When Colville came to himself his first sensation was delight in the
softness and smoothness of the turf on which he lay. Then the strange
colour of the grass commended itself to his notice, and presently he
perceived that the thing under his head was a pillow, and that he was in
bed. He was supported in this conclusion by the opinion of the young man
who sat watching him a little way off, and who now smiled cheerfully at
the expression in the eyes which Colville turned inquiringly upon him.
"Where am I?" he asked, with what appeared to him very unnecessary
feebleness of voice.
The young man begged his pardon in Italian, and when Colville repeated
his question in that tongue, he told him that he was in Palazzo Pinti,
whither he had been brought from the scene of his accident. He added
that Colville must not talk till the doctor had seen him and given him
leave, and he explained that he was himself a nurse from the hospital,
who had been taking care of him.
Colville moved his head and felt the bandage upon it; he desisted in his
attempt to lift his right arm to it before the attendant could interfere
in behalf of the broken limb. He recalled dimly and fragmentarily long
histories that he had dreamed, but he forbore to ask how long he had
been in his present case, and he accepted patiently the apparition of
the doctor and other persons who came and went, and were at his bedside
or not there, as it seemed to him, between the opening and closing of an
eye. As the days passed they acquired greater permanence and maintained
a more uninterrupted identity. He was able to make quite sure of Mr.
Morton and of Mr. Waters; Mrs. Bowen came in, leading Effie, and this
gave him a great pleasure. Mrs. Bowen seemed to have grown younger and
better. Imogene was not among the phantoms who visited him; and he
accepted her absence as quiescently as he accepted the presence of the
others. There was a cheerfulness in those who came that permitted him no
anxiety, and he was too weak to invite it by any conjecture. He
consented to be spared and to spare himself; and there were some things
about the affair which gave him a singular and perhaps not wholly sane
content. One of these was the man nurse who had evidently taken care of
him throughout. He celebrated, whenever he looked at this capable
person, his escape from being, in the odious helplessness of sickness, a
burden upon the strength and sympathy of the two women for whom he had
otherwise made so much trouble. His satisfaction in this had much to do
with his recovery, which, when it once began, progressed rapidly to a
point where he was told that Imogene and her mother were at a hotel in
Florence, waiting till he should be strong enough to see them. It was
Mrs. Bowen who told him this with an air which she visibly strove to
render non-committal and impersonal, but which betrayed, nevertheless, a
faint apprehension for the effect upon him. The attitude of Imogene and
her mother was certainly not one to have been expected of people holding
their nominal relation to him, but Colville had been revising his
impressions of events on the day of his accident; Imogene's last look
came back to him, and he could not think the situation altogether
unaccountable.
"Have I been here a long time?" he asked, as if he had not heeded what
she told him.
"About a fortnight," answered Mrs. Bowen.
"And Imogene--how long has she been away?"
"Since they knew you would get well."
"I will see them any time," he said quietly.
"Do you think you are strong enough?"
"I shall never be stronger till I have seen them," he returned, with a
glance at her. "Yes; I want them to come to-day. I shall not be excited;
don't be troubled--if you were going to be," he added. "Please send to
them at once."
Mrs. Bowen hesitated, but after a moment left the room. She returned in
half an hour with a lady who revealed even to Colville's languid regard
evidences of the character which Mrs. Bowen had attributed to Imogene's
mother. She was a large, robust person, laced to sufficient shapeliness,
and she was well and simply dressed. She entered the room with a waft of
some clean, wholesome perfume, and a quiet temperament and perfect
health looked out of her clear, honest eyes--the eyes of Imogene Graham,
though the girl's were dark and the woman's were blue. When Mrs. Bowen
had named them to each other, in withdrawing, Mrs. Graham took
Colville's weak left hand in her fresh, strong, right, and then lifted
herself a chair to his bedside, and sat down.
"How do you do to-day, sir?" she said, with a touch of old-fashioned
respectfulness in the last word. "Do you think you are quite strong
enough to talk with me?"
"I think so," said Colville, with a faint smile. "At least I can listen
with fortitude."
Mrs. Graham was not apparently a person adapted to joking. "I don't know
whether it will require much fortitude to hear what I have to say or
not," she said, with her keen gaze fixed upon him. "It's simply this: I
am going to take Imogene home."
She seemed to expect that Colville would make some reply to this, and he
said blankly, "Yes?"
"I came out prepared to consent to what she wished, after I had seen
you, and satisfied myself that she was not mistaken; for I had always
promised myself that her choice should be perfectly untrammelled, and I
have tried to bring her up with principles and ideas that would enable
her to make a good choice."
"Yes," said Colville again. "I'm afraid you didn't take her temperament
and her youth into account, and that she disappointed you."
"No; I can't say that she did. It isn't that at all. I see no reason to
blame her for her choice. Her mistake was of another kind."
It appeared to Colville that this very sensible and judicial lady found
an intellectual pleasure in the analysis of the case, which modified the
intensity of her maternal feeling in regard to it, and that, like many
people who talk well, she liked to hear herself talk in the presence of
another appreciative listener. He did not offer to interrupt her, and
she went on. "No, sir, I am not disappointed in her choice. I think her
chances of happiness would have been greater, in the abstract, with one
nearer her own age; but that is a difference which other things affect
so much that it did not alarm me greatly. Some people are younger at
your age than at hers. No, sir, that is not the point." Mrs. Graham
fetched a sigh, as if she found it easier to say what was not the point
than to say what was, and her clear gaze grew troubled. But she
apparently girded herself for the struggle. "As far as you are
concerned, Mr. Colville, I have not a word to say. Your conduct
throughout has been most high-minded and considerate and delicate."
It is hard for any man to deny merits attributed to him, especially if
he has been ascribing to himself the opposite demerits. But Colville
summoned his dispersed forces to protest against this.
"Oh, no, no," he cried. "Anything but that. My conduct has been selfish
and shameful. If you could understand all--"
"I think I do understand all--at least far more, I regret to say, than
my daughter has been willing to tell me. And I am more than satisfied
with you. I thank you and honour you."
"Oh no; don't say that," pleaded Colville. "I really can't stand it."
"And when I came here it was with the full intention of approving and
confirming Imogene's decision. But I was met at once by a painful and
surprising state of things. You are aware that you have been very sick?"
"Dimly," said Colville.
"I found you very sick, and I found my daughter frantic at the error
which she had discovered in herself--discovered too late, as she felt."
Mrs. Graham hesitated, and then added abruptly, "She had found out that
she did not love you."
"Didn't love me?" repeated Colville feebly.
"She had been conscious of the truth before, but she had stifled her
misgivings insanely, and, as I feel, almost wickedly, pushing on, and
saying to herself that when you were married, then there would be no
escape, and she _must_ love you."
"Poor girl! poor child! I see, I see."
"But the accident that was almost your death saved her from that
miserable folly and iniquity. Yes," she continued, in answer to the
protest in his face, "folly and iniquity. I found her half crazed at
your bedside. She was fully aware of your danger, but while she was
feeling all the remorse that she ought to feel--that any one could
feel--she was more and more convinced that she never had loved you and
never should. I can give you no idea of her state of mind."
"Oh, you needn't! you needn't! Poor, poor child!"
"Yes, a child indeed. If it had not been for the pity I felt for
her--But no matter about that. She saw at last that if your heroic
devotion to her"--Colville did his best to hang his pillowed head for
shame--"if your present danger did not awaken her to some such feeling
for you as she had once imagined she had; if they both only increased
her despair and self-abhorrence, then the case was indeed hopeless. She
was simply distracted. I had to tear her away almost by force. She has
had a narrow escape from brain-fever. And now I have come to implore, to
_demand_"--Mrs. Graham, with all her poise and calm, was rising to the
hysterical key--"her release from a fate that would be worse than death
for such a girl. I mean marrying without the love of her whole soul. She
esteems you, she respects you, she admires you, she likes you; but--"
Mrs. Graham pressed her lips together, and her eyes shone.
"She is free," said Colville, and with the words a mighty load rolled
from his heart. "There is no need to demand anything."
"I know."
"There hasn't been an hour, an instant, during--since I--we--spoke
together that I wouldn't have released her if I could have known what
you tell me now."
"Of course!--of course!"
"I have had my fears--my doubts; but whenever I approached the point I
found no avenue by which we could reach a clearer understanding. I could
not say much without seeming to seek for myself the release I was
offering her."
"Naturally. And what added to her wretchedness was the suspicion at
the bottom of all that she had somehow forced herself upon
you--misunderstood you, and made you say and do things to spare her that
you would not have done voluntarily." This was advanced tentatively. In
the midst of his sophistications Colville had, as most of his sex have,
a native, fatal, helpless truthfulness, which betrayed him at the most
unexpected moments, and this must now have appeared in his countenance.
The lady rose haughtily. She had apparently been considering him, but,
after all, she must have been really considering her daughter. "If
anything of the kind was the case," she said, "I will ask you to spare
her the killing knowledge. It's quite enough for _me_ to know it. And
allow me to say, Mr. Colville, that it would have been far kinder in
you--"
"Ah, _think,_ my dear madam!" he exclaimed. "How _could_ I?"
She did think, evidently, and when she spoke it was with a generous
emotion, in which there was no trace of pique.
"You couldn't. You have done right; I feel that, and I will trust you to
say anything you will to my daughter."
"To your daughter? Shall I see her?"
"She came with me. She wished to beg your forgiveness."
Colville lay silent. "There is no forgiveness to be asked or granted,"
he said, at length. "Why should she suffer the pain of seeing me?--for
it would be nothing else. What do you think? Will it do her any good
hereafter? I don't care for myself."
"I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Graham. "She is a strange child.
She may have some idea of reparation."
"Oh, beseech her from me not to imagine that any reparation is due!
Where there has been an error there must be blame; but wherever it lies
in ours, I am sure it isn't at her door. Tell her I say this; tell her
that I acquit her with all my heart of every shadow of wrong; that I am
not unhappy, but glad for her sake and my own that this has ended as it
has." He stretched his left hand across the coverlet to her, and said,
with the feebleness of exhaustion, "Good-bye. Bid her good-bye for me."
Mrs. Graham pressed his hand and went out. A moment after the door was
flung open, and Imogene burst into the room. She threw herself on her
knees beside his bed. "I will _pray_ to you!" she said, her face intense
with the passions working in her soul. She seemed choking with words
which would not come; then, with an inarticulate cry that must stand for
all, she caught up the hand that lay limp on the coverlet; she crushed
it against her lips, and ran out of the room.
He sank into a deathly torpor, the physical refusal of his brain to take
account of what had passed. When he woke from it, little Effie Bowen was
airily tiptoeing about the room, fondly retouching its perfect order. He
closed his eyes, and felt her come to him and smooth the sheet softly
under his chin. Then he knew she must be standing with clasped hands
admiring the effect. Some one called her in whisper from the door. It
closed, and all was still again.