University of Virginia Library

4. IV.

The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an
apartment fronted on a broad campo, and hung its
empty marble balconies from gothic windows above
a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice.
The local pharmacy, the caffè, the grocery,
the fruiterer's, the other shops with which every
Venetian campo is furnished, had each a certain
life about it, but it was a silent life, and at midday
a frowsy-headed woman clacking across the flags in
her wooden-heeled shoes made echoes whose garrulity
was interrupted by no other sound. In the
early morning, when the lid of the public cistern in
the centre of the campo was unlocked, there was
a clamor of voices and a clangor of copper vessels,
as the housewives of the neighborhood and the local
force of strong-backed Friulan water-girls drew
their day's supply of water; and on that sort of
special parochial holiday, called a sagra, the campo
hummed and clattered and shrieked with a multitude
celebrating the day around the stands where
pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisettewater
were sold, and before the movable kitchen
where cakes were fried in caldrons of oil, and uproariously
offered to the crowd by the cook, who
did not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the

rival drama of adjoining puppet-shows, but continued
to bellow forth his bargains all day long and
far into the night, when the flames under his kettles
painted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra
once over, however, the campo relapsed into its
habitual silence, and no one looking at the front of
the palace would have thought of it as a place for
distraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But it was
not on this side that the landlord tempted his
tenants; his principal notice of lodgings to let was
affixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened
on a smaller channel so near the Grand Canal
that no wandering eye could fail to see it. The
portal was a tall arch of Venetian gothic tipped
with a carven flame; steps of white Istrian stone
descended to the level of the lowest ebb, irregularly
embossed with barnacles, and dabbling long fringes
of soft green sea-mosses in the rising and falling
tide. Swarms of water-bugs and beetles played
over the edges of the steps, and crabs scuttled sidewise
into deeper water at the approach of a gondola.
A length of stone-capped brick wall, to
which patches of stucco still clung, stretched from
the gate on either hand under cover of an ivy that
flung its mesh of shining green from within, where
there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for
Venice, and full of a delicious, half-sad surprise for
wh so opened upon it. In the midst it had a
broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on
a shell, and looking saucier than the sculptor
meant, from having lost the point of her nose;
nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses,
her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery
in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture
of an arm, or the casting of a leg or so; one
lady had no head, but she was the boldest of all.
In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate
trees, several of which hung about the
fountain with seats in their shade, and for the rest
there seemed to be mostly roses and oleanders, with
other shrubs of a kind that made the greatest show
of blossom and cost the least for tendance. A wide
terrace stretched across the rear of the palace, dropping
to the garden path by a flight of balustraded
steps, and upon this terrace opened the long windows
of Mrs. Vervain's parlor and dining-room.
Her landlord owned only the first story and the
basement of the palace, in some corner of which he
cowered with his servants, his taste for pictures and
bric-à-brac, and his little branch of inquiry into
Venetian history, whatever it was, ready to let
himself or anything he had for hire at a moment's
notice, but very pleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive;
a cheat and a liar, but of a kind heart
and sympathetic manners. Under his protection
Mrs. Vervain set up her impermanent household
gods. The apartment was taken only from week
to week, and as she freely explained to the padrone
hovering about with offers of service, she
knew herself too well ever to unpack anything that
would not spoil by remaining packed. She made
her trunks yield all the appliances necessary for
an invalid's comfort, and then left them in a
state to be strapped and transported to the station
within half a day after the desire of change or the
exigencies of her feeble health caused her going.
Everything for housekeeping was furnished with
the rooms. There was a gondolier and a sort of
house-servant in the employ of the landlord, of
whom Mrs. Vervain hired them, and she caressingly
dismissed the padrone at an early moment after her
arrival, with the charge to find a maid for herself
and daughter. As if she had been waiting at the
next door this maid appeared promptly, and being
Venetian, and in domestic service, her name
was of course Nina. Mrs. Vervain now said to
Florida that everything was perfect, and contentedly
began her life in Venice by telling Mr. Ferris,
when he came in the evening, that he could bring
Don Ippolito the day after the morrow, if he liked.

She and Florida sat on the terrace waiting for
them on the morning named, when Ferris, with the
priest in his clerical best, came up the garden path
in the sunny light. Don Ippolito's best was a little
poverty-stricken; he had faltered a while, before
leaving home, over the sad choice between a shabby
cylinder hat of obsolete fashion and his well-worn
three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put
on the latter with a sigh. He had made his servant
polish the buckles of his shoes, and instead of

a band of linen round his throat, he wore a strip of
cloth covered with small white beads, edged above
and below with a single row of pale blue ones.

As he mounted the steps with Ferris, Mrs. Vervain
came forward a little to meet them, while
Florida rose and stood beside her chair in a sort of
proud suspense and timidity. The elder lady was
in that black from which she had so seldom been
able to escape; but the daughter wore a dress of
delicate green, in which she seemed a part of the
young season that everywhere clothed itself in the
same tint. The sunlight fell upon her blonde
hair, melting into its light gold; her level brows
frowned somewhat with the glance of scrutiny
which she gave the dark young priest, who was
making his stately bow to her mother, and trying
to answer her English greetings in the same tongue.

“My daughter,” said Mrs. Vervain, and Don
Ippolito made another low bow, and then looked at
the girl with a sort of frank and melancholy wonder,
as she turned and exchanged a few words with
Ferris, who was assailing her seriousness and hauteur
with unabashed levity of compliment. A quick
light flashed and fled in her cheek as she talked,
and the fringes of her serious, asking eyes swept
slowly up and down as she bent them upon him a
moment before she broke abruptly, not coquettishly,
away from him, and moved towards her mother,
while Ferris walked off to the other end of the terrace,
with a laugh. Mrs. Vervain and the priest

were trying each other in French, and not making
great advance; he explained to Florida in Italian,
and she answered him hesitatingly; whereupon he
praised her Italian in set phrase.

“Thank you,” said the girl sincerely, “I have
tried to learn. I hope,” she added as before, “you
can make me see how little I know.” The deprecating
wave of the hand with which Don Ippolito
appealed to her from herself, seemed arrested midway
by his perception of some novel quality in her.
He said gravely that he should try to be of use, and
then the two stood silent.

“Come, Mr. Ferris,” called out Mrs. Vervain,
“breakfast is ready, and I want you to take me
in.”

“Too much honor,” said the painter, coming forward
and offering his arm, and Mrs. Vervain led
the way indoors.

“I suppose I ought to have taken Don Ippolito's
arm,” she confided in under-tone, “but the fact is,
our French is so unlike that we don't understand
each other very well.”

“Oh,” returned Ferris, “I 've known Italians and
Americans whom Frenchmen themselves could n't
understand.”

“You see it 's an American breakfast,” said Mrs.
Vervain with a critical glance at the table before
she sat down. “All but hot bread; that you can't
have,” and Don Ippolito was for the first time in
his life confronted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak,

eggs and toast, fried potatoes, and coffee with milk,
with a choice of tea. He subdued all signs of the
wonder he must have felt, and beyond cutting his
meat into little bits before eating it, did nothing to
betray his strangeness to the feast.

The breakfast had passed off very pleasantly,
with occasional lapses. “We break down under
the burden of so many languages,” said Ferris. “It
is an embarras de richesses. Let us fix upon a common
maccheronic. May I trouble you for a poco
piú di sugar dans mon café, Mrs. Vervain? What
do you think of the bellazza de ce weather magnifique,
Don Ippolito?”

“How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Vervain in a tone
of fond admiration aside to Don Ippolito, who
smiled, but shrank from contributing to the new
tongue.

“Very well, then,” said the painter. “I shall
stick to my native Bergamask for the future; and
Don Ippolito may translate for the foreign ladies.”

He ended by speaking English with everybody;
Don Ippolito eked out his speeches to Mrs. Vervain
in that tongue with a little French; Florida, conscious
of Ferris's ironical observance, used an embarrassed
but defiant Italian with the priest.

“I 'm so pleased!” said Mrs. Vervain, rising
when Ferris said that he must go, and Florida
shook hands with both guests.

“Thank you, Mrs. Vervain; I could have gone
before, if I 'd thought you would have liked it,” answered
the painter.

“Oh nonsense, now,” returned the lady. “You
know what I mean. I 'm perfectly delighted with
him,” she continued, getting Ferris to one side,
“and I know he must have a good accent. So very
kind of you. Will you arrange with him about the
pay? — such a shame! Thanks. Then I need n't
say anything to him about that. I 'm so glad I had
him to breakfast the first day; though Florida
thought not. Of course, one need n't keep it
up. But seriously, it is n't an ordinary case, you
know.”

Ferris laughed at her with a sort of affectionate
disrespect, and said good-by. Don Ippolito lingered
for a while to talk over the proposed lessons,
and then went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs.
Vervain remained thoughtful a moment before she
said: —

“That was rather droll, Florida.”

“What, mother?”

“His cutting his meat into small bites, before he
began to eat. But perhaps it 's the Venetian custom.
At any rate, my dear, he 's a gentleman in
virtue of his profession, and I could n't do less than
ask him to breakfast. He has beautiful manners;
and if he must take snuff, I suppose it 's neater to
carry two handkerchiefs, though it does look odd.
I wish he would n't take snuff.”

“I don't see why we need care, mother. At any
rate, we cannot help it.”

“That 's true, my dear. And his nails. Now,

when they 're spread out on a book, you know, to
keep it open, won't it be unpleasant?”

“They seem to have just such fingernails all over
Europe — except in England.”

“Oh, yes; I know it. I dare say we should n't
care for it in him, if he did n't seem so very nice
otherwise. How handsome he is!”