A Foregone Conclusion

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"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."

"You're a woman of business, Mrs. Vervain," said Ferris. "The man's a
perfect Jew--or a perfect Christian, one ought to say in Venice; we
true believers do gouge so much, more infamously here--and you let him
get you in black and white before you come to me. Well," he continued,
as he glanced at the paper, "you've done it! He makes you pay one half
too much. However, it's cheap enough; twice as cheap as your hotel."

"But I don't care for cheapness. I hate to be imposed upon. What's to
be done about it?"

"Nothing; if he has your letter as you have his. It's a bargain, and
you must stand to it."

"A bargain? Oh nonsense, now, Mr. Ferris. This is merely a note of
mutual understanding."

"Yes, that's one way of looking at it. The Civil Tribunal would call it
a binding agreement of the closest tenure,--if you want to go to law
about it."

"I _will_ go to law about it."

"Oh no, you won't--unless you mean to spend your remaining days and all
your substance in Venice. Come, you haven't done so badly, Mrs.
Vervain. I don't call four rooms, completely furnished for
housekeeping, with that lovely garden, at all dear at eleven francs a
day. Besides, the landlord is a man of excellent feeling, sympathetic
and obliging, and a perfect gentleman, though he is such an outrageous
scoundrel. He'll cheat you, of course, in whatever he can; you must
look out for that; but he'll do you any sort of little neighborly
kindness. Good-by," said Ferris, getting to the door before Mrs.
Vervain could intercept him. "I'll come to your new place this evening
to see how you are pleased."

"Florida," said Mrs. Vervain, "this is outrageous."

"I wouldn't mind it, mother. We pay very little, after all."

"Yes, but we pay too much. That's what I can't bear. And as you said
yesterday, I don't think Mr. Ferris's manners are quite respectful to
me."

"He only told you the truth; I think he advised you for the best. The
matter couldn't be helped now."

"But I call it a want of feeling to speak the truth so bluntly."

"We won't have to complain of that in our landlord, it seems," said
Florida. "Perhaps not in our priest, either," she added.

"Yes, that _was_ kind of Mr. Ferris," said Mrs. Vervain. "It was
thoroughly thoughtful and considerate--what I call an instance of true
delicacy. I'm really quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito! How very
odd to call a priest _Don_! I should have said Padre. Don always
makes you think of a Spanish cavalier. Don Rodrigo: something like
that."

They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, and what he might
be like. In speaking of him the day before, Ferris had hinted at some
mysterious sadness in him; and to hint of sadness in a man always
interests women in him, whether they are old or young: the old have
suffered, the young forebode suffering. Their interest in Don Ippolito
had not been diminished by what Ferris had told them of his visit to
the priest's house and of the things he had seen there; for there had
always been the same strain of pity in his laughing account, and he had
imparted none of his doubts to them. They did not talk as if it were
strange that Ferris should do to-day what he had yesterday said he
would not do; perhaps as women they could not find such a thing
strange; but it vexed him more and more as he went about all afternoon
thinking of his inconsistency, and wondering whether he had not acted
rashly.

IV.

The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an apartment fronted on a
broad campo, and hung its empty marble balconies from gothic windows
above a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice. The local
pharmacy, the caffe, the grocery, the fruiterer's, the other shops with
which every Venetian campo is furnished, had each a certain life about
it, but it was a silent life, and at midday a frowsy-headed woman
clacking across the flags in her wooden-heeled shoes made echoes whose
garrulity was interrupted by no other sound. In the early morning, when
the lid of the public cistern in the centre of the campo was unlocked,
there was a clamor of voices and a clangor of copper vessels, as the
housewives of the neighborhood and the local force of strong-backed
Frinlan water-girls drew their day's supply of water; and on that sort
of special parochial holiday, called a _sagra_, the campo hummed
and clattered and shrieked with a multitude celebrating the day around
the stands where pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisette-water
were sold, and before the movable kitchen where cakes were fried in
caldrons of oil, and uproariously offered to the crowd by the cook, who
did not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the rival drama of
adjoining puppet-shows, but continued to bellow forth his bargains all
day long and far into the night, when the flames under his kettles
painted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra once over, however, the
campo relapsed into its habitual silence, and no one looking at the
front of the palace would have thought of it as a place for
distraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But it was not on this side
that the landlord tempted his tenants; his principal notice of lodgings
to let was affixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened on a
smaller channel so near the Grand Canal that no wandering eye could
fail to see it. The portal was a tall arch of Venetian gothic tipped
with a carven flame; steps of white Istrian stone descended to the
level of the lowest ebb, irregularly embossed with barnacles, and
dabbling long fringes of soft green sea-mosses in the rising and
falling tide. Swarms of water-bugs and beetles played over the edges of
the steps, and crabs scuttled side-wise into deeper water at the
approach of a gondola. A length of stone-capped brick wall, to which
patches of stucco still clung, stretched from the gate on either hand
under cover of an ivy that flung its mesh of shining green from within,
where there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for Venice, and
full of a delicious, half-sad surprise for whoso opened upon it. In the
midst it had a broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on a
shell, and looking saucier than the sculptor meant, from having lost
the point of her nose, nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and
shepherdesses, her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery in
flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture of an arm, or the
casting of a leg or so; one lady had no head, but she was the boldest
of all. In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate trees,
several of which hung about the fountain with seats in their shade, and
for the rest there seemed to be mostly roses and oleanders, with other
shrubs of a kind that made the greatest show of blossom and cost the
least for tendance. A wide terrace stretched across the rear of the
palace, dropping to the garden path by a flight of balustraded steps,
and upon this terrace opened the long windows of Mrs. Vervain's parlor
and dining-room. Her landlord owned only the first story and the
basement of the palace, in some corner of which he cowered with his
servants, his taste for pictures and _bric-a-brac_, and his little
branch of inquiry into Venetian history, whatever it was, ready to let
himself or anything he had for hire at a moment's notice, but very
pleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive; a cheat and a liar, but of a kind
heart and sympathetic manners. Under his protection Mrs. Vervain set up
her impermanent household gods. The apartment was taken only from week
to week, and as she freely explained to the _padrone_ hovering
about with offers of service, she knew herself too well ever to unpack
anything that would not spoil by remaining packed. She made her trunks
yield all the appliances necessary for an invalid's comfort, and then
left them in a state to be strapped and transported to the station
within half a day after the desire of change or the exigencies of her
feeble health caused her going. Everything for housekeeping was
furnished with the rooms. There was a gondolier and a sort of house-
servant in the employ of the landlord, of whom Mrs. Vervain hired them,
and she caressingly dismissed the padrone at an early moment after her
arrival, with the charge to find a maid for herself and daughter. As if
she had been waiting at the next door this maid appeared promptly, and
being Venetian, and in domestic service, her name was of course Nina.
Mrs. Vervain now said to Florida that everything was perfect, and
contentedly began her life in Venice by telling Mr. Ferris, when he
came in the evening, that he could bring Don Ippolito the day after the
morrow, if he liked.

She and Florida sat on the terrace waiting for them on the morning
named, when Ferris, with the priest in his clerical best, came up the
garden path in the sunny light. Don Ippolito's best was a little
poverty-stricken; he had faltered a while, before leaving home, over
the sad choice between a shabby cylinder hat of obsolete fashion and
his well-worn three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put on
the latter with a sigh. He had made his servant polish the buckles of
his shoes, and instead of a band of linen round his throat, he wore a
strip ot cloth covered with small white beads, edged above and below
with a single row of pale blue ones.

As he mounted the steps with Ferris, Mrs. Vervain came forward a little
to meet them, while Florida rose and stood beside her chair in a sort
of proud suspense and timidity. The elder lady was in that black from
which she had so seldom been able to escape; but the daughter wore a
dress of delicate green, in which she seemed a part of the young season
that everywhere clothed itself in the same tint. The sunlight fell upon
her blonde hair, melting into its light gold; her level brows frowned
somewhat with the glance of scrutiny which she gave the dark young
priest, who was making his stately bow to her mother, and trying to
answer her English greetings in the same tongue.

"My daughter," said Mrs. Vervain, and Don Ippolito made another low
bow, and then looked at the girl with a sort of frank and melancholy
wonder, as she turned and exchanged a few words with Ferris, who was
assailing her seriousness and hauteur with unabashed levity of
compliment. A quick light flashed and fled in her cheek as she talked,
and the fringes of her serious, asking eyes swept slowly up and down as
she bent them upon him a moment before she broke abruptly, not
coquettishly, away from him, and moved towards her mother, while Ferris
walked off to the other end of the terrace, with a laugh. Mrs. Vervain
and the priest were trying each other in French, and not making great
advance; he explained to Florida in Italian, and she answered him
hesitatingly; whereupon he praised her Italian in set phrase.

"Thank you," said the girl sincerely, "I have tried to learn. I hope,"
she added as before, "you can make me see how little I know." The
deprecating wave of the hand with which Don Ippolito appealed to her
from herself, seemed arrested midway by his perception of some novel
quality in her. He said gravely that he should try to be of use, and
then the two stood silent.

"Come, Mr. Ferris," called out Mrs. Vervain, "breakfast is ready, and I
want you to take me in."

"Too much honor," said the painter, coming forward and offering his
arm, and Mrs. Vervain led the way indoors.

"I suppose I ought to have taken Don Ippolito's arm," she confided in
under-tone, "but the fact is, our French is so unlike that we don't
understand each other very well."

"Oh," returned Ferris, "I've known Italians and Americans whom
Frenchmen themselves couldn't understand."

"You see it's an American breakfast," said Mrs. Vervain with a critical
glance at the table before she sat down. "All but hot bread;
_that_ you _can't_ have," and Don Ippolito was for the first
time in his life confronted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak, eggs and
toast, fried potatoes, and coffee with milk, with a choice of tea. He
subdued all signs of the wonder he must have felt, and beyond cutting
his meat into little bits before eating it, did nothing to betray his
strangeness to the feast.

The breakfast had passed off very pleasantly, with occasional lapses.
"We break down under the burden of so many languages," said Ferris. "It
is an _embarras de richesses_. Let us fix upon a common maccheronic.
May I trouble you for a poco piu di sugar dans mon cafe, Mrs. Vervain?
What do you think of the bellazza de ce weather magnifique, Don Ippolito?"

"How ridiculous!" said Mrs. Vervain in a tone of fond admiration aside
to Don Ippolito, who smiled, but shrank from contributing to the new
tongue.

"Very well, then," said the painter. "I shall stick to my native
Bergamask for the future; and Don Ippolito may translate for the
foreign ladies."

He ended by speaking English with everybody; Don Ippolito eked out his
speeches to Mrs. Vervain in that tongue with a little French; Florida,
conscious of Ferris's ironical observance, used an embarrassed but
defiant Italian with the priest.

"I'm so pleased!" said Mrs. Vervain, rising when Ferris said that he
must go, and Florida shook hands with both guests.

"Thank you, Mrs. Vervain; I could have gone before, if I'd thought you
would have liked it," answered the painter.

"Oh nonsense, now," returned the lady. "You know what I mean. I'm
perfectly delighted with him," she continued, getting Ferris to one
side, "and I _know_ he must have a good accent. So very kind of
you. Will you arrange with him about the pay?--such a _shame_!
Thanks. Then I needn't say anything to him about that. I'm so glad I
had him to breakfast the first day; though Florida thought not. Of
course, one needn't keep it up. But seriously, it isn't an ordinary
case, you know."

Ferris laughed at her with a sort of affectionate disrespect, and said
good-by. Don Ippolito lingered for a while to talk over the proposed
lessons, and then went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs. Vervain
remained thoughtful a moment before she said:--

"That was rather droll, Florida."

"What, mother?"

"His cutting his meat into small bites, before he began to eat. But
perhaps it's the Venetian custom. At any rate, my dear, he's a
gentleman in virtue of his profession, and I couldn't do less than ask
him to breakfast. He has beautiful manners; and if he must take snuff,
I suppose it's neater to carry two handkerchiefs, though it does look
odd. I wish he wouldn't take snuff."

"I don't see why we need care, mother. At any fate, we cannot help it."

"That's true, my dear. And his nails. Now when they're spread out on a
book, you know, to keep it open,--won't it be unpleasant?"

"They seem to have just such fingernails all over Europe--except in
England."

"Oh, yes; I know it. I dare say we shouldn't care for it in him, if he
didn't seem so very nice otherwise. How handsome he is!"

V.

It was understood that Don Ippolito should come every morning at ten
o'clock, and read and talk with Miss Vervain for an hour or two; but
Mrs. Vervain's hospitality was too aggressive for the letter of the
agreement. She oftener had him to breakfast at nine, for, as she
explained to Ferris, she could not endure to have him feel that it was
a mere mercenary transaction, and there was no limit fixed for the
lessons on these days. When she could, she had Ferris come, too, and
she missed him when he did not come. "I like that bluntness of his,"
she professed to her daughter, "and I don't mind his making light of
me. You are so apt to be heavy if you're not made light of
occasionally. I certainly shouldn't want a _son_ to be so
respectful and obedient as you are, my dear."

The painter honestly returned her fondness, and with not much greater
reason. He saw that she took pleasure in his talk, and enjoyed it even
when she did not understand it; and this is a kind of flattery not easy
to resist. Besides, there was very little ladies' society in Venice in
those times, and Ferris, after trying the little he could get at, had
gladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted with the young men
he met at the caffe's, or in the Piazza. But when the Vervains came,
they recalled to him the younger days in which he had delighted in the
companionship of women. After so long disuse, it was charming to be
with a beautiful girl who neither regarded him with distrust nor
expected him to ask her in marriage because he sat alone with her, rode
out with her in a gondola, walked with her, read with her. All young
men like a house in which no ado is made about their coming and going,
and Mrs. Vervain perfectly understood the art of letting him make
himself at home. He perceived with amusement that this amiable lady,
who never did an ungraceful thing nor wittingly said an ungracious one,
was very much of a Bohemian at heart,--the gentlest and most blameless
of the tribe, but still lawless,--whether from her campaigning married
life, or the rovings of her widowhood, or by natural disposition; and
that Miss Vervain was inclined to be conventionally strict, but with
her irregular training was at a loss for rules by which to check her
mother's little waywardnesses. Her anxious perplexity, at times,
together with her heroic obedience and unswerving loyalty to her mother
had something pathetic as well as amusing in it. He saw her tried
almost to tears by her mother's helpless frankness,--for Mrs. Vervain
was apparently one of those ladies whom the intolerable surprise of
having anything come into their heads causes instantly to say or do
it,--and he observed that she never tried to pass off her endurance
with any feminine arts; but seemed to defy him to think what he would
of it. Perhaps she was not able to do otherwise: he thought of her at
times as a person wholly abandoned to the truth. Her pride was on the
alert against him; she may have imagined that he was covertly smiling
at her, and she no doubt tasted the ironical flavor of much of his talk
and behavior, for in those days he liked to qualify his devotion to the
Vervains with a certain nonchalant slight, which, while the mother
openly enjoyed it, filled the daughter with anger and apprehension.
Quite at random, she visited points of his informal manner with
unmeasured reprisal; others, for which he might have blamed himself,
she passed over with strange caprice. Sometimes this attitude of hers
provoked him, and sometimes it disarmed him; but whether they were at
feud, or keeping an armed truce, or, as now and then happened, were in
an _entente cordiale_ which he found very charming, the thing that
he always contrived to treat with silent respect and forbearance in
Miss Vervain was that sort of aggressive tenderness with which she
hastened to shield the foibles of her mother. That was something very
good in her pride, he finally decided. At the same time, he did not
pretend to understand the curious filial self-sacrifice which it
involved.

Another thing in her that puzzled him was her devoutness. Mrs. Vervain
could with difficulty be got to church, but her daughter missed no
service of the English ritual in the old palace where the British and
American tourists assembled once a week with their guide-books in one
pocket and their prayer-books in the other, and buried the tomahawk
under the altar. Mr. Ferris was often sent with her; and then his
thoughts, which were a young man's, wandered from the service to the
beautiful girl at his side,--the golden head that punctiliously bowed
itself at the proper places in the liturgy: the full lips that murmured
the responses; the silken lashes that swept her pale cheeks as she
perused the morning lesson. He knew that the Vervains were not
Episcopalians when at home, for Mrs. Vervain had told him so, and that
Florida went to the English service because there was no other. He
conjectured that perhaps her touch of ritualism came from mere love of
any form she could make sure of.

The servants in Mrs. Vervain's lightly ordered household, with the
sympathetic quickness of the Italians, learned to use him as the next
friend of the family, and though they may have had their decorous
surprise at his untrammeled footing, they probably excused the whole
relation as a phase of that foreign eccentricity to which their nation
is so amiable. If they were not able to cast the same mantle of charity
over Don Ippolito's allegiance,--and doubtless they had their reserves
concerning such frankly familiar treatment of so dubious a character as
priest,--still as a priest they stood somewhat in awe of him; they had
the spontaneous loyalty of their race to the people they served, and
they never intimated by a look that they found it strange when Don
Ippolito freely came and went. Mrs. Vervain had quite adopted him into
her family; while her daughter seemed more at ease with him than with
Ferris, and treated him with a grave politeness which had something
also of compassion and of child-like reverence in it. Ferris observed
that she was always particularly careful of his supposable
sensibilities as a Roman Catholic, and that the priest was oddly
indifferent to this deference, as if it would have mattered very little
to him whether his church was spared or not. He had a way of lightly
avoiding, Ferris fancied, not only religious points on which they could
disagree, but all phases of religion as matters of indifference. At
such times Miss Vervain relaxed her reverential attitude, and used him
with something like rebuke, as if it did not please her to have the
representative of even an alien religion slight his office; as if her
respect were for his priesthood and her compassion for him personally.
That was rather hard for Don Ippolito, Ferris thought, and waited to
see him snubbed outright some day, when he should behave without
sufficient gravity.

The blossoms came and went upon the pomegranate and almond trees in the
garden, and some of the earliest roses were in their prime; everywhere
was so full leaf that the wantonest of the strutting nymphs was forced
into a sort of decent seclusion, but the careless naiad of the fountain
burnt in sunlight that subtly increased its fervors day by day, and it
was no longer beginning to be warm, it was warm, when one morning
Ferris and Miss Vervain sat on the steps of the terrace, waiting for
Don Ippolito to join them at breakfast.

By this time the painter was well on with the picture of Don Ippolito
which the first sight of the priest had given him a longing to paint,
and he had been just now talking of it with Miss Vervain.

"But why do you paint him simply as a priest?" she asked. "I should
think you would want to make him the centre of some famous or romantic
scene," she added, gravely looking into his eyes as he sat with his
head thrown back against the balustrade.

"No, I doubt if you _think_," answered Ferris, "or you'd see that
a Venetian priest doesn't need any tawdry accessories. What do you
want? Somebody administering the extreme unction to a victim of the
Council of Ten? A priest stepping into a confessional at the Frari--
tomb of Canova in the distance, perspective of one of the naves, and so
forth--with his eye on a pretty devotee coming up to unburden her
conscience? I've no patience with the follies people, think and say
about Venice!"

Florida stared in haughty question at the painter.

"You're no worse than the rest," he continued with indifference to her
anger at his bluntness. "You all think that there can be no picture of
Venice without a gondola or a Bridge of Sighs in it. Have you ever read
the Merchant of Venice, or Othello? There isn't a boat nor a bridge nor
a canal mentioned in either of them; and yet they breathe and pulsate
with the very life of Venice. I'm going to try to paint a Venetian
priest so that you'll know him without a bit of conventional Venice
near him."

"It was Shakespeare who wrote those plays," said Florida. Ferris bowed
in mock suffering from her sarcasm. "You'd better have some sort of
symbol in your picture of a Venetian priest, or people will wonder why
you came so far to paint Father O'Brien."

"I don't say I shall succeed," Ferris answered. "In fact I've made one
failure already, and I'm pretty well on with a second; but the
principle is right, all the same. I don't expect everybody to see the
difference between Don Ippolito and Father O'Brien. At any rate, what
I'm going to paint _at_ is the lingering pagan in the man, the
renunciation first of the inherited nature, and then of a personality
that would have enjoyed the world. I want to show that baffled
aspiration, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which you caten
in his face When he's off his guard, and that suppressed look which is
the characteristic expression of all Austrian Venice. Then," said
Ferris laughing, "T must work in that small suspicion of Jesuit which
there is in every priest. But it's quite possible I may make a Father
O'Brien of him."

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