A Foregone Conclusion

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"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 shore 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 shore, 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 passengers 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 Canal 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 passionately; "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 glass 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," assented 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 glass of
wine. I'm sent away, you see," said Ferris. "And Miss Vervain is quite
right. Good night."

"Oh--_good_ night, Mr. Ferris," said Mrs. Vervain, giving her
hand. "Thank you so much."

Florida did not look towards him. She gathered her mother's shawl about
her shoulders for the twentieth time that day, and softly urged her in
doors, while Ferris let himself out into the campo.

IX.

Florida began to prepare the bed for her mother's lying down.

"What are you doing that for, my dear?" asked Mrs. Vervain. "I can't go
to bed at once."

"But mother"--

"No, Florida. And I mean it. You are too headstrong. I should think you
would see yourself how you suffer in the end by giving way to your
violent temper. What a day you have made for us!"

"I was very wrong," murmured the proud girl, meekly.

"And then the mortification of an apology; you might have spared
yourself that."

"It didn't mortify me; I didn't care for it."

"No, I really believe you are too haughty to mind humbling yourself.
And Don Ippolito had been so uniformly kind to us. I begin to believe
that Mr. Ferris caught your true character in that sketch. But your
pride will be broken some day, Florida."

"Won't you let me help you undress, mother? You can talk to me while
you're undressing. You must try to get some rest."

"Yes, I am all unstrung. Why couldn't you have let him come in and talk
awhile? It would have been the best way to get me quieted down. But no;
you must always have your own way Don't twitch me, my dear; I'd rather
undress myself. You pretend to be very careful of me. I wonder if you
really care for me."

"Oh, mother, you are all I have in the world!"

Mrs. Vervain began to whimper. "You talk as if I were any better off.
Have I anybody besides you? And I have lost so many."

"Don't think of those things now, mother."

Mrs. Vervain tenderly kissed the young girl. "You are good to your
mother. Don Ippolito was right; no one ever saw you offer me disrespect
or unkindness. There, there! Don't cry, my darling. I think I
_had_ better lie down, and I'll let you undress me."

She suffered herself to be helped into bed, and Florida went softly
about the room, putting it in order, and drawing the curtains closer to
keep out the near dawn. Her mother talked a little while, and presently
fell from incoherence to silence, and so to sleep.

Florida looked hesitatingly at her for a moment, and then set her
candle on the floor and sank wearily into an arm-chair beside the bed.
Her hands fell into her lap; her head drooped sadly forward; the light
flung the shadow of her face grotesquely exaggerated and foreshortened
upon the ceiling.

By and by a bird piped in the garden; the shriek of a swallow made
itself heard from a distance; the vernal day was beginning to stir from
the light, brief drowse of the vernal night. A crown of angry red
formed upon the candle wick, which toppled over in the socket and
guttered out with a sharp hiss.

Florida started from her chair. A streak of sunshine pierced shutter
and curtain. Her mother was supporting herself on one elbow in the bed,
and looking at her as if she had just called to her.

"Mother, did you speak?" asked the girl.

Mrs. Vervain turned her face away; she sighed deeply, stretched her
thin hands on the pillow, and seemed to be sinking, sinking down
through the bed. She ceased to breathe and lay in a dead faint.

Florida felt rather than saw it all. She did not cry out nor call for
help. She brought water and cologne, and bathed her mother's face, and
then chafed her hands. Mrs. Vervain slowly revived; she opened her
eyes, then closed them; she did not speak, but after a while she began
to fetch her breath with the long and even respirations of sleep.

Florida noiselessly opened the door, and met the servant with a tray of
coffee. She put her finger to her lip, and motioned her not to enter,
asking in a whisper: "What time is it, Nina? I forgot to wind my
watch."

"It's nine o'clock, signorina; and I thought you would be tired this
morning, and would like your coffee in bed. Oh, misericordia!" cried
the girl, still in whisper, with a glance through the doorway, "you
haven't been in bed at all!"

"My mother doesn't seem well. I sat down beside her, and fell asleep in
my chair without knowing it."

"Ah, poor little thing! Then you must drink your coffee at once. It
refreshes."

"Yes, yes," said Florida, closing the door, and pointing to a table in
the next room, "put it down here. I will serve myself, Nina. Go call
the gondola, please. I am going out, at once, and I want you to go with
me. Tell Checa to come here and stay with my mother till I come back."

She poured out a cup of coffee with a trembling hand, and hastily drank
it; then bathing her eyes, she went to the glass and bestowed a touch
or two upon yesterday's toilet, studied the effect a moment, and turned
away. She ran back for another look, and the next moment she was
walking down to the water-gate, where she found Nina waiting her in the
gondola.

A rapid course brought them to Ferris's landing. "Ring," she said to
the gondolier, "and say that one of the American ladies wishes to see
the consul."

Ferris was standing on the balcony over her, where he had been watching
her approach in mute wonder. "Why, Miss Vervain," he called down, "what
in the world is the matter?"

"I don't know. I want to see you," said Florida, looking up with a
wistful face.

"I'll come down."

"Yes, please. Or no, I had better come up. Yes, Nina and I will come
up."

Ferris met them at the lower door and led them to his apartment. Nina
sat down in the outer room, and Florida followed the painter into his
studio. Though her face was so wan, it seemed to him that he had never
seen it lovelier, and he had a strange pride in her being there, though
the disorder of the place ought to have humbled him. She looked over it
with a certain childlike, timid curiosity, and something of that lofty
compassion with which young ladies regard the haunts of men when they
come into them by chance; in doing this she had a haughty, slow turn of
the head that fascinated him.

"I hope," he said, "you don't mind the smell," which was a mingled one
of oil-colors and tobacco-smoke. "The woman's putting my office to
rights, and it's all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring you in
here."

Florida sat down on a chair fronting the easel, and found herself
looking into the sad eyes of Don Ippolito. Ferris brusquely turned the
back of the canvas toward her. "I didn't mean you to see that. It isn't
ready to show, yet," he said, and then he stood expectantly before her.
He waited for her to speak, for he never knew how to take Miss Vervain;
he was willing enough to make light of her grand moods, but now she was
too evidently unhappy for mocking; at the same time he did not care to
invoke a snub by a prematurely sympathetic demeanor. His mind ran on
the events of the day before, and he thought this visit probably
related somehow to Don Ippolito. But his visitor did not speak, and at
last he said: "I hope there's nothing wrong at home, Miss Vervain. It's
rather odd to have yesterday, last night, and next morning all run
together as they have been for me in the last twenty-four hours. I
trust Mrs. Vervain is turning the whole thing into a good solid
oblivion."

"It's about--it's about--I came to see you"--said Florida, hoarsely. "I
mean," she hurried on to say, "that I want to ask you who is the best
doctor here?"

Then it was not about Don Ippolito. "Is your mother sick?" asked
Ferris, eagerly. "She must have been fearfully tired by that unlucky
expedition of ours. I hope there's nothing serious?"

"No, no! But she is not well. She is very frail, you know. You must
have noticed how frail she is," said Florida, tremulously.

Ferris had noticed that all his countrywomen, past their girlhood,
seemed to be sick, he did not know how or why; he supposed it was all
right, it was so common. In Mrs. Vervain's case, though she talked a
great deal about her ill-health, he had noticed it rather less than
usual, she had so great spirit. He recalled now that he _had_
thought her at times rather a shadowy presence, and that occasionally
it had amused him that so slight a structure should hang together as it
did--not only successfully, but triumphantly.

He said yes, he knew that Mrs. Vervain was not strong, and Florida
continued: "It's only advice that I want for her, but I think we had
better see some one--or know some one that we could go to in need. We
are so far from any one we know, or help of any kind." She seemed to be
trying to account to herself, rather than to Ferris, for what she was
doing. "We mustn't let anything pass unnoticed".... She looked at him
entreatingly, but a shadow, as of some wounding memory, passed over her
face, and she said no more.

"I'll go with you to a doctor's," said Ferris, kindly.

"No, please, I won't trouble you."

"It's no trouble."

"I don't _want_ you to go with me, please. I'd rather go alone."
Ferris looked at her perplexedly, as she rose. "Just give me the
address, and I shall manage best by myself. I'm used to doing it."

"As you like. Wait a moment." Ferris wrote the address. "There," he
said, giving it to her; "but isn't there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes," answered Florida with awkward hesitation, and a half-defiant,
half-imploring look at him. "You must have all sorts of people applying
to you, as a consul; and you look after their affairs--and try to
forget them"--

"Well?" said Ferris.

"I wish you wouldn't remember that I've asked this favor of you; that
you'd consider it a"--

"Consular service? With all my heart," answered Ferris, thinking for
the third or fourth time how very young Miss Vervain was.

"You are very good; you are kinder than I have any right," said
Florida, smiling piteously. "I only mean, don't speak of it to my
mother. Not," she added, "but what I want her to know everything I do;
but it would worry her if she thought I was anxious about her. Oh! I
wish I wouldn't."

She began a hasty search for her handkerchief; he saw her lips tremble
and his soul trembled with them.

In another moment, "Good-morning," she said briskly, with a sort of
airy sob, "I don't want you to come down, please."

She drifted out of the room and down the stairs, the servant-maid
falling into her wake.

Ferris filled his pipe and went out on his balcony again, and stood
watching the gondola in its course toward the address he had given, and
smoking thoughtfully. It was really the same girl who had given poor
Don Ippolito that cruel slap in the face, yesterday. But that seemed no
more out of reason than her sudden, generous, exaggerated remorse both
were of a piece with her coming to him for help now, holding him at a
distance, flinging herself upon his sympathy, and then trying to snub
him, and breaking down in the effort. It was all of a piece, and the
piece was bad; yes, she had an ugly temper; and yet she had magnanimous
traits too. These contradictions, which in his reverie he felt rather
than formulated, made him smile, as he stood on his balcony bathed by
the morning air and sunlight, in fresh, strong ignorance of the whole
mystery of women's nerves. These caprices even charmed him. He
reflected that he had gone on doing the Vervains one favor after
another in spite of Florida's childish petulancies; and he resolved
that he would not stop now; her whims should be nothing to him, as they
had been nothing, hitherto. It is flattering to a man to be
indispensable to a woman so long as he is not obliged to it; Miss
Vervain's dependent relation to himself in this visit gave her a grace
in Ferris's eyes which she had wanted before.

In the mean time he saw her gondola stop, turn round, and come back to
the canal that bordered the Vervain garden.

"Another change of mind," thought Ferris, complacently; and rising
superior to the whole fitful sex, he released himself from uneasiness
on Mrs. Vervain's account. But in the evening he went to ask after her.
He first sent his card to Florida, having written on it, "I hope Mrs.
Vervain is better. Don't let me come in if it's any disturbance." He
looked for a moment at what he had written, dimly conscious that it was
patronizing, and when he entered he saw that Miss Vervain stood on the
defensive and from some willfulness meant to make him feel that he was
presumptuous in coming; it did not comfort him to consider that she was
very young. "Mother will be in directly," said Florida in a tone that
relegated their morning's interview to the age of fable.

Mrs. Vervain came in smiling and cordial, apparently better and not
worse for yesterday's misadventures.

"Oh, I pick up quickly," she explained. "I'm an old campaigner, you
know. Perhaps a little _too_ old, now. Years do make a difference;
and you'll find it out as you get on, Mr. Ferris."

"I suppose so," said Ferris, not caring to have Mrs. Vervain treat him
so much like a boy. "Even at twenty-six I found it pleasant to take a
nap this afternoon. How does one stand it at seventeen, Miss Vervain?"
he asked.

"I haven't felt the need of sleep," replied Florida, indifferently, and
he felt shelved, as an old fellow.

He had an empty, frivolous visit, to his thinking. Mrs. Vervain asked
if he had seen Don Ippolito, and wondered that the priest had not come
about, al day. She told a long story, and at the end tapped herself on
the mouth with her fan to punish a yawn.

Ferris rose to go. Mrs. Vervain wondered again in the same words why
Don Ippolito had not been near them all day.

"Because he's a wise man," said Ferris with bitterness, "and knows when
to time his visits." Mrs. Vervain did not notice his bitterness, but
something made Florida follow him to the outer door.

"Why, it's moonlight!" she exclaimed; and she glanced at him as though
she had some purpose of atonement in her mind.

But he would not have it. "Yes, there's a moon," he said moodily.
"Good-night."

"Good night," answered Florida, and she impulsively offered him her
hand. He thought that it shook in his, but it was probably the
agitation of his own nerves.

A soreness that had been lifted from his heart, came back; he walked
home disappointed and defeated, he hardly knew why or in what. He did
not laugh now to think how she had asked him that morning to forget her
coming to him for help; he was outraged that he should have been repaid
in this sort, and the rebuff with which his sympathy had just been met
was vulgar; there was no other name for it but vulgarity. Yet he could
not relate this quality to the face of the young girl as he constantly
beheld it in his homeward walk. It did not defy him or repulse him; it
looked up at him wistfully as from the gondola that morning.
Nevertheless he hardened his heart. The Vervains should see him next
when they had sent for him. After all, one is not so very old at
twenty-six.

X.

"Don Ippolito has come, signorina," said Nina, the next morning,
approaching Florida, where she sat in an attitude of listless patience,
in the garden.

"Don Ippolito!" echoed the young girl in a weary tone. She rose and
went into the house, and they met with the constraint which was but too
natural after the events of their last parting. It is hard to tell
which has most to overcome in such a case, the forgiver or the
forgiven. Pardon rankles even in a generous soul, and the memory of
having pardoned embarrasses the sensitive spirit before the object of
its clemency, humbling and making it ashamed. It would be well, I
suppose, if there need be nothing of the kind between human creatures,
who cannot sustain such a relation without mutual distrust. It is not
so ill with them when apart, but when they meet they must be cold and
shy at first.

"Now I see what you two are thinking about," said Mrs. Vervain, and a
faint blush tinged the cheek of the priest as she thus paired him off
with her daughter. "You are thinking about what happened the other day;
and you had better forget it. There is no use brooding over these
matters. Dear me! if _I_ had stopped to brood over every little
unpleasant thing that happened, I wonder where I should be now? By the
way, where were _you_ all day yesterday, Don Ippolito?"

"I did not come to disturb you because I thought you must be very
tired. Besides I was quite busy."

"Oh yes, those inventions of yours. I think you are _so_
ingenious! But you mustn't apply too closely. Now really, yesterday,--
after all you had been through, it was too much for the brain." She
tapped herself on the forehead with her fan.

"I was not busy with my inventions, madama," answered Don Ippolito, who
sat in the womanish attitude priests get from their drapery, and
fingered the cord round his three-cornered hat. "I have scarcely
touched them of late. But our parish takes part in the procession of
Corpus Domini in the Piazza, and I had my share of the preparations."

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