 | XIV. A foregone conclusion |  |
14. XIV.
Don Ippolito did not go directly to the painter's.
He walked toward his house at first, and then turned
aside, and wandered out through the noisy and populous
district of Canaregio to the Campo di Marte.
A squad of cavalry which had been going through
some exercises there was moving off the parade
ground; a few infantry soldiers were strolling about
under the trees. Don Ippolito walked across the
field to the border of the lagoon, where he began to
pace to and fro, with his head sunk in deep thought.
He moved rapidly, but sometimes he stopped and
stood still in the sun, whose heat he did not seem
to feel, though a perspiration bathed his pale face
and stood in drops on his forehead under the
shadow of his nicchio. Some little dirty children of
the poor, with which this region swarms, looked at
him from the sloping shore of the Campo di Giustizia,
where the executions used to take place, and
a small boy began to mock his movements and
pauses, but was arrested by one of the girls, who
shook him and gesticulated warningly.
At this point the long railroad bridge which connects
Venice with the mainland is in full sight, and
now from the reverie in which he continued, whether
he walked or stood still, Don Ippolito was roused by
his eye as it streamed along over the far-stretching
arches, and struck out into the flat, salt marshes beyond.
When the distance hid it, he put on his hat,
which he had unknowingly removed, and turned
his rapid steps toward the railroad station. Arrived
there, he lingered in the vestibule for half an
hour, watching the people as they bought their
tickets for departure, and had their baggage examined
by the customs officers, and weighed and
registered by the railroad porters, who passed it
through the wicket shutting out the train, while the
passengers gathered up their smaller parcels and
took their way to the waiting-rooms. He followed
a group of English people some paces in this direction,
and then returned to the wicket, through
which he looked long and wistfully at the train.
The baggage was all passed through; the doors of
the waiting-rooms were thrown open with harsh
proclamation by the guards, and the passengers
flocked into the carriages. Whistles and bells
were sounded, and the train crept out of the station.
A man in the company's uniform approached the
unconscious priest, and striking his hands softly together,
said with a pleasant smile, “Your servant,
Don Ippolito. Are you expecting some one?”
“Ah, good day!” answered the priest, with a
little start. “No,” he added, “I was not looking
for any one.”
“I see,” said the other. “Amusing yourself as
usual with the machinery. Excuse the freedom,
Don Ippolito; but you ought to have been of our
profession, — ha, ha! When you have the leisure,
I should like to show you the drawing of an American
locomotive which a friend of mine has sent me
from Nuova York. It is very different from ours,
very curious. But monstrous in size, you know,
prodigious! May I come with it to your house,
some evening?”
“You will do me a great pleasure,” said Don Ippolito.
He gazed dreamily in the direction of the
vanished train. “Was that the train for Milan?”
he asked presently.
“Exactly,” said the man.
“Does it go all the way to Milan?”
“Oh, no! it stops at Peschiera, where the passengers
have their passports examined; and then
another train backs down from Desenzano and
takes them on to Milan. And after that,” continued
the man with animation, “if you are on the
way to England, for example, another train carries
you to Susa, and there you get the diligence over
the mountain to St. Michel, where you take railroad
again, and so on up through Paris to Boulognesur-Mer,
and then by steamer to Folkestone, and
then by railroad to London and to Liverpool. It is
at Liverpool that you go on board the steamer for
America, and piff! in ten days you are in Nuova
York. My friend has written me all about it.”
“Ah yes, your friend. Does he like it there in
America?”
“Passably, passably. The Americans have no
manners; but they are good devils. They are
governed by the Irish. And the wine is dear. But
he likes America; yes, he likes it. Nuova York is
a fine city. But immense, you know! Eight times
as large as Venice!”
“Is your friend prosperous there?”
“Ah heigh! That is the prettiest part of the
story. He has made himself rich. He is employed
by a large house to make designs for mantlepieces,
and marble tables, and tombs; and he has — listen!
— six hundred francs a month!”
“Oh per Bacco!” cried Don Ippolito.
“Honestly. But you spend a great deal there.
Still, it is magnificent, is it not? If it were not
for that blessed war there, now, that would be the
place for you, Don Ippolito. He tells me the
Americans are actually mad for inventions. Your
servant. Excuse the freedom, you know,” said the
man, bowing and moving away.
“Nothing, dear, nothing,” answered the priest.
He walked out of the station with a light step, and
went to his own house, where he sought the room
in which his inventions were stored. He had not
touched them for weeks. They were all dusty and
many were cobwebbed. He blew the dust from
some, and bringing them to the light, examined
them critically, finding them mostly disabled in one
which he polished with his handkerchief and
set apart, surveying them from a distance with a
look of hope. He took up the breech-loading cannon
and then suddenly put it down again with a
little shiver, and went to the threshold of the perverted
oratory and glanced in at his forge. Veneranda
had carelessly left the window open, and the
draught had carried the ashes about the floor. On
the cinder-heap lay the tools which he had used in
mending the broken pipe of the fountain at Casa
Vervain, and had not used since. The place seemed
chilly even on that summer's day. He stood in the
doorway with clenched hands. Then he called
Veneranda, child her for leaving the window open,
and bade her close it, and so quitted the house and
left her muttering.
Ferris seemed surprised to see him when he appeared
at the consulate near the middle of the afternoon,
and seated himself in the place where he
was wont to pose for the painter.
“Were you going to give me a sitting?” asked
the latter, hesitating. “The light is horrible, just
now, with this glare from the canal. Not that I
manage much better when it 's good. I don't get
on with you, Don Ippolito. There are too many
of you. I should n't have known you in the procession
yesterday.”
Don Ippolito did not respond. He rose and went
toward his portrait on the easel, and examined it
to his chair, and continued to look at it. “I suppose
that it resembles me a great deal,” he said,
“and yet I do not feel like that. I hardly know
what is the fault. It is as I should be if I were
like other priests, perhaps?”
“I know it 's not good,” said the painter. “It
is conventional, in spite of everything. But here 's
that first sketch I made of you.”
He took up a canvas facing the wall, and set it
on the easel. The character in this charcoal sketch
was vastly sincerer and sweeter.
“Ah!” said Don Ippolito, with a sigh and smile
of relief, “that is immeasurably better. I wish I
could speak to you, dear friend, in a mood of yours
as sympathetic as this picture records, of some matters
that concern me very nearly. I have just come
from the railroad station.”
“Seeing some friends off?” asked the painter,
indifferently, hovering near the sketch with a bit of
charcoal in his hand, and hesitating whether to give
it a certain touch. He glanced with half-shut eyes
at the priest.
Don Ippolito sighed again. “I hardly know. I
was seeing off my hopes, my desires, my prayers,
that followed the train to America!”
The painter put down his charcoal, dusted his
fingers, and looked at the priest without saying
anything.
“Do you remember when I first came to you?”
asked Don Ippolito.
“Certainly,” said Ferris. “Is it of that matter
you want to speak to me? I 'm very sorry to hear
it, for I don't think it practical.”
“Practical, practical!” cried the priest hotly.
“Nothing is practical till it has been tried. And
why should I not go to America?”
“Because you can't get your passport, for one
thing,” answered the painter dryly.
“I have thought of that,” rejoined Don Ippolito
more patiently. “I can get a passport for France
from the Austrian authorities here, and at Milan
there must be ways in which I could change it for
one from my own king” — it was by this title that
patriotic Venetians of those days spoke of Victor
Emmanuel — “that would carry me out of France
into England.”
Ferris pondered a moment. “That is quite
true,” he said. “Why had n't you thought of that
when you first came to me?”
“I cannot tell. I did n't know that I could even
get a passport for France till the other day.”
Both were silent while the painter filled his pipe.
“Well,” he said presently, “I 'm very sorry. I 'm
afraid you 're dooming yourself to many bitter disappointments
in going to America. What do you
expect to do there?”
“Why, with my inventions” —
“I suppose,” interrupted the other, putting a
lighted match to his pipe, “that a painter must be
a very poor sort of American: his first thought is
about the fortunes of my inventive fellow-countrymen,
or whether an inventor has any prospect of
making a living. But once when I was at Washington
I went into the Patent Office, where the
models of the inventions are deposited; the building
is about as large as the Ducal Palace, and it is
full of them. The people there told me nothing
was commoner than for the same invention to be repeated
over and over again by different inventors.
Some few succeed, and then they have lawsuits
with the infringers of their patents; some sell out
their inventions for a trifle to companies that have
capital, and that grow rich upon them; the great
number can never bring their ideas to the public
notice at all. You can judge for yourself what
your chances would be. You have asked me why
you should not go to America. Well, because I
think you would starve there.”
“I am used to that,” said Don Ippolito; “and
besides, until some of my inventions became known,
I could give lessons in Italian.”
“Oh, bravo!” said Ferris, “you prefer instant
death, then?”
“But madamigella seemed to believe that my
success as an inventor would be assured, there.”
Ferris gave a very ironical laugh. “Miss Vervain
must have been about twelve years old when
she left America. Even a lady's knowledge of business,
at that age, is limited. When did you talk
me, of late, and I thought you were more contented
than you used to be.”
“It is true,” said the priest. “Sometimes within
the last two months I have almost forgotten it.”
“And what has brought it so forcibly to your
mind again?”
“That is what I so greatly desire to tell you,”
replied Don Ippolito, with an appealing look at the
painter's face. He moistened his parched lips a
little, waiting for further question from the painter,
to whom he seemed a man fevered by some strong
emotion and at that moment not quite wholesome.
Ferris did not speak, and Don Ippolito began
again: “Even though I have not said so in words
to you, dear friend, has it not appeared to you that
I have no heart in my vocation?”
“Yes, I have sometimes fancied that. I had no
right to ask you why.”
“Some day I will tell you, when I have the
courage to go all over it again. It is partly my
own fault, but it is more my miserable fortune.
But wherever the wrong lies, it has at last become
intolerable to me. I cannot endure it any longer
and live. I must go away, I must fly from it.”
Ferris shrank from him a little, as men instinctively
do from one who has set himself upon some
desperate attempt. “Do you mean, Don Ippolito,
that you are going to renounce your priesthood?”
Don Ippolito opened his hands and let his priesthood
drop, as it were, to the ground.
“You never spoke of this before, when you talked
of going to America. Though to be sure” —
“Yes, yes!” replied Don Ippolito with vehemence,
“but now an angel has appeared and shown
me the blackness of my life!”
Ferris began to wonder if he or Don Ippolito
were not perhaps mad.
“An angel, yes,” the priest went on, rising from
his chair, “an angel whose immaculate truth has
mirrored my falsehood in all its vileness and distortion
— to whom, if it destroys me, I cannot devote
less than a truthfulness like hers!”
“Hers — hers?” cried the painter, with a sudden
pang. “Whose? Don't speak in these riddles.
Whom do you mean?”
“Whom can I mean but only one? — madamigella!”
“Miss Vervain? Do you mean to say that Miss
Vervain has advised you to renounce your priesthood?”
“In as many words she has bidden me forsake it
at any risk, — at the cost of kindred, friends, good
fame, country, everything.”
The painter passed his hand confusedly over his
face. These were his own words, the words he had
used in speaking with Florida of the supposed skeptical
priest. He grew very pale. “May I ask,”
he demanded in a hard, dry voice, “how she came
to advise such a step?”
“I can hardly tell. Something had already
to know that I was a man with neither faith nor
hope. Her pure heart was torn by the thought of
my wrong and of my error. I had never seen myself
in such deformity as she saw me even when she
used me with that divine compassion. I was almost
glad to be what I was because of her angelic
pity for me!”
The tears sprang to Don Ippolito's eyes, but
Ferris asked in the same tone as before, “Was it
then that she bade you be no longer a priest?”
“No, not then,” patiently replied the other;
“she was too greatly overwhelmed with my calamity
to think of any cure for it. To-day it was that
she uttered those words — words which I shall never
forget, which will support and comfort me, whatever
happens!”
The painter was biting hard upon the stem of his
pipe. He turned away and began ordering the
color-tubes and pencils on a table against the wall,
putting them close together in very neat, straight
rows. Presently he said: “Perhaps Miss Vervain
also advised you to go to America?”
“Yes,” answered the priest reverently. “She
had thought of everything. She has promised me
a refuge under her mother's roof there, until I can
make my inventions known; and I shall follow
them at once.”
“Follow them?”
“They are going, she told me. Madama does
but you must know all this already?”
“Oh, not at all, not at all,” said the painter with
a very bitter smile. “You are telling me news.
Pray go on.”
“There is no more. She made me promise to
come to you and listen to your advice before I took
any step. I must not trust to her alone, she said;
but if I took this step, then through whatever happened
she would be my friend. Ah, dear friend,
may I speak to you of the hope that these words
gave me? You have seen — have you not? — you
must have seen that” —
The priest faltered, and Ferris stared at him
helpless. When the next words came he could not
find any strangeness in the fact which yet gave him
so great a shock. He found that to his nether consciousness
it had been long familiar — ever since
that day when he had first jestingly proposed Don
Ippolito as Miss Vervain's teacher. Grotesque,
tragic, impossible — it had still been the under-current
of all his reveries; or so now it seemed to have
been.
Don Ippolito anxiously drew nearer to him and
laid an imploring touch upon his arm, — “I love
her!”
“What!” gasped the painter. “You? You!
A priest?”
“Priest! priest!” cried Don Ippolito, violently.
“From this day I am no longer a priest! From
love of a man, the truth of a most sacred
marriage, and fidelity to death!”
Ferris made no answer. He began to look very
coldly and haughtily at Don Ippolito, whose heat
died away under his stare, and who at last met it
with a glance of tremulous perplexity. His hand
had dropped from Ferris's arm, and he now moved
some steps from him. “What is it, dear friend?”
he besought him. “Is there something that offends
you? I came to you for counsel, and you meet me
with a repulse little short of enmity. I do not understand.
Do I intend anything wrong without
knowing it? Oh, I conjure you to speak plainly!”
“Wait! Wait a minute,” said Ferris, waving
his hand like a man tormented by a passing pain.
“I am trying to think. What you say is....
I cannot imagine it!”
“Not imagine it? Not imagine it? And why?
Is she not beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“And good?”
“Without doubt.”
“And young, and yet wise beyond her years?
And true, and yet angelically kind?”
“It is all as you say, God knows. But....
a priest” —
“Oh! Always that accursed word! And at
heart, what is a priest, then, but a man? — a
wretched, masked, imprisoned, banished man! Has
to see what is fair, and ears to hear what is sweet?
Can he live near so divine a flower and not know
her grace, not inhale the fragrance of her soul, not
adore her beauty? Oh, great God! And if at
last he would tear off his stifling mask, escape from
his prison, return from his exile, would you gainsay
him?”
“No!” said the painter with a kind of groan.
He sat down in a tall, carven gothic chair, — the
furniture of one of his pictures, — and rested his
head against its high back and looked at the priest
across the room. “Excuse me,” he continued with
a strong effort. “I am ready to befriend you to
the utmost of my power. What was it you wanted
to ask me? I have told you truly what I thought
of your scheme of going to America; but I may
very well be mistaken. Was it about that Miss
Vervain desired you to consult me?” His voice
and manner hardened again in spite of him. “Or
did she wish me to advise you about the renunciation
of your priesthood? You must have thought
that carefully over for yourself.”
“Yes, I do not think you could make me see that
as a greater difficulty than it has appeared to me.”
He paused with a confused and daunted air, as if
some important point had slipped his mind. “But
I must take the step; the burden of the double
part I play is unendurable, is it not?”
“You know better than I.”
“But if you were such a man as I, with neither
love for your vocation nor faith in it, should you
not cease to be a priest?”
“If you ask me in that way, — yes,” answered
the painter. “But I advise you nothing. I could
not counsel another in such a case.”
“But you think and feel as I do,” said the priest,
“and I am right, then.”
“I do not say you are wrong.”
Ferris was silent while Don Ippolito moved up
and down the room, with his sliding step, like some
tall, gaunt, unhappy girl. Neither could put an
end to this interview, so full of intangible, inconclusive
misery. Ferris drew a long breath, and then
said steadily, “Don Ippolito, I suppose you did not
speak idly to me of your — your feeling for Miss
Vervain, and that I may speak plainly to you in
return.”
“Surely,” answered the priest, pausing in his
walk and fixing his eyes upon the painter. “It
was to you as the friend of both that I spoke of my
love, and my hope — which is oftener my despair.”
“Then you have not much reason to believe that
she returns your — feeling?”
“Ah, how could she consciously return it? I
have been hitherto a priest to her, and the thought
of me would have been impurity. But hereafter, if
I can prove myself a man, if I can win my place in
the world.... No, even now, why should she
care so much for my escape from these bonds, if she
did not care for me more than she knew?”
“Have you ever thought of that extravagant
generosity of Miss Vervain's character?”
“It is divine!”
“Has it seemed to you that if such a woman
knew herself to have once wrongly given you pain,
her atonement might be as headlong and excessive
as her offense? That she could have no reserves
in her reparation?”
Don Ippolito looked at Ferris, but did not interpose.
“Miss Vervain is very religious in her way, and
she is truth itself. Are you sure that it is not concern
for what seems to her your terrible position,
that has made her show so much anxiety on your
account?”
“Do I not know that well? Have I not felt
the balm of her most heavenly pity?”
“And may she not be only trying to appeal to
something in you as high as the impulse of her own
heart?”
“As high!” cried Don Ippolito, almost angrily.
“Can there be any higher thing in heaven or on
earth than love for such a woman?”
“Yes; both in heaven and on earth,” answered
Ferris.
“I do not understand you,” said Don Ippolito
with a puzzled stare.
Ferris did not reply. He fell into a dull reverie
in which he seemed to forget Don Ippolito and the
“Have you nothing to say to me, signore?”
“I? What is there to say?” returned the other
blankly.
“Do you know any reason why I should not love
her, save that I am — have been — a priest?”
“No, I know none,” said the painter, wearily.
“Ah,” exclaimed Don Ippolito, “there is something
on your mind that you will not speak. I
beseech you not to let me go wrong. I love her so
well that I would rather die than let my love offend
her. I am a man with the passions and hopes of a
man, but without a man's experience, or a man's
knowledge of what is just and right in these relations.
If you can be my friend in this so far as to
advise or warn me; if you can be her friend” —
Ferris abruptly rose and went to his balcony,
and looked out upon the Grand Canal. The timestained
palace opposite had not changed in the last
half-hour. As on many another summer day, he saw
the black boats going by. A heavy, high-pointed
barge from the Sile, with the captain's family at
dinner in the shade of a matting on the roof, moved
sluggishly down the middle current. A party of
Americans in a gondola, with their opera-glasses
and guide-books in their hands, pointed out to each
other the eagle on the consular arms. They were
all like sights in a mirror, or things in a world
turned upside down.
Ferris came back and looked dizzily at the priest,
phantasm had been telling him that it loved a
beautiful young girl of his own race, faith, and
language.
“Will you not answer me, signore?” meekly demanded
Don Ippolito.
“In this matter,” replied the painter, “I cannot
advise or warn you. The whole affair is beyond my
conception. I mean no unkindness, but I cannot
consult with you about it. There are reasons why
I should not. The mother of Miss Vervain is here
with her, and I do not feel that her interests in
such a matter are in my hands. If they come to
me for help, that is different. What do you wish?
You tell me that you are resolved to renounce the
priesthood and go to America; and I have answered
you to the best of my power. You tell me that
you are in love with Miss Vervain. What can I
have to say about that?”
Don Ippolito stood listening with a patient, and
then a wounded air. “Nothing,” he answered
proudly. “I ask your pardon for troubling you
with my affairs. Your former kindness emboldened
me too much. I shall not trespass again. It was
my ignorance, which I pray you to excuse. I take
my leave, signore.”
He bowed, and moved out of the room, and a
dull remorse filled the painter, as he heard the outer
door close after him. But he could do nothing.
If he had given a wound to the heart that trusted
able to master, and whose causes he could not yet
define. It was all a shapeless torment; it held him
like the memory of some hideous nightmare prolonging
its horror beyond sleep. It seemed impossible
that what had happened should have happened.
It was long, as he sat in the chair from which he
had talked with Don Ippolito, before he could reason
about what had been said; and then the worst
phase presented itself first. He could not help seeing
that the priest might have found cause for hope
in the girl's behavior toward him. Her violent resentments,
and her equally violent repentances; her
fervent interest in his unhappy fortunes, and her
anxiety that he should at once forsake the priesthood;
her urging him to go to America, and her
promising him a home under her mother's roof
there: why might it not all be in fact a proof of
her tenderness for him? She might have found it
necessary to be thus coarsely explicit with him, for
a man in Don Ippolito's relation to her could not
otherwise have imagined her interest in him. But
her making use of Ferris to confirm her own purposes
by his words, her repeating them so that they
should come back to him from Don Ippolito's lips,
her letting another man go with her to look upon
the procession in which her priestly lover was to
appear in his sacerdotal panoply; these things could
not be accounted for except by that strain of insolent,
from the beginning. Why should she first tell Don
Ippolito of their going away? “Well, I wish him
joy of his bargain,” said Ferris aloud, and rising,
shrugged his shoulders, and tried to cast off all care
of a matter that did not concern him. But one
does not so easily cast off a matter that does not
concern one. He found himself haunted by certain
tones and looks and attitudes of the young girl,
wholly alien to the character he had just constructed
for her. They were child-like, trusting, unconscious,
far beyond anything he had yet known in
women, and they appealed to him now with a maddening
pathos. She was standing there before Don
Ippolito's picture as on that morning when she
came to Ferris, looking anxiously at him, her innocent
beauty, troubled with some hidden care, hallowing
the place. Ferris thought of the young
fellow who told him that he had spent three months
in a dull German town because he had the room
there that was once occupied by the girl who had
refused him; the painter remembered that the
young fellow said he had just read of her marriage
in an American newspaper.
Why did Miss Vervain send Don Ippolito to him?
Was it some scheme of her secret love for the
priest; or mere coarse resentment of the cautions
Ferris had once hinted, a piece of vulgar bravado?
But if she had acted throughout in pure simplicity,
in unwise goodness of heart? If Don Ippolito
unknowing pity had given him grounds of hope?
He himself had suggested this to the priest, and
now with a different motive he looked at it in his
own behalf. A great load began slowly to lift itself
from Ferris's heart, which could ache now for
this most unhappy priest. But if his conjecture
were just, his duty would be different. He must
not coldly acquiesce and let things take their course.
He had introduced Don Ippolito to the Vervains;
he was in some sort responsible for him; he must
save them if possible from the painful consequences
of the priest's hallucination. But how to do this
was by no means clear. He blamed himself for
not having been franker with Don Ippolito and
tried to make him see that the Vervains might regard
his passion as a presumption upon their kindness
to him, an abuse of their hospitable friendship;
and yet how could he have done this without outrage
to a sensitive and right-meaning soul? For a
moment it seemed to him that he must seek Don
Ippolito, and repair his fault; but they had hardly
parted as friends, and his action might be easily
misconstrued. If he shrank from the thought of
speaking to him of the matter again, it appeared
yet more impossible to bring it before the Vervains.
Like a man of the imaginative temperament as he
was, he exaggerated the probable effect, and pictured
their dismay in colors that made his interference
seem a ludicrous enormity; in fact, it would
hampered by his intricate obligations. He felt
bound to the Vervains, the ignorant young girl, and
the addle-pated mother; but if he ought to go to
them and tell them what he knew, to which of them
ought he to speak, and how? In an anguish of
perplexity that made the sweat stand in drops upon
his forehead, he smiled to think it just possible that
Mrs. Vervain might take the matter seriously, and
wish to consider the propriety of Florida's accepting
Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to the daughter,
how should he approach the subject? “Don Ippolito
tells me he loves you, and he goes to America
with the expectation that when he has made his
fortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you
will marry him.” Should he say something to this
purport? And in Heaven's name what right had
he, Ferris, to say anything at all? The horrible
absurdity, the inexorable delicacy of his position
made him laugh.
On the other hand, besides, he was bound to Don
Ippolito, who had come to him as the nearest friend
of both, and confided in him. He remembered with
a tardy, poignant intelligence how in their first talk
of the Vervains Don Ippolito had taken pains to
inform himself that Ferris was not in love with
Florida. Could he be less manly and generous than
this poor priest, and violate the sanctity of his confidence?
Ferris groaned aloud. No, contrive it
as he would, call it by what fair name he chose, he
impossible to him because, in this agony of doubt
as to what he should do, he now at least read his
own heart clearly, and had no longer a doubt what
was in it. He pitied her for the pain she must
suffer. He saw how her simple goodness, her blind
sympathy with Don Ippolito, and only this, must
have led the priest to the mistaken pass at which
he stood. But Ferris felt that the whole affair had
been fatally carried beyond his reach; he could do
nothing now but wait and endure. There are cases
in which a man must not protect the woman he
loves. This was one.
The afternoon wore away. In the evening he
went to the Piazza, and drank a cup of coffee at
Florian's. Then he walked to the Public Gardens,
where he watched the crowd till it thinned in the
twilight and left him alone. He hung upon the
parapet, looking off over the lagoon that at last he
perceived to be flooded with moonlight. He desperately
called a gondola, and bade the man row
him to the public landing nearest the Vervains',
and so walked up the calle, and entered the palace
from the campo, through the court that on one side
opened into the garden.
Mrs. Vervain was alone in the room where he
had always been accustomed to find her daughter
with her, and a chill as of the impending change
fell upon him. He felt how pleasant it had been
to find them together; with a vain, piercing regret
him. Mrs. Vervain, indeed, was not changed; she
was even more than ever herself, though all that
she said imported change. She seemed to observe
nothing unwonted in him, and she began to talk in
her way of things that she could not know were so
near his heart.
“Now, Mr. Ferris, I have a little surprise for
you. Guess what it is!”
“I 'm not good at guessing. I 'd rather not
know what it is than have to guess it,” said Ferris,
trying to be light, under his heavy trouble.
“You won't try once, even? Well, you 're going
to be rid of us soon! We are going away.”
“Yes, I knew that,” said Ferris quietly. “Don
Ippolito told me so to-day.”
“And is that all you have to say? Is n't it
rather sad? Is n't it sudden? Come, Mr. Ferris,
do be a little complimentary, for once!”
“It 's sudden, and I can assure you it 's sad
enough for me,” replied the painter, in a tone
which could not leave any doubt of his sincerity.
“Well, so it is for us,” quavered Mrs. Vervain.
“You have been very, very good to us,” she went
on more collectedly, “and we shall never forget it.
Florida has been speaking of it, too, and she 's extremely
grateful, and thinks we 've quite imposed
upon you.”
“Thanks.”
“I suppose we have, but as I always say, you 're
that 's neither here nor there. We have no relatives
on the face of the earth, you know; but I
have a good many old friends in Providence, and
we 're going back there. We both think I shall
be better at home; for I 'm sorry to say, Mr.
Ferris, that though I don't complain of Venice, —
it 's really a beautiful place, and all that; not the
least exaggerated, — still I don't think it 's done
my health much good; or at least I don't seem to
gain, don't you know, I don't seem to gain.”
“I 'm very sorry to hear it, Mrs. Vervain.”
“Yes, I'm sure you are; but you see, don't you,
that we must go? We are going next week.
When we 've once made up our minds, there 's no
object in prolonging the agony.”
Mrs. Vervain adjusted her glasses with the
thumb and finger of her right hand, and peered into
Ferris's face with a gay smile. “But the greatest
part of the surprise is,” she resumed, lowering
her voice a little, “that Don Ippolito is going with
us.”
“Ah!” cried Ferris sharply.
“I knew I should surprise you,” laughed Mrs.
Vervain. “We 've been having a regular confab
— clave, I mean — about it here, and he 's all on
fire to go to America; though it must be kept a
great secret on his account, poor fellow. He 's to
join us in France, and then he can easily get into
England, with us. You know he 's to give up being
when he gets to America. Now, what do you
think of it, Mr. Ferris? Quite strikes you dumb,
does n't it?” triumphed Mrs. Vervain. “I suppose
it 's what you would call a wild goose chase,
— I used to pick up all those phrases, — but we
shall carry it through.”
Ferris gasped, as though about to speak, but said
nothing.
“Don Ippolito 's been here the whole afternoon,”
continued Mrs. Vervain, “or rather ever since
about five o'clock. He took dinner with us, and
we 've been talking it over and over. He 's so enthusiastic
about it, and yet he breaks down every
little while, and seems quite to despair of the undertaking.
But Florida won't let him do that; and
really it 's funny, the way he defers to her judgment
— you know I always regard Florida as such
a mere child — and seems to take every word she
says for gospel. But, shedding tears, now: it 's
dreadful in a man, is n't it? I wish Don Ippolito
would n't do that. It makes one creep. I can't
feel that it 's manly; can you?”
Ferris found voice to say something about those
things being different with the Latin races.
“Well, at any rate,” said Mrs. Vervain, “I 'm
glad that Americans don't shed tears, as a general
rule. Now, Florida: you 'd think she was the
man all through this business, she 's so perfectly heroic
about it; that is, outwardly: for I can see —
she 's on the point of breaking down, all the while.
Has she ever spoken to you about Don Ippolito?
She does think so highly of your opinion, Mr. Ferris.”
“She does me too much honor,” said Ferris, with
ghastly irony.
“Oh, I don't think so,” returned Mrs. Vervain.
“She told me this morning that she 'd made Don
Ippolito promise to speak to you about it; but he
did n't mention having done so, and — I hated,
don't you know, to ask him..... In fact, Florida
had told me beforehand that I must n't. She said
he must be left entirely to himself in that matter,
and” — Mrs. Vervain looked suggestively at Ferris.
“He spoke to me about it,” said Ferris.
“Then why in the world did you let me run on?
I suppose you advised him against it.”
“I certainly did.”
“Well, there 's where I think woman's intuition
is better than man's reason.”
The painter silently bowed his head.
“Yes, I 'm quite woman's rights in that respect,”
said Mrs. Vervain.
“Oh, without doubt,” answered Ferris, aimlessly.
“I 'm perfectly delighted,” she went on, “at the
idea of Don Ippolito's giving up the priesthood, and
I've told him he must get married to some good
American girl. You ought to have seen how the
are lots of nice girls that would jump at him — so
handsome and sad-looking, and a genius.”
Ferris could only stare helplessly at Mrs. Vervain,
who continued: —
“Yes, I think he 's a genius, and I 'm determined
that he shall have a chance. I suppose we 've got
a job on our hands; but I 'm not sorry. I 'll introduce
him into society, and if he needs money he
shall have it. What does God give us money for,
Mr. Ferris, but to help our fellow-creatures?”
So miserable, as he was, from head to foot, that
it seemed impossible he could endure more, Ferris
could not forbear laughing at this burst of piety.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Mrs. Vervain,
who had cheerfully joined him. “Something
I 've been saying. Well, you won't have me to
laugh at much longer. I do wonder whom you 'll
have next.”
Ferris's merriment died away in something like a
groan, and when Mrs. Vervain again spoke, it was
in a tone of sudden querulousness. “I wish Florida
would come! She went to bolt the land-gate after
Don Ippolito, — I wanted her to, — but she ought
to have been back long ago. It 's odd you did n't
meet them, coming in. She must be in the garden
somewhere; I suppose she 's sorry to be leaving it.
But I need her. Would you be so very kind, Mr.
Ferris, as to go and ask her to come to me?”
Ferris rose heavily from the chair in which he
hardly heard anything that he did not know already,
but the clear vision of the affair with which
he had come to the Vervains was hopelessly confused
and darkened. He could make nothing of
any phase of it. He did not know whether he
cared now to see Florida or not. He mechanically
obeyed Mrs. Vervain, and stepping out upon the
terrace, slowly descended the stairway.
The moon was shining brightly into the garden.
| XIV. A foregone conclusion | |