Indian Summer Part 44

"Is it all for me?" she asked.

"For the whole obliging and amiable world," he answered gaily.

XIX

The next time Colville came he found himself alone with Imogene, who asked him what he had been doing all day.

"Oh, living along till evening. What have you?"

She did not answer at once, nor praise his speech for the devotion implied in it. After a while she said: "Do you believe in courses of reading? Mr. Morton has taken up a course of reading in Italian poetry.

He intends to master it."

"Does he?"

"Yes. Do you think something of the kind would be good for me?"

"Oh, if you thirst for conquest. But I should prefer to rest on my laurels if I were you."

Imogene did not smile. "Mr. Morton thinks I should enjoy a course of Kingsley. He says he's very earnest."

"Oh, immensely. But aren't you earnest enough already, my dear?"

"Do you think I'm too earnest?"

"No; I should say you were just right."

"You know better than that. I wish you would criticise me sometimes."

"Oh, I'd rather not."

"Why? Don't you see anything to criticise in me? Are you satisfied with me in every way? You ought to think. You ought to think now. Do you think that I am doing right in all respects? Am I all that I could be to you, and to you alone? If I am wrong in the least thing, criticise me, and I will try to be better."

"Oh, you might criticise back, and I shouldn't like that."

"Then you don't approve of a course of Kingsley?" asked the girl.

"Does that follow? But if you're going in for earnestness, why don't you take up a course of Carlyle?"

"Do you think that would be better than Kingsley?"

"Not a bit. But Carlyle's so earnest that he can't talk straight."

"I can't make out what you mean. Wouldn't you like me to improve?"

"Not much," laughed Colville. "If you did, I don't know what I should do. I should have to begin to improve too, and I'm very comfortable as I am."

"I should wish to do it to--to be more worthy of you," grieved the girl, as if deeply disappointed at his frivolous behaviour.

He could not help laughing, but he was sorry, and would have taken her hand; she kept it from him, and removed to the farthest corner of the sofa. Apparently, however, her ideal did not admit of open pique, and she went on trying to talk seriously with him.

"You think, don't you, that we oughtn't to let a day pa.s.s without storing away some thought--suggestion----"

"Oh, there's no hurry," he said lazily. "Life is rather a long affair--if you live. There appears to be plenty of time, though people say not, and I think it would be rather odious to make every day of use.

Let a few of them go by without doing anything for you! And as for reading, why not read when you're hungry, just as you eat? Shouldn't you hate to take up a course of roast beef, or a course of turkey?"

"Very well, then," said Imogene. "I shall not begin Kingsley."

"Yes, do it. I dare say Mr. Morton's quite right. He will look at these things more from your own point of view. All the Kingsley novels are in the Tauchnitz. By all means do what he says."

"I will do what _you_ say."

"Oh, but I say nothing."

"Then I will do nothing."

Colville laughed at this too, and soon after the clergyman appeared.

Imogene met him so coldly that Colville felt obliged to make him some amends by a greater show of cordiality than he felt. But he was glad of the effort, for he began to like him as he talked to him; it was easy for him to like people; the young man showed sense and judgment, and if he was a little academic in his mind and manners, Colville tolerantly reflected that some people seemed to be born so, and that he was probably not artificial, as he had once imagined from the ecclesiastical scrupulosity of his dress.

Imogene ebbed away to the piano in the corner of the room, and struck some chords on it. At each stroke the young clergyman, whose eyes had wandered a little toward her from the first, seemed to vibrate in response. The conversation became incoherent before Mrs. Bowen joined them. Then, by a series of illogical processes, the clergyman was standing beside Imogene at the piano, and Mrs. Bowen was sitting beside Colville on the sofa.

"Isn't there to be any Effie, to-night?" he asked.

"No. She has been up too much of late. And I wished to speak with you--about Imogene."

"Yes," said Colville, not very eagerly. At that moment he could have chosen another topic.

"It is time that her mother should have got my letter. In less than a fortnight we ought to have an answer."

"Well?" said Colville, with a strange constriction of the heart.

"Her mother is a person of very strong character; her husband is absorbed in business, and defers to her in everything."

"It isn't an uncommon American situation," said Colville, relieving his tension by this excursion.

Mrs. Bowen ignored it. "I don't know how she may look at the affair. She may give her a.s.sent at once, or she may decide that nothing has taken place till--she sees you."

"I could hardly blame her for that," he answered submissively.

"It isn't a question of that," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's a question of--others. Mr. Morton was here before you came, and I know he was interested in Imogene--I am certain of it. He has come back, and he sees no reason why he should not renew his attentions."

"No--o--o," faltered Colville.

"I wish you to realise the fact."