It seemed a long time till the commissary came, but his coming instantly simplified the situation. Perhaps because he had never been able to befriend a consul in trouble before, he befriended Ferris to the utmost.
He had met him with rather a browbeating air; but after a glance at his card, he gave a kind of roar of deprecation and apology. He had the ladies and Don Ippolito in out of the gondola, and led them to an upper chamber, where he made them all repose their honored persons upon his sofas. He ordered up his housekeeper to make them coffee, which he served with his own hands, excusing its hurried feebleness, and he stood by, rubbing his palms together and smiling, while they refreshed themselves.
"They need never tell me again that the Austrians are tyrants," said Mrs. Vervain in undertone to the consul.
It was not easy for Ferris to remind his host of the malefactors; but he brought himself to this ungraciousness. The commissary begged pardon, and asked him to accompany him below, where he confronted the accused and the accusers. The tragedy was acted over again with blood-curdling effectiveness by the Chiozzotti; the gondoliers maintaining the calm of conscious innocence.
Ferris felt outraged by the trumped-up charge against them.
"Listen, you others the prisoners," said the commissary. "Your padrone is anxious to return to Venice, and I wish to inflict no further displeasures upon him. Restore their rope to these honest men, and go about your business."
The injured gondoliers spoke in low tones together; then one of them shrugged his shoulders and went out. He came back in a moment and laid a rope before the commissary.
"Is that the rope?" he asked. "We found it floating down the ca.n.a.l, and picked it up that we might give it to the rightful owner. But now I wish to heaven we had let it sink to the bottom of the sea."
"Oh, a beautiful story!" wailed the Chiozzoti. They flung themselves upon the rope, and lugged it off to their boat; and the gondoliers went out, too.
The commissary turned to Ferris with an amiable smile. "I am sorry that those rogues should escape," said the American.
"Oh," said the Italian, "they are poor fellows it is a little matter; I am glad to have served you."
He took leave of his involuntary guests with effusion, following them with a lantern to the gondola.
Mrs. Vervain, to whom Ferris gave an account of this trial as they set out again on their long-hindered return, had no mind save for the magical effect of his consular quality upon the commissary, and accused him of a vain and culpable modesty.
"Ah," said the diplomatist, "there"s nothing like knowing just when to produce your dignity. There are some officials who know too little,--like those guards; and there are some who know too much,--like the commissary"s superiors. But he is just in that golden mean of ignorance where he supposes a consul is a person of importance."
Mrs. Vervain disputed this, and Ferris submitted in silence. Presently, as they skirted the sh.o.r.e to get their bearings for the route across the lagoon, a fierce voice in Venetian shouted from the darkness, "Indrio, indrio!" (Back, back!) and a gleam of the moon through the pale, watery clouds revealed the figure of a gendarme on the nearest point of land.
The gondoliers bent to their oars, and sent the boat swiftly out into the lagoon.
"There, for example, is a person who would be quite insensible to my greatness, even if I had the consular seal in my pocket. To him we are possible smugglers; [Footnote: Under the Austrians, Venice was a free port but everything carried there to the mainland was liable to duty.]
and I must say," he continued, taking out his watch, and staring hard at it, "that if I were a disinterested person, and heard his suspicion met with the explanation that we were a little party out here for pleasure at half past twelve P. M., I should say he was right. At any rate we won"t engage him in controversy. Quick, quick!" he added to the gondoliers, glancing at the receding sh.o.r.e, and then at the first of the lagoon forts which they were approaching. A dim shape moved along the top of the wall, and seemed to linger and scrutinize them. As they drew nearer, the challenge, "_Wer da?_" rang out.
The gondoliers eagerly answered with the one word of German known to their craft, "_Freunde_," and struggled to urge the boat forward; the oar of the gondolier in front slipped from the high rowlock, and fell out of his hand into the water. The gondola lurched, and then suddenly ran aground on the shallow. The sentry halted, dropped his gun from his shoulder, and ordered them to go on, while the gondoliers clamored back in the high key of fear, and one of them screamed out to his pa.s.sengers to do something, saying that, a few weeks before, a sentinel had fired upon a fisherman and killed him.
"What"s that he"s talking about?" demanded Mrs. Vervain. "If we don"t get on, it will be that man"s duty to fire on us; he has no choice," she said, nerved and interested by the presence of this danger.
The gondoliers leaped into the water and tried to push the boat off. It would not move, and without warning, Don Ippolito, who had sat silent since they left Fusina, stepped over the side of the gondola, and thrusting an oar under its bottom lifted it free of the shallow.
"Oh, how very unnecessary!" cried Mrs. Vervain, as the priest and the gondoliers clambered back into the boat. "He will take his death of cold."
"It"s ridiculous," said Ferris. "You ought to have told these worthless rascals what to do, Don Ippolito. You"ve got yourself wet for nothing.
It"s too bad!"
"It"s nothing," said Don Ippolito, taking his seat on the little prow deck, and quietly dripping where the water would not incommode the others.
"Oh, here!" cried Mrs. Vervain, gathering some shawls together, "make him wrap those about him. He"ll die, I know he will--with that reeking skirt of his. If you must go into the water, I wish you had worn your abbate"s dress. How _could_ you, Don Ippolito?"
The gondoliers set their oars, but before they had given a stroke, they were arrested by a sharp "Halt!" from the fort. Another figure had joined the sentry, and stood looking at them.
"Well," said Ferris, "_now_ what, I wonder? That"s an officer. If I had a little German about me, I might state the situation to him."
He felt a light touch on his arm. "I can speak German," said Florida timidly.
"Then you had better speak it now," said Ferris.
She rose to her feet, and in a steady voice briefly explained the whole affair. The figures listened motionless; then the last comer politely replied, begging her to be in no uneasiness, made her a shadowy salute, and vanished. The sentry resumed his walk, and took no further notice of them.
"Brava!" said Ferris, while Mrs. Vervain babbled her satisfaction, "I will buy a German Ollendorff to-morrow. The language is indispensable to a pleasure excursion in the lagoon."
Florida made no reply, but devoted herself to restoring her mother to that state of defense against the discomforts of the time and place, which the common agitation had impaired. She seemed to have no sense of the presence of any one else. Don Ippolito did not speak again save to protect himself from the anxieties and reproaches of Mrs. Vervain, renewed and reiterated at intervals. She drowsed after a while, and whenever she woke she thought they had just touched her own landing.
By fits it was cloudy and moonlight; they began to meet peasants" boats going to the Rialto market; at last, they entered the Ca.n.a.l of the Zattere, then they slipped into a narrow way, and presently stopped at Mrs. Vervain"s gate; this time she had not expected it. Don Ippolito gave her his hand, and entered the garden with her, while Ferris lingered behind with Florida, helping her put together the wraps strewn about the gondola.
"Wait!" she commanded, as they moved up the garden walk. "I want to speak with you about Don Ippolito. What shall I do to him for my rudeness? You _must_ tell me--you _shall_," she said in a fierce whisper, gripping the arm which Ferris had given to help her up the landing-stairs. "You are--older than I am!"
"Thanks. I was afraid you were going to say wiser. I should think your own sense of justice, your own sense of"--
"Decency. Say it, say it!" cried the girl pa.s.sionately; "it was indecent, indecent--that was it!"
--"would tell you what to do," concluded the painter dryly.
She flung away the arm to which she had been clinging, and ran to where the priest stood with her mother at the foot of the terrace stairs. "Don Ippolito," she cried, "I want to tell you that I am sorry; I want to ask your pardon--how can you ever forgive me?--for what I said."
She instinctively stretched her hand towards him.
"Oh!" said the priest, with an indescribable long, trembling sigh. He caught her hand in his held it tight, and then pressed it for an instant against his breast.
Ferris made a little start forward.
"Now, that"s right, Florida," said her mother, as the four stood in the pale, estranging moonlight. "I"m sure Don Ippolito can"t cherish any resentment. If he does, he must come in and wash it out with a gla.s.s of wine--that"s a good old fashion. I want you to have the wine at any rate, Don Ippolito; it"ll keep you from taking cold. You really must."
"Thanks, madama; I cannot lose more time, now; I must go home at once.
Good night."
Before Mrs. Vervain could frame a protest, or lay hold of him, he bowed and hurried out of the land-gate.
"How perfectly absurd for him to get into the water in that way," she said, looking mechanically in the direction in which he had vanished.
"Well, Mrs. Vervain, it isn"t best to be too grateful to people,"
said Ferris, "but I think we must allow that if we were in any danger, sticking there in the mud, Don Ippolito got us out of it by putting his shoulder to the oar."
"Of course," a.s.sented Mrs. Vervain.
"In fact," continued Ferris, "I suppose we may say that, under Providence, we probably owe our lives to Don Ippolito"s self-sacrifice and Miss Vervain"s knowledge of German. At any rate, it"s what I shall always maintain."
"Mother, don"t you think you had better go in?" asked Florida, gently.
Her gentleness ignored the presence, the existence of Ferris. "I"m afraid you will be sick after all this fatigue."
"There, Mrs. Vervain, it"ll be no use offering _me_ a gla.s.s of wine. I"m sent away, you see," said Ferris. "And Miss Vervain is quite right. Good night."