Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Yes!” said the girl, pouring all the intensity of her face into that whisper.

  “Even if there had been nothing said to make me go away — should you still wish me to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked her in the starry, lucid eyes, where a divine fervour deepened. He sighed in nerveless perplexity; it was she who had the courage.

  “It’s a mistake! You mustn’t! I am too old for you! It would be a wrong and a cruelty! Yes, you must let me go, and forget me. I have been to blame. If Mrs. Bowen has blamed me, she was right — I deserved it; I deserved all she could say against me.”

  “She never said anything against you. Do you think I would have let her? No; it was I that said it, and I blamed you. It was because I thought that you were — you were—”

  “Trifling with you? How could you think that?”

  “Yes, I know now how it was, and it makes you seem all the grander to me. Did you think I cared for your being older than I was? I never cared for it — I never hardly thought of it after the very first. I tried to make you understand that, and how it hurt me to have you speak of it. Don’t you think that I could see how good you were? Do you suppose that all I want is to be happy? I don’t care for that — I despise it, and I always hate myself for seeking my own pleasure, if I find myself doing it. I have seen enough of life to know what that comes to! And what hurt me worst of all was that you seemed to believe that I cared for nothing but amusing myself, when I wished to be something better, higher! It’s nothing whether you are of my age or not, if — if — you care for me.”

  “Imogene!”

  “All that I ask is to be with you, and try to make you forget what’s been sad in your life, and try to be of use to you in whatever you are doing, and I shall be prouder and gladder of that than anything that people call happiness.”

  Colville stood holding her hand, while she uttered these ideas and incoherent repetitions of them, with a deep sense of powerlessness. “If I believed that I could keep you from regretting this—”

  “What should I regret? I won’t let you depreciate yourself — make yourself out not good enough for the best. Oh, I know how it happened! But now you shall never think of it again. No; I will not let you. That is the only way you could make me regret anything.”

  “I am going to stay,” said Colville. “But on my own terms. I will be bound to you, but you shall not be bound to me.”

  “You doubt me! I would rather have you go! No; stay. And let me prove to you how wrong you are. I mustn’t ask more than that. Only give me the chance to show you how different I am from what you think — how different you are, too.”

  “Yes. But you must be free.”

  “Well.”

  “What are they doing so long there?” asked Mrs. Amsden of Effie, putting her glasses to her eyes. “I can’t see.”

  “They are just holding hands,” said the child, with an easy satisfaction in the explanation, which perhaps the old lady did not share. “He always holds my hand when he is with me.”

  “Does he, indeed?” exclaimed Mrs. Amsden, with a cackle. She added, “That’s very polite of him, isn’t it? You must be a great favourite with Mr. Colville. You will miss him when he’s gone.”

  “Yes. He’s very nice.”

  Colville and Imogene returned, coming slowly across the loose, neglected grass toward the old woman’s seat. She rose as they came up.

  “You don’t seem to have succeeded so well in getting flowers for Miss Graham as for the other ladies. But perhaps you didn’t find her favourite over there. What is your favourite flower, Miss Graham? Don’t say you have none! I didn’t know that I preferred scarlet anemones. Were there no forget-me-nots over there in the grass?”

  “There was no occasion for them,” answered Colville.

  “You always did make such pretty speeches!” said the old lady. “And they have such an orphic character, too; you can interpret them in so many different ways. Should you mind saying just what you meant by that one?”

  “Yes, very much,” replied Colville.

  The old lady laughed with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from a life of harmless coquetries.

  “I will refer it to Mrs. Bowen,” she said. “She is a very wise woman, and she used to know you a great while ago.”

  “If you like, I will do it for you, Mrs. Amsden. I’m going to see her.”

  “To renew your adieux? Well, why not? Parting is such sweet sorrow! And if I were a young man I would go to say good-bye to Mrs. Bowen as often as she would let me. Now tell me honestly, Mr. Colville, did you ever see such an exquisite, perfect creature?”

  “Oh, that’s asking a good deal.”

  “What?”

  “To tell you a thing honestly. How did you come here, Mrs. Amsden?”

  “In Mrs. Bowen’s carriage. I sent it round from the Pitti entrance to the Porta Romana. It’s waiting there now, I suppose.”

  “I thought you had been corrupted, somehow. Your zeal is carriage-bought. It is a delightful vehicle. Do you think you could give me a lift home in it?”

  “Yes, indeed. I’ve always a seat for you in my carriage. To Hotel d’Atene?”

  “No, to Palazzo Pinti.”

  “This is deliciously mysterious,” said Mrs. Amsden, drawing her shawl up about her shoulders, which, if no longer rounded, had still a charming droop. One realises in looking at such old ladies that there are women who could manage their own skeletons winningly. She put up her glasses, which were an old-fashioned sort, held to the nose by a handle, and perused the different persons of the group. “Mr. Colville concealing an inward trepidation under a bold front; Miss Graham agitated but firm; the child as much puzzled as the old woman. I feel that we are a very interesting group — almost dramatic.”

  “Oh, call us a passage from a modern novel,” suggested Colville, “if you’re in the romantic mood. One of Mr. James’s.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to be rather more of the great world for that? I hardly feel up to Mr. James. I should have said Howells. Only nothing happens in that case!”

  “Oh, very well; that’s the most comfortable way. If it’s only Howells, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go with Miss Graham to show her the view of Florence from the cypress grove up yonder.”

  “No; he’s very particular when he’s on Italian ground,” said Mrs. Amsden, rising. “You must come another time with Miss Graham, and bring Mrs. Bowen. It’s quite time we were going home.”

  The light under the limbs of the trees had begun to grow more liquid. The currents of warm breeze streaming through the cooler body of the air had ceased to ruffle the lakelet round the fountain, and the naiads rode their sea-horses through a perfect calm. A damp, pierced with the fresh odour of the water and of the springing grass, descended upon them. The saunterers through the different paths and alleys were issuing upon the main avenues, and tending in gathering force toward the gate.

  They found Mrs. Bowen’s carriage there, and drove first to her house, beyond which Mrs. Amsden lived in a direct line. On the way Colville kept up with her the bantering talk that they always carried on together, and found in it a respite from the formless future pressing close upon him. He sat with Effie on the front seat, and he would not look at Imogene’s face, which, nevertheless, was present to some inner vision. When the porter opened the iron gate below and rang Mrs. Bowen’s bell, and Effie sprang up the stairs before them to give her mother the news of Mr. Colville’s coming, the girl stole her hand into his.

  “Shall you — tell her?”

  “Of course. She must know without an instant’s delay.”

  “Yes, yes; that is right. Oh! — Shall I go with you?”

  “Yes; come!”

  XV

  Mrs. Bowen came
in to them, looking pale and pain-worn, as she did that evening when she would not let Colville go away with the other tea-taking callers to whom she had made her headache an excuse. The eyelids which she had always a little difficulty in lifting were heavy with suffering, and her pretty smile had an effect of very great remoteness. But there was no consciousness of anything unusual or unexpected in his presence expressed in her looks or manner. Colville had meant to take Imogene by the hand and confront Mrs. Bowen with an immediate declaration of what had happened; but he found this impossible, at least in the form of his intention; he took, instead, the hand of conventional welcome which she gave him, and he obeyed her in taking provisionally the seat to which she invited him. At the same time the order of his words was dispersed in that wonder, whether she suspected anything, with which he listened to her placid talk about the weather; she said she had thought it was a chilly day outdoors; but her headaches always made her very sensitive.

  “Yes,” said Colville, “I supposed it was cold myself till I went out, for I woke with a tinge of rheumatism.” He felt a strong desire to excuse, to justify what had happened, and he went on, with a painful sense of Imogene’s eyes bent in bewildered deference upon him. “I started out for a walk with Mr. Waters, but I left him after we got across the Ponte Vecchio; he went up to look at the Michelangelo bastions, and I strolled over to the Boboli Gardens — where I found your young people.”

  He had certainly brought himself to the point, but he seemed actually further from it than at first, and he made a desperate plunge, trying at the same time to keep something of his habitual nonchalance. “But that doesn’t account for my being here. Imogene accounts for that. She has allowed me to stay in Florence.”

  Mrs. Bowen could not turn paler than her headache had left her, and she now underwent no change of complexion. But her throat was not clear enough to say to the end, “Allowed you to stay in—” The trouble in her throat arrested her again.

  Colville became very red. He put out his hand and took Imogene’s, and now his eyes and Mrs. Bowen’s met in the kind of glance in which people intercept and turn each other aside before they have reached a resting-place in each other’s souls. But at the girl’s touch his courage revived — in some physical sort. “Yes, and if she will let me stay with her, we are not going to part again.”

  Mrs. Bowen did not answer at once, and in the hush Colville heard the breathing of all three.

  “Of course,” he said, “we wished you to know at once, and I came in with Imogene to tell you.”

  “What do you wish me,” asked Mrs. Bowen, “to do?”

  Colville forced a nervous laugh. “Really, I’m so little used to this sort of affair that I don’t know whether I have any wish. Imogene is here with you, and I suppose I supposed you would wish to do something.”

  “I will do whatever you think best.”

  “Thank you: that’s very kind of you.” He fell into a silence, in which he was able only to wish that he knew what was best, and from which he came to the surface with, “Imogene’s family ought to know, of course.”

  “Yes; they put her in my charge. They will have to know. Shall I write to them?”

  “Why, if you will.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  “Thank you.”

  He had taken to stroking with his right hand the hand of Imogene which he held in his left, and now he looked round at her with a glance which it was a relief not to have her meet. “And till we can hear from them, I suppose you will let me come to see her?”

  “You know you have always been welcome here.”

  “Thank you very much.” It seemed as if there ought to be something else to say, but Colville could not think of anything except: “We wish to act in every way with your approval, Mrs. Bowen. And I know that you are very particular in some things” — the words, now that they were said, struck him as unfortunate, and even vulgar— “and I shouldn’t wish to annoy you—”

  “Oh, I understand. I think it will be — I have no doubt you will know how to manage all that. It isn’t as if you were both—”

  “Young?” asked Colville. “No; one of us is quite old enough to be thoroughly up in the convenances. We are qualified, I’m afraid, as far as that goes,” he added bitterly, “to set all Florence an example of correct behaviour.”

  He knew there must be pain in the face which he would not look at; he kept looking at Mrs. Bowen’s face, in which certainly there was not much pleasure, either.

  There was another silence, which became very oppressive before it ended in a question from Mrs. Bowen, who stirred slightly in her chair, and bent forward as if about to rise in asking it. “Shall you wish to consider it an engagement?”

  Colville felt Imogene’s hand tremble in his, but he received no definite prompting from the tremor. “I don’t believe I know what you mean.”

  “I mean, till you have heard from Imogene’s mother.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps under the circumstances—” The tremor died out of the hand he held; it lay lax between his. “What do you say, Imogene?”

  “I can’t say anything. Whatever you think will be right — for me.”

  “I wish to do what will seem right and fair to your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  Colville heaved a hopeless sigh. Then with a deep inward humiliation, he said, “Perhaps if you know Imogene’s mother, Mrs. Bowen, you can suggest — advise — You—”

  “You must excuse me; I can’t suggest or advise anything. I must leave you perfectly free.” She rose from her chair, and they, both rose too from the sofa on which he had seated himself at Imogene’s side. “I shall have to leave you, I’m afraid; my head aches still a little. Imogene!” She advanced toward the girl, who stood passively letting her come the whole distance. As if sensible of the rebuff expressed in this attitude, she halted a very little. Then she added, “I hope you will be very happy,” and suddenly cast her arms round the girl, and stood long pressing her face into her neck. When she released her, Colville trembled lest she should be going to give him her hand in congratulation. But she only bowed slightly to him, with a sidelong, aversive glance, and walked out of the room with a slow, rigid pace, like one that controls a tendency to giddiness.

  Imogene threw herself on Colville’s’ breast. It gave him a shock, as if he were letting her do herself some wrong. But she gripped him fast, and began to sob and to cry. “Oh! oh! oh!”

  “What is it? — what is it, my poor girl?” he murmured. “Are you unhappy? Are you sorry? Let it all end, then!”

  “No, no; it isn’t that! But I am very unhappy — yes, very, very unhappy! Oh, I didn’t suppose I should ever feel so toward any one. I hate her!”

  “You hate her?” gasped Colville.

  “Yes, I hate her. And she — she is so good to me! It must be that I’ve done her some deadly wrong, without knowing it, or I couldn’t hate her as I know I do.”

  “Oh no,” said Colville soothingly; “that’s just your fancy. You haven’t harmed her, and you don’t hate her.”

  “Yes, yes, I do! You can’t understand how I feel toward her.”

  “But you can’t feel so toward her long,” he urged, dealing as he might with what was wholly a mystery to him. She is so good—”

  “It only makes my badness worse, and makes me hate her more.”

  “I don’t understand. But you’re excited now. When you’re calmer you’ll feel differently, of course. I’ve kept you restless and nervous a long time, poor child; but now our peace begins, and everything will be bright and—” He stopped: the words had such a very hollow sound.

  She pushed herself from him, and dried her eyes. “Oh yes.”

  “And, Imogene — perhaps — perhaps — Or, no; never mind, now. I must go away—” She looked at him, frightened but submissive. “But I will be back to-night, or perhaps to-morrow morning. I want to think — to give you time to think. I don’t want to be selfish about you — I want to consider you, all
the more because you won’t consider yourself. Good-bye.” He stooped over and kissed her hair. Even in this he felt like a thief; he could not look at the face she lifted to his.

  Mrs. Bowen sent word from her room that she was not coming to dinner, and Imogene did not come till the dessert was put on. Then she found Effie Bowen sitting alone at the table, and served in serious formality by the man, whom she had apparently felt it right to repress, for they were both silent. The little girl had not known how to deny herself an excess of the less wholesome dishes, and she was perhaps anticipating the regret which this indulgence was to bring, for she was very pensive.

  “Isn’t mamma coming at all?” she asked plaintively, when Imogene sat down, and refused everything but a cup of coffee. “Well,” she went on, “I can’t make out what is coming to this family. You were all crying last night because Mr. Colville was going away, and now, when he’s going to stay, it’s just as bad. I don’t think you make it very pleasant for him. I should think he would be perfectly puzzled by it, after he’s done so much to please you all. I don’t believe he thinks it’s very polite. I suppose it is polite, but it doesn’t seem so. And he’s always so cheerful and nice. I should think he would want to visit in some family where there was more amusement. There used to be plenty in this family, but now it’s as dismal! The first of the winter you and mamma used to be so pleasant when he came, and would try everything to amuse him, and would let me come in to get some of the good of it; but now you seem to fly every way as soon as he comes in sight of the house, and I’m poked off in holes and corners before he can open his lips. And I’ve borne it about as long as I can. I would rather be back in Vevay. Or anywhere.” At this point her own pathos overwhelmed her, and the tears rolling down her cheeks moistened the crumbs of pastry at the corners of her pretty mouth. “What was so strange, I should like to know, about his staying, that mamma should pop up like a ghost, when I told her he had come home with us, and grab me by the wrist, and twitch me about, and ask me all sorts of questions I couldn’t answer, and frighten me almost to death? I haven’t got over it yet. And I don’t think it’s very nice. It used to be a very polite family, and pleasant with each other, and always having something agreeable going on in it; but if it keeps on very much longer in this way, I shall think the Bowens are beginning to lose their good-breeding. I suppose that if Mr. Colville were to go down on his knees to mamma and ask her to let him take me somewhere now, she wouldn’t do it.” She pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, and dried her eyes on a ball of it. “I don’t see what you’ve been crying about, Imogene. You’ve got nothing to worry you.”