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 have 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?”...
“What!” shuddered the girl, recoiling, with almost a shriek. “_You_? _A
priest_!”