William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
what is in your mind."
The thing that was in his mind had rankled there for two years; in many a black reverie of those that alternated with his moods of abject self-reproach and perfect trust of her, he had confronted her and flung it out upon her in one stinging phrase. But he was now suddenly at a loss; the words would not come; his torment fell dumb before her; in her presence the cause was unspeakable. Her lips had quivered a little in making that demand, and there had been a corresponding break in her voice.
"Florida! Florida!" Ferris heard himself saying, "I loved you all the time!"
"Oh indeed, did you love me?" she cried, indignantly, while the tears shone in her eyes. "And was that why you left a helpless young girl to meet that trouble alone? Was that why you refused me your advice, and turned your back on me, and snubbed me? Oh, many thanks for your love!" She dashed the gathered tears angrily away, and went on. "Perhaps you knew, too, what that poor priest was thinking of?"
"Yes," said Ferris, stolidly, "I did at last: he told me."
"Oh, then you acted generously and nobly to let him go on! It was kind to him, and very, very kind to me!"
"What could I do?" demanded Ferris, amazed and furious to find himself on the defensive. "His telling me put it out of my power to act."
"I'm glad that you can satisfy yourself with such a quibble! But I wonder that you can tell me—any woman of it!"
"By Heavens, this is atrocious!" cried Ferris. "Do you think ... Look here!" he went on rudely. "I'll put the case to you, and you shall judge it. Remember that I was such a fool as to be in love with you. Suppose Don Ippolito had told me that he was going to risk everything—going to give up home, religion, friends—on the ten thousandth part of a chance that you might some day care for him. I did not believe he had even so much chance as that; but he had always thought me his friend, and he trusted me. Was it a quibble that kept me from betraying him? I don't know what honor is among women; but no man could have done it. I confess to my shame that I went to your house that night longing to betray him. And then suppose your mother sent me into the garden to call you, and I saw ... what has made my life a hell of doubt for the last two years; what ... No, excuse me! I can't put the case to you after all."
"What do you mean?" asked Florida. "I don't understand you!"
"What do I mean? You don't understand? Are you so blind as that, or are you making a fool of me? What could I think but that you had played with that priest's heart till your own"....
"Oh!" cried Florida with a shudder, starting away from him, "did you think I was such a wicked girl as that?"
It was no defense, no explanation, no denial; it simply left the case with Ferris as before. He stood looking like a man who does not know whether to bless or curse himself, to laugh or blaspheme.
She stooped and tried to pick up the things she had let fall upon the floor; but she seemed not able to find them. He bent over, and, gathering them together, returned them to her with his left hand, keeping the other in the breast of his coat.
"Thanks," she said; and then after a moment, "Have you been hurt?" she asked timidly.
"Yes," said Ferris in a sulky way. "I have had my share." He glanced down at his arm askance. "It's rather conventional," he added. "It isn't much of a hurt; but then, I wasn't much of a soldier."
The girl's eyes looked reverently at the conventional arm; those were the days, so long past, when women worshipped men for such things. But she said nothing, and as Ferris's eyes wandered to her, he received a novel and painful impression. He said, hesitatingly, "I have not asked before: but your mother, Miss Vervain—I hope she is well?"
"She is dead," answered Florida, with stony quiet.
They were both silent for a time. Then Ferris said, "I had a great affection for your mother."
"Yes," said the girl, "she was fond of you, too. But you never wrote or sent her any word; it used to grieve her."
Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long preoccupied with its own troubles; he recalled with a tender remorse the old Venetian days and the kindliness of the gracious, silly woman who had seemed to like him so much; he remembered the charm of her perfect ladylikeness, and of her winning, weak-headed desire to make every one happy to whom she spoke; the beauty of the good-will, the hospitable soul that in an imaginably better world than this will outvalue a merely intellectual or aesthetic life. He humbled himself before her memory, and as keenly reproached himself as if he could have made her hear from him at any time during the past two years. He could only say, "I am sorry that I gave your mother pain; I loved her very truly. I hope that she did not suffer much before"—
"No," said Florida, "it was a peaceful end; but finally it was very sudden. She had not been well for many years, with that sort of decline; I used sometimes to feel troubled about her before we came to Venice; but I was very young. I never was really alarmed till that day I went to you."
"I remember," said Ferris contritely.
"She had fainted, and I thought we ought to see a doctor; but afterwards, because I thought that I ought not to do so without speaking to her, I did not go to the doctor; and that day we made up our minds to get home as soon as we could; and she seemed so much better, for a while; and then, everything seemed to happen at once. When we did start home, she could not go any farther than Switzerland, and in the fall we went back to Italy. We went to Sorrento, where the climate seemed to do her good. But she was growing frailer, the whole time. She died in March. I found some old friends of hers in Naples, and came home with them."
The girl hesitated a little over the words, which she nevertheless uttered unbroken, while the tears fell quietly down her face. She seemed to have forgotten the angry words that had passed between her and Ferris, to remember him only as one who had known her mother, while she went on to relate some little facts in the history of her mother's last days; and she rose into a higher, serener atmosphere, inaccessible to his resentment or his regret, as she spoke of her loss. The simple tale of sickness and death inexpressibly belittled his passionate woes, and made them look theatrical to him. He hung his head as they turned at her motion and walked away from the picture of Don Ippolito, and down the stairs toward the street-door; the people before the other Venetian picture had apparently yielded to their craving for lunch, and had vanished.
"I have very little to tell you of my own life," Ferris began awkwardly. "I came home soon after you started, and I went to Providence to find you, but you had not got back."
Florida stopped him and looked perplexedly into his face, and then moved on.
"Then I went into the army. I wrote once to you."
"I never got your letter," she said.
They were now in the lower hall, and near the door.
"Florida," said Ferris, abruptly, "I'm poor and disabled; I've no more right than any sick beggar in the street to say it to you; but I loved you, I must always love you. I—Good-by!"
She halted him again, and "You said," she grieved, "that you doubted me; you said that I had made your life a"—
"Yes, I said that; I know it," answered Ferris.
"You thought I could be such a false and cruel girl as that!"
"Yes, yes: I thought it all, God help me!"
"When I was only sorry for him, when it was you that I"—
"Oh, I know it," answered Ferris in a heartsick, hopeless voice. "He knew it, too. He told me so the day before he died."
"And didn't you believe him?"
Ferris could not answer.
"Do you believe him now?"
"I believe anything you tell me. When I look at you, I can't believe I ever doubted you."
"Why?"
"Because—because—I love you."
"Oh! That's no reason."
"I