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, all 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.