A Foregone Conclusion
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W. D. Howells >> A Foregone Conclusion
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"Have you ever thought of that extravagant generosity of Miss Vervain's
character?"
"It is divine!"
"Has it seemed to you that if such a woman knew herself to have once
wrongly given you pain, her atonement might be as headlong and
excessive as her offense? That she could have no reserves in her
reparation?"
Don Ippolito looked at Ferris, but did not interpose.
"Miss Vervain is very religious in her way, and she is truth itself.
Are you sure that it is not concern for what seems to her your terrible
position, that has made her show so much anxiety on your account?"
"Do I not know that well? Have I not felt the balm of her most heavenly
pity?"
"And may she not be only trying to appeal to something in you as high
as the impulse of her own heart?"
"As high!" cried Don Ippolito, almost angrily. "Can there be any higher
thing in heaven or on earth than love for such a woman?"
"Yes; both in heaven and on earth," answered Ferris.
"I do not understand you," said Don Ippolito with a puzzled stare.
Ferris did not reply. He fell into a dull reverie in which he seemed to
forget Don Ippolito and the whole affair. At last the priest spoke
again: "Have you nothing to say to me, signore?"
"I? What is there to say?" returned the other blankly.
"Do you know any reason why I should not love her, save that I am--have
been--a priest?"
"No, I know none," said the painter, wearily.
"Ah," exclaimed Don Ippolito, "there is something on your mind that you
will not speak. I beseech you not to let me go wrong. I love her so
well that I would rather die than let my love offend her. I am a man
with the passions and hopes of a man, but without a man's experience,
or a man's knowledge of what is just and right in these relations. If
you can be my friend in this so far as to advise or warn me; if you can
be her friend"--
Ferris abruptly rose and went to his balcony, and looked out upon the
Grand Canal. The time-stained palace opposite had not changed in the
last half-hour. As on many another summer day, he saw the black boats
going by. A heavy, high-pointed barge from the Sile, with the captain's
family at dinner in the shade of a matting on the roof, moved
sluggishly down the middle current. A party of Americans in a gondola,
with their opera-glasses and guide-books in their hands, pointed out to
each other the eagle on the consular arms. They were all like sights in
a mirror, or things in a world turned upside down.
Ferris came back and looked dizzily at the priest trying to believe
that this unhuman, sacerdotal phantasm had been telling him that it
loved a beautiful young girl of his own race, faith, and language.
"Will you not answer me, signore?" meekly demanded Don Ippolito.
"In this matter," replied the painter, "I cannot advise or warn you.
The whole affair is beyond my conception. I mean no unkindness, but I
cannot consult with you about it. There are reasons why I should not.
The mother of Miss Vervain is here with her, and I do not feel that her
interests in such a matter are in my hands. If they come to me for
help, that is different. What do you wish? You tell me that you are
resolved to renounce the priesthood and go to America; and I have
answered you to the best of my power. You tell me that you are in love
with Miss Vervain. What can I have to say about that?"
Don Ippolito stood listening with a patient, and then a wounded air.
"Nothing," he answered proudly. "I ask your pardon for troubling you
with my affairs. Your former kindness emboldened me too much. I shall
not trespass again. It was my ignorance, which I pray you to excuse. I
take my leave, signore."
He bowed, and moved out of the room, and a dull remorse filled the
painter, as he heard the outer door close after him. But he could do
nothing. If he had given a wound to the heart that trusted him, it was
in an anguish which he had not been able to master, and whose causes he
could not yet define. It was all a shapeless torment; it held him like
the memory of some hideous nightmare prolonging its horror beyond
sleep. It seemed impossible that what had happened should have
happened.
It was long, as he sat in the chair from which he had talked with Don
Ippolito, before he could reason about what had been said; and then the
worst phase presented itself first. He could not help seeing that the
priest might have found cause for hope in the girl's behavior toward
him. Her violent resentments, and her equally violent repentances; her
fervent interest in his unhappy fortunes, and her anxiety that he
should at once forsake the priesthood; her urging him to go to America,
and her promising him a home under her mother's roof there: why might
it not all be in fact a proof of her tenderness for him? She might have
found it necessary to be thus coarsely explicit with him, for a man in
Don Ippolito's relation to her could not otherwise have imagined her
interest in him. But her making use of Ferris to confirm her own
purposes by his words, her repeating them so that they should come back
to him from Don Ippolito's lips, her letting another man go with her to
look upon the procession in which her priestly lover was to appear in
his sacerdotal panoply; these things could cot be accounted for except
by that strain of insolent, passionate defiance which he had noted ill
her from the beginning. Why should she first tell Don Ippolito of their
going away? "Well, I wish him joy of his bargain," said Ferris aloud,
and rising, shrugged his shoulders, and tried to cast off all care of a
matter that did not concern him. But one does not so easily cast off a
matter that does not concern one. He found himself haunted by certain
tones and looks and attitudes of the young girl, wholly alien to the
character he had just constructed for her. They were child-like,
trusting, unconscious, far beyond anything he had yet known in women,
and they appealed to him now with a maddening pathos. She was standing
there before Don Ippolito's picture as on that morning when she came to
Ferris, looking anxiously at him, her innocent beauty, troubled with
some hidden care, hallowing the place. Ferris thought of the young
fellow who told him that he had spent three months in a dull German
town because he had the room there that was once occupied by the girl
who had refused him; the painter remembered that the young fellow said
he had just read of her marriage in an American newspaper.
Why did Miss Vervain send Don Ippolito to him? Was it some scheme of
her secret love for the priest; or mere coarse resentment of the
cautions Ferris had once hinted, a piece of vulgar bravado? But if she
had acted throughout in pure simplicity, in unwise goodness of heart?
If Don Ippolito were altogether self-deceived, and nothing but her
unknowing pity had given him grounds of hope? He himself had suggested
this to the priest, and how with a different motive he looked at it in
his own behalf. A great load began slowly to lift itself from Ferris's
heart, which could ache now for this most unhappy priest. But if his
conjecture were just, his duty would be different. He must not coldly
acquiesce and let things take their course. He had introduced Don
Ippolito to the Vervains; he was in some sort responsible for him; he
must save them if possible from the painful consequences of the
priest's hallucination. But how to do this was by no means clear. He
blamed himself for not having been franker with Don Ippolito and tried
to make him see that the Vervains might regard his passion as a
presumption upon their kindness to him, an abuse of their hospitable
friendship; and yet how could he have done this without outrage to a
sensitive and right-meaning soul? For a moment it seemed to him that he
must seek Don Ippolito, and repair his fault; but they had hardly
parted as friends, and his action might be easily misconstrued. If he
shrank from the thought of speaking to him of the matter again, it
appeared yet more impossible to bring it before the Vervains. Like a
man of the imaginative temperament as he was, he exaggerated the
probable effect, and pictured their dismay in colors that made his
interference seem a ludicrous enormity; in fact, it would have been an
awkward business enough for one not hampered by his intricate
obligations. He felt bound to the Vervains, the ignorant young girl,
and the addle-pated mother; but if he ought to go to them and tell them
what he knew, to which of them ought he to speak, and how? In an
anguish of perplexity that made the sweat stand in drops upon his
forehead, he smiled to think it just possible that Mrs. Vervain might
take the matter seriously, and wish to consider the propriety of
Florida's accepting Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to the daughter, how
should he approach the subject? "Don Ippolito tells me he loves you,
and he goes to America with the expectation that when he has made his
fortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you will marry him."
Should he say something to this purport? And in Heaven's name what
right had he, Ferris, to say anything at all? The horrible absurdity,
the inexorable delicacy of his position made him laugh.
On the other hand, besides, he was bound to Don Ippolito, who had come
to him as the nearest friend of both, and confided in him. He
remembered with a tardy, poignant intelligence how in their first talk
of the Vervains Don Ippolito had taken pains to inform himself that
Ferris was not in love with Florida. Could he be less manly and
generous than this poor priest, and violate the sanctity of his
confidence? Ferris groaned aloud. No, contrive it as he would, call it
by what fair name he chose, he could not commit this treachery. It was
the more impossible to him because, in this agony of doubt as to what
he should do, he now at least read big own heart clearly, and had no
longer a doubt what was in it. He pitied her for the pain she must
suffer. He saw how her simple goodness, her blind sympathy with Don
Ippolito, and only this, must have led the priest to the mistaken pass
at which he stood. But Ferris felt that the whole affair had been
fatally carried beyond his reach; he could do nothing now but wait and
endure. There are cases in which a man must not protect the woman he
loves. This was one.
The afternoon wore away. In the evening he went to the Piazza, and
drank a cup of coffee at Florian's. Then he walked to the Public
Gardens, where he watched the crowd till it thinned in the twilight and
left him alone. He hung upon the parapet, looking off over the lagoon
that at last he perceived to be flooded with moonlight. He desperately
called a gondola, and bade the man row him to the public landing
nearest the Vervains', and so walked up the calle, and entered the
palace from the campo, through the court that on one side opened into
the garden.
Mrs. Vervain was alone in the room where he had always been accustomed
to find her daughter with her, and a chill as of the impending change
fell upon him. He felt how pleasant it had been to find them together;
with a vain, piercing regret he felt how much like home the place had
been to him. Mrs. Vervain, indeed, was not changed; she was even more
than ever herself, though all that she said imported change. She seemed
to observe nothing unwonted in him, and she began to talk in her way of
things that she could not know were so near his heart.
"Now, Mr. Ferris, I have a little surprise for you. Guess what it is!"
"I'm not good at guessing. I'd rather not know what it is than have to
guess it," said Ferris, trying to be light, under his heavy trouble.
"You won't try once, even? Well, you're going to be rid of us soon I We
are going away."
"Yes, I knew that," said Ferris quietly. "Don Ippolito told me so to-
day."
"And is that all you have to say? Isn't it rather sad? Isn't it sudden?
Come, Mr. Ferris, do be a little complimentary, for once!"
"It's sudden, and I can assure you it's sad enough for me," replied the
painter, in a tone which could not leave any doubt of his sincerity.
"Well, so it is for us," quavered Mrs. Vervain. "You have been very,
very good to us," she went on more collectedly, "and we shall never
forget it. Florida has been speaking of it, too, and she's extremely
grateful, and thinks we've quite imposed upon you."
"Thanks."
"I suppose we have, but as I always say, you're the representative of
the country here. However, that's neither here nor there. We have no
relatives on the face of the earth, you know; but I have a good many
old friends in Providence, and we're going back there. We both think I
shall be better at home; for I'm sorry to say, Mr. Ferns, that though I
don't complain of Venice,--it's really a beautiful place, and all that;
not the least exaggerated,--still I don't think it's done my health
much good; or at least I don't seem to gain, don't you know, I don't
seem to gain."
"I'm very sorry to hear it, Mrs. Vervain."
"Yes, I'm sure you are; but you see, don't you, that we must go? We are
going next week. When we've once made up our minds, there's no object
in prolonging the agony."
Mrs. Vervain adjusted her glasses with the thumb and finger of her
right hand, and peered into Ferris's face with a gay smile. "But the
greatest part of the surprise is," she resumed, lowering her voice a
little, "that Don Ippolito is going with us."
"Ah!" cried Ferris sharply.
"I _knew_ I should surprise you," laughed Mrs. Vervain. "We've
been having a regular confab--_clave_, I mean--about it here, and
he's all on fire to go to America; though it must be kept a great
secret on his account, poor fellow. He's to join us in France, and then
he can easily get into England, with us. You know he's to give up being
a priest, and is going to devote himself to invention when ho gets to
America. Now, what _do_ you think of it, Mr. Ferris? Quite strikes
you dumb, doesn't it?" triumphed Mrs. Vervain. "I suppose it's what you
would call a wild goose chase,--I used to pick up all those phrases,--
but we shall carry it through."
Ferris gasped, as though about to speak, but said nothing.
"Don Ippolito's been here the whole afternoon," continued Mrs. Vervain,
"or rather ever since about five o'clock. He took dinner with us, and
we've been talking it over and over. He's _so_ enthusiastic about
it, and yet he breaks down every little while, and seems quite to
despair of the undertaking. But Florida won't let him do that; and
really it's funny, the way he defers to her judgment--you know _I_
always regard Florida as such a mere child--and seems to take every
word she says for gospel. But, shedding tears, now: it's dreadful in a
man, isn't it? I wish Don Ippolito wouldn't do that. It makes one
creep. I can't feel that it's manly; can you?"
Ferris found voice to say something about those things being different
with the Latin races.
"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Vervain, "I'm glad that _Americans_
don't shed tears, as a general _rule_. Now, Florida: you'd think
she was the man all through this business, she's so perfectly heroic
about it; that is, outwardly: for I can see--women can, in each other,
Mr. Ferris--just where she's on the point of breaking down, all the
while. Has she ever spoken to you about Don Ippolito? She does think so
highly of your opinion, Mr. Ferris."
"She does me too much honor," said Ferris, with ghastly irony.
"Oh, I don't think so," returned Mrs. Vervain. "She told me this
morning that she'd made Don Ippolito promise to speak to you about it;
but he didn't mention having done so, and--I hated, don't you know, to
ask him.... In fact, Florida had told me beforehand that I mustn't. She
said he must be left entirely to himself in that matter, and"--Mrs.
Vervain looked suggestively at Ferris.
"He spoke to me about it," said Ferris.
"Then why in the world did you let me run on? I suppose you advised him
against it."
"I certainly did."
"Well, there's where I think woman's intuition is better than man's
reason."
The painter silently bowed his head.
"Yes, I'm quite woman's rights in that respect," said Mrs. Vervain.
"Oh, without doubt," answered Ferris, aimlessly.
"I'm perfectly delighted," she went on, "at the idea of Don Ippolito's
giving up the priesthood, and I've told him he must get married to some
good American girl. You ought to have seen how the poor fellow blushed!
But really, you know, there are lots of nice girls that would
_jump_ at him--so handsome and sad-looking, and a genius."
Ferris could only stare helplessly at Mrs. Vervain, who continued:--
"Yes, I think he's a genius, and I'm determined that he shall have a
chance. I suppose we've got a job on our hands; but I'm not sorry. I'll
introduce him into society, and if he needs money he shall have it.
What does God give us money for, Mr. Ferris, but to help our fellow-
creatures?"
So miserable, as he was, from head to foot, that it seemed impossible
he could endure more, Ferris could not forbear laughing at this burst
of piety.
"What are you laughing at?" asked Mrs. Vervain, who had cheerfully
joined him. "Something I've been saying. Well, you won't have me to
laugh at much longer. I do wonder whom you'll have next."
Ferris's merriment died away in something like a groan, and when Mrs.
Vervain again spoke, it was in a tone of sudden querulousness. "I
_wish_ Florida would come! She went to bolt the land-gate after
Don Ippolito,--I wanted her to,--but she ought to have been back long
ago. It's odd you didn't meet them, coming in. She must be in the
garden Somewhere; I suppose she's sorry to be leaving it. But I need
her. Would you be so very kind, Mr. Ferris, as to go and ask her to
come to me?"
Ferris rose heavily from the chair in which he seemed to have grown ten
years older. He had hardly heard anything that he did not know already,
but the clear vision of the affair with which he had come to the
Vervains was hopelessly confused and darkened. He could make nothing of
any phase of it. He did not know whether he cared now to see Florida or
not. He mechanically obeyed Mrs. Vervain, and stepping out upon the
terrace, slowly descended the stairway.
The moon was shining brightly into the garden.
XV.
Florida and Don Ippolito had paused in the pathway which parted at the
fountain and led in one direction to the water-gate, and in the other
out through the palace-court into the campo.
"Now, you must not give way to despair again," she said to him. "You
will succeed, I am sure, for you will deserve success."
"It is all your goodness, madamigella," sighed the priest, "and at the
bottom of my heart I am afraid that all the hope and courage I have are
also yours."
"You shall never want for hope and courage then. We believe in you, and
we honor your purpose, and we will be your steadfast friends. But now
you must think only of the present--of how you are to get away from
Venice. Oh, I can understand how you must hate to leave it! What a
beautiful night! You mustn't expect such moonlight as this in America,
Don Ippolito."
"It _is_ beautiful, is it not?" said the priest, kindling from
her. "But I think we Venetians are never so conscious of the beauty of
Venice as you strangers are."
"I don't know. I only know that now, since we tave made up our minds to
go, and fixed the day and hour, it is more like leaving my own country
than anything else I've ever felt. This garden, I seem to have spent my
whole life in it; and when we are settled in Providence, I'm going to
have mother send back for some of these statues. I suppose Signor
Cavaletti wouldn't mind our robbing his place of them if he were paid
enough. At any rate we must have this one that belongs to the fountain.
You shall be the first to set the fountain playing over there, Don
Ippolito, and then we'll sit down on this stone bench before it, and
imagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervain at Venice."
"No, no; let me be the last to set it playing here," said the priest,
quickly stooping to the pipe at the foot of the figure, "and then we
will sit down here, and imagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervain
at Providence."
Florida put her hand on his shoulder. "You mustn't do it," she said
simply. "The padrone doesn't like to waste the water."
"Oh, we'll pray the saints to rain it back on him some day," cried Don
Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight
and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shall
I shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, looking
ruefully at the floating threads of splendor.
"Oh, I will shut it off before I go," answered Don Ippolito. "Let it
play a moment," he continued, gazing rapturously upon it, while the
moon painted his lifted face with a pallor that his black robes
heightened. He fetched a long, sighing breath, as if he inhaled with
that respiration all the rich odors of the flowers, blanched like his
own visage in the white lustre; as if he absorbed into his heart at
once the wide glory of the summer night, and the beauty of the young
girl at his side. It seemed a supreme moment with him; he looked as a
man might look who has climbed out of lifelong defeat into a single
instant of release and triumph.
Florida sank upon the bench before the fountain, indulging his caprice
with that sacred, motherly tolerance, some touch of which is in all
womanly yielding to men's will, and which was perhaps present in
greater degree in her feeling towards a man more than ordinarily
orphaned and unfriended.
"Is Providence your native city?" asked Don Ippolito, abruptly, after a
little silence.
"Oh no; I was born at St. Augustine in Florida."
"Ah yes, I forgot; madama has told me about it; Providence is
_her_ city. But the two are near together?"
"No," said Florida, compassionately, "they are a thousand miles apart."
"A thousand miles? What a vast country!"
"Yes, it's a whole world."
"Ah, a world, indeed!" cried the priest, softly. "I shall never
comprehend it."
"You never will," answered the young girl gravely, "if you do not think
about it more practically."
"Practically, practically!" lightly retorted the priest. "What a word
with you Americans; That is the consul's word: _practical_."
"Then you have been to see him to-day?" asked Florida, with eagerness.
"I wanted to ask you"--
"Yes, I went to consult the oracle, as you bade me."
"Don Ippolito"--
"And he was averse to my going to America. He said it was not
practical."
"Oh!" murmured the girl.
"I think," continued the priest with vehemence, "that Signor Ferris is
no longer my friend."
"Did he treat you coldly--harshly?" she asked, with a note of
indignation in her voice. "Did he know that I--that you came"--
"Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I shall indeed go to ruin there. Ruin,
ruin! Do I not _live_ ruin here?"
"What did he say--what did he tell you?"
"No, no; not now, madamigella! I do not want to think of that man, now.
I want you to help me once more to realize myself in America, where I
shall never have been a priest, where I shall at least battle even-
handed with the world. Come, let us forget him; the thought of him
palsies all my hope. He could not see me save in this robe, in this
figure that I abhor."
"Oh, it was strange, it was not like him, it was cruel! What did he
say?"
"In everything but words, he bade me despair; he bade me look upon all
that makes life dear and noble as impossible to me!"
"Oh, how? Perhaps he did not understand you. No, he did not understand
you. What did you say to him, Don Ippolito? Tell me!" She leaned
towards him, in anxious emotion, as she spoke.
The priest rose, and stretched out his arms, as if he would gather
something of courage from the infinite space. In his visage were the
sublimity and the terror of a man who puts everything to the risk.
"How will it really be with me, yonder?" he demanded. "As it is with
other men, whom their past life, if it has been guiltless, does not
follow to that new world of freedom and justice?"
"Why should it not be so?" demanded Florida. "Did _he_ say it
would not?"
"Need it be known there that I have been a priest? Or if I tell it,
will it make me appear a kind of monster, different from other men?"
"No, no!" she answered fervently. "Your story would gain friends and
honor for you everywhere in America. Did _he_"--
"A moment, a moment!" cried Don Ippolito, catching his breath. "Will it
ever be possible for me to win something more than honor and friendship
there?"
She looked up at him askingly, confusedly.
"If I am a man, and the time should ever come that a face, a look, a
voice, shall be to me what they are to other men, will _she_
remember it against me that I have been a priest, when I tell her--say
to her, madamigella--how dear she is to me, offer her my life's
devotion, ask her to be my wife?"...
Florida rose from the seat, and stood confronting him, in a helpless
silence, which he seemed not to notice.
Suddenly he clasped his hands together, and desperately stretched them
towards her.
"Oh, my hope, my trust, my life, if it were you that I loved?"...
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