"No other," said Colville.
"I confess," said Mrs. Bowen, "that I _am_ rather stupid this morning. I
suppose it's the softness of the air; it's been harsh and irritating so
long. It makes me drowsy."
"Don't mind _us_," returned Colville. "We will call you at important
points." They were driving into a village at which people stop sometimes
to admire the works of art in its church. "Here, for example, is--What
place is this?" he asked of the coachman.
"San Domenico."
"I should know it again by its beggars." Of all ages and sexes they
swarmed round the carriage, which the driver had instinctively slowed to
oblige them, and thrust forward their hands and hats. Colville gave
Effie his small change to distribute among them, at sight of which they
streamed down the street from every direction. Those who had received
brought forward the halt and blind, and did not scruple to propose being
rewarded for this service. At the same time they did not mind his
laughing in their faces; they laughed too, and went off content, or as
nearly so as beggars ever are. He buttoned up his pocket as they drove
on more rapidly. "I am the only person of no principle--except Effie--in
the carriage, and yet I am at this moment carrying more blessings out of
this 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 have
sent the beggars of San Domenico to Florence, where they would all be
shut 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 no
appeal made to your better nature that is not made at the appellant's
risk of imprisonment. When I was there before, you had opportunities of
giving 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 of
it; I want to see my beneficiary cringe under my bounty. But I've tried
in vain to convince you that the world has gone wrong in other ways. Do
you remember the one-armed man whom we used to give to on the Lung'
Arno? That persevering sufferer has been repeatedly arrested for
mendicancy, and obliged to pay a fine out of his hard earnings to escape
being sent to your Pia Casa."
Mrs. Bowen smiled, and said, Was he living yet? in a pensive tone of
reminiscence. She was even more than patient of Colville's nonsense. It
seemed to him that the light under her eyelids was sometimes a grateful
light. Confronting Imogene and the young man whose hopes of her he was
to destroy at the first opportunity, the lurid moral atmosphere which he
breathed seemed threatening to become a thing apparent to sense, and to
be about to blot the landscape. He fought it back as best he could, and
kept the hovering cloud from touching the earth by incessant effort. At
times he looked over the side of the carriage, and drew secretly a long
breath of fatigue. It began to be borne in upon him that these ladies
were using him ill in leaving him the burden of their entertainment. He
became angry, but his heart softened, and he forgave them again, for he
conjectured that he was the cause of the cares that kept them silent. He
felt certain that the affair had taken some new turn. He wondered if
Mrs. Bowen had told Imogene what she had demanded of him. But he could
only conjecture and wonder in the dreary undercurrent of thought that
flowed evenly and darkly on with the talk he kept going. He made the
most he could of the varying views of Florence which the turns and
mounting levels of the road gave him. He became affectionately grateful
to the young clergyman when he replied promptly and fully, and took an
interest in the objects or subjects he brought up.
Neither Mrs. Bowen nor Imogene was altogether silent. The one helped on
at times wearily, and the other broke at times from her abstraction.
Doubtless the girl had undertaken too much in insisting upon a party of
pleasure with her mind full of so many things, and doubtless Mrs. Bowen
was sore with a rankling resentment at her insistence, and vexed at
herself for having yielded to it. If at her time of life and with all
her experience of it, she could not rise under this inner load, Imogene
must have been crushed by it.
Her starts from the dreamy oppression, if that were what kept her
silent, took the form of aggression, when she disagreed with Colville
about things he was saying, or attacked him for this or that thing which
he had said in times past. It was an unhappy and unamiable
self-assertion, which he was not able to compassionate so much when she
resisted or defied Mrs. Bowen, as she seemed seeking to do at every
point. Perhaps another would not have felt it so; it must have been
largely in his consciousness; the young clergyman seemed not to see
anything in these bursts but the indulgence of a gay caprice, though his
laughing at them did not alleviate the effect to Colville, who, when he
turned to Mrs. Bowen for her alliance, was astonished with a prompt
snub, unmistakable to himself, however imperceptible to others.
He found what diversion and comfort he could in the party of children
who beset them at a point near the town, and followed the carriage,
trying to sell them various light and useless trifles made of
straw--fans, baskets, parasols, and the like. He bought recklessly of
them and gave them to Effie, whom he assured, without the applause of
the ladies, and with the grave question of the young clergyman, that the
vendors were little Etruscan girls, all at least twenty-five hundred
years old. "It's very hard to find any Etruscans under that age; most of
the grown-up people are three thousand."
The child humoured his extravagance with the faith in fable which
children are able to command, and said, "Oh, tell me about them!" while
she pushed up closer to him, and began to admire her presents, holding
them up before her, and dwelling fondly upon them one by one.
"Oh, there's very little to tell," answered Colville. "They're mighty
close people, and always keep themselves very much _to_ themselves. But
wouldn't you like to see a party of Etruscans of all ages, even down to
little babies only eleven or twelve hundred years old, come driving into
an 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 very
much 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," returned
Colville defensively. Accepting the challenge, he added: "Yes, I should
really like to meet a few Etruscans in Fiesole this morning. I should
feel as if I'd got amongst my contemporaries at last; they would
understand me."