"Really?" Mrs. Vervain leaned towards Ferris for sharper scrutiny of his face. Her gla.s.ses sprang from her nose, and precipitated themselves into his bosom.
"Allow me," he said, with burlesque politeness, withdrawing them from the recesses of his waistcoat and gravely presenting them. Miss Vervain burst into a helpless laugh; then she turned toward her mother with a kind of indignant tenderness, and gently arranged her shawl so that it should not drop off when she rose to leave the gondola. She did not look again at Ferris, who resisted Mrs. Vervain"s entreaties to remain, and took leave as soon as the gondola landed.
The ladies went to their room, where Florida lifted from the table a vase of divers-colored hyacinths, and stepping out upon the balcony flung the flowers into the ca.n.a.l. As she put down the empty vase, the lingering perfume of the banished flowers haunted the air of the room.
"Why, Florida," said her mother, "those were the flowers that Mr. Ferris gave you. Did you fancy they had begun to decay? The smell of hyacinths when they"re a little old is dreadful. But I can"t imagine a gentleman"s giving you flowers that were at all old."
"Oh, mother, don"t speak to me!" cried Miss Vervain, pa.s.sionately, clasping her hands to her face.
"Now I see that I"ve been saying something to vex you, my darling," and seating herself beside the young girl on the sofa, she fondly took down her hands. "Do tell me what it was. Was it about your teachers falling in love with you? You know they did, Florida: Pestachiavi and Schulze, both; and that horrid old Fleuron."
"Did you think I liked any better on that account to have you talk it over with a stranger?" asked Florida, still angrily.
"That"s true, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain, penitently. "But if it worried you, why didn"t you do something to stop me? Give me a hint, or just a little knock, somewhere?"
"No, mother; I"d rather not. Then you"d have come out with the whole thing, to prove that you were right. It"s better to let it go," said Florida with a fierce laugh, half sob. "But it"s strange that you can"t remember how such things torment me."
"I suppose it"s my weak health, dear," answered the mother. "I didn"t use to be so. But now I don"t really seem to have the strength to be sensible. I know it"s silly as well as you. The talk just seems to keep going on of itself,--slipping out, slipping out. But you needn"t mind.
Mr. Ferris won"t think you could ever have done anything out of the way.
I"m sure you don"t act with _him_ as if you"d ever encouraged anybody. I think you"re too haughty with him, Florida. And now, his flowers."
"He"s detestable. He"s conceited and presuming beyond all endurance. I don"t care what he thinks of me. But it"s his manner towards you that I can"t tolerate."
"I suppose it"s rather free," said Mrs. Vervain. "But then you know, my dear, I shall be soon getting to be an old lady; and besides, I always feel as if consuls were a kind of one of the family. He"s been very obliging since we came; I don"t know what we should have done without him. And I don"t object to a little ease of manner in the gentlemen; I never did."
"He makes fun of you," cried Florida: "and there at the convent,", she said, bursting into angry tears, "he kept exchanging glances with that monk as if he.... He"s insulting, and I hate him!"
"Do you mean that he thought your mother ridiculous, Florida?" asked Mrs. Vervain gravely. "You must have misunderstood his looks; indeed you must. I can"t imagine why he should. I remember that I talked particularly well during our whole visit; my mind was active, for I felt unusually strong, and I was interested in everything. It"s nothing but a fancy of yours; or your prejudice, Florida. But it"s odd, now I"ve sat down for a moment, how worn out I feel. And thirsty."
Mrs. Vervain fitted on her gla.s.ses, but even then felt uncertainly about for the empty vase on the table before her.
"It isn"t a goblet, mother," said Florida; "I"ll get you some water."
"Do; and then throw a shawl over me. I"m sleepy, and a nap before dinner will do me good. I don"t see why I"m so drowsy of late. I suppose it"s getting into the sea air here at Venice; though it"s mountain air that makes you drowsy. But you"re quite mistaken about Mr. Ferris. He isn"t capable of anything really rude. Besides, there wouldn"t have been any sense in it."
The young girl brought the water and then knelt beside the sofa, on which she arranged the pillows under her mother, and covered her with soft wraps. She laid her cheek against the thinner face. "Don"t mind anything I"ve said, mother; let"s talk of something else."
The mother drew some loose threads of the daughter"s hair through her slender fingers, but said little more, and presently fell into a deep slumber. Florida gently lifted her head away, and remained kneeling before the sofa, looking into the sleeping face with an expression of strenuous, compa.s.sionate devotion, mixed with a vague alarm and self-pity, and a certain wondering anxiety.
III.
Don Ippolito had slept upon his interview with Ferris, and now sat in his laboratory, amidst the many witnesses of his inventive industry, with the model of the breech-loading cannon on the workbench before him.
He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its completeness might do him the greater credit with the consul when he should show it him, but the carriage had been broken in his pocket, on the way home, by an unlucky thrust from the burden of a porter, and the poor toy lay there disabled, as if to dramatize that premature explosion in the secret chamber.
His heart was in these inventions of his, which had as yet so grudgingly repaid his affection. For their sake he had stinted himself of many needful things. The meagre stipend which he received from the patrimony of his church, eked out with the money paid him for baptisms, funerals, and marriages, and for ma.s.ses by people who had friends to be prayed out of purgatory, would at best have barely sufficed to support him; but he denied himself everything save the necessary decorums of dress and lodging; he fasted like a saint, and slept hard as a hermit, that he might spend upon these ungrateful creatures of his brain. They were the work of his own hands, and so he saved the expense of their construction; but there were many little outlays for materials and for tools, which he could not avoid, and with him a little was all. They not only famished him; they isolated him. His superiors in the church, and his brother priests, looked with doubt or ridicule upon the labors for which he shunned their company, while he gave up the other social joys, few and small, which a priest might know in the Venice of that day, when all generous spirits regarded him with suspicion for his cloth"s sake, and church and state were alert to detect disaffection or indifference in him. But bearing these things willingly, and living as frugally as he might, he had still not enough, and he had been fain to a.s.sume the instruction of a young girl of old and n.o.ble family in certain branches of polite learning which a young lady of that sort might fitly know.
The family was not so rich as it was old and n.o.ble, and Don Ippolito was paid from its purse rather than its pride. But the slender salary was a help; these patricians were very good to him; many a time he dined with them, and so spared the cost of his own pottage at home; they always gave him coffee when he came, and that was a saving; at the proper seasons little presents from them were not wanting. In a word, his condition was not privation. He did his duty as a teacher faithfully, and the only trouble with it was that the young girl was growing into a young woman, and that he could not go on teaching her forever. In an evil hour, as it seemed to Don Ippolito, that made the years she had been his pupil shrivel to a mere pinch of time, there came from a young count of the Friuli, visiting Venice, an offer of marriage; and Don Ippolito lost his place. It was hard, but he bade himself have patience; and he composed an ode for the nuptials of his late pupil, which, together with a brief sketch of her ancestral history, he had elegantly printed, according to the Italian usage, and distributed among the family friends; he also made a sonnet to the bridegroom, and these literary tributes were handsomely acknowledged.
He managed a whole year upon the proceeds, and kept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo was spent, inventing one thing after another, and giving much time and money to a new principle of steam propulsion, which, as applied without steam to a small boat on the ca.n.a.l before his door, failed to work, though it had no logical excuse for its delinquency. He tried to get other pupils, but he got none, and he began to dream of going to America. He pinned his faith in all sorts of magnificent possibilities to the names of Franklin, Fulton, and Morse; he was so ignorant of our politics and geography as to suppose us at war with the South American Spaniards, but he knew that English was the language of the North, and he applied himself to the study of it. Heaven only knows what kind of inventor"s Utopia, our poor, patent-ridden country appeared to him in these dreams of his, and I can but dimly figure it to myself. But he might very naturally desire to come to a land where the spirit of invention is recognized and fostered, and where he could hope to find that comfort of incentive and companionship which our artists find in Italy.
The idea of the breech-loading cannon had occurred to him suddenly one day, in one of his New-World-ward reveries, and he had made haste to realize it, carefully studying the form and general effect of the Austrian cannon under the gallery of the Ducal Palace, to the high embarra.s.sment of the Croat sentry who paced up and down there, and who did not feel free to order off a priest as he would a civilian. Don Ippolito"s model was of admirable finish; he even painted the carriage yellow and black, because that of the original was so, and colored the piece to look like bra.s.s; and he lost a day while the paint was drying, after he was otherwise ready to show it to the consul.
He had parted from Ferris with some gleams of comfort, caught chiefly from his kindly manner, but they had died away before nightfall, and this morning he could not rekindle them.
He had had his coffee served to him on the bench, as his frequent custom was, but it stood untasted in the little copper pot beside the dismounted cannon, though it was now ten o"clock, and it was full time he had breakfasted, for he had risen early to perform the matin service for three peasant women, two beggars, a cat, and a paralytic n.o.bleman, in the ancient and beautiful church to which he was attached. He had tried to go about his wonted occupations, but he was still sitting idle before his bench, while his servant gossiped from her balcony to the mistress of the next house, across a calle so deep and narrow that it opened like a mountain chasm beneath them. "It were well if the master read his breviary a little more, instead of always maddening himself with those blessed inventions, that eat more soldi than a Christian, and never come to anything. There he sits before his table, as if he were nailed to his chair, and lets his coffee cool--and G.o.d knows I was ready to drink it warm two hours ago--and never looks at me if I open the door twenty times to see whether he has finished. Holy patience! You have not even the advantage of fasting to the glory of G.o.d in this house, though you keep Lent the year round. It"s the Devil"s Lent, _I_ say. Eh, Diana!
There goes the bell. Who now? Adieu, Lusetta. To meet again, dear.
Farewell!"
She ran to another window, and admitted the visitor. It was Ferris, and she went to announce him to her master by the t.i.tle he had given, while he amused his leisure in the darkness below by falling over a cistern-top, with a loud clattering of his cane on the copper lid, after which he heard the voice of the priest begging him to remain at his convenience a moment till he could descend and show him the way upstairs. His eyes were not yet used to the obscurity of the narrow entry in which he stood, when he felt a cold hand laid on his, and pa.s.sively yielded himself to its guidance. He tried to excuse himself for intruding upon Don Ippolito so soon, but the priest in far suppler Italian overwhelmed him with lamentations that he should be so unworthy the honor done him, and ushered his guest into his apartment. He plainly took it for granted that Ferris had come to see his inventions, in compliance with the invitation he had given him the day before, and he made no affectation of delay, though after the excitement of the greetings was past, it was with a quiet dejection that he rose and offered to lead his visitor to his laboratory.
The whole place was an outgrowth of himself; it was his history as well as his character. It recorded his quaint and childish tastes, his restless endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The ante-room in which he had paused with Ferris was painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellised walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed their lavish cl.u.s.ters of white and purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had seen in remote corners of Venice before the doors of degenerate palaces, or forming the entrances of open-air restaurants, and did not seem at all to have been studied from grape-arbors in the country. He perceived the archaic striving for exact truth, and he successfully praised the mechanical skill and love of reality with which it was done; but he was silenced by a collection of paintings in Don Ippolito"s parlor, where he had been made to sit down a moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, these copies of famous masterpieces,--saints of either s.e.x, ascensions, a.s.sumptions, martyrdoms, and what not,--and they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically pathetic than the frescoed grape-arbor; he stared about him for some sort of escape from the pictures, and his eye fell upon a piano and a melodeon placed end to end in a right angle. Don Ippolito, seeing his look of inquiry, sat down and briefly played the same air with a hand upon each instrument.
Ferris smiled. "Don Ippolito, you are another Da Vinci, a universal genius."
"Bagatelles, bagatelles," said the priest pensively; but he rose with greater spirit than he had yet shown, and preceded the consul into the little room that served him for a smithy. It seemed from some peculiarities of shape to have once been an oratory, but it was now begrimed with smoke and dust from the forge which Don Ippolito had set up in it; the embers of a recent fire, the bellows, the pincers, the hammers, and the other implements of the trade, gave it a sinister effect, as if the place of prayer had been invaded by mocking imps, or as if some hapless mortal in contract with the evil powers were here searching, by the help of the adversary, for the forbidden secrets of the metals and of fire. In those days, Ferris was an uncompromising enemy of the theatricalization of Italy, or indeed of anything; but the fancy of the black-robed young priest at work in this place appealed to him all the more potently because of the sort of tragic innocence which seemed to characterize Don Ippolito"s expression. He longed intensely to sketch the picture then and there, but he had strength to rebuke the fancy as something that could not make itself intelligible without the help of such accessories as he despised, and he victoriously followed the priest into his larger workshop, where his inventions, complete and incomplete, were stored, and where he had been seated when his visitor arrived. The high windows and the frescoed ceiling were festooned with dusty cobwebs; litter of shavings and whittlings strewed the floor; mechanical implements and contrivances were everywhere, and Don Ippolito"s listlessness seemed to return upon him again at the sight of the familiar disorder. Conspicuous among other objects lay the illogically unsuccessful model of the new principle of steam propulsion, untouched since the day when he had lifted it out of the ca.n.a.l and carried it indoors through the ranks of grinning spectators. From a shelf above it he took down models of a flying-machine and a perpetual motion. "Fantastic researches in the impossible. I never expected results from these experiments, with which I nevertheless once pleased myself," he said, and turned impatiently to various pieces of portable furniture, chairs, tables, bedsteads, which by folding up their legs and tops condensed themselves into flat boxes, developing handles at the side for convenience in carrying. They were painted and varnished, and were in all respects complete; they had indeed won favorable mention at an exposition of the Provincial Society of Arts and Industries, and Ferris could applaud their ingenuity sincerely, though he had his tacit doubts of their usefulness. He fell silent again when Don Ippolito called his notice to a photographic camera, so contrived with straps and springs that you could s.n.a.t.c.h by its help whatever joy there might be in taking your own photograph; and he did not know what to say of a submarine boat, a four-wheeled water-velocipede, a movable bridge, or the very many other principles and ideas to which Don Ippolito"s cunning hand had given shape, more or less imperfect. It seemed to him that they all, however perfect or imperfect, had some fatal defect: they were aspirations toward the impossible, or realizations of the trivial and superfluous. Yet, for all this, they strongly appealed to the painter as the stunted fruit of a talent denied opportunity, instruction, and sympathy. As he looked from them at last to the questioning face of the priest, and considered out of what disheartened and solitary patience they must have come in this city,--dead hundreds of years to all such endeavor,--he could not utter some glib phrases of compliment that he had on his tongue. If Don Ippolito had been taken young, he might perhaps have amounted to something, though this was questionable; but at thirty--as he looked now,--with his undisciplined purposes, and his head full of vagaries of which these things were the tangible witness....
Ferris let his eyes drop again. They fell upon the ruin of the breech-loading cannon, and he said, "Don Ippolito, it"s very good of you to take the trouble of showing me these matters, and I hope you"ll pardon the ungrateful return, if I cannot offer any definite opinion of them now. They are rather out of my way, I confess. I wish with all my heart I could order an experimental, life-size copy of your breech-loading cannon here, for trial by my government, but I can"t; and to tell you the truth, it was not altogether the wish to see these inventions of yours that brought me here to-day."
"Oh," said Don Ippolito, with a mortified air, "I am afraid that I have wearied the Signor Console."
"Not at all, not at all," Ferris made haste to answer, with a frown at his own awkwardness. "But your speaking English yesterday; ...
perhaps what I was thinking of is quite foreign to your tastes and possibilities."... He hesitated with a look of perplexity, while Don Ippolito stood before him in an att.i.tude of expectation, pressing the points of his fingers together, and looking curiously into his face.
"The case is this," resumed Ferris desperately. "There are two American ladies, friends of mine, sojourning in Venice, who expect to be here till midsummer. They are mother and daughter, and the young lady wants to read and speak Italian with somebody a few hours each day. The question is whether it is quite out of your way or not to give her lessons of this kind. I ask it quite at a venture. I suppose no harm is done, at any rate," and he looked at Don Ippolito with apologetic perturbation.
"No," said the priest, "there is no harm. On the contrary, I am at this moment in a position to consider it a great favor that you do me in offering me this employment. I accept it with the greatest pleasure.
Oh!" he cried, breaking by a sudden impulse from the composure with which he had begun to speak, "you don"t know what you do for me; you lift me out of despair. Before you came, I had reached one of those pa.s.ses that seem the last bound of endeavor. But you give me new life.
Now I can go on with my experiment. I can at test my grat.i.tude by possessing your native country of the weapon I had designed for it--I am sure of the principle: some slight improvement, perhaps the use of some different explosive, would get over that difficulty you suggested," he said eagerly. "Yes, something can be done. G.o.d bless you, my dear little son--I mean--perdoni!--my dear sir."...
"Wait--not so fast," said Ferris with a laugh, yet a little annoyed that a question so purely tentative as his should have met at once such a definite response. "Are you quite sure you can do what they want?" He unfolded to him, as fully as he understood it, Mrs. Vervain"s scheme.
Don Ippolito entered into it with perfect intelligence. He said that he had already had charge of the education of a young girl of n.o.ble family, and he could therefore the more confidently hope to be useful to this American lady. A light of joyful hope shone in his dreamy eyes, the whole man changed, he a.s.sumed the hospitable and caressing host. He conducted Ferris back to his parlor, and making him sit upon the hard sofa that was his hard bed by night, he summoned his servant, and bade her serve them coffee. She closed her lips firmly, and waved her finger before her face, to signify that there was no more coffee. Then he bade her fetch it from the caffe: and he listened with a sort of rapt inattention while Ferris again returned to the subject and explained that he had approached him without first informing the ladies, and that he must regard nothing as final. It was at this point that Don Ippolito, who had understood so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted, appeared a little slow to understand; and Ferris had a doubt whether it was from subtlety or from simplicity that the priest seemed not to comprehend the impulse on which he had acted. He finished his coffee in this perplexity, and when he rose to go, Don Ippolito followed him down to the street-door, and preserved him from a second encounter with the cistern-top.
"But, Don Ippolito--remember! I make no engagement for the ladies, whom you must see before anything is settled," said Ferris.
"Surely,--surely!" answered the priest, and he remained smiling at the door till the American turned the next corner. Then he went back to his work-room, and took up the broken model from the bench. But he could not work at it now, he could not work at anything; he began to walk up and down the floor.
"Could he really have been so stupid because his mind was on his ridiculous cannon?" wondered Ferris as he sauntered frowning away; and he tried to prepare his own mind for his meeting with the Vervains, to whom he must now go at once. He felt abused and victimized. Yet it was an amusing experience, and he found himself able to interest both of the ladies in it. The younger had received him as coldly as the forms of greeting would allow; but as he talked she drew nearer him with a reluctant haughtiness which he noted. He turned the more conspicuously towards Mrs. Vervain. "Well, to make a long story short," he said, "I couldn"t discourage Don Ippolito. He refused to be dismayed--as I should have been at the notion of teaching Miss Vervain. I didn"t arrange with him not to fall in love with her as his secular predecessors have done--it seemed superfluous. But you can mention it to him if you like.
In fact," said Ferris, suddenly addressing the daughter, "you might make the stipulation yourself, Miss Vervain."
She looked at him a moment with a sort of defenseless pain that made him ashamed; and then walked away from him towards the window, with a frank resentment that made him smile, as he continued, "But I suppose you would like to have some explanation of my motive in precipitating Don Ippolito upon you in this way, when I told you only yesterday that he wouldn"t do at all; in fact I think myself that I"ve behaved rather fickle-mindedly--for a representative of the country. But I"ll tell you; and you won"t be surprised to learn that I acted from mixed motives. I"m not at all sure that he"ll do; I"ve had awful misgivings about it since I left him, and I"m glad of the chance to make a clean breast of it.
When I came to think the matter over last night, the fact that he had taught himself English--with the help of an Irishman for the p.r.o.nunciation--seemed to promise that he"d have the right sort of sympathy with your scheme, and it showed that he must have something practical about him, too. And here"s where the selfish admixture comes in. I didn"t have your interests solely in mind when I went to see Don Ippolito. I hadn"t been able to get rid of him; he stuck in my thought.
I fancied he might be glad of the pay of a teacher, and--I had half a notion to ask him to let me paint him. It was an even chance whether I should try to secure him for Miss Vervain, or for Art--as they call it.
Miss Vervain won because she could pay him, and I didn"t see how Art could. I can bring him round any time; and that"s the whole inconsequent business. My consolation is that I"ve left you perfectly free. There"s nothing decided."
"Thanks," said Mrs. Vervain; "then it"s all settled. You can bring him as soon as you like, to our new place. We"ve taken that apartment we looked at the other day, and we"re going into it this afternoon. Here"s the landlord"s letter," she added, drawing a paper out of her pocket.
"If he"s cheated us, I suppose you can see justice done. I didn"t want to trouble you before."