“I ought perhaps to say,” he corrected, “everybody is good and well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay.”
“I’ve thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not being very happy,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, “and I guessed it was something about Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn’t try to make out. Brenda doesn’t take to me, somehow, as the others do. I’m not her kind, of course; but I do adore her from afar. She’s so beautiful! She’s like a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the sunset over the sea, or else marries the prince.”
“Yes, Brenda is wonderful.”
“I never should take her for an American.”
“She’s not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country and breathed in its ideas and feelings till 113she even looks Italian. Her parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries wouldn’t budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have taken it for granted that one of them couldn’t really be in love with an Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can’t say to them: ‘But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to buy him for me.’ Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can’t say that to them, and because she doesn’t say it, they are in doubt, they only half apprehend, they don’t understand. The one thing they are sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe thing they see to do, when Brenda’s face, combined with her entire reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is ‘interested in’ an Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head.”
“So that’s why they’re sending her home!”
“There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; but”–Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of reservation–“in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don’t know what quality supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian son-in-law.”
He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if wishing to get through as quickly as possible 114with the disagreeable, if not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping:
“During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at home. She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they should make conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with Italians as well as with others, and come out of them without impairing that sense of humor which permits her to see as funny that one should succumb to the attractions of one of those only half-understood men, who may either be playing a comedy of love while in truth pursuing a fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint of jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss’s knowledge, Brenda, during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli’s letters, written at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her help. With this excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courtship dans toutes les règles. Brenda is not asked by an American mother to show her letters or his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not have imagined such a thing if the parents were unwilling to receive him as a suitor. Brenda herself–one will never know about Brenda, how it began, what she thought or hoped. She is very young; no doubt she did hope. Children seldom know much about their parents’ means. She very likely thought hers could make her the present of a dowry, as they had made her other presents. But when she discovered their attitude toward the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as they desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a thing their prejudice is so 115strongly set against. They did what they thought best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was best; for though Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they do not press her to give it, with that respect for a child’s liberty which is also American, they are growing more and more uneasy with the suspicion that it was serious on her part, too. They love her extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. They show their love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She shows hers by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched.”
For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what she had heard. “I don’t see how, if she really loves this Italian, she could give him up so gracefully,” she finally said.