A Foregone Conclusion. William Dean Howells
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on what was oddly various in character and manner, for Mrs. Vervain touched upon the gloomiest facts of her history with a certain impersonal statistical interest. They were rowing across the lagoon to the Island of San Lazzaro, where for reasons of her own she intended to venerate the convent in which Byron studied the Armenian language preparatory to writing his great poem in it; if her pilgrimage had no very earnest motive, it was worthy of the fact which it was designed to honor. The lagoon was of a perfect, shining smoothness, broken by the shallows over which the ebbing tide had left the sea-weed trailed like long, disheveled hair. The fishermen, as they waded about staking their nets, or stooped to gather the small shell-fish of the shallows, showed legs as brown and tough as those of the apostles in Titian’s Assumption. Here and there was a boat, with a boy or an old man asleep in the bottom of it. The gulls sailed high, white flakes against the illimitable blue of the heavens; the air, though it was of early spring, and in the shade had a salty pungency, was here almost languorously warm; in the motionless splendors and rich colors of the scene there was a melancholy before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfully silent. Now and then Ferris briefly spoke, calling Miss Vervain’s notice to this or that, and she briefly responded. As they passed the mad-house of San Servolo, a maniac standing at an open window took his black velvet skull-cap from his white hair, bowed low three times, and kissed his hand to the ladies. The Lido in front of them stretched a brown strip of sand with white villages shining out of it; on their left the Public Gardens showed a mass of hovering green; far beyond and above, the ghostlike snows of the Alpine heights haunted the misty horizon.
It was chill in the shadow of the convent when they landed at San Lazzaro, and it was cool in the parlor where they waited for the monk who was to show them through the place; but it was still and warm in the gardened court, where the bees murmured among the crocuses and hyacinths under the noonday sun. Miss Vervain stood looking out of the window upon the lagoon, while her mother drifted about the room, peering at the objects on the wall through her eyeglasses. She was praising a Chinese painting of fish on rice-paper, when a young monk entered with a cordial greeting in English for Mr. Ferris. She turned and saw them shaking hands, but at the same moment her eyeglasses abandoned her nose with a vigorous leap; she gave an amiable laugh, and groping for them over her dress, bowed at random as Mr. Ferris presented Padre Girolamo.
“I’ve been admiring this painting so much, Padre Girolamo,” she said, with instant good-will, and taking the monk into the easy familiarity of her friendship by the tone with which she spoke his name. “Some of the brothers did it, I suppose.”
“Oh no,” said the monk, “it’s a Chinese painting. We hung it up there because it was given to us, and was curious.”
“Well, now, do you know,” returned Mrs. Vervain, “I thought it was Chinese! Their things are, so odd. But really, in an Armenian convent it’s very misleading. I don’t think you ought to leave it there; it certainly does throw people off the track,” she added, subduing the expression to something very lady-like, by the winning appeal with which she used it.
“Oh, but if they put up Armenian paintings in Chinese convents?” said Mr. Ferris.
“You’re joking!” cried Mrs. Vervain, looking at him with a graciously amused air. “There are no Chinese convents. To be sure those rebels are a kind of Christians,” she added thoughtfully, “but there can’t be many of them left, poor things, hundreds of them executed at a time, that way. It’s perfectly sickening to read of it; and you can’t help it, you know. But they say they haven’t really so much feeling as we have—not so nervous.”
She walked by the side of the young friar as he led the way to such parts of the convent as are open to visitors, and Mr. Ferris came after with her daughter, who, he fancied, met his attempts at talk with sudden and more than usual hauteur. “What a fool!” he said to himself. “Is she afraid I shall be wanting to make love to her?” and he followed in rather a sulky silence the course of Mrs. Vervain and her guide. The library, the chapel, and the museum called out her friendliest praises, and in the last she praised the mummy on show there at the expense of one she had seen in New York; but when Padre Girolamo pointed out the desk in the refectory from which one of the brothers read while the rest were eating, she took him to task. “Oh, but I can’t think that’s at all good for the digestion, you know,—using the brain that way whilst you’re at table. I really hope you don’t listen too attentively; it would be better for you in the long run, even in a religious point of view. But now—Byron! You must show me his cell!” The monk deprecated the non-existence of such a cell, and glanced in perplexity at Mr. Ferris, who came to his relief. “You couldn’t have seen his cell, if he’d had one, Mrs. Vervain. They don’t admit ladies to the cloister.”
“What nonsense!” answered Mrs. Vervain, apparently regarding this as another of Mr. Ferris’s pleasantries; but Padre Girolamo silently confirmed his statement, and she briskly assailed the rule as a disrespect to the sex, which reflected even upon the Virgin, the object, as he was forced to allow, of their high veneration. He smiled patiently, and confessed that Mrs. Vervain had all the reasons on her side. At the polyglot printing-office, where she handsomely bought every kind of Armenian book and pamphlet, and thus repaid in the only way possible the trouble their visit had given, he did not offer to take leave of them, but after speaking with Ferris, of whom he seemed an old friend, he led them through the garden environing the convent, to a little pavilion perched on the wall that defends the island from the tides of the lagoon. A lay-brother presently followed them, bearing a tray with coffee, toasted rusk, and a jar of that conserve of rose-leaves which is the convent’s delicate hospitality to favored guests. Mrs. Vervain cried out over the poetic confection when Padre Girolamo told her what it was, and her daughter suffered herself to express a guarded pleasure. The amiable matron brushed the crumbs of the baicolo from her lap when the lunch was ended, and fitting on her glasses leaned forward for a better look at the monk’s black-bearded face. “I’m perfectly delighted,” she said. “You must be very happy here. I suppose you are.”
“Yes,” answered the monk rapturously; “so happy that I should be content never to leave San Lazzaro. I came here when I was very young, and the greater part of my life has been passed on this little island. It is my home—my country.”
“Do you never go away?”
“Oh yes; sometimes to Constantinople, sometimes to London and Paris.”
“And you’ve never been to America yet? Well now, I’ll tell you; you ought to go. You would like it, I know, and our people would give you a very cordial reception.”
“Reception?” The monk appealed once more to Ferris with a look.
Ferris broke into a laugh. “I don’t believe Padre Girolamo would come in quality of distinguished foreigner, Mrs. Vervain, and I don’t think he’d know what to do with one of our cordial receptions.”
“Well, he ought to go to America, any way. He can’t really know anything about us till he’s been there. Just think how ignorant the English are of our country! You will come, won’t you? I should be delighted to welcome you at my house in Providence. Rhode Island is a small State, but there’s a great deal of wealth there, and very good society in Providence. It’s quite New-Yorky, you know,” said Mrs. Vervain expressively. She rose as she spoke, and led the way back to the gondola. She told Padre Girolamo that they were to be some weeks in Venice, and made him promise to breakfast with them at their hotel. She smiled and nodded to him after the boat had pushed off, and kept him bowing on the landing-stairs.
“What a lovely place, and what a perfectly heavenly morning you have given us, Mr. Ferris I We never can thank you enough for it. And now, do you know what I’m thinking of? Perhaps you can help me. It was Byron’s studying there put me in mind of it. How soon do the mosquitoes come?”
“About the end of June,” responded Ferris mechanically, staring with helpless mystification at Mrs. Vervain.
“Very well; then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t stay in Venice till that time. We are both very fond of the place, and we’d quite concluded, this morning, to stop here till the mosquitoes came. You know, Mr. Ferris,