Colville got himself out of the comfort and quiet of Mrs. Bowen's house
as soon as he could. He made the more haste because he felt that if he
could have remained with the smallest trace of self-respect, he would
have been glad to stay there for ever.
Even as it was, the spring had advanced to early summer, and the sun was
lying hot and bright in the piazzas, and the shade dense and cool in the
narrow streets, before he left Palazzo Pinti; the Lung' Arno was a glare
of light that struck back from the curving line of the buff houses; the
river had shrivelled to a rill in its bed; the black cypresses were dim
in the tremor of the distant air on the hill-slopes beyond; the olives
seemed to swelter in the sun, and the villa walls to burn whiter and
whiter. At evening the mosquito began to wind his tiny horn. It was the
end of May, and nearly everybody but the Florentines had gone out of
Florence, dispersing to Via Reggio by the sea, to the hills of
Pistoja, and to the high, cool air of Siena. More than once Colville had
said that he was keeping Mrs. Bowen after she ought to have got away,
and she had answered that she liked hot weather, and that this was not
comparable to the heat of Washington in June. She was looking very well,
and younger and prettier than she had since the first days of their
renewed acquaintance in the winter. Her southern complexion enriched
itself in the sun; sometimes when she came into his room from outdoors
the straying brown hair curled into loose rings on her temples, and her
cheeks glowed a deep red.
She said those polite things to appease him as long as he was not well
enough to go away, but she did not try to detain him after his strength
sufficiently returned. It was the blow on the head that kept him
longest. After his broken arm and his other bruises were quite healed,
he was aware of physical limits to thinking of the future or regretting
the past, and this sense of his powerlessness went far to reconcile him
to a life of present inaction and oblivion. Theoretically he ought to
have been devoured by remorse and chagrin, but as a matter of fact he
suffered very little from either. Even in people who are in full
possession of their capacity for mental anguish one observes that after
they have undergone a certain amount of pain they cease to feel.
Colville amused himself a good deal with Effie's endeavours to entertain
him and take care of him. The child was with him every moment that she
could steal from her tasks, and her mother no longer attempted to stem
the tide of her devotion. It was understood that Effie should joke and
laugh with Mr. Colville as much as she chose; that she should fan him as
long as he could stand it; that she should read to him when he woke, and
watch him when he slept. She brought him his breakfast, she petted him
and caressed him, and wished to make him a monster of dependence and
self-indulgence. It seemed to grieve her that he got well so fast.
The last night before he left the house she sat on his knee by the
window looking out beyond the firefly twinkle of Oltrarno, to the
silence and solid dark of the solemn company of hills beyond. They had
not lighted the lamps because of the mosquitoes, and they had talked
till her head dropped against his shoulder.