“Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite,” answered Colville. “I say a great deal more than I think.”
She looked at him again with envy, with admiration, qualifying her perplexity. They had come to a point where some moss-grown, weather-beaten statues stood at the corners of the road that traversed the bosky stretch between the avenues of the Cascine. “Ah, how beautiful they are!” he said, halting, and giving himself to the rapture that a blackened garden statue imparts to one who beholds it from the vantage-ground of sufficient years and experience.
“Do you remember that story of Heine’s,” he resumed, after a moment, “of the boy who steals out of the old castle by moonlight, and kisses the lips of the garden statue, fallen among the rank grass of the ruinous parterres? And long afterward, when he looks down on the sleep of the dying girl where she lies on the green sofa, it seems to him that she and that statue are the same?”
“Oh!” deeply sighed the young girl. “No, I never read it. Tell me what it is. I must read it.”
“The rest is all talk—very good talk; but I doubt whether it would interest you. He goes on to talk of a great many things—of the way Bellini spoke French, for example. He says it was bloodcurdling, horrible, cataclysmal. He brought out the poor French words and broke them upon the wheel, till you thought the whole world must give way with a thunder-crash. A dead hush reigned in the room; the women did not know whether to faint or fly; the men looked down at their pantaloons, and tried to realise what they had on.”
“Oh, how perfectly delightful! how shameful!” cried the girl. “I must read it. What is it in? What is the name of the story?”
“It isn’t a story,” said Colville. “Did you ever see anything lovelier than these statues?”
“No,” said Imogene. “Are they good?”
“They are much better than good—they are the very worst rococo.”
“What makes you say they are beautiful, then?”
“Why, don’t you see? They commemorate youth, gaiety, brilliant, joyous life. That’s what that kind of statues was made for—to look on at rich, young, beautiful people and their gallantries; to be danced before by fine ladies and gentlemen playing at shepherd and shepherdesses; to be driven past by marcheses and contessinas flirting in carriages; to be hung with scarfs and wreaths; to be parts of eternal fêtes champêtres. Don’t you see how bored they look? When I first came to Italy I should have detested and ridiculed their bad art; but now they’re exquisite—the worse, the better.”
“I don’t know what in the world you do mean,” said Imogene, laughing uneasily.
“Mrs. Bowen would. It’s a pity Mrs. Bowen isn’t here with us. Miss Effie, if I lift you up to one of those statues, will you kindly ask it if it doesn’t remember a young American signor who was here just before the French Revolution? I don’t believe it’s forgotten me.”
“No, no,” said Imogene. “It’s time we were walking back. Don’t you like Scott!” she added. “I should think you would if you like those romantic things. I used to like Scott so much. When I was fifteen I wouldn’t read anything but Scott. Don’t you like Thackeray? Oh, he’s so cynical! It’s perfectly delightful.”
“Cynical?” repeated Colville thoughtfully. “I was looking into The Newcomes the other day, and I thought he was rather sentimental.”
“Sentimental! Why, what an idea! That is the strangest thing I ever heard of. Oh!” she broke in upon her own amazement, “don’t you think Browning’s ‘Statue and the Bust’ is splendid? Mr. Morton read it to us—to Mrs. Bowen, I mean.”
Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morton’s, he did not know just why; then his pique was lost in sarcastic recollection of the time when he too used to read poems to ladies. He had read that poem to Lina Ridgely and the other one.
“Mrs. Bowen asked him to read it,” Imogene continued.
“Did she?” asked Colville pensively.
“And then we discussed it afterward. We had a long discussion. And then he read us the ‘Legend of Pornic,’ and we had a discussion about that. Mrs. Bowen says it was real gold they found in the coffin; but I think it was the girl’s ‘gold hair.’ I don’t know which Mr. Morton thought. Which do you? Don’t you think the ‘Legend of Pornic’ is splendid?”
“Yes, it’s a great poem, and deep,” said Colville. They had come to a place where the bank sloped invitingly to the river. “Miss Effie,” he asked, “wouldn’t you like to go down and throw stones into the Arno? That’s what a river is for,” he added, as the child glanced toward Imogene for authorisation, “to have stones thrown into it.”
“Oh, let us!” cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. “I don’t want to throw stones into it, but to get near it—to get near to any bit of nature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!” She stood and watched Colville skim stones over the current. “When you stand by the shore of a swift river like this, or near a railroad train when it comes whirling by, don’t you ever have a morbid impulse to fling yourself forward?”
“Not at my time of life,” said Colville, stooping to select a flat stone. “Morbid impulses are one of the luxuries of youth.” He threw the stone, which skipped triumphantly far out into the stream. “That was beautiful, wasn’t it, Miss Effie?”
“Lovely!” murmured the child.
He offered her a flat pebble. “Would you like to try one?”
“It would spoil my gloves,” she said, in deprecating refusal.
“Let me try it!” cried Imogene. “I’m not afraid of my gloves.”
Colville yielded the pebble, looking at her with the thought of how intoxicating he should once have found this bit of wilful abandon, but feeling rather sorry for it now. “Oh, perhaps not?” he said, laying
