 | X. A foregone conclusion |  |
10. X.
“Don Ippolito has come, signorina,” said Nina,
the next morning, approaching Florida, where she
sat in an attitude of listless patience, in the garden.
“Don Ippolito!” echoed the young girl in a
weary tone. She rose and went into the house, and
they met with the constraint which was but too natural
after the events of their last parting. It is
hard to tell which has most to overcome in such a
case, the forgiver or the forgiven. Pardon rankles
even in a generous soul, and the memory of having
pardoned embarrasses the sensitive spirit before the
object of its clemency, humbling and making it
ashamed. It would be well, I suppose, if there need
be nothing of the kind between human creatures,
who cannot sustain such a relation without mutual
distrust. It is not so ill with them when apart, but
when they meet they must be cold and shy at first.
“Now I see what you two are thinking about,”
said Mrs. Vervain, and a faint blush tinged the
cheek of the priest as she thus paired him off with
her daughter. “You are thinking about what happened
the other day; and you had better forget it.
There is no use brooding over these matters. Dear
me! if I had stopped to brood over every little
unpleasant thing that happened, I wonder where I
day yesterday, Don Ippolito?”
“I did not come to disturb you because I thought
you must be very tired. Besides I was quite busy.”
“Oh, yes, those inventions of yours. I think you
are so ingenious! But you must n't apply too
closely. Now really, yesterday, — after all you had
been through, it was too much for the brain.” She
tapped herself on the forehead with her fan.
“I was not busy with my inventions, madama,”
answered Don Ippolito, who sat in the womanish
attitude priests get from their drapery, and fingered
the cord round his three-cornered hat. “I have
scarcely touched them of late. But our parish takes
part in the procession of Corpus Domini in the Piazza,
and I had my share of the preparations.”
“Oh, to be sure! When is it to be? We must
all go. Our Nina has been telling Florida of the
grand sights, — little children dressed up like John
the Baptist, leading lambs. I suppose it's a great
event with you.”
The priest shrugged his shoulders, and opened
both his hands, so that his hat slid to the floor,
bumping and tumbling some distance away. He
recovered it and sat down again. “It 's an observance,”
he said coldly.
“And shall you be in the procession?”
“I shall be there with the other priests of my
parish.”
“Delightful!” cried Mrs. Vervain. “We shall
to think I actually know some one in the procession.
I 'm going to give you a little nod. You won't
think it very wrong?”
She saved him from the embarrassment he might
have felt in replying, by an abrupt lapse from all
apparent interest in the subject. She turned to her
daughter, and said with a querulous accent, “I
wish you would throw the afghan over my feet,
Florida, and make me a little comfortable before
you begin your reading this morning.” At the same
time she feebly disposed herself among the sofa
cushions on which she reclined, and waited for some
final touches from her daughter. Then she said,
“I 'm just going to close my eyes, but I shall hear
every word. You are getting a beautiful accent,
my dear, I know you are. I should think Goldoni
must have a very smooth, agreeable style; has n't
he now, in Italian?”
They began to read the comedy; after fifteen or
twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and
said, “But before you commence, Florida, I wish
you 'd play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel
so very flighty. I suppose it 's this sirocco. And
I believe I 'll lie down in the next room.”
Florida followed her to repeat the arrangements
for her comfort. Then she returned, and sitting
down at the piano struck with a sort of soft firmness
a few low, soothing chords, out of which a lulling
melody grew. With her fingers still resting on the
through the open door at her mother.
“Don Ippolito,” she asked softly, “is there anything
in the air of Venice that makes people very
drowsy?”
“I have never heard that, madamigella.”
“I wonder,” continued the young girl absently,
“why my mother wants to sleep so much.”
“Perhaps she has not recovered from the fatigues
of the other night,” suggested the priest.
“Perhaps,” said Florida, sadly looking toward
her mother's door.
She turned again to the instrument, and let her
fingers wander over the keys, with a drooping head.
Presently she lifted her face, and smoothed back
from her temples some straggling tendrils of hair.
Without looking at the priest she asked with the
child-like bluntness that characterized her, “Why
don't you like to walk in the procession of Corpus
Domini?”
Don Ippolito's color came and went, and he answered
evasively, “I have not said that I did not
like to do so.”
“No, that is true,” said Florida, letting her
fingers drop again on the keys.
Don Ippolito rose from the sofa where he had
been sitting beside her while they read, and walked
the length of the room. Then he came towards her
and said meekly, “Madamigella, I did not mean to
repel any interest you feel in me. But it was a
was when you asked it.”
“Don't you always remember that?” demanded
the girl, still without turning her head.
“No; sometimes I am suffered to forget it,” he
said with a tentative accent.
She did not respond, and he drew a long breath,
and walked away in silence. She let her hands fall
into her lap, and sat in an attitude of expectation.
As Don Ippolito came near her again he paused a
second time.
“It is in this house that I forget my priesthood,”
he began, “and it is the first of your kindnesses
that you suffer me to do so, your good mother,
there, and you. How shall I repay you? It cut
me to the heart that you should ask forgiveness of
me when you did, though I was hurt by your
rebuke. Oh, had you not the right to rebuke me
if I abused the delicate unreserve with which you
had always treated me? But believe me, I meant
no wrong, then.”
His voice shook, and Florida broke in, “You did
nothing wrong. It was I who was cruel for no
cause.”
“No, no. You shall not say that,” he returned.
“And why should I have cared for a few words,
when all your acts had expressed a trust of me that
is like heaven to my soul?”
She turned now and looked at him, and he went
on. “Ah, I see you do not understand! How
most unhappy city? To be haunted by the strict
espionage of all your own class, to be shunned as a
spy by all who are not of it! But you two have
not put up that barrier which everywhere shuts me
out from my kind. You have been willing to see
the man in me, and to let me forget the priest.”
“I do not know what to say to you, Don Ippolito.
I am only a foreigner, a girl, and I am very ignorant
of these things,” said Florida with a slight
alarm. “I am afraid that you may be saying
what you will be sorry for.”
“Oh never! Do not fear for me if I am frank
with you. It is my refuge from despair.”
The passionate vibration of his voice increased, as
if it must break in tears. She glanced towards the
other room with a little movement or stir.
“Ah, you need n't be afraid of listening to me!”
cried the priest bitterly.
“I will not wake her,” said Florida calmly, after
an instant.
“See how you speak the thing you mean, always,
always, always! You could not deny that you
meant to wake her, for you have the life-long habit
of the truth. Do you know what it is to have the
life-long habit of a lie? It is to be a priest. Do
you know what it is to seem, to say, to do, the
thing you are not, think not, will not? To leave
what you believe unspoken, what you will undone,
what you are unknown? It is to be a priest!”
Don Ippolito spoke in Italian, and he uttered
these words in a voice carefully guarded from every
listener but the one before his face. “Do you
know what it is when such a moment as this comes,
and you would fling away the whole fabric of falsehood
that has clothed your life — do you know what
it is to keep still so much of it as will help you
to unmask silently and secretly? It is to be a
priest!”
His voice had lost its vehemence, and his manner
was strangely subdued and cold. The sort of
gentle apathy it expressed, together with a certain
sad, impersonal surprise at the difference between
his own and the happier fortune with which he contrasted
it, was more touching than any tragic demonstration.
As if she felt the fascination of the pathos which
she could not fully analyze, the young girl sat silent.
After a time, in which she seemed to be trying to
think it all out, she asked in a low, deep murmur:
“Why did you become a priest, then?”
“It is a long story,” said Don Ippolito. “I will
not trouble you with it now. Some other time.”
“No; now,” answered Florida, in English. “If
you hate so to be a priest, I can't understand why
you should have allowed yourself to become one.
We should be very unhappy if we could not respect
you, — not trust you as we have done; and how
could we, if we knew you were not true to yourself
in being what you are?”
“Madamigella,” said the priest, “I never dared
believe that I was in the smallest thing necessary to
your happiness. Is it true, then, that you care for
my being rather this than that? That you are in
the least grieved by any wrong of mine?”
“I scarcely know what you mean. How could
we help being grieved by what you have said to
me?”
“Thanks; but why do you care whether a priest
of my church loves his calling or not, — you, a Protestant?
It is that you are sorry for me as an unhappy
man, is it not?”
“Yes; it is that and more. I am no Catholic,
but we are both Christians” —
Don Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his
shoulders.
— “and I cannot endure to think of your doing
the things you must do as a priest, and yet hating
to be a priest. It is terrible!”
“Are all the priests of your faith devotees?”
“They cannot be. But are none of yours so?”
“Oh, God forbid that I should say that. I have
known real saints among them. That friend of
mine in Padua, of whom I once told you, became
such, and died an angel fit for Paradise. And I
suppose that my poor uncle is a saint, too, in his
way.”
“Your uncle? A priest? You have never
mentioned him to us.”
“No,” said Don Ippolito. After a certain pause
family, and in each generation we have sought to
honor our blood by devoting one of the race to the
church. When I was a child, I used to divert myself
by making little figures out of wood and pasteboard,
and I drew rude copies of the pictures I saw
at church. We lived in the house where I live now,
and where I was born, and my mother let me play
in the small chamber where I now have my forge;
it was anciently the oratory of the noble family
that occupied the whole palace. I contrived an
altar at one end of it; I stuck my pictures about
the walls, and I ranged the puppets in the order of
worshippers on the floor; then I played at saying
mass, and preached to them all day long.
“My mother was a widow. She used to watch
me with tears in her eyes. At last, one day, she
brought my uncle to see me: I remember it all far
better than yesterday. `Is it not the will of
God?' she asked. My uncle called me to him,
and asked me whether I should like to be a priest
in good earnest, when I grew up? `Shall I then
be able to make as many little figures as I like,
and to paint pictures, and carve an altar like that
in your church?' I demanded. My uncle answered
that I should have real men and women to
preach to, as he had, and would not that be much
finer? In my heart I did not think so, for I did
not care for that part of it; I only liked to preach
to my puppets because I had made them. But I
the toys that I played with, and I grew used to
hearing it told among my mates and about the
neighborhood that I was to be a priest; I cannot
remember any other talk with my mother, and I do
not know how or when it was decided. Whenver
I thought of the matter, I thought, `That will be
very well. The priests have very little to do, and
they gain a great deal of money with their masses;
and I shall be able to make whatever I like.' I
only considered the office then as a means to gratify
the passion that has always filled my soul for inventions
and works of mechanical skill and ingenuity.
My inclination was purely secular, but I was as
inevitably becoming a priest as if I had been born
to be one.”
“But you were not forced? There was no pressure
upon you?”
“No, there was merely an absence, so far as they
were concerned, of any other idea. I think they
meant justly, and assuredly they meant kindly by
me. I grew in years, and the time came when I
was to begin my studies. It was my uncle's influence
that placed me in the Seminary of the Salute,
and there I repaid his care by the utmost diligence.
But it was not the theological studies that
I loved, it was the mathematics and their practical
application, and among the classics I loved best the
poets and the historians. Yes, I can see that I was
always a mundane spirit, and some of those in
used to take us to walk, — you have seen the little
creatures in their priest's gowns, which they put on
when they enter the school, with a couple of young
priests at the head of the file, — and once, for an
uncommon pleasure, they took us to the Arsenal,
and let us see the shipyards and the museum. You
know the wonderful things that are there: the flags
and the guns captured from the Turks; the strange
weapons of all devices; the famous suits of armor.
I came back half-crazed; I wept that I must leave
the place. But I set to work the best I could to
carve out in wood an invention which the model of
one of the antique galleys had suggested to me.
They found it, — nothing can be concealed outside
of your own breast in such a school, — and they
carried me with my contrivance before the superior.
He looked kindly but gravely at me: `My son,'
said he, `do you wish to be a priest?' `Surely,
reverend father,' I answered in alarm, `why not?'
`Because these things are not for priests. Their
thoughts must be upon other things. Consider
well of it, my son, while there is yet time,' he said,
and he addressed me a long and serious discourse
upon the life on which I was to enter. He was a
just and conscientious and affectionate man; but
every word fell like burning fire in my heart. At
the end, he took my poor plaything, and thrust it
down among the coals of his scaldino. It made the
scaldino smoke, and he bade me carry it out with
me, and so turned again to his book.
“My mother was by this time dead, but I could
hardly have gone to her, if she had still been living.
`These things are not for priests!' kept repeating
itself night and day in my brain. I was in despair,
I was in a fury to see my uncle. I poured out my
heart to him, and tried to make him understand
the illusions and vain hopes in which I had lived.
He received coldly my sorrow and the reproaches
which I did not spare him; he bade me consider
my inclinations as so many temptations to be overcome
for the good of my soul and the glory of God.
He warned me against the scandal of attempting
to withdraw now from the path marked out for me.
I said that I never would be a priest. `And what
will you do?' he asked. Alas! what could I do?
I went back to my prison, and in due course I became
a priest.
“It was not without sufficient warning that I
took one order after another, but my uncle's words,
`What will you do?' made me deaf to these admonitions.
All that is now past. I no longer resent
nor hate; I seem to have lost the power; but
those were days when my soul was filled with bitterness.
Something of this must have showed itself
to those who had me in their charge. I have
heard that at one time my superiors had grave
doubts whether I ought to be allowed to take orders.
My examination, in which the difficulties of the
sacerdotal life were brought before me with the
greatest clearness, was severe; I do not know how
uncle. I spent the next ten days in a convent, to
meditate upon the step I was about to take. Poor
helpless, friendless wretch! Madamigella, even yet
I cannot see how I was to blame, that I came forth
and received the first of the holy orders, and in
their time the second and the third.
“I was a priest, but no more a priest at heart
than those Venetian conscripts, whom you saw
carried away last week, are Austrian soldiers. I
was bound as they are bound, by an inexorable
and inevitable law.
“You have asked me why I became a priest.
Perhaps I have not told you why, but I have told
you how — I have given you the slight outward
events, not the processes of my mind — and that
is all that I can do. If the guilt was mine, I have
suffered for it. If it was not mine, still I have suffered
for it. Some ban seems to have rested upon
whatever I have attempted. My work, — oh, I
know it well enough! — has all been cursed with
futility; my labors are miserable failures or contemptible
successes. I have had my unselfish
dreams of blessing mankind by some great discovery
or invention; but my life has been barren,
barren, barren; and save for the kindness that I
have known in this house, and that would not let
me despair, it would now be without hope.”
He ceased, and the girl, who had listened with
her proud looks transfigured to an aspect of grieving
you!” she said, “more sorry than I know how to
tell. But you must not lose courage, you must not
give up!”
Don Ippolito resumed with a melancholy smile.
“There are doubtless temptations enough to be
false under the best of conditions in this world.
But something — I do not know what or whom;
perhaps no more my uncle or my mother than I,
for they were only as the past had made them —
caused me to begin by living a lie, do you not
see?”
“Yes, yes,” reluctantly assented the girl.
“Perhaps — who knows? — that is why no good
has come of me, nor can come. My uncle's piety
and repute have always been my efficient help. He
is the principal priest of the church to which I am
attached, and he has had infinite patience with me.
My ambition and my attempted inventions are a
scandal to him, for he is a priest of those like the
Holy Father, who believe that all the wickedness
of the modern world has come from the devices of
science; my indifference to the things of religion
is a terror and a sorrow to him which he combats
with prayers and penances. He starves himself and
goes cold and faint that God may have mercy and
turn my heart to the things on which his own is
fixed. He loves my soul, but not me, and we are
scarcely friends.”
Florida continued to look at him with steadfast,
like some dream,” she murmured, “that you
should be saying all this to me, Don Ippolito, and
I do not know why I should have asked you anything.”
The pity of this virginal heart must have been
very sweet to the man on whom she looked it. His
eyes worshipped her, as he answered her devoutly,
“It was due to the truth in you that I should seem
to you what I am.”
“Indeed, you make me ashamed!” she cried
with a blush. “It was selfish of me to ask you to
speak. And now, after what you have told me, I
am so helpless and I know so very little that I
don't understand how to comfort or encourage you.
But surely you can somehow help yourself. Are
men, that seem so strong and able, just as powerless
as women, after all, when it comes to real
trouble? Is a man” —
“I cannot answer. I am only a priest,” said
Don Ippolito coldly, letting his eyes drop to the
gown that fell about him like a woman's skirt.
“Yes, but a priest should be a man, and so much
more; a priest” —
Don Ippolito shrugged his shoulders.
“No, no!” cried the girl. “Your own schemes
have all failed, you say; then why do you not
think of becoming a priest in reality, and getting
the good there must be in such a calling? It is
singular that I should venture to say such a thing
for me, a Protestant — but our ways are so
different.”.... She paused, coloring deeply,
then controlled herself, and added with grave composure,
“If you were to pray” —
“To what, madamigella?” asked the priest,
sadly.
“To what!” she echoed, opening her eyes full
upon him. “To God!”
Don Ippolito made no answer. He let his head
fall so low upon his breast that she could see the
sacerdotal tonsure.
“You must excuse me,” she said, blushing again.
“I did not mean to wound your feelings as a Catholic.
I have been very bold and intrusive. I ought
to have remembered that people of your church
have different ideas — that the saints” —
Don Ippolito looked up with pensive irony.
“Oh, the poor saints!”
“I don't understand you,” said Florida, very
gravely.
“I mean that I believe in the saints as little as
you do.”
“But you believe in your Church?”
“I have no Church.”
There was a silence in which Don Ippolito again
dropped his head upon his breast. Florida leaned
forward in her eagerness, and murmured, “You
believe in God?”
The priest lifted his eyes and looked at her beseechingly.
“I do not know,” he whispered.
She met his gaze with one of dumb bewilderment.
At last she said: “Sometimes you baptize
little children and receive them into the church
in the name of God?”
“Yes.”
“Poor creatures come to you and confess their
sins, and you absolve them, or order them to do
penances?”
“Yes.”
“And sometimes when people are dying, you
must stand by their death-beds and give them the
last consolations of religion?”
“It is true.”
“Oh!” moaned the girl, and fixed on Don Ippolito
a long look of wonder and reproach, which he
met with eyes of silent anguish.
“It is terrible, madamigella,” he said, rising. “I
know it. I would fain have lived single-heartedly,
for I think I was made so; but now you see how
black and deadly a lie my life is. It is worse than
you could have imagined, is it not? It is worse
than the life of the cruelest bigot, for he at least
believes in himself.”
“Worse, far worse!”
“But at least, dear young lady,” he went on piteously,
“believe me that I have the grace to abhor
myself. It is not much, it is very, very little, but
it is something. Do not wholly condemn me!”
“Condemn? Oh, I am sorry for you with my
whole heart. Only, why must you tell me all this?
I made you put yourself to shame.”
“Not that, dearest madamigella. I would unsay
nothing now, if I could, unless to take away the
pain I have given you. It has been more a relief
than a shame to have all this known to you; and
even if you should despise me” —
“I don't despise you; that is n't for me; but oh,
I wish that I could help you!”
Don Ippolito shook his head. “You cannot help
me; but I thank you for your compassion; I shall
never forget it.” He lingered irresolutely with his
hat in his hand. “Shall we go on with the reading,
madamigella?”
“No, we will not read any more to-day,” she answered.
“Then I relieve you of the disturbance, madamigella,”
he said; and after a moment's hesitation he
bowed sadly and went.
She mechanically followed him to the door, with
some little gestures and movements of a desire to
keep him from going, yet let him go, and so turned
back and sat down with her hands resting noiseless
on the keys of the piano.
| X. A foregone conclusion | |