"Not at all. I don"t think I could explain," said Ferris with a certain air of regretting to have gone so far in comment on the Vervains. He added recklessly, "Don"t you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes does and says things that embarra.s.s her daughter, and that Miss Vervain seems to try to restrain her?"
"I thought," returned Don Ippolito meditatively, "that the signorina was always very tenderly submissive to her mother."
"Yes, so she is," said the painter dryly, and looked in annoyance from the priest to the picture, and from the picture to the priest.
After a minute Don Ippolito said, "They must be very rich to live as they do."
"I don"t know about that," replied Ferris. "Americans spend and save in ways different from the Italians. I dare say the Vervains find Venice very cheap after London and Paris and Berlin."
"Perhaps," said Don Ippolito, "if they were rich you would be in a position to marry her."
"I should not marry Miss Vervain for her money," answered the painter, sharply.
"No, but if you loved her, the money would enable you to marry her."
"Listen to me, Don Ippolito. I never said that I loved Miss Vervain, and I don"t know how you feel warranted in speaking to me about the matter.
Why do you do so?"
"I? Why? I could not but imagine that you must love her. Is there anything wrong in speaking of such things? Is it contrary to the American custom? I ask pardon from my heart if I have done anything amiss."
"There is no offense," said the painter, with a laugh, "and I don"t wonder you thought I ought to be in love with Miss Vervain. She _is_ beautiful, and I believe she"s good. But if men had to marry because women were beautiful and good, there isn"t one of us could live single a day. Besides, I"m the victim of another pa.s.sion,--I"m laboring under an unrequited affection for Art."
"Then you do _not_ love her?" asked Don Ippolito, eagerly.
"So far as I"m advised at present, no, I don"t."
"It is strange!" said the priest, absently, but with a glowing face.
He quitted the painter"s and walked swiftly homeward with a triumphant buoyancy of step. A subtle content diffused itself over his face, and a joyful light burnt in his deep eyes. He sat down before the piano and organ as he had arranged them, and began to strike their keys in unison; this seemed to him for the first time childish. Then he played some lively bars on the piano alone; they sounded too light and trivial, and he turned to the other instrument. As the plaint of the reeds arose, it filled his sense like a solemn organ-music, and transfigured the place; the notes swelled to the ample vault of a church, and at the high altar he was celebrating the ma.s.s in his sacerdotal robes. He suddenly caught his fingers away from the keys; his breast heaved, he hid his face in his hands.
VII.
Ferris stood cleaning his palette, after Don Ippolito was gone, sc.r.a.ping the colors together with his knife and neatly b.u.t.tering them on the palette"s edge, while he wondered what the priest meant by pumping him in that way. Nothing, he supposed, and yet it was odd. Of course she had a bad temper....
He put on his hat and coat and strolled vaguely forth, and in an hour or two came by a roundabout course to the gondola station nearest his own house. There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring for his custom, he stepped into one and ordered the man to row him to a gate on a small ca.n.a.l opposite.
The gate opened, at his ringing, into the garden of the Vervains.
Florida was sitting alone on a bench near the fountain. It was no longer a ruined fountain; the broken-nosed naiad held a pipe above her head, and from this rose a willowy spray high enough to catch some colors of the sunset then striking into the garden, and fell again in a mist around her, making her almost modest.
"What does this mean?" asked Ferris, carelessly taking the young girl"s hand. "I thought this lady"s occupation was gone."
"Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the landlord, and he agreed to pay for filling the tank that feeds it," said Florida. "He seems to think it a hard bargain, for he only lets it play about half an hour a day. But he says it"s very ingeniously mended. He didn"t believe it could be done. It _is_ pretty.
"It is, indeed," said the painter, with a singular desire, going through him like a pang, likewise to do something for Miss Vervain. "Did you go to Don Ippolito"s house the other day, to see his traps?"
"Yes; we were very much interested. I was sorry that I knew so little about inventions. Do you think there are many practical ideas amongst his things? I hope there are--he seemed so proud and pleased to show them. Shouldn"t you think he had some real inventive talent?"
"Yes, I think he has; but I know as little about the matter as you do."
He sat down beside her, and picking up a twig from the gravel, pulled the bark off in silence. Then, "Miss Vervain," he said, knitting his brows, as he always did when he had something on his conscience and meant to ease it at any cost, "I"m the dog that fetches a bone and carries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over with you, the other day, and now I"ve been talking you over with him. But I"ve the grace to say that I"m ashamed of myself."
"Why need you be ashamed?" asked Florida. "You said no harm of him. Did you of us?"
"Not exactly; but I don"t think it was quite my business to discuss you at all. I think you can"t let people alone too much. For my part, if I try to characterize my friends, I fail to do them perfect justice, of course; and yet the imperfect result remains representative of them in my mind; it limits them and fixes them; and I can"t get them back again into the undefined and the ideal where they really belong. One ought never to speak of the faults of one"s friends: it mutilates them; they can never be the same afterwards."
"So you have been talking of my faults," said Florida, breathing quickly. "Perhaps you could tell me of them to my face."
"I should have to say that unfairness was one of them. But that is common to the whole s.e.x. I never said I was talking of your faults. I declared against doing so, and you immediately infer that my motive is remorse. I don"t know that you have any faults. They may be virtues in disguise. There is a charm even in unfairness. Well, I did Bay that I thought you had a quick temper,"--
Florida colored violently.
--"but now I see that I was mistaken," said Ferris with a laugh.
"May I ask what else you said?" demanded the young girl haughtily.
"Oh, that would be a betrayal of confidence," said Ferris, unaffected by her hauteur.
"Then why have you mentioned the matter to me at all?"
"I wanted to clear my conscience, I suppose, and sin again. I wanted to talk with you about Don Ippolito."
Florida looked with perplexity at Ferris"s face, while her own slowly cooled and paled.
"What did you want to say of him?" she asked calmly.
"I hardly know how to put it: that he puzzles me, to begin with. You know I feel somewhat responsible for him."
"Yes."
"Of course, I never should have thought of him, if it hadn"t been for your mother"s talk that morning coming back from San Lazzaro."
"I know," said Florida, with a faint blush.
"And yet, don"t you see, it was as much a fancy of mine, a weakness for the man himself, as the desire to serve your mother, that prompted me to bring him to you."
"Yes, I see," answered the young girl.
"I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian prejudice against priests.
All my friends here--they"re mostly young men with the modern Italian ideas, or old liberals--hate and despise the priests They believe that priests are full of guile and deceit, that they are spies for the Austrians, and altogether evil."
"Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most secret thoughts to the police," said Florida, whose look of rising alarm relaxed into a smile.
"Oh," cried the painter, "how you leap to conclusions! I never intimated that Don Ippolito was a spy. On the contrary, it was his difference from other priests that made me think of him for a moment. He seems to be as much cut off from the church as from the world. And yet he is a priest, with a priest"s education. What if I should have been altogether mistaken? He is either one of the openest souls in the world, as you have insisted, or he is one of the closest."
"I should not be afraid of him in any case," said Florida; "but I can"t believe any wrong of him."