THE VENETIAN TRILOGY: A Foregone Conclusion, Ragged Lady & The Lady of the Aroostook. William Dean Howells
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of these things."
"I thought it was the business of painters to send home the sentiment of them in pictures," said Florida.
Ferris talked to her in this way because it was his way of talking; it always surprised him a little that she entered into the spirit of it; he was not quite sure that she did; he sometimes thought she waited till she could seize upon a point to turn against him, and so give herself the air of having comprehended the whole. He laughed: "Oh yes, a poor little fragmentary, faded-out reproduction of their sentiment—which is 'as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine,' when compared with the real thing. Suppose I made a picture of this very bit, ourselves in the foreground, looking at the garden over there where that amusing Vandal of an owner has just had his statues painted white: would our friends at home understand it? A whole history must be left unexpressed. I could only hint at an entire situation. Of course, people with a taste for olives would get the flavor; but even they would wonder that I chose such an unsuggestive bit. Why, it is just the most maddeningly suggestive thing to be found here! And if I may put it modestly, for my share in it, I think we two young Americans looking on at this supreme excess of the rococo, are the very essence of the sentiment of the scene; but what would the honored connoisseurs—the good folks who get themselves up on Ruskin and try so honestly hard to have some little ideas about art—make of us? To be sure they might justifiably praise the grace of your pose, if I were so lucky as to catch it, and your way of putting your hand under the elbow of the arm that holds your parasol,"—Florida seemed disdainfully to keep her attitude, and the painter smiled,—"but they wouldn't know what it all meant, and couldn't imagine that we were inspired by this rascally little villa to sigh longingly over the wicked past."
"Excuse me," interrupted Florida, with a touch of trouble in her proud manner, "I'm not sighing over it, for one, and I don't want it back. I'm glad that I'm American and that there is no past for me. I can't understand how you and Don Ippolito can speak so tolerantly of what no one can respect," she added, in almost an aggrieved tone.
If Miss Vervain wanted to turn the talk upon Don Ippolito, Ferris by no means did; he had had enough of that subject yesterday; he got as lightly away from it as he could.
"Oh, Don Ippolito's a pagan, I tell you; and I'm a painter, and the rococo is my weakness. I wish I could paint it, but I can't; I'm a hundred years too late. I couldn't even paint myself in the act of sentimentalizing it."
While he talked, he had been making a few lines in a small pocket sketch-book, with a furtive glance or two at Florida. When they returned to the boat, he busied himself again with the book, and presently he handed it to Mrs. Vervain.
"Why, it's Florida!" cried the lady. "How very nicely you do sketch, Mr. Ferris."
"Thanks, Mrs. Vervain; you're always flattering me."
"No, but seriously. I wish that I had paid more attention to my drawing when I was a girl. And now, Florida—she won't touch a pencil. I wish you'd talk to her, Mr. Ferris."
"Oh, people who are pictures needn't trouble themselves to be painters," said Ferris, with a little burlesque.
Mrs. Vervain began to look at the sketch through her tubed hand; the painter made a grimace. "But you've made her too proud, Mr. Ferris. She doesn't look like that."
"Yes she does—to those unworthy of her kindness. I have taken Miss Vervain in the act of scorning the rococo, and its humble admirer, me, with it."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Mr. Ferris; but I can't think that this proud look is habitual with Florida; and I've heard people say—very good judges—that an artist oughtn't to perpetuate a temporary expression. Something like that."
"It can't be helped now, Mrs. Vervain: the sketch is irretrievably immortal. I'm sorry, but it's too late."
"Oh, stuff! As if you couldn't turn up the corners of the mouth a little. Or something."
"And give her the appearance of laughing at me? Never!"
"Don Ippolito," said Mrs. Vervain, turning to the priest, who had been listening intently to all this trivial talk, "what do you think of this sketch?"
He took the book with an eager hand, and perused the sketch as if trying to read some secret there. After a minute he handed it back with a light sigh, apparently of relief, but said nothing.
"Well?" asked Mrs. Vervain.
"Oh! I ask pardon. No, it isn't my idea of madamigella. It seems to me that her likeness must be sketched in color. Those lines are true, but they need color to subdue them; they go too far, they are more than true."
"You're quite right, Don Ippolito," said Ferris.
"Then you don't think she always has this proud look?" pursued Mrs. Vervain. The painter fancied that Florida quelled in herself a movement of impatience; he looked at her with an amused smile.
"Not always, no," answered Don Ippolito.
"Sometimes her face expresses the greatest meekness in the world."
"But not at the present moment," thought Ferris, fascinated by the stare of angry pride which the girl bent upon the unconscious priest.
"Though I confess that I should hardly know how to characterize her habitual expression," added Don Ippolito.
"Thanks," said Florida, peremptorily. "I'm tired of the subject; it isn't an important one."
"Oh yes it is, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain. "At least it's important to me, if it isn't to you; for I'm your mother, and really, if I thought you looked like this, as a general thing, to a casual observer, I should consider it a reflection upon myself." Ferris gave a provoking laugh, as she continued sweetly, "I must insist, Don Ippolito: now did you ever see Florida look so?"
The girl leaned back, and began to wave her fan slowly to and fro before her face.
"I never saw her look so with you, dear madama," said the priest with an anxious glance at Florida, who let her fan fall folded into her lap, and sat still. He went on with priestly smoothness, and a touch of something like invoked authority, such as a man might show who could dispense indulgences and inflict penances. "No one could help seeing her devotedness to you, and I have admired from the first an obedience and tenderness that I have never known equaled. In all her relations to you, madamigella has seemed to me"—
Florida started forward. "You are not asked to comment on my behavior to my mother; you are not invited to speak of my conduct at all!" she burst out with sudden violence, her visage flaming, and her blue eyes burning upon Don Ippolito, who shrank from the astonishing rudeness as from a blow in the face. "What is it to you how I treat my mother?"
She sank back again upon the cushions, and opening the fan with a clash swept it swiftly before her.
"Florida!" said her mother gravely.
Ferris turned away in cold disgust, like one who has witnessed a cruelty done to some helpless thing. Don Ippolito's speech was not fortunate at the best, but it might have come from a foreigner's misapprehension, and at the worst it was good-natured and well-meant. "The girl is a perfect brute, as I thought in the beginning," the painter said to himself. "How could I have ever thought differently? I shall have to tell Don Ippolito that I'm ashamed of her, and disclaim all responsibility. Pah! I wish I was out of this."
The pleasure of the day was dead. It could not rally from that stroke. They went on to Strà, as they had planned, but the glory of the Villa Pisani was eclipsed for Don Ippolito. He plainly did not know what to do. He did not address Florida again, whose savagery he would not probably have known how to resent if he had wished to resent it. Mrs. Vervain prattled away to him with unrelenting kindness; Ferris kept near him, and with affectionate zeal tried to make him talk of the villa, but neither the frescoes, nor the orangeries, nor the green-houses, nor the stables, nor the gardens could rouse him from the listless daze in which he moved, though Ferris found them all as wonderful as he had said. Amidst this heavy embarrassment no one seemed at ease but the author of it. She did not, to be sure, speak to Don Ippolito, but