Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Paying him?”

  “Yes, paying him — paying him for your lessons. It’s always been very awkward. He hasn’t been like other teachers, you know: more like a guest, or friend of the family. He never seemed to want to take the money, and of late, I’ve been letting it run along, because I hated so to offer it, till now, it’s quite a sum. I suppose he needs it, poor fellow. And how to get it to him is the question. He may not come to-morrow, as usual, and I couldn’t trust it to the padrone. We might send it to him in a draft from Paris, but I’d rather pay him before we go. Besides, it would be rather rude, going away without seeing him again.” Mrs. Vervain thought a moment; then, “I’ll tell you,” she resumed. “If he doesn’t happen to come here to-morrow morning, we can stop on our way to the station and give him the money.”

  Florida did not answer.

  “Don’t you think that would be a good plan?”

  “I don’t know,” replied the girl in a dull way.

  “Why, Florida, if you think from anything Don Ippolito said that he would rather not see us again — that it would be painful to him — why, we could ask Mr. Ferris to hand him the money.”

  “Oh no, no, no, mother!” cried Florida, hiding her face, “that would be too horribly indelicate!”

  “Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be quite good taste,” said Mrs. Vervain perturbedly, “but you needn’t express yourself so violently, my dear. It’s not a matter of life and death. I’m sure I don’t know what to do. We must stop at Don Ippolito’s house, I suppose. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” faintly assented the daughter.

  Mrs. Vervain yawned. “Well I can’t think anything more about it to-night; I’m too stupid. But that’s the way we shall do. Will you help me to bed, my dear? I shall be good for nothing to-morrow.”

  She went on talking of Don Ippolito’s change of purpose till her head touched the pillow, from which she suddenly lifted it again, and called out to her daughter, who had passed into the next room: “But Mr. Ferris —— why didn’t he come back with you?”

  “Come back with me?”

  “Why yes, child. I sent him out to call you, just before you came in. This Don Ippolito business put him quite out of my head. Didn’t you see him? ... Oh! What’s that?”

  “Nothing: I dropped my candle.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t set anything on fire?”

  “No! It went dead out.”

  “Light it again, and do look. Now is everything right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s queer he didn’t come back to say he couldn’t find you. What do you suppose became of him?”

  “I don’t know, mother.”

  “It’s very perplexing. I wish Mr. Ferris were not so odd. It quite borders on affectation. I don’t know what to make of it. We must send word to him the very first thing to-morrow morning, that we’re going, and ask him to come to see us.”

  Florida made no reply. She sat staring at the black space of the doorway into her mother’s room. Mrs. Vervain did not speak again. After a while her daughter softly entered her chamber, shading the candle with her hand; and seeing that she slept, softly withdrew, closed the door, and went about the work of packing again. When it was all done, she flung herself upon her bed and hid her face in the pillow.

  The next morning was spent in bestowing those interminable last touches which the packing of ladies’ baggage demands, and in taking leave with largess (in which Mrs. Vervain shone) of all the people in the house and out of it, who had so much as touched a hat to the Vervains during their sojourn. The whole was not a vast sum; nor did the sundry extortions of the padrone come to much, though the honest man racked his brain to invent injuries to his apartments and furniture. Being unmurmuringly paid, he gave way to his real goodwill for his tenants in many little useful offices. At the end he persisted in sending them to the station in his own gondola and could with difficulty be kept from going with them.

  Mrs. Vervain had early sent a message to Ferris, but word came back a first and a second time that he was not at home, and the forenoon wore away and he had not appeared. A certain indignation sustained her till the gondola pushed out into the canal, and then it yielded to an intolerable regret that she should not see him.

  “I can’t go without saying good-by to Mr. Ferris, Florida,” she said at last, “and it’s no use asking me. He may have been wanting a little in politeness, but he’s been so good all along; and we owe him too much not to make an effort to thank him before we go. We really must stop a moment at his house.”

  Florida, who had regarded her mother’s efforts to summon Ferris to them with passive coldness, turned a look of agony upon her. But in a moment she bade the gondolier stop at the consulate, and dropping her veil over her face, fell back in the shadow of the tenda-curtains.

  Mrs. Vervain sentimentalized their departure a little, but her daughter made no comment on the scene they were leaving.

  The gondolier rang at Ferris’s door and returned with the answer that he was not at home.

  Mrs. Vervain gave way to despair. “Oh dear, oh dear! This is too bad! What shall we do?”

  “We’ll lose the train, mother, if we loiter in this way,” said Florida.

  “Well, wait. I must leave a message at least.” “How could you be away,” she wrote on her card, “when we called to say good-by? We’ve changed our plans and we’re going to-day. I shall write you a nice scolding letter from Verona — we’re going over the Brenner — for your behavior last night. Who will keep you straight when I’m gone? You’ve been very, very kind. Florida joins me in a thousand thanks, regrets, and good-byes.”

  “There, I haven’t said anything, after all,” she fretted, with tears in her eyes.

  The gondolier carried the card again to the door, where Ferris’s servant let down a basket by a string and fished it up.

  “If Don Ippolito shouldn’t be in,” said Mrs. Vervain, as the boat moved on again, “I don’t know what I shall do with this money. It will be awkward beyond anything.”

  The gondola slipped from the Canalazzo into the network of the smaller canals, where the dense shadows were as old as the palaces that cast them and stopped at the landing of a narrow quay. The gondolier dismounted and rang at Don Ippolito’s door. There was no response; he rang again and again. At last from a window of the uppermost story the head of the priest himself peered out. The gondolier touched his hat and said, “It is the ladies who ask for you, Don Ippolito.”

  It was a minute before the door opened, and the priest, bare-headed and blinking in the strong light, came with a stupefied air across the quay to the landing-steps.

  “Well, Don Ippolito!” cried Mrs. Vervain, rising and giving him her hand, which she first waved at the trunks and bags piled up in the vacant space in the front of the boat, “what do you think of this? We are really going, immediately; we can change our minds too; and I don’t think it would have been too much,” she added with a friendly smile, “if we had gone without saying good-by to you. What in the world does it all mean, your giving up that grand project of yours so suddenly?”

  She sat down again, that she might talk more at her ease, and seemed thoroughly happy to have Don Ippolito before her again.

  “It finally appeared best, madama,” he said quietly, after a quick, keen glance at Florida, who did not lift her veil.

  “Well, perhaps you’re partly right. But I can’t help thinking that you with your talent would have succeeded in America. Inventors do get on there, in the most surprising way. There’s the Screw Company of Providence. It’s such a simple thing; and now the shares are worth eight hundred. Are you well to-day, Don Ippolito?”

  “Quite well, madama.”

  “I thought you looked rather pale. But I believe you’re always a little pale. You mustn’t work too hard. We shall miss you a great deal, Don Ippolito.”

  “Thanks, madama.”

  “Yes, we shall be quite lost without you. And I wanted to say this to you,
Don Ippolito, that if ever you change your mind again, and conclude to come to America, you must write to me, and let me help you just as I had intended to do.”

  The priest shivered, as if cold, and gave another look at Florida’s veiled face.

  “You are too good,” he said.

  “Yes, I really think I am,” replied Mrs. Vervain, playfully. “Considering that you were going to let me leave Venice without even trying to say good-by to me, I think I’m very good indeed.”

  Mrs. Vervain’s mood became overcast, and her eyes filled with tears: “I hope you’re sorry to have us going, Don Ippolito, for you know how very highly I prize your acquaintance. It was rather cruel of you, I think.”

  She seemed not to remember that he could not have known of their change of plan. Don Ippolito looked imploringly into her face, and made a touching gesture of deprecation, but did not speak.

  “I’m really afraid you’re not well, and I think it’s too bad of us to be going,” resumed Mrs. Vervain; “but it can’t be helped now: we are all packed, don’t you see. But I want to ask one favor of you, Don Ippolito; and that is,” said Mrs. Vervain, covertly taking a little rouleau from her pocket, “that you’ll leave these inventions of yours for a while, and give yourself a vacation. You need rest of mind. Go into the country, somewhere, do. That’s what’s preying upon you. But we must really be off, now. Shake hands with Florida — I’m going to be the last to part with you,” she said, with a tearful smile.

  Don Ippolito and Florida extended their hands. Neither spoke, and as she sank back upon the seat from which she had half risen, she drew more closely the folds of the veil which she had not lifted from her face.

  Mrs. Vervain gave a little sob as Don Ippolito took her hand and kissed it; and she had some difficulty in leaving with him the rouleau, which she tried artfully to press into his palm. “Good-by, good-by,” she said, “don’t drop it,” and attempted to close his fingers over it.

  But he let it lie carelessly in his open hand, as the gondola moved off, and there it still lay as he stood watching the boat slip under a bridge at the next corner, and disappear. While he stood there gazing at the empty arch, a man of a wild and savage aspect approached. It was said that this man’s brain had been turned by the death of his brother, who was betrayed to the Austrians after the revolution of ‘48, by his wife’s confessor. He advanced with swift strides, and at the moment he reached Don Ippolito’s side he suddenly turned his face upon him and cursed him through his clenched teeth: “Dog of a priest!”

  Don Ippolito, as if his whole race had renounced him in the maniac’s words, uttered a desolate cry, and hiding his face in his hands, tottered into his house.

  The rouleau had dropped from his palm; it rolled down the shelving marble of the quay, and slipped into the water.

  The young beggar who had held Mrs. Vervain’s gondola to the shore while she talked, looked up and down the deserted quay, and at the doors and windows. Then he began to take off his clothes for a bath.

  XVII.

  Ferris returned at nightfall to his house, where he had not been since daybreak, and flung himself exhausted upon the bed. His face was burnt red with the sun, and his eyes were bloodshot. He fell into a doze and dreamed that he was still at Malamocco, whither he had gone that morning in a sort of craze, with some fishermen, who were to cast their nets there; then he was rowing back to Venice across the lagoon, that seemed a molten fire under the keel. He woke with a heavy groan, and bade Marina fetch him a light.

  She set it on the table, and handed him the card Mrs. Vervain had left. He read it and read it again, and then he laid it down, and putting on his hat, he took his cane and went out. “Do not wait for me, Marina,” he said, “I may be late. Go to bed.”

  He returned at midnight, and lighting his candle took up the card and read it once more. He could not tell whether to be glad or sorry that he had failed to see the Vervains again. He took it for granted that Don Ippolito was to follow; he would not ask himself what motive had hastened their going. The reasons were all that he should never more look upon the woman so hatefully lost to him, but a strong instinct of his heart struggled against them.

  He lay down in his clothes, and began to dream almost before he began to sleep. He woke early, and went out to walk. He did not rest all day. Once he came home, and found a letter from Mrs. Vervain, postmarked Verona, reiterating her lamentations and adieux, and explaining that the priest had relinquished his purpose, and would not go to America at all. The deeper mystery in which this news left him was not less sinister than before.

  In the weeks that followed, Ferris had no other purpose than to reduce the days to hours, the hours to minutes. The burden that fell upon him when he woke lay heavy on his heart till night, and oppressed him far into his sleep. He could not give his trouble certain shape; what was mostly with him was a formless loss, which he could not resolve into any definite shame or wrong. At times, what he had seen seemed to him some baleful trick of the imagination, some lurid and foolish illusion.

  But he could do nothing, he could not ask himself what the end was to be. He kept indoors by day, trying to work, trying to read, marveling somewhat that he did not fall sick and die. At night he set out on long walks, which took him he cared not where, and often detained him till the gray lights of morning began to tremble through the nocturnal blue. But even by night he shunned the neighborhood in which the Vervains had lived. Their landlord sent him a package of trifles they had left behind, but he refused to receive them, sending back word that he did not know where the ladies were. He had half expected that Mrs. Vervain, though he had not answered her last letter, might write to him again from England, but she did not. The Vervains had passed out of his world; he knew that they had been in it only by the torment they had left him.

  He wondered in a listless way that he should see nothing of Don Ippolito. Once at midnight he fancied that the priest was coming towards him across a campo he had just entered; he stopped and turned back into the calle: when the priest came up to him, it was not Don Ippolito.

  In these days Ferris received a dispatch from the Department of State, informing him that his successor had been appointed, and directing him to deliver up the consular flags, seals, archives, and other property of the United States. No reason for his removal was given; but as there had never been any reason for his appointment, he had no right to complain; the balance was exactly dressed by this simple device of our civil service. He determined not to wait for the coming of his successor before giving up the consular effects, and he placed them at once in the keeping of the worthy ship-chandler who had so often transferred them from departing to arriving consuls. Then being quite ready at any moment to leave Venice, he found himself in nowise eager to go; but he began in a desultory way to pack up his sketches and studies.

  One morning as he sat idle in his dismantled studio, Marina came to tell him that an old woman, waiting at the door below, wished to speak with him.

  “Well, let her come up,” said Ferris wearily, and presently Marina returned with a very ill-favored beldam, who stared hard at him while he frowningly puzzled himself as to where he had seen that malign visage before.

  “Well?” he said harshly.

  “I come,” answered the old woman, “on the part of Don Ippolito Rondinelli, who desires so much to see your excellency.”

  Ferris made no response, while the old woman knotted the fringe of her shawl with quaking hands, and presently added with a tenderness in her voice which oddly discorded with the hardness of her face: “He has been very sick, poor thing, with a fever; but now he is in his senses again, and the doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is still very weak. He tried to write two lines to you, but he had not the strength; so he bade me bring you this word: That he had something to say which it greatly concerned you to hear, and that he prayed you to forgive his not coming to revere you, for it was impossible, and that you should have the goodness to do him this favor, to come to find hi
m the quickest you could.”

  The old woman wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl, and her chin wobbled pathetically while she shot a glance of baleful dislike at Ferris, who answered after a long dull stare at her, “Tell him I’ll come.”

  He did not believe that Don Ippolito could tell him anything that greatly concerned him; but he was worn out with going round in the same circle of conjecture, and so far as he could be glad, he was glad of this chance to face his calamity. He would go, but not at once; he would think it over; he would go to-morrow, when he had got some grasp of the matter.

  The old woman lingered.

  “Tell him I’ll come,” repeated Ferris impatiently.

  “A thousand excuses; but my poor master has been very sick. The doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is very weak indeed; a little shock, a little disappointment.... Is the signore very, very much occupied this morning? He greatly desired, — he prayed that if such a thing were possible in the goodness of your excellency .... But I am offending the signore!”

  “What do you want?” demanded Ferris.

  The old wretch set up a pitiful whimper, and tried to possess herself of his hand; she kissed his coat-sleeve instead. “That you will return with me,” she besought him.

  “Oh, I’ll go!” groaned the painter. “I might as well go first as last,” he added in English. “There, stop that! Enough, enough, I tell you! Didn’t I say I was going with you?” he cried to the old woman.

  “God bless you!” she mumbled, and set off before him down the stairs and out of the door. She looked so miserably old and weary that he called a gondola to his landing and made her get into it with him.

  It tormented Don Ippolito’s idle neighborhood to see Veneranda arrive in such state, and a passionate excitement arose at the caffè, where the person of the consul was known, when Ferris entered the priest’s house with her.

  He had not often visited Don Ippolito, but the quaintness of the place had been so vividly impressed upon him, that he had a certain familiarity with the grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings of the parlor, and the puerile arrangement of the piano and melodeon. Veneranda led him through these rooms to the chamber where Don Ippolito had first shown him his inventions. They were all removed now, and on a bed, set against the wall opposite the door, lay the priest, with his hands on his breast, and a faint smile on his lips, so peaceful, so serene, that the painter stopped with a sudden awe, as if he had unawares come into the presence of death.