“You preach the true American gospel,” said Colville.
“Of course; there is no other gospel. That is the gospel.”
“Do you suppose that Savonarola would think it had all come out right,” asked Colville, a little maliciously, “if he could look from the window with us here and see the wicked old Carnival, that he tried so hard to kill four hundred years ago, still alive? And kicking?” he added, in cognisance of the caper of one of the maskers.
“Oh yes; why not? By this time he knows that his puritanism was all a mistake, unless as a thing for the moment only. I should rather like to have Savonarola here with us; he would find these costumes familiar; they are of his time. I shall make a point of seeing all I can of the Carnival, as part of my study of Savonarola, if nothing else.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to give yourself limitations,” said Colville, as one of the maskers threw his arm round the mock-nun’s neck. But the old man did not see this, and Colville did not feel it necessary to explain himself.
The maskers had passed out of the piazza, now, and “Have you seen our friends at Palazzo Pinti lately?” said Mr. Waters.
“Not very,” said Colville. “I was just on my way there.”
“I wish you would make them my compliments. Such a beautiful young creature.”
“Yes,” said Colville; “she is certainly a beautiful girl.”
“I meant Mrs. Bowen,” returned the old man quietly.
“Oh, I thought you meant Miss Graham. Mrs. Bowen is my contemporary, and so I didn’t think of her when you said young. I should have called her pretty rather than beautiful.”
“No; she’s beautiful. The young girl is good-looking—I don’t deny that; but she is very crude yet.”
Colville laughed. “Crude in looks? I should have said Miss Graham was rather crude in mind, though I’m not sure I wouldn’t have stopped at saying young.”
“No,” mildly persisted the old man; “she couldn’t be crude in mind without being crude in looks.”
“You mean,” pursued Colville, smiling, but not wholly satisfied, “that she hasn’t a lovely nature?”
“You never can know what sort of nature a young girl has. Her nature depends so much upon that of the man whose fate she shares.”
“The woman is what the man makes her? That is convenient for the woman, and relieves her of all responsibility.”
“The man is what the woman makes him, too, but not so much so. The man was cast into a deep sleep, you know—”
“And the woman was what he dreamed her. I wish she were.”
“In most cases she is,” said Mr. Waters.
They did not pursue the matter. The truth that floated in the old minister’s words pleased Colville by its vagueness, and flattered the man in him by its implication of the man’s superiority. He wanted to say that if Mrs. Bowen were what the late Mr. Bowen had dreamed her, then the late Mr. Bowen, when cast into his deep sleep, must have had Lina Ridgely in his eye. But this seemed to be personalising the fantasy unwarrantably, and pushing it too far. For like reason he forbore to say that if Mr. Waters’s theory were correct, it would be better to begin with someone whom nobody else had dreamed before; then you could be sure at least of not having a wife to somebody else’s mind rather than your own. Once on his way to Palazzo Pinti, he stopped, arrested by a thought that had not occurred to him before in relation to what Mr. Waters had been saying, and then pushed on with the sense of security which is the compensation the possession of the initiative brings to our sex along with many responsibilities. In the enjoyment of this, no man stops to consider the other side, which must wait his initiative, however they mean to meet it.
In the Por San Maria Colville found masks and dominoes filling the shop windows and dangling from the doors. A devil in red and a clown in white crossed the way in front of him from an intersecting street; several children in pretty masquerading dresses flashed in and out among the crowd. He hurried to the Lung’ Arno, and reached the palace where Mrs. Bowen lived, with these holiday sights fresh in his mind. Imogene turned to meet him at the door of the apartment, running from the window where she had left Effie Bowen still gazing.
“We saw you coming,” she said gaily, without waiting to exchange formal greetings. “We didn’t know at first but it might be somebody else disguised as you. We’ve been watching the maskers go by. Isn’t it exciting?”
“Awfully,” said Colville, going to the window with her, and putting his arm on Effie’s shoulder, where she knelt in a chair looking out. “What have you seen?”
“Oh, only two Spanish students with mandolins,” said Imogene; “but you can see they’re beginning to come.”
“They’ll stop now,” murmured Effie, with gentle disappointment; “it’s commencing to rain.”
“Oh, too bad!” wailed the young girl. But just then two medieval men-at-arms came in sight, carrying umbrellas. “Isn’t that too delicious? Umbrellas and chain-armour!”
“You can’t expect them to let their chain-armour get rusty,” said Colville. “You ought to have been with me—minstrels in scale-armour, Florentines of Savonarola’s times, nuns, clowns, demons, fairies—no end to them.”
“It’s very well saying we ought to have been with you; but we can’t go anywhere alone.”
“I didn’t say alone,” said Colville. “Don’t you think Mrs. Bowen would trust you with me to see these Carnival beginnings?” He had not meant at all to do anything of this kind, but that had not prevented his doing it.
“How do we know, when she hasn’t been asked?” said Imogene, with a touch of burlesque dolor, such as makes a dignified girl enchanting, when she permits it to herself. She took Effie’s hand in hers, the child having faced round from the window, and stood smoothing it, with her lovely head pathetically tilted
