University of Virginia Library

6. VI.

One afternoon, as Don Ippolito was posing to
Ferris for his picture of A Venetian Priest, the
painter asked, to make talk, “Have you hit upon
that new explosive yet, which is to utilize your
breech-loading cannon? Or are you engaged upon
something altogether new?”

“No,” answered the other uneasily, “I have not
touched the cannon since that day you saw it at my
house; and as for other things, I have not been able
to put my mind to them. I have made a few trifles,
which I have ventured to offer the ladies.”

Ferris had noticed the ingenious reading-desk
which Don Ippolito had presented to Florida, and
the footstool, contrived with springs and hinges so
that it would fold up into the compass of an ordinary
portfolio, which Mrs. Vervain carried about
with her.

An odd look, which the painter caught at and
missed, came into the priest's face, as he resumed:
“I suppose it is the distraction of my new occupation,
and of the new acquaintances — so very
strange to me in every way — that I have made in
your amiable country-women, which hinders me
from going about anything in earnest, now that
their munificence has enabled me to pursue my aims

with greater advantages than ever before. But
this idle mood will pass, and in the mean time I am
very happy. They are real angels, and madama is
a true original.”

“Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar,” said the
painter, retiring a few paces from his picture, and
quizzing it through his half-closed eyes. “She is a
woman who has had affliction enough to turn a
stronger head than hers could ever have been,” he
added kindly. “But she has the best heart in the
world. In fact,” he burst forth, “she is the most
extraordinary combination of perfect fool and perfect
lady I ever saw.”

“Excuse me; I don't understand,” blankly faltered
Don Ippolito.

“No; and I 'm afraid I could n't explain to
you,” answered Ferris.

There was a silence for a time, broken at last by
Don Ippolito, who asked, “Why do you not marry
madamigella?”

He seemed not to feel that there was anything
out of the way in the question, and Ferris was too
well used to the childlike directness of the most
maneuvering of races to be surprised. Yet he was
displeased, as he would not have been if Don Ippolito
were not a priest. He was not of the type of
priests whom the American knew from the prejudice
and distrust of the Italians; he was alienated
from his clerical fellows by all the objects of his
life, and by a reciprocal dislike. About other priests

there were various scandals; but Don Ippolito was
like that pretty match-girl of the Piazza of whom it
was Venetianly answered, when one asked if so
sweet a face were not innocent, “Oh yes, she is
mad!” He was of a purity so blameless that he
was reputed crack-brained by the caffè-gossip that
in Venice turns its searching light upon whomever
you mention; and from his own association with
the man Ferris perceived in him an apparent single-heartedness
such as no man can have but the rarest
of Italians. He was the albino of his species; a
gray crow, a white fly; he was really this, or he
knew how to seem it with an art far beyond any
common deceit. It was the half expectation of coming
sometime upon the lurking duplicity in Don
Ippolito, that continually enfeebled the painter in
his attempts to portray his Venetian priest, and
that gave its undecided, unsatisfactory character to
the picture before him — its weak hardness, its provoking
superficiality. He expressed the traits of
melancholy and loss that he imagined in him, yet
he always was tempted to leave the picture with a
touch of something sinister in it, some airy and subtle
shadow of selfish design.

He stared hard at Don Ippolito while this perplexity
filled his mind, for the hundredth time;
then he said stiffly, “I don't know. I don't want
to marry anybody. Besides,” he added, relaxing
into a smile of helpless amusement, “it 's possible
that Miss Vervain might not want to marry
me.”

“As to that,” replied Don Ippolito, “you never
can tell. All young girls desire to be married, I
suppose,” he continued with a sigh. “She is very
beautiful, is she not? It is seldom that we see
such a blonde in Italy. Our blondes are dark; they
have auburn hair and blue eyes, but their complexions
are thick. Miss Vervain is blonde as the
morning light; the sun's gold is in her hair, his
noonday whiteness in her dazzling throat; the flush
of his coming is on her lips; she might utter the
dawn!”

“You 're a poet, Don Ippolito,” laughed the
painter. “What property of the sun is in her
angry-looking eyes?”

“His fire! Ah, that is her greatest charm! Those
strange eyes of hers, they seem full of tragedies.
She looks made to be the heroine of some stormy
romance; and yet how simply patient and good
she is!”

“Yes,” said Ferris, who often responded in English
to the priest's Italian; and he added half musingly
in his own tongue, after a moment, “but I
don't think it would be safe to count upon her. I'm
afraid she has a bad temper. At any rate, I always
expect to see smoke somewhere when I look at
those eyes of hers. She has wonderful self-control,
however; and I don't exactly understand why.
Perhaps people of strong impulses have strong
wills to overrule them; it seems no more than
fair.”

“Is it the custom,” asked Don Ippolito, after a
moment, “for the American young ladies always
to address their mammas as mother?”

“No; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss
Vervain's. It 's a little formality that I should say
served to hold Mrs. Vervain in check.”

“Do you mean that it repulses her?”

“Not at all. I don't think I could explain,” said
Ferris with a certain air of regretting to have gone
so far in comment on the Vervains. He added
recklessly, “Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes
does and says things that embarrass her
daughter, and that Miss Vervain seems to try to
restrain her?”

“I thought,” returned Don Ippolito meditatively,
“that the signorina was always very tenderly submissive
to her mother.”

“Yes, so she is,” said the painter dryly, and
looked in annoyance from the priest to the picture,
and from the picture to the priest.

After a minute Don Ippolito said, “They must
be very rich to live as they do.”

“I don't know about that,” replied Ferris.
“Americans spend and save in ways different from
the Italians. I dare say the Vervains find Venice
very cheap after London and Paris and Berlin.”

“Perhaps,” said Don Ippolito, “if they were
rich you would be in a position to marry her.”

“I should not marry Miss Vervain for her
money,” answered the painter, sharply.

“No, but if you loved her, the money would enable
you to marry her.”

“Listen to me, Don Ippolito. I never said that
I loved Miss Vervain, and I don't know how you
feel warranted in speaking to me about the matter.
Why do you do so?”

“I? Why? I could not but imagine that you
must love her. Is there anything wrong in speaking
of such things? Is it contrary to the American
custom? I ask pardon from my heart if I have
done anything amiss.”

“There is no offense,” said the painter, with a
laugh, “and I don't wonder you thought I ought to
be in love with Miss Vervain. She is beautiful, and
I believe she 's good. But if men had to marry
because women were beautiful and good, there is n't
one of us could live single a day. Besides, I 'm the
victim of another passion, — I 'm laboring under an
unrequited affection for Art.”

“Then you do not love her?” asked Don Ippolito,
eagerly.

“So far as I 'm advised at present, no, I don't.”

“It is strange!” said the priest, absently, but
with a glowing face.

He quitted the painter's and walked swiftly
homeward with a triumphant buoyancy of step.
A subtle content diffused itself over his face, and
a joyful light burnt in his deep eyes. He sat down
before the piano and organ as he had arranged
them, and began to strike their keys in unison; this

seemed to him for the first time childish. Then he
played some lively bars on the piano alone; they
sounded too light and trivial, and he turned to the
other instrument. As the plaint of the reeds arose,
it filled his sense like a solemn organ-music, and
transfigured the place; the notes swelled to the
ample vault of a church, and at the high altar he
was celebrating the mass in his sacerdotal robes.
He suddenly caught his fingers away from the keys;
his breast heaved, he hid his face in his hands.