Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “It isn’t quite a parallel case,” said Colville, rather sulkily. He had, in fact, suffered more under Mr. Waters’s generalisation than he could from a more personal philosophy of the affair.

  “Oh no; I didn’t think that,” consented the old man.

  “And I don’t think I shall undertake any extended scheme of drainage or subsoiling in atonement for my little dream,” Colville continued, resenting the parity of outline that grew upon him in spite of his protest. They were both silent for a while, and then Colville cried out, “Yes, yes; they are alike. I dreamed, too, of recovering and restoring my own lost and broken past in the love of a young soul, and it was in essence the same cruelly egotistic dream; and it’s nothing in my defence that it was all formless and undirected at first, and that as soon as I recognised it I abhorred it.”

  “Oh yes, it is,” replied the old man, with perfect equanimity. “Your assertion is the hysterical excess of Puritanism in all times and places. In the moral world we are responsible only for the wrong that we intend. It can’t be otherwise.”

  “And the evil that’s suffered from the wrong we didn’t intend?”

  “Ah, perhaps that isn’t evil.”

  “It’s pain!”

  “It’s pain, yes.”

  “And to have wrung a young and innocent heart with the anguish of self-doubt, with the fear of wrong to another, with the shame of an error such as I allowed, perhaps encouraged her to make—”

  “Yes,” said the old man. “The young suffer terribly. But they recover. Afterward we don’t suffer so much, but we don’t recover. I wouldn’t defend you against yourself if I thought you seriously in the wrong. If you know yourself to be, you shouldn’t let me.”

  Thus put upon his honour, Colville was a long time thoughtful. “How can I tell?” he asked. “You know the facts; you can judge.”

  “If I were to judge at all, I should say you were likely to do a greater wrong than any you have committed.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Miss Graham is a young girl, and I have no doubt that the young clergyman — what was his name?”

  “Morton. Do you think — do you suppose there was anything in that?” demanded Colville, with eagerness, that a more humorous observer than Mr. Waters might have found ludicrous. “He was an admirable young fellow, with an excellent head and a noble heart. I underrated him at one time, though I recognised his good qualities afterward; but I was afraid she did not appreciate him.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” said the old man, with an astuteness of manner which Colville thought authorised by some sort of definite knowledge.

  “I would give the world if it were so!” he cried fervently.

  “But you are really very much more concerned in something else.”

  “In what else?”

  “Can’t you imagine?”

  “No,” said Colville; but he felt himself growing very red in the face.

  “Then I have no more to say.”

  “Yes, speak!” And after an interval Colville added, “Is it anything about — you hinted at something long ago — Mrs. Bowen?”

  “Yes;” the old man nodded his head. “Do you owe her nothing?”

  “Owe her nothing? Everything! My life! What self-respect is left me! Immeasurable gratitude! The homage of a man saved from himself as far as his stupidity and selfishness would permit! Why, I — I love her!” The words gave him courage. “In every breath and pulse! She is the most beautiful and gracious and wisest and best woman in the world! I have loved her ever since I met her here in Florence last winter. Good heavens! I must have always loved her! But,” he added, falling from the rapture of this confession, “she simply loathes me!”

  “It was certainly not to your credit that you were willing at the same time to marry some one else.”

  “Willing! I wasn’t willing! I was bound hand and foot! Yes — I don’t care what you think of my weakness — I was not a free agent. It’s very well to condemn one’s-self, but it may be carried too far; injustice to others is not the only injustice, or the worst. What I was willing to do was to keep my word — to prevent that poor child, if possible, from ever finding out her mistake.”

  If Colville expected this heroic confession to impress his listener he was disappointed. Mr. Waters made him no reply, and he was obliged to ask, with a degree of sarcastic impatience, “I suppose you scarcely blame me for that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I blame people for things. There are times when it seems as if we were all puppets, pulled this way or that, without control of our own movements. Hamlet was able to browbeat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with his business of the pipe; but if they had been in a position to answer they might have told him that it required far less skill to play upon a man than any other instrument. Most of us, in fact, go sounding on without any special application of breath or fingers, repeating the tunes that were played originally upon other men. It appears to me that you suffered yourself to do something of the kind in this affair. We are a long time learning to act with common-sense or even common sanity in what are called matters of the affections. A broken engagement may be a bad thing in some cases, but I am inclined to think that it is the very best thing that could happen in most cases where it happens. The evil is done long before; the broken engagement is merely sanative, and so far beneficent.”

  The old gentleman rose, and Colville, dazed by the recognition of his own cowardice and absurdity, did not try to detain him. But he followed him down to the outer gate of the hotel. The afternoon sun was pouring into the piazza a sea of glimmering heat, into which Mr. Waters plunged with the security of a salamander. He wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat, a sack coat of black alpaca, and loose trousers of the same material, and Colville fancied him doubly defended against the torrid waves not only by the stored cold of half a century of winters at Haddam East Village, but by an inner coolness of spirit, which appeared to diffuse itself in an appreciable atmosphere about him. It was not till he was gone that Colville found himself steeped in perspiration, and glowing with a strange excitement.

  XXIII

  Colville went back to his own room, and spent a good deal of time in the contemplation of a suit of clothes, adapted to the season, which had been sent home from the tailor’s just before Mr. Waters came in. The coat was of the lightest serge, the trousers of a pearly grey tending to lavender, the waistcoat of cool white duck. On his way home from Palazzo Pinti he had stopped in Via Tornabuoni and bought some silk gauze neckties of a tasteful gaiety of tint, which he had at the time thought very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during his sickness, and the things bagged about him. If he were going to see Mrs. Bowen that evening, he ought to go in some decent shape. It was perhaps providential that he had failed to find her at home in the morning, when he had ventured thither in the clumsy attire in which he had been loafing about her drawing-room for the past week. He now owed it to her to appear before her as well as he could. How charmingly punctilious she always was herself!

  As he put on his new clothes he felt the moral support which the becomingness of dress alone can give. With the blue silk gauze lightly tied under his collar, and the lapels of his thin coat thrown back to admit his thumbs to his waistcoat pockets, he felt almost cheerful before his glass. Should he shave? As once before, this important question occurred to him. His thinness gave him some advantages of figure, but he thought that it made his face older. What effect would cutting off his beard have upon it? He had not seen the lower part of his face for fifteen years. No one could say what recent ruin of a double chin might not be lurking there. He decided not to shave, at least till after dinner, and aft
er dinner he was too impatient for his visit to brook the necessary delay.

  He was shown into the salotto alone, but Effie Bowen came running in to meet him. She stopped suddenly, bridling.

  “You never expected to see me looking quite so pretty,” said Colville, tracing the cause of her embarrassment to his summer splendour. “Where is your mamma?”

  “She is in the dining-room,” replied the child, getting hold of his hand. “She wants you to come and have coffee with us.”

  “By all means — not that I haven’t had coffee already, though.”

  She led the way, looking up at him shyly over her shoulder as they went.

  Mrs. Bowen rose, napkin in lap, and gave him a hand of welcome. “How are you feeling to-day?” she asked, politely ignoring his finery.

  “Like a new man,” he said. And then he added, to relieve the strain of the situation, “Of the best tailor’s make in Florence.”

  “You look very well,” she smiled.

  “Oh, I always do when I take pains,” said Colville. “The trouble is that I don’t always take pains. But I thought I would to-night, in upon a lady.”

  “Effie will feel very much flattered,” said Mrs. Bowen.

  “Don’t refuse a portion of the satisfaction,” he cried.

  “Oh, is it for me too?”

  This gave Colville consolation which no religion or philosophy could have brought him, and his pleasure was not marred, but rather heightened, by the little pangs of expectation, bred by long custom, that from moment to moment Imogene would appear. She did not appear, and a thrill of security succeeded upon each alarm. He wished her well with all his heart; such is the human heart that he wished her arrived home the bretrothed of that excellent, that wholly unobjectionable young man, Mr. Morton.

  “Will you have a little of the ice before your coffee?” asked Mrs. Bowen, proposing one of the moulded creams with her spoon.

  “Yes, thank you. Perhaps I will take it in place of the coffee. They forgot to offer us any ice at the table d’hôte this evening.”

  “This is rather luxurious for us,” said Mrs. Bowen. “It’s a compromise with Effie. She wanted me to take her to Giacosa’s this afternoon.”

  “I thought you would come,” whispered the child to Colville.

  Her mother made a little face of mock surprise at her. “Don’t give yourself away, Effie.”

  “Why, let us go to Giacosa’s too,” said Colville, taking the ice. “We shall be the only foreigners there, and we shall not even feel ourselves foreign. It’s astonishing how the hot weather has dispersed the tourists. I didn’t see a Baedeker on the whole way up here, and I walked down Via Tornabuoni across through Porta Rosso and the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizzi. You’ve no idea how comfortable and home-like it was — all the statues loafing about in their shirt sleeves, and the objects of interest stretching and yawning round, and having a good rest after their winter’s work.”

  Effie understood Colville’s way of talking well enough to enjoy this; her mother did not laugh.

  “Walked?” she asked.

  “Certainly. Why not?”

  “You are getting well again. You’ll soon be gone too.”

  “I’ve got well. But as to being gone, there’s no hurry. I rather think I shall wait now to see how long you stay.”

  “We may keep you all summer,” said Mrs. Bowen, dropping her eyelids indifferently.

  “Oh, very well. All summer it is, then. Mr. Waters is going to stay, and he is such a very cool old gentleman that I don’t think one need fear the wildest antics of the mercury where he is.”

  When Colville had finished his ice, Mrs. Bowen led the way to the salotto; and they all sat down by the window there and watched the sunset die on San Miniato. The bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David, in the Piazzale below the church, blackened in perfect relief against the pink sky and then faded against the grey while they talked. They were so domestic that Colville realised with difficulty that this was an image of what might be rather than what really was; the very ease with which he could apparently close his hand upon the happiness within his grasp unnerved him. The talk strayed hither and thither, and went and came aimlessly. A sound of singing floated in from the kitchen, and Effie eagerly asked her mother if she might go and see Maddalena. Maddalena’s mother had come to see her, and she was from the mountains.

  “Yes, go,” said Mrs. Bowen; “but don’t stay too long.”

  “Oh, I will be back in time,” said the child, and Colville remembered that he had proposed going to Giacosa’s.

  “Yes; don’t forget.” He had forgotten it himself.

  “Maddalena is the cook,” explained Mrs. Bowen. “She sings ballads to Effie that she learned from her mother, and I suppose Effie wants to hear them at first hand.”

  “Oh yes,” said Colville dreamily.

  They were alone now, and each little silence seemed freighted with a meaning deeper than speech.

  “Have you seen Mr. Waters to-day?” asked Mrs. Bowen, after one of these lapses.

  “Yes; he came this afternoon.”

  “He is a very strange old man. I should think he would be lonely here.”

  “He seems not to be. He says he finds company in the history of the place. And his satisfaction at having got out of Haddam East Village is perennial.”

  “But he will want to go back there before he dies.”

  “I don’t know. He thinks not. He’s a strange old man, as you say. He has the art of putting all sorts of ideas into people’s heads. Do you know what we talked about this afternoon?”

  “No, I don’t,” murmured Mrs. Bowen.

  “About you. And he encouraged me to believe — imagine — that I might speak to you — ask — tell you that — I loved you, Lina.” He leaned forward and took one of the hands that lay in her lap. It trembled with a violence inconceivable in relation to the perfect quiet of her attitude. But she did not try to take it away. “Could you — do you love me?”

  “Yes,” she whispered; but here she sprang up and slipped from his hold altogether, as with an inarticulate cry of rapture he released her hand to take her in his arms.

  He followed her a pace or two. “And you will — will be my wife?” he pursued eagerly.

  “Never!” she answered, and now Colville stopped short, while a cold bewilderment bathed him from head to foot. It must be some sort of jest, though he could not tell where the humour was, and he could not treat it otherwise than seriously.

  “Lina, I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you this winter, and Heaven knows how long before!”

  “Yes; I know that.”

  “And every moment.”

  “Oh, I know that too.”

  “Even if I had no sort of hope that you cared for me, I loved you so much that I must tell you before we parted—”

  “I expected that — I intended it.”

  “You intended it! and you do love me! And yet you won’t — Ah, I don’t understand!”

  “How could you understand? I love you — I blush and burn for shame to think that I love you. But I will never marry you; I can at least help doing that, and I can still keep some little trace of self-respect. How you must really despise me, to think of anything else, after all that has happened! Did you suppose that I was merely waiting till that poor girl’s back was turned, as you were? Oh, how can you be yourself, and still be yourself? Yes, Jenny Wheelwright was right. You are too much of a mixture, Theodore Colville” — her calling him so showed how often she had thought of him so— “too much for her, too much for Imogene, too much for me; too much for any woman except some wretched creature who enjoys being trampled on and dragged through the dust, as you have dragged me.”

  “I dragged you through the dust? There hasn’t been a moment in the past six months when I wouldn’t have rolled myself in it to please you.”

  “Oh, I knew that well enough! And do you think that was flattering to me?”

  “That has nothing to
do with it. I only know that I love you, and that I couldn’t help wishing to show it even when I wouldn’t acknowledge it to myself. That is all. And now when I am free to speak, and you own that you love me, you won’t — I give it up!” he cried desperately. But in the next breath he implored, “Why do you drive me from you, Lina?”

  “Because you have humiliated me too much.” She was perfectly steady, but he knew her so well that in the twilight he knew what bitterness there must be in the smile which she must be keeping on her lips. “I was here in the place of her mother, her best friend, and you made me treat her like an enemy. You made me betray her and cast her off.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, you! I knew from the very first that you did not really care for her, that you were playing with yourself, as you were playing with her, and I ought to have warned her.”

  “It appears to me you did warn her,” said Colville, with some resentful return of courage.

  “I tried,” she said simply, “and it made it worse. It made it worse because I knew that I was acting for my own sake more than hers, because I wasn’t — disinterested.” There was something in this explanation, serious, tragic, as it was to Mrs. Bowen, which made Colville laugh. She might have had some perception of its effect to him, or it may have been merely from a hysterical helplessness, but she laughed too a little.

  “But why,” he gathered courage to ask, “do you still dwell upon that? Mr. Waters told me that Mr. Morton — that there was—”

  “He is mistaken. He offered himself, and she refused him. He told me.”

  “Oh!”

  “Do you think she would do otherwise, with you lying here between life and death? No: you can have no hope from that.”

  Colville, in fact, had none. This blow crushed and dispersed him. He had not strength enough to feel resentment against Mr. Waters for misleading him with this ignis fatuus.

  “No one warned him, and it came to that,” said Mrs. Bowen. “It was of a piece with the whole affair. I was weak in that too.”