CHAPTER XVI.
"Tous les hommes se haïssent naturellement. Je mets en fait que s'ils savaient exactement ce qu'ils disent, les uns des autres, il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde."
Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of Miss Wilson as "Amelia," and is acquainted with every detail of that young lady's uneventful history—thanks to a long series of direct and interested questions, addressed through a considerable number of years, to her friend Jim, as to his betrothed—she has no personal acquaintance with the latter. She is so determined, however, to repair this omission, now that so highly favourable an opportunity is presented as their common stay in the same small city, that Jim is powerless to hinder her from arranging a joint expedition of the two parties—herself and her son on the one side, and Jim with his future wife and sister-in-law on the other, to Careggi, on the afternoon of the same day as he had witnessed her abortive attempt to add Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother to the list of her acquaintances.
Amelia, is, for a wonder, free from home claims, Sybilla being more than usually bright, a kind friend having lately provided her with a number of the Lancet, containing a detailed account of an operation, which it seems not over-sanguine to expect she may herself be able to undergo. We all have our Blue Roses, and to "undergo operation," as she technically phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. Cecilia is likewise disengaged. The latter circumstance is matter for not unmixed rejoicing to Jim, Cecilia's future connection with himself being too close for him to relish the thought of her somewhat pronounced wooing of Byng being exposed in all its naïveté to the clear if good-humoured eyes of Byng's mother. But in this he wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her that the fruit is hung too high for her fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which had enabled her genuinely to relish the wedding-cake of the man who had jilted her, now teaches her to lay to heart the sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to look at the young man as poor women look at diamonds. Beyond one or two trifling gallantries, for which no one can judge her harshly, she leaves him alone, even though out of good-nature, and from inveterate force of habit, he gives her several openings to make love to him.
The day is one of even Italy's best, an air as soft as feathers, and full of April odours—a bright gay sun. The vines are rushing into leaf; they that ten days ago looked such hopeless sticks; little juicy leaves uncurling and spreading on each, and the mulberry trees, round which they twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant call of the spring.
The party being of the unmanageable number five, has to be divided between two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pursuance of her determination to know Amelia, insists upon occupying the first in tête-à-tête with Miss Wilson, while Cecilia and the two men fill the other. The latter makes but a silent load. Byng is, for him, out of spirits, and finding that Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is glad to lapse into his own reflections. His example is followed by Jim, whose temper is ruffled by being again obliged to defer the quest he is still feverishly anxious to pursue, despite the shock of the morning's meeting at the Accademia.
They reach the villa, and leave their vehicles, glad to think that two of the perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will have a pause of rest, and, having shaken off a tiresome would-be laquais de place, desirous to embitter for them the sweet day and place, they stray at will through the garden among the clipped laurels, the cypresses, the gorgeous red rhododendrons, while beds of mignonette send forth such a steady wave of poignant sweetness as makes the sense ache with ecstasy of pleasure; and over the conservatory hangs a wistaria so old, so magnificent, with such a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes an English breath away. They go over the villa itself, pass through the room, and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the grotesque grim face, Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave his last sigh. It would make Death even more difficult to face than he is already, if one thought one should have to meet him under such a catafalque.
As they issue out again from the house's shadow into the sun-drenched garden, Mrs. Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a little apart.