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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated) is a comprehensive collection of the works of William Dean Howells, a prominent figure in 19th century American literature. This anthology showcases Howells' diverse literary style, ranging from realistic portrayals of everyday life to social commentary on the changing society of his time. With a keen eye for detail and a sharp wit, Howells' novels provide a rich tapestry of characters and settings that captivate readers and offer valuable insights into the complexities of the human experience. The inclusion of illustrations enhances the reading experience, bringing Howells' vivid descriptions to life on the page. This collection is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature of the Gilded Age. William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated) is a testament to Howells' enduring legacy as a writer who explored the nuances of American society with depth and nuance, making it a valuable addition to any literary enthusiast's library.
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William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
Table of Contents
Introduction:
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Howells, William Dean, author, b. in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, 1 March, 1837. His ancestors on the father's side were Welsh Quakers, and people of substance; his great-grandfather introduced the manufacture of flannel into his town and built three mills; his grandfather, impelled by his democratic sympathies, emigrated to this country, and became an ardent Methodist; while his father adopted the beliefs of Swedenborg, in which young Howells was educated. In all these generations the family was a cultivated race, living in an atmosphere of books and moral and literary refinement. His father had, for the time and place, a good collection of books, but it was mostly poetry, and familiarity with this doubtless decided the nature of his early literary efforts. Almost as soon as he could read he began to make verses and put them in type in his father's printing-office. In his inherited literary tastes and refinement and liberal and undogmatic religious tendency, in the plain living of his early years and his learning a trade, in his contact with a thoroughly democratic society, in the early habit of self-dependence and the knowledge of the realities of life, it is evident what has given the man his charm as a writer, his courage of opinion, his sturdy Americanism, and his profound sympathy with common life. When he was three years old his father removed to Hamilton, Ohio, and bought the Hamilton “Intelligencer,” a weekly journal, in the office of which Howells learned to set type before he was twelve years old. In 1849, the elder Howells, unable, conscientiously, to support a slave-holding president, sold his newspaper, and removed with is family to Dayton, Ohio, where he purchased the Dayton “Transcript,” a semi-weekly newspaper, which he turned into a daily. After a struggle of two years, this enterprise completely failed, not, however, from any want of industry, for all the sons worked at the case, and young Howells often set type till eleven o'clock at night, and then arose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers. The announcement of the catastrophe in business was accepted with American insouciance. “We all,” says the author, “went down to the Miami river, and went in swimming.” In expectation, which was disappointed, of taking the superintendence of a projected paper-mill, the elder Howells took his family to Greene county, where they remained a year. During this year, in a log house, the author had his sole experience of roughing it, away from the amenities of civilization, an experience which he has turned to account in a charming sketch of his boyhood. In 1851, when the father was clerk of the house at the state capital, Howells worked as a compositor on the “Ohio State Journal,” earning four dollars a week, which he contributed to the family treasury. It was here that he made the acquaintance of John J. Piatt, an intimacy which stimulated his poetical tendency. In 1851 the family removed to Ashtabula, and all found employment on the “Sentinel,” which the elder Howells purchased; but this newspaper was subsequently transferred to Jefferson, where it continued under the management of the family. Before this last removal the talents of the young author had attracted attention; at the age of nineteen he was the Columbus correspondent of the Cincinnati “Gazette,” and when he was twenty-two he was made the news editor of the “State Journal” at Columbus. During his residence in Columbus he published poems in the “Atlantic Monthly,” the first entitled “By the Dead,” and in one year five others, “The Poet's Friends,” “The Pilot's Story,” “Pleasure Pain,” “Lost Beliefs,” and “Andenken.” Upon the nomination of Lincoln in 1860, Howells wrote his life, and from the profits of this book, $160, he made his first excursion into the world, visiting Montreal and Boston, where he formed the acquaintance of James Russell Lowell, then editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” who introduced him to Oliver Wendell Holmes. By President Lincoln he was appointed consul to Venice, and he resided in that city from 1861 till 1865, devoting his leisure hours to the mastering of the Italian language and literature, and the general cultivation of letters. The earliest fruits of this residence were a series of papers on “Venetian Life,” first published in book-form in England, in which was at once recognized the advent of a new writer of uncommon power, one capable of conveying to the reader exquisite delight merely by the charm of an original style, as vivid as it was subtle and flexible. The sketches had the novelty of realism; never was Venice so perfectly photographed, and the reader was agreeably surprised to find that the intrinsic romance of the city of the lagoons was heightened rather than diminished by this delicate and sympathetic analysis. Returning home well equipped for newspaper work, by a knowledge of foreign politics and literature, and the acquisition of French and Italian, Howells was for some time an editorial writer on the New York “Tribune” and the “Times,” and a salaried contributor of the “Nation,” and in 1866 he was made by James T. Fields assistant editor of the “Atlantic Monthly.” In 1872 he became its editor, which post he retained till 1881, when he resigned and was succeeded by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Besides his strictly editorial work on this periodical, he contributed to it a vast amount of criticism, miscellaneous sketches, and fiction. During this period he was an occasional contributor to the “North American Review” of papers on Italian literature, and, residing in Cambridge, he was a valuable member of the coterie that gathered at Longfellow's house to assist in the translation of Dante. About this time. he began his acquaintance with Spanish literature. While editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” he edited with delightful introductory essays a series of “Choice Autobiographies.” His first tentative attempt at a story in “Their Wedding Journey” was so successful with the public that it determined his career as a writer of fiction, and since he dissolved his connection with the “Atlantic” he has pursued the career of a professional man of letters, devoting himself mainly to fiction, with the occasional production of plays, travel sketches, and literary criticism. Since 1881 most of his work has had a preliminary publication in “The Century” and “Harper's Magazine.” In 1882-’3 Mr. Howells was again in Europe with his family, spending some time in England and revisiting Italy. Since his return his residence has been in Boston. In 1886 he made a salaried connection with “Harper's,” taking charge of a new and critical department called the “Editor's Study,” and contributing exclusively to its pages. In this department he exposes and explains his theory of modern fiction, taking part with signal courage and acumen in that conflict which is always raging, under one name or another, between the idealists and the realists. To his apprehension there is a new spirit in the world, or a new era in fiction, which concerns itself with life as it actually is, has a profound sympathy with humanity, and reckons more important the statement of the facts of life than the weaving these facts, by any process of selection, which in a painter would be called “composition,” into any sort of story, more or less ideal. Anything ceases to be commonplace when it is frankly and exactly stated. In this new literary movement, the novels of the past seem unreal and artificial. This tendency is best exemplified in the modern Russian school, which is remorseless in its fidelity to the actual, the lowly, the sordid, the sinful, and the sorrowful in life, and accepts the inevitable, the fateful, without sarcasm, but with a tender pity. Because he portrays life as it is, or rather has the power of transferring the real, throbbing, human life, and not merely its incidents, to his pages as no writer has done before, Mr. Howells regards Count Leo Tolstoi as the first of all novelists that have written. Howells adds to his theory of realism the notion that genius is merely the power of taking conscientious pains. In practice he is a methodical and industrious worker, with a keen literary conscience, mindful of the responsibilities of a writer, serious in mind, but genial and even gay in temperament, and a delightful talker and companion. Mr. Howells married in Paris, 24 Dec., 1862, Elinor G. Mead, sister of Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor. They have three children, two girls and a boy. Besides his occasional uncollected writings, some translations, and four popular farces, “The Parlor Car,” “The Sleeping Car,” “The Register,” and “The Elevator,” the writings of Mr. Howells are “Poems of Two Friends,” with John J. Piatt (Columbus, Ohio, 1860); “Life of Abraham Lincoln” (1860); “Venetian Life” (London and New York, 1866); “Italian Journeys” (1867); “Suburban Sketches” (1868); “o Love Lost, a Poem of Travel” (1868); “Their Wedding Journey” (Boston, 1871); “A Chance Acquaintance” (1873); “A Foregone Conclusion” (1874); “Out of the Question” (Boston, 1876): “Life of Rutherford B. Hayes” (New York, 1876); “A Counterfeit Presentment” (1877); “Choice Biographies,” edited with essays (8 vols., 1877-’8); “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1878); “The Undiscovered Country” (1880); “A Fearful Responsibility, and other Tales” (1882); “Dr. Breen's Practice” (1883); “A Modern Instance” (1883); “A Woman's Reason” (1884); “Three Villages” (1885): “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885); “Tuscan Cities” (1885); “A Little Girl among the Old Masters,” drawings by his daughter (1886); “The Minister's Charge” 11886); “Indian Summer” (1886); “Modern Italian Poets” (1887); and “April Hopes” (New York, 1887).
Novels:
A FOREGONE CONCLUSION
I
As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow calle or footway leading from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, he peered anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up the calle, where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a garden gate; now running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast on either hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible overhead with the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and now glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless black boats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his own footfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine in one of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots of pinks and roses in the campo came softened to Don Ippolito's sense, and he heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together and gossiped, with the canal between them, at the next gondola station.
The first tenderness of spring was in the air though down in that calle there was yet enough of the wintry rawness to chill the tip of Don Ippolito's sensitive nose, which he rubbed for comfort with a handkerchief of dark blue calico, and polished for ornament with a handkerchief of white linen. He restored each to a different pocket in the sides of the ecclesiastical talare, or gown, reaching almost to his ankles, and then clutched the pocket in which he had replaced the linen handkerchief, as if to make sure that something he prized was safe within. He paused abruptly, and, looking at the doors he had passed, went back a few paces and stood before one over which hung, slightly tilted forward, an oval sign painted with the effigy of an eagle, a bundle of arrows, and certain thunderbolts, and bearing the legend, CONSULATE OF THE UNITED STATES, in neat characters. Don Ippolito gave a quick sigh, hesitated a moment, and then seized the bell-pull and jerked it so sharply that it seemed to thrust out, like a part of the mechanism, the head of an old serving-woman at the window above him.
"Who is there?" demanded this head.
"Friends," answered Don Ippolito in a rich, sad voice.
"And what do you command?" further asked the old woman.
Don Ippolito paused, apparently searching for his voice, before he inquired, "Is it here that the Consul of America lives?"
"Precisely."
"Is he perhaps at home?"
"I don't know. I will go ask him."
"Do me that pleasure, dear," said Don Ippolito, and remained knotting his fingers before the closed door. Presently the old woman returned, and looking out long enough to say, "The consul is at home," drew some inner bolt by a wire running to the lock, that let the door start open; then, waiting to hear Don Ippolito close it again, she called out from her height, "Favor me above." He climbed the dim stairway to the point where she stood, and followed her to a door, which she flung open into an apartment so brightly lit by a window looking on the sunny canal, that he blinked as he entered. "Signor Console," said the old woman, "behold the gentleman who desired to see you;" and at the same time Don Ippolito, having removed his broad, stiff, three-cornered hat, came forward and made a beautiful bow. He had lost for the moment the trepidation which had marked his approach to the consulate, and bore himself with graceful dignity.
It was in the first year of the war, and from a motive of patriotism common at that time, Mr. Ferris (one of my many predecessors in office at Venice) had just been crossing his two silken gondola flags above the consular bookcase, where with their gilt lance-headed staves, and their vivid stars and stripes, they made a very pretty effect. He filliped a little dust from his coat, and begged Don Ippolito to be seated, with the air of putting even a Venetian priest on a footing of equality with other men under the folds of the national banner. Mr. Ferris had the prejudice of all Italian sympathizers against the priests; but for this he could hardly have found anything in Don Ippolito to alarm dislike. His face was a little thin, and the chin was delicate; the nose had a fine, Dantesque curve, but its final droop gave a melancholy cast to a countenance expressive of a gentle and kindly spirit; the eyes were large and dark and full of a dreamy warmth. Don Ippolito's prevailing tint was that transparent blueishness which comes from much shaving of a heavy black beard; his forehead and temples were marble white; he had a tonsure the size of a dollar. He sat silent for a little space, and softly questioned the consul's face with his dreamy eyes. Apparently he could not gather courage to speak of his business at once, for he turned his gaze upon the window and said, "A beautiful position, Signor Console."
"Yes, it's a pretty place," answered Mr. Ferris, warily.
"So much pleasanter here on the Canalazzo than on the campos or the little canals."
"Oh, without doubt."
"Here there must be constant amusement in watching the boats: great stir, great variety, great life. And now the fine season commences, and the Signor Console's countrymen will be coming to Venice. Perhaps," added Don Ippolito with a polite dismay, and an air of sudden anxiety to escape from his own purpose, "I may be disturbing or detaining the Signor Console?"
"No," said Mr. Ferris; "I am quite at leisure for the present. In what can I have the honor of serving you?"
Don Ippolito heaved a long, ineffectual sigh, and taking his linen handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his forehead with it, and rolled it upon his knee. He looked at the door, and all round the room, and then rose and drew near the consul, who had officially seated himself at his desk.
"I suppose that the Signor Console gives passports?" he asked.
"Sometimes," replied Mr. Ferris, with a clouding face.
Don Ippolito seemed to note the gathering distrust and to be helpless against it. He continued hastily: "Could the Signor Console give a passport for America ... to me?"
"Are you an American citizen?" demanded the consul in the voice of a man whose suspicions are fully roused.
"American citizen?"
"Yes; subject of the American republic."
"No, surely; I have not that happiness. I am an Austrian subject," returned Don Ippolito a little bitterly, as if the last words were an unpleasant morsel in the mouth.
"Then I can't give you a passport," said Mr. Ferris, somewhat more gently. "You know," he explained, "that no government can give passports to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of thing."
"But I thought that to go to America an American passport would be needed."
"In America," returned the consul, with proud compassion, "they don't care a fig for passports. You go and you come, and nobody meddles. To be sure," he faltered, "just now, on account of the secessionists, they do require you to show a passport at New York; but," he continued more boldly, "American passports are usually for Europe; and besides, all the American passports in the world wouldn't get you over the frontier at Peschiera. You must have a passport from the Austrian Lieutenancy of Venice."
Don Ippolito nodded his head softly several times, and said, "Precisely," and then added with an indescribable weariness, "Patience! Signor Console, I ask your pardon for the trouble I have given," and he made the consul another low bow.
Whether Mr. Ferris's curiosity was piqued, and feeling himself on the safe side of his visitor he meant to know why he had come on such an errand, or whether he had some kindlier motive, he could hardly have told himself, but he said, "I'm very sorry. Perhaps there is something else in which I could be of use to you."
"Ah, I hardly know," cried Don Ippolito. "I really had a kind of hope in coming to your excellency."
"I am not an excellency," interrupted Mr. Ferris, conscientiously.
"Many excuses! But now it seems a mere bestiality. I was so ignorant about the other matter that doubtless I am also quite deluded in this."
"As to that, of course I can't say," answered Mr. Ferris, "but I hope not."
"Why, listen, signore!" said Don Ippolito, placing his hand over that pocket in which he kept his linen handkerchief. "I had something that it had come into my head to offer your honored government for its advantage in this deplorable rebellion."
"Oh," responded Mr. Ferris with a falling countenance. He had received so many offers of help for his honored government from sympathizing foreigners. Hardly a week passed but a sabre came clanking up his dim staircase with a Herr Graf or a Herr Baron attached, who appeared in the spotless panoply of his Austrian captaincy or lieutenancy, to accept from the consul a brigadier-generalship in the Federal armies, on condition that the consul would pay his expenses to Washington, or at least assure him of an exalted post and reimbursement of all outlays from President Lincoln as soon as he arrived. They were beautiful men, with the complexion of blonde girls; their uniforms fitted like kid gloves; the pale blue, or pure white, or huzzar black of their coats was ravishingly set off by their red or gold trimmings; and they were hard to make understand that brigadiers of American birth swarmed at Washington, and that if they went thither, they must go as soldiers of fortune at their own risk. But they were very polite; they begged pardon when they knocked their scabbards against the consul's furniture, at the door they each made him a magnificent obeisance, said "Servus!" in their great voices, and were shown out by the old Marina, abhorrent of their uniforms and doubtful of the consul's political sympathies. Only yesterday she had called him up at an unwonted hour to receive the visit of a courtly gentleman who addressed him as Monsieur le Ministre, and offered him at a bargain ten thousand stand of probably obsolescent muskets belonging to the late Duke of Parma. Shabby, hungry, incapable exiles of all nations, religions, and politics beset him for places of honor and emolument in the service of the Union; revolutionists out of business, and the minions of banished despots, were alike willing to be fed, clothed, and dispatched to Washington with swords consecrated to the perpetuity of the republic.
"I have here," said Don Ippolito, too intent upon showing whatever it was he had to note the change in the consul's mood, "the model of a weapon of my contrivance, which I thought the government of the North could employ successfully in cases where its batteries were in danger of capture by the Spaniards."
"Spaniards? Spaniards? We have no war with Spain!" cried the consul.
"Yes, yes, I know," Don Ippolito made haste to explain, "but those of South America being Spanish by descent"—
"But we are not fighting the South Americans. We are fighting our own Southern States, I am sorry to say."
"Oh! Many excuses. I am afraid I don't understand," said Don Ippolito meekly; whereupon Mr. Ferris enlightened him in a formula (of which he was beginning to be weary) against European misconception of the American situation. Don Ippolito nodded his head contritely, and when Mr. Ferris had ended, he was so much abashed that he made no motion to show his invention till the other added, "But no matter; I suppose the contrivance would work as well against the Southerners as the South Americans. Let me see it, please;" and then Don Ippolito, with a gratified smile, drew from his pocket the neatly finished model of a breech-loading cannon.
"You perceive, Signor Console," he said with new dignity, "that this is nothing very new as a breech-loader, though I ask you to observe this little improvement for restoring the breech to its place, which is original. The grand feature of my invention, however, is this secret chamber in the breech, which is intended to hold an explosive of high potency, with a fuse coming out below. The gunner, finding his piece in danger, ignites this fuse, and takes refuge in flight. At the moment the enemy seizes the gun the contents of the secret chamber explode, demolishing the piece and destroying its captors."
The dreamy warmth in Don Ippolito's deep eyes kindled to a flame; a dark red glowed in his thin cheeks; he drew a box from the folds of his drapery and took snuff in a great whiff, as if inhaling the sulphurous fumes of battle, or titillating his nostrils with grains of gunpowder. He was at least in full enjoyment of the poetic power of his invention, and no doubt had before his eyes a vivid picture of a score of secessionists surprised and blown to atoms in the very moment of triumph. "Behold, Signor Console!" he said.
"It's certainly very curious," said Mr. Ferris, turning the fearful toy over in his hand, and admiring the neat workmanship of it. "Did you make this model yourself?"
"Surely," answered the priest, with a joyous pride; "I have no money to spend upon artisans; and besides, as you might infer, signore, I am not very well seen by my superiors and associates on account of these little amusements of mine; so keep them as much as I can to myself." Don Ippolito laughed nervously, and then fell silent with his eyes intent upon the consul's face. "What do you think, signore?" he presently resumed. "If this invention were brought to the notice of your generous government, would it not patronize my labors? I have read that America is the land of enterprises. Who knows but your government might invite me to take service under it in some capacity in which I could employ those little gifts that Heaven"—He paused again, apparently puzzled by the compassionate smile on the consul's lips. "But tell me, signore, how this invention appears to you." "Have you had any practical experience in gunnery?" asked Mr. Ferris.
"Why, certainly not."
"Neither have I," continued Mr. Ferris, "but I was wondering whether the explosive in this secret chamber would not become so heated by the frequent discharges of the piece as to go off prematurely sometimes, and kill our own artillerymen instead of waiting for the secessionists?"
Don Ippolito's countenance fell, and a dull shame displaced the exultation that had glowed in it. His head sunk on his breast, and he made no attempt at reply, so that it was again Mr. Ferris who spoke. "You see, I don't really know anything more of the matter than you do, and I don't undertake to say whether your invention is disabled by the possibility I suggest or not. Haven't you any acquaintances among the military, to whom you could show your model?"
"No," answered Don Ippolito, coldly, "I don't consort with the military. Besides, what would be thought of a priest," he asked with a bitter stress on the word, "who exhibited such an invention as that to an officer of our paternal government?"
"I suppose it would certainly surprise the lieutenant-governor somewhat," said Mr. Ferris with a laugh. "May I ask," he pursued after an interval, "whether you have occupied yourself with other inventions?"
"I have attempted a great many," replied Don Ippolito in a tone of dejection.
"Are they all of this warlike temper?" pursued the consul.
"No," said Don Ippolito, blushing a little, "they are nearly all of peaceful intention. It was the wish to produce something of utility which set me about this cannon. Those good friends of mine who have done me the honor of looking at my attempts had blamed me for the uselessness of my inventions; they allowed that they were ingenious, but they said that even if they could be put in operation, they would not be what the world cared for. Perhaps they were right. I know very little of the world," concluded the priest, sadly. He had risen to go, yet seemed not quite able to do so; there was no more to say, but if he had come to the consul with high hopes, it might well have unnerved him to have all end so blankly. He drew a long, sibilant breath between his shut teeth, nodded to himself thrice, and turning to Mr. Ferris with a melancholy bow, said, "Signor Console, I thank you infinitely for your kindness, I beg your pardon for the disturbance, and I take my leave."
"I am sorry," said Mr. Ferris. "Let us see each other again. In regard to the inventions,—well, you must have patience." He dropped into some proverbial phrases which the obliging Latin tongues supply so abundantly for the races who must often talk when they do not feel like thinking, and he gave a start when Don Ippolito replied in English, "Yes, but hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
It was not that it was so uncommon to have Italians innocently come out with their whole slender stock of English to him, for the sake of practice, as they told him; but there were peculiarities in Don Ippolito's accent for which he could not account. "What," he exclaimed, "do you know English?"
"I have studied it a little, by myself," answered Don Ippolito, pleased to have his English recognized, and then lapsing into the safety of Italian, he added, "And I had also the help of an English ecclesiastic who sojourned some months in Venice, last year, for his health, and who used to read with me and teach me the pronunciation. He was from Dublin, this ecclesiastic."
"Oh!" said Mr. Ferris, with relief, "I see;" and he perceived that what had puzzled him in Don Ippolito's English was a fine brogue superimposed upon his Italian accent.
"For some time I have had this idea of going to America, and I thought that the first thing to do was to equip myself with the language."
"Um!" said Mr. Ferris, "that was practical, at any rate," and he mused awhile. By and by he continued, more kindly than he had yet spoken, "I wish I could ask you to sit down again: but I have an engagement which I must make haste to keep. Are you going out through the campo? Pray wait a minute, and I will walk with you."
Mr. Ferris went into another room, through the open door of which Don Ippolito saw the paraphernalia of a painter's studio: an easel with a half-finished picture on it; a chair with a palette and brushes, and crushed and twisted tubes of colors; a lay figure in one corner; on the walls scraps of stamped leather, rags of tapestry, desultory sketches on paper.
Mr. Ferris came out again, brushing his hat.
"The Signor Console amuses himself with painting, I see," said Don Ippolito courteously.
"Not at all," replied Mr. Ferris, putting on his gloves; "I am a painter by profession, and I amuse myself with consuling;" [Footnote: Since these words of Mr. Ferris were first printed, I have been told that a more eminent painter, namely Rubens, made very much the same reply to very much the same remark, when Spanish Ambassador in England. "The Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty, I see, amuses himself by painting sometimes," said a visitor who found him at his easel. "I amuse myself by playing the ambassador sometimes," answered Rubens. In spite of the similarity of the speeches, I let that of Mr. Ferris stand, for I am satisfied that he did not know how unhandsomely Rubens had taken the words out of his mouth.] and as so open a matter needed no explanation, he said no more about it. Nor is it quite necessary to tell how, as he was one day painting in New York, it occurred to him to make use of a Congressional friend, and ask for some Italian consulate, he did not care which. That of Venice happened to be vacant: the income was a few hundred dollars; as no one else wanted it, no question was made of Mr. Ferris's fitness for the post, and he presently found himself possessed of a commission requesting the Emperor of Austria to permit him to enjoy and exercise the office of consul of the ports of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, to which the President of the United States appointed him from a special trust in his abilities and integrity. He proceeded at once to his post of duty, called upon the ship's chandler with whom they had been left, for the consular archives, and began to paint some Venetian subjects.
He and Don Ippolito quitted the Consulate together, leaving Marina to digest with her noonday porridge the wonder that he should be walking amicably forth with a priest. The same spectacle was presented to the gaze of the campo, where they paused in friendly converse, and were seen to part with many politenesses by the doctors of the neighborhood, lounging away their leisure, as the Venetian fashion is, at the local pharmacy.
The apothecary craned forward over his counter, and peered through the open door. "What is that blessed Consul of America doing with a priest?"
"The Consul of America with a priest?" demanded a grave old man, a physician with a beautiful silvery beard, and a most reverend and senatorial presence, but one of the worst tongues in Venice. "Oh!" he added, with a laugh, after scrutiny of the two through his glasses, "it's that crack-brain Don Ippolito Rondinelli. He isn't priest enough to hurt the consul. Perhaps he's been selling him a perpetual motion for the use of his government, which needs something of the kind just now. Or maybe he's been posing to him for a picture. He would make a very pretty Joseph, give him Potiphar's wife in the background," said the doctor, who if not maligned would have needed much more to make a Joseph of him.
II
Mr. Ferris took his way through the devious footways where the shadow was chill, and through the broad campos where the sun was tenderly warm, and the towers of the church rose against the speck-less azure of the vernal heaven. As he went along, he frowned in a helpless perplexity with the case of Don Ippolito, whom he had begun by doubting for a spy with some incomprehensible motive, and had ended by pitying with a certain degree of amusement and a deep sense of the futility of his compassion. He presently began to think of him with a little disgust, as people commonly think of one whom they pity and yet cannot help, and he made haste to cast off the hopeless burden. He shrugged his shoulders, struck his stick on the smooth paving-stones, and let his eyes rove up and down the fronts of the houses, for the sake of the pretty faces that glanced out of the casements. He was a young man, and it was spring, and this was Venice. He made himself joyfully part of the city and the season; he was glad of the narrowness of the streets, of the good-humored jostling and pushing; he crouched into an arched doorway to let a water-carrier pass with her copper buckets dripping at the end of the yoke balanced on her shoulder, and he returned her smiles and excuses with others as broad and gay; he brushed by the swelling hoops of ladies, and stooped before the unwieldy burdens of porters, who as they staggered through the crowd with a thrust hero, and a shove there forgave themselves, laughing, with "We are in Venice, signori;" and he stood aside for the files of soldiers clanking heavily over the pavement, then muskets kindling to a blaze in the sunlit campos and quenched again in the damp shadows of the calles. His ear was taken by the vibrant jargoning of the boatmen as they pushed their craft under the bridges he crossed, and the keen notes of the canaries and the songs of the golden-billed blackbirds whose cages hung at lattices far overhead. Heaps of oranges, topped by the fairest cut in halves, gave their color, at frequent intervals, to the dusky corners and recesses and the long-drawn cry of the venders, "Oranges of Palermo!" rose above the clatter of feet and the clamor of other voices. At a little shop where butter and eggs and milk abounded, together with early flowers of various sorts, he bought a bunch of hyacinths, blue and white and yellow, and he presently stood smelling these while he waited in the hotel parlor for the ladies to whom he had sent his card. He turned at the sound of drifting drapery, and could not forbear placing the hyacinths in the hand of Miss Florida Vervain, who had come into the room to receive him. She was a girl of about seventeen years, who looked older; she was tall rather than short, and rather full,—though it could not be said that she erred in point of solidity. In the attitudes of shy hauteur into which she constantly fell, there was a touch of defiant awkwardness which had a certain fascination. She was blonde, with a throat and hands of milky whiteness; there was a suggestion of freckles on her regular face, where a quick color came and went, though her cheeks were habitually somewhat pale; her eyes were very blue under their level brows, and the lashes were even lighter in color than the masses of her fair gold hair; the edges of the lids were touched with the faintest red. The late Colonel Vervain of the United States army, whose complexion his daughter had inherited, was an officer whom it would not have been peaceable to cross in any purpose or pleasure, and Miss Vervain seemed sometimes a little burdened by the passionate nature which he had left her together with the tropical name he had bestowed in honor of the State where he had fought the Seminoles in his youth, and where he chanced still to be stationed when she was born; she had the air of being embarrassed in presence of herself, and of having an anxious watch upon her impulses. I do not know how otherwise to describe the effort of proud, helpless femininity, which would have struck the close observer in Miss Vervain.
"Delicious!" she said, in a deep voice, which conveyed something of this anxiety in its guarded tones, and yet was not wanting in a kind of frankness. "Did you mean them for me, Mr. Ferris?"
"I didn't, but I do," answered Mr. Ferris. "I bought them in ignorance, but I understand now what they were meant for by nature;" and in fact the hyacinths, with their smooth textures and their pure colors, harmonized well with Miss Vervain, as she bent her face over them and inhaled their full, rich perfume.
"I will put them in water," she said, "if you'll excuse me a moment. Mother will be down directly."
Before she could return, her mother rustled into the parlor.
Mrs. Vervain was gracefully, fragilely unlike her daughter. She entered with a gentle and gliding step, peering near-sightedly about through her glasses, and laughing triumphantly when she had determined Mr. Ferris's exact position, where he stood with a smile shaping his full brown beard and glancing from his hazel eyes. She was dressed in perfect taste with reference to her matronly years, and the lingering evidences of her widowhood, and she had an unaffected naturalness of manner which even at her age of forty-eight could not be called less than charming. She spoke in a trusting, caressing tone, to which no man at least could respond unkindly.
"So very good of you, to take all this trouble, Mr. Ferris," she said, giving him a friendly hand, "and I suppose you are letting us encroach upon very valuable time. I'm quite ashamed to take it. But isn't it a heavenly day? What I call a perfect day, just right every way; none of those disagreeable extremes. It's so unpleasant to have it too hot, for instance. I'm the greatest person for moderation, Mr. Ferris, and I carry the principle into everything; but I do think the breakfasts at these Italian hotels are too light altogether. I like our American breakfasts, don't you? I've been telling Florida I can't stand it; we really must make some arrangement. To be sure, you oughtn't to think of such a thing as eating, in a place like Venice, all poetry; but a sound mind in a sound body, I say. We're perfectly wild over it. Don't you think it's a place that grows upon you very much, Mr. Ferris? All those associations,—it does seem too much; and the gondolas everywhere. But I'm always afraid the gondoliers cheat us; and in the stores I never feel safe a moment—not a moment. I do think the Venetians are lacking in truthfulness, a little. I don't believe they understand our American fairdealing and sincerity. I shouldn't want to do them injustice, but I really think they take advantages in bargaining. Now such a thing even as corals. Florida is extremely fond of them, and we bought a set yesterday in the Piazza, and I know we paid too much for them. Florida," said Mrs. Vervain, for her daughter had reentered the room, and stood with some shawls and wraps upon her arm, patiently waiting for the conclusion of the elder lady's speech, "I wish you would bring down that set of corals. I'd like Mr. Ferris to give an unbiased opinion. I'm sure we were cheated."
"I don't know anything about corals, Mrs. Vervain," interposed Mr. Ferris.
"Well, but you ought to see this set for the beauty of the color; they're really exquisite. I'm sure it will gratify your artistic taste."
Miss Vervain hesitated with a look of desire to obey, and of doubt whether to force the pleasure upon Mr. Ferris. "Won't it do another time, mother?" she asked faintly; "the gondola is waiting for us."
Mrs. Vervain gave a frailish start from the chair, into which she had sunk, "Oh, do let us be off at once, then," she said; and when they stood on the landing-stairs of the hotel: "What gloomy things these gondolas are!" she added, while the gondolier with one foot on the gunwale of the boat received the ladies' shawls, and then crooked his arm for them to rest a hand on in stepping aboard; "I wonder they don't paint them some cheerful color."
"Blue, or pink, Mrs. Vervain?" asked Mr. Ferris. "I knew you were coming to that question; they all do. But we needn't have the top on at all, if it depresses your spirits. We shall be just warm enough in the open sunlight."
"Well, have it off, then. It sends the cold chills over me to look at it. What did Byron call it?"
"Yes, it's time for Byron, now. It was very good of you not to mention him before, Mrs. Vervain. But I knew he had to come. He called it a coffin clapped in a canoe."
"Exactly," said Mrs. Vervain. "I always feel as if I were going to my own funeral when I get into it; and I've certainly had enough of funerals never to want to have anything to do with another, as long as I live."
She settled herself luxuriously upon the feather-stuffed leathern cushions when the cabin was removed. Death had indeed been near her very often; father and mother had been early lost to her, and the brothers and sisters orphaned with her had faded and perished one after another, as they ripened to men and women; she had seen four of her own children die; her husband had been dead six years. All these bereavements had left her what they had found her. She had truly grieved, and, as she said, she had hardly ever been out of black since she could remember.
"I never was in colors when I was a girl," she went on, indulging many obituary memories as the gondola dipped and darted down the canal, "and I was married in my mourning for my last sister. It did seem a little too much when she went, Mr. Ferris. I was too young to feel it so much about the others, but we were nearly of the same age, and that makes a difference, don't you know. First a brother and then a sister: it was very strange how they kept going that way. I seemed to break the charm when I got married; though, to be sure, there was no brother left after Marian."
Miss Vervain heard her mother's mortuary prattle with a face from which no impatience of it could be inferred, and Mr. Ferris made no comment 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, my daughter had to leave school much earlier than she ought, for my health has obliged me to travel a great deal since I lost my husband; and I must have her with me, for we're all that there is of us; we haven't a chick or a child that's related to us anywhere. But wherever we stop, even for a few weeks, I contrive to get her some kind of instruction. I feel the need of it so much in my own case; for to tell you the truth, Mr. Ferris, I married too young. I suppose I should do the same thing over again if it was to be done over; but don't you see, my mind wasn't properly formed; and then following my husband about from pillar to post, and my first baby born when I was nineteen—well, it wasn't education, at any rate, whatever else it was; and I've determined that Florida, though we are such a pair of wanderers, shall not have my regrets. I got teachers for her in England,—the English are not anything like so disagreeable at home as they are in traveling, and we stayed there two years,—and I did in France, and I did in Germany. And now, Italian. Here we are in Italy, and I think we ought to improve the time. Florida knows a good deal of Italian already, for her music teacher in France was an Italian, and he taught her the language as well as music. What she wants now, I should say, is to perfect her accent and get facility. I think she ought to have some one come every day and read and converse an hour or two with her."
Mrs. Vervain leaned back in her seat, and looked at Ferris, who said, feeling that the matter was referred to him, "I think—without presuming to say what Miss Vervain's need of instruction is—that your idea is a very good one." He mused in silence his wonder that so much addlepatedness as was at once observable in Mrs. Vervain should exist along with so much common-sense. "It's certainly very good in the abstract," he added, with a glance at the daughter, as if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmth with which she was dressed, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist, showing its delicious whiteness, and letting her fingers trail through the cool water; she dried them on her handkerchief, and then bent her eyes full upon him as if challenging him to think this unlady-like.
"No, clearly the sense does not come from her," said Ferris to himself; it is impossible to think well of the mind of a girl who treats one with tacit contempt.
"Yes," resumed Mrs. Vervain, "it's certainly very good in the abstract. But oh dear me! you've no idea of the difficulties in the way. I may speak frankly with you, Mr. Ferris, for you are here as the representative of the country, and you naturally sympathize with the difficulties of Americans abroad; the teachers will fall in love with their pupils."
"Mother!" began Miss Vervain; and then she checked herself.
Ferris gave a vengeful laugh. "Really, Mrs. Vervain, though I sympathize with you in my official capacity, I must own that as a man and a brother, I can't help feeling a little sorry for those poor fellows, too."
"To be sure, they are to be pitied, of course, and I feel for them; I did when I was a girl; for the same thing used to happen then. I don't know why Florida should be subjected to such embarrassments, too. It does seem sometimes as if it were something in the blood. They all get the idea that you have money, you know."
"Then I should say that it might be something in the pocket," suggested Ferris with a look at Miss Vervain, in whose silent suffering, as he imagined it, he found a malicious consolation for her scorn.
"Well, whatever it is," replied Mrs. Vervain, "it's too vexatious. Of course, going to new places, that way, as we're always doing, and only going to stay for a limited time, perhaps, you can't pick and choose. And even when you do get an elderly teacher, they're as bad as any. It really is too trying. Now, when I was talking with that nice monk of yours at the convent, there, I couldn't help thinking how perfectly delightful it would be if Florida could have him for a teacher. Why couldn't she? He told me that he would come to take breakfast or lunch with us, but not dinner, for he always had to be at the convent before nightfall. Well, he might come to give the lessons sometime in the middle of the day."
"You couldn't manage it, Mrs. Vervain, I know you couldn't," answered Ferris earnestly. "I'm sure the Armenians never do anything of the kind. They're all very busy men, engaged in ecclesiastical or literary work, and they couldn't give the time."
"Why not? There was Byron."
"But Byron went to them, and he studied Armenian, not Italian, with them. Padre Girolamo speaks perfect Italian, for all that I can see; but I doubt if he'd undertake to impart the native accent, which is what you want. In fact, the scheme is altogether impracticable."
"Well," said Mrs. Vervain; "I'm exceedingly sorry. I had quite set my heart on it. I never took such a fancy to any one in such a short time before."
"It seemed to be a case of love at first sight on both sides," said Ferris. "Padre Girolamo doesn't shower those syruped rose-leaves indiscriminately upon visitors."
"Thanks," returned Mrs. Vervain; "it's very good of you to say so, Mr. Ferris, and it's very gratifying, all round; but don't you see, it doesn't serve the present purpose. What teachers do you know of?"
She had been by marriage so long in the service of the United States that she still regarded its agents as part of her own domestic economy. Consuls she everywhere employed as functionaries specially appointed to look after the interests of American ladies traveling without protection. In the week which had passed since her arrival in Venice, there had been no day on which she did not appeal to Ferris for help or sympathy or advice. She took amiable possession of him at once, and she had established an amusing sort of intimacy with him, to which the haughty trepidations of her daughter set certain bounds, but in which the demand that he should find her a suitable Italian teacher seemed trivially matter of course.
"Yes. I know several teachers," he said, after thinking awhile; "but they're all open to the objection of being human; and besides, they all do things in a set kind of way, and I'm afraid they wouldn't enter into the spirit of any scheme of instruction that departed very widely from Ollendorff." He paused, and Mrs. Vervain gave a sketch of the different professional masters whom she had employed in the various countries of her sojourn, and a disquisition upon their several lives and characters, fortifying her statements by reference of doubtful points to her daughter. This occupied some time, and Ferris listened to it all with an abstracted air. At last he said, with a smile, "There was an Italian priest came to see me this morning, who astonished me by knowing English—with a brogue that he'd learned from an English priest straight from Dublin; perhaps he might do, Mrs. Vervain? He's professionally pledged, you know, not to give the kind of annoyance you've suffered from in teachers. He would do as well as Padre Girolamo, I suppose."
"Do you really? Are you in earnest?"
"Well, no, I believe I'm not. I haven't the least idea he would do. He belongs to the church militant. He came to me with the model of a breech-loading cannon he's invented, and he wanted a passport to go to America, so that he might offer his cannon to our government."
"How curious!" said Mrs. Vervain, and her daughter looked frankly into Ferris's face. "But I know; it's one of your jokes."
