Indian Summer | Page 9

their titles, one just beyond the margin of the
other. He turned from the door and went into the dining-room, where
the stove was ostentatiously roaring over its small logs and its lozenges
of peat, But even here the fire had been so recently lighted that the
warmth was potential rather than actual. By stooping down before the
stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville
managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the
woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds developing into vines and
foliage that covered the frescoed trellising of the quadrangularly
vaulted ceiling. The waiters, in their veteran dress-coats, were putting
the final touches to the table, and the sound of voices outside the door
obliged Colville to get up. The effort involved made him still more
reluctant about going out to Mrs. Bowen's.
The door opened, and some English ladies entered, faintly
acknowledging, provisionally ignoring, his presence, and talking of
what they had been doing since lunch. They agreed that it was really
too cold in the churches for any pleasure in the pictures, and that the

Pitti Gallery, where they had those braziers, was the only place you
could go with comfort. A French lady and her husband came in; a
Russian lady followed; an Italian gentleman, an American family, and
three or four detached men of the English-speaking race, whose
language at once became the law of the table.
As the dinner progressed from soup to fish, and from the entrée to the
roast and salad, the combined effect of the pleasant cheer and the
increasing earnestness of the stove made the room warmer and warmer.
They drank Chianti wine from the wicker-covered flasks, tied with tufts
of red and green silk, in which they serve table wine at Florence, and
said how pretty the bottles were, but how the wine did not seem very
good.
"It certainly isn't so good as it used to be," said Colville.
"Ah, then you have been in Florhence before." said the French lady,
whose English proved to be much better than the French that he began
to talk to her in.
"Yes, a great while ago; in a state of pre-existence, in fact," he said.
The lady looked a little puzzled, but interested. "In a state of
prhe-existence?" she repeated.
"Yes; when I was young," he added, catching the gleam in her eye.
"When I was twenty-four. A great while ago."
"You must be an Amerhican," said the lady, with a laugh.
"Why do you think so? From my accent?"
"Frhom your metaphysics too. The Amerhicans like to talk in that
way."
"I didn't know it," said Colville.
"They like to strhike the key of personality; they can't endure not being
interhested. They must rhelate everything to themselves or to those

with whom they are talking."
"And the French, no?" asked Colville.
The lady laughed again. "There is a large Amerhican colony in Parhis.
Perhaps we have learned to be like you."
The lady's husband did not speak English, and it was probably what
they had been saying that she interpreted to him, for he smiled, looking
forward to catch Colville's eye in a friendly way, and as if he would not
have him take his wife's talk too seriously.
The Italian gentleman on Colville's right was politely offering him the
salad, which had been left for the guests to pass to one another. Colville
thanked him in Italian, and they began to talk of Italian affairs. One
thing led to another, and he found that his new friend, who was not yet
his acquaintance, was a member of Parliament, and a republican.
"That interests me as an American," said Colville. "But why do you
want a republic in Italy?"
"When we have a constitutional king, why should we have a king?"
asked the Italian.
An Englishman across the table relieved Colville from the difficulty of
answering this question by asking him another that formed talk about it
between them. He made his tacit observation that the English, since he
met them last, seemed to have grown in the grace of facile speech with
strangers; it was the American family which kept its talk within itself,
and hushed to a tone so low that no one else could hear it. Colville did
not like their mumbling; for the honour of the country, which we all
have at heart, however little we think it, he would have preferred that
they should speak up, and not seem afraid or ashamed; he thought the
English manner was better. In fact, he found himself in an unexpectedly
social mood; he joined in helping to break the ice; he laughed and
hazarded comment with those who were new-comers like himself, and
was very respectful of the opinions of people who had been