A Foregone Conclusion Part 20

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 l.u.s.tre; 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, compa.s.sionately, "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 evenhanded 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 n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.ce. 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?"...