"Not very," said Colville. "I was just on my way there."
"I wish you would make them my compliments. Such a beautiful young creature."
"Yes," said Colville; "she is certainly a beautiful girl."
"I meant Mrs. Bowen," returned the old man quietly.
"Oh, I thought you meant Miss Graham. Mrs. Bowen is my contemporary, and so I didn"t think of her when you said young. I should have called her pretty rather than beautiful."
"No; she"s beautiful. The young girl is good-looking--I don"t deny that; but she is very crude yet."
Colville laughed. "Crude in looks? I should have said Miss Graham was rather crude in mind, though I"m not sure I wouldn"t have stopped at saying _young_."
"No," mildly persisted the old man; "she couldn"t be crude in mind without being crude in looks."
"You mean," pursued Colville, smiling, but not wholly satisfied, "that she hasn"t a lovely nature?"
"You never can know what sort of nature a young girl has. Her nature depends so much upon that of the man whose fate she shares."
"The woman is what the man makes her? That is convenient for the woman, and relieves her of all responsibility."
"The man is what the woman makes him, too, but not so much so. The man was cast into a deep sleep, you know----"
"And the woman was what he dreamed her. I wish she were."
"In most cases she is," said Mr. Waters.
They did not pursue the matter. The truth that floated in the old minister"s words pleased Colville by its vagueness, and flattered the man in him by its implication of the man"s superiority. He wanted to say that if Mrs. Bowen were what the late Mr. Bowen had dreamed her, then the late Mr. Bowen, when cast into his deep sleep, must have had Lina Ridgely in his eye. But this seemed to be personalising the fantasy unwarrantably, and pushing it too far. For like reason he forbore to say that if Mr. Waters"s theory were correct, it would be better to begin with some one whom n.o.body else had dreamed before; then you could be sure at least of not having a wife to somebody else"s mind rather than your own. Once on his way to Palazzo Pinti, he stopped, arrested by a thought that had not occurred to him before in relation to what Mr.
Waters had been saying, and then pushed on with the sense of security which is the compensation the possession of the initiative brings to our s.e.x along with many responsibilities. In the enjoyment of this, no man stops to consider the other side, which must wait his initiative, however they mean to meet it.
In the Por San Maria Colville found masks and dominoes filling the shop windows and dangling from the doors. A devil in red and a clown in white crossed the way in front of him from an intersecting street; several children in pretty masquerading dresses flashed in and out among the crowd. He hurried to the Lung" Arno, and reached the palace where Mrs.
Bowen lived, with these holiday sights fresh in his mind. Imogene turned to meet him at the door of the apartment, running from the window where she had left Effie Bowen still gazing.
"We saw you coming," she said gaily, without waiting to exchange formal greetings. "We didn"t know at first but it might; be somebody else disguised as you. We"ve been watching the maskers go by. Isn"t it exciting?"
"Awfully," said Colville, going to the window with her, and putting his arm on Effie"s shoulder, where she knelt in a chair looking out. "What have you seen?"
"Oh, only two Spanish students with mandolins," said Imogene; "but you can see they"re _beginning_ to come."
"They"ll stop now," murmured Effie, with gentle disappointment; "it"s commencing to rain."
"Oh, too bad!" wailed the young girl. But just then two mediaeval men-at-arms came in sight, carrying umbrellas. "Isn"t that too delicious? Umbrellas and chain-armour!"
"You can"t expect them to let their chain-armour get rusty," said Colville. "You ought to have been with me--minstrels in scale-armour, Florentines of Savonarola"s times, nuns, clowns, demons, fairies--no end to them."
"It"s very well saying we ought to have been with you; but we can"t go anywhere alone."
"I didn"t say alone," said Colville. "Don"t you think Mrs. Bowen would trust you with me to see these Carnival beginnings?" He had not meant at all to do anything of this kind, but that had not prevented his doing it.
"How do we know, when she hasn"t been asked?" said Imogene, with a touch of burlesque dolor, such as makes a dignified girl enchanting, when she permits it to herself. She took Effie"s hand in hers, the child having faced round from the window, and stood smoothing it, with her lovely head pathetically tilted on one side.
"What haven"t I been asked yet?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, coming lightly toward them from a door at the side of the _salon_. She gave her hand to Colville with the prettiest grace, and a cordiality that brought a flush to her cheek. There had really been nothing between them but a little unreasoned coolness, if it were even so much as that; say rather a dryness, aggravated by time and absence, and now, as friends do, after a thing of that kind, they were suddenly glad to be good to each other.
"Why, you haven"t been asked how you have been this long time," said Colville.
"I have been wanting to tell you for a whole week," returned Mrs. Bowen, seating the rest and taking a chair for herself. "Where have you been?"
"Oh, shut up in my cell at Hotel d"Atene, writing a short history of the Florentine people for Miss Effie."
"Effie, take Mr. Colville"s hat," said her mother. "We"re going to make you stay to lunch," she explained to him.
"Is that so?" he asked, with an effect of polite curiosity.
"Yes." Imogene softly clapped her hands, unseen by Mrs. Bowen, for Colville"s instruction that all was going well. If it delights women to pet an undangerous friend of our s.e.x, to use him like one of themselves, there are no words to paint the soft and flattered content with which his spirit purrs under their caresses. "You must have nearly finished the history," added Mrs. Bowen.
"Well, I could have finished it," said Colville, "if I had only begun it. You see, writing a short history of the Florentine people is such quick work that you have to be careful how you actually put pen to paper, or you"re through with it before you"ve had any fun out of it."
"I think Effie will like to read that kind of history," said her mother.
The child hung her head, and would not look at Colville; she was still shy with him; his absence must have seemed longer to a child, of course.
At lunch they talked of the Carnival sights that had begun to appear. He told of his call upon Mr. Waters, and of the old minister"s purpose to see all he could of the Carnival in order to judge intelligently of Savonarola"s opposition to it.
"Mr. Waters is a very good man," said Mrs. Bowen, with the air of not meaning to approve him quite, nor yet to let any notion of his be made fun of in her presence. "But for my part I wish there were not going to be any Carnival; the city will be in such an uproar for the next two weeks."
"O Mrs. Bowen!" cried Imogene reproachfully; Effie looked at her mother in apparent anxiety lest she should be meaning to put forth an unquestionable power and stop the Carnival.
"The last Carnival, I thought there was never going to be any end to it; I was so glad when Lent came."
"Glad when _Lent_ came!" breathed Imogene, in astonishment; but she ventured upon nothing more insubordinate, and Colville admired to see this spirited girl as subject to Mrs. Bowen as her own child. There is no reason why one woman should establish another woman over her, but nearly all women do it in one sort or another, from love of a voluntary submission, or from a fear of their own ignorance, if they are younger and more inexperienced than their lieges. Neither the one pa.s.sion nor the other seems to reduce them to a like pa.s.sivity as regards their husbands. They must apparently have a fetish of their own s.e.x. Colville could see that Imogene obeyed Mrs. Bowen not only as a _protegee_ but as a devotee.
"Oh, I suppose _you_ will have to go through it all," said Mrs. Bowen, in reward of the girl"s acquiescence.
"You"re rather out of the way of it up here," said Colville. "You had better let me go about with the young ladies--if you can trust them to the care of an old fellow like me."
"Oh, I don"t think you"re so very old, at all times," replied Mrs.
Bowen, with a peculiar look, whether indulgent or reproachful he could not quite make out.
But he replied, boldly, in his turn: "I have certainly my moments of being young still; I don"t deny it. There"s always a danger of their occurrence."
"I was thinking," said Mrs. Bowen, with a graceful effect of not listening, "that you would let me go too. It would be quite like old times."
"Only too much honour and pleasure," returned Colville, "if you will leave out the old times. I"m not particular about having them along."
Mrs. Bowen joined in laughing at the joke, which they had to themselves.
"I was only consulting an explicit abhorrence of yours in not asking you to go at first," he explained.
"Oh yes; I understand that."