Ferris returned at nightfall to his house, where he had not been since
daybreak, and flung himself exhausted upon the bed. His face was burnt
red with the sun, and his eyes were bloodshot. He fell into a doze and
dreamed that he was still at Malamocco, whither he had gone that morning
in a sort of craze, with some fishermen, who were to cast their nets
there; then he was rowing back to Venice across the lagoon, that seemed
a molten fire under the keel. He woke with a heavy groan, and bade
Marina fetch him a light.
She set it on the table, and handed him the card Mrs. Vervain had left.
He read it and read it again, and then he laid it down, and putting on
his hat, he took his cane and went out. “Do not wait for me, Marina,” he
said, “I may be late. Go to bed.”
He returned at midnight, and lighting his candle took up the card and
read it once more. He could not tell whether to be glad or sorry that
he had failed to see the Vervains again. He took it for granted that
Don Ippolito was to follow; he would not ask himself what motive had
hastened their going. The reasons were all that he should never more
look upon the woman so hatefully lost to him, but a strong instinct of
his heart struggled against them.
He lay down in his clothes, and began to dream almost before he began
to sleep. He woke early, and went out to walk. He did not rest all day.
Once he came home, and found a letter from Mrs. Vervain, postmarked
Verona, reiterating her lamentations and adieux, and explaining that the
priest had relinquished his purpose, and would not go to America at all.
The deeper mystery in which this news left him was not less sinister
than before.
In the weeks that followed, Ferris had no other purpose than to reduce
the days to hours, the hours to minutes. The burden that fell upon him
when he woke lay heavy on his heart till night, and oppressed him far
into his sleep. He could not give his trouble certain shape; what was
mostly with him was a formless loss, which he could not resolve into any
definite shame or wrong. At times, what he had seen seemed to him some
baleful trick of the imagination, some lurid and foolish illusion.
But he could do nothing, he could not ask himself what the end was to
be. He kept indoors by day, trying to work, trying to read, marveling
somewhat that he did not fall sick and die. At night he set out on long
walks, which took him he cared not where, and often detained him till
the gray lights of morning began to tremble through the nocturnal blue.
But even by night he shunned the neighborhood in which the Vervains
had lived. Their landlord sent him a package of trifles they had left
behind, but he refused to receive them, sending back word that he did
not know where the ladies were. He had half expected that Mrs. Vervain,
though he had not answered her last letter, might write to him again
from England, but she did not. The Vervains had passed out of his world;
he knew that they had been in it only by the torment they had left him.
He wondered in a listless way that he should see nothing of Don
Ippolito. Once at midnight he fancied that the priest was coming towards
him across a campo he had just entered; he stopped and turned back into
the calle: when the priest came up to him, it was not Don Ippolito.
In these days Ferris received a dispatch from the Department of State,
informing him that his successor had been appointed, and directing him
to deliver up the consular flags, seals, archives, and other property of
the United States. No reason for his removal was given; but as there had
never been any reason for his appointment, he had no right to complain;
the balance was exactly dressed by this simple device of our civil
service. He determined not to wait for the coming of his successor
before giving up the consular effects, and he placed them at once in the
keeping of the worthy ship-chandler who had so often transferred them
from departing to arriving consuls. Then being quite ready at any moment
to leave Venice, he found himself in nowise eager to go; but he began in
a desultory way to pack up his sketches and studies.
One morning as he sat idle in his dismantled studio, Marina came to tell
him that an old woman, waiting at the door below, wished to speak with
him.
“Well, let her come up,” said Ferris wearily, and presently Marina
returned with a very ill-favored beldam, who stared hard at him while
he frowningly puzzled himself as to where he had seen that malign visage
before.
“Well?” he said harshly.
“I come,” answered the old woman, “on the part of Don Ippolito
Rondinelli, who desires so much to see your excellency.”
Ferris made no response, while the old woman knotted the fringe of her
shawl with quaking hands, and presently added with a tenderness in her
voice which oddly discorded with the hardness of her face: “He has been
very sick, poor thing, with a fever; but now he is in his senses again,
and the doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is still very
weak. He tried to write two lines to you, but he had not the strength;
so he bade me bring you this word: That he had something to say which it
greatly concerned you to hear, and that he prayed you to forgive his not
coming to revere you, for it was impossible, and that you should have
the goodness to do him this favor, to come to find him the quickest you
could.”
The old woman wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl, and her
chin wobbled pathetically while she shot a glance of baleful dislike
at Ferris, who answered after a long dull stare at her, “Tell him I’ll
come.”
He did not believe that Don Ippolito could tell him anything that
greatly concerned him; but he was worn out with going round in the same
circle of conjecture, and so far as he could be glad, he was glad of
this chance to face his calamity. He would go, but not at once; he would
think it over; he would go to-morrow, when he had got some grasp of the
matter.
The old woman lingered.
“Tell him I’ll come,” repeated Ferris impatiently.
“A thousand excuses; but my poor master has been very sick. The doctors
say he will get well. I hope so. But he is very weak indeed; a little
shock, a little disappointment.... Is the signore very, _very_ much
occupied this morning? He greatly desired,--he prayed that if such a
thing were possible in the goodness of your excellency .... But I am
offending the signore!”
“What do you want?” demanded Ferris.
The old wretch set up a pitiful whimper, and tried to possess herself of
his hand; she kissed his coat-sleeve instead. “That you will return with
me,” she besought him.
“Oh, I’ll go!” groaned the painter. “I might as well go first as last,”
he added in English. “There, stop that! Enough, enough, I tell you!
Didn’t I say I was going with you?” he cried to the old woman.
“God bless you!” she mumbled, and set off before him down the stairs and
out of the door. She looked so miserably old and weary that he called a
gondola to his landing and made her get into it with him.
It tormented Don Ippolito’s idle neighborhood to see Veneranda arrive
in such state, and a passionate excitement arose at the caffè, where the
person of the consul was known, when Ferris entered the priest’s house
with her.
He had not often visited Don Ippolito, but the quaintness of the
place had been so vividly impressed upon him, that he had a certain
familiarity with the grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings of the
parlor, and the puerile arrangement of the piano and melodeon. Veneranda
led him through these rooms to the chamber where Don Ippolito had first
shown him his inventions. They were all removed now, and on a bed, set
against the wall opposite the door, lay the priest, with his hands on
his breast, and a faint smile on his lips, so peaceful, so serene, that
the painter stopped with a sudden awe, as if he had unawares come into
the presence of death.
“Advance, advance,” whispered the old woman.
Near the head of the bed sat a white-haired priest wearing the red
stockings of a canonico; his face was fanatically stern; but he rose,
and bowed courteously to Ferris.
The stir of his robes roused Don Ippolito. He slowly and weakly turned
his head, and his eyes fell upon the painter. He made a helpless gesture
of salutation with his thin hand, and began to excuse himself, for
the trouble he had given, with a gentle politeness that touched the
painter’s heart through all the complex resentments that divided them.
It was indeed a strange ground on which the two men met. Ferris could
not have described Don Ippolito as his enemy, for the priest had
wittingly done him no wrong; he could not have logically hated him as
a rival, for till it was too late he had not confessed to his own heart
the love that was in it; he knew no evil of Don Ippolito, he could not
accuse him of any betrayal of trust, or violation of confidence. He felt
merely that this hapless creature, lying so deathlike before him, had
profaned, however involuntarily, what was sacredest in the world to him;
beyond this all was chaos. He had heard of the priest’s sickness with
a fierce hardening of the heart; yet as he beheld him now, he began to
remember things that moved him to a sort of remorse. He recalled again
the simple loyalty with which Don Ippolito had first spoken to him of
Miss Vervain and tried to learn his own feeling toward her; he thought
how trustfully at their last meeting the priest had declared his love
and hope, and how, when he had coldly received his confession, Don
Ippolito had solemnly adjured him to be frank with him; and Ferris could
not. That pity for himself as the prey of fantastically cruel chances,
which he had already vaguely felt, began now also to include the priest;
ignoring all but that compassion, he went up to the bed and took the
weak, chill, nerveless hand in his own.
The canonico rose and placed his chair for Ferris beside the pillow, on
which lay a brass crucifix, and then softly left the room, exchanging a
glance of affectionate intelligence with the sick man.
“I might have waited a little while,” said Don Ippolito weakly, speaking
in a hollow voice that was the shadow of his old deep tones, “but you
will know how to forgive the impatience of a man not yet quite master
of himself. I thank you for coming. I have been very sick, as you see;
I did not think to live; I did not care.... I am very weak, now; let
me say to you quickly what I want to say. Dear friend,” continued Don
Ippolito, fixing his eyes upon the painter’s face, “I spoke to her that
night after I had parted from you.”
The priest’s voice was now firm; the painter turned his face away.
“I spoke without hope,” proceeded Don Ippolito, “and because I must. I
spoke in vain; all was lost, all was past in a moment.”
The coil of suspicions and misgivings and fears in which Ferris had
lived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallid
visage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtle
expression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; Don
Ippolito went on.
“Even if I had never been a priest, I would still have been impossible
to her. She”....
He stopped as if for want of strength to go on. All at once he cried,
“Listen!” and he rapidly recounted the story of his life, ending with
the fatal tragedy of his love. When it was told, he said calmly, “But
now everything is over with me on earth. I thank the Infinite Compassion
for the sorrows through which I have passed. I, also, have proved the
miraculous power of the church, potent to save in all ages.” He gathered
the crucifix in his spectral grasp, and pressed it to his lips. “Many
merciful things have befallen me on this bed of sickness. My uncle, whom
the long years of my darkness divided from me, is once more at peace
with me. Even that poor old woman whom I sent to call you, and who had
served me as I believed with hate for me as a false priest in her heart,
has devoted herself day and night to my helplessness; she has grown
decrepit with her cares and vigils. Yes, I have had many and signal
marks of the divine pity to be grateful for.” He paused, breathing
quickly, and then added, “They tell me that the danger of this sickness
is past. But none the less I have died in it. When I rise from this bed
it shall be to take the vows of a Carmelite friar.”