 | IX. A foregone conclusion |  |
9. IX.
Florida began to prepare the bed for her
mother's lying down.
“What are you doing that for, my dear?” asked
Mrs. Vervain. “I can't go to bed at once.”
“But mother” —
“No, Florida. And I mean it. You are too
headstrong. I should think you would see yourself
how you suffer in the end by giving way to your
violent temper. What a day you have made for
us!”
“I was very wrong,” murmured the proud girl,
meekly.
“And then the mortification of an apology; you
might have spared yourself that.”
“It did n't mortify me; I did n't care for it.”
“No, I really believe you are too haughty to
mind humbling yourself. And Don Ippolito had
been so uniformly kind to us. I begin to believe
that Mr. Ferris caught your true character in that
sketch. But your pride will be broken some day,
Florida.”
“Won't you let me help you undress, mother?
You can talk to me while you 're undressing. You
must try to get some rest.”
“Yes, I am all unstrung. Why could n't you
have been the best way to get me quieted down.
But no; you must always have your own way.
Don't twitch me, my dear; I 'd rather undress myself.
You pretend to be very careful of me. I
wonder if you really care for me.”
“Oh, mother, you are all I have in the world!”
Mrs. Vervain began to whimper. “You talk as
if I were any better off. Have I anybody besides
you? And I have lost so many.”
“Don't think of those things now, mother.”
Mrs. Vervain tenderly kissed the young girl.
“You are good to your mother. Don Ippolito
was right; no one ever saw you offer me disrespect
or unkindness. There, there! Don't cry, my darling.
I think I had better lie down, and I 'll let
you undress me.”
She suffered herself to be helped into bed, and
Florida went softly about the room, putting it in
order, and drawing the curtains closer to keep out
the near dawn. Her mother talked a little while,
and presently fell from incoherence to silence, and
so to sleep.
Florida looked hesitatingly at her for a moment,
and then set her candle on the floor and sank
wearily into an arm-chair beside the bed. Her
hands fell into her lap; her head drooped sadly
forward; the light flung the shadow of her face
grotesquely exaggerated and foreshortened upon
the ceiling.
By and by a bird piped in the garden; the shriek
of a swallow made itself heard from a distance;
the vernal day was beginning to stir from the light,
brief drowse of the vernal night. A crown of angry
red formed upon the candle wick, which toppled over
in the socket and guttered out with a sharp hiss.
Florida started from her chair. A streak of sunshine
pierced shutter and curtain. Her mother
was supporting herself on one elbow in the bed,
and looking at her as if she had just called to her.
“Mother, did you speak?” asked the girl.
Mrs. Vervain turned her face away; she sighed
deeply, stretched her thin hands on the pillow, and
seemed to be sinking, sinking down through the
bed. She ceased to breathe and lay in a dead
faint.
Florida felt rather than saw it all. She did not
cry out nor call for help. She brought water and
cologne, and bathed her mother's face, and then
chafed her hands. Mrs. Vervain slowly revived;
she opened her eyes, then closed them; she did not
speak, but after a while she began to fetch her
breath with the long and even respirations of sleep.
Florida noiselessly opened the door, and met
the servant with a tray of coffee. She put her
finger to her lip, and motioned her not to enter,
asking in a whisper: “What time is it, Nina? I
forgot to wind my watch.”
“It 's nine o'clock, signorina; and I thought
you would be tired this morning, and would like
girl, still in whisper, with a glance through the
doorway, “you have n't been in bed at all!”
“My mother does n't seem well. I sat down
beside her, and fell asleep in my chair without
knowing it.”
“Ah, poor little thing! Then you must drink
your coffee at once. It refreshes.”
“Yes, yes,” said Florida, closing the door, and
pointing to a table in the next room, “put it down
here. I will serve myself, Nina. Go call the gondola,
please. I am going out, at once, and I want
you to go with me. Tell Checa to come here and
stay with my mother till I come back.”
She poured out a cup of coffee with a trembling
hand, and hastily drank it; then bathing her eyes,
she went to the glass and bestowed a touch or two
upon yesterday's toilet, studied the effect a moment,
and turned away. She ran back for another look,
and the next moment she was walking down to
the water-gate, where she found Nina waiting her
in the gondola.
A rapid course brought them to Ferris's landing.
“Ring,” she said to the gondolier, “and say that
one of the American ladies wishes to see the consul.”
Ferris was standing on the balcony over her,
where he had been watching her approach in mute
wonder. “Why, Miss Vervain,” he called down,
“what in the world is the matter?”
“I don't know. I want to see you,” said Florida,
looking up with a wistful face.
“I 'll come down.”
“Yes, please. Or no, I had better come up.
Yes, Nina and I will come up.”
Ferris met them at the lower door and led them
to his apartment. Nina sat down in the outer
room, and Florida followed the painter into his studio.
Though her face was so wan, it seemed to
him that he had never seen it lovelier, and he had
a strange pride in her being there, though the
disorder of the place ought to have humbled him.
She looked over it with a certain childlike, timid
curiosity, and something of that lofty compassion
with which young ladies regard the haunts of men
when they come into them by chance; in doing
this she had a haughty, slow turn of the head that
fascinated him.
“I hope,” he said, “you don't mind the smell,”
which was a mingled one of oil-colors and tobacco-smoke.
“The woman 's putting my office to rights,
and it 's all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring
you in here.”
Florida sat down on a chair fronting the easel,
and found herself looking into the sad eyes of Don
Ippolito. Ferris brusquely turned the back of the
canvas toward her. “I did n't mean you to see
that. It is n't ready to show, yet,” he said, and
then he stood expectantly before her. He waited
for her to speak, for he never knew how to take
of her grand moods, but now she was too evidently
unhappy for mocking; at the same time he did not
care to invoke a snub by a prematurely sympathetic
demeanor. His mind ran on the events of the day
before, and he thought this visit probably related
somehow to Don Ippolito. But his visitor did not
speak, and at last he said: “I hope there 's nothing
wrong at home, Miss Vervain. It 's rather odd
to have yesterday, last night, and next morning all
run together as they have been for me in the last
twenty-four hours. I trust Mrs. Vervain is turning
the whole thing into a good solid oblivion.”
“It 's about — it 's about — I came to see you” —
said Florida, hoarsely. “I mean,” she hurried on
to say, “that I want to ask you who is the best
doctor here?”
Then it was not about Don Ippolito. “Is your
mother sick?” asked Ferris, eagerly. “She must
have been fearfully tired by that unlucky expedition
of ours. I hope there 's nothing serious?”
“No, no! But she is not well. She is very
frail, you know. You must have noticed how frail
she is,” said Florida, tremulously.
Ferris had noticed that all his countrywomen,
past their girlhood, seemed to be sick, he did not
know how or why; he supposed it was all right, it
was so common. In Mrs. Vervain's case, though
she talked a great deal about her ill-health, he had
noticed it rather less than usual, she had so great
at times rather a shadowy presence, and that occasionally
it had amused him that so slight a structure
should hang together as it did — not only successfully,
but triumphantly.
He said yes, he knew that Mrs. Vervain was
not strong, and Florida continued: “It 's only advice
that I want for her, but I think we had better
see some one — or know some one that we could go
to in need. We are so far from any one we know,
or help of any kind.” She seemed to be trying to
account to herself, rather than to Ferris, for what
she was doing. “We must n't let anything pass
unnoticed”.... She looked at him entreatingly,
but a shadow, as of some wounding memory,
passed over her face, and she said no more.
“I 'll go with you to a doctor's,” said Ferris,
kindly.
“No, please, I won't trouble you.”
“It 's no trouble.”
“I don't want you to go with me, please. I 'd
rather go alone.” Ferris looked at her perplexedly,
as she rose. “Just give me the address, and I shall
manage best by myself. I 'm used to doing it.”
“As you like. Wait a moment.” Ferris wrote
the address. “There,” he said, giving it to her;
“but is n't there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” answered Florida with awkward hesitation,
and a half-defiant, half-imploring look at him.
“You must have all sorts of people applying to
and try to forget them” —
“Well?” said Ferris.
“I wish you would n't remember that I 've asked
this favor of you; that you 'd consider it a” —
“Consular service? With all my heart,” answered
Ferris, thinking for the third or fourth time
how very young Miss Vervain was.
“You are very good; you are kinder than I have
any right,” said Florida, smiling piteously. “I only
mean, don't speak of it to my mother. Not,” she
added, “but what I want her to know everything I
do; but it would worry her if she thought I was
anxious about her. Oh! I wish I would n't.”
She began a hasty search for her handkerchief;
he saw her lips tremble and his soul trembled with
them.
In another moment, “Good-morning,” she said
briskly, with a sort of airy sob, “I don't want you
to come down, please.”
She drifted out of the room and down the stairs,
the servant-maid falling into her wake.
Ferris filled his pipe and went out on his balcony
again, and stood watching the gondola in its course
toward the address he had given, and smoking
thoughtfully. It was really the same girl who had
given poor Don Ippolito that cruel slap in the face,
yesterday. But that seemed no more out of reason
than her sudden, generous, exaggerated remorse;
both were of a piece with her coming to him for
upon his sympathy, and then trying to snub
him, and breaking down in the effort. It was all
of a piece, and the piece was bad; yes, she had an
ugly temper; and yet she had magnanimous traits
too. These contradictions, which in his reverie he
felt rather than formulated, made him smile, as he
stood on his balcony bathed by the morning air and
sunlight, in fresh, strong ignorance of the whole
mystery of women's nerves. These caprices even
charmed him. He reflected that he had gone on
doing the Vervains one favor after another in spite
of Florida's childish petulancies; and he resolved
that he would not stop now; her whims should be
nothing to him, as they had been nothing, hitherto.
It is flattering to a man to be indispensable to a
woman so long as he is not obliged to it; Miss Vervain's
dependent relation to himself in this visit
gave her a grace in Ferris's eyes which she had
wanted before.
In the mean time he saw her gondola stop, turn
round, and come back to the canal that bordered
the Vervain garden.
“Another change of mind,” thought Ferris, complacently;
and rising superior to the whole fitful
sex, he released himself from uneasiness on Mrs.
Vervain's account. But in the evening he went to
ask after her. He first sent his card to Florida,
having written on it, “I hope Mrs. Vervain is better.
Don't let me come in if it 's any disturbance.”
written, dimly conscious that it was patronizing;
and when he entered he saw that Miss Vervain
stood on the defensive and from some willfulness
meant to make him feel that he was presumptuous
in coming; it did not comfort him to consider that
she was very young. “Mother will be in directly,”
said Florida in a tone that relegated their morning's
interview to the age of fable.
Mrs. Vervain came in smiling and cordinal, apparently
better and not worse for yesterday's misadventures.
“Oh, I pick up quickly,” she explained. “I 'm
an old campaigner, you know. Perhaps a little too
old, now. Years do make a difference; and you 'll
find it out as you get on, Mr. Ferris.”
“I suppose so,” said Ferris, not caring to have
Mrs. Vervain treat him so much like a boy. “Even
at twenty-six I found it pleasant to take a nap this
afternoon. How does one stand it at seventeen,
Miss Vervain?” he asked.
“I have n't felt the need of sleep,” replied Florida,
indifferently, and he felt shelved, as an old fellow.
He had an empty, frivolous visit, to his thinking.
Mrs. Vervain asked if he had seen Don Ippolito,
and wondered that the priest had not come about,
all day. She told a long story, and at the end
tapped herself on the mouth with her fan to punish
a yawn.
Ferris rose to go. Mrs. Vervain wondered again
near them all day.
“Because he 's a wise man,” said Ferris with bitterness,
“and knows when to time his visits.” Mrs.
Vervain did not notice his bitterness, but something
made Florida follow him to the outer door.
“Why, it 's moonlight!” she exclaimed; and
she glanced at him as though she had some purpose
of atonement in her mind.
But he would not have it. “Yes, there 's a
moon,” he said moodily. “Good-night.”
“Good night,” answered Florida, and she impulsively
offered him her hand. He thought that it
shook in his, but it was probably the agitation of
his own nerves.
A soreness that had been lifted from his heart,
came back; he walked home disappointed and defeated,
he hardly knew why or in what. He did
not laugh now to think how she had asked him that
morning to forget her coming to him for help; he
was outraged that he should have been repaid in
this sort, and the rebuff with which his sympathy
had just been met was vulgar; there was no other
name for it but vulgarity. Yet he could not relate
this quality to the face of the young girl as he constantly
beheld it in his homeward walk. It did not
defy him or repulse him; it looked up at him wistfully
as from the gondola that morning. Nevertheless
he hardened his heart. The Vervains should
see him next when they had sent for him. After
all, one is not so very old at twenty-six.
| IX. A foregone conclusion | |