At forty-one a man is still very much of a boy, and Colville was obscurely willing that Mrs. Bowen, whose life since they last met at an evening party had been pa.s.sed chiefly at New York and Washington, should see that he was a man of the world in spite of Des Vaches. Before she had decided which of the company she should first present him to, her daughter came up to his elbow with a cup of tea and some bread and b.u.t.ter on a tray, and gave him good-evening with charming correctness of manner. "Really," he said, turning about to take the cup, "I thought it was you, Mrs. Bowen, who had got round to my side with a sash on. How do you and Miss Effie justify yourselves in looking so bewitchingly alike?"
"You notice it, then?" Mrs. Bowen seemed delighted.
"I did every moment you were together to-day. You don"t mind my having been so personal in my observations?"
"Oh, not at all," said Mrs. Bowen, and Colville laughed.
"It must be true," he said, "what a French lady said to me at the _table-d"hote_ dinner to-night: "the Amerhicans always strhike the note of perhsonality."" He neatly imitated the French lady"s guttural accent.
"I suppose we do," mused Mis. Bowen, "and that we don"t mind it in each other. I wish _you_ would say which I shall introduce you to," she said, letting her glance stray invisibly over her company, where all the people seemed comfortably talking.
"Oh, there"s no hurry; put it off till to-morrow," said Colville.
"Oh no; that won"t do," said Mrs. Bowen, like a woman who has public duties to perform, and is resolute to sacrifice her private pleasure to them. But she postponed them a moment longer. "I hope you got home before the rain," she said.
"Yes," returned Colville. "That is, I don"t mind a little sprinkling.
Who is the Junonian young person at the end of the room?"
"Ah," said Mrs. Bowen, "you can"t be introduced to _her_ first. But _isn"t_ she lovely?"
"Yes. It"s a wonderful effect of white and gold."
"You mustn"t say that to her. She was doubtful about her dress, because she says that the ivory white with her hair makes her look just like white and gold furniture."
"Present me at once, then, before I forget not to say it to her."
"No; I must keep you for some other person: anybody can talk to a pretty girl."
Colville said he did not know whether to smile or shed tears at this embittered compliment, and pretended an eagerness for the acquaintance denied him.
Mrs. Bowen seemed disposed to intensify his misery. "Did you ever see a more statuesque creature--with those superb broad shoulders and that little head, and that thick braid brought round over the top? Doesn"t her face, with that calm look in those starry eyes, and that peculiar fall of the corners of the mouth, remind you of some of those exquisite great Du Maurier women? That style of face is very fashionable now: you might think he had made it so."
"Is there a fashion in faces?" asked Colville.
"Why, certainly. You must know that."
"Then why aren"t all the ladies in the fashion?"
"It isn"t one that can be put on. Besides, every one hasn"t got Imogene Graham"s figure to carry it off."
"That"s her name, then--Imogene Graham. It"s a very pretty name."
"Yes. She"s staying with me for the winter. Now that"s all I can allow you to know for the present. Come! You must!"
"But this is worse than nothing." He made a feint of protesting as she led him away, and named him to the lady she wished him to know. But he was not really sorry; he had his modest misgivings whether he were equal to quite so much young lady as Miss Graham seemed. When he no longer looked at her he had a whimsical impression of her being a heroic statue of herself.
The lady whom Mrs. Bowen left him with had not much to say, and she made haste to introduce her husband, who had a great deal to say. He was an Italian, but master of that very efficient English which the Italians get together with unimaginable sufferings from our orthography, and Colville repeated the republican deputy"s saying about a const.i.tutional king, which he had begun to think was neat.
"I might prefer a republic myself," said the Italian, "but I think that gentleman is wrong to be a republican where he is, and for the present.
The monarchy is the condition of our unity; nothing else could hold us together, and we must remain united if we are to exist as a nation. It"s a necessity, like our army of half a million men. We may not like it in itself, but we know that it is our salvation." He began to speak of the economic state of Italy, of the immense cost of freedom and independence to a people whose political genius enables them to bear quietly burdens of taxation that no other government would venture to impose. He spoke with that fond, that appealing patriotism, which expresses so much to the sympathetic foreigner in Italy: the sense of great and painful uncertainty of Italy"s future through the complications of diplomacy, the memory of her sufferings in the past, the spirit of quiet and inexhaustible patience for trials to come. This resolution, which is almost resignation, poetises the att.i.tude of the whole people; it made Colville feel as if he had done nothing and borne nothing yet.
"I am ashamed," he said, not without a remote resentment of the unworthiness of the republican voters of Des Vaches, "when I hear of such things, to think of what we are at home, with all our resources and opportunities."
The Italian would have politely excused us to him, but Colville would have no palliation of our political and moral nakedness; and he framed a continuation of the letter he began on the Ponte Vecchio to the _Post-Democrat-Republican_, in which he made a bitterly ironical comparison of the achievements of Italy and America in the last ten years.
He forgot about Miss Graham, and had only a vague sense of her splendour as he caught sight of her in the long mirror which she stood before. She was talking to a very handsome young clergyman, and smiling upon him.
The company seemed to be mostly Americans, but there were a good many evident English also, and Colville was dimly aware of a question in his mind whether this clergyman was English or American. There were three or four Italians and there were some Germans, who spoke English.
Colville moved about from group to group as his enlarging acquaintance led, and found himself more interested in society than he could ever have dreamed of being again. It was certainly a defect of the life at Des Vaches that people, after the dancing and love-making period, went out rarely or never. He began to see that the time he had spent so busily in that enterprising city had certainly been in some sense wasted.
At a certain moment in the evening, which perhaps marked its advancement, the tea-urn was replaced by a jug of the rum punch, mild or strong according to the custom of the house, which is served at most Florentine receptions. Some of the people went immediately after, but the young clergyman remained talking with Miss Graham.
Colville, with his smoking gla.s.s in his hand, found himself at the side of a friendly old gentleman who had refused the punch. They joined in talk by a common impulse, and the old gentleman said, directly, "You are an American, I presume?"
His accent had already established the fact of his own nationality, but he seemed to think it the part of candour to say, when Colville had acknowledged his origin, "I"m an American myself."
"I"ve met several of our countrymen since I arrived," suggested Colville.
The old gentleman seemed to like this way of putting it. "Well, yes, we"re not unfairly represented here in numbers, I must confess. But I"m bound to say that I don"t find our countrymen so aggressive, so loud, as our international novelists would make out. I haven"t met any of their peculiar heroines as yet, sir."
Colville could not help laughing. "I wish _I_ had. But perhaps they avoid people of our years and discretion, or else take such a filial att.i.tude toward us that we can"t recognise them."
"Perhaps, perhaps," cried the old gentleman, with cheerful a.s.sent.
"I was talking with one of our German friends here just now, and he complained that the American girls--especially the rich ones--seem very calculating and worldly and conventional. I told him I didn"t know how to account for that. I tried to give him some notion of the enn.o.bling influences of society in Newport, as I"ve had glimpses of it."
The old gentleman caressed his elbows, which he was holding in the palms of his hands, in high enjoyment of Colville"s sarcasm. "Ah! very good!
very good!" he said. "I quite agree with you, and I think the other sort are altogether preferable."
"I think," continued Colville, dropping his ironical tone, "that we"ve much less to regret in their unsuspecting, unsophisticated freedom than in the type of hard materialism which we produce in young girls, perfectly wide awake, disenchanted, unromantic, who prefer the worldly vanities and advantages deliberately and on principle, recognising something better merely to despise it. I"ve sometimes seen them----"
Mrs. Bowen came up in her gentle, inquiring way. "I"m glad that you and Mr. Colville have made acquaintance," she said to the old gentleman.
"Oh, but we haven"t," said Colville. "We"re entire strangers."
"Then I"ll introduce you to Rev. Mr. Waters. And take you away," she added, putting her hand through Colville"s arm with a delicate touch that flattered his whole being, "for your time"s come at last, and I"m going to present you to Miss Graham."
"I don"t know," he said. "Of course, as there is a Miss Graham, I can"t help being presented to her, but I had almost worked myself up to the point of wishing there were none. I believe I"m afraid."
"Oh, I don"t believe that at all. A simple schoolgirl like that!" Mrs.
Bowen"s sense of humour had not the national acuteness. She liked joking in men, but she did not know how to say funny things back "You"ll see, as you come up to her."
IV