The canonico rose and placed his chair for Ferris beside the pillow, on which lay a brass crucifix, and then softly left the room, exchanging a glance of affectionate intelligence with the sick man.
“I might have waited a little while,” said Don Ippolito weakly, speaking in a hollow voice that was the shadow of his old deep tones, “but you will know how to forgive the impatience of a man not yet quite master of himself. I thank you for coming. I have been very sick, as you see; I did not think to live; I did not care.... I am very weak, now; let me say to you quickly what I want to say. Dear friend,” continued Don Ippolito, fixing his eyes upon the painter’s face, “I spoke to her that night after I had parted from you.”
The priest’s voice was now firm; the painter turned his face away.
“I spoke without hope,” proceeded Don Ippolito, “and because I must. I spoke in vain; all was lost, all was past in a moment.”
The coil of suspicions and misgivings and fears in which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallid visage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtle expression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; Don Ippolito went on.
“Even if I had never been a priest, I would still have been impossible to her. She”....
He stopped as if for want of strength to go on. All at once he cried, “Listen!” and he rapidly recounted the story of his life, ending with the fatal tragedy of his love. When it was told, he said calmly, “But now everything is over with me on earth. I thank the Infinite Compassion for the sorrows through which I have passed. I, also, have proved the miraculous power of the church, potent to save in all ages.” He gathered the crucifix in his spectral grasp, and pressed it to his lips. “Many merciful things have befallen me on this bed of sickness. My uncle, whom the long years of my darkness divided from me, is once more at peace with me. Even that poor old woman whom I sent to call you, and who had served me as I believed with hate for me as a false priest in her heart, has devoted herself day and night to my helplessness; she has grown decrepit with her cares and vigils. Yes, I have had many and signal marks of the divine pity to be grateful for.” He paused, breathing quickly, and then added, “They tell me that the danger of this sickness is past. But none the less I have died in it. When I rise from this bed it shall be to take the vows of a Carmelite friar.”
Ferris made no answer, and Don Ippolito resumed:—
“I have told you how when I first owned to her the falsehood in which I lived, she besought me to try if I might not find consolation in the holy life to which I had been devoted. When you see her, dear friend, will you not tell her that I came to understand that this comfort, this refuge, awaited me in the cell of the Carmelite? I have brought so much trouble into her life that I would fain have her know I have found peace where she bade me seek it, that I have mastered my affliction by reconciling myself to it. Tell her that but for her pity and fear for me, I believe that I must have died in my sins.”
It was perhaps inevitable from Ferris’s Protestant association of monks and convents and penances chiefly with the machinery of fiction, that all this affected him as unreally as talk in a stage-play. His heart was cold, as he answered: “I am glad that your mind is at rest concerning the doubts which so long troubled you. Not all men are so easily pacified; but, as you say, it is the privilege of your church to work miracles. As to Miss Vervain, I am sorry that I cannot promise to give her your message. I shall never see her again. Excuse me,” he continued, “but your servant said there was something you wished to say that concerned me?”