it to be winter when it is winter?”
She did not seem to have expected anything from Colville but an impulsive acquiescence, but she listened while he defended the mild weather. “I think it’s very well for Italy,” he said. “It has always seemed to me — that is, it seems to me now for the first time, but one has to begin the other way — as if the seasons here had worn themselves out like the turbulent passions of the people. I dare say the winter was much 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 in proving it, I think, to the sympathetic understanding.”
“I wish you would prove it to mine. It sounds so pretty, I’m sure it must 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 for me she isn’t — that her being matter-of-fact lets me be as romantic as I like.”
“Then Mrs. Bowen isn’t as romantic as she would like to be if she hadn’t charge of a romantic young lady?”
“Oh, I don’t say that. Dear me! I’d no idea it could be so hot in January.” As they strolled along beside the long hedge of laurel, the carriage slowly following them at a little distance, the sun beat strong upon the white road, blotched here and there with the black irregular shadows of the ilexes. The girl undid the pelisse across her breast, with a fine impetuosity, and let it swing open as she walked. She stopped 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 sometimes occurred 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 like Shakespeare?”
“Well, I’ve seen the time when I preferred Alexander Smith,” said Colville evasively.
“Alexander Smith? Who in the world is Alexander Smith?”
“How recent you are! Alexander Smith was an immortal who flourished about the year 1850.”
“That was before I was born. How could I remember him? But I don’t feel so very recent for all that.”
“Neither do I, this morning,” said Colville. “I was up at one of Pharaoh’s balls last night, and I danced too much.”
He gave Imogene a droll glance, and then bent it upon Effie’s discreet face. The child dropped her eyes with a blush like her mother’s, having first sought provisional counsel of Imogene, who turned away. He rightly inferred that they all had been talking him over at breakfast, and he broke into a laugh which they joined in, but Imogene said nothing in recognition of the fact.
With what he felt to be haste for his relief she said, “Don’t you hate to be told to read a book?”
“I used to — quarter of a century ago,” said Colville, recognising that this 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 get the book out of the library. I draw the line at buying. I still hate to buy 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 say with 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 things afterward?”
“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 the girl, regarding him with a puzzled look.
“Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite,” answered Colville. “I say a great deal more than I think.”
She looked at him again with envy, with admiration, qualifying her perplexity. They had come to a point where some moss-grown, weather-beaten statues stood at the corners of the road that traversed the bosky stretch between the avenues of the Cascine. “Ah, how beautiful they are!” he said, halting, and giving himself to the rapture that a blackened garden statue imparts to one who beholds it from the vantage-ground of sufficient years and experience.
“Do you remember that story of Heine’s,” he resumed, after a moment, “of the boy who steals out of the old castle by moonlight, and kisses the lips of the garden statue, fallen among the rank grass of the ruinous parterres? And long afterward, when he looks down on the sleep of the dying girl where she lies on the green sofa, it seems to him that she and that statue are the same?”
“Oh!” deeply sighed the young girl. “No, I never read it. Tell me what it is. I must read it.”
“The rest is all talk — very good talk; but I doubt whether it would interest you. He goes on to talk of a great many things — of the way Bellini spoke French, for example. He says it was bloodcurdling, horrible, cataclysmal. He brought out the poor French words and broke them upon the wheel, till you thought the whole world must give way with a thunder-crash. A dead hush reigned in the room; the women did not know whether to faint or fly; the men looked down at their pantaloons, and tried 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 lovelier than 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, joyous life. 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 by fine ladies and gentlemen playing at shepherd and shepherdesses; to be driven past by marcheses and contessinas flirting in carriages; to be hung w
ith scarfs and wreaths; to be parts of eternal fétes champêtres. Don’t you see how bored they look? When I first came to Italy I should have detested and ridiculed their bad art; but now they’re exquisite — the worse, the better.”
“I don’t know what in the world you do mean,” said Imogene, laughing uneasily.
“Mrs. Bowen would. It’s a pity Mrs. Bowen isn’t here with us. Miss Effie, if I lift you up to one of those statues, will you kindly ask it if it doesn’t remember a young American signor who was here just before the French Revolution? I don’t believe it’s forgotten me.”
“No, no,” said Imogene. “It’s time we were walking back. Don’t you like Scott!” she added. “I should think you would if you like those romantic things. I used to like Scott so much. When I was fifteen I wouldn’t read 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 The Newcomes the other day, and I thought he was rather sentimental.”
“Sentimental! Why, what an idea! That is the strangest thing I ever heard of. Oh!” she broke in upon her own amazement, “don’t you think Browning’s ‘Statue and the Bust’ is splendid? Mr. Morton read it to us — to Mrs. Bowen, I mean.”
Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morion’s, he did not know just why; then his pique was lost in sarcastic recollection of the time when he too used to read poems to ladies. He had read that poem to Lina Ridgely 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 then he 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 think it was the girl’s ‘gold hair.’ I don’t know which Mr. Morion 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 a place where the bank sloped invitingly to the river. “Miss Effie,” he asked, “wouldn’t you like to go down and throw stones into the Arno? That’s what a river is for,” he added, as the child glanced toward Imogene for authorisation, “to have stones thrown into it.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 267
