XX
In the morning Mrs. Bowen received a note from her banker covering adespatch by cable from America. It was from Imogene's mother; itacknowledged the letters they had written, and announced that she sailedthat day for Liverpool. It was dated at New York, and it was to beinferred that after perhaps writing in answer to their letters, she hadsuddenly made up her mind to come out.
"Yes, that is it," said Imogene, to whom Mrs. Bowen hastened with thedespatch. "Why should she have telegraphed to _you_?" she asked coldly,but with a latent fire of resentment in her tone.
"You must ask her when she comes," returned Mrs. Bowen, with all hergentleness. "It won't be long now."
They looked as if they had neither of them slept; but the girl's vigilseemed to have made her wild and fierce, like some bird that has beatitself all night against its cage, and still from time to time feeblystrikes the bars with its wings. Mrs. Bowen was simply worn to apathy.
"What shall you do about this?" she asked.
"Do about it? Oh, I will think. I will try not to trouble you."
"Imogene!"
"I shall have to tell Mr. Colville. But I don't know that I shall tellhim at once. Give me the despatch, please." She possessed herself of itgreedily, offensively. "I shall ask you not to speak of it."
"I will do whatever you wish."
"Thank you."
Mrs. Bowen left the room, but she turned immediately to re-open the doorshe had closed behind her.
"We were to have gone to Fiesole to-morrow," she said inquiringly.
"We can still go if the day is fine," returned the girl. "Nothing ischanged. I wish very much to go. Couldn't we go to-day?" she added, witheager defiance.
"It's too late to-day," said Mrs. Bowen quietly. "I will write to remindthe gentlemen."
"Thank you. I wish we could have gone to-day."
"You can have the carriage if you wish to drive anywhere," said Mrs.Bowen.
"I will take Effie to see Mrs. Amsden." But Imogene changed her mind,and went to call upon two Misses Guicciardi, the result of aninternational marriage, whom Mrs. Bowen did not like very well. Imogenedrove with them to the Cascine, where they bowed to a numerous militaryacquaintance, and they asked her if Mrs. Bowen would let her join themin a theatre party that evening: they were New-Yorkers by birth, and itwas to be a theatre party in the New York style; they were to bechaperoned by a young married lady; two young men cousins of theirs,just out from America, had taken the box.
When Imogene returned home she told Mrs. Bowen that she had acceptedthis invitation. Mrs. Bowen said nothing, but when one of the young mencame up to hand Imogene down to the carriage, which was waiting with theothers at the gate, she could not have shown a greater tolerance of hissecond-rate New Yorkiness if she had been a Boston dowager offering himthe scrupulous hospitalities of her city.
Imogene came in at midnight; she hummed an air of the opera as she tookoff her wraps and ornaments in her room, and this in the quiet of thehour had a terrible, almost profane effect: it was as if some other kindof girl had whistled. She showed the same nonchalance at breakfast,where she was prompt, and answered Mrs. Bowen's inquiries about herpleasure the night before with a liveliness that ignored the politeresolution that prompted them.
Mr. Morton was the first to arrive, and if his discouragement began atonce, the first steps masked themselves in a reckless welcome, whichseemed to fill him with joy, and Mrs. Bowen with silent perplexity. Thegirl ran on about her evening at the opera, and about the weather, andthe excursion they were going to make; and after an apparently needlessado over the bouquet which he brought her, together with one for Mrs.Bowen, she put it into her belt, and made Colville notice it when hecame: he had not thought to bring flowers.
He turned from her hilarity with anxious question to Mrs. Bowen, who didnot meet his eye, and who snubbed Effie when the child found occasion towhisper: "_I_ think Imogene is acting very strangely, for _her_; don'tyou, mamma? It seems as if going with those Guicciardi girls just oncehad spoiled her."
"Don't make remarks about people, Effie," said her mother sharply. "Itisn't nice in little girls, and I don't want you to do it. You talk toomuch lately."
Effie turned grieving away from this rejection, and her face did notlight up even at the whimsical sympathy in Colville's face, who saw thatshe had met a check of some sort; he had to take her on his knee andcoax and kiss her before her wounded feelings were visibly healed. Heput her down with a sighing wish that some one could take him up andsoothe his troubled sensibilities too, and kept her hand in his while hesat waiting for the last of those last moments in which the hurryingdelays of ladies preparing for an excursion seem never to end.
When they were ready to get into the carriage, the usual contest ofself-sacrifice arose, which Imogene terminated by mounting to the frontseat; Mr. Morton hastened to take the seat beside her, and Colville wasleft to sit with Effie and her mother. "You old people will be saferback there," said Imogene. It was a little joke which she addressed tothe child, but a gleam from her eye as she turned to speak to the youngman at her side visited Colville in desperate defiance. He wondered whatshe was about in that allusion to an idea which she had shrunk from sosensitively hitherto. But he found himself in a situation which he couldnot penetrate at any point. When he spoke with Mrs. Bowen, it was with adark undercurrent of conjecture as to how and when she expected him totell Mr. Morton of his relation to Imogene, or whether she stillexpected him to do it; when his eyes fell upon the face of the youngman, he despaired as to the terms in which he should put the fact; anyform in which he tacitly dramatised it remained very embarrassing, forhe felt bound to say that while he held himself promised in the matter,he did not allow her to feel herself so.
A sky of American blueness and vastness, a mellow sun, and a delicatebreeze did all that these things could for them, as they began the long,devious climb of the hills crowned by the ancient Etruscan city. Atfirst they were all in the constraint of their own and one another'smoods, known or imagined, and no talk began till the young clergymanturned to Imogene and asked, after a long look at the smiling landscape,"What sort of weather do you suppose they are having at Buffalo to-day?"
"At Buffalo?" she repeated, as if the place had only a dim existence inher remotest consciousness. "Oh! The ice isn't near out of the lake yet.You can't count on it before the first of May."
"And the first of May comes sooner or later, according to the season,"said Colville. "I remember coming on once in the middle of the month,and the river was so full of ice between Niagara Falls and Buffalo thatI had to shut the car window that I'd kept open all the way throughSouthern Canada. But we have very little of that local weather at home;our weather is as democratic and continental as our politicalconstitution. Here it's March or May any time from September till June,according as there's snow on the mountains or not."
The young man smiled. "But don't you like," he asked with deference,"this slow, orderly advance of the Italian spring, where the flowersseem to come out one by one, and every blossom has its appointed time?"
"Oh yes, it's very well in its way; but I prefer the rush of theAmerican spring; no thought of mild weather this morning; a warm, gustyrain to-morrow night; day after to-morrow a burst of blossoms andflowers and young leaves and birds. I don't know whether we were madefor our climate or our climate was made for us, but its impatience andlavishness seem to answer some inner demand of our go-ahead souls. Thishappens to be the week of the peach blossoms here, and you see theirpink everywhere to-day, and you don't see anything else in the blossomline. But imagine the American spring abandoning a whole week of herprecious time to the exclusive use of peach blossoms! She wouldn't doit; she's got too many other things on hand."
Effie had stretched out over Colville's lap, and with her elbow sunkdeep in his knee, was renting her chin in her hand and taking the factsof the landscape thoroughly in. "Do they have just a week?" she asked.
"Not an hour more or less," said Colville. "If they found a
n almondblossom hanging round anywhere after their time came, they would make anawful row; and if any lazy little peach-blow hadn't got out by the timetheir week was up, it would have to stay in till next year; the pearblossoms wouldn't let it come out."
"Wouldn't they?" murmured the child, in dreamy sympathy with thisbelated peach-blow.
"Well, that's what people say. In America it would be allowed to comeout any time. It's a free country."
Mrs. Bowen offered to draw Effie back to a posture of more decorum, butColville put his arm round the little girl. "Oh, let her stay! Itdoesn't incommode me, and she must be getting such a novel effect of thelandscape."
The mother fell back into her former attitude of jaded passivity. Hewondered whether she had changed her mind about having him speak to Mr.Morton; her quiescence might well have been indifference; one could havesaid, knowing the whole situation, that she had made up her mind to letthings take their course, and struggle with them no longer.
He could not believe that she felt content with him; she must feel farotherwise; and he took refuge, as he had the power of doing, from thediscomfort of his own thoughts in jesting with the child, and mockingher with this extravagance and that; the discomfort then became merely adull ache that insisted upon itself at intervals, like a grumblingtooth.
The prospect was full of that mingled wildness and subordination thatgives its supreme charm to the Italian landscape; and without elementsof great variety, it combined them in infinite picturesqueness. Therewere olive orchards and vineyards, and again vineyards and oliveorchards. Closer to the farm-houses and cottages there were peaches andother fruit trees and kitchen-gardens; broad ribbons of grain wavedbetween the ranks of trees; around the white villas the spires of thecypresses pierced the blue air. Now and then they came to a villa withweather-beaten statues strutting about its parterres. A mild, pleasantheat brooded upon the fields and roofs, and the city, dropping lower andlower as they mounted, softened and blended its towers and monuments ina sombre mass shot with gleams of white.
Colville spoke to Imogene, who withdrew her eyes from it with a sigh,after long brooding upon the scene. "You can do nothing with it, I see."
"With what?"
"The landscape. It's too full of every possible interest. What a historyis written all over it, public and private! If you don't take it simplylike any other landscape, it becomes an oppression. It's well thattourists come to Italy so ignorant, and keep so. Otherwise they couldn'tlive to get home again; the past would crush them."
Imogene scrutinised him as if to extract some personal meaning from hiswords, and then turned her head away. The clergyman addressed him withwhat was like a respectful toleration of the drolleries of a gifted buteccentric man, the flavour of whose talk he was beginning to taste.
"You don't really mean that one shouldn't come to Italy as well informedas possible?"
"Well, I did," said Colville, "but I don't."
The young man pondered this, and Imogene started up with an air ofrescuing them from each other--as if she would not let Mr. Morton thinkColville trivial or Colville consider the clergyman stupid, but would dowhat she could to take their minds off the whole question. Perhaps shewas not very clear as to how this was to be done; at any rate she didnot speak, and Mrs. Bowen came to her support, from whatever motive ofher own. It might have been from a sense of the injustice of letting Mr.Morton suffer from the complications that involved herself and theothers. The affair had been going very hitchily ever since they started,with the burden of the conversation left to the two men and thathelpless girl; if it were not to be altogether a failure she mustinterfere.
"Did you ever hear of Gratiano when you were in Venice?" she asked Mr.Morton.
"Is he one of their new water-colourists?" returned the young man. "Iheard they had quite a school there now."
"No," said Mrs. Bowen, ignoring her failure as well as she could; "hewas a famous talker; he loved to speak an infinite deal of nothing morethan any man in Venice."
"An ancestor of mine, Mr. Morton," said Colville; "a poor, honest man,who did his best to make people forget that the ladies were silent.Thank you, Mrs. Bowen, for mentioning him. I wish he were with usto-day."
The young man laughed. "Oh, in the _Merchant of Venice_!"
"No other," said Colville.
"I confess," said Mrs. Bowen, "that I _am_ rather stupid this morning. Isuppose it's the softness of the air; it's been harsh and irritating solong. It makes me drowsy."
"Don't mind _us_," returned Colville. "We will call you at importantpoints." They were driving into a village at which people stop sometimesto admire the works of art in its church. "Here, for example, is--Whatplace is this?" he asked of the coachman.
"San Domenico."
"I should know it again by its beggars." Of all ages and sexes theyswarmed round the carriage, which the driver had instinctively slowed tooblige them, and thrust forward their hands and hats. Colville gaveEffie his small change to distribute among them, at sight of which theystreamed down the street from every direction. Those who had receivedbrought forward the halt and blind, and did not scruple to propose beingrewarded for this service. At the same time they did not mind hislaughing in their faces; they laughed too, and went off content, or asnearly so as beggars ever are. He buttoned up his pocket as they droveon more rapidly. "I am the only person of no principle--except Effie--inthe carriage, and yet I am at this moment carrying more blessings out ofthis village than I shall ever know what to do with. Mrs. Bowen, I know,is regarding me with severe disapproval. She thinks that I ought to havesent the beggars of San Domenico to Florence, where they would all beshut up in the Pia Casa di Ricovero, and taught some useful occupation.It's terrible in Florence. You can walk through Florence now and have noappeal made to your better nature that is not made at the appellant'srisk of imprisonment. When I was there before, you had opportunities ofgiving at every turn."
"You can send a cheque to the Pia Casa," said Mrs. Bowen.
"Ah, but what good would that do me? When I give I want the pleasure ofit; I want to see my beneficiary cringe under my bounty. But I've triedin vain to convince you that the world has gone wrong in other ways. Doyou remember the one-armed man whom we used to give to on the Lung'Arno? That persevering sufferer has been repeatedly arrested formendicancy, and obliged to pay a fine out of his hard earnings to escapebeing sent to your Pia Casa."
Mrs. Bowen smiled, and said, Was he living yet? in a pensive tone ofreminiscence. She was even more than patient of Colville's nonsense. Itseemed to him that the light under her eyelids was sometimes a gratefullight. Confronting Imogene and the young man whose hopes of her he wasto destroy at the first opportunity, the lurid moral atmosphere which hebreathed seemed threatening to become a thing apparent to sense, and tobe about to blot the landscape. He fought it back as best he could, andkept the hovering cloud from touching the earth by incessant effort. Attimes he looked over the side of the carriage, and drew secretly a longbreath of fatigue. It began to be borne in upon him that these ladieswere using him ill in leaving him the burden of their entertainment. Hebecame angry, but his heart softened, and he forgave them again, for heconjectured that he was the cause of the cares that kept them silent. Hefelt certain that the affair had taken some new turn. He wondered ifMrs. Bowen had told Imogene what she had demanded of him. But he couldonly conjecture and wonder in the dreary undercurrent of thought thatflowed evenly and darkly on with the talk he kept going. He made themost he could of the varying views of Florence which the turns andmounting levels of the road gave him. He became affectionately gratefulto the young clergyman when he replied promptly and fully, and took aninterest in the objects or subjects he brought up.
Neither Mrs. Bowen nor Imogene was altogether silent. The one helped onat times wearily, and the other broke at times from her abstraction.Doubtless the girl had undertaken too much in insisting upon a party ofpleasure with her mind full of so many things, and doubtless Mrs. Bowenwas sore with a rankling resentment at her ins
istence, and vexed atherself for having yielded to it. If at her time of life and with allher experience of it, she could not rise under this inner load, Imogenemust have been crushed by it.
Her starts from the dreamy oppression, if that were what kept hersilent, took the form of aggression, when she disagreed with Colvilleabout things he was saying, or attacked him for this or that thing whichhe had said in times past. It was an unhappy and unamiableself-assertion, which he was not able to compassionate so much when sheresisted or defied Mrs. Bowen, as she seemed seeking to do at everypoint. Perhaps another would not have felt it so; it must have beenlargely in his consciousness; the young clergyman seemed not to seeanything in these bursts but the indulgence of a gay caprice, though hislaughing at them did not alleviate the effect to Colville, who, when heturned to Mrs. Bowen for her alliance, was astonished with a promptsnub, unmistakable to himself, however imperceptible to others.
He found what diversion and comfort he could in the party of childrenwho beset them at a point near the town, and followed the carriage,trying to sell them various light and useless trifles made ofstraw--fans, baskets, parasols, and the like. He bought recklessly ofthem and gave them to Effie, whom he assured, without the applause ofthe ladies, and with the grave question of the young clergyman, that thevendors were little Etruscan girls, all at least twenty-five hundredyears old. "It's very hard to find any Etruscans under that age; most ofthe grown-up people are three thousand."
The child humoured his extravagance with the faith in fable whichchildren are able to command, and said, "Oh, tell me about them!" whileshe pushed up closer to him, and began to admire her presents, holdingthem up before her, and dwelling fondly upon them one by one.
"Oh, there's very little to tell," answered Colville. "They're mightyclose people, and always keep themselves very much _to_ themselves. Butwouldn't you like to see a party of Etruscans of all ages, even down tolittle babies only eleven or twelve hundred years old, come driving intoan American town? It would make a great excitement, wouldn't it?"
"It would be splendid."
"Yes; we would give them a collation in the basement of the City Hall,and drive them out to the cemetery. The Americans and Etruscans are verymuch alike in that--they always show you their tombs."
"Will they in Fiesole?"
"How you always like to burrow into the past!" interrupted Imogene.
"Well, it's rather difficult burrowing into the future," returnedColville defensively. Accepting the challenge, he added: "Yes, I shouldreally like to meet a few Etruscans in Fiesole this morning. I shouldfeel as if I'd got amongst my contemporaries at last; they wouldunderstand me."
The girl's face flushed. "Then no one else can understand you?"
"Apparently not. I am the great American _incompris_."
"I'm sorry for you," she returned feebly; and, in fact, sarcasm was nother strong point.
When they entered the town they found the Etruscans preoccupied withother visitors, whom at various points in the quaint little piazza theysurrounded in dense groups, to their own disadvantage as guides andbeggars and dealers in straw goods. One of the groups reluctantlydispersed to devote itself to the new arrivals, and these then perceivedthat it was a party of artists, scattered about and sketching, which hadabsorbed the attention of the population. Colville went to therestaurant to order lunch, leaving the ladies to the care of Mr. Morton.When he came back he found the carriage surrounded by the artists, whohad turned out to be the Inglehart boys. They had walked up to Fiesolethe afternoon before, and they had been sketching there all the morning.With the artist's indifference to the conventional objects of interest,they were still ignorant of what ought to be seen in Fiesole bytourists, and they accepted Colville's proposition to be of his party ingoing the rounds of the Cathedral, the Museum, and the view from thatpoint of the wall called the Belvedere. They found that they had been atthe Belvedere before without knowing that it merited particularrecognition, and some of them had made sketches from it--of bits ofarchitecture and landscape, and of figure amongst the women with strawfans and baskets to sell, who thronged round the whole party again, andinterrupted the prospect. In the church they differed amongst themselvesas to the best bits for study, and Colville listened in whimsicaldespair to the enthusiasm of their likings and dislikings. All that wasso far from him now; but in the Museum, which had only a thin interestbased upon a small collection of art and archeology, he suffered a realaffliction in the presence of a young Italian couple, who were probablyplighted lovers. They went before a grey-haired pair, who might havebeen the girl's father and mother, and they looked at none of theobjects, though they regularly stopped before them and waited till theirguide had said his say about them. The girl, clinging tight to the youngman's arm, knew nothing but him; her mouth and eyes were set in apassionate concentration of her being upon him, and he seemed to walk ina dream of her. From time to time they peered upon each other's faces,and then they paused, rapt and indifferent to all besides.
The young painters had their jokes about it; even Mr. Morton smiled, andMrs. Bowen recognised it. But Imogene did not smile; she regarded thelovers with an interest in them scarcely less intense than theirinterest in each other; and a cold perspiration of question broke out onColville's forehead. Was that her ideal of what her own engagementshould be? Had she expected him to behave in that way to her, and toaccept from her a devotion like that girl's? How bitterly he must havedisappointed her! It was so impossible to him that the thought of itmade him feel that he must break all ties which bound him to anythinglike it. And yet he reflected that the time was when he could have beenequal to that, and even more.
After lunch the painters joined them again, and they all went togetherto visit the ruins of the Roman theatre and the stretch of Etruscan wallbeyond it. The former seems older than the latter, whose huge blocks ofstone lie as firmly and evenly in their courses as if placed there ayear ago; the turf creeps to the edge at top, and some small trees nodalong the crest of the wall, whose ancient face, clean and bare, lookssternly out over a vast prospect, now young and smiling in the firstdelight of spring. The piety or interest of the community, which guardsthe entrance to the theatre by a fee of certain centesimi, may beconcerned in keeping the wall free from the grass and vines which arestealing the half-excavated arena back to forgetfulness and decay; butwhatever agency it was, it weakened the appeal that the wall made to thesympathy of the spectators.
They could do nothing with it; the artists did not take theirsketch-blocks from their pockets. But in the theatre, where a few brokencolumns marked the place of the stage, and the stone benches of theauditorium were here and there reached by a flight of uncovered steps,the human interest returned.
"I suspect that there is such a thing as a ruin's being too old," saidColville. "Our Etruscan friends made the mistake of building their wallseveral thousand years too soon for our purpose."
"Yes," consented the young clergyman. "It seems as if our own racebecame alienated from us through the mere effect of time, don't youthink, sir? I mean, of course, terrestrially."
The artists looked uneasy, as if they had not counted upon anything ofthis kind, and they began to scatter about for points of view. Effie gother mother's leave to run up and down one of the stairways, if she wouldnot fall. Mrs. Bowen sat down on one of the lower steps, and Mr. Mortontook his place respectfully near her.
"I wonder how it looks from the top?" Imogene asked this of Colville,with more meaning than seemed to belong to the question properly.
"There is nothing like going to see," he suggested. He helped her up,giving her his hand from one course of seats to another. When theyreached the point which commanded the best view of the whole, she satdown, and he sank at her feet, but they did not speak of the view.
"Theodore, I want to tell you something," she said abruptly. "I haveheard from home."
"Yes?" he replied, in a tone in which he did his best to express areadiness for any fate.
"Mother has telegraphed. She is
coming out. She is on her way now. Shewill be here very soon."
Colville did not know exactly what to say to these passionatelyconsecutive statements. "Well?" he said at last.
"Well"--she repeated his word--"what do you intend to do?"
"Intend to do in what event?" he asked, lifting his eyes for the firsttime to the eyes which he felt burning down upon him.
"If she should refuse?"
Again he could not command an instant answer, but when it came it was afair one. "It isn't for me to say what I shall do," he replied gravely."Or, if it is, I can only say that I will do whatever you wish."
"Do _you_ wish nothing?"
"Nothing but your happiness."
"Nothing but my happiness!" she retorted. "What is my happiness to me?Have I ever sought it?"
"I can't say," he answered; "but if I did not think you would find it--"
"I shall find it, if ever I find it, in yours," she interrupted. "Andwhat shall you do if my mother will not consent to our engagement?"
The experienced and sophisticated man--for that in no ill way was whatColville was--felt himself on trial for his honour and his manhood bythis simple girl, this child. He could not endure to fall short of herideal of him at that moment, no matter what error or calamity thefulfilment involved. "If you feel sure that you love me, Imogene, itwill make no difference to me what your mother says. I would be glad ofher consent; I should hate to go counter to her will; but I know that Iam good enough man to be true and keep you all my life the first in allmy thoughts, and that's enough for me. But if you have any fear, anydoubt of yourself, now is the time--"
Imogene rose to her feet as in some turmoil of thought or emotion thatwould not suffer her to remain quiet.
"Oh, keep still!" "Don't get up yet!" "Hold on a minute, please!" camefrom the artists in different parts of the theatre, and half a dozenimploring pencils were waved in the air.
"They are sketching you," said Colville, and she sank compliantly intoher seat again.
"I have no doubt for myself--no," she said, as if there had been nointerruption.
"Then we need have no anxiety in meeting your mother," said Colville,with a light sigh, after a moment's pause. "What makes you think shewill be unfavourable?"
"I don't think that; but I thought--I didn't know but--"
"What?"
"Nothing, now." Her lips were quivering; he could see her struggle forself-control, but he could not see it unmoved.
"Poor child!" he said, putting out his hand toward her.
"Don't take my hand; they're all looking," she begged.
He forbore, and they remained silent and motionless a little while,before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak again.
"Then we are promised to each other, whatever happens," she said.
"Yes."
"And we will never speak of this again. But there is one thing. Did Mrs.Bowen ask you to tell Mr. Morton of our engagement?"
"She said that I ought to do so."
"And did you say you would?"
"I don't know. But I suppose I ought to tell him."
"I don't wish you to!" cried the girl.
"You don't wish me to tell him?"
"No; I will not have it!"
"Oh, very well; it's much easier not. But it seems to me that it's onlyfair to him."
"Did you think of that yourself?" she demanded fiercely.
"No," returned Colville, with sad self-recognition. "I'm afraid I'm notapt to think of the comforts and rights of other people. It was Mrs.Bowen who thought of it."
"I knew it!"
"But I must confess that I agreed with her, though I would havepreferred to postpone it till we heard from your family." He wasthoughtfully silent a moment; then he said, "But if their decision is tohave no weight with us, I think he ought to be told at once."
"Do you think that I am flirting with him?"
"Imogene!" exclaimed Colville reproachfully.
"That's what you imply; that's what she implies."
"You're very unjust to Mrs. Bowen, Imogene."
"Oh, you always defend her! It isn't the first time you've told me I wasunjust to her."
"I don't mean that you are willingly unjust, or could be so, to anyliving creature, least of all to her. But I--we--owe her so much; shehas been so patient."
"What do we owe her? How has she been patient?"
"She has overcome her dislike to me."
"Oh, indeed!"
"And--and I feel under obligation to her for--in a thousand little ways;and I should be glad to feel that we were acting with her approval; Ishould like to please her."
"You wish to tell Mr. Morton?"
"I think I ought."
"To please Mrs. Bowen! Tell him, then! You always cared more to pleaseher than me. Perhaps you stayed in Florence to please her!"
She rose and ran down the broken seats and ruined steps so recklesslyand yet so sure-footedly that it seemed more like a flight than a paceto the place where Mrs. Bowen and Mr. Morton were talking together.
Colville followed as he could, slowly and with a heavy heart. A goodthing develops itself in infinite and unexpected shapes of good; a badthing into manifold and astounding evils. This mistake was whirling awaybeyond his recall in hopeless mazes of error. He saw this generous youngspirit betrayed by it to ignoble and unworthy excess, and he knew thathe and not she was to blame.
He was helpless to approach her, to speak with her, to set her right,great as the need of that was, and he could see that she avoided him.But their relations remained outwardly undisturbed. The artists broughttheir sketches for inspection and comment, and, without speaking to eachother, he and Imogene discussed them with the rest.
When they started homeward the painters said they were coming a littleway with them for a send-off, and then going back to spend the night inFiesole. They walked beside the carriage, talking with Mrs. Bowen andImogene, who had taken their places, with Effie between them, on theback seat; and when they took their leave, Colville and the youngclergyman, who had politely walked with them, continued on foot a littlefurther, till they came to the place where the highway to Florencedivided into the new road and the old. At this point it steeply overtopsthe fields on one side, which is shored up by a wall some ten or twelvefeet deep; and here round a sharp turn of the hill on the other sidecame a peasant driving a herd of the black pigs of the country.
Mrs. Bowen's horses were, perhaps, pampered beyond the habitualresignation of Florentine horses to all manner of natural phenomena;they reared at sight of the sable crew, and backing violently uphill,set the carriage across the road, with its hind wheels a few feet fromthe brink of the wall. The coachman sprang from his seat, the ladies andthe child remained in theirs as if paralysed.
Colville ran forward to the side of the carriage. "Jump, Mrs. Bowen!jump, Effie! Imogene--"
The mother and the little one obeyed. He caught them in his arms and setthem down. The girl sat still, staring at him with reproachful, withdisdainful eyes.
He leaped forward to drag her out; she shrank away, and then he flew tohelp the coachman, who had the maddened horses by the bit.
"Let go!" he heard the young clergyman calling to him; "she's safe!" Hecaught a glimpse of Imogene, whom Mr. Morton had pulled from the otherside of the carriage. He struggled to free his wrist from the curb-bitchain of the horse, through which he had plunged it in his attempt toseize the bridle. The wheels of the carriage went over the wall; he felthimself whirled into the air, and then swung ruining down into thewrithing and crashing heap at the bottom of the wall.