"Apparently not. I am the great American _incompris_."
"I'm sorry for you," she returned feebly; and, in fact, sarcasm was not
her strong point.
When they entered the town they found the Etruscans preoccupied with
other visitors, whom at various points in the quaint little piazza they
surrounded in dense groups, to their own disadvantage as guides and
beggars and dealers in straw goods. One of the groups reluctantly
dispersed to devote itself to the new arrivals, and these then perceived
that it was a party of artists, scattered about and sketching, which had
absorbed the attention of the population. Colville went to the
restaurant to order lunch, leaving the ladies to the care of Mr. Morton.
When he came back he found the carriage surrounded by the artists, who
had turned out to be the Inglehart boys. They had walked up to Fiesole
the 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 by
tourists, and they accepted Colville's proposition to be of his party in
going the rounds of the Cathedral, the Museum, and the view from that
point of the wall called the Belvedere. They found that they had been at
the Belvedere before without knowing that it merited particular
recognition, and some of them had made sketches from it--of bits of
architecture and landscape, and of figure amongst the women with straw
fans and baskets to sell, who thronged round the whole party again, and
interrupted the prospect. In the church they differed amongst themselves
as to the best bits for study, and Colville listened in whimsical
despair to the enthusiasm of their likings and dislikings. All that was
so far from him now; but in the Museum, which had only a thin interest
based upon a small collection of art and archeology, he suffered a real
affliction in the presence of a young Italian couple, who were probably
plighted lovers. They went before a grey-haired pair, who might have
been the girl's father and mother, and they looked at none of the
objects, though they regularly stopped before them and waited till their
guide had said his say about them. The girl, clinging tight to the young
man's arm, knew nothing but him; her mouth and eyes were set in a
passionate concentration of her being upon him, and he seemed to walk in
a 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, and
Mrs. Bowen recognised it. But Imogene did not smile; she regarded the
lovers with an interest in them scarcely less intense than their
interest in each other; and a cold perspiration of question broke out on
Colville's forehead. Was that her ideal of what her own engagement
should be? Had she expected him to behave in that way to her, and to
accept from her a devotion like that girl's? How bitterly he must have
disappointed her! It was so impossible to him that the thought of it
made him feel that he must break all ties which bound him to anything
like it. And yet he reflected that the time was when he could have been
equal to that, and even more.
After lunch the painters joined them again, and they all went together
to visit the ruins of the Roman theatre and the stretch of Etruscan wall
beyond it. The former seems older than the latter, whose huge blocks of
stone lie as firmly and evenly in their courses as if placed there a
year ago; the turf creeps to the edge at top, and some small trees nod
along the crest of the wall, whose ancient face, clean and bare, looks
sternly out over a vast prospect, now young and smiling in the first
delight of spring. The piety or interest of the community, which guards
the entrance to the theatre by a fee of certain centesimi, may be
concerned in keeping the wall free from the grass and vines which are
stealing the half-excavated arena back to forgetfulness and decay; but
whatever agency it was, it weakened the appeal that the wall made to the
sympathy of the spectators.
They could do nothing with it; the artists did not take their
sketch-blocks from their pockets. But in the theatre, where a few broken
columns marked the place of the stage, and the stone benches of the
auditorium 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," said
Colville. "Our Etruscan friends made the mistake of building their wall
several thousand years too soon for our purpose."
"Yes," consented the young clergyman. "It seems as if our own race
became alienated from us through the mere effect of time, don't you
think, sir? I mean, of course, terrestrially."
The artists looked uneasy, as if they had not counted upon anything of
this kind, and they began to scatter about for points of view. Effie got
her mother's leave to run up and down one of the stairways, if she would
not fall. Mrs. Bowen sat down on one of the lower steps, and Mr. Morton
took 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 they
reached the point which commanded the best view of the whole, she sat
down, 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 have
heard from home."
"Yes?" he replied, in a tone in which he did his best to express a
readiness for any fate.
"Mother has telegraphed. She is coming out. She is on her way now. She
will be here very soon."
Colville did not know exactly what to say to these passionately
consecutive 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 first
time 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 a
fair 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. "And
what shall you do if my mother will not consent to our engagement?"
The experienced and sophisticated man--for that in no ill way was what
Colville was--felt himself on trial for his honour and his manhood by
this simple girl, this child. He could not endure to fall short of her
ideal of him at that moment, no matter what error or calamity the
fulfilment involved. "If you feel sure that you love me, Imogene, it
will make no difference to me what your mother says. I would be glad of
her consent; I should hate to go counter to her will; but I know that I
am good enough man to be true and keep you all my life the first in all
my thoughts, and that's enough for me. But if you have any fear, any
doubt of yourself, now is the time--"
Imogene rose to her feet as in some turmoil of thought or emotion that
would not suffer her to remain quiet.
"Oh, keep still!" "Don't get up yet!" "Hold on a minute, please!" came
from the artists in different parts of the theatre, and half a dozen
imploring pencils were waved in the air.
"They are sketching you," said Colville, and she sank compliantly into
her seat again.
"I have no doubt for myself--no," she said, as if there had been no
interruption.
"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 she
will 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 for
self-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 only
fair to him."
"Did you think of that yourself?" she demanded fiercely.
"No," returned Colville, with sad self-recognition. "I'm afraid I'm not
apt 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 have
preferred to postpone it till we heard from your family." He was
thoughtfully silent a moment; then he said, "But if their decision is to
have 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 was
unjust to her."
"I don't mean that you are willingly unjust, or could be so, to any
living creature, least of all to her. But I--we--owe her so much; she
has 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; I
should 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 please
her than me. Perhaps you stayed in Florence to please her!"
She rose and ran down the broken seats and ruined steps so recklessly
and yet so sure-footedly that it seemed more like a flight than a pace
to the place where Mrs. Bowen and Mr. Morton were talking together.
Colville followed as he could, slowly and with a heavy heart. A good
thing develops itself in infinite and unexpected shapes of good; a bad
thing into manifold and astounding evils. This mistake was whirling away
beyond his recall in hopeless mazes of error. He saw this generous young
spirit betrayed by it to ignoble and unworthy excess, and he knew that
he 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 brought
their sketches for inspection and comment, and, without speaking to each
other, he and Imogene discussed them with the rest.
When they started homeward the painters said they were coming a little
way with them for a send-off, and then going back to spend the night in
Fiesole. They walked beside the carriage, talking with Mrs. Bowen and
Imogene, who had taken their places, with Effie between them, on the
back seat; and when they took their leave, Colville and the young
clergyman, who had politely walked with them, continued on foot a little
further, till they came to the place where the highway to Florence
divided into the new road and the old. At this point it steeply overtops
the fields on one side, which is shored up by a wall some ten or twelve
feet deep; and here round a sharp turn of the hill on the other side
came a peasant driving a herd of the black pigs of the country.
Mrs. Bowen's horses were, perhaps, pampered beyond the habitual
resignation 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 from
the brink of the wall. The coachman sprang from his seat, the ladies and
the 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 set
them down. The girl sat still, staring at him with reproachful, with
disdainful eyes.
He leaped forward to drag her out; she shrank away, and then he flew to
help the coachman, who had the maddened horses by the bit.
"Let go!" he heard the young clergyman calling to him; "she's safe!" He
caught a glimpse of Imogene, whom Mr. Morton had pulled from the other
side of the carriage. He struggled to free his wrist from the curb-bit
chain of the horse, through which he had plunged it in his attempt to
seize the bridle. The wheels of the carriage went over the wall; he felt
himself whirled into the air, and then swung ruining down into the
writhing and crashing heap at the bottom of the wall.