“What a pity, Miss Vervain,” said the painter, “that the blessings of this world should be so unequally divided! Why should all this sketchable adversity be lavished upon the neighborhood of a city that is so rich as Venice in picturesque dilapidation? It’s pretty hard on us Americans, and forces people of sensibility into exile. What wouldn’t cultivated persons give for a stretch of this street in the suburbs of Boston, or of your own Providence? I suppose the New Yorkers will be setting up something of the kind one of these days, and giving it a French name—they’ll call it Aux bords du Brenta. There was one of them carried back a gondola the other day to put on a pond in their new park. But the worst of it is, you can’t take home the sentiment 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.”