William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ as he continued, "But I suppose you would like to have some explanation of my motive in precipitating Don Ippolito upon you in this way, when I told you only yesterday that he wouldn't do at all; in fact I think myself that I've behaved rather fickle-mindedly—for a representative of the country. But I'll tell you; and you won't be surprised to learn that I acted from mixed motives. I'm not at all sure that he'll do; I've had awful misgivings about it since I left him, and I'm glad of the chance to make a clean breast of it. When I came to think the matter over last night, the fact that he had taught himself English—with the help of an Irishman for the pronunciation—seemed to promise that he'd have the right sort of sympathy with your scheme, and it showed that he must have something practical about him, too. And here's where the selfish admixture comes in. I didn't have your interests solely in mind when I went to see Don Ippolito. I hadn't been able to get rid of him; he stuck in my thought. I fancied he might be glad of the pay of a teacher, and—I had half a notion to ask him to let me paint him. It was an even chance whether I should try to secure him for Miss Vervain, or for Art—as they call it. Miss Vervain won because she could pay him, and I didn't see how Art could. I can bring him round any time; and that's the whole inconsequent business. My consolation is that I've left you perfectly free. There's nothing decided."

      "Thanks," said Mrs. Vervain; "then it's all settled. You can bring him as soon as you like, to our new place. We've taken that apartment we looked at the other day, and we're going into it this afternoon. Here's the landlord's letter," she added, drawing a paper out of her pocket. "If he's cheated us, I suppose you can see justice done. I didn't want to trouble you before."

      "You're a woman of business, Mrs. Vervain," said Ferris. "The man's a perfect Jew—or a perfect Christian, one ought to say in Venice; we true believers do gouge so much, more infamously here—and you let him get you in black and white before you come to me. Well," he continued, as he glanced at the paper, "you've done it! He makes you pay one half too much. However, it's cheap enough; twice as cheap as your hotel."

      "But I don't care for cheapness. I hate to be imposed upon. What's to be done about it?"

      "Nothing; if he has your letter as you have his. It's a bargain, and you must stand to it."

      "A bargain? Oh nonsense, now, Mr. Ferris. This is merely a note of mutual understanding."

      "Yes, that's one way of looking at it. The Civil Tribunal would call it a binding agreement of the closest tenure,—if you want to go to law about it."

      "I will go to law about it."

      "Oh no, you won't—unless you mean to spend your remaining days and all your substance in Venice. Come, you haven't done so badly, Mrs. Vervain. I don't call four rooms, completely furnished for housekeeping, with that lovely garden, at all dear at eleven francs a day. Besides, the landlord is a man of excellent feeling, sympathetic and obliging, and a perfect gentleman, though he is such an outrageous scoundrel. He'll cheat you, of course, in whatever he can; you must look out for that; but he'll do you any sort of little neighborly kindness. Good-by," said Ferris, getting to the door before Mrs. Vervain could intercept him. "I'll come to your new place this evening to see how you are pleased."

      "Florida," said Mrs. Vervain, "this is outrageous."

      "I wouldn't mind it, mother. We pay very little, after all."

      "Yes, but we pay too much. That's what I can't bear. And as you said yesterday, I don't think Mr. Ferris's manners are quite respectful to me."

      "He only told you the truth; I think he advised you for the best. The matter couldn't be helped now."

      "But I call it a want of feeling to speak the truth so bluntly."

      "We won't have to complain of that in our landlord, it seems," said Florida. "Perhaps not in our priest, either," she added.

      "Yes, that was kind of Mr. Ferris," said Mrs. Vervain. "It was thoroughly thoughtful and considerate—what I call an instance of true delicacy. I'm really quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito! How very odd to call a priest Don! I should have said Padre. Don always makes you think of a Spanish cavalier. Don Rodrigo: something like that."

      They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, and what he might be like. In speaking of him the day before, Ferris had hinted at some mysterious sadness in him; and to hint of sadness in a man always interests women in him, whether they are old or young: the old have suffered, the young forebode suffering. Their interest in Don Ippolito had not been diminished by what Ferris had told them of his visit to the priest's house and of the things he had seen there; for there had always been the same strain of pity in his laughing account, and he had imparted none of his doubts to them. They did not talk as if it were strange that Ferris should do to-day what he had yesterday said he would not do; perhaps as women they could not find such a thing strange; but it vexed him more and more as he went about all afternoon thinking of his inconsistency, and wondering whether he had not acted rashly.

IV

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      The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an apartment fronted on a broad campo, and hung its empty marble balconies from gothic windows above a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice. The local pharmacy, the caffè, the grocery, the fruiterer's, the other shops with which every Venetian campo is furnished, had each a certain life about it, but it was a silent life, and at midday a frowsy-headed woman clacking across the flags in her wooden-heeled shoes made echoes whose garrulity was interrupted by no other sound. In the early morning, when the lid of the public cistern in the centre of the campo was unlocked, there was a clamor of voices and a clangor of copper vessels, as the housewives of the neighborhood and the local force of strong-backed Frinlan water-girls drew their day's supply of water; and on that sort of special parochial holiday, called a sagra, the campo hummed and clattered and shrieked with a multitude celebrating the day around the stands where pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisette-water were sold, and before the movable kitchen where cakes were fried in caldrons of oil, and uproariously offered to the crowd by the cook, who did not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the rival drama of adjoining puppet-shows, but continued to bellow forth his bargains all day long and far into the night, when the flames under his kettles painted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra once over, however, the campo relapsed into its habitual silence, and no one looking at the front of the palace would have thought of it as a place for distraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But it was not on this side that the landlord tempted his tenants; his principal notice of lodgings to let was affixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened on a smaller channel so near the Grand Canal that no wandering eye could fail to see it. The portal was a tall arch of Venetian gothic tipped with a carven flame; steps of white Istrian stone descended to the level of the lowest ebb, irregularly embossed with barnacles, and dabbling long fringes of soft green sea-mosses in the rising and falling tide. Swarms of water-bugs and beetles played over the edges of the steps, and crabs scuttled side-wise into deeper water at the approach of a gondola. A length of stone-capped brick wall, to which patches of stucco still clung, stretched from the gate on either hand under cover of an ivy that flung its mesh of shining green from within, where there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for Venice, and full of a delicious, half-sad surprise for whoso opened upon it. In the midst it had a broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on a shell, and looking saucier than the sculptor meant, from having lost the point of her nose, nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses, her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture of an arm, or the casting of a leg or so; one lady had no head, but she was the boldest of all. In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate trees, several of which hung about the fountain with seats in their shade, and for the rest there seemed to СКАЧАТЬ