"It wouldn"t be of any use," cried the young girl gaily. "We"re all wrapped up, and you couldn"t form any idea of us. You must wait, and let us burst upon you when we come out of the dressing-room at Madame Uccelli"s."
"But then it may be too late," he urged. "Is it very far?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen. "It"s ridiculously far. It"s outside the Roman Gate. I don"t see why people live at that distance."
"In order to give the friends you bring the more pleasure of your company, Mrs. Bowen."
"Ah! that"s very well. But you"re not logical."
"No," said Colville; "you can"t be logical and complimentary at the same time. It"s too much to ask. How delicious your flowers are!" The ladies each had a bouquet in her hand, which she was holding in addition to her fan, the edges of her cloak, and the skirt of her train.
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "we are so much obliged to you for them."
"Why, I sent you _no flowers_," said Colville, startled into untimely earnest.
"Didn"t you?" triumphed Mrs. Bowen. "I thought gentlemen always sent flowers to ladies when they were going to a ball with them. They used to, in Columbus."
"And in Buffalo they always do," Miss Graham added.
"Ah! they don"t in Des Vaches," said Colville. They tried to mystify him further about the bouquets; they succeeded in being very gay, and in making themselves laugh a great deal. Mrs. Bowen was even livelier than the young girl.
Her carriage was one of the few private equipages that drove up to Madame Uccelli"s door; most people had not even come in a _remise_, but, after the simple Florentine fashion, had taken the little cabs, which stretched in a long line up and down the way; the horses had let their weary heads drop, and were easing their broken knees by extending their forelegs while they drowsed; the drivers, huddled in their great-coats, had a.s.sembled around the doorway to see the guests alight, with that amiable, unenvious interest of the Italians in the pleasure of others.
The deep sky glittered with stars; in the corner of the next villa garden the black plumes of some cypresses blotted out their s.p.a.ce among them.
"_Isn"t_ it Florentine?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, giving the hand which Colville offered in helping her out of the carriage a little vivid pressure, full of reminiscence and confident sympathy. A flush of youth warmed his heart; he did not quail even when the porter of the villa intervened between her and her coachman, whom she was telling when to come back, and said that the carriages were ordered for three o"clock.
"Did you ever sit up so late as that in Des Vaches?" asked Miss Graham mischievously.
"Oh yes; I was editor of a morning paper," he explained. But he did not like the imputation of her question.
Madame Uccelli accepted him most hospitably among her guests when he was presented. She was an American who had returned with her Italian husband to Italy, and had long survived him in the villa which he had built with her money. Such people grow very queer with the lapse of time. Madame Uccelli"s character remained inalienably American, but her manners and customs had become largely Italian; without having learned the language thoroughly, she spoke it very fluently, and its idioms marked her Philadelphia English. Her house was a menagerie of all the nationalities; she was liked in Italian society, and there were many Italians; English-speaking Russians abounded; there were many genuine English, Germans, Scandinavians, Protestant Irish, American Catholics, and then Americans of all kinds. There was a superst.i.tion of her exclusiveness among her compatriots, but one really met every one there sooner or later; she was supposed to be a convert to the religion of her late husband, but no one really knew what religion she was of, probably not even Madame Uccelli herself. One thing you were sure of at her house, and that was a substantial supper; it is the example of such resident foreigners which has corrupted the Florentines, though many native families still hold out against it.
The dancing was just beginning, and the daughter of Madame Uccelli, who spoke both English and Italian much better than her mother, came forward and possessed herself of Miss Graham, after a polite feint of pressing Mrs. Bowen to let her find a partner for her.
Mrs. Bowen cooed a gracious refusal, telling f.a.n.n.y Uccelli that she knew very well that she never danced now. The girl had not much time for Colville; she welcomed him, but she was full of her business of starting the dance, and she hurried away without asking him whether she should introduce him to some lady for the quadrille that was forming. Her mother, however, asked him if he would not go out and get himself some tea, and she found a lady to go with him to the supper-room. This lady had daughters whom apparently she wished to supervise while they were dancing, and she brought Colville back very soon. He had to stand by the sofa where she sat till Madame Uccelli found him and introduced him to another mother of daughters. Later he joined a group formed by the father of one of the dancers and the non-dancing husband of a dancing wife. Their conversation was perfunctory; they showed one another that they had no pleasure in it.
Presently the father went to see how his daughter looked while dancing; the husband had evidently no such curiosity concerning his wife; and Colville went with the father, and looked at Miss Graham. She was very beautiful, and she obeyed the music as if it were her breath; her face was rapt, intense, full of an unsmiling delight, which shone in her dark eyes, glowing like low stars. Her _abandon_ interested Colville, and then awed him; the spectacle of that young, unjaded capacity for pleasure touched him with a profound sense of loss. Suddenly Imogene caught sight of him, and with the coming of a second look in her eyes the light of an exquisite smile flashed over her face. His heart was in his throat.
"_Your_ daughter?" asked the fond parent at his elbow. "That is mine yonder in red."
Colville did not answer, nor look at the young lady in red. The dance was ceasing; the fragments of those kaleidoscopic radiations were dispersing themselves; the tormented piano was silent.
The officer whom Imogene had danced with brought her to Mrs. Bowen, and resigned her with the regulation bow, hanging his head down before him as if submitting his neck to the axe. She put her hand in Colville"s arm, where he stood beside Mrs. Bowen. "Oh, _do_ take me to get something to eat!"
In the supper-room she devoured salad and ices with a childish joy in them. The place was jammed, and she laughed from her corner at Colville"s struggles in getting the things for her and bringing them to her. While she was still in the midst of an ice, the faint note of the piano sounded. "Oh, they"re beginning again. It"s the Lancers!" she said, giving him the plate back. She took his arm again; she almost pulled him along on their return.
"Why don"t _you_ dance?" she demanded mockingly.
"I would if you"d let me dance with you."
"Oh, that"s impossible! I"m engaged ever so many deep." She dropped his arm instantly at sight of a young Englishman who seemed to be looking for her. This young Englishman had a zeal for dancing that was unsparing; partners were nothing to him except as a means of dancing; his manner expressed a supreme contempt for people who made the slightest mistake, who danced with less science or less conscience than himself. "I"ve been looking for you," he said, in a tone of cold rebuke, without looking at her. "We"ve been waiting."
Colville wished to beat him, but Imogene took his rebuke meekly, and murmured some apologies about not hearing the piano before. He hurried her off without recognising Colville"s existence in any way.
The undancing husband of the dancing wife was boring himself in a corner; Colville decided that the chances with him were better than with the fond father, and joined him, just as a polite officer came up and entreated him to complete a set. "Oh, I never danced in my life," he replied; and then he referred the officer to Colville. "Don"t _you_ dance?"
"I used to dance," Colville began, while the officer stood looking patiently at him. This was true. He used to dance the Lancers, too, and very badly, seventeen years before. He had danced it with Lina Ridgely and the other one, Mrs. Milbury. His glance wandered to the vacant place on the floor; it was the same set which Miss Graham was in; she smiled and beckoned derisively. A vain and foolish ambition fired him. "Oh yes, I can dance a little," he said.
A little was quite enough for the eager officer. He had Colville a partner in an instant, and the next he was on the floor.
"Oh, what fun!" cried Miss Graham; but the fun had not really begun yet.
Colville had forgotten everything about the Lancers. He walked round like a bear in a pen: he capered to and fro with a futile absurdity; people poked him hither and thither; his progress was attended by rending noises from the trains over which he found his path. He smiled and cringed, and apologised to the hardening faces of the dancers: even Miss Graham"s face had become very grave.
"This won"t do," said the Englishman at last, with cold insolence. He did not address himself to any one; he merely stopped; they all stopped, and Colville was effectively expelled the set? another partner was found for his lady, and he wandered giddily away. He did not know where to turn; the whole room must have seen what an incredible a.s.s he had made of himself, but Mrs. Bowen looked as if she had not seen.
He went up to her, resolved to make fun of himself at the first sign she gave of being privy to his disgrace. But she only said, "Have you found your way to the supper-room yet?"
"Oh yes; twice," he answered, and kept on talking with her and Madame Uccelli. After five minutes or so something occurred to Colville. "Have _you_ found the way to the supper-room yet, Mrs. Bowen?"
"No!" she owned, with a small, pathetic laugh, which expressed a certain physical faintness, and reproached him with insupportable gentleness for his selfish obtuseness.
"Let me show you the way," he cried.
"Why, I _am_ rather hungry," said Mrs. Bowen, taking his arm, with a patient arrangement first of her fan, her bouquet, and her train, and then moving along by his side with a delicate footed pace, which insinuated and deprecated her dependence upon him.
There were only a few people in the supper-room, and they had it practically to themselves. She took a cup of tea and a slice of b.u.t.tered bread, with a little salad, which she excused herself from eating because it was the day after her headache. "I shouldn"t have thought you _were_ hungry, Mrs. Bowen," he said, "if you hadn"t told me so," and he recalled that, as a young girl, her friend used to laugh at her for having such a b.u.t.terfly appet.i.te; she was in fact one of those women who go through life the marvels of such of our brutal s.e.x as observe the ethereal nature of their diet. But in an illogical revulsion of feeling.
Colville, who was again cramming himself with all the solids and fluids in reach, and storing up a vain regret against the morrow, preferred her delicacy to the magnificent rapacity of Miss Graham: Imogene had pa.s.sed from salad to ice, and at his suggestion had frankly reverted to salad again and then taken a second ice, with the robust appet.i.te of perfect health and perfect youth. He felt a desire to speak against her to Mrs.
Bowen, he did not know why and he did not know how; he veiled his feeling in an open attack. "Miss Graham has just been the cause of my playing the fool, with her dancing. She dances so superbly that she makes you want to dance too--she made me feel as if I _could_ dance."
"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "it was very kind of you to complete the set. I saw you dancing," she added, without a glimmer of guilty consciousness in her eyes.
It was very sweet, but Colville had to protest. "Oh no; you didn"t see me _dancing_; you saw me _not dancing_. I am a ruined man, and I leave Florence to-morrow; but I have the sad satisfaction of reflecting that I don"t leave an unbroken train among the ladies of that set. And I have made one young Englishman so mad that there is a reasonable hope of his not recovering."
"Oh no; you _don"t_ think of going away for that!" said Mrs. Bowen, not heeding the rest of his joking.
"Well, the time has been when I have left Florence for loss," said Colville, with the air of preparing himself to listen to reason.
"You mustn"t," said Mrs. Bowen briefly.
"Oh, very well, then, I won"t," said Colville whimsically, as if that settled it.
Mrs. Bowen would not talk of the matter any more; he could see that with her kindness, which was always more than her tact, she was striving to get away from the subject. As he really cared for it no longer, this made him persist in clinging to it; he liked this pretty woman"s being kind to him. "Well," he said finally, "I consent to stay in Florence on condition that you suggest some means of atonement for me which I can also make a punishment to Miss Graham."
Mrs. Bowen did not respond to the question of placating and punishing her _protegee_ with sustained interest. They went back to Madame Uccelli, and to the other elderly ladies in the room that opened by archways upon the dancing-room.
Imogene was on the floor, dancing not merely with unabated joy, but with a zest that seemed only to freshen from dance to dance. If she left the dance, it was to go out on her partner"s arm to the supper-room.
Colville could not decently keep on talking to Mrs. Bowen the whole evening; it would be too conspicuous; he devolved from frump to frump; he bored himself; he yawned in his pa.s.sage from one of these mothers or fathers to another. The hours pa.s.sed; it was two o"clock; Imogene was going out to the supper-room again. He was taking out his watch. She saw him, and "Oh, don"t!" she cried, laughing, as she pa.s.sed.