CHAPTER II.
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The Cleverlys' was the house, on his visiting list,
where Paul was most at home. Phil. Cleverly, the
eldest son, was a college friend and intimate ally. An
introduction to the strangers for whom the party had
been made, that evening, and of the cordial kind which
would ensure full attention, would be a matter of course;
and it was with curiosity on the alert and his best manners
in readiness, that Paul walked through the rooms
with his friend's mother leaning on his arm, and awaited
the opportunity to be presented.
A visit to their friends who were in office in Canada
had brought the family of Ashlys across the water. They
were prolonging their trip by a look at “the States,”
and were to be out of England only for the summer. It
was understood that, though the gentleman was simple
Mr. Ashly, he was of that class of ancient families who
would be demeaned by accepting a title—the wealth and
gentle blood having been longer in the line of their
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descent than in that of most of the present nobility.
His letters had introduced him, of course, to the principal
official persons in the different cities, and a knot
of Boston gentlemen of whom something specific could
thus be said, were now gathered around Mr. and Mrs.
Ashly, exchanging with them the civilities of new acquaintance.
But there was a Miss Ashly—a young lady apparently
of nineteen or twenty — who, leaving the party of
dignitaries around her father and mother, had strolled
off to the conservatory at the end of the long suite of
apartments, and stood in the dimmer light of its fragrant
atmosphere, examining one among the multitude of exotics
there in bloom. She was of slight and graceful figure,
rather tall, and, except that she was particularly quiet
and deliberate in her movements—walking and looking,
indeed, as if she felt entirely alone in the room—Paul
saw nothing to distinguish her, at the first glance.
The opportunity to present her young friend was seen at
once by Mrs. Cleverly.
“Miss Ashly!” she said, approaching her, and phrasing
her introduction with a demolition of ceremony at which
she was usually very successful, “this young gentleman
(allow me to present him to you — Mr. Fane), is our
walking dictionary of beautiful things, and will tell you
the names of any flowers you may not recognise.”
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Miss Ashly bowed very quietly.
“Will you excuse me,” continued Mrs. Cleverly, “if I
commission him to do the honors of my conservatory,
while I look up some music for my other guests? Paul!
you will not forget to show Miss Ashly my new South
American plant, farther on.”
And, with this groundwork of conversation provided,
left quite alone with the fair stranger, his presentment
flattering, and the surroundings particularly inspiring and
beautiful, Paul's task of making himself agreeable seemed
not very difficult.
The history of the plant in question was very smoothly
entered upon. Miss Ashly followed to the vase over whose
lip it threw its flowers, heavy and gorgeous, and they
examined together the encouragement to luxury which
Nature seemed to give in so mere a prodigality of beauty.
The transition from this to other topics was easy; for Paul
was, of course, at home, as to the associations around
them, and the young lady was too thoroughly at home in
her own self-possession to have an awkwardness, either
from silence or abruptness, any way probable. They
talked away, for a half hour, in the conservatory, apparently
as any other two people might—and, to her, if she had
thought about it at all, exactly as any two indifferent
strangers, who were pretty sure never to meet again, were
likely to do.
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“Mildred, my dear!” said a voice from the other room—
Mr. Ashly the next moment appearing and beckoning
to his daughter.
She half turned to Paul, after a step toward her father,
as if she had nearly forgotten even to take leave of her
new acquaintance, thus ending an interview that was to
change the whole current of life, for him, while, for her, it
was but the touch of the swallow's wing to the calm surface
of the lake.
The summons, by Mr. Ashly, was to some music in the
reception-room, which was promised to be worth the hearing—
but Paul turned back into the conservatory, and, following
the marble floor to the balcony at the end, stepped
out into the moonlight. There was a new, strange feeling
in his bosom, with which he wished to be alone.
He began by shutting out, with a half-conscious resentment
of thought, the accustomed softness of the summer
night—out of harmony, somehow, for once—and then proceeded
to call the last half hour rigidly to account.
It was not her beauty; he knew a hundred women more
beautiful. Her features were even plain, as he came to
recall them. Was there any especial grace or queenliness
in her manner? No; she was quite inelegant, he thought,
in the management of her hands; and, with that forward
bend of her neck and half neglectful indolence of gait, her
impression upon most persons would be anything but
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imposing. The large grey eye—it was fine, certainly, with
its motionless cloud of dark uplifted lashes that seemed
never to close, but—
Paul tightened his lips, and concentrated mind and
memory on that feature of Miss Ashly's.
—Yes! something had flashed upon his consciousness
as that cold grey eye rested on his face—a something that
had never fallen on him from a human look before—yet so
evasive and unreal, though his whole soul was up in arms
with it, that, with all his effort, he could neither define nor
confront it. She had become a creature of intense interest
to him, but it was no beginning, ever so remote, of a passion.
There was more distaste than love in his sentiment
towards her. Yet to know her better—to understand that
look, and find the plummet that would sound the depths to
which it had reached—this seemed now the troubled fever,
before the sudden thirst of which all other feelings were
inexplicably swept away.
Unfitted for the gayety within, and unwilling to see any
one with whom he must exchange indifferent words that
night, Paul stepped from the balcony into the garden
below, and without taking leave of his friends, made his
way homeward.
The usual happiness of a talk with his mother had a
constraint in it for once, as has been already described;
but, that over, he turned his key, and, with the new
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thought that he must master before sleeping, he was glad
to be alone.
To those who have not looked back and wondered at
the intangible slightness of first motive, and who have not
found, by trial, how impossible it is, with the coarse woof
of words, to portray the cobweb thread of which the most
enduring motives are sometimes woven, it will be difficult
to make the solution of the mystery thus far entangled,
seem at all satisfactory. The daylight that looked in upon
Paul's sleepless eyes the next morning, however, brought
with it, for him, a shape and semblance for his new
thought, which, though he still wondered at its power.
was sufficient for recognition, and future analysis and
study; and of this we may give a hint in our present
chapter, trusting to the progress of our story to make it
clearer as we go.
The life of our hero, hitherto, had been passed in a
circle of very vague social distinctions. With a personal
presence and manners better than his family circumstances,
a nature of large hope and confidence, and unusually quick
tact and adaptability, he had been everywhere an unquestioned
favorite, and the possibility of a society to which he
should not be promptly welcomed, or in which he might
not find it easy to please, had never occurred to him. With
the “best people,” by the world's estimate, and the best by
the preferences of his own taste, equally ready to
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sympathize with and esteem him, the thought of levels of life
unattainable—human passions out of reach of his awakening
and sharing—was as distant as the thought of an
angel society for which he needed the aristocracy of wings.
To his main ambition, the Art in which he determined to
be a master (and of his career in which, this story, be it
understood, traces only a side-current, else unexplained), the
broad channel of his mind, till now, had been left clear
and open.
But now had been first felt the new impulse to the tide
through heart and brain. Without insult—without contempt—
without intended slight—that cold gray eye had
passed over his face with no recognition of him as an equal.
It was the first human look (and from a woman too!) in
which that indefinable acknowledgment—that vague something
as habitually expected as heat with sunshine, and as
unthought of separately till held back—had been ever
wanting. It was not resentment he felt, for she was a
passing stranger, whom he had only thought to amuse for
the half hour, and whom there was no probability of his
ever meeting again. It was not his pride that was wounded
(now that he thought of it—though it was that doubtless
which had at first so wildly taken the alarm), for his
consciousness of superiority in undeveloped genius—a superiority
she had no time or means to recognise—put that
sensitiveness promptly to rest. It was quite another feeling
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which stood fixed, like a mountain-peak, as the clouds and
darkness of the storm of the past night fled before the
calm light of the morning.
Was he of coarser clay than some other human beings?
Were there classes on this planet between whom and himself,
by better blood or by long-accumulating culture and
refinements, there had gradually widened a chasm, now,
even by instinct impassable? Were there women who, under
no circumstances, could possibly have loved him—men who
by born superiority of quality, were insurmountably out
of reach of his fellowship and friendship? Had he lived
a blind mole in his home, wholly mistaken in his estimates
of those around him—of his mother, whom he had believed
next downward from an angel, and of one other (of whom
he scarce dared trust himself to think, in connection with
this new thought), Marry, his genius love, his mind-idol, to
whom, besides his mother, he had alone breathed of his inspirations
and aspirations hitherto?
It was by these questions that he felt he was now possessed.
The thirst to know his relative rank of nature—
to gauge his comparative human claim to respect and affection—
to measure himself by his own jealous standard, with
those whom he should find first in the world's most established
appreciation—was now like a fever in his blood.
The temptation to travel, hitherto, had been only for the
artistic errand in foreign countries. It had been a passive
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day-dream only. He had looked upon it as a pleasant
probability, but a pleasure which he could easily defer very
long, or forego altogether. He had even argued, indeed,
that success in Art would be prouder and worthier if won
wholly at home—the birth, growth, and culture of what
genius he might have, thus made American only. But
travel had another charm, now. A closer view of what
was rarest and proudest in older countries promised something
beside scholarship in Art. All was confused as yet—
his whole soul troubled and perplexed with wants and
difficulties—but high above all his weary thoughts, as he
flung himself on his bed, after looking out upon the sunrise
that morning, was the new spell of that golden East—
the beckoning finger of a new want calling him irresistibly
to the far lands that lay beyond.
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CHAPTER III.
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It was not without a slight heightening of color that
Paul met the calm eye of Mary Evenden, that afternoon.
She sat at the parsonage window, as usual, waiting his
coming, and wiling the time with her drawing-book and
pencil, and his first impulse—her hand left so confidingly
in his, while he seated himself at her side—was to avow
that he had something critical to confess, bespeaking, however,
her kind suspension of judgment, till he could modify
her inevitable first impression.
He began with the utterance of her beautiful name—
hesitated—stammered. No! he must turn his thought
over, and present it differently. It was, somehow, difficult
to find words in which what he had to say would seem
worthy to follow after that sainted name—Mary!
As he looked at her face again, it occurred to him that
he was about to confess to at least a curiosity as to
whether there might not be finer clay than she—a thirst
to know whether he had yet seen Nature's best—herself
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included in the misgiving disparagement of what he already
knew.
“Get bonnet and shawl, and come out for a walk,” he
abruptly proposed, after a moment more of vain entanglement
and hesitation, “my thoughts are of this world, and
you look so superfluously good in this religious little domicil—
come!”
But there were drawings to put away, and it would be a
minute or two before she would rejoin him at the garden
gate, and so he had gained a breathing time to put his
confused thoughts into order.
Mary Evenden stood almost in the relation of a sister to
young Fane; for, by her own dying mother she had been
committed to his, in her early childhood—the invalid condition
of her father's health, making it probable at the
time, that she would soon be an orphan. The good
clergyman had lingered on, however, though his complete
absorption in the overburdening cares of his profession
made Mrs. Fane's guardianship over the daughter, for
some years, as complete as if the orphanage had been
entire. The separate roof which each child called a home,
was, indeed, the only reminder that they were not children
of the same mother, their amusements and studies having
been mingled entirely, up to Paul's departure for college;
and the return to intimacy in his vacations, and now that
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he was graduated, being as simply free and frank as if the
tie of blood were between them.
It was a peculiar friendship, however. Though the possibility
of love had not given the alarm to either heart, as
yet, and no word or look, such as lovers use, had startled
or embarrassed them, they were conscious of being sacredly
dear to each other—the link, whatever it might be, all
the more pure and precious that it had never been named
nor measured. Paul had a favorite theory of two or more
souls inhabiting one body, and it was mainly fed and
strengthened by the perfectly single-hearted exclusiveness
with which Mary Evenden maintained a recognition only
of his inner nature—a nature which, though he felt conscious
it was his truer and stronger self, was not at all seen
into by many who knew him otherwise well. To her and
to his mother he was veritably one manner of man, and to
his common acquaintances he was just as veritably another;
and the two, separately described, would hardly have been
thought reconcilable. It was Paul's riddle of human nature—
not that he was in any way contradictory or other
than single-minded to himself; but that, with daily conduct
and manners as studiously truthful and natural as he
could jealously and almost resentfully make them, he was
to different eyes still so different.
There was no denying, Paul confessed himself now,
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however, that the temptation to a first insincerity was very
strong. He was trying the strength of the temptation
with rather a wilful perversity, when Mary stepped from
the low threshold of the parsonage. Why tell her of all
the motive he might have for an errand to foreign lands?
But another claim for his new problem seemed to present
itself as he looked upon the form that came towards
him.
Paul had often tried in vain to define the artistic charm
which there lay in Mary Evenden's beauty. Its effect fell
upon the eye only in surprises—revealable, apparently, only
to the after look, when common standards had been first
put aside—but of that beauty, it now seemed to him that
he might reasonably wish to know the comparative rarity
and value. The tempter had gone down into the unlighted
corner of his heart for the apology that he needed!
More critically than ever before, he studied the air and
movement of the unconscious girl during that moment of
approach. It was the first trial of the new assay with
which, he had now become aware, Nature's coinage must
be tested. The reading of the clear stamp on the face and
form before him was easy. He knew it better than it could
ever be learned by another eye. But there were standards
of which his imagination was tremblingly foreshadowing
the demands for beauty of noble presence. Was this different
beauty there? The simple and yet faultless pose of
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her neck, assuming nothing and yet bearing up the head
with such tranquil dignity—that unalarmed innocence of
open eye—the mist-like abandonment of motion, yet every
footfall so indefinably modest—the smile that was not reluctant,
but had well nigh been too late for the thought by
not remembering itself as of any value—form and limb so
luxuriantly complete, so venturesomely full, yet over the
fruitlike ripeness of which there was such an overrule of a
consciousness intellectual only—the white dress falling so
gracefully from her tall figure, and her straw hat so primitively
plain, and the massive blonde braid wound round
from either temple with sculpture-like severity of line—no
ornament save the half-blown rose whose stem was slipped
through her girdle—simple Mary Evenden—would she be
thought beautiful in a palace?
By tacit agreement, the topic on which the interest
promised to be unusual was let alone till they should be
off sidewalks; and the conversation (with no knowledge
on Mary's part, of anything that should embarrass it) kept
its accustomed easy flow for some time after reaching the
noble shadows of the Mall. Easily as it flowed, it was
communing of which Paul did not yet know the value.
Her habitual happiness was to mirror his inner nature; and
their intercourse, long and well as they had known each
other, was the exchange of thoughts and sympathies on
ground only where he was earnest and gifted. With his
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genius strengthening and demanding, each day, more and
more recognition and encouragement, her eagerness for
exchange with the pure ore of his mind had wonderfully
aided in melting out and coining it; though, so ready and
instinctive had been this rare and precious reciprocity, that
each seemed to the other to be imparting that which was
easiest and most natural. Nor was Paul aware, either,
that, by the sufficing of Mary Evenden and his mother for
these more sacred sympathies, he was insensibly keeping
his inner nature for their loving and sharing only—the
more volatile and worldly qualities of his character being,
by mere rotation of mood, the change of weapons and
armor, with which he went out for his lighter skirmishings
with the world.
As Paul coaxed up his unwilling confession once more
to the light, he forgot that he had looked at the matter
only from his somewhat culprit point of view. To Mary,
his proposition to go abroad—particularly if he should
withhold from her the new and more worldly motive which
was now superadded to his purposes of Art—would be but
a leaning toward the bent of her own constant counsel.
He had his other advisers, as to a career in life, and they
were mostly kind friends who were prepared to second
their views by holding out to him the handles of opportunity.
For either mercantile or professional success, indeed,
nothing seemed wanting but his acceptance of one or the
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other of these opportunities, and the easy use of his evident
tact and ability. To these advisers, of course (as to his
father, whose friends they also were), his devoted application
to so unprofitable a pursuit as the pencil, was wholly
unknown. And such tempters from without were not
likely to be wholly unlistened to! They came with the
sounding trumpets of “Enterprise” and “Ambition,” and
they had pleaders in his energetic health, his strong will,
his pride of manhood—one other pleader, too, in the
promise of an earlier competency to share with one whom
he might love.
But Mary's unworldly eye saw only his genius for Art.
To develop his intense love for the Beautiful, seemed to
her his proper destiny. Better a more slender livelihood,
the daily industry of which should ennoble heart and
mind (thought Mary), than larger wealth, the struggle for
the acquisition of which must demean the intellect, and
leave Nature's best gifts without culture. Art, to her, was
a lofty walk with such spirits as Raphael for guide and
company; and all other successes in life were, to those of
genius, poor and secondary. She had read with Paul, on
these subjects till both their minds were artistic in taste
and enthusiasm. Without his skill of hand; and the fine
intuition of form and color, which constituted his peculiarity
of genius, she had done her best to discipline her
judgment by assiduous practice in drawing, and she was,
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at least, an entire appreciator of what he did, and a charming
encourager of his every effort and victory.
“Well?” said Mary, looking up with an inquiring smile,
after a few minutes of silence, and thus reminding Paul of
the something he had to say.
His magnanimity sprang to the throne with a bound, at
the liberal and confiding nobleness of that look and smile.
How could he conceal from such a soul-mirror, the remotest
impulse of so important a step? He would not!
“Mary,” he said, “I have resolved, at last, to go to
Europe.”
She started, and drew his arm closer to her side.
“But that is not all,” he continued. “I wish to make a
fair confession to you of all the mystery of this new determination—
what awoke it, and what is involved in it.”
He hesitated a moment, and Mary, who had stopped and
resumed her walk, took the opportunity to come in with
what she thought was the encouraging word critically
needed to confirm a great resolution.
“The very sunshine without which your genius must
languish, my dear Paul,” she said, in a low, strong, steady
tone. “I am so glad you give up, at last, that misplaced
Americanism of trying to be an artist here. You need
the air of Italy—the collision with other schools of
artists—”
“But, Mary—”
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“No, I will not listen to any qualification of so good a
resolve! Go, my dear friend—go—”
But the last syllable trembled on her lip, and the flecked
light through the overshadowing elms flashed on a sudden
brightness in the large blue eye of which he half caught a
glimpse as she turned away. There was more than mere
expediency to be felt and thought of, in the discussion of
that new resolve!
But a familiar call suddenly startled them.
“My children!” said the loving voice of Mrs. Fane, who,
as they walked slowly along the Mall, had entered from a
side street and overtaken them, “shall I interrupt your
downcast eyes in their study of those broken shadows, if I
take Paul's other arm? I am tired, and quite need its kind
support.”
And, with that chance interruption, Paul's confession
sank back into silence—to be resummoned and honestly
achieved to the satisfaction of his conscience, but not till
days had elapsed, and not till the life-long passion for Art
had again found its supremacy and become the absorbing
and main interest of his plans. Strong and keen motive as
his new pride-thirst of social curiosity still continued to be,
it fell to its secondary and subordinate place; and, when
avowed to Mary, it seemed to her but a side-interest of
travel, incidental to his youth and sex. With her broad
and unselfish appreciation, the new knowledge he thus
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wished was included in the outline of Taste, and accredited
to the larger want and more instinctive completeness of
his Nature. Paul had his misgiving as to receiving all of
this generous estimate. But he marked the mental reservation
with a tear of grateful tenderness at his heart, and a
prayer for strength to be even what he was thought to be.
The addition, to their company, of one so intimate with
both, did not change the topic that afternoon. With the
interrupted confession set aside, the project itself of foreign
travel was at once imparted to the loving and beloved
mother. She received it sadly, thoughtfully, but assentingly.
With less youthful elasticity of hope than Mary,
the mournful certainties of separation and dread possibilities
of harm and unforeseen trial in absence, pressed first on
her busy heart and brain.
That was an evening crowded with the undramatic trials
of home differences of opinion, and questions of means and
future resources. With Mr. Fane's unwavering justice and
truth, his severity and practical angularity of judgment had
always been borne with, hitherto, and till this unexpected
proposition, by his son, no wish or decision of the father
had ever needed to be openly opposed. By this calm dissent,
known well to be wholly inflexible, Paul's future separation
of interest and support was to commence with his
departure from the paternal roof. This was expected and
unargued. The respectfully dispassionate expression, by
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Mrs. Fane, of a regret at his difference of opinion, softened
his departure from the room as he left for his evening walk,
and the mother and son together once more, laid their
plans for the future. She had, happily, a small income of
her own, which, with close management and economy,
might suffice for his mere wants, till he should find resources
in the productions of his genius, and, with this
assured, the new path might at least be entered upon.
It was a late hour when they parted that night, at his
study-door.
And with these moving-springs of our hero's character
and outset placed in the reader's hand, he is ready for the
more active movement of our story.
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CHAPTER IV.
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Intending, with this chapter, to have taken a single
flying leap to the fair city of Florence, and there (with
the omission of a year in our story) to commence the history
of our hero's adventures in Europe, we found a difficulty—
unable to alight, that is to say within any very
close neighborhood of Mr. Paul Fane, at Florence, without
jostling a gentleman, who was, then and there, the sole
sharer of the secrets of his domestic life, and to whose
familiar acquaintance the reader would thus be too precipitately
introduced. With the imagination so kindly
intrusted to us while your eye rests upon this page, dear
reader, it is due, by the courtesy of narrative, that we
should prepare you for any so full-blown intimacy by some
little confidential “aside.”
To go back then, for a little personal information as to
the history of the gentleman to be introduced to you.
On entering college (five or six years previous to present
date) Paul had obediently taken the “room-mate”
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assigned to him by “The Faculty,” and had thus found
himself in sudden and bivalve familiarity with an equally
astonished young gentleman from Indiana. As a means
of neutralizing the sectional prejudices with which the
students were apt to get clannish and hostile, Freshmen
from opposite parts of the country were thus coupled as
inmates.
Mr. Wabash Blivins was a “hoosier” of fifteen years of
age, whose father was an enterprising captain on the Western
waters, and who was patriotically named after the
river at the mouth of which the “Star-spangled Banner,”
his father's lumber-craft, was tied up (Mrs. Blivins being
on board) to have him born. He had not been long in
college before his overpowering first name was reduced by
his classmates to the affectionate diminutive of “Bosh;”
and by that (like the sweet iteration in “Will Shakspeare,”
and “Ben Jonson”) he is now on his way to posterity.
With “Bosh Blivins” for a room-mate, Paul was not,
at first, very particularly pleased. His manners, though
based on heroic principles, were, as yet, matters of very
general outline, the particulars to be filled in, according to
individual need and circumstances. He would “pitch
into” any Sophomore who tried a trick upon his slenderer
room-mate, for instance, but he could not be made to understand
the relative privacies of boots and hair-brushes.
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Then he mortified Paul, in their daily promenades to the
Post-office, by his hoosier habit of resting—squatting flat
upon his heels, if his friend stopped to speak to a lady or
look in at a shop window, and with his arms hung collapsedly
over his knees, sitting motionless in this Western
attitude of repose, till called to go on again. His vital
electricity, also, had the Western peculiarity of becoming
vocal with excitement. In his backwoods' early education
poetry had not chanced to fall much in his way, and now,
as he sat up late at night, very much worked upon by
Byron and Tom Moore, his various utterances of emotion
at the exciting passages—whistling, squealing, howling, or
yelling, according to the sentiment to be sympathized
with—was very disturbing to Paul's slumbers. For one
of these hoosier yells, given with fearful suddenness at an
eloquent climax in the Tutor's prayer, during a period of
religious excitement in the college, Bosh was threatened
with rustication.
In addition to point-blank differences of habit and manner
on such points, the Westerner and Down-Easter were
diametrically opposite in some qualities of character.
Paul was an absorbent—eager only to receive the magnetism
of other minds, and expressing himself always with
modest deference; Blivins was a demonstrative—eager
only to impress, and saying all he meant, if not considerably
more. Then, while Paul had a very keen sense of the
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ludicrous, habitually moderating his own language and
manners by his knowledge of laugh-shot distance, Blivins
was sublimely safe among his superlatives, and, though
ready enough for broad fun when explained to him, wholly
without natural recognition of that element in the intellectual
atmosphere, and blissfully unconscious of being by
any possibility in danger of ridicule himself.
It is not unlikely, that, in the very contradiction of the two
characters, lay half the secret of the friendship that soon
grew up between them; but they had some strong qualities
in common, besides, and, after rooming together for
the Freshman year, they were more than content to send
in their names as “chums” in perpetuam. And so, for
Sophomore year, Fane and Blivins hooked arms and vicissitudes.
But, toward the end of this second year, an active principle
of Blivins' character began to get uneasy. Stilted
as he certainly was on most subjects, he had the most flat-footed
downrightness of perception as to “what would
pay.” He had taken a cool look at the two upper classes
of students in their third and fourth years, and made up
his mind that the difference between them and him wasn't
quite worth waiting so long for. “College life might be
very well for slow folks, but it was a one-horse affair, and
he was a whole team.” “Sophomore, perhaps—but he was
seventeen years old, and had cut his eye-teeth.” “Latin
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and Greek don't sell.” “Time a boy like him was making
money.” And with deductions like these, drawn from his
long arguments with Paul, Blivins brought his college education
to a close with the end of the Sophomore year, and
was off for what he called a “faster place,” his native
Indiana.
With no capital except sanguine for one, Bosh's first
pick of customers for his imaginative goods was of course
somewhat experimental, and, after various unsuccessful
trials of the different professions, he found himself, in the
second year after parting with Paul, profiting by some
taste he had caught, and some little instructions he had
received from his room-mate in his favorite occupation of
drawing. He had become scene-painter to a dramatic
company who had a floating theatre in a flat-boat on the
Mississippi. With his hand thus got in, he looked around
for what was wanted in that line, and soon found that such
patriotic or pious pictures as he could paint—say two per
week, more or less—found a ready sale. This “opened
up.” He worked at it a while, till the demand came in
faster than he could finish off, and he then raised his
prices, and began to think of fame. Italy was a country
where he could work cheaper, and, at any rate, a better
place for his pictures to hail from. To make sure, however,
he began with a tour through the back settlements;
and, calling on the religious farmers and leading politicians,
-- 038 -- p746-043
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he procured commissions for such subjects as they severally
preferred, established an agency in Cincinnati, and so
organized his market. And, by due return of the merchantmen
with cargoes of oil and wine from Leghorn,
came home scores of Blivins' masterpieces from Florence,
which stood, splendid witnesses of republican appreciation
of native talent, on the mantel-pieces of the glorious West.
CHAPTER V.
In the back wing of one of the old half-ruined palaces
under the Eastern wall of Florence—(the once splendid
home of one of the decayed Tuscan nobility, but now, like
others in its unfashionable neighborhood, rented for mere
pittances of rent to the painters and sculptors who needed
the favoring light of the tall windows and lofty ceilings)—
in the north corner of the Palazzo F—, on a still, mellow
morning of April, 1832, two artists, busy with color
and pencil, stood before their respective easels, in the same
room. They were in opposite corners, on either side of
the only unshuttered window, and, upon a raised platform
on the other side of the large apartment, with a flood of
the golden light of that beautiful sky pouring down upon
her nude shoulders and loosened locks, knelt the female
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model, of whom they were each making a study for a picture.
The girl's mother, who accompanied her always, sat
knitting on a low chair near by, and in the sketch on one
of the easels, the picturesque head and figure of the elder
female were very strikingly included.
“Ten cents an hour, and the mother thrown in, is what
I call moderate damages,” said Blivins, putting a wrinkle
into the forehead under his hand with a single dash of his
brush, “but I don't intend to swindle the old woman. It's
a Bible Sarah I want, and she isn't quite used-up enough
to justify my Abraham, as it were. I have to imagine the
flesh-flats at low water, and the tear-troughs and cavingsin.
But her daughter is a slap-up Hagar and no mistake,
and if I get a good picture out of the old cow and her
pretty heifer, why, I'll behave handsomely, and fork over
the consideration.”
“Right, and fair, my dear Bosh,” said Paul, “though
Giulietta's `ten cents an hour' is for letting one pair of
eyes drink of her beauty, and there are two of us having
that pleasure. So, she is entitled to double wages on her
own account, and the mother's extra into the bargain.
But come, see what a charming Psyche she makes!—the
same head you have made into that pork-fed looking
Hagar of yours, you awful aggravator!”
Blivins stood half way between the two pictures, looking
first at his strapping Hagar receiving her doom of exile
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from old Sarah, at the door of Abraham's tent, and then at
the timid Psyche just venturing, with her half-shaded lamp,
upon the slumber of the yet unseen Cupid.
“Not much like pictures of the same woman, that's a
fact,” he said, after a moment of musing; “and there's a
likeness of the girl in yours, too—but it's mine that looks
as most people like to have their women look”—
“But why not paint what they ought to like, and so
help people to better taste?” interrupted Paul, who kept
up a daily hammering upon Bosh's exaggerations of fancy.
“Look at that girl, now!”
And, as he spoke, Giulietta, taking advantage of the unoccupied
moment for a change of posture, rose and walked
dreamily about the room, her exquisitely rounded arms
folded across her undraped bust—superbly lovely, and yet
as innocently unconscious of the exposure from her waist
upwards as a nymph in marble.
“What could be more ethereal and pure? And yet
your Hagar, there, looks anything but proper, with all that
flesh and color, my dear Bosh!”
“I don't doubt you are entirely unanimous in thinking
so,” said Bosh, with a tone of injured mournfulness, “but
most folks prefer lips with a landing-place to 'em, and
something to make fast to, here and there. That moonshine
woman of yours wouldn't do for my customers, Mr.
Paul! Did I ever tell you who my Hagar is to stand for?”
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“No,” said his friend, who had resumed his study of
Giulietta; and Paul went on sketching, while Blivins, with
his attention mostly occupied with his work, entered upon
a careless and interrupted narrative of one of his Western
experiences—showing the good influence of criticism, however,
by shading away, as he talked, some of the superfluous
plumptitude of his Hagar.
“Wall, you see, I was drifting round through the back
settlements in Michigan, on a propagation of the Fine Arts—
getting commissions, that is to say, to come out here.
* * * But people don't buy pictures very spontaneously,
particularly if they haven't seen 'em; and it took
`soft sodder' to start the subject, and then it had to be
piety or politics where you put in your persuader; or perhaps
something curious had happened to themselves, or,
with a sharp look out, the weak spot would turn up, and
you might stand a picture on that. It was tight electioneering,
though, and I could go to Congress with half the
steam. * * * Come to a river one night, horseback;
I found I was close by the diggings of Deacon Superior
Nash, and he and my old gentleman had lumbered together,
and so I reckoned I'd got a picture on to him. * * *
Horse put up—all right—nobody at home but the Deacon—
and, to talking we went, over cider and sausages.” * * *
“Topics, pork and lumber, I suppose,” said Paul, breaking
the silence, while Bosh became abstracted for a minute
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or two in gazing at a new turn of the light upon the superb
shoulders of Giulietta.
“No,” continued Blivins, “I got him confidential by
the third or fourth mug, and then he began telling about
his wives.”
“But the Abraham that is to serve for his likeness,
there, had two wives at a time,” suggested Fane.
“So had the Deacon,” pursued Bosh, “and there lay
my high water for business. He told me the whole story—
too long to go over now—but I saw my opportunity,
and put in at the right place. `Just like Abraham and
Hagar,' says I, and it hit him exactly on the raw. His
first wife was a high-pressure old spitfire, and he had compassed
Heaven and Michigan, lobby and Legislature, to
get a divorce from her. * * * At last he thought he
had it. * * * Rafting-time came round, and he went
down stream with a mile of lumber, calm and comfortable.
* * * Well, the Deacon made a good sell at New
Orleans, smarted up, and started for home. But the
thought of the old woman still troubled him, and on the
way he married another woman, to take the taste out of
his mouth.”
“Then it was his Sarah driven into the wilderness, not
his Hagar,” observed Paul.
“No, no; back water, if you please! He hadn't yet got
his papers, and the old woman managed to slip her foot
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out of the trap while he was away. So he had hardly
got home and held the first prayer-meeting in his own
house as a bridegroom, when he had to cut loose from his
pretty new wife, and begin to pay bills again for the old
one.”
“Then that robustious young woman you have been
painting there, went home somewhat a-Miss?” said Paul.
“A miss and nothing else,” assented Blivins, who did
not see the pun.
“And so, Giulietta, my dear,” said Paul with a tone of
compassion, as he walked across the room to lay away one
of the waves of raven hair that was hiding the arch of her
beautiful throat, “you are not to be Mrs. Deacon Nash,
after all!”
“Signore!” murmured the half couchant peasant-girl,
on hearing her name—but with a look of tender earnestness
in her large dark eyes, though she got no answer,
which showed that the voice and manner of Paul even in
a strange language, were very sweet to hear.
“But Giulietta is to hang up in the Deacon's parlor for
the Mrs. Nash that was to be,” continued Bosh, “and very
happy the old Deacon was, to find that Hagar in Genesis
had just such a time of it as his poor girl, and that he
himself was no worse off than Abraham, after all. He'll
think it a pity that his live Mrs. Hagar Nash can't get
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
into his house and stay there, as peaceably as my painted
one will, that's all.”
“And which do you think would be the happier, Bosh—
Giulietta as Mrs. Deacon Nash, or Mrs. Deacon Nash as
Giulietta?”
Blivins, for once in a way, gave a loud laugh.
“Well, I think I see the wife of a Michigan Deacon
showing herself round for ten cents an hour—even if her
mother went along! Rather low water for Captain Nash's
family to drift in, Mr. Paul!”
“But, persisted Fane, who was beginning to have his
own ideas about comparative happiness, “do you think
Giulietta would be happier and more innocent if she could
change places even with Mrs. Sarah Nash?”
“Why,” said Bosh, rather dodging the point in dispute,
“the Deacon will, like as not, be Governor of Michigan?”
“But look at that face, my popular Blivins! Every
line of it, spite of her un-republican industry, has the repose
of completely untroubled happiness. Giulietta has
never had an illness, never had a care. I have seen where
they live, in the valley just over Fiesole, and, with what
Italian I had picked up and added to my Latin, I managed,
the other day, to hear their whole story. She has bed-ridden
grand-parents and a troop of young brothers and
sisters—her father unable to get half a livelihood for them.
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But they bless the Holy Virgin, night and morning, that
the eldest daughter, Giulietta, was born beautiful and symmetrical
enough to be a model to the artists. She commenced
at ten years of age, sitting to the sculptors for their
cherubs and cupids, and has supported her mother's family
ever since, in comfort and happiness, with a profession
which, in her rank of life, while conducted properly, is both
respected and envied.”
“All very well, out here,” Blivins partly knocked under,
by saying, as Paul took breath, “but it'll be a long time
before they'll turn it to account that way, if a girl is born
handsome out West!”
“Yet here and there a Western beauty, I fancy, would
like to be the type, as Giulietta is, of many a work of
genius—copied, idealized, immortalized, on canvas and in
marble—studied and worshipped, daily and all day, by the
eyes in the world that best know how to reverence and
prize what, in her beauty, God has made admirable.”
“You're putting it strong, Paul,” said Bosh, giving more
eyes than before, however, to the beauty that was so discoursed
upon, “for I don't believe Giulietta cares a fig what
the artists copy, or what they think while they're doing it.”
“Mezzo giorno, Signori,” said the mother, rising, as the
convent bell rang for noon, and so interrupting the argument
with the announcement of the close of the hour.
And Giulietta stepped from the platform and drew up
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the shoulder-straps of the coarse petticoat that had fallen
around her hips, twisted her heavy masses of long raven
hair into a knot, and, with her mantle drawn modestly
around her faultless form, and her straw hat gracefully set
upon her nymph-like head, courtesied her “Addio,” and
gave a last sweet smile to Paul.
And, as they set back their easels for that day, both
artists wished it were the time to-morrow when she would
come again.
CHAPTER VI.
The reader is not aware, perhaps, that he was let into a
secret, in the last chapter, by the description there given
of Blivins' studio, and of his and his friend Fane's artistic
morning with the fair model, Giulietta. There will hardly
be a fair understanding of the footing of these two gentlemen
in Florence, without a pause in our story while we
explain—though, how real life, which does not pause for
such explanations, manages to get understood at all, is a
doubtfulness which you have only to write a true tale to
grow charitable upon.
Of course we should prefer to proceed, as we were about
to do, and finish the story of that day by a description of
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[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
our friends' disposal of their evening—Bosh being engaged
to dine with the Fitz-Firkins, the wealthy American family
resident at Florence, and Paul going to a Court ball at the
Pitti—but, as they both followed the custom of the country
and took the afternoon nap (which goes by the pretty
name of “la siesta”), we have an interval of time, for which,
without violation of probability, our story may leave them
by themselves.
And now, then, to explain why this studio, and the daily
labors upon its two very different easels, in a half-ruined and
forgotten old plazzo of the City of Art, formed a part of the
daily life of our two friends, which they kept secret from
their respective acquaintances.
On Fane's first arrival at Paris, with a warm letter of
introduction from his friend Mrs. Cleverly, to the wife of
the American Minister, who chanced to be a special intimate
of her own, he had been very kindly received; and,
with but time enough to confirm the favorable programme
of his mind and manners given in the letter, had been
taken under the especial wing of his distinguished lady-consignee,
by his appointment as attaché to the Legation. By
this nominal honor, with neither emoluments nor duties,
Paul was put at his ease in the court society of the gay
capital; but it involved the necessity, also, that, in accordance
with the usual proprieties of the position, he should
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
appear, in all other respects, a gentleman of leisure. His
studies for the main ambition of his life—as an artist—
were again, therefore, as at home, put under a chance seal
of privacy.
For the secondary object of his visit to Europe—the
strong though unconfessed desire to look close upon the
world's finer or prouder clay, and know wherein it differed
from himself and those he loved—Paul's horoscope seemed
most favorably cast. It was with a secret satisfaction
which he scarce dared acknowledge to himself, that he accepted
the advantage thus held out to him, and with the
magic “open sesame” of a diplomatic title on his card,
entered upon the dazzling labyrinths of Parisian life, with
its world-pick society of the high-born and brilliant.
Fortunately for the effect of this giddy intoxication upon
his impressible and plastic mind, the correspondence with
his mother called him faithfully to account, day by day,
before conscience and her calm, sweet eyes; and, in his
genius and what it found to appreciate and select in the
glitter around him, there was still another pure spirit, unseen
but ever silently separative and rejective; and of these
influences (the latter more particularly), we may, perhaps,
better trust one of his own letters to explain the value.
He thus wrote from Paris:—
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[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
Dearest Mother:
That little twitch at the lock of hair over my left temple tells
me that you are here, just as certainly as when you crept behind
me at my easel at home, and by that bell-pull to my abstracted
brain, informed me that I was to come out of my picture and attend
to you. Spirits can cross oceans and pull hair—I here record
my well-founded belief—and you are here, up three flights of
stairs, in my private and unapproachable Parisian den waiting to
have a talk with your boy. Kiss, dear mother, and begin.
By your last letter you were still doubting my “continued identity
under the addition of a court sword,” and, to tell the truth, I
am still wondering, occasionally, when I come suddenly upon
myself in a mirror at a ball, whether that pendant superfluity and
gold collar are me! I have swallowed, with some difficulty, gulp
by gulp, the daily dishonesty of laying aside the maul-stick of the
artist (which I am) and going out into the world decked with the
weapons of a cavalier (which I am not). So silly to wear a sword
to a party at all, but particularly without the slightest idea of how
to use it if it were drawn! But we soon agree with the world if
we find it admiring us, even for an absurdity, and so I follow my
sword about, most of the time; letting it make way for me if it
will, and asking no questions. Small-clothes and silk stockings,
too! But I will spare you the lesser particulars.
My pencil achieves little at present, I am free to own, and,
between “late hours” and early engagements, my good-boy quotidian
of application is shortened at both ends; but I think you
mistake, dearest mother, in fancying the time altogether lost
which is given to the “gay and giddy world,” even by the artist.
Fashion, though it has a bad name, is the customer of genius, and
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[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
enlists many a pure spirit of beauty in its service of pleasure-making.
Take away but the wickedness that walks unseen in these
lighted rooms, and they would be fit places to entertain angels.
And it is not merely that there are pictures and statuary which
wealth alone could buy, but the beauty of woman (though you
need not tell this to Mary), seems to me artistically elevated by the
wondrous art often shown in its embellishment—made more sacred,
I may even say, by the costliness that seems so to enshrine and
fence it in. A jewel of great price has great splendor, and a rare
flower is the more curious and far-sought work of God—and such
gem or flower, well worn by the proud and high-born beauty, has
the effect (on my new eyes, at least) of a choice seal or more precious
cipher placed on the wearer to mark Nature's best.
Then these people who “fritter away life,” “turn day into
night,” indulge in “wasteful extravagance,” and are, in fact, the
very Pharaohs and Pharisees whom good Dr. Evenden preaches
into the Red Sea, and a still warmer place with such heavenly-minded
perseverance—why, dear mother, they do not look so bad
when you come close to them! Of course the palaces and grand
houses where all the “pomp and vainglory” is to be found, are the
Doctor's “Sodom and Gomorrah”—but, to my surprise, the manners
are simpler in such places than in the Doctor's own congregation;
and the voices are more meditative and gentle; and the
postures, walk and conversation (if my artistic sense of propriety
as well as taste, is to be trusted at all), are, in their well-studied
humility and well-bred unassumingness and simplicity, more suitable
for any reasonable “Zion.” “Satan in disguise,” very possibly—
but may I not admire, with suitable precaution (or, till there
is some smell of brimstone in the air), what I thus find purest in
taste and seeming?
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One thing I should insist on your recognising and approving, if
you were here, my calm-eyed and quiet-mannered mamma!—the
character given to the general look and presence of these high-bred
Europeans by their air of unconscious repose. It may be
from the contrast with the more abrupt and nervous constitution
of our people at home, but it seems to me a very marked as well
as admirable peculiarity of court manners. It affects beauty so
much! The pose of the head, the turn of the arm, the movement
of the person—all governed by nerves that are never taken by
surprise, and always deliberately dignified. Then the expression
of the features is so artistically improved by it! One look is
shaded into another—a smile heralded like a sunrise, by a dawn;
a change from gayety to sadness made tenderer by a twilight.
Such self-possessed and imperturbable tranquillity of look, manner
and movement, I may add, impresses you like a language of
peace of mind (deceivingly, as it may interpret the fashionable
consciences beneath), and gives a kind of moral superiority to the
atmosphere, which is sometimes painfully wanting to the starting,
hesitating, uncertain manners of our most exemplary “brethren
and sisters.” Please, let me think so, at least, dear mother, and
profit by the lesson I draw from it. The “cælum-que tueri”—the
face of man made to look upward—implies that the human countenance
may have a more or less edifying look—does it not?
I have all sorts of acquaintances here, but, as yet, no intimates.
After the excitement of an evening in society, the mute presence
of genius in these hushed and lofty galleries of Art has a wonderful
enchantment. Fortunately the world is too busy or too polite
to inquire how one disposes of his spare time, and I safely give to
my pencil, or to studies of great pictures, as exclusive and long a
morning as I please. It might be different if I had intimacies;
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
but, as I said before, I have none—my attention, up to the present
time, having enough to do to be general only—wholly engrossed,
that is to say, with being civil enough to pass muster while I
observe merely. There is so much that is new and beautiful on
every side, that Curiosity and Appreciation (those two quiet ministering
spirits) give one his fill of pleasure. With admirable
works of Art and admirable people, therefore, I maintain, at present,
pretty much the same relation—receiving great pleasure from
what is charming in each, but endeavoring to impress, in turn,
neither picture nor gentleman, neither statue nor lady.
My own path in Art is becoming again visible to me, though its
faint and far line was entirely lost, at first, in the flood of predominant
genius gathered in these splendid galleries. Whether I shall
ever have the skill to express the ideal which is daily shaping itself
to my inner eyes, I do not know—but, from every masterpiece, as
I study it more intently, the something I should have done differently
separates and stands apart like a phantom, and, to grasp
and realize that I feel to be my problem of success. Of course,
what I cannot make visible with my pencil, I am still less able to
define in words, so I cannot tell you what this style of mine is to
be. But I may say that, while it is less animal than what I find to
be the most successful ideals, it is not so by any lessening of proportions
or development. It is merely that it is made more spiritual
by a consciousness intellectual only. The body, with all its
perfected beauty, is forgotten in the soul. Mary Evenden represents
it. She looks as if walking the world with only the spirit-memory
of the Heaven she came from—wholly unconscious of the
form that she animates and bears about—yet how full and absolute
is her beauty as a woman!
Well, dear mother, I have passed the evening with you, and the
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midnight, that, to you, three thousand miles away, will be a more
tardy visitant, is now at my door. Let it bring you my good-night
kiss—though, instead of undressing for dream-land, as with that
good-night kiss at home, I must dress presently for a ball. May
God preserve me to my mother, and my mother to me! Dear,
precious, blessed mother, ever loving and beloved, good-night!
Paul.
It was three months after the date of this letter that
Fane found himself in Florence—his six months in Paris
having given him all the knowledge of the gay capital of
which he felt he could make conscientious use at that stage
of his artistic progress, and his errand to Italy being the
need he felt of the apprenticeship to its higher schools,
combined with its better facilities for practical study. By
the advice of his kind friend, the Minister, however, he had
retained his appointment as attaché—the diplomatic passport
giving him the same privileges at other courts as at
Paris—and, on his arrival, he had duly gone through the
form of a presentation to the hospitable sovereign of Tuscany,
and, with his court position, and the letters he had
brought, was very readily at his ease as a supposed traveller
for pleasure.
But Florence is a small capital, and the arrangement of
means for a very devoted yet still necessarily secret pursuit
of his professional studies, seemed to offer, at first, formidable
embarrassments to Paul. He had occupied himself
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
for a week or two in forming acquaintances and visiting
the Galleries, his mind very much troubled with plans for
which his small resources seemed quite unequal, when he
chanced, one evening, to stroll into the café of the Piazza
Trinita. As usual, this favorite resort of artists and idlers
was thronged with guests—the wandering musicians, flower-girls,
cigar-venders, and begging monks, all in lively circulation
among the crowd—and Paul seated himself at one
of the marble tables, dispirited and lonely. He called for
his coffee, and sat stirring away at his sugar very thoughtfully,
when, carelessly looking up, he encountered a pair of
eyes fastened upon him, the owner sitting on the other side
of the café, in a petrified stare, head and arms thrown back,
mouth wide open, and the power of motion, apparently, suspended
for the moment by an asphyxia of speechless astonishment.
Paul leaned suddenly forward, and as he shaded his
eyes with his hand, the just visible parting of his lips with
the inaudible question “Bosh!” expressed his own incredulous
amazement at what he saw.
At the same instant there was a yell which all but
scalped every musical Italian within half a mile.
“Yahoo! Jehosophat! Don't hold me! Paul Fane,
by all that's navigable!”
And crouching into a figure 4, like a hard-pushed bear
clearing the chasm of a water-course, Blivins started on
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[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
an air-line across the café to Paul, overturning first the
supper on his own round table, and then with a touch-and-go
wipe of his foot over the top of the next one, carrying
away the coffee and maraschino of a couple of thunder-struck
French artists.
The mutual miscellany of limbs and exclamations that
the friends went into—(for Paul's own recognition of
Bosh was a rebound from loneliness and depression, and
he had embraced and re-embraced his old room-mate
before he thought of the probable impression on those
around)—was a spectacle gazed on with apprehensive
amazement. They were scarce beginning to sit on two
seats, and hear each other speak, however, when the waiters
came rushing in with ropes and shutters—the landlord
not doubting in the least that Bosh was an escaped madman,
and sending instantly for something to tie him to,
and prevent further mischief.
The waiters hesitated about taking hold of such a looking
customer as Bosh, and, with the time thus gained, Paul
settled his disturbed clothes and put on his habitual look
of propriety; and, with an apology to the two gentlemen
who had been walked over, and an explanation to the
landlord that his friend was from the Rocky Mountains
and had the precipitate manners of the steep side of the
American Continent, he paid the breakages, etc., and
walked Bosh off—the track made for them by the
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[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
distrustful crowd, as they gained the street, being considerably
wider than the respect for Bosh's personal presence usually
commanded.
It was a happy evening to the two friends. Besides the
pleasure of renewing their old intimacy, each happened to
supply exactly the most pressing want of the other—Paul's
counsel and tutorship in Art being very necessary to
Blivins and Blivins's nominal tenantship of a studio, and
confidential agency in the procuring of all the belongings
of an artist, being the very screen for retired application
which Paul was puzzled to contrive.
And, before the sunset of another day, they were domiciled
together, their lodgings in a small street running
westward from the Piazza Trinita, and their common studio
where we have already described it, in a wing of one of
the lofty and half-ruined palaces on the unfrequented side
of the city. It was an accident favorable to Paul's wishes,
also, that Blivins, from some glimmer which his dignity
had received of the probable misappreciation of his pictures
by his brother artists in Florence, had, after the first
week, jealously kept his sanctum to himself. No visitor
knew the way to it.
And here, in what was nominally Blivins's studio, the
two friends gave their mornings uninterruptedly to Art—
the manner of disposal of the remaining portions of their
time being what the deferred next chapter will now hasten
to portray.
-- 057 -- p746-062
CHAPTER VII.
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The sunset was pouring its yellow dust over the streets
of Florence, giving a softened and rounded edge to every
line of the bold and overladen architecture. Every most
careless effect of building or beast of burden—every movement
or posture of man, woman or child—seemed the original
of a picture of Claude. The air was happiness enough
to breathe, without life's being made any richer.
“I will make no engagement for to-morrow morning,”
said Paul, to his friend Bosh, as they parted at the door
of their lodgings; “to a night with such an atmosphere as
this, a man can only deliver himself over.”
“But, there's Giulietta engaged early,” interrupted
Bosh; “why not give the night's sleep the go-by, altogether—
wind up at the ball with a cup of coffee, and come
straight to the studio?”
“Too pure a presence to bring such polluted eyes to,”
said Paul, thoughtfully. “I would not profane the child
by looking upon her beauty without the baptism of sleep,
after one of these court balls!”
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“Wh—e—w!” incredulously whistled Blivins, to whom
this scruple was a trifle too transcendental; “little she'll
care whether you've baptized your ten-cent piece, so you
pay it! I shall go dine with the Firkinses, without losing
any of my goodness, as I know of. Giulietta for one, if
you're not there, that's all.”
The passing vetturino, to whom Paul had beckoned,
drove up at this moment, and the two friends parted for
their different engagements—Blivins to proceed on foot to
the splendid “Palazzo Firkin,” and Fane directing the
driver of the hired vehicle to pass out at the city gate
toward San Miniato. He was to take tea with the Palefords,
at their vineyard cottage among the neighboring
hills, and come in with them to the court ball, at a later
hour.
With alternate crawl and scamper, after the fashion of
the country, the vetturino pursued his way toward Casa
F—, and the yellow of the fading sunlight was contending
with the silver of a full moon new risen, when they
stopped at the rude old gateway.
“Porter or portress, whichever you please, my dear
Fane,” said Colonel Paleford, stepping out from under the
roofed lintel, with his daughter upon his arm, and giving
Paul a hand as he alighted, “Sybil and I came down to
share the honor of opening the gate for you.”
And warmly returning the grasp of the soldierly
-- 059 --
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Englishman, and raising his hat with the most deferential homage
as he bowed low to take the proffered hand of the daughter,
Paul joined them on their return to the house. The
rough vineyard road was lined and roofed over with the
luxuriant vines, and as they emerged from the darkened
avenue at the end, they came upon the English tea-table
spread on the grass in the open air.
“This is rather al fresco, for an invalid,” said Mrs. Paleford,
as she nodded familiarly to Paul, and went on pouring
out the tea that had been waiting for them, “but a
house, in this climate, is such a different thing! In England
it shuts in comfort—here, it shuts it out.”
“So defined in the bird-dictionary,” said Paul.
“It was thought to be running such a dreadful gauntlet
of exposure, when I started to get to Italy,” continued the
invalid, “but what would my doctor say, now—quite given
over as a consumptive, and yet taking tea out of doors in
the evening?”
Paul was seated at the round table, by this time, with
one of the younger children upon his knee, and Miss Paleford
leaned upon her father's shoulder, looking alternately
into his face as he talked, and at the broad disk of the
moon as it lifted among the olive-trees beyond. The
beautiful girl took little or no part in the conversation,
except by a worshipping attention to her father, which
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seemed to Paul to partake almost of the character of a
fascination.
“I was speculating, only this morning, upon a very contented
old cripple at the gate,” said the Colonel, “and
thinking what a happy country it is, where exclusion and
exposure are not among the ills of poverty.”
“And where bread and wine may be had at any vineyard
gate for the asking,” added Paul.
“But it is not merely in the climate and its prodigality
of what will sustain life,” continued his friend, “but see
how much more is free of cost than elsewhere—say of
luxuries, and to those who are poor, like us!”
Paul glanced at the lofty impress of feature and manner
on the family around him, and admired once more the
English-ism of making no secret of reduced circumstances
or necessary economy.
“The Duke's galleries are of unheard of cost—so are his
gardens—the galleries and gardens of his nobility—yet neither
he nor any one of his court is more at liberty to enjoy
them than you or I, Fane—and without the cost of a farthing!
Then the ball at the Palace to-night, with its lighted wilderness
of splendors, its music and feasting—the very preeminence
of rank, in the sovereign entertainer, relieving your
pride of the embarrassment of receiving such hospitalities
without return!”
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“But I have thought, even in my own country, where
there is less `luxury gratis' than any where else,” said
Paul, “that the rich man is often the care-worn manager
of the theatre where others enjoy the play.”
“Climate has much to do with the pleasure of being
rich,” the Colonel went musingly on to say, “the consciousness
of an empty pocket being very different in a
chilly atmosphere or a warm one. Any man in the world,
I venture to say, would feel richer on a shilling in Florence,
than on a guinea in London. But aside from the fancy of
the matter, there is positive reason for wealth being so
much more of a blessing in England—the costly shutting
out of the climate, that there is to be done before you can
begin to be happy. The beggar, here, has what we call
`comfort'—but there must be `competency' in England, to
procure you the house and hearth which would only just
enable you to begin where the Italian beggar stands
already.”
“No beggars in republics, I suppose? asked the listening
Sybil, turning her calm blue eyes from the moon upon Paul,
with an effect, in their lustre and in the slow motion which
he admiringly likened in his own mind to the priestess-like
pouring out of vases-full of moonlight upon a worshipper of
Dian. Busy with storing away the chance-gleam of so
much beauty in his artistic memory—observing, too, that the
earnest study of his voicelessly responsive look had started
-- 062 --
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the color into the cheek of the reserved girl—Paul did not
immediately answer.
“And with no rank in America,” said Mrs. Paleford, “I
suppose wealth goes further there than elsewhere, towards
making a grandee.”
“It would seem as if it must be so,” replied Paul, and
probably would be, but that wealth is brought into less esteem
by two or three chance influences, that are also
American. In the first place, fortunes are made easily, in
our country—often so accidentally or suddenly—that the
mere fact of being rich gives no unconditional position.
Then wealth is so easily lost, with the venturesome character
of our people, and it is so divided up where there is no
law of primogeniture, that it is not looked upon as a sufficient
permanency to confer any undisputed superiority of
one family over another. And there is a third and worse
opprobrium under which wealth labors in America—its
possession, in the majority of cases, by those to whose children
it is a curse. New to it themselves, as most rich
people are, and bringing up their families in mere idleness
and ostentation, they do not hand down the superiorities
of culture in mind and manners which are the accompaniments
of inherited wealth elsewhere. The phrase “rich
men's sons” contains a sneer in common parlance, and describes
those, who, as a class, are positively offensive.”
“But you have distinctions of society, surely,” said the
-- 063 --
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Colonel, “and there are such gradations recognized as
“first families” and “fashionables.” You have people
who are allowed to be more of gentlefolks than others—
have you not?”
“Undoubtedly — nowhere more certainly,” answered
Paul—“though there would be different ground to be
shown for the higher social standing, in each particular
case. No one theory of aristocracy would account for the
“first families” in any American city. And, as there are no
definite or arbitrary crusts of gentility, above or below, the
rise or fall of social consequence has a certain naturalness
of play—a moral specific gravity, as it were—more just
than in other countries.”
“Wealth is an accessory, of course?” inquired the invalid.
“Yes, and so is good birth or descent from forefathers
who have stood socially well rather than from those who
have held popular office. But these are accessories only.
Claims (over and above integrity and morals, that is to
say), must be otherwise undeniable.”
“Claims such as talents, you mean, or superior education?”
said the Colonel.
“No,” said Paul, hesitating and coloring slightly as he
ventured upon a remark which only its entire truthfulness
redeemed from being too directly complimentary, “there
is nothing which gives such unquestioned social standing
-- 064 --
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in America as just what I have the happiness to see before
me—Nature's mark and mould of superiority.
The father playfully smoothed off the golden-edged
tress from the forehead of his child so superbly beautiful,
and she, in turn, looked into his clear-cut and noble features—
each finding in the other a confirmation of Paul's
bold venture of appreciation.
“And it is a privileged country, in that respect,” continued
Paul, “for those who represent our first classes
commonly have the look of it; and when the stranger is
called upon to recognise the leaders of society, it may be
tolerably certain that he finds them to be Nature's nobility
also.”
“Curiously different from Italy, in that respect,” said
Mrs. Paleford, “the peasantry having all the beauty in this
least republican of countries.”
“And the contrast must continue to strengthen,” added
the Colonel, “for, with the greater value of beauty and the
higher position given by a natural air of superiority, the
possessors of such gifts, in America, will make what are
called `the best matches,' and so the pick of Nature's outside
chances and caprices will be constantly tributary to
the stock of the upper classes. Here, it is very easy to
see, the physique of the aristocracy is suffering pitiably
from the opposite system—the nobility being very rigidly
subject to intermarriage of old blood, and for reasons of
-- 065 --
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mere pride or interest. That fine races run out with this
treatment, we see by the present dwarfed possessors of the
great names of Spain and Portugal.”
“Then you romantically marry for love, in America?”
asked Mrs. Paleford.
“Oftenest,” said Paul smiling, “though it is hardly
looked upon as a sacrifice. It is taken for granted in our
new country, that any young man worth having can at
least support a wife; and, as married men are more trusted
in business, from having more to be responsible for, a young
bride is an improvement of her husband's credit, and therefore,
in herself a dowry.”
Miss Paleford lifted her head from her father's shoulder,
and gave an attention to the conversation which Paul
interpreted as only an amused interest in the novelty of
the view.
“Oh,” he continued, laughing, “you should go to America
to see the difference that little trifle makes in the
manners of the young ladies! Fancy a country where
they all behave like heiresses!”
“Time to be thinking of the Duke's ball, my child,”
said Colonel Paleford. “There is not much complaint
made,” he continued, turning to Paul as the stately girl
disappeared under the rough trellis-work which made the
vestibule to their vineyard cottage—“not much that we
hear of, at least, as to the subjection of the sex to this
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destiny of `bought-and-sold,' which, in our high European
society, is scarce avoidable—but there is occasionally a
proud spirit that makes bitter rebellion against it!”
Paul understood, from the degree more than usual of
subdued distinctness with which the Colonel uttered this
remark (at the same time so undertoning it as not to be
overheard by his retiring daughter) that a point had been
inadvertently approached where the pride of the queenly
girl had made its resistance to what might be looked forward
to as her lot, under the reduced circumstances of her
family. Mrs. Paleford had, in the meantime, left them to
assist at the toilette within; and, putting his arm through
the Colonel's, Paul led off for a stroll through the vineyard,
changing the subject as they turned away. We may
leave the two gentlemen to their conversation, while we
give the reader a hint or two, by which these—Paul's most
intimate friends in Florence—will have a fairer introduction
to our story.
Colonel Paleford was an English officer, who had retired
from the service upon half pay, after losing an arm at Waterloo;
and, with little beside that slender income for the
support of his family, he had made Italy his permanent
home. The extreme economy with which the mere necessaries
of life may be had in that country, by those who
will consent to entirely forego show and luxury, had been
thoroughly studied and unhesitatingly and openly adopted
-- 067 --
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by the independent and lofty-minded soldier, and he was
thus enabled to live within his means and with little or no
embarrassment or care. The cottage he rented, on one of
the beautiful hillsides in the suburbs of Florence, was the
rustic homestead of a vintager, whose simple Italian family
were glad to bestow themselves in the out-buildings and
serve as domestics; and, with himself and his wife as the
only instructors of his children, they had a little world of
their own to which their natural nobility and refinement
gave the atmosphere of a palace.
Paul had first met the Palefords at court, where they
had a position quite peculiar to themselves. The English
Ambassador was a man of strong good sense, and he had
lost no opportunity of designating, by his own marked and
constant attentions, the place which he wished his high-minded
and soldierly countryman to take in the courtly
estimation. But even this was not necessary. The sovereign
of the Tuscan Court was a man to appreciate Colonel
Paleford at a glance. Simple in his own manners,
and a thorough man of the world, Leopold valued Nature's
mark of superiority on those around him, and evidently
felt his court to be peculiarly dignified and graced by the
stately form with the empty sleeve pinned to its breast like
a cross of honor, and the fine face distinguished above all
the courtiers and men of rank for its intellectual nobility.
Oftener seen in conversation with him than with any other
-- 068 --
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of his guests, he made his royal appreciation the universal
one, of course.
But it was the daughter of the soldierly Englishman who
was the mystery to the gay court of Tuscany. The father's
constant presence at the various festivities had evidently no
object but to bring her into society—her mother too much
of an invalid to perform her duties as chaperon—yet she
seemed to take little interest in the gayeties around her.
Dressed always in white, and with the most studied simplicity
and absence of ornament, she had his tall military
figure for certainly a most becoming foil, and, as she was
almost inseparable from his arm, they formed the one
tableau, always seen, yet startlingly unique and beautiful.
There were few whose eyes did not follow and dwell upon
them as they were met promenading the long suites of
rooms, or as they sat together with some distinguished
group around them; and, among her own sex, there were
few who did not envy Miss Paleford the constant procession
of admiring “desirables” led up for presentation, while
they could not but wonder at her quiet refusals to dance,
and the calm dignity of coldness which was her only
response to the attentions of lords and princes.
To Paul, when first presented to her by his friend the
Chamberlain, the stately Sybil had seemed simply a bewildering
marvel of beauty. The artist within him had received
the entire impression; and, engrossed with the study of the
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
wonder, as of a chance-seen and rare picture, he had
endeavored only to watch the play of her features as she
conversed, and so to store up and bring away some line of
which his pencil might try to copy the witchery on the
morrow. As the different foreigners left them, however,
and the conversation fell into English, their common language,
the Colonel had taken sufficient interest in his new
acquaintance to propose that they should find a corner for
a chat at their ease; and so, with the inseparable father
and daughter, Paul had commenced a “wall-flower” intercourse,
which soon (between the gentlemen, at least) ripened
into a friendship. In the quiet and deferential tone of the
young stranger's mind, the Colonel found something for
which he insensibly formed a liking, and it increased as
they met and exchanged thoughts, night after night, in
the luxurious halls of the Pitti; though upon Paul's silent
and artistic but still very evident study and appreciation of
the fair girl who was the listener as they talked, he put
only the interpretation of an unconscious homage to purity
and loveliness, such as might easily be the ground-work of
a passion—though of another secret of Paul's manner
toward them both, the deeply-buried curiosity in his heart
which they had powerfully re-awakened, and which they,
of all persons, seemed most likely to gratify, neither Colonel
Paleford nor his daughter had the means to form
even a conjecture.
-- 070 -- p746-075
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And, of this latter moving-spring to the intercourse
between our hero and his friends, the Palefords, we shall
have more to say, farther on.
CHAPTER VIII.
Of Bosh's dinner at the Firkins's (for the biography of
the two friends may as well keep pace while they are
rooming together), we shall have time to give a general
idea while the humble carryall of the Palefords is winding
its slow way to the Pitti. The court ball was to be late;
and it was a moon to loiter under; and the three friends,
wise enough to realize that life for that hour was as enjoyably
complete as human life could well be, were content
to let Giacomo, the old vintager, who was their driver, take
his time.
The “Palazzo Firkin,” the splendid residence of the
wealthy American family, had been the abode of an
extravagant Russian nobleman, the unpronounceableness
of whose name had facilitated the change to its present
designation, and whose ruin and break-up had chanced to
occur about the time of the arrival in Florence of Mr.
Summutt Firkin, of the wealthy firm of Firkin, Splitfig &
-- 071 --
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Co., wholesale grocers of Cincinnati. Under the direction
of his daughter (the family government being an oligarchy
of one—'Phia Firkin, as Miss Sophia, the heiress was commonly
called), the Prince had been bought out, “concern
and liabilities”—house, horses, furniture, French cooks,
grooms and dressing-maids, all included—Russia walking
out after breakfast, and America entering in time to dress
for dinner. His ruined Excellency having brought his
establishment to Italy by the way of England, the servants
had picked up English enough in that country to
be intelligible to their new household; and, as parents and
children, were thereby enabled to speak their mother
tongue, and awkwardness, if any there were, was shifted
upon those, either guests or servants, to whom the Ohio
was unhappily a foreign language, Mr. Firkin found himself,
from the start, quite as much of a prince as he had
any occasion to pay-the-bills-and-be; while Mrs. Firkin,
after a few days of effort at “realizing,” was entirely
comfortable. The eldest boy, Master Rodolphus Firkin,
found the stable, with stanhope and “tiger” exactly to his
mind; and the “fast” young lady of eighteen, to whose
wheels in deep water papa and mamma were but the
necessary paddle-boxes, and to whose intended career,
“abroad,” all this was but the delightful machinery, “went
ahead.”
With the variety of governments in Italy, and the
-- 072 --
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embarrassing difference in their coinage and values, the “letter
of credit” is necessary to all travellers; but this does not
result merely in drawing the amount on arrival. With
the presentation of the letter, the stranger and his family
are invited to the weekly soiree of the banker, which is a
candidacy for the other more exclusive circles; but which
is, more particularly, the “stalking-field” for the damaged
reputations and doubtful titles and fortunes of which Italy
is the “Alsatia.” The banker's “letter of advice” from his
London or New York correspondent (preceding the traveller),
has usually given some idea of his financial consequence
at home, and, this known, the family's remaining
worth-while-ativeness, as acquaintances to cultivate, is
come-at-able readily at a soiree. And it was by introduction
under this knowledge and circumstances, that the
Firkinses enjoyed the distinction of their present titled
acquaintances—the company who were to meet Mr. Blivins
(Lady Highsnake, Baroness Kuhl, Sir Cummit Strong and
Count Ebenhog) having called at the Palazzo Firkin after
an introduction at the banker's, and being now almost the
daily appreciators, both of the brilliant eccentricities of the
marriageable daughter and of the dinners which the Russian
had left in training.
To Bosh, himself, Mr. Firkin was a very old acquaintance.
The “Blivins boat” had carried many a freight of
butter to New Orleans for the house of Firkin & Splitfig,
-- 073 --
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and the very sight of the son of his old captain relieved
something of the homesickness of the expatriated grocer.
He had used a degree of positiveness not very common
between him and 'Phia, in insisting that Mr. Blivins (who
had not even an artistic repute at Florence), should be cordially
welcomed, at first; though Bosh very soon established
a footing for himself, in Miss Firkin's approbation,
and by a little adventure, which should be given, in fact,
as the introduction to their present friendly intimacy.
The stable of Count Kickubrichinoff had contained several
very fine saddle-horses, of which Miss Firkin, with her
backwoods education in the heart of Kentucky, was, of
course, likely to try the metal. In fact, it was only by
the addition of a horse that she felt entirely herself; and,
with a groom behind her, and a gentleman companion, if
she could get one, the “dashing American heiress” was
soon a well known object of curiosity among the fashionable
equipages on the Cascine.
But, the companion was the trouble! Willing as she
was to furnish the steed for her two titled admirers, there
was no getting them mounted, after the first essay in her
rapid company. Sir Cummit was too carefully put together
(reputation and ivory) to stand such risks of exposure, and
Count Ebenhog, being unfortunately of the pitchfork model
rather than of the tongs, had a top-heavy liability which
was the drawback to his tall seat at table. They might
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[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
have had other reasons for not wishing to advertise themselves
as the followers of the heiress, but these were given
as explanatory enough, by the head groom, who, to his
new young lady, had taken a prodigious fancy.
The proposal to ride the spare horse had been made to
Blivins rather as a bagatelle, he having called at the
moment of mounting, and it was somewhat to their surprise
that the “tall and awkward hoosier” gravely accepted.
They mounted him upon a powerful English hunter, which
had been the favorite of the bankrupt Russian; and, with
many a caution from Bill, the groom, particularly as to
the use of the spurs, which Bosh requested might be added
to his equipment, he followed his lady forth like a true
knight.
But the hunter seemed very comfortable and content
under his new rider, and, as Miss Firkin proceeded to try
experiments with her familiar palfrey in the open ground
of the Cascine, she discovered that her companion was as
much at home as herself, and, in fact, was one of those men
recognised as a class in the West, and defined as “born a-horseback.”
Bosh kept like a shadow at her side in all
her vagaries, and was entirely at his ease, so that, on
their return to the city gate, the belle had fallen into a very
demure pace, and was riding like any other lady.
At the gate ahead appeared a difficulty, however.
Across the way stood a mounted dragoon, and it was
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at once understood that this less frequented gate was reserved
for the day to the use of some of the Grand Duke's imperial
relatives from Austria, the royal entertainment being a fête
champêtre at the duke's farm. In honor of their Imperial
transit, back and forward for the afternoon, that entrance
to the city was under guard, and common horsemen and
carriages were to go round by the next gate.
Now, to Miss Sophia, this was particularly inconvenient.
Her time had been carefully calculated, and, with a dinner-party
at home and a box at the opera in the evening—toilettes
accordingly—the additional circuit of the three or
four miles was unbearable.
“What shall I do?” she vexatiously inquired of her
companion, after stating the case to him, and finding that
he had not Italian enough even to request leave for a lady
to pass.
“Why, there's but one man that I can see,” said Bosh,
buttoning up his coat, “and, if it's merely him you want
out of the way”—
The Western girl looked at Blivins very inquiringly.
Was he joking?—or crazy?—or was it possible that he
would do so very hoosier a thing as encounter an armed
dragoon for the whim of a lady?
“Do you mean to say that you could remove that
mounted guard so that I can pass?” she asked, bending her
bright black eyes very searchingly upon him.
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“Not if he expected me,” he answered, “and I with no
tools—but as matters stand, we can manage to get you
through, easy enough. We'll first get up a pretty fair
pace, as if we saw no reason why he should stop us, and
if he puts out to head us off, why, I'll clap spurs and ride
into him. You are a lady, and it'll be natural to be
frightened and go ahead. He'll go over—with all that
trumpery, and this horse twice his weight—and you'll
have time enough to be out of reach before he picks himself
up, I'll warrant.”
“And you!” asked the now excited girl, giving a
thought to her companion while she felt her Western
blood tingle with the prospect of adventure.
“Oh, I run the same gauntlet, said Blivins, and shall
very likely, get through too. So, turn on the steam!”
With a touch of the spur, Bosh waked up his hunter
very thoroughly and went prancing away, and, a little in
the rear, capered the palfrey of Miss Sophia. With all
the apparent simplicity of “ignorant Inglesi” they approached
the gate; and, as expected, the dragoon put his
charger forward a step and waved his forbidding arm.
The audacious riders kept on. Out flew the sword for intimidation;
and in the next moment, the powerful blood
hunter took the spurs up to the rowels, and, dashing to the
left with a tremendous leap, Bosh and his steed avalanched
into the lap and holsters of the dragoon. Down they went,
-- 077 --
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
pell mell, the charge having been wholly unexpected by
the enemy; but the active hunter, recovering his legs
while the astonished trooper was still thinking of picking
himself out of the dirt, Bosh clapped spurs again and followed
his lady—successfully reaching the Palazzo Firkin
after something very like the tournament of a cavalier.
There was a police arrest, immediately, of course, and it
took some intercession of Paul, through his friend the
Chamberlain, and some considerable “damages” from Mr.
Firkin, for the damaged dragoon, to get Bosh out of the
scrape; but it established the tall hoosier in the favor of
the Kentucky-bred girl—one man, at least, who would “go
the whole” for her—and, at the Firkin dinners he became
thereafter indispensable.
We should fail to give a just idea, however, of the American
heiress' campaign in Florence, without copying a letter
of her own which is under our hand, and which reports
authentically, of course, her mode of “carrying on the war.”
She thus writes (with the exception of such corrections of
spelling and punctuation as the printer is requested to
make in a manuscript indicative of rather a careless education)
to her friend and schoolfellow, Miss Catherine Kumletts,
of Rumpusville, Alabama:—
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Florence, —, —.
Dearest Kitty:
By looking at the bottom of the fourth page you will see
that I still write to you “au naturel” as our French grammar
used to say, and I beg to inform you, more particularly, that I am,
as yet, neither Lady Cummit Strong, nor Countess Ebenhog, but
simply your old friend 'Phia Firkin, not much aggravated nor
diminished. The above titles, however, being my present imminent
catastrophes, I name them at once, to ease your anxious mind.
La! they do things so differently here, Kitty! A girl's admirers
have to keep such a distance! You'll scarce believe, now, that
these two titled danglers are understood lovers of mine, and have
got their percussion caps all ready to pop, and yet I have never
been a minute alone with either of them! “It is because their
intentions are honorable, my dear,” as old lady Highsnake
expressed herself, when I named the same phenomenon to her;
though how it is any more honorable the less acquainted you are,
when you marry, I could not push her stiff old Ladyship to explain.
There's some difference, my dear, between Willy Wonteye's
making love, for himself, in Kentucky, and Count Ebenhog's having
himself praised to me by his friend the Baroness! It's funny
how two such wholly opposite experiments can go by the same name!
Courting! And not only second-hand, but from a woman, and in
bad English! Of all the cold victuals in the world, I think love
makes the very worst!
They go at it, these two old women, as if the mere repetition of
complimentary speeches by two gentlemen in the blue distance
was going to enamor me, but pouring their principal artillery into
mamma and papa, and so very accidentally happening to want to
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know how much the governor intends giving his daughter! Such
dear little sweet peas as we girls are—expected to stay podded in
our innocent simplicity even till after eighteen, if we're not married—
just as if I couldn't see out enough to understand that these
venerable belles are trying each to help an old lover of her own to
a rich young wife! (Though, to be honest about this last idea, it
was my French maid that turned the gas on to that.)
But what do you think of me as a “tiger,” Kitty?—claws and
all, a veritable he tiger! Catch your breath while you realize—for
I was it—just that varmint, yesterday afternoon—no more, no
less! You shall hear about it—though it is putting awful trust in
post-offices to write it to you, and the letters of the Editor of the
“Alabama Eagle” (your last lover, I think you said he was?) delivered
at the same window! Think of those breeches of mine in
a paragraph! Bless us, Kitty! take care!
You must know, then, that Master Rodolphus Firkin, my adult
brother of sixteen, was going to the races the other day. He has
his own horse and stanhope, but he wanted my mare Fanny to
drive tandem, and as he and I never stand in each other's way, I
agreed—only it occurred to me that Bob, his tiger, was about my
size, and that I should like to see the fun myself, out of a pair of
white-top boots. 'Phus had no objection, if I would “go through
the motions;” and, with a little bribing and palavering, I got the
toggery and arranged that Bob should be missing. (Money, in
this part of the world, is a trifle more omnipotent than with us—a
fact you can “pot and pickle,” Kitty, against you travel this way
and have a little odd want or two yourself! Few things you can't
have, if you'll pay for them!)
But they are shaped a little differently from us, after all, these
“same-sized” youths, and we were half the night, my maid Rosalie
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and I, altering buttons and letting out and taking in—till, towards
morning, I got waistcoat and corduroys all right; and, at the proper
time, next day, I stepped out and opened the gate for brother
'Phus, and hopped in—“as like that boy Bob,” the old head groom
said, as he ran his audacious eyes all over me, “as there was any
sort of necessity to be!”
Well—away we rattled. 'Phus's horse Pontiff is a thunderer,
and Fanny was all right, and on those flat stone pavements it was
beautiful wheeling! I felt a little funny, with my hair hid away
in the top of a hat, and my knees playing about so, in separate
parcels—(small-clothes show your garters and are so queer!)—but
'Phus drove splendidly, and along we went past the hotels and
cafés, all crowded with staring loungers, and were soon out in the
open country, two as handsome and manly fellows as you'd any
day wish to see! Oh, it felt so pleasantly! I had a creeping sensation,
the emotion of a silky young moustache, I'm very sure, just
under my nose, and I have an instinct that those are little differences
that grow by thinking of. You know that's what Miss Discipline
Jones used to tell us, in her Lecture on “Volition:” “Will,”
she said, “will, young ladies! why it would make the hair come on
a bald place!” And she had quite a moustache herself, the cross
old thing!
The race-ground was five or six miles below the town, on the
bank of the river—(trotting matches between gentlemen's horses)—
and all the “fancy” were out, in all sorts of “drags,” making
it very likely that just what did happen would happen. We were
“spilt,” just as we got to the ground, and I went, easy enough,
into the ditch, hat and boots—Major Phelim Blankartridge, the
wild Irishman, whose phæton had run into us, bowling away without
once looking over his shoulder!
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But now comes the trouble! A wheel gone, and how to get
home! It's the worst of an all-sufficient gender that nobody
rushes to your assistance, in such a case! Two such saucy-looking
fellows (of course everybody thought) had nothing to do but hop
on to their two animals and make for home. Well enough for
'Phus, perhaps—but with no saddle, and me to ride five miles like
a groom, bareback! Oh Kitty!
'Phus got me on, however, from the top of a stone wall, and on
we pottered. Ah me! Well, we reached Florence, through much
tribulation, about sunset. You have no idea—but I'll not harrow
your tender feelings with particulars. It does not seem to me,
now, that I could ever have so much mortal uncomfortableness
again! Those open streets of Florence, in broad daylight! And
me, obliged to look perfectly natural! Oh! oh!
Not much else to write to you about, dear Kitty, though I
thought I should have any quantity of flirtations to astonish you
with when I got over here. But as girls are not allowed to choose
for themselves, they don't want them tampered with, I suppose—
so I don't get even a nibble. I hear of a Mr. Fane that I mean to
set my cap for, but he's an attaché, and so finds enough to do at
Court. Mr. Blivins, his room-mate, is a friend of ours, however,
and that'll bring him, perhaps, in time. No more at present, dear
Kitty, from
Your affectionate
'Phia Firkin.
And, having thus introduced the reader to the company
with whom prosperous Bosh was eating his distinguished
dinner, while Paul was on his evening visit to the
-- 082 -- p746-087
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Palefords, let us resume our friend's history by overtaking him,
later that night, on his way to the court ball at the Pitti.
CHAPTER IX.
It was not a bal paré. Ladies were not needlessly
“trained” and feathered—gentlemen not cumbrously gold-laced
and sworded. Everything was royally sumptuous,
but everybody (or at liberty to be) simply comfortable.
It was the best that the wealthiest sovereign of Europe
could do, in a capital that is another name for Art and
Taste, to supply the maddening incompletenesses of a first
night of June. The music, the perfume of the flowers, the
skillful and marvellous illuminations, the surprises of architecture,
and the effects upon statuary and pictures—these
and the other luxuries of the palace were blended into an
enchantment as tangible and satisfying as it was strange
and wonderful; and it was felt to leave nothing unanswered
in the dreamy moonlight out of doors, nothing
unsupplied of which that atmosphere of Heaven awoke
the spirit-hunger and thirst.
The Palefords had come late; and the father having
transferred his daughter to Paul's arm, they loitered
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leisurely through the long galleries and ante-rooms, wondering
over the profusion of rare flowers, and now and then
listening in breathless silence to some more exquisite turn
of the music in the distance; but they reached the reception-room
at last—unwillingly, on Paul's part—and at a
critical moment, as it chanced. The Grand Duke, for the
first time since the death of the duchess, had consented to
lay aside his saddened reserve, and was about to mingle in
the dance. As Miss Paleford appeared upon the threshold,
it seemed to decide a question in his mind; and, meeting
the trio half-way as they advanced to be presented, he took
the hand of the English girl—his royal invitation, of course
overruling what, to one of any lesser rank, would have been
a refusal—and led her out for the quadrille.
“Will you find a partner, and make us a vis-à-vis?” she
said to Paul, with a slight retention of his arm, and in a
voice intended to express a wish for the duke's hearing.
But Paul followed rather an instinct of his own. He
did not take advantage of the consent that was in the
duke's momentary hesitation and look of inquiry; and
the quadrille, in the next instant, being made up without
him, he found a stand where he could be alone and unobserved.
To be a silent spectator of that dance was his
need, scarce explainable.
His majesty's departure from a reserve which had been
somewhat oppressive, was a novelty that went electrically
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through the rooms; and, by the time that the other sets
were formed with some attention to precedence and etiquette,
the dancing-hall had become crowded with lookers-on.
Upon the raised platforms at the sides, gathered the
jewelled throng of dowagers and their attendant princes
and ambassadors; and in the corners and recesses of the
room clustered all that was in Florence, that night, of
either honored or illustrious. The duchess-mother, pleased
with her son's resumption of his royal place amid the gayeties
of the court, looked down upon the dance with her
sweet, effortless smile; and Colonel Paleford, who had continued
to converse with Her Grace after the reception,
stood now with his noble and erect figure distinguished
above all the royal coterie, listening with quiet pride to the
appreciative comments upon his daughter.
It was a chance tableau, upon which the whole court
was now bending its eye; but Paul felt, the moment his
gaze took in the lovely vision, that, in the artistic atmosphere
of the Pitti Palace, the world's inner sanctuary of
Genius's recognition of Beauty, it was impossible for any
but one thought to be suggested by the figure of Sybil.
There stood one who, by Nature's unmistakable moulding,
should have been a Queen! By the efforts of the chamberlain,
on seeing Leopold bring a partner to the dance,
the quadrille had been completed from the rank that
would best grace the movement with a welcome, and, with
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the exception of Miss Paleford, it was a carré of only royal
descent—princes and princesses completing the sett while
she danced with the Sovereign.
Over the gentle and intellectual countenance of the
Grand Duke there was the expression of admiring tenderness
which was natural. He evidently forgot state and
sceptre in watching his partner as she moved. The tall
figure that would have been too majestic but for its cloud-like
airiness of grace—the imprint just less than pride on
those wonderfully clear-cut features, yet their indefinable
loftiness and supremacy—the infantine abandonment of
every nerve and muscle to instinct, yet the inevitable elegance
which Art finds so difficult—the entire perfectness
of that unconscious girl, in white, and without an ornament,
as a creature of God indisputably queenlier, as well
as simpler and fairer than all around—it was seen to be
impossible that the owner and daily reader-aright of the
world's best pictures and statuary was not reading aright,
also, this warm and breathing masterpiece at his side.
Was there likely to be a single heart, among all those
eager watchers of this passing drama of a moment,
through which there did not pass a sight for the monarch—
something like pity for even a throne, to which
such beauty as that could not be lifted? Paul thought not.
But while Fane's earnest eyes were looking with their
utmost intensity upon the picture that so occupied the
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court, he became aware that he was closely observed by
Colonel Paleford; and it flashed across his mind (as he
afterwards had occasion to remember) that, though his
absorbed manner had told truly of the entireness of his
admiring homage, the causes and character of that homage
might still be misunderstood. Of the two interests
which he felt in the scene, either of which might give to
his gaze the apparent concentration of enamored worship,
his friend had no means of forming even a single conjecture.
As an artist only, Paul would have been sufficiently
engrossed. In the English girl, at that moment, there
was a singularly rare model of beauty, seen with startling
accessories of effect, and under the same roof and
with the same atmosphere as the creations of Titian
and Raphael—a lesson for the evasive appreciation and
memory, such as the intensest study would but imperfectly
bring away. How look enough into that large
grey eye, while the flattery of a sovereign, the music
of a palace, the utmost stimulants of pride and feeling,
were calling every possible charm into its expression?
How watch closely enough the pose of the faultless neck,
when there was more need than ever before that the
superb head should be carried proudly? How reluctantly
would he lose any shade of play in those admirable
features, when, to remember and paint her, as she
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reigned in beauty at that moment, might be a whole
drama for the genius of his pencil? All this, and a
world more of stimulating thought was giving electric
vitality to the gaze of the artist only.
But the curiosity which was his still more secret
errand of travel—and to the thirsting want of which,
that instance of peculiar beauty, with the accompaniments
of the place and hour, chanced to be just the ministration
most satisfying! It would have been an event to him to
have seen Sybil Paleford—even if it had been only in
retirement. There was upon her the undeniable mark
of that amalgam of which he most wished to know the
grain and lustre—Nature's finest and purest clay. She
was the perfection of pride in mould and mien, as she
was of tender expressiveness in beauty. Yet capable as
he now felt of judging of this, there was, as it chanced,
that night—in the unanimous homage paid to it also by
a sovereign and his court—priceless corroboration! Around
her stood the fairest flowers of the Tuscan nobility, several
illustrious visitors from the other royal races of Europe,
noble travellers from England, and the bright circle which
the Pitti gathers in the families brought by the diplomacy
of all courts within its walls. Never, probably, was there
more of high-born beauty together, and never was dress
or decoration more at liberty to be becomingly worn—
yet this simple girl, in an unadorned dress of white, made
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by her mother's needle, and with her golden-edged braids
of brown hair laid to the mere shape of the head by her
mother's fingers, queened it over all! Envy was silent.
Jealousy was taken by surprise. She had come, that
night, to be an unobserved wall-flower only at the ball.
But, by the chance choice of the monarch, she had been
throned for a passing moment where Nature would have
given her the crown, and to that suddenly apparent
sovereignty of beauty in its place, every courtly heart
resistlessly dropped the knee!
That Paul was the artist to see, in this unpainted picture
of real life, a more adorable masterpiece than ever stood
upon an easel—that a morbid secret of his own heart
gave him the key to read, in all its force and meaning,
that poem of breathing beauty, so far deeper and more
dazzlingly inspired than was ever moulded into verse—
were two unseen fires burning under the glow of his
gaze; and, that it looked, to the watchful-eyed father
of that beautiful girl, like the unmistakable entrancement
of a passion undeclared—one upon the strength of which,
at least, the happiness of a beloved child might safely be
staked—was in no way wonderful. As a parent keenly
alive to the uncertain provision which his own pensioned
life gave to his daughter, and anxious therefore that she
should marry, but who, still, above all worldly requirements
in a suitor, would demand the elevating romance
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of a most genuine natural attachment, such appearances
would, of course, be stored away. And, with the habitual
alarm of the proud spirit of Sybil herself at the possibility
of any mercenary disposal of her hand, it was the more
important to watch well that such approaches as she did
approve were, at least, what she thought them.
And here we must take the liberty to think better of
the reader than most novelists think of theirs. Our
story, as one of real life, must turn on very trifling
circumstances—the popular novelist, now-a-days, seeming
to suppose that the turning point of his narrative will
not look probable or interesting unless hinged upon a
startling event. We have not found that the destinies
in which we were interested were wrought out by such
invariably large machinery. Coincidences and catastrophes,
surprises and crises—common enough in vulgar life,
and doubtless necessary to a melo-drama—have been
strangely wanting in the equally trying experiences of
the gentlemen and ladies we have known. A moment,
or a look, has decided very critical culminations of the
destinies we have had the privilege of watching, and
we shall therefore trust the reader to be willing, that
of such moment or look we should give the unstilted
history.
As the royal quadrille came to a close, a little drama
of unconfessed embarrassment fell into action—three
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[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
minds becoming suddenly occupied with the decision
that was to be made by a single glance, and upon a
matter of apparently very little importance. Taken as
Miss Paleford had been from the arm of Mr. Fane, to
be led to the dance, he might, without any violation of
propriety, receive her again, or she might, a little more
etiquettically, perhaps, be handed to the charge of her
father. To the duke, of course, the disposal of his
partner would be in simple accordance with the hitherward
movement of the hand he held; but the look which
the stately Sybil should give, to summon to her side the
one who was to receive her, was the subject of her own
thoughts, as the moment approached, while, to both the
gentlemen who stood awaiting the decision, it was for
unconfessed reasons, a problem of rather lively anxiety.
With a woman's tact of perception, the beautiful girl
felt that, as the transfer to the care of another, after the
dance, was to be from the sovereign's hand, and with the
attention of the whole court upon her, she could not
return to the charge of her mere companion in a promenade
without a conspicuousness the allowance of which, on
her part, would be the admission of a complimentary preference.
Such was the degree of possible confidingness
between herself and Paul, however, that to prefer being
consigned to her father's charge, was to avoid at least an
opportunity to resume the conversation interrupted by the
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[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
dance, and this, again, might be construed as indifference.
And while this dilemma was presenting itself to her mind,
she was not unaware of the intense interest with which, it
will be remembered, Paul was gazing on her beauty.
But, in Fane's part of this wordless drama, there were
conflicting elements which the others did not quite understand.
He had been made aware (as was mentioned), by
a chance-seen expression in Colonel Paleford's face, that,
whatever was thought to be the motive of his own absorbed
gaze at Miss Sybil, there was no disapproval of it. On the
contrary, there was something very like the tenderness of
parental interest and encouragement in the gently forward
posture and thoughtful smile with which he found himself
regarded. This suggested a possibility of which Paul had
not hitherto dreamed, that his own assiduous cultivation
of the friendship of the high-bred Englishman—mainly the
following out of an unavowed interest in him as the finest
specimen he had yet seen of lofty courtliness of nature—
might have been interpreted, by his inseparable daughter,
as the betrayal of a passion for herself. In the lapse of
but a cadence or two of the music of the band, his memory
had made a retrospect with crowds of conflicting disprovals
and confirmations (the strongest among the latter being
her pointed request that he would dance opposite when
she was to be partner to the duke), but he now stood
waiting to know whether he was to be called to her side
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again at the close of the dance—balancing, precisely as her
own perception was doing, the evidence that optional summons
would contain, as to her feeling towards him.
The quadrille was within an instant of breaking up, and
Paul observed that Colonel Paleford had not left the side
of the duchess-mother. His eyes were eagerly fixed on
his daughter, however, and it was evidently his intention
to leave it to her own look to decide whether he should
step forward to receive her from her royal partner.
“Does Mr. Fane ever expect to get his eyes back from
that charming vision?” at this moment said a low musical
voice just behind him.
Paul turned to the Princess C—, whose slightly
accented but pure and fluent English was familiar to him,
and he was but half through the response which civility
required, when the music stopped! A glance! He was
but half too late! With a look that was unmistakably
shaded with a reproach, Miss Paleford was turning to the
side where stood her father, and he hurriedly reverted to
make the best of the unforeseen interruption and follow—
but the princess was alone.
“Shall I take your arm to the garden?” she said, taking
it, at the same moment, with the quiet authority of one
accustomed to have her way, and following the crowd, who
were now scattering off, after the dance, to the lighted
labyrinths of the Boboli.
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And, with the first turn on the fragrant garden terrace,
leading from the palace-porch—the colored lamps struggling
with the moonlight, the music of the band softening
out at the windows to the night-air, and everything apparently
attuned with irresistible timeliness and sweetness to
love and love only—he passed Miss Paleford, leaning on
the arm of her father.
With the well-known character of his companion for
willful lawlessness and fascination, Paul could not possibly
have been in more unlucky company for the aggravation
of his contrarieties of position. The look he exchanged
with his friends in passing could explain nothing. He
even felt, a moment after, that, with the apparent misunderstanding
of his feelings toward themselves, it would be
but an embarrassment to offer explanation, were he to be
alone with them again. Better to have time, at least, for
some clearer light upon it, he thought; and it was with
this need for seeing no more of the Palefords, that night,
that he accepted an invitation from the princess, of which
our next chapter will say more.
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CHAPTER X.
[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
To wind up a ball with a breakfast-party was one of the
specialities of the eccentric princess who had taken Paul's
arm after the quadrille; and, while he was yet puzzling
his brain over his dilemma with the Palefords, he was
bespoken for a gathering of choice spirits to whose table
the sunrise should be the lamp. The villa G—, amid
whose witcheries of rural beauty and luxury these untimely
gaieties were held, was on the slope of one of the eminences
beyond Fiesolé, four or five miles from Florence;
and, Paul having accepted the offered seat in her Highness's
britzka, they whirled punctually away from the Palace
gate as the morning star rose in the east—the carriages
crowding to the door for the departing guests, but the
music still measuring gay vigils for the dancers within.
As the only person of very high rank whom he had yet
seen who differed from other people by acting out an
every-day consciousness of birthright (eccentricity, it was
called by her friends, and less amiably designated by common
rumor), the Princess C— had an additional
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interest to Paul. By natural character, she seemed, to him,
simply eagle-born among the sparrows of society. At the
same time that she willingly offended no one, nor took the
trouble to defy any prejudice or usage, she had no recognition
of a restraint. Her habit of mind seemed a tranquillity
of mood—or disregard of what would irritate other
people—from a mere sense of superiority. And this superiority
would have been thought to be seldom or never
asserted, probably, but that her supreme indifference was
unpardonably offensive—keeping her in a constant attitude
of contempt for what, under the soft name of “appearances”
constitutes the covert supremacy of the Many.
With better blood in her veins than could be found in a
suitor for her hand, the Princess C— had still made
a match of family interest. She was married young to a
man of rank and of great wealth, considerably older than
herself; and as, after the first year or two of wedded life,
they had seldom resided in the same city, it was presumable
that their tempers were not very congenial—though, as
the public were not admitted to their secrets, the separation
was not recognisable by etiquette. With plenty of
means, and a position at any court unexceptionable, she
made a home in one city of Italy after another, returning
oftenest to Florence, however, which she much preferred,
and where the villa G—, in the suburbs, was kept in
luxurious readiness for her use.
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Quite idolized by the few with whom she chose to be
intimate, and pleasing nobody else, the fascinating princess
could hardly appear, to any court eyes, otherwise than dangerous
to one of Fane's age and inexperience—the merely
being seen in attendance upon her, when, by propriety, he
should have remained (as he had intended to do) at the
disposal of another, having the look of a neglect which
was the result of a self-evident preference.
The endeavor to convince himself that the Palefords
must have understood the awkwardness of his position,
and, with this, a half-conscious comparison of the exquisite
beauty of Sybil with the reclining form thrown back in
the carriage, and just visible by the gray light of the dawn,
as they whirled along, was the counter-current of thought,
which, for the moment, somewhat hindered Paul's flow of
conversation.
Though wholly of another mould than the English girl,
there was beauty in what he looked upon, however. The
princess was, at this time, about thirty—and of a most
ethereal slightness of figure. It was her peculiarity of
appearance that, with the airy and spirituelle proportions
which usually accompany a nervous habit, she was of such
wondrous indolence of movement. Paul thought this
repose, at first, to be the language of a period of life—
thinking there might be an emotional lull, for a woman of
thirty, corresponding to the calm of mid-forenoon after the
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[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
breezes of a summer's morning. But however this might
have confirmed it, the temperament itself, he soon found,
was the tranquillity of a nature in which the nerves, as well
as the coarser sensibilities, had felt the control of pride.
Her natural instinct of superiority, though of birth and
rank, was intellectual—and, at the same time that it constituted,
for her, a presence which refused to be subjective
to the presence of others, it insisted on supremacy over herself.
Her limbs knew no motion that was not gracefully
deliberate. Her unvarying paleness, and her exquisitely
subdued modulations of voice, were parts of the same self-mastery.
It was only in the covert fires of those black
eyes, so almost unnaturally large and lustrous—partly softened
as they were by the apparent languor of the drooping
lids with their sweep of overhanging lashes—that the
capabilities of her character were betrayed. While, to
common observers, the delicate, pale face, with its carelessly
idle lips and dreamy look, was expressive of mere
indolence and indifference, it would be startlingly apparent,
to a closer student of expression, that, under the soft
moonlight of such repose lay asleep a volcano of character.
The Villa G— was a small paradise of luxury, and
each expected guest, on arriving from the gaieties of the
city, was shown into an apartment that would content a
Sybarite. With the few minutes of solitude thus gained,
Paul's buoyant health rallied from fatigue and care, and, as
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he stepped out upon the lawn, it was in spirits with which
the just waked lark sung in tune. To the princess it was
veritable morning; for her habitual day was from midnight
to siesta, and she had risen from well-timed sleep to
dress for the duke's ball. As she made her appearance
presently, in her favorite costume of turban and négligé,
her profusion of black locks over her shoulders, and her
girdle of golden cord swinging from her waist—(the tassels
kissing each arching instep as it appeared, as if to call
attention to the exquisite beauty of those deliberate little
feet)—Paul could not but give a sigh for his pencil. It
was a picture of the inexplicably patrician air—beauty
made unimportant by the elegance and maintien that out-did
it—of which he would have well liked to use that
morning light in making a study.
The sliding windows of the breakfast-room opened it
entirely to the main plateau of the garden, and the close-shaven
greensward of the lawn meeting the carpet, it was
an apartment half sparkling with dew, in which the guests
now assembled. Every object was glowing with the rosy
light kindling in the east, and the fragrance of the moist
earth and flowers filled the room. On a table covered
with the most consummate temptations for the appetite,
the rays of the rising sun began to slant; and, as coffee
was served to them, lounging in their luxurious fauteuils,
a wondrous morning of Italy seemed in attendance on their
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pleasure—parading for them, while they feasted, its spells
of splendor.
They were not long at table—restraint being the excluded
spirit in the princess's ideal of her own rightful
sphere—and (the company, of course, being such couples
as could be pleased to prolong a night's gaieties by a
matinée) the labyrinths of the grounds were more inviting.
With the beauty and fragrance of sunrise, the terraces and
groves, shaded alleys, grottoes and arbors of the Villa
G— formed a wilderness of enchantment. Paul, as a
comparative stranger, was understood to be the object of
interest for the moment to the hostess herself; and, after a
turn or two in groups around the fountains and statuary
in the centre, each couple took its separate path for a
ramble.
“The sun is like other every-day visitors,” said Paul,
while the servant was bringing cushions for the stone seat
at which the princess was halting for a lounge; “his coming
and his going are more agreeable than his stay. What
noon is equal to a dawn or a sunset?”
“Yes,” she said, “and it is a pity we cannot sleep away
the middle of a visit as we do the middle of a day. But,
to think of society's wonderful slavery to habits, when, at
this most luxuriously beautiful hour of the whole twenty-four,
the classes who could best appreciate it are asleep in
their beds.”
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“Few, except people of genius, see things with first
eyes,” he replied.
“But it should be clear enough, even to borrowed eyes,”
she continued, “for never is Nature half so beautiful—the
dew giving a brighter color to the grass and foliage, and a
fresher atmosphere over everything. And then the birds
particularly musical and the flowers particularly fragrant—
why, it seems marked, over and over again, by Nature, for
an hour to be observed and enjoyed!”
“And yet indebted to your Highness, I presume,” said
Paul, “for its very first admission into polite society. I
never before heard, at least, of a pleasure-party given to
titled guests at sunrise, and what does the mention of
`dawn of day' suggest, but laborious poverty and the being
unwillingly astir betimes?”
“My recognition of the day's best hour, then,” recommenced
the princess, after a reverie which Paul had
respected, “is something like my preferences, in society.
The men, particularly, that are least thought of, are, so
very often, Nature's best!”
“You like us, I suppose,” said Paul, “men or mornings,
when we are not past blushing?”
“Yes—rosy morn or rosy men,” laughed the Princess,
“particularly if the men blush as you do now, with saying
a good thing. But that does not explain my preference,
quite.”
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“Nor will any one ideal, certainly,” he suggested again.
“No, for I am speaking of men for a woman's set of
friendships, not for her one passion,” she replied; “and
though there are fewer of the class I prefer, there may be,
in an ordinary round of acquaintance, more than one of
them—of men particularly gifted by Nature, I mean.”
“But these are oftenest men of genius,” objected her
now earnest listener; “poets and artists, scholars and authors,
who are poor and obscure.”
“As society is constituted,” she continued, “the grands
seigneurs, even with birth and fortune only for recommendations,
are undoubtedly the best to marry. So much
for the pedestal and the rough-hewing, which are to mark
the elevation and outline the purpose. But it is the expression
that is to breathe through the statue which is to
constitute its after-value and superiority to other blocks,
and how is this to be given without something besides the
shaping of mediocrity? That is what I wonder at women's
not seeing, as you express it, with `first eyes!' Intercourse
with common minds so strangely contents them!
How seldom does a woman of rank give herself a thought
as to whether she is visited by the intellectually high-born
or low-born! Content with her court acquaintances, she
has, perhaps, not a man of genius on her list!”
“It is probably more because he is badly gloved, than
because she is badly educated,” said Paul.
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“Ah! but wait till better gloves make her prefer a
count's hand to a duke's,” she once more insisted. “Women
are quick-sighted in most things, and the wonder to
me is, that the same pride which makes them ambitious as
to title, house, equipage and dress, does not suggest also
some corresponding aristocracy of conversation.”
“Is it not vanity that makes the choice,” asked Paul;
“or, at least, an instinctive dread that intellectual conversation
may demand too much, or otherwise have less flattery
in it?”
“Why, there, I think,” more eagerly argued the princess,
“you touch upon the strangest mystery of all! What
so delicious to a woman's vanity as the subtle appreciation
which she can get from genius only! Common-place
minds make very common-place compliments, it seems to
me, and there is scarce a woman in the world who has
not some beauty or grace likely to go unrecognized among
dull people.”
“It would delight an artist to listen to your highness,”
said Paul, almost afraid that his concealed allusion to his
profession would betray itself in his smile.
“Some men who are neither artists nor poets,” she replied,
“have the perceptions of genius, and it is not her
beauty only that a woman wants appreciated. A favorably
true reading of her qualities of mind and character is
exquisite pleasure to her”—
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“Even though it be a surprise,” interrupted Paul.
“Yes, for there is a secret consciousness at the bar of
which all flattery is tried,” thoughtfully added the princess.
“It is the pleasure of the intercourse I speak of,
with men of genius, that, though they compliment what
may never have been complimented before, it is because it
has been always overlooked. Yet we have at the same time
been aware of its existence. Many a thing is true of us which
we should ourselves lack the skill to define—is it not?”
“I am mentally reversing the picture,” said Paul, with
his eyes cast to the ground and his mind far away for
the moment, “thinking how exquisite, in turn, to the man
of genius, would be such appreciation of himself by the
woman he admired—appreciation” (he continued, remembering
to whom he was speaking, and meeting her dark
eyes as he looked up) “such as could be given to a superior
mind by perceptions and powers of analysis like your
own.”
“The which perceptions and powers,” she said, with one
of the most delicious of her indolent smiles, I have been
bestowing very industriously upon you, Mr. Fane! You
may not take it as a compliment, but I assure you that
your criticisms upon people and things, the first time I
saw you at court, satisfied me that you were born for an
artist.”
“Happily not introduced to you as one, however,” said
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Paul, feeling the discovery thus far to be very agreeable,
but still acting upon his habit of keeping his profession to
himself.
“And why?” asked his friend with a more closely scrutinizing
look.
“According to court usage,” he replied, (seeking the
cover of ceremony from a discussion that might endanger
his secret), “my position behind my diplomatic button is
better than it might be behind an easel; and I could not
presume to suppose that your highness would make an
exception in my favor.”
“Very diplomatically stated!” said the princess, quietly,
and I see that you were born also for a portefeuille; but
your proposition is only partly true, notwithstanding.
The formalities of my first acquaintance might be easier
to the attaché—but all beyond that would be easier to the
artist!”
Paul's sensitiveness as to his secret began to grow nervous.
He feared from the leaning of the last remark, that
the princess knew more than she had admitted; but, thinking
he would make one more effort to throw the artist into
the background, he rushed into a digression that proved
suggestive: “I should have supposed,” he said, “that your
preference would have been quite the other way, and simply
for a woman's strongest of reasons—pride of monopoly.
A diplomatist would give you all the powers of his mind—
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or all you care for—those which he devotes to his profession
being mere business faculties that have no sentiment
in them; while the artist, of course, shares with you his
ideal. The more genius he has to make you love him,
the more imagination, dream-study, tenderness and even
passionate longing, he will give to the Pysche of his Art.”
“Better the half of a gold ring than the whole of a
brass one,” impatiently interrupted his listener, “even if
your theory were altogether true. But, in the amount as
well as the quality of the devotion, which is the richer,
think you—a Laura in her Petrarch, or a countess in her
Metternich? No, no, mon ami! The Pysche that you
speak of is but the heightener of the capacity and desire—
the rehearsal which gives perfection to the play! It
seems to me that if there is any privilege worth being
born to, it is to be better loved than others, and if there
were but one genius-lover in the world, it should be a
queen that should have him!”
“The `Koh-i-noor diamond'—too precious for anything
but the crown-jewel—found to be but a poor poet's love!”
ejaculated Paul.
“Heavens!” continued the impassioned speaker (rising
and pacing backward and forward, with her dark eyes
glowing, and the usually tranquilly-lined arches of her lips
curving with superb tensity of expression), “the difference
there is, between being even looked at by inspired or brute
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eyes! The demand of the inmost soul that is answered by
appreciation! There is something without language, Mr.
Fane, which tells how we seem to others; and it degrades
us to be admired by some minds—they so vulgarize and
materialize all they look upon! Take the picture of a woman,
if you could get it, out of the mind of a common-place
admirer—just as she seems to him when he is pouring
his dull flattery upon her—and contrast it with the
heroine of the novelist, or the ideal of the poet, or the
Pysche of the sculptor! And to be thus inexpressibly
more beautiful is the difference when genius is the
lover!”
Paul, by this time, was studying with very genuine wonder
and admiration the effect given to high-born grace and
distinction by natural abandon and passionateness. She
had stopped for a moment and stood, silently before him,
lost in thought—the warmth of her tone and action betraying
that the subject had turned a chance key to the
chamber of her heart hidden from the world, and her
flashing eyes and the expansion of her thin nostrils most
forgetfully expressive and beautiful.
“Pardon me,” said Paul, with the enthusiasm of the
most natural homage in his voice, “pardon me if, in turn,
I recognize genius out of place—an improvisatrice who has
been cradled for a princess!”
She offered him her hand with a sudden change to
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gaiety of manner, and allowed him to raise it respectfully
to his lips.
“We meet on new ground then, hereafter,” she playfully
said, “and, as an improvisatrice, of course, I may
choose my character. You shall be what Petrarch would
have been as an artist, and I will play Laura with such
variations as I may choose to improvise.”
“Madame,” commenced Paul, with an embarrassed
inclination of the head—but, at this moment, two of the
other guests approached, returning from their ramble.
“Here come those,” said the princess, “who are not to
know us as `artist' and `improvisatrice!' That is our own
world, remember, my dear Fane!”
And preceding the other couple to the drawing-room—
(Paul the sudden sharer in a confidence which he had not
the time, even if he had had the skill to control or modify)—
the curtains were dropped, and amid the in-door twilight
now made more agreeable by the strengthening sun, the
conversation became general between guests and hostess.
It was an hour or two after this that Paul was whirling
back to Florence, alone in the princess's britzka, but with
a brain very thickly peopled with contending thoughts.
That he was under a spell of fascination, new and bewildering,
he could not but confess to the two spirits that his
consciousness compelled him to know were now looking
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down upon him—his mother and Mary Evenden—but the
chain that bound him was not thus altogether broken!
The secret weakness of his ambition—the unconfessed and
secondary, but still powerful, motive of his visit abroad,
had been doubly touched and tempted, within the past
night. How resist some trial, at least, of the intoxicating
tests, now so apparently within reach—tests of what sympathy
was possible between his own and the world's very
finest and proudest clay? Sybil Paleford—should he risk
the dangers of a friendship with such peerless beauty?
The Princess C—, and her strange, bold defiance of
the world—could he fly from her already bewildering
spells to be alone with his home memories and his pencil?
The wheels rattled over the flag-stone pavements of the
Piazza Trinita, while he turned over these busily conflicting
thoughts, and, landed at the door of his lodgings by
the liveried servants of the princess, he was glad to darken
his room for early siesta, and seek the troubled mind's
blessed refuge of sleep.
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CHAPTER XI.
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It was the middle of an Italian forenoon, with a light in
the still air so broad, so generous and mellow, that the
whole artist was content. Paul thanked God for June, as
he stood before his easel. Not a pore in his frame that
was reluctant to let his soul out upon his work—his eyes
feeling largely willing, his hand breadthy and dexterous,
his consciousness throughout proportionate and full—even
Blivins, in the other corner of the vast room, conscious of
the same delicious influence. “Paul!” said he, “my
dear boy, did you ever feel such a unanimous morning?”
But Paul would have had too busy a heart, if his genius
had not put it in harness. The subject on his easel gave
it work. In a crayon sketch of three female heads grouped
like the Graces, he was trying to bring in the light
shadows that haunted him; for, in the dim background of
his imagination, with changing prominence and brightness—
fading into indistinctness at one hour, and all powerful
the next—dwelt three visions of beauty. To each, in turn,
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as its bewildering influence swept over his sleeping or
waking dreams, he felt strangely and irresistibly subject.
But so different looked they, near or distant, and, in the
changing light of mere memory so impossible to bring
into comparison, that he felt compelled to call his genius
to his aid. If his pencil would but compel to the light
those three viewless enchantresses, and so place them in
contrast that one loveliness might be controlled and measured
by the other—if he could sketch them, each at its
best, as it appeared to him, and, in one unchanging picture,
by which his outward eye could call to reason the capricious
and evasive fancy, take refuge from the strangely
alternating supremacy of one or another—he felt that he
should be less hopelessly adrift.
As he elaborated more exquisitely an expressive line
in the features of one of these beautiful heads, the intercourse
that had passed between him and the Palefords,
since the duke's ball, came freshly to his mind. We will
leave him to re-touch, also, his crayon memories of Mary
Evenden and the princess, while we outline for the reader
one portion of the shadowy background to which his
thoughts now wandered.
From his siesta, after the breakfast with the Princess
C—, Paul had waked, with his English friends
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uppermost in his mind. To his cooler eyes, his position, with
reference to them, seemed more embarrassing. In their
secret thoughts he was undoubtedly accused of an inattention
that had the character of a slight; yet it was one
that it would be extremely difficult either to explain or
apologize for. From a merely indifferent acquaintance, it
would scarce have amounted to an inattention, indeed; and,
to mention it at all was to assume that Miss Paleford not
only had an interest in his most trifling movements, but
could find time, to be sensitive about them even when
dancing with the sovereign.
Yet, his friendship with Colonel Paleford! Could he
suffer any shadow to rest on that? By nothing that had
happened to Paul, since his residence abroad, had his
pride been so substantially gratified as by this courteous
and lofty-minded soldier's preference for his society. It
had given him an invaluable self-confidence as to his own
quality of nature. If only from grateful attachment to the
father, should he not run every risk to show that any conscious
inattention to the daughter was impossible?
And another thought came up with this—a question
that had occurred to his own mind more than once—was
there not a degree of acquaintance, at which the maintenance
of his own false position, as an apparent diplomatist,
became an unfairness? Was it not quite time that
he threw aside his borrowed consequence as an attaché
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(the mere title, by foreign usage, implying just what he
had no claim to, fortune, high connections and certainty
of preferment); and would not the two explanations seem
natural together? He seized his pen, at this thought,
and, instead of his usual sunset stroll toward the Boboli
gardens, indited the following leter:—
My dear Colonel,
Not quite sure that I have anything to write to you about—
or rather, seeing very distinctly that what may seem important
for me to write may not be important enough for you to take the
trouble to read—I still venture to intrude upon you, as you see.
It will not be the first time that your good nature has been called
upon in my behalf, and, trusting to your having acquired the habit,
I must pray you to pardon me once more!
An honor was done me by Miss Paleford, last night, to which
I have properly no claim; and though the same flattering chance
might never again occur, and the explanation, therefore, may be
needless, I still feel uneasy without offering it to you. On the
Grand Duke's taking your daughter from my arm, for the quadrille,
she kindly proposed to me to find a partner and dance opposite.
This, with a diplomatic rank, it would have been very proper for
me to do; and, of course, the happiness would have very far
exceeded the honor—but, by the distinction as to personages,
with which the set was immediately made up, it was evident that
an obscure civilian would have been out of place in the royal
quadrille, and that in not availing myself of the opportunity, I was
but acting rightly upon what I wish to explain to you—viz. that
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my title as attaché is nominal only. Miss Paleford, of course,
gives me the full benefit of the word in its common acceptation;
but, instead of being the young man of fortune and family for
whom this door to a courtly career is usually thrown open, I am
simply Paul Fane, an obscure youth, with no diplomatic or other
promotion in prospect, and dependent wholly on my own efforts
for future support—the American minister at Paris having done
me the kindness to put this title on my passport merely as a
facility of form, by which I might better see society. While I am
at liberty, therefore, to be presented at courts, and, in my uniform
of mere ceremony, play the looker-on, you will readily understand
how the acceptance of any real diplomatic privilege would scarcely
be honest.
Of course I had no time to explain to Miss Paleford why I did
not avail myself of her generous permission; but another question
presented itself while I was looking on (at what you will allow me
to say, as did all who had the happiness to see it, was a spectacle
of unprecedented interest)—whether I could presume so far as to
offer to receive again, from the hand of the sovereign, one who
was being crowned, at the instant, with the glowing homage of his
court. I was balancing the proprieties of my position as to this
latter point, when the dance came to a close; and, at the same
instant, my attention was called off by the Princess C—, and the
opportunity, even if I could properly have availed myself of it, was
lost. And that lady being alone at the moment and claiming my
attendance, I was prevented from joining you before you left, and
thus putting myself in the way of even a subsequent explanation.
It is very possible, as I said before, that we may be looking at
these matters from wholly different stand-points of view. Your
daughter may think it strange that I could suppose her to have
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any memory for such a trifle as I have explained, and you may feel
that our acquaintance scarce warrants the obtrusion of my private
history upon your confidence. But even this is not all! I must
be still one degree more venturesome. You would scarce be prepared
to comprehend my illusion, indeed—if such it be—unless I
confess to you the interest in yourselves that forms its groundwork.
I shall but clumsily explain it, I fear, but I will try.
There is a kind of knowledge the study of which forms an errand
for me abroad, and to which you could scarce be aware of your
exceeding value. While another traveller makes it his specialty
to be curious in pictures or statuary, rare gems, mosaics, or other
wonders of human Art, I make mine of the masterpieces of the
Great Artist above all. To find the rarest workmanship of God in
human beings, is my enthusiasm of search. With any degree of
self-appreciation, and love for what is around you, your mind, my
dear colonel, jumps at once to my conclusion. The supremacy of
beauty awarded to your daughter, last night (in the Palace which
is the inner sanctuary of Taste and Art), expresses but the rank
which I had found her to occupy as a type of God's perfecting.
In yourself, and in the family around you, I must be excused for
saying I have found what takes precedence of all I have yet seen
abroad, of superiority by nature and culture. Even as a study,
only, I might naturally desire to see the most of a gentleman and
his household such as I had not before found; but the possibility
of a friendship with such as these—a memory to store away and
cherish in the far off country that is my home!—there was a charm
in that hope, my dear friend, for the irresistibleness of which from
any impartial mind, I could safely lay claim to indulgence.
I must beg that you will not feel compelled to answer this letter.
If you laugh at it when you next give me a shake of the hand, and
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so forget it, I shall be abundantly content—its object being quite
served if I may have relieved my own mind of its uneasiness without
troubling yours.
With thanks (thanks of which you will now better understand
the full meaning) for your kind hospitalities and friendly attentions,
and, with my most respectful and grateful compliments to
Mrs. Palesford and your daughter, I remain, my dear colonel,
Yours faithfully, Paul Fane.
Chancing to know that Colonel Paleford was to be at
the English embassy that evening, Paul sent round his
letter, with the ink scarce dry; but was a little mystified
by the answer, brought him by his own messenger. It
was simply a card on which was scratched with a pencil:
“Drive out to-morrow evening, to tea.”
In the friendly informality of this there was, at least,
negative evidence that his letter had given no offence to
his friend; but Miss Paleford was still to see it, and
whether it was to improve or damage his position in that
delightful family circle, was the main question in his
thoughts for the following day. One point he felt secretly
more easy upon—the liberty he should now feel to address
conversation to the daughter, and otherwise pay her such
attentions as were natural. It was always at least possible,
before, that he might be numbere damong the attachés,
who are proverbially eligible as suitors; and this, even as
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a possibility being set aside by his avowal of poverty and
obscurity, he could be freer to exchange thoughts with
her, or even to express his admiration. Whatever the
footing upon which he should find himself, after this trying
visit, the field to cultivate would be one of friendship only,
and free of all chance of misunderstanding.
Paul crossed the Arno as the afternoon light grew more
golden, and took the southerly road winding into the hills—
the difficulty of getting any conversation out of the
thoughtful signore, who was usually so frank and courteous,
acting very depressingly on the spirits of the favorite
vetturino. But the passenger's perplexity of mind would
have been vainly confided even to so affectionate a driver
as Giuseppe. It was on what artists call “a vanishing
line”—so imperceptible its change from light to shade—
that Paul balanced the crisis of the coming hour. Invited
familiarly as a friend, and undoubtedly to be treated as a
friend, his reception by the Palefords was, still, to test most
critically, he thought, the question on which he was sensitive.
Would there be the faintest shade of difference in
the manner, towards him, of these, the most refined and
lofty-natured people he had ever known, now that he came
to them stripped of every worldly advantage, and with no
claim beyond his mere stamp by nature and education?
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The sun dipped at the horizon as Paul walked up the
trellised lane to the old stone casa, and, as the sound of
his approaching footsteps was heard, he was called to,
from around the angle of the house. In the shade of the
eastern front stood the tea-table as usual; and here, in
their easy-chairs, with books and papers, work and playthings,
lounged the family, expecting him—the general
acclamation with which he was received, strange to say,
suddenly putting to flight all remembrance of what he
meant particularly to observe! With the “How are you,
my dear Fane?” of the colonel, the cordial pressure of the
hand by Mrs. Paleford, and the joyous welcome by the
children, he was so suddenly and completely made at
home as to lose sight of his embarrassments altogether!
But Miss Paleford was not present. She had returned
from the ball, not feeling very well, and “had been playing
the invalid,” said the mother, “though it was the first
time she had ever known Sybil to need so powerful a sedative—
two whole days of solitude to recover from an evening's
surfeit of society!”
With the rattle of the tea-tray, however, the invalid
made her appearance at the little vine-covered door-window
of the balcony above, and gave an unceremonious “good
evening” to the visitor, as she descended the open stairway
to the terrace.
It is not too much to say that it almost took away Paul's
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breath to look upon that approaching vision. He had
never seen Sybil Paleford before, except with the severest
simplicity of dress—her hair made the least of, and her
pride of coldness and unostentatiousness having guarded so
closely against ornament or effect, in her exterior, as to
give it the air of a rebuke to admiration. Nothing but
the unconcealable proportion of her commanding stature,
and the artistic fitness with which it was draped, prevented
that plainness from being more than negatively simple—
indeed, positively unbecoming.
Now, however, the fair invalid was in that most fascinating
of all possible drapery for woman, the demi-toilette that,
however carefully arranged, is to express her careless hour.
From under a most exquisitely becoming cap broke loose
a wealth of the golden edged locks usually so closely put
away; and, with this additional shade heaped so massively
over temples and cheek, the eyes, to Paul's artistic perception,
were made unfathomably deeper. The négligé robe,
confined only at the waist, seemed almost profance in its
disclosure of the white underdress from the waist downwards,
and the pliant folds of a light blue semi-transparent
material followed the movements of her beauty with a
grace, which, to the artist, seemed like a sentiment—a
caressingness, half timid, half venturesome, such as, if it
could not be copied in a picture, might, at least, be told in
a poem.
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With the absolutely new disclosure made by this costume
of intimacy, Paul was completely bewildered! Hers
was beauty which embellishment first made to seem mortal—
never before appearing within reach but to be revered
and worshipped. The expression of that careless drapery
was an admission, now first made, that hers was loveliness
to be approached—the loosened tresses a first betrayal
that they belonged to what mortal might yet caress. In
the retreating swell of the faultless lines above the wrist,
half hidden by the sleeve, there was more that was human,
than in the arm bared to the shoulder with the full dress
of evening. Even the slipper, though it disclosed less of
the arching instep, was an encouragement to the admiring
eye which the shoe of the ball-room never gave.
But the surprise of the evening was not all in this first
impression. With Miss Paleford, heretofore, Paul had
always felt that he conversed, through the mind and mood
of the father, on whose arm she so habitually leaned.
Not only was there no direct communication of thought,
but her very recognition of others seemed to have a reserve
of intermediation—as if it were only through the protecting
third person's presence that her guarded consciousness
could be addressed. There was a difference, now, however,
which he could scarce explain. As she took her place
between Paul and her mother, giving him her hand with
the usual first commonplaces of greeting, there was a slight
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heightening of color—but, this over, her features and
manner gave an impression like the light in a just un-shuttered
room. Never before to him had that smile
shone clear through, with no barrier between heart and
lips. The look out of her largely open eye, was, for the
first time trustingly complete. She was as childlike and
playful as she was largely and nobly beautiful; and while,
in the pride-forgetting joyousness of her every accent, Paul
felt an electric exhilaration, he still struggled in strange
bewilderment at the change!
With the mother's prudent dismissal of the invalid to
her room, as the evening deepened, the visitor took an
early departure—Colonel Paleford accompanying him to
the gateway, and by a single allusion to his letter confirming
what the manners and conversation of the family circle
had already expressed. It was evident, that, while its
points were not to be answered or discussed seriously,
the spirit in which the letter was written had brought him
nearer to them. They liked him better than before. And
thus was settled, to his boundless increase of contentment,
the foreshadowed problem of the evening.
But completely as this had engrossed his mind, to the
exclusion of the beauty of the setting sun, on his way out,
it was not the subject of thought, which, on his way home,
made him equally unmindful of the gloriously risen moon.
The wondrous loveliness of Sybil Paleford! The incredible
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novelty of her impression upon him, with the removal of
her proud reserve! And, how strangely had his anticipations
been exceeded, as to the freedom of intercourse between
him and her, which he had ventured to anticipate would
spring naturally from his completeness of explanation! It
could only be a friendship, of course—but what a new, bright
poem of real life, would be a friendship with such a father
and daughter! How better than a love it might be! How
stranger, and yet more rational, than a romance! Ah, the
new door opened into to-morrow and to-morrow! The
intoxicating promise of intercourse henceforth daily and unreserved
between himself and two such sovereignties in one—
the finest workmanship of God he had yet seen in man,
and the court-acknowledged supremacy of beauty in woman!
Might not this be, to him, life's chapter of gold,
sometime unrecognized when written, but wonderingly
turned back to, from pages never again so bright!
It was a rapid review of these circumstances and
thoughts which coursed through the mind of Paul, as he
followed with his pencil a gleam of deeper insight into the
features of Sybil Paleford. As his study of that face, and
the other two, in the sketch upon his easel, had much to
do with the moulding of his destiny, we shall bring the
reader to find him again at work upon them, farther on.
-- -- p746-127
CHAPTER XII.
[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]
It was an interesting day at the Blivins' studio—(some
two weeks after the date of the preceding chapter)—Miss
Firkin being expected at twelve to give Mr. Blivins her
first sitting for a portrait, and Paul having yielded a point
to his friend in consenting to be present.
This latter circumstance had been the subject of some
argument, Paul having begun to attach a certain poetical
charm to the secrecy of his artistic life, and finding, besides,
that the possession of an unproclaimed accomplishment,
such as the discipline of taste and eye which belongs
to an artist, gave him a magnetism, like a sympathy of
freemasonry, over the superior minds met with in society.
Bosh's interest in the matter, however, even as a business
consideration, abundantly outweighed all this. With Miss
Firkin, who had attached great interest to the making of
Paul's acquaintance, it would be a vast accession to Mr.
Blivins's character as an artist, if Mr. Fane were known to
be his daily visitor—showing either a sympathy of taste,
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or still better, an amateur desire to take advantage of the
facilities of his friend's studio to pursue a study of drawing.
The commissions for portraits which might grow out
of this—Miss Firkin being, as it were, the controlling axle
to a large circle of titled subjects for his pencil—Blivins
declared to be a prospect equal to the “good will” of a
freighting-line on the Mississippi.
Business first with Bosh, of course; but there was another
argument which he did not openly press, though it
followed very close on the heels of the other in his secret
thoughts, and, with a friend's tender interest in matters of
feeling, Paul would have felt even more bound to make
the sacrifice. Wabash was in love! It was the arbitress
of his fate who was to sit for her portrait to him; and,
with the light and shade of hope and trepidation was that
picture—the picture of the possibly future Mrs. Blivins—
to be drawn and colored! And this would have been
betrayed, if by nothing else, by the restlessness of anticipation
with which the enamored artist made his arrangements.
Long before the appointed hour, the palette was
set with its colors; the canvas stood ready upon the easel;
and Paul's still assiduous pencil was left at work alone
upon the beauty of the patient Giulietta.
“Close upon twelve, my dear boy!” said Bosh, coming
behind Paul's easel with amiably concealed impatience,
and looking upon his sketch as if to see what it was that
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so unaccountably engrossed him; “don't you think you
could leave off, now? The Firkins' coming—I expect
them every moment—and Giulietta here, so very `æsthetic,'
as you call it, in her costume! Imagine what a dreadful
surprise it would be for excellent Mrs. Firkins to see
her!”
Paul pulled out his watch. “Half-past eleven only,
and grand people are never punctual. They'll not come
before half-past twelve, my dear Bosh, and we're at least
safe in letting Giulietta stay out her time. Suppose, just
to keep yourself from fretting, you give me a pose, that I
very much want, just now—you and Giulietta!”
“But, Paul! my dear friend!” remonstrated the anxious
Bosh.
“Here!—it will take but a moment!—Look at my
sketch. You see these two figures—the younger Rimini,
just stabbed by his jealous brother, is soaring away into
ghost-land, with the spirit of the dead Francesca striving
to cling to him. It has been a sinful love, you understand,
for which he has lost his life, and the attempted
caress, therefore, is received in the other world with reluctance.
Now, I can't catch the expression of that—a
woman's arms around an unwilling neck. Try to outline
it for me—you and she!”
“What—stand like a figure afloat in the air, my dear
friend!—how is it possible?”
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“Oh, I'll arrange that,” said Paul, proceeding to get
Blivins's tall figure into pose—“something must be imagined,
in every picture. Stand as near as you can, in the
posture of the figure I have drawn—arms over your head—
one leg out behind—so!”
By showing his sketch to Giulietta, Paul had easily
explained, to her accustomed eye, what was to be the combination
of attitude between her and Bosh. With a skillful
twist of her petticoat, she imitated the winding-sheet
falling from Francesca's hips, and then, with her long hair
streaming down over her naked back, she mechanically
took her position.
“Excellent!” said Paul, “excellent!”—proceeding to
study the pose with all the ardor of artistic perception—
“don't move an inch, my dear friend!”
And steadfast stood Bosh, accordingly—his arms over
his head, the weight of his body balanced on one leg, and
the other, as far as was possible, thrust out behind, while
Giulietta stood, half tip-toe, straining her spread arms
toward his neck—(the tableau, however, such as would
seem to a common eye rather like a respectable gentleman
trying to escape from a very slenderly dressed young
woman)—when, suddenly, there was a scream!
“La'-d'-a-mercy!” cried Mrs. Firkin, snatching at her
daughter's dress to prevent her entering the door of the
room that the officious footman had thrown open without
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knocking; “'Phia! 'Phia!—The horrid wretches!—what
a place to come to! Why, I never!—'Phia, I say!”
And the horror-stricken mother had half succeeded in
dragging her daughter back to the landing-place of the
stairs, before the petrified Blivins (for Paul did not feel
sufficiently acquainted to interfere) could utter a syllable
of remonstrance. By the simple accident of coming a little
before their time, they had stumbled upon the very scene
about which Bosh was so prophetically apprehensive.
“But, Ma!” expostulated Miss Firkin (who was herself
a little staggered at the spectacle of her friend Blivins
apparently hard run by a doubtfully apparelled person),
“Ma! he's going to explain!”
“I don't want any explanation of it, 'Phia! I saw it with
my own eyes! Come right away, I say!”
The words “model” and “artists' rooms” had began, by
this time, however, to convey a glimmer of the state of the
case, and Giulietta's very proper and civil look as she
hastily drew her dress around her, and passed out with her
mother, contributed to quiet the alarm of Mrs. Firkin.
Paul came forward also, and paid his respects with a formal
deference, in which there was no consciousness of anything
wrong or unusual; and so, at last, the unexpected
commotion was allayed.
“My friend, Mr. Fane,” said Blivins, as the ladies took
seats and looked around, “is an amateur of the Arts, in
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addition to his other distinguished accomplishments, and—
(you see by his easel in the corner, ladies!)—makes use of
my studio like a brother artist.”
“Particularly a privilege to-day,” said Paul, with a
complimentary inclination of his head, “as I am to have
the honor, I believe, of giving an opinion upon the costume
and attitude in which my friend is to paint Miss Firkin!
What is your own choice in the matter, if I may ask?” he
continued, addressing the young lady with the tone of the
most simple desire for knowledge on the important point.
“Well, I don't know, I declare!” she replied, evidently
laying herself out for a discussion that was going to be
very delightful. “What do you think is my style, Mr.
Fane? I will be painted as anything you and Mr. Blivins
think of most when you see me!”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Firkin, with a decision that was intended
to express her horror of the fancy-pictures which
stared down upon her from every wall, “I hope, Mr. Blivins,
that you will paint her as her father's daughter, and
sufficiently dressed for Cincinnati!”
“La! Ma! you're always looking through your Ohio
spectacles at everything!” pouted Miss 'Phia, half turning
her back upon her; “I shan't always be Miss Firkin, I
hope, and I'm sure I don't want to be stuck up for ever in
one dress! Can't you paint me in some character Mr.
Blivins?
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“Miss Firkins is right,” said Paul, putting in a timely
word. “Fashions change hundreds of times while a
portrait hangs on the wall, and the drapery should be
something which fashion does not affect. Suppose you
answer the lady's first question, my dear Blivins:—Of
what character in history or allegory, does her personal
appearance most remind you?”
Bosh was entirely reinstated in his dignity by the
respectful solemnity of his friend's deferential appeal. He
drew himself up, and gave a wide sweep with the pencil
he held in his hand. The artistic inspiration was upon
him.
“When I see Miss Sophia Firkin,” he proudly announced
looking at her with the raised eyebrows of the
loftiest admiration, “I see the Goddess of American
Liberty!”
“A female figure in a helmet and tunic,” said Paul.
“It would certainly look well in Cincinnati.”
But Miss Firkin's idea of the matter was not quite
reached. “You have not favored us with your own
opinion, yet, Mr. Fane!” she remarked, with a slight
heightening of color. “Is there nothing you know of, that
I could be painted as and not be covered up, somehow, as
this American Goddess always is?”
With a glance at Miss Firkin's slight change of attitude—
her chest a little thrown forward, and the left cheek
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turned off so as to give plenty of room to the shoulder
below—Paul saw at once that there were natural advantages
of figure to which that picture was, in some way,
to be made to do justice. The Ohio belle had been
abroad long enough to see what was most dwelt upon by
the Fine Arts; and a little vanity as to a needlessly concealed
perfection or two of her own—(compared, that is
to say, with what the artists expended so much study
upon)—was not to be avoided. Still, with Mrs. Firkin's
present alarm on the subject, it would evidently be impossible
to decide at once upon such pose and drapery as
would be acceptable to both her and her daughter.
“As to faces, Miss Firkin,” said Paul, in reply to her
question, “I have found that they change in their impression
upon us, almost invariably with closer study—particularly
with study under the pencil. My friend Blivins, I
have no doubt, in very little time, would find something
better suited to your expression than the helmet of his
goddess. Even with my own few minutes' study of your
features (if you will pardon the artistic freedom of the
remark) I have noticed another expression—something,
for instance, that would work finely into a picture of
Cleopatra applying the asp”—
“Oh, delightful, delightful!” suddenly interrupted Miss
Firkin. Exactly my idea, Mr. Fane!—thank you!—
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Cleopatra in a reclining position, holding the serpent to—to—just
below her heart, isn't it?”—
“But this is only a suggestion,” continued Paul, “and
it would be better, at least, to give Mr. Blivins' own higher
order of imagination its natural precedence. Genius
requires time, Miss Firkin!”
Blivins bowed affectionately to Paul.
“Shall we defer the decision of what the character is to
be, then, till we have first had a sitting or two, and made
studies of the features merely? I have the consent of my
friend,” Paul added with grave humility, “to occupy my
usual place at the other easel, and share his subject with
him—Miss Firkin consenting”—
“Certainly! Certainly!” exclaimed the fair subject.
“And as I stand at a different point of view,” he continued,
“it will not be surprising if I see the expression differently.
Perhaps, of the same subject, we may make two
wholly different pictures.”
This last proposition was altogether too delightful to be
objected to—Miss Firkin enchanted, Blivins relieved of
“immediate first pressure,” and Mrs. Firkin considerably
flattered with the interest taken in the matter by “that
very polite Mr. Fane.” With a request for the removal of
the un-goddesque bonnet, and a timid hint or two as to
attitude, etc., the happy lover made a beginning of his
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Goddess of Liberty—(evidently persisting in his preference
of that sacred Fourth-of-July-approved costume for the
intended Mrs. Blivins)—and the united happinesses and
anxieties went into paint and progress.
[It has long been a cherished opinion of our own, dear
reader, that (as journeys are better achieved by a change
of horses) stories are better told by an occasional change
of narrators; and we shall take the liberty to hand over
the remaining history of the painting of Miss Firkin's
portrait to her own fresher powers of description—one of
her private letters giving the particulars which will substantially
complete it, besides the other lights and shadows
which could only be furnished from her own different point
of vision. She thus writes to the faithful school-fellow and
ally, with whom she exchanged eternal vows of friendship
and reciprocity of secrets, Miss Kumletts, of Rumpusville,
Alabama:—]
Florence, — —.
Dear Kitty:
I dare say you feel quite like a widow, not to have heard
from your faithful 'Phia for so long (now three weeks since I wrote
to you, I believe), but the neglect is not because I forget you. I
think of you, on the contrary, oftener than ever, and because I
have more to tell—which, you know, makes it so much harder to
begin. Why, I live so much more than I used to, Kitty, that I
feel like half a dozen of what I used to be! In fact, multiplied as
my existence is, at present, I should not feel justified in marrying
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any one man. Don't you think there is danger of outgrowing the
“allowance for one”—becoming, in one's own self, a sort of
seraglio, as it were? At any rate, my mind must be more clear as
to what constitutes a “single woman,” before I give the whole of
myself to a single husband!
But, to drop this discussion of principle (for fear you will think
it is one of my old compositions, dear!) and begin with the news.
Politics first, of course. What do you think is offered to papa, by
secret embassy from one of the courts of Europe? At least, the
Baroness Kuhl declares, that, in consequence of the proper representations
to her government, by Count Ebenhog and herself, she is
authorized to propose to the distinguished Mr. Firkin to become a
count—(a real live German count and no mistake!)—for just money
enough to pay the expenses! The twenty thousand dollars (about
the sum it would cost, she thinks!) would be paid in advance to
herself, as it is what she calls a dormant title in her own family
which is to be bought out—but Count Ebenhog would also require
a “consideration,” viz.:—(wait till Miss Namely catches her breath,
if you please!)—my own trifling little heart and hand, “be the
same more or less.”
Now, what do you think of being courted in that sort of way?—
for that is simply a diplomatic proposal of marriage! These sly
Germans thought I should be willing enough to be made a countess,
but they wanted first to get what business folks call a “bonus” out
of papa. And in a country where all the love is thus made through
one's anxious parent, of course you suppose a young lady's feelings
are all of a size. But I have my little preferences, notwithstanding;
and of these I now proceed to give you the confidential particulars.
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[We will omit this portion of Miss Firkin's letter, as not
having any special bearing on our story, and come at once
to the last page, and of its mention of her portrait by Mr.
Blivins.]
But it is curious how the kind of love that one means to settle
down upon, after all (when our little innocent flirtations are over,
you know, Kitty!), just spoils a man for painting one's portrait! I
went to sit to my devoted Blivins, expecting that he would, at
least, make me as good-looking as I am—(especially as, by the
way, he talked to me, I was sure he thought me very beautiful),
and what does he do but begin his husbanding of me at once—
painting me in a helmet and tunic as a Goddess of Liberty, that is
to say—and a more boxed up woman you never saw, out of a coffin.
There was nothing to be seen of me but the face! Now you know,
Kitty (for we have compared notes on the subject), that what little
beauty I have is not exactly there. It has been my greatest comfort,
in visiting these foreign galleries and studios, to see that the
painters of all ages (ugly “old masters” as well as handsome young
masters) dwell particularly on just where I am perfect. There is
not a Virgin Mary, nor a Saint Cecilia, nor even a Lucretia (and
this last is a pattern of modesty, you know), that is not painted, as
you may say, with a figure. And mamma says it is only because
there are so many exposed bosoms (fifty, at least, in every gallery)
that people walk round and look at them so unconcernedly. So,
don't you see, that if it were only the fashion for us all to show
our figures, it would be proper enough! In the East, it is improper
for a woman to show her mouth; and I dare say that, if
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there were only one woman in the world that showed her elbow,
it would be considered very immoral.
But my portrait—(for I have not yet told you quite all)—came
very near being painted the right way, notwithstanding. Mr.
Fane, Blivins's friend, is studying drawing, in the same room; and
he offered to “make a study,” as they call it, by painting me, at
the same time, as Cleopatra poisoning herself. And he made a
beginning. But you know, to find her heart (where the poisonous
serpent is to be applied), Cleopatra is obliged to get below her
figure, a little—(rather more, at any rate, than I could sit for)—
and, though Mr. Fane offered very politely to paint as much of me
as might be thought proper, and then finish his study from an
Italian model (a pretty girl that is made very much like me),
mamma would not allow it. So, for the present, I am goddess
with a nose and chin—the rest left to the spectator's imagination;
but I am “breaking ground,” as we say at the West, to have my
bust taken, and so be done even more justice to, perhaps, after all.
Most anything is proper in marble, you know. But of this I will
write you hereafter.
Well, here I am at the bottom of my fourth page; and half my
object, when I sat down to write, was to tell you all about Mr.
Fane, whom I have scarce mentioned. But it will do for a letter
by itself. So, good-night for now, dearest Kitty, and to bed will go
Yours for ever and ever,
'Phia Firkin.
And here, dropping the curtain for the present, upon the
Blivins side-scene in Paul's artistic life, we will pass to his
more personal experiences in another chapter.
-- 135 -- p746-140
CHAPTER XIII.
[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]
It was mid-forenoon; and (with a very unusual irregularity—
for he made a religion of his Art, and ordinarily
suffered no engagement of pleasure or ceremony to interrupt
his habitual industry)—Paul was not at his studio.
He paced up and down the little parlor of his lodgings,
awaiting the carriage of the Princess C—, but with very
conflicting feelings for his thought-company, meanwhile.
His own heart had called him to account. In his
pocket was a letter from his mother—unopened. It had
been brought him as he waited to fulfil the engagement of
the morning; and, making the excuse to himself that
probably there would not be time to read it before he
should be called away, he had thus deferred what he never
had deferred before.
But that letter had arrived just as he was summoned to
the same bar of self-examination by another twinge of conscience.
The princess had several times alluded to a
young sculptor, Signor Valerio, in whom she was
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interested, and to whose retired and unvisited studio—hidden
within that of the old sculptor Secchi, under whom he was
studying—she wished some day to introduce him. And
the note of this morning was to request Paul to stay at
home till she should call and take him there. But what
meant the uneasiness with which he waited to comply with
this invitation? Why could he not go, with such a lover
of Art as the princess, to give his admiration, with hers, to
the genius of a youthful sculptor, without a jealous unwillingness
so foreign to his usual generous appreciation?
As the rattle of wheels announced the stop of a rapidly
driven carriage at the door, Paul stood self-convicted of
two charges from which he was very glad to escape—first,
a jealousy which betrayed a deeper interest in that lady
than he had been willing to confess, and, second, a consciousness
that to the nature of this jealous interest the
mere presence of his mother's letter was a reproof. He
dreaded that the reading of it might break the charm,
even of the doubtful pleasure of that morning.
To get rid of an oppressive solitude, as well as to prevent
the princess from waiting, Paul made haste below;
but the well-appointed equipage was at the door without
her. The footman's message was to say that her highness
had been passing the morning at Signor Valerio's, and the
carriage would bring Mr. Fane to her highness at the
Galeria Secchi.
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Away dashed those proud blood horses, and discontentedly
alone upon the cushions of the luxurious britzka rode
Paul. He was struggling to disbelieve and make light of
his fascination by the princess; but that did not prevent
his feeling something exceedingly like resentment, that she
should have anticipated an engagement with himself in
her eagerness to get earlier to his rival. His preparation
to seem unconcerned, and the endeavoring to smother all
that should interfere with a proper estimate of the sculptor's
work and a liberal commendation of it, occupied
quite all the time which it took the gay equipage to
thread the narrow streets to its destination.
Signor Secchi, “the sculptor,” was a venerable mediocrity,
early in life mislabelled as a genius, and ever since
proudly wearing the label, and executing occasionally an
original work to keep up his theoretic belief in it—but
showing what was his practical misgiving on the subject,
by relying for subsistence on the making of copies. His
large establishment for this mechanical production of statuary
for the foreign markets was, of course, a great deal
visited by strangers wishing to purchase; and, in this
atmosphere of tangible celebrity, the oft-named and much-sought
Secchi felt blissfully renowned.
It struck Paul that her highness's “tiger” seemed very
much at home, as, on arriving, he led the way into the
galeria of Signor Secchi; and, without asking for the
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polite old sculptor, pursued his way past the larger workshops,
and through passages and side-doors, to the hidden
haunt of his pupil. The mysterious Signor Valerio must
be very often visited, Fane thought, when the confidential
servant knew the way so trippingly!
But, to what a luxurious studio was Paul suddenly introduced!
The exquisitely softened light from above fell
upon walls hung with draperies of green, while a large
couch of green velvet, and a round table and fauteuils,
covered with the same costly stuff, made a half boudoir
under the window. There was no one in the room when
he entered; and, as the door closed behind and left him in
silence, he looked around with an increased tumult of wonder
and jealousy. What a luxuriast must be this favorite
Valerio!
He began to look closer at the artistic belongings of the
place. In the centre stood a sculptor's easel, on which
was a clay figure, covered with the wet cloth of suspended
labor. On the side opposite the door, however, were two
finished statues, of the size of life—one, a fugitive Daphne,
with her face turned to the wall; and the other a prostrate
Antinoüs, lying asleep at a fountain's lip. He was approaching
these for a closer look, when the door opened
behind him.
“Signor Valerio, at your service!” said a familiar voice;
but as he turned, and, at the first glance, saw only a
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person in the costume of an artist, he bowed inquiringly—the
smile of the princess, the next moment, however, beaming
out from under the rim of the slouched hat, and an incredulous
glimpse of the whole mystification flashed upon
him!
“And your friend, the sculptor?” he exclaimed, as he
eagerly sprang forward to take the offered hand of the
princess.
“C'est moi!” she deliberately pronounced—commencing
with much gravity to make a courtesy, but suddenly
remembering her present costume and the now visible
machinery of that feminine performance, and with a
slide to the right, performing a gentleman's ceremonious
bow.
Paul felt—he did not dare, for the moment, to ask himself
why—boundlessly relieved. He looked around him
with fresh eyes, and admiration inexpressibly more willing,
as she described to him the secret culture of her artistic
tastes in this chamber of enchantment.
“I did not confess this to you, when you first recognized
the spirit that breathes here,” said the princess;
“I let you misname me the improvisatrice—content with
that, indeed, as it is the same inspired thought, whether it
is breathed through words or marble. But I was not
quite ready, at the time, to admit you to this inner sanctuary.”
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“You doubted my capability of appreciating it,” said
Paul.
“No—for I saw, as I told you, that you were born with
the soul of an artist; but every sacred temple has its vestibule,
and a secret like this, you will allow, should have
its vestibule of time.”
“But there must be few of your friends, who, even by
waiting, have gained the privilege of entrance here,” he
said, “for I am surprised never to have heard a hint of
such a delicious mystery.”
“My visits here have been constant, of course,” said
the princess; “yet, under the management of good old
Secchi, the secret has been well kept. With the inquisitive
underlings of his workshops, the inner studio passes
for his own impenetrable sanctuary; and the works, which
you see here, are cast and rough-hewn as his own—
`Signor Valerio' being known but as the one confidential
student admitted to his choicest instruction in the Art.
As to my friends and acquaintances now in Florence,
scarce one has ever entered here.”
The princess, meantime, was unwinding the wet cloth
from the figure on the easel; and (deferring for the
moment his closer look at the statues) Paul went on with
his inquiries into the intellectual portion of the mystery.
“With so exquisite a piece of work as this which you
are unveiling,” said he (for the admirable lines of a most
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lovely figure, nearly completed, now became visible), “how
are you content with secresy? Can there be genius without
fame? Would a star be a star, without the atmosphere
by which to shine?”
“It is the contrary that seems wonderful to me,” said
the princess, as she took the slender moulding-pencils into
her hands, and balanced one after another with the dextrous
manipulation of habit—“how genius, particularly
artistic genius, can consent to promiscuous publicity! It
seems to me that the higher the conception of beauty, the
more exclusive should be the admiration of it—the gaze
of a vulgar or unappreciative eye being a profanation from
which it shrinks, as if by simply a natural modesty.”
“The higher beauties among birds and flowers have no
such exclusiveness,” said Paul, smiling.
“Human instincts are better authority than birds and
flowers,” she replied. “How instinctively does a beautiful
woman veil herself from the vulgar eye! And genius,
which is very feminine in its instincts, just so instinctively,
I think (if it acted upon first impulse), would reserve its
beauties for the few.”
“But, to return to my simile,” said Paul; “the light of
the star is lost, unless the few and the many are shone
upon together; and the influences of genius are as varied
as the uses of starlight—the boor and his sweetheart
promising to remember each other by the same star that
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inspires the poet and instructs the astronomer. There are
vile eyes, too, that look on the stars—as there are vile eyes
that look on the works of genius—without profaning
them.”
“I have embodied something of this feeling,” said the
princess, without directly meeting Paul's argument, “in my
modelling of Daphne, here. The nymph” (she continued,
crossing the room to where the beautiful statue stood, with
its face turned to the wail) “is, according to mythology,
flying from the god of day—Beauty shunning the world's
universal eye. Yet see how Nature has ordained that she
shall thus appear no less beautiful! The limbs are seen
to much better advantage, as she flies—the two arches
with which the knotted hair joins to the neck, certainly
intended to be admired, are thus brought into view—the
fall of the shoulders from the wealth of shadow on the
after part of the head, and the shaping of the waist, with
those two exquisite dimples where the hips turn into the
small of the back—these are perfections intended to give
grace to beauty in its flight—are they not?”
“Why,” said Paul, laughing at the artistic earnestness
with which the fair sculptress maintained her theory,
“they are certainly perfections that might pass unobserved
in a Venus who did not turn her back upon us!”
“You are a republican,” said the princess, “and mock
at my argument for exclusiveness, of course—but I insist,
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still, that the profaning many are to be fled from, Daphne
fashion”—
“And from the Daphne motive, too—indifference to
love?” asked Paul, with a smile.
“Yes—or it is just as well, at least, for the mythology
of gossip to put that construction upon it—but still, though
a Daphne is very likely to have a secret lover at the other
end of her flight, Indifference is one of my ideals. In my
Antinoüs, here, I have tried to express it,” added the
princess, pointing to the couchant statue on the left.
Paul approached nearer, and looked upon what he
thought one of the most exquisite creations he had ever
seen in marble. It was the figure of a youth who had
fallen asleep after slaking his thirst at the fountain flowing
past his lip—his arm thrown neglectfully over his head,
the proportions of his form ethereally delicate, and an
expression, both in the unalarmed abandonment of posture
and in the delicately intellectual features, telling of a never-troubled
spirituality of repose.
“But this divine model of Indifference—you have made
it of our sex,” said Paul, after gazing on it for some time
in silent admiration.
“One of your sex, with the beauty of ours,” said the
princess, smiling; “for, spite of our self-love, it is a law of
nature to love our opposites. Antinoüs was the type of
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Indifference, because, being beautiful, like a woman, he
loved no woman. But that was but a portion of what I
thought of, in first conceiving it. My intention was to
mould a being to whom both sexes had contributed their
best—man his intellectuality and woman her grace and
delicacy—but who, from this very perfection of equipoise
between them, was passionless.”
“But, in the excessive beauty of this creation, you have
made Indifference more attractive than it is in real life,”
said Paul.
“I think not,” said the princess. “It is loved no less for
not loving. We are not told what passion was inspired by
the masculine attractions of Antinoüs—mythology stopping
only to chronicle the passion inspired by his feminine
attractions. The Emperor Hadrian built temples to deify
this half of the perfect nature of Antinoüs. Indifference
aside, however, we yearn to find all qualities in our ideals.
It is for what genius borrows of woman, for instance, that
I love it most.”
“Why,” said Paul, “I think our sex borrows more safely
of yours than you of us. A man is beloved for being
femininely tender of heart and delicate in his tastes and
perceptions, but on a woman all masculinities sit ungracefully.”
The princess held up the skirt of her artistic tunic
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with a look of inquiry; and, as Paul looked at her in her
male attire, he could not but confess that the inference to
be drawn from his remark would be but true.
“In the intoxicating presence of these triumphs of your
genius,” said he, slightly coloring, “it is of little importance
how your outward person is attired; but I must still
own that I have seen your highness dressed more becomingly.”
“You shall drive home with me, by-and-by, then,” she
said, “and dine with my turban, to remove the impression;
but come first and give me a criticism on my work in
hand.”
“I had already found the features to be very like your
own,” he said, as they turned to the nearly finished clay
figure on the easel.
“The likeness to myself in feature, if any there be, is
unintentional,” said the princess, “though the feeling
embodied in it is, I will venture to tell you, a memory of
my own. I call it Hermione—more to give it a name
than to represent strictly the history of the Trojan princess—
though that suggested the name, and it might be
true of her, perhaps, at the period, when, loving Orestes,
she is compelled to marry Pyrrhus. But I have endeavored
to express in it the sudden death in the heart from
the abandonment of hope—death even to blank
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unconsciousness within, while the limbs and pulses are still
unchanged in their outer presence of youth.”
Paul looked in silence on the clay figure while the
thoughtful artist, now interested again in her work,
touched, with the imperceptible elaboration of her moulding
pencil, the round of the forward thrown shoulder. It
was a nude form, more slight than is common in statuary,
though in the fullness of completed development as a
woman. The posture was one of suddenly relaxed impulse,
the clasped hands fallen, with the fingers half loosening
their hold, the head dropped upon the bosom, and the
partially dishevelled hair dividing upon the shoulders.
The poetic meaning of the conception—beauty unchanged
except by the utter withdrawal of all expression of what
it had lived for—the lamp unbroken but unlit—was carried
out, Paul thought, with a fineness of discrimination
possible only to inspired genius. But there was an expression
in the statue to which his mind kept returning; and
of which he tried in vain to understand the secret. In
that nude figure, abandoned forgetfully to the support of
muscles unsustained but by instinct—the character of every
line and nerve made completely natural by a pervading
palsy of grief—there was still a look of high birth unmistakable.
With the features half hidden by the droop of
the head, the limbs undraped, the hair dishevelled, and a
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woe-stricken prostration of all movement of pride or grace,
there breathed through it all, unchanged, the something
which told of a king's daughter. The distinction was as
marked, between this and the models by other hands, as
between the air and manner of the princess-artist herself,
and the other sculptors of Florence. Now wherein lay this
rank which nothing could unclothe? In what subtle difference
of line or mould was hid this escutcheon of presence?
Paul found words, after a while, to express what was his
embarrassment in the study of the sad Hermione; and the
princess, to whom the remark seemed new, entered with
him upon an analysis of the proportions of the figure—
without success, however, as to the solution of the problem
in his mind.
“Even without the likeness to your own features,” he
said, “it would have seemed to me that your own undeniable
presence breathes through the complete whole—as
recognisable as a spirit-portrait might be to spirit-eyes.”
“It is natural, of course,” she musingly said, as she retouched
the figure, here and there, while under criticism,
“that one's own nature, whatever it be, should impress
itself on the model as one works. It is the escape, indeed,
of a fermenting identity, which might else, I should think,
become an agony. The air I breathe scarce seems to me
more necessary, in that respect, than the Art on which I
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slake this thirst for self-trasfusion. Love or maternity—
perhaps family cares or charity—may be the escape-valve
for other women. I have tried these, each in its turn—
but they were not enough Without the something more—
deeper and stronger even than love—which this impassioned
study of Art gives to me, I have a prisoner within
my inmost soul, who would madden with solitary confinement.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that you trace a
likeness to me in what is thus born of the breath of my
soul's heart—though that scarce explains to you, after all,
by what lines of the pencil is given the expression of blood
and birth.”
The discussion reverted again to the other statues, and
from a critical analysis of the Antinoüs, Paul picked out,
in that creation also, proofs of the fascinating artist's
unconscious reproduction of herself. And so, with but the
interruption of a lunch of sherbet and fruits, passed that noon
and afternoon like a dream away! The two minds were
at home together in that luxurious studio and its enchantments.
Paul ceased to find fault with the male costume of
the gifted woman, when he found how thoroughly and
enthusiastically she became an artist with that convenient
outward transformation—how magically complete was the
sculptress, with those firmly held pencils of boxwood, and
the light shaded from those earnest eyes with the slouched
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hat! In the glow of her genius she forgot, and almost
made Paul forget, the woman and the princess.
With the beginning of gold in the lessening light of
the afternoon, the slight fingers threw down their pencils,
and the pleasures to be found outside that little world of
Art were reluctantly remembered. The princess retired to
her dressing room to reappear in her costume better
known; and as the sun set over Florence, the two artists—
Paul irresistibly happy with the spells thus magically
wove around him—were driven rapidly out of the gate
toward Fiesolé, on their way to their tête-à-tête dinner at
the Villa G——.
CHAPTER XIV.
Paul's thoughts, on the morning after his tête-à-tête
dinner with the princess, were not, where they might
easily have been, amid the memories of that bewildering
day. In the visit to the strangely hidden studio of the
eccentric sculptress and in the few dream-like hours which
he had afterwards passed at her luxurious villa, there were
remembrances enough to give full employment to a mind
at leisure; but he was doubly pre-occupied, that morning
and with things very differently exciting.
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On the table before him, as he dressed, lay two missives,
either of which, without the other, would have been sufficient
to monopolize his attention—the letter from his
mother, which he had read, after his return home, the
night before; and a note from Miss Paleford, just received,
and running thus:
Dear Mr. Fane:
Papa has commissioned me to act as his amanuensis, his only
hand being disabled by the neuralgic trouble to which he is
liable, and I obey—only with a little uncommissioned variation
of my own.
A young gentleman, the son of one of our old friends and
neighbors in England, has arrived in Florence, and we have just
received a note from him through the post. As papa will not
be well enough to see him to-day, he wishes me to endeavor to
time the visit more conveniently by inviting him to tea to-morrow
evening. But it occurred to me, that, as a stranger, he might not
readily find the way to us without a guide; and that perhaps you
would not object to give us the pleasure of your company the
same evening, and bring him with you. At the embassy reception
to-night, you will meet this gentleman (Mr. Ashly—I liked to have
forgotten to mention his name) and any one will introduce you;
so that you can propose and arrange it. Pray do not disappoint
us. We shall look for you at our usual early tea-hour, and, meantime,
dear Mr. Fane, I remain
Yours very truly,
Sybil Paleford
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The nerve out of tune in Paul's heart was struck by
that well-remembered name. And the excitement was
not alone from what it recalled—the cold eye from which
he had received his first humiliation. One evening at the
Palefords, the conversation turning upon their home associations
in England, there had been a chance mention
of the Ashlys as their wealthiest neighbors; and, by a
question or two, he identified them with those he had
seen. The young Mr. Ashly, now in Florence, he knew
also, was the eldest son, and heir to the large fortune of
the old and proud family.
Miss Paleford's note was flattering—assuming, as it did,
that there could be no doubt of the agreeableness, to Mr.
Ashly, of the proposed frank offer of a service from the
new acqaintance; and, had the stranger borne any other
name, Paul would have taken this for granted without
giving it a second thought. But, with the mere name
of Ashly came a vague presentiment of a slight; while
the compliance with the lady's request would be an
infringement upon a rule he had laid down for himself
on his first landing in Europe—one by which his sensitive
pride might shelter itself from the possibility of mortification
by rebuff—that he would ask an introduction to
no one. Thus far it had been carefully observed. His
acquaintances had been either wholly incidental, or they
were such as had made the first advance. To break this
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rule at all would be the sacrifice of a broad and compre
hensive generality, which, always to be able to assert was
to have a weapon in reserve; but, to break it—now, and
for the first time—for an Ashly, and her brother!
Still, the refusal of a request so simple, and made by
Miss Sybil herself, was not to be thought of. It must
be a better reason, indeed, than a whimsical and unconfessed
sensitiveness of his own, that should stand in
the way of his shielding his invalid friend, Colonel Paleford,
from an inconvenience. The manner in which he
was to perform the duty was the only question; and,
with a thought which occurred to him on this point,
he took his hat and crossed the Square to the lodgings
of an English acquaintance.
Being a close student of men, as well as of the gentler
sex, Paul had become interested, very soon after his arrival
in Florence, in an Englishman who, by his own countrymen,
was called “a character.” This gentleman, Mr.
Tetherly, was a bachelor of about fifty years of age, who
had lived all his life independently idle, upon a small
but certain income—for the last few years having taken
up his permanent residence in Florence as the most
economical and agreeable capital of Europe, and being
now known, at the cafés and elsewhere, as one of the
“fixtures.” He was first pointed out to Paul as the man
who had refused to be presented at court—the English
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ambassador having taken a great fancy to him, and proposing
it, but Mr. Tetherly declining on the ground that
he was the son of a tradesman, not presentable at his
own court at home, and therefore not entitled to it
abroad. The diplomatic official, liking him no less for
this independence, had persevered in cultivating him,
however, and, by frequent invitation and attention, he
had gradually become one of the habitués of the English
embassy.
Between Paul and him there had grown up, from their
first introduction, a cordial understanding. Meeting constantly
at the cafés and restaurants, and lingering in talk,
when they thus had the chance opportunity, as well as in
society, they soon needed nothing of a friendship but the
avowing it—just the point of intimacy, either in love or
friendship, where Mr. Tetherly's cautious reserve brought
him usually to a stand-still. Exactly to know his own
place and keep it, was his hobby; and though his education
at an English university, and his long experience
abroad, had so liberalized him that his speciality was never
obtrusive, it was still his secret habit of mind, never intermitted
or forgotten. Among ladies—with whom his kind-heartedness,
wit, and refinement made him a favorite—he
kept always his sentry-thought in the background, making
sure that he was falling into no manner of illusion; and,
among men, he was perpetually measuring his own value,
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and questioning and anatomizing every civility and approach.
But while of the misanthropy that only measures and
depreciates others he had none—his rule and plummet
being applied only with perpetual comparison to himself—
Mr. Tetherly was the best of reference and authority as to
social distinctions, and niceties of observance and conduct.
To Paul, with his republican newness to that part of
foreign life which was artificial, this was an invaluable
quality in a mind to which he had daily access; and it
was therefore with a happy sense of relief that he now
turned to his English friend for advice as to the execution
of Miss Paleford's commission.
“Just in time for a cup of tea, my dear Fane!” exclaimed
the bachelor, as Paul opened the door. “I was that
moment comforting my loneliness with offering one to the
Baronet. Down You-Sir! and give that chair to Mr.
Fane!”
Mr. Tetherly was breakfasting alone—or rather with his
usual companion, a very sagacious Scotch terrier, seated
upright in the opposite chair, his paws on the edge of the
table, and his eyes fixed with nervous attentiveness on his
master. The hairy countenance of the animal was really
intelligent enough to talk to, as was the solitary Englishman's
habit, and he understood much that was said to him,
and looked as if he understood all of it! His name of
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“You-Sir” was an abbreviation, or rather a variation, of
that under which he came to his present owner—a certain
baronet's coachman, of whom he was bought, having given
the pup the title of his own master, Sir John—“The
Baronet” his name, “You-Sir,” for shortness, as Tetherly
expressed it. With nothing to occupy him, and his peculiarities
preventing his forming even an intimacy which
should make any demand on his time, the leisure of the
bachelor was divided pretty equally between his books and
the education of his favorite dog.
“Allow me to wonder at this lonely breakfast of yours,”
said Paul, as he took the vacated seat—the terrier becoming
his vis-à-vis, by occupying his master's lap, with his
paws again on the edge of the table—“you might so easily
come round to the café, and give us the pleasure of your
company every morning.”
“I have thought of it,” replied his friend, hesitating,
and evidently making some little effort of frankness, before
finishing the sentence, “but the fact is I can't afford it.”
“Surely,” said Paul, looking at the well-spread table,
“you could breakfast for much less”—
“Pardon me,” interrupted Tetherly, “I forgot that you
were not aware of what I am obliged to economize most.
It is not money, but self-esteem, that I was thinking of
saving. I get tired of myself if I begin too early—or,
rather, I need to feel like a flower new-blown, or a
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gentleman fresh from silence and solitude, to fancy myself agreeable
to people. Don't you think, yourself, that a man
who has breakfasted out, comes stale and second-hand, for
instance, to a dinner-party?”
“Why,” said Paul, laughing, “I might confess to a more
sentimental cherishing of the same idea. It has often
occurred to me that marriage, if it had no other privilege
than that of breakfasting alone with a beloved woman,
would be an invaluable happiness—looking into her eyes
when first opened after the sacredness of sleep—hearing
her voice with the first words uttered after dream-talk
with angels. Night, it always seemed to me, re-hallows
the presence and re-virgins the beauty of woman.”
“Um!—that is putting rather too fine an edge upon it,”
said Tetherly, smiling at Paul's poetical innocence, “or, at
least, I never came so near breakfasting, that way, with a
nice woman, as to inquire what made it agreeable. But I
mean to say that, as a social principle, common to both
sexes, privacy is dignifying; and the more recent our
arrival from it, or the more impregnated is our presence
with the known fact or the effects of it, the more precious
our company to others.”
“Yes,” said Paul, whose artistic finger of thought was
immediately laid upon the nice line of the definition, “I
have once or twice in my life seen faces which owed their
charm to that expression—looking always sacredly fresh
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from privacy—and it has occurred to me whether it might
not be cultivated as a beauty.”
“A flushed face is the opposite of it,” said Tetherly,
“and that is, perhaps, why paleness gives so distinguished
a look. Calmness of countenance might be cultivated;
and so might the unwinking or unalarmed tranquillity of
eye which betokens thoughts coming reluctantly from elsewhere;
and then the tone of voice might express something
of it, both by slower enunciation and by being
pitched a half-note lower than the key of the conversation
around.
“It would require to be so well done,” said Paul, “that
it must be classed among the reserved weapons of the
gifted. A failure at it would be blank stupidity. Fortunately
there is beauty which can belong, thus, to only
Nature's picked people.”
“And what is to console the unpicked?” asked Tetherly—
both he and Paul lapsing into a reverie of a moment or
two, the silence of which was broken, at last, by the barking
of the terrier.
“Silence, You-Sir!” quietly said the master, as he reprovingly
pulled the ear of his dog; “pray pardon the Baronet's
lack of discrimination, my dear Fane! He has been taught
to vary conversation, when visitors are dull, by barking in
the `awkward pauses.' He did not appreciate the resting
on our oars while thought was under headway.”
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“If he lack discrimination, he lacks what his master is
very rich in,” replied Paul, laughing at the novelty of
dog-supply for the gaps of conversation; “and, if you will
pardon the digression, my dear Tetherly, it is just that
volume of wisdom which I have called to consult, this
morning.”
“A poor oracle, my dear fellow, but it shall at least be
vocal at your summons. What is the myth?” The
eccentric bachelor smiled and looked genially happy, as he
always did, when there was a chance to do a kindness.
“You will laugh at the commonplaceness of my `myth,'”
said Paul. “To you it is as little of a mystery, probably,
as the meaning of a fence or a hedge; yet please
remember that what is shut in and shut out by English
hedges and fences, might, at first, puzzle the Arab who had
ridden his blood barb or his camel, only in the unfenced
desert.”
“And to what Yankee Sahara are you willing to `own
up, then, my dear republican?” asked Tetherly, with a
remembrance of some of their former arguments on the
respective perfections of their native countries.
“Social distinctions,” answered Paul—“or that part of
them which may be described as the ethics of introductions
between gentlemen. We are a prairie on this subject, as
yet—with here and there an obstinate squatter, perhaps, or
a temporary encampment.”
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“Do you mean to inquire what gives a right to an introduction,
then?”
As Paul hesitated a moment, turning over in his mind
how he might best present the handle of his dilemma,
“You-Sir” broke the silence with his inquisitive bark.
“Bow, says the baronet, you observe,” replied Paul
(“though, with a slight stammer, he prolongs it into bowwow),
and he is right, as far as he goes. But it is what
we bow to, that I am seeking light upon—what is implied
or involved, that is to say, in the asking of an introduction.”
“Well, then—to begin at the beginning—it means that
you desire the person's acquaintance.”
“But, does the request claim equality, or does it confess
inferiority?”
“Of course it is asked as a favor—and, so far, it is an
admission of lacking something yourself which the other
has power to bestow—a favor sometimes overbalanced,
however, by the compliment of asking.”
“Yet, is there not, after thus taking the position of applicant,
a certain irreversible inferiority, likely always to be
remembered in the mutual consciousness of intercourse,
and certain to be appealed to, in case of a collision of dignity
or other quarrel?”
“Why, I begin to comprehend how there might be
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very tangled roots to the question; though the common
`flower of courtesy,' above ground, seems at first glance to
be very simple. Let us see! There may be such a thing
as equality so well understood between two persons, that
the asking an introduction is a mere convenience—like
turning out for each other on the sidewalk.”
“That, in our republic, is the general understanding of
the matter.”
“Then there is a homage to eminence of any kind—to
genius and achievements such as have given a position
separate from rank or wealth—and, in seeking introductions
to such men, the question of relative position does
not come up.”
“Two points disposed of,” said Paul.
“We come now to differences of rank such as are accidental
or unachieved—men of old families and new, commoners
and noblemen, gentlemen and tradesmen, the more
rich and the less, the professional and industrial classes.”
“And how—between these?”
“Why, each individual case would have its modifications.
An introduction, asked for merely the pleasure of acquaintance,
might chance to confer, in almost any case, more
than it sought.”
“But is it not common in England and on the continent,
for a man of inferior position, but still mingling in the
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same society, to ask an introduction where the acquaintance
is to be an understood condescension on the other's part—
so admitted at the time, so acknowledged ever after?”
“Certainly—very common.”
“And where the different shades of position are doubtful,
or so near that they might otherwise be disputed, does
not the seeking of the acquaintance of one man by
another, amount to an admission of the other's inferiority?”
“Why, it might be so construed, without a doubt.”
“And there, I take it then, is just the point where the
American and English feeling would divide. Our people
would not accept of introductions in society on these
terms.”
“The desert-bred Arab, you mean to say, on coming to
England, instead of following the roads like an Englishman,
would ride across the country as he has been accustomed
to do, paying no regard to hedges or fences!”
“An illustration that contains a forcible argument, I
admit,” said Paul. “And the difference between the two
countries (monarchical distinctions in one and republican
equality in the other), fully accounts for the difference of
feeling in the matter. But, till we have the substance we
are not likely to observe the shadow—and, till we submit
to monarchy and rank, we are likely to insist on intercourse
with all people as their equals.”
“And so I am sure you are fully allowed to do,” said
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Tetherly. “It is understood in all continental society, I
believe, that having no rank, the American may mingle
with any rank suitable to his education and manners.
Your countrymen have no reason to complain. But, after
all, these are vague generalities, from which the deductions
to suit any particular case might be very unreliable. And,
by the way, if I may ask the question, to what particular
circumstances are you applying our argument?—for something
seems to have given you more than a theoretic
interest in the matter.”
Paul mentioned Miss Paleford's commission, and the
necessity it put him under, of breaking his own rule as to
asking introductions, still reserving to himself, however,
the secret which linked a separate nervousness with the
stranger's name.
“Why, of course, the man will be very happy indeed
to accept of your offer to take him out there,” said
Tetherly, smiling at what he evidently thought to be a
very needless sensitiveness on the subject, “but I can manage
the introduction for you, if that is all, so that, at least,
he will never know of your asking it. I am to meet him
at dinner at the embassy to-day; and at the soirée afterwards,
you can come up when you see me talking with
him. I will introduce you simply as a friend of mine
whom I wish him to know. Will that do?
Paul felt more relieved than he could explain to his
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friend, for the apt and ready suggestion; but his thanks
were very abundant, and he took his leave with half the
load, at least, gone from his heart. Too uneasy, still, for
his accustomed work, he took his mother's letter for company,
and, in the lonely and luxurious solitudes of the
duke's gardens, wiled away, with meditative idleness, the
day that was to precede the evening of trial
CHAPTER XV.
Paul's mother's letter had lain open on the table
while he was dressing for the soirée at the English
embassy, and it was with somewhat a complex feeling
that he now gave himself up to it for five minutes
before going out for the evening. In any newly opened
letter from her hand, there was the presence of a guardian
spirit which he had hesitated to confront with his promise
of adventure of the evening before—delaying therefore
the reading of this one till he should have returned
from the visit with the princess to the mysterious artist—
but it was not altogether as a delinquent trying to
make amends for a neglect, that he now re-conned the
already well-studied syllables. There was another very
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important ministration, for which the spirit of his mother's
letters had grown, insensibly, with his European experiences,
to be the reliance. Though a general human
want for which it thus furnished the supply, it was so
far American that it was one to which the atmosphere
of monarchical countries for the first time made him
sensitive.
The more sacred world than society—the something
of his own to which all the exterior of his present life
should be secondary—was the need which he found
supplied in those letters. He read his thoughts back
into his mother's presence, before going out, to be reassured
of what, more precious than the errand out of
doors, he had to come home to. The association so
constantly with those who had rank, station or resources,
like nests to which they could at any moment return—
to whom society was but the air when idly on the wing—
had awakened in Paul's mind, gradually, a dread of the
heart-sinking sense of vagrancy. To be everywhere the
stranger—only recognised as passing, and with no value
on which, at will, to stop, and within which to entrench
privacy, strengthen resources and suffice for oneself—
this seemed to him the phantom of dread with which
low spirits, for a traveller so nameless as himself, stood
ever ominously prepared. There could be no smoother
sailing, it was true, than he had everywhere found it,
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and all, at present, seemed a summer sea—but he must
have chart and compass for voyage and venture of his
own, if need were, or he was adrift upon European society
as upon a plank in mid-ocean.
Bound, for the evening, to a scene where his habitual
welcome was particularly friendly and familiar, there was
still to be an encounter with eyes akin to the first that
had ever looked coldly on him (an introduction to an
Ashly)—and it was perhaps with the vague shadow of
association with this name that Paul lingered more sensitively
than usual over what was dearest to him. He
once more turned to make certain upon what better
treasure, than his errand without, he was to lock the
door of memory within. Thus ran the concluding pages
with which his mother wound up her gossip of home
matters:
* * * Your accounts of gaieties and intimacies are very
amusing, and, to us at this distance at least, they seem to be
throwing very attractive spells upon you as you pass. And this
is to be rejoiced in. The world should be thanked for smiling
upon us, if it will. But, in these glittering eddies along the shore,
we should not forget the main current of our life, and you particularly,
may as well be reminded, perhaps, that your arrival at
the far outlet of ambition and culture is to be by a headway slow
and unnoticed. You have but the force of the natural channel to
trust for guidance and progress, and are just so often hindered
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and thrown into the slack-water of inaction, as you are made
giddy by any side-whirls, or excitements such as are objectless
and temporary.
Of course, my dear son, you are keeping aware of what there is
for yourself to learn among the gay and dazzling scenes to which
you have temporary access. Technical and professional knowledge
is not all that is necessary for an artist; an acquaintance with
beauty, in all its varieties; of shape and culture, and with taste
in all its caprices and modifications implies a knowledge of
human character and manner only got by a certain conversance
with the life and society around you. But much as there is thus
for you, in those foreign circles of fashion and gaiety, there is
more that is not for you—far more that is held out to you quite as
temptingly, but which even they who tempt you are not aware how
worse than a burden it would be for you to accept.
The wisdom enough for any one day, or its choice of conduct,
my dear Paul, will come easy. With your own position kept in
mind, your one object in travel never lost sight of, and the hopes of
a self-dependent and industrial career kept modest and truthful,
you may always decide what will teach or profit you anything—
very often deciding quite differently, indeed, from kind friends
who overrate or misconceive you. What advantages come openly
and legitimately, or would only come more readily were your
entire circumstances known, may be safely accepted; while pleasure
or advancement that is in any manner dependent on a false
position, or that may by any chance be thought not to have naturally
belonged to you, is carefully to be shunned.
You see how your own gay letter has furnished the text for my
grave sermon. I could not read of your daily mingling with persons
of such different rank in life, without spinning my cobweb of
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possibilities, and fancying many a tangle of embarrassment. It
still occurs to me, however, that your rallying-point in a chance
difficulty of position might better be self-respect than the humility
I was preaching to you, though of that you must yourself be the
judge. To a reserved pride in your own natural qualities and
elevated pursuits you are well entitled; and, while this need claim
nothing in the way of honor from others, it might still remind you
of an elevation at which to forget annoyance from those naturally
beneath you. The lark does not sing the less because the swan
called him an upstart as he rose.
I am taking great comfort in sweet Mary Evenden in your
absence. She comes and works upon your easel while I gossip
beside her with my needle, and it is very certain (I think I may
trust my unskillful eye to pronounce) that her patient pencil will
be once more within reach of companionship when you return.
She mourns very much that your studies are not such as you can
send home, enabling her to get hints from time to time of the
direction of your progress. Your absence, she thinks, would have
no estrangement in it, if with your mind she could but thus be
kept familiar. The chatty letters we get are not from that portion
of you which she knew best—the Paul of whose genius she loved
the features—and she is only afraid of being outgrown by this
inner physiognomy which is thus lost sight of while fastest maturing.
I do not know whether I should add to this, by the way, that
there is a chance of your seeing Mary in Florence. Mrs. Cleverly
is at present talking of a year in Europe, and if the dear kind lady
should go, she will take our old pastor's daughter as her companion.
The twin nurture with your own mind which the sweet
girl might thus be able to resume, would be an inexpressible
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happiness to her, and though I scarce know how I should bear to have
you both absent, it is a good news of which I sincerely hope
to send you the confirmation. Two such beloved ones breathing
together in the artistic air of Italy! How I should long to be
with you! * * *
It was with his inner eyes thus brightened—his consciousness
of a life, for which another sky furnished him with the
light and air, renewed and made familiar—that Paul drew
on his gloves and strolled slowly out to his evening's
engagement. The stars seemed looking deep down betwixt
the overhanging eaves into the dim-lit streets of Florence,
and the passers-by were few; the rattle of now and then a
rapidly driven carriage over the smooth pavement being
almost the only sound that broke upon the night air in
that quarter of palaces; but there was unseen company for
at least one lingering foot-passenger along the dark streets.
Paul turned from one of the narrower cross thoroughfares,
and entered upon the glare of the porch-way, where the
equipages were dashing in and out with the guests for the
festivities at the English Embassy, not feeling that, in his
own solitary walk hither, he had loitered through the
hushed shadows altogether alone.
Dancing was not yet commenced; but the band were
playing waltzes, and the promenading couples were beginning
to take their range through the formidable length of
the ball-room. The guests of the small dinner-party which
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had preceded the general reception, were just from table;
and one of the two or three strangers who were gathered
immediately around the ambassador, Paul supposed must
be Mr. Ashly. After making his bow to the lady of the
house, he made the tea-tray an errand for approaching this
group of gentlemen; and it needed but half a look for his
well-prepared eye to select the face which should be the
brother's of her whom he had such occasion to remember!
There was the same cold grey eye, and the same passionless
and imperturbable pallor of complexion, with the curl
of the lip, even in repose objective and contemptuous. In
figure, Mr. Ashly was slight and tall, well dressed, and of a
distinguished look quite unmistakable. Spite of the ungenial
character given to his first presence by the unconscious
superciliousness that was evidently habitual to him,
a second look at his thorough-bred outline and maintien
would scarce fail to find him very intellectually handsome.
After shaking hands with the ambassador, Paul fell into
conversation with an acquaintance who was one of the
group, and, seeing Tetherly occupied at a little distance
with a lady, he thought he would thus wait his time till
that friend should come along, as proposed, for the incidental
introduction. He observed directly, however, that
Mr. Ashly was taken aside by Sir Cummit Strong, who had
been one of the dinner-guests at the Embassy, and, if he
was not very much mistaken, he was himself pointed out
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to the stranger immediately after. Of what interest he
could be to either of them, thus far, he could not understand,
though he had once or twice of late chanced to be
the object of a preference by his countrywoman, Miss Firkin,
to the temporary discomfiture of Sir Cummit; and
Blivins had mentioned to him that Miss 'Phia's English
admirer and his female ally, Lady Highsnake, spoke not
very lovingly of the attaché in his absence. Even if the
baronet attributed his unsuccessfulness of suit to Paul's
hindrance, however, there could be no sufficient reason for
calling a stranger's attention so directly to the offender.
By a movement among the company, a moment after,
the gentlemen in that quarter of the room were drawn
into a circle around the ambassadress, and, at the same
instant that Paul discovered himself in close neighborhood
to the stranger, her frank ladyship chose to remove the
ceremony from between them by the exercise of her privilege
as hostess.
“Mr. Ashly, Mr. Fane,” and, for the moment, it appeared
as if those chance-uttered words had removed the only
obstacle to the fulfilment of the commands of the lovely
Sybil.
But there was a sudden check to the impulse with which
Paul was about to follow up the first phrase of courtesy
with an allusion to their mutual acquaintance, and her commission
for the morrow evening. To the smile on his own
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lip there was no answer! With the Englishman's recovery
of position from the bow which civility required, there was
an evident limit to the introduction. It was the Ashly
look again which Paul felt in the passive-lidded turn of
that reluctant eye upon him! And, by a just perceptible
compression of the supercilious lip, the expression was
unmistakably confirmed.
One of the reigning belles of the court of Florence fell
into the line of Paul's look at the moment, and to give her
an arm for a waltz was the sudden diversion of purpose
with which he covered the embarrassment of the smile so
suddenly checked; and, as he glided away to the measure
of the enchanting music, leaving Mr. Ashly with an apparent
recognition of their introduction which seemed only
more careless than his own, he found time to struggle with
the phantom that so strangely had re-found to re-haunt
him.
What could be the barb in the repetition, now, of that
slight so trifling? Why should that sister's unintentional
indifference be turned in the wound like a poisoned arrow
by the brother's still more unimportant coldness in a civility?
How, was Miss Ashly not forgotten? Why should
the brother or his acquaintance outlast, to-night, in Paul's
mind, a single turn of the waltz with that titled beauty
upon his arm? A whole court present, with whose throngs
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of rank and talent to be familiarly friendly, and yet all
made inscrutably valueless by the indifference of one
undistinguished stranger!
The waltz over, and the conspicuous countess and her
bouquet taking breath together at the head of the room,
Paul took advantage of the approach of an admirer or
two, and made his escape from the glaring rooms to the
fresh air of one of the balconies over the garden. He was
joined here by Tetherly, after a few minutes.
“This is diplomatic air, my dear fellow,” he said; “but
we are not all born to it! At least my proposed dodge in
your service has been too slow; for, remembering your
American scruple about introductions, and finding occasion
to practise a little ambassadorial reserve in the exercise of
your commission, I was just coming to you for further
instructions when I saw you introduced without me.”
“Then, perhaps the reason for your reserve will explain
the manner of the gentleman, said Paul, “for his evident
unwillingness to accept of her ladyship's courtesy prevented
my even speaking to him of Miss Paleford—the only use
I had for his acquaintance, you know.”
“Not too fast, my boy!—though I think the lady's
errand must, in any case, go unperformed. You could not
well offer Mr. Ashly the civility of a drive with his present
impression of you. But let us distribute the blame a little
more justly than you are likely to do!”
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“Among Yankees, generally, do you mean?” asked Paul,
with a smile.
“Why, your belonging across the water made the matter
a little easier no doubt,” said Tetherly, with a deprecating
inclination of his head, “and my own remark at the
dinner-table, which proved suggestive of what I wish to
enlighten you upon, was complimentary enough to your
people to provoke a rejoinder.”
“Thanks, for your championship,” said Paul; “but of
what shape was Mr. Ashly's rejoinder.”
“Now we come to your mistake, my dear Fane! The
rejoinder was from another person, and its sentiment was
not agreed in by Mr. Ashly—but though he could dissent
from the speaker on the general question, as he did very
quietly and decidedly as to American qualities, he could
say nothing in reply to Sir Cummit's personal disparagement
of you.”
“What, abused by the stiff old baronet?” asked Paul,
with a laugh.
“Then you are quite sure it's of no consequence?” said
Tetherly, a little inquisitively.
“As far as his own opinion goes, not the least in the
world—his own nor the opinion of the ninety-nine in a
hundred who are like him. But,” added Paul, after a
moment, “even such a dull abuser may be listened to by
refined ears. What said he to Mr. Ashly?”
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“May I own now, that your distinction is a little inexplicable,”
asked Tetherly, “though I confess that its discovery
has relieved somewhat of the embarrassment of
my feeling—the opinion of so passing a stranger as this
simple Mr. Ashly of such interest to you, while that of the
baronet, who is so much more consequential a personage
hereabouts, is of no importance at all?”
Paul balanced for an instant the unconfessed secret that
gave the eye of that passing stranger its caprice of power,
but despairing of making it understood, or, more probably,
dreading the self-ridicule that might follow his bringing it
from the shadow of his own mind fairly to the light, he
let the remark pass in silence.
Tetherly went on to explain the conversation at the
dinner-table. Miss Paleford's exceeding beauty had come
under discussion, and, by way of preparing the ground for
introduction to Paul and the coming excursion, he had
alluded to him as a friend of Colonel Paleford's, but in a
general mention of the Americans at Florence. The allusion
had been quite enough to draw down a torrent of
abuse from Sir Cummit. He thought little of Americans
in Europe, generally; but made out Colonel Paleford's
friend, more particularly to be a humbug—“a color-grinder
to a portrait-painter by the name of Blivins, travelling about
with a diplomatic title on his passport, pretending, for the
present, to make his addresses to the rich Miss Firkin!”
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Tetherly had waited for the stormy baronet to give him
an opportunity to take his friend's part; but at the height
of his unaccountable tirade, he had observed the ambasador
rising from the table; and so Mr. Ashly had gone into the
drawing-room with rather one-sided impressions of Mr.
Fane's desirableness as an acquaintance.
“I am sorry I do not look a refutation of the baronet's
slanders or disparagements,” said Paul, still writhing under
the infliction of the slight by that eye of mysterious power;
“but there is at least an error or so, that may be corrected,
and about this I will call on you in the morning. Meantime,
my dear Tetherly, here are bright eyes looking for
you, I can see, and so you shall say good night to things
as mirth-killing as my troubles. Allons!”
And, taking his friend's arm into the drawing room,
Paul left him with a lady of their mutual acquaintance,
and made his own way back to his own busy thought-world
at home.
-- 176 -- p746-181
CHAPTER XVI.
[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]
It was a week after the evening described in the previous
chapter, and the sun of an Italian June had risen
(her father thought, suitably) upon the birth-day of Sybil
Paleford. At any rate, there need be no finer morning for
the birth-day of anything mortal—and mortal (against the
general impression) Colonel Paleford thought his daughter
might very possibly be. Everything out-of-doors seemed
just as luxuriously lodged as anything in-doors. Happiness
was as sheltered in the cobbler's unwindowed stall as
in the duke's double-shuttered and costly-curtained palace.
“Because you are going to breakfast in the country at
dinner-time,” said Bosh, as his friend played with his
spoon rather daintily, “it is no reason why you should not
breakfast in the city at breakfast-time. Come, eat a roll,
my dear Paul, if only for bread-and-butter corroboration
that I have you back again.”
Blivins and Paul had taken their place at one of the
marble tables on the sidewalk in front of the café, and,
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with dozens of artists and travellers, they were having their
morning meal served to them in the street. The fragrant
coffee and the tempting dish were within full enjoyment,
at least, of the beggar's sight and smell. Fair, too, looked
the baskets of the flower girls. And the mirror-covered
walls of the café, all open to the public thoroughfare as
they were, gave even the beggars back a copy of their
beauty.
“I see Tetherly coming yonder,” said Paul, “and he
has been doing an errand for me this morning, about
which I wish to have a chat with him alone. So, my dear
Bosh, get off to your studio, and do not expect me there
to-day. The breakfast party at Paleford's will last till
sun-set, I dare say, and I will look in upon you at the
Firkins' box at the opera, if I do not see you before. No
more idle days after this.”
And off up the street went the compliant Bosh, affectionately,
without hesitation or question, as the sturdy
and wholesome-looking Englishman, with his checked
cravat and short hair, approached from the hotel neighborhood
of the Arno.
“Pardon me, if I refresh the gift of speech with a cup
of coffee,” said he, taking Bosh's vacated chair and giving
Paul's hand a shake with the two fingers he had to spare
from his stick, “though my exhaustion is not far from what
I have said. It's what I haven't said that has used me up,
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my dear Fane? How do diplomatists sustain nature
under political silence, I should like to know?'
“Then you found Mr. Ashly at home?” asked Paul, as
the beckoned Botega held high his silver pots, and poured
the hot milk and the coffee in two well-aimed cataracts at
the cup.”
“Yes — though, if you had not wished him to be
enlightened on the subject, before meeting him, to-day, I
should have sent up my card rather later. Like yourself,
though engaged to breakfast out, he was breakfasting
quietly before starting, however—quite ready for a call,
but evidently surprised at seeing me so early.”
“But it passed for a mere call of ceremony, I hope?”
“Yes—if my diplomacy has been successful, that is to
say. I made myself out to be on a chance errand at his
hotel, and apologized for killing two birds with one stone
by giving him a call in passing. We gossiped for an hour
on indifferent matters, and it was only when I rose to go
that I mentioned you quite incidentally—remarking that
the baronet, whom he had heard abusing you so at the
embassy, had taken all that back.”
“And he had no glimmer of suspicion, you think, that
it was news meant especially for him?”
“No—the duel passed for an item of gossip only. He
hardly seemed to remember you, to tell you the truth, and
there was the tight place for my self-command! To
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know that you had taken a whole week of trouble, and
perilled life and liberty, to set a man right who had misinformed
him as to your character, and then to see him
dismiss the whole subject with half a wink of attention!
Why, I came near bursting from a mere suppression of
knowledge! But, tell me, my dear fellow—unless there
is some very mysterious reason in the background (and, of
course, you are at liberty to keep your secret, if there is)—
are you not putting rather an eccentric value on the good
opinion of this Mr. Ashly?”
“I should fail to make you understand,” said Paul,
after a moment's hesitation; “for I am not sure that I
understand it altogether myself—how it is that I look to
that man's cold grey eye for recognition of my quality as
a gentleman. A circumstance, connected with his family,
has made that so, however. While I neither like the man,
nor wish anything from him, his opinion on the fineness
of my clay, as a superior or inferior human being, is irresistibly
and inevitably beyond appeal. Yet to be of any
value to me, in the way of approval, it must be wholly
uninfluenced and instinctive; and therefore it was, that I
wished for a man of nice honor, like yourself, to entrust
with my justification. I needed that Mr. Ashly should be
simply and barely put right as to the facts of my position,
and that, beyond this, he should hear no praise of my character
which could any way influence his judgment. So I
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instructed you, and so I was very sure you would do. He
will meet me now, to-day, thanks to you, with an unconscious
freedom from prejudice—a tabula rasa on which to
receive a fair natural impression.”
Paul's eyes dropped upon the table, as if, from thinking
aloud, he had fallen into a reverie.
“The longer I live, the more respect I have for what
can be seen but by one pair of eyes,” said Tetherly, looking
kindly and earnestly upon his friend, and commencing
in a tone of voice which had none of his habitual raillery;
“a man has oftenest good reason for an idiosyncrasy; but,
will you excuse me, if I tell you how your present whim
looks, from my outside point of view; it seems to me simply
like a monomania, and one over which you would do
better to get the mastery. It will be putting you, else, to
endless inconvenience. I am, perhaps, a better judge of
my countryman, Mr. Ashly, than you (who have never
been in England) would naturally be, and I assure you he
is not the authority on such points that you would make
him. He is a gentlemanly man enough, and of ordinary
good judgment, I dare say; but you will meet such men
at every turn; and, with this susceptibility to imaginary
prerogatives of standard, your life will be but a long gauntlet
of doubtful appreciation.”
“Pardon me!” interrupted Paul, “I have seen but one
Mr. Ashly, and I begin to doubt whether I ever shall see
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another. Whatever the caprice which has invested him, a
stranger, with this inexplicable touchstone, he is the only
man in Europe, as yet, by whose presence I feel it applied
to me. And of course it is not his own higher rank.
You know, yourself, how sufficiently friendly is my footing
with those who, in title and fortune, are his superiors
But it is an instinct with which I cannot reason, which I
can neither evade nor modify, that the impression which
he first and frankly receives of my quality—my stamp
from Nature—will be incontrovertible. And yet, I say
again, that, with intense curiosity to know what this will
be—desire, therefore, to approach and be conversant with
him—I have no presentiment of liking Mr. Ashly. On
the contrary, thus far, he has aroused my antagonism only;
and, the question between us once settled, I shall be
likelier to be his enemy than his friend.”
“But I should suppose,” said Tetherly, evidently somewhat
puzzled, “that you would need some antagonism,
rivalry, or trial of comparative strength, with him, to settle
this question, or is it merely what is his estimate of you,
and not how you rank in reference to himself?”
“Why, what effect it might have on faith in the touchstone,
to find myself in any respect the superior of the
man who is the holder of it, I do not know. Possibly it
might assist me in the struggle of becoming indifferent to
his valuation, to find that I could write better, paint
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better, fence or fight better, or even be more successful
as a lover; but the question is not one of talent, you
should understand It is not what my grade is, either for
intellectual ability or acquirement. Nor would it be at
all affected by my having been born a duke or a peasant.
It is simply what is the natural texture, coarser or finer,
of my stuff and quality as a gentleman. The clay of
mankind is of different grain, you will allow, my dear
monarchist, and not altogether dependent for its fineness
on birth and breeding!”
“A tangled theme, my dear republican, and one for
which, even if I were inclined to discuss it at all, we have
no time, if you have an engagement in the country to
breakfast. Shall I see you to-morrow morning?” asked
Tetherly, rising from the table and giving his two fingers
to his friend, with his usual affectation of indifference, as
he turned away.
In another half-hour Paul was on his way to the
Casa G—, and, as his vetturino took a more thoughtful
pace, commencing the ascent from the bank of the
Arno into the hills, his mood and the glorious completeness
and contentment of the forenoon seemed scarce in
harmony. There was a gay birth-day celebration before
him, and a hearty welcome to it; but the reaction of a
trying and eventful week was on his spirits—a week
which had been passed in the care for what society
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[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
would call his “honor,” but the memory of which, he
found, was not to be given over like a carelessly-turned
leaf to the past. The refusal of the English baronet
to be put courteously right, had driven Paul to seek
vindication by the detestable extremity of the duel, and,
with Tetherly's counsel and service, the hard-wrung reparation
had been ample enough—but the conscience
to which he had been educated was not at ease with
his pride. With this new unrest in his bosom—secret
and without sympathy, too, for the events of the just
foregone week of his absence from Florence were probably
unsuspected by the gay spirits with whom he was
presently to mingle—he would have been happier with
a day of solitude, or in the company of his pencil.
But when was ever unhappiness not the shortest way
to be more loved by woman? To the subdued manner
and the languid eye which Paul brought to the festivity,
there was the instant response of a twofold tenderness
of reception by its lovely queen. Prepared to find fault
with him for his non-compliance with her written request,
and his since unexplained long absence, the beautiful Sybil
felt, at the very first sight of his saddened features, that
her thought of reproach had been unjust to him. The
lingering and kindly pressure of her hand, and the softened
tone of her inquiries as she welcomed him back,
expressed this to him with a charm for which his
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depressed spirits had prepared the want and the welcome.
Made lighter-hearted by it for the moment, he did not
ask himself why the soft smile of that faultlessly moulded
mouth seemed less in need of a certain expressional sweetness
than ever before!
The latest of the guests were meantime arriving, though,
among these, was not Mr. Ashly. Paul had noticed that
this gentleman, arrived before him, stood leaning leisurely
against the porch of the casa, watching every movement
of the lovely Sybil, and scarce attending at all to Mrs.
Paleford, who talked to him from her easy-chair near by.
It did not require an artistic quickness of perception to
see that there was a movement in the watchful grey
eye which indicated an inquiry into the meaning of the
attaché's very cordial welcome. Paul felt that he was
more scrutinized than he would otherwise have been,
and was so far pleased that he was sure, now, of commanding
at least the attention of Mr. Ashly. That Sybil
might have awakened a tender interest in the new visitor
(who now first saw her since her childhood), was a natural
possibility, which, strange to say, had not before occurred
to Paul, and he saw in it the sudden prospect of a level
upon which he and Mr. Ashly would more fairly meet.
“I think you said you knew Mr. Fane,” said Mrs.
Paleford to her half-abstracted neighbor, as Paul paid
his respects to her, after leaving Sybil.
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Both gentlemen bowed a recognition, and Paul endeavored,
as before, to measure the indifference of his
address by the stranger's; though he could but perceive
that, with no relaxation of distant coldness, there was,
still, a certain non-withdrawal of the look that met his
own—differing, thereby, from the reluctant half glance at
their previous introduction—which he took to be proof
of the effect of his friend Tetherly's errand. The unjust
prepossession was removed.
With the serving of the breakfast, the queen of the
festivity, in her white dress, became a busy mover among
the guests. It was part of the style of little cost, which
Colonel Paleford was so quietly and consistently resolute
in maintaining, in accordance with his little means, that
there should be no servants in waiting at their simple
entertainments. The dishes once placed upon the table,
he and his daughter did what serving the guests could not
do for themselves—a very enlivening novelty in its operation,
for it distributed their presence as well as the fruits
and coffee, giving a pic-nic unceremoniousness to scenes,
which, with the difference of rank and languages, might
else have been constrained and unequal.
And there was a triumph of economy over cost, too, in
the splendor of the apartment for these rural gaieties. By
the colonel's influence with his landlord vintager, in early
spring, the rude trellising and latticing for the vines had
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been extended over an earthen level on the southern exposure
of the house, and shaped into a roomy hall, with columns
and alcoves. The apartments of the old stone casa
were small and low; but the pavilion in which now sat the
English ambassador and his family, and a few of the most
intelligent of the nobles and beauties of the court of Florence,
was as spacious as luxury could make it, and it
would scarce have been more beautiful if it had been built
of emeralds. With the prodigal fulness of the leaves, in
their June ripeness, the light came through the tangled
roof in the brightest of green and gold, and no stuffs of
the upholsterer could have exceeded the drapery of the
side columns, with their fruit-laden branches and tendrils.
Nature, that looks well enough with any company, looked
certainly more in harmony than usual with the refinement
and elegance it was here shutting in.
But as the breakfast gaieties went on, Paul found himself
again balancing one of those embarrassing choices of
conduct, in the light shadings of which, visible only to
himself, rather than in any tangible trial or adventure,
seemed to lie the shaping of his destiny. To his quick
eyes it became soon evident that the white dress moving
so actively about, carried with it the completely absorbed
interest and attention of Mr. Ashly. As Sybil stopped and
seated herself with one group after another, conversing
everywhere with the same childlike abandonment to the
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joyousness of the hour, he dwelt upon her with his gaze of
abstracted and forgetful earnestness, even showing by the
nervous movement of his lip that he was continually on
the verge of being surprised into a passionate exclamation
at her beauty. It was very apparent that, in the exceeding
loveliness of the daughter of his exile friend, the cold and
reserved man had found a wholly unanticipated enchantment.
On easy terms of acquaintance with most of the company
present, Paul was of course at liberty to bestow his
time and attention in more than one way, acceptably. He
needed not to see, unless he pleased, that there was a continual
opportunity to be the aid and attendant of the
active Sybil—sharing her services gaily when occasion
required, and meantime excusably lingering near her and
breathing the spell of her charming presence. With the
familiar abandon of the whole tone of the party, he might
thus monopolize a great portion of her real attention without
remark, while, just as unobservedly (by all but herself),
he might find any one of several other ladies sufficiently
attractive.
But it became clear enough to Paul, at the same time,
as the morning wore on, that just the portion which he
might thus relinquish of the smiles and near society of the
fair Sybil, would fall to the lot of Mr. Ashly. By several
little commissions from Colonel and Mrs. Paleford, the
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latter gentleman had been made the occasional sharer of her
duties; and, from nearness of age and similarity of language,
it was to these two that the more particular attendance
upon her was by general consent given over. The
service which the one should fail to render, would be performed
by the other—the call to her side for which one
might not be on the watch, would seem as if for the other
alone intended.
Paul could not but understand that Mr. Ashly was what
the world would consider a very desirable “match,” and
(where that point was any way brought in question) a man
to be given way to. He himself, as a confessed “detrimental,”
would be especially called upon to recognize and
even promote such legitimate precedence—by the neglecting
and avoiding Miss Sybil, that is to say, or otherwise
creating opportunity, to forward the better-freighted bliss
of the richer lover, if need were. But such magnanimity,
just now, on Paul's part, was not to be altogether spontaneous.
He did not feel sufficiently kindly, or even sufficiently
indifferent, to Mr. Ashly, to yield the path without
summons—before he should be seen, indeed, to stand at all
in the way. In fact, his pride and other unwillingnesses
sought a refuge from the present exercise of the virtue;
and he found it in the apparent coldness of the lady herself
to his rival, and the nature of what he believed to be
his own friendship with her—a Platonic intimacy, he now
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insisted, which might be still enjoyed without any interference
with the claims of a proper suitor for her hand.
[But there was an episode to this breakfast, for which
we see that we shall require the elbow-room of another
chapter.]
CHAPTER XVII.
To the reader who is keeping in view the key to our
story—that it portrays only the vanishing and usually
overlooked shades of the coloring of a destiny (the “parts
of a life yet untold”)—it will not seem strange that we
dwell thus principally on what was but a hidden and
unconfessed thought of Paul's mind during this birth-day
breakfast. With most of the company the day was one
(intellectually) of slippers and shirt-sleeves, loosened girdles,
and unbound hair. Such, at least, would have been
the apparelling of their thoughts made visible. The rural
festivity so uncostly and so simple, was a mental (as well
as bodily) taking of breath in fresh open air, after confinement
to things artificial—a change from the imprisonment
of palace luxury and ceremony to the cottage freedom of
plain surroundings and gaiety at will. And the guests
were not only such as could best realize this charm of
contrast, but they were those who could be at ease with
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each other, under full abandonment to its simplicities for
the day. Colonel Paleford, with a dignity above all splendor,
and his daughter with a beauty above all rank, were
the best of bidders to such a feast. But, while Paul felt all
this with the others, and was busy laying away in his
memory its many artistic contrasts and combinations, the
haunting spectre-thought in the background of his mind
was still visible. Trifling as it might have been, to all
present, and improbable as the existence of such a thought
would have seemed to her who believed herself (for him,
at least), the sole magnet of the hour, it still had its perpetual
place, and acted, with more or less influence, upon
his every look and movement.
A proposition to change the scene, by a transfer of the
coffee-tray to the cool spring in the grove below the hill,
was the break-up of the party at the table; and, through
the long alleys of the vineyard, and away under the old
chestnuts and cedars of the small wood that had been left
to shelter the spring, were seen scattered the careless promenaders.
The movement, of course, involved some new
arrangements, for which the fair Sybil must call upon her
aids; and Paul saw immediately, that, in the joint attendance
which would thus fall upon him and Mr. Ashly,
there would be a familiar contact with that gentleman,
which would throw light enough for his own quick eyes
upon his secret point of curiosity.
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In another moment entered the little barefooted regazza
and her peasant mother (of the resident family of the
vineyard, the outside attendants upon the festivity), bringing
between them the costly tray with its silver furniture,
which was almost the only relic preserved from the reduced
fortune of the Palefords. To remove this heavy article
with its fragrant load, and set it on the old stone curb of
the well below, was evidently to be the work of two courteous
assistants—the lady herself, and her father with his
one arm, already laden with cake-baskets and cups.
“Mr. Fane! Mr. Ashly!” was the appealing call upon
them, by the sweet voice of the smiling Sybil.
Paul stepped promptly forward, and, with a slight inclination
of the head, to express his consent to the proposed
partnership, laid his hand upon the tray.
But there was a hesitation—a single instant of embarrassment—
a look of inquiry to Colonel Paleford, as if the
partnership should rather have been with him—before the
movement was acceded to by Mr. Ashly. With a single
glance at Paul (but no word of courtesy or other sign of
willing fellowship with him in the lady's service) he then
hurriedly recovered as if from a delay that had grown
awkward, lifted his part of the burthen and walked on.
Now, while there was nothing in this at which Paul
could reasonably take offence—no proffer of his own
rejected, no advance of his own repelled—there was still
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enough in that look of an instant, and the trifling action
that accompanied it, to decide, incontrovertibly, for him,
the visionary uncertainty at his heart. The phantom
question was answered. Circumstances had combined to
present him fairly and fully to the fatal eye in which lay
the power of pronouncing what was his grade in nature;
and by the unprompted instinct of that eye, he had been
looked down upon as inferior. The disparagement of his
quality by the same tribunal once before—the sister's cold
eye, in which resided the same power—was thus confirmed.
Even as they walked, now, side by side—through the
vibrations of the senseless burthen borne between his and
Mr. Ashly's united grasp—there passed, it seemed to him,
a magnetism of rejection and depreciation. He was
denied to be of the world's finer clay. The moss-covered
stones of the old well were not reached, before the gates
of his heart closed upon the admitted secret, so long held
at arms'-length, and like a barbed arrow, it was shut in to
rankle in his pride.
But with the setting down of the massive silver tray,
there was a new liveliness given, all at once, to the ministrations
of the lovely Egeria. An ingenious table was suddenly
constructed by a lattice-gate taken from its hinges
and laid across the well-curb; the turned-up bucket was
placed for a seat; the coffee-cups and their various accompaniments
were skillfully arranged; and every want of the
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extemporized entertainment seemed to be magically anticipated.
As the guests came in, couple after couple, from
their stroll through the vineyard and grove, they were
waited on and served from the fragrant fount, with the
graceful gaiety of a play; the groups were arranged picturesquely
on the green-sward in the shade, and the pervading
tone of buoyancy and merry unceremoniousness
made the scene less like a party from modern Florence than
like a romance from Boccacio.
And it would have been difficult for Mr. Ashly not to
see that the conjuror of this fresh spell of gaiety was Mr.
Fane. In the change of this gentleman's manner to sudden
joyousness, there had been a complete magnetism for
the spirits of the company. In the confident aptness of
his attendance upon Miss Paleford, his ready tact of
courtesy, his respectful but eager promptness, his abandonment
altogether to the mirth and impulse of the moment,
it was evident that he was exercising a natural gift of
becoming the ruling spirit of the hour. Whatever might
be Mr. Ashly's opinion as to its assumption or forwardness,
it was undeniably successful in superseding and throwing
into the shade his own dignity and reserve; and he could
not but see, also, that it sat exceedingly well upon Mr.
Fane.
But, for Sybil, there was a magnetism, in this change of
Paul's manner, which reached farther. Exhilarated as she
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might easily have been with such magic anticipation of
her wants, such skillful service, and such aid of herself as a
centre to shine and diffuse brightness to her circle of
guests, there was a contrast in it all, which was alone
visible to her, and which stirred a thoughtfulness deeper
than any exhilaration was likely to have thrown its light
She had but vaguely realized, before, what was wanting in
Paul's manner to her. With all the charm she had
secretly thought to possess over him, there was a reserved
depth in his heart, which his manner, hitherto, in some
inexplicable way, assured her she did not reach. Without
fairly reasoning upon it—dismissing it, indeed, with some
easily found excuse as often as it presented itself—she had
been, still, perseveringly haunted by this uncertainty of her
power over him.
It was changed now! There was an entireness of purpose
in every look, word, and action—a welcome to that
and more—which was new in Paul's manner. Its expression
seemed to her to be that of a lover, and a complete
and daring one—one who wished all her attention for the
moment, and was confident of deserving and winning it—
yet with a lover's deference in the accent of the words
addressed only to his own ear, and a lover's deep-toned
earnestness and an inexpressibly softened tenderness, in the
attentions which were for herself only. It was the making
her seem the whole world to him, as she had longed to
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seem; and the response—in her gentle yieldingness of
movement and tone, and in the more languid softness
which now veiled the usual clearness of her eye—would
have startled any observer less pre-occupied than he who
had caused it.
But, in thus playing the lover for the first time to this
beautiful girl, Paul was madly unaware both of the character
of his motive, and of the extent to which he was
successful. His apparent coolness and self-possession might
have made him seem more than usually conscious of what
responsibility he was incurring; yet these were but the
outer workings of an inner tumult that, in its present first
waking, was wholly ungovernable. The power of concentration
that was his leading quality of mind—enabling him
now, as it did, to bend every faculty with almost unnatural
aptitude and quickness to the accomplishment of his object—
was, for the present, but a withdrawal of all light from
conscience and motive. The slight which his visionary
sensibility had received from Mr. Ashly forced the long-gathered
darkness of the cloud in his mind to a lightning
point. He had been pronounced of coarser clay—and by
any possible assertion of a superiority of his own he must
lessen the contempt of that verdict! With his stung and
turbulent feeling he did not stop to ask himself why this
doom (a doom to which he had so strangely and unresistingly
assented) should be revenged upon the one who had
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unconsciously pronounced it; nor did he realize, as he certainly
would have done, with time for reflection, how the
retaliatory exercise of a momentary mastery over his censor—
staking all, to win, for an hour of resentful rivalry,
the preference of the young heart aspired to by the other—
was, in its possible injury to the best hopes of that young
heart, at least, wanton and unworthy.
It approached the sunset, and most of the titled and gay
guests had taken their leave. The few who remained were
the more special intimates of the family; and for these
had been reserved a summons to the little drawing-room
of the old Casa, where, over a cup of tea, were to be produced
and discussed the more affectionate secrets of the
occasion—the letters of felicitation, the flowers, the birth-day
presents, and the exchange of smiles and sweet wishes
between parents and child.
The latter part of the entertainment out of doors had
been a most marked carrying out of the morning's vindictive
triumph. Colonel Paleford himself had watched with
mingled feelings the more thoughtful and assured contentment
of his daughter's manner, and her complete absorption
in Paul's every look and word. The bewilderment of
Mr. Ashly with her beauty, and the rejection of his
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[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]
lover-like attentions, which was contained in her polite civility
to him, were, to the clear-sighted eyes of the father, equally
apparent. It was not for him to disturb, even by a look,
on her birth-day, this dream of happiness; yet he could
not but sigh over the advantages she was thus girlishly
throwing aside—worldly advantages that might be so
important to beauty and qualities like hers; and, in his
manner to the depressed and discouraged lover, there was
a tenderness of courtesy which indirectly soothed his
annoyance, and which, rightly interpreted, would have
been to him a whisper of encouragement.
But, to the exhilarating liveliness with which Paul—
still in untiring spirits—was successfully giving the tone to
the conversation at the tea-table, there was presently an
interruption. The servant handed in a box, which had
just been left at the gate for Miss Paleford—a birth-day
present, doubtless arriving late—and the colonel proceeded
to gratify general curiosity by opening it in the drawing-room.
Paul alone was in the secret of what that box contained.
It was a copy of Sybil's portrait, taken from the study of
the group of three, drawn from memory, on which he had
spent such careful elaboration. Simply framed as a crayon
sketch, it had only “best wishes for many happy returns
of the day” written under the address, and no intimation
from whence it came, or who was the painter. On this
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latter point he knew very well there would be room for
ample conjecture; as the Palefords, with their love of the
Arts, were constant visitors to the various studios of Florence,
and the colonel was a kind encourager particularly
of his own countrymen among the artists. That the features
of one so generally admired should have been taken
for a study, was of course very natural, and, though a portrait
without a sitting, it was a compliment to her beauty
very likely to be paid.
As the picture was taken out, and set in a favorable
light against the wall, there was a universal recognition of
the subject; but it was looked at, for a moment or two,
with silent and wondering inquisitiveness. Wholly unsuspected
to be the artist, even by Sybil herself, Paul's conversation—
(between the awkwardness of giving an opinion
of his own work, and the necessity of still playing
a leading part while listening for the criticisms and
watching for the first impressions he so wished to store
away in his memory)—became a matter of some embarrassment.
“It is very quiet,” said Colonel Paleford, at last, whose
habit of mind was to feel his way to a decision very carefully—
“nothing startling about it.”
Paul mentally thanked him for that much. It was a
negative approval of one of his chief aims in the design.
“And what do you think of it, Mrs. Paleford?” asked
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some one, as the invalid's chair was wheeled up to the
point of view.
“Well,” said the mother, gazing at it with moistened
eyes very tenderly, “it looks as I have imagined Sybil
might look when she is alone.”
Paul thanked the mother in his heart for what, to him,
was very sweet praise of his picture.
“It is a fine piece of work,” said the English ambassador,
who had scrutinized it very carefully through his
glass—“a masterly drawing, I think, if only for what it
has left undone. The temptations to effect were very
great in so queenly a face, and the artist has kept true to
a certain flower-like simplicity.”
Standing a little apart from the company, meantime
with Sybil left to his more especial attention, Paul was
thoughtfully treasuring up the last very precious commendation
of his drawing, when the fair original herself,
somewhat overpowered with the discussion of her beauty,
turned to him with a criticism for his ear alone.
“It seems to me,” she said, “to lack decision, and to be
altogether too dreamy for so real a person as I am. At least
I do not feel very like that. What is your judgment of it?”
Paul made an evasive reply; but, in that chance remark
was expressed the difficulty he had found in the picture—
the want, indeed, which there was for him in the magnetism
and character of Miss Paleford. It explained where
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he had departed from the likeness, and why he had been
compelled to make the expression rather what it might
have been than what it was. But, though he treasured
and remembered these few significant words of hers, his
attention was awakened the next moment, by what was far
more a surprise.
Colonel Paleford had watched Mr. Ashly with great
interest after becoming aware of the little drama that had
been enacting out of doors, and, keeping near him at the
tea-table, he endeavored to soften with his own tact and
kindness, as far as was possible, the neglect which the
slighted lover was experiencing from his preoccupied
daughter. The conversation he had addressed to him,
from time to time, had but partially withdrawn him from
his still persevering and unequal contest with Paul, however,
till, on the appearance of the picture, he became in
that entirely and abstractedly absorbed. With his arms
crossed over the back of one of the high chairs, he stood
quite motionless for a few minutes, looking at it with an
intensity in which the living original seemed almost
forgotten.
“And what do you think of the picture, my dear
Ashly?” was the question from Colonel Paleford which
had arrested Paul's ear, and made him a listener to the
reply, so wholly unexpected.
“I should like very much to know the artist,” he said,
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with the slow enunciation of one thinking aloud. “That
sketch is from a quality of genius that I have been trying
for years to find.”
“Why, I thought myself, that the touch was very delicate,”
said the Colonel, assenting and approaching the
picture.
“Something of that, perhaps, too,” continued Mr. Ashly
“but I referred to the expression only. The artist has
gone deeper than the face, for his sitter.”
“Less a likeness than an ideal, then, you think?”
“No! I have not yet quite made myself understood,”
the still half-musing critic went on to say. “There are
plenty of artists who idealize a portrait, but it is only their
way of softening defects of feature, or oftener, perhaps, of
slighting something difficult to draw. It is an easy mode
of flattering the subject. But the departure from literal
likeness in this sketch, seems to me only a more clear-sighted
faithfulness to the original. I feel in looking at
that, as if my own previous impression of the face were
corrected by a deeper-seeing observer.”
(Paul began to feel that what he had tried to believe of
Miss Paleford's character of mind, and painted accordingly,
was, to her more real lover, a full faith.)
“You find it to be an intellectually true portrait of
Sybil?” said the father, looking inquiringly to and fro
between his daughter and the picture.
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“Pardon me!—one more distinction!” persisted Mr.
Ashly. It is the due proportion given to the qualities of
character, as well as to those of the mind, which makes its
peculiarity. The artist has gone in and seen her whole
nature, with spirit-perception. He has read her heart as
well as recognised her thoughts. And it is not a picture
of any one look or any special mood of mind. It is the
unconscious repose of expression that she might have, as
Mrs. Paleford just now said, “when she is alone”—a pure
woman's mere calm of life when just risen from her morning
prayer. Believe me, my dear colonel, that artist has
what is called `inspiration!' When at work at his art, at
least, whoever he is, he is a noble-natured and superior
man.”
(Could Paul believe his ears? Was the utterer of these
words the man from whom he thought he had received
unpardonable contempt? And—second thought!—could
he forgive himself for the revenge he had taken for what
was now so evidently but a passing impression of himself,
acted upon with no knowledge of his inner and better
nature?)
“Of course you will soon know who was the artist?”
said Mr. Ashly, looking at the colonel over his shoulder as
he stepped forward to Mrs. Paleford to offer her his hand
and take his leave.
“To-morrow, I dare say; and we will take you to him
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at once, to see his other works—(though to tell the truth,
I have not the remotest idea which of our artist friends it
can be)—but why are you off, my dear Ashly?” said the
hospitable host, retaining the hand of his guest.
The movement was a signal for dispersion, however, and
Paul, with scarce self-command enough left under this new
reaction, to make a farewell consistent at all with his
doings for the day, said adieu under cover of the general
stir, and took his way, with the thickening twilight,
toward town. He needed solitude. He saw life getting
tangled before him; and, to be at peace with himself
again, there was much of what he had lately done that he
must mourn over and undo.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
Autumn had been brought round by the pitilessly
punctual wheel of the Seasons, and the trees probably felt—
as Blivins chanced to feel with a corresponding Octoberness—
that their attraction, for what they had most
rejoiced in, was beginning to weaken. The leaves clung
with less constancy to the trees, and Paul seemed to
adhere with less and less flourishing perpetuity of vegetation
to his faithful Bosh. From passing every day, and the
whole day, at the Blivins studio, Paul was now but an
occasional visitor there—his work at that neglected easel
on the other side of the room, indeed, becoming daily
more uncertain and brief. And it was like a departure of
summer that Bosh felt this falling off. He would have
expressed it clumsily in words, probably, but he had an
affection for his college room-mate that had leaved out into
a most umbrageous ever-pleasantness; and, oh, the wintriness
of shedding such foliage of the soul!
If it had been only that Paul was growing idle, or had
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more studying to do at the Galleries, or if, for any reason
but the apparently real one, he was now bestowing less
time and talk on his old chum and crony, the consolation
might have been easier to find. But there was an inference
which made it a slight, as well as a neglect. It was
another friend—another artist—who was taking Bosh's
place as an intimate. There was even another studio, where
was set an easel at which the faithless fellow spent the
day with his pencil. Those long and precious hours of
gossip over work, the un-pumped flow of thoughts welling
like a spring, were not only thirsty Bosh's, no more, but
somebody else's!
Upon this new intimacy and its peculiar attraction,
Paul was, somehow, curiously incommunicative. He not
only would not introduce Blivins to his friend the sculptor,
but, in their still daily conversations at their common
lodgings, he could not be hinted into a discussion of his
style of genius and works, nor into any description of his
person and manners. That his name was “Signor Valerio,”
and that he was the favorite student of old Secchi the
copyist, was all that the reluctant Paul seemed willing to
communicate; and this to one from whom he never before
had a secret!
Paul's intimacy with the Princess (Signor Valerio) had
taken a new character from the moment of his confessing
himself an artist. Her surprise to find him really one,
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was the most agreeable that she had recognised, in the
conversation of the attaché, the qualities of mind which
had made her designate him, in playful compliment, “an
artist;” and his constant society, as such, chanced to be
just the companionship of which she most felt the want.
The privacy with which both she and Paul were devoting
life to the pursuit of art, while apparently interested only
in the gaieties of a court, made a common bond of sympathy;
and, with an inquiry into his working habits, it
was very natural that she should propose to place an easel
for him where she could share his artistic hours, in her
own well-lighted and luxurious studio. That there was
any reason why those hours of inspired industry—apparently
thrown away on his countryman Blivins, as far as
companionship went—should not be linked with her own
daily life, in a retreat thus hidden from the world, was a
doubt not likely to occur to the Princess, with her habitual
defiance of appearances.
The complete union of the artist-life of the two, however,
had been but gradually brought about. It was not
till the coming on of the summer that the Palefords had
taken their departure (the invalid mother of Sybil ordered
by the physician to the Baths of Lucca); and this, with the
return of Mr. Ashly to England, had left Paul, for the first
time, at full leisure, and with interest and thought to spare,
for the cultivation of a friendship. With time and
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sensibilities to dispose of, the studio of the gifted and high-born
woman became more and more agreeable as a resort, and
there was no alarm in Paul's mind at the nature of the
new intimacy thus commencing. Startling as it might
have seemed, if its fullest mingling of thoughts and hours
could have been looked forward to, the successive steps to
it were natural and rational. The repose and imperturbableness
of the Princess's habitual tone and presence may have
contributed to this; but it was, probably, more the elevated
level of the leading topics of interest between them. Is
there not a height of intellectual sympathy at which a
friendship between those of opposite sex may be cultivated
without danger from love? Some indirect light is thrown,
upon Paul's experience in the matter, by the following
passage from one of his letters to his mother:—
* * * The path of Art which, in glowing and sanguine
moments, I mark out for myself as peculiarly my own, becomes
very indistinct under depression and discouragement. It is not
merely that I cannot handle my pencil, when out of spirits, but
the handling that I have already done, with a feeling of success
and a belief in its originality, loses all force and beauty to my eye.
If I were working entirely by myself, I should, half the time, neither
be the same person, nor believe Art to be the same thing.
The fact is, dear mother (though it may look like a craving for
flattery), we need some one to talk to us about ourselves. I, at
least, need to be followed very closely by some loving and willing
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appreciator, who believes in me when I am doubtful about myself,
and, by praise and judicious criticism, re-identifies and restores the
ideal I have lost. The love that would praise blindly and indiscriminately
would not answer for this. While it needs the delicacy
and watchful devotion of a woman, it needs, also, the well-balanced
and unimpulsive judgment of a man.
“Signor Valerio,” in whose studio I oftenest pass my day, at
present, is just this friend to me. He is a sculptor, and works at
his clay model, while, at my easel, near by, I paint or draw. For
any good touch or line of mine, I get the immediate recognition
which inspires me to surpass it; for any doubtful line, I get the
discussion which confirms or rejects; for the concentration and
patience without which there is no excellence (yet which are so
fickle and evasive as moods of the mind), I get approval for what
I show, and encouragement to show more. My genius (if I may
use that word, for lack of a better) does not depend on the
deferred or unheard approval of a distant public, but has its
reward while the glow of performance is still warm, in the near
and present congratulation so much sweeter than tardy fame.
And now, are you prepared for a surprise? And will you
believe that this “Signor Valerio”—the sculptor in artist costume,
and with the confident ease as well as the slouched hat of a gentleman—
is a woman? With your ideas of such matters, my dear
mother, this will seem, first incredible, then disreputable. But do
not condemn too hastily. The Princess C— (who thus disguises
herself) is a woman with genius enough to be entitled to an eccentricity.
I will give you her history, as known to the world, in
another letter. She thus varies her court life, because, to a high
rank in genius she was as much born as to that of a princess, and
she must have privilege and scope as an artist. I formed her
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acquaintance at the duke's palace, and have gradually been admitted
to this intimacy of common pursuits. The sculpture, which is
her utterance of inspiration, is a sort of fraternity of Art between
us which makes her male attire seem natural.
Now, can you not see, dear mother, how this should be, to me,
even more absorbing than a love would be—a friendship without
passion, and better than a passion? Doubtless there is danger in
such an intimacy; for the princess is very lovely as a woman, and
her nature is glowing and fearless—but, escaping this, how precious
is the gem which only with this peril is perfected! I really do not
think a friend complete who has not the mental qualities of the
two sexes; yet, as a man is thought less than man who is feminine
enough for this, it must be a woman who is more than woman by
being masculine enough. And the poetry of sacredness that slumbers
in the background of such a friendship—with a tempting
human passion within reach, for which the else completely united
hearts are too strong and too pure!
Yes, mother! this slender and soft-eyed youth, who looks over
my shoulder as I draw, is the romance of my present life, I am
free to own. And that there are moments when the danger which
belongs to the romance seems critical, I own as freely. Yet professional
habit, and her own unconsciousness, make me forget, for
the great portion of the time, that there is anything to be guarded
against; and it is curious, after all, how much there is conventional
and needless in our notions of what is modest. I leave my work
to look, in turn, at some new beauty of her moulding; and,
though the model is entirely nude—(an ideal of Hermione)—I
stand before it with “Signor Valerio,” and, without a thought of
indelicacy, criticise and admire all its graces and proportions.
She has strangely given to this Hermione, indeed, wholly undraped
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as it is, a look of high birth which throws a protecting atmosphere
of purity around it. And in this look (which, I am un-republican
enough to confess, is a very great fascination of her own) lies part
of the secret, perhaps, why her fearless defiances of dress and conduct
seem all so irreproachable. * * *
As our chapter was going on to say (before this
letter's occurring to us as throwing some light on the
character of Paul's new friendship), there was a sudden
suspension of the neglect about which Blivins had grown
disconsolate. For several mornings the deserter had appeared
and gone duly to work, at his accustomed easel.
No explanation, to be sure, of why he had wandered,
nor why he now returned—but there he was, gentle
and playful as ever, sketching and conversing as naturally
as if no rival intimate and artist had ever made
another studio more agreeable. Bosh was too delicate
as well as too happy to ask questions. He behaved
like a generous woman to her uncatechised truant of a
lover; simply striving to be so much sweeter than ever
that the forgiven sinner would never do so any more.
The pacified Bosh would not have liked to know,
however, why that same Signor Valerio was under the
necessity of dispensing with Paul's society for a while!
In the course of some conversation on the subject
of models, the princess had spoken of the difficulty she
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found in the coarseness of the forms of the Italian lower
classes; and, with Paul's incidental mention of the slighter
and more graceful American type of female beauty, Miss
Firkin's defeated ambition (as to her portrait and its
justice to her figure) had been naturally alluded to.
A regret expressed by the princess that she had not
been the artist—to obviate the embarrassment by being
of the same sex as the sitter—led to a proposal that
her highness should be introduced to the fair Sophia
as simply a sculptress, and so make the bust which
the Ohio beauty was ambitious of possessing; at the
same time obtaining a study of her form for artistic
uses. There was a novelty of adventure in the matter
which at once took the princess's fancy.
Paul, since the discomfiture and departure of the
fortune-hunting and dinner-seeking baronet, had become
a great favorite with the Firkins. Yet it required some
little diplomacy to arrange the sittings for the bust—
mamma's prejudice on the subject to be encountered,
point blank, and Blivins (the now accepted lover) to
be kept altogether in the dark; besides which, it was
necessary to soften the fact, to Mrs. Firkin at least,
that the sculptress, for incog. reasons of her own,
as well as for convenience, would be apparelled as a
gentleman! These difficulties surmounted, however, the
first interview was brought about; and Mrs. Firkin
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(greatly astonished at what she saw, but still satisfied
that “Signor Valerio” was really of the harmless gender,
and no mistake), was content with once matronizing
her daughter to that queer place, and willing, that, for
the remaining number of sittings, she should go alone.
It was on the days for these tête-à-tête sittings that Paul
was of course excluded from the princess's studio, and
returned, as we have already mentioned, to his friend
Blivins; and as the only eye-witness to give us an account
of what took place in his absence is the fair
sitter herself, we will borrow what she is willing to
tell of it from one of her confidential letters. She thus
wrote to her friend and constant correspondent, Miss Kitty
Kumletts, of Rumpusville, Alabama:
Florence, —, —.
My dear Kitty:
Please receive me in my night-cap and slippers, for I was all
undressed to go to bed, when I found I must first go to Alabama—
so full of thoughts of you, that is to say, that there would be no
sleeping till I had written you a letter. It is not late, either. You
are very certain to be wide awake, yourself. Very likely enjoying
your second-hand sunset—the identical sun that set, for us here in
Florence, three or four hours ago! Of course you love it more
because it has lately seen me; though, when Mr. Fane happened
to mention Europe's getting the first call from the sun and moon,
Pa was quite disgusted with the whole affair. He said the Declaration
of Independence ought to have arranged that our glorious
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Republic should have the “first cut” of daylight and everything
else.
But, talking of Mr. Fane and me, Kitty, what do you think of
this charming man's having managed to gratify my little pet wickedness
of a wish, after all? I may as well own, I suppose, that this
letter is for nothing but to tell you that I am sitting for my bust!
Pos-i-tive-ly! And, to an artist in trousers that button in front,
and reach (I tremble to write it) to his very heels!
Have you got your breath, my dear, so that I can proceed to
give you the particulars?
You know I wrote to you of the injustice done to my figure by
a portrait in which I was boxed up as a goddess of Liberty, with
nothing visible but a nose, as it were. My sorrows on this point
touched the heart of Mr. Fane. He has an artist's eye, and had
observed my “proportions,” (such a nice, useful word, proportions!)
and not wishing me to be the “full many a flower that's born to
blush unseen,” he set about contriving how I should be seen—in
marble, which is not expected to blush, you know! I thought, at
the first mention of the possibility of it, that mamma would scream
so that you could hear her over there.
But (not to keep you longer in suspense) it appeared that Mr.
Fane had a friend whose profession was sculpture, and who, when
at work, was as like a naughty man as possible; but who had only
to undress to be a lady! It was “Mr. Valerio,” and in masculine
belongings; but there was neither whisker nor moustache, and the
trousers were altogether harmless. So Mr. Fane assured us on his
honor—though mamma had seen boys with smooth faces, and
would trust no apparent young man to be left alone with my “proportions,”
till she had first put her two good Ohio eyes upon him.
Well, we went, first, all together. We were shown into a
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beautiful studio, and “Signor Valerio” came in, presently, dressed like
an artist and with a slouched hat, and as like a man—but I will
not aggravate your curiosity by saying how much. Mamma looked
sharp, I assure you! She watched him as he walked round, and
saw him sit down and get up; and heard him speak, and looked at
his chin and under his hat—and, finally, she was content to go
away, with Mr. Fane, and leave me alone with “Signor Valerio.”
What she saw that convinced her, I have no idea, for, to my eyes,
it was exactly as any slender young man would begin by behaving
and looking; but there I was—left unchaperoned with that suit of
clothes and its contents—and nothing but Mr. Fane's “solemn
honor” to satisfy me that it was a woman! And—to “sit” to him,
presently! Oh, Kitty! oh!
Of course you know how they do these things. A clay model,
partly shaped, stood on the stand, and “Signor Valerio,” after a
few minutes' chat, took the wet cloth from this muddy lump, and
very coolly commenced working on the—on the “proportions.”
This was as much as to say, that, as it was to be a likeness of me,
the lovely original was expected to be visible at the same place;
and here commenced my crisis! I had gone there in a loose
wrapper, on purpose—but, to take off my collar and let down my
shoulder-straps, etc., with a pair of pantaloons walking about the
room! Impossible! And then a man's hat with a pair of live
eyes, that might be of any sex whatever, under the rim! Wait till
you have shown your “proportions” under such awful circumstances,
my dear!
No! I was compelled to a compromise. I tried—and tried—
but no! I couldn't! It was not the trousers altogether—but that
hat! As long as such a male unmistakability as a man's hat with
eyes under it was looking right at me, I could never take off my
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shoulder-straps—never! never! And, finally, I asked if the hat
couldn't be put out of the room.
But, la! with the letting down of the “Signor's” long hair (for
he politely complied with my request, though he wears the hat to
shade his weak eyes from the light), he became female at once!
With those black tresses down his back, the trousers had no manner
of expression! I should not have minded, even if his suspenders
had been visible. And, do you know, I think that it is long
hair that makes the difference, after all? Why the men, who
adore us so, don't let their own hair grow, and thus become just as
adorable, themselves, I cannot conceive. I am wondering whether
I mightn't do several convenient things with my curls let down—
such as wearing trousers for a walk in muddy weather, or for riding
so much more nicely on a man's saddle. Think that over, Kitty,
and perhaps, when I come home, we can set the fashion!
Well, it's very pleasant to have one's figure admired, even by
a woman. Once sure that the trousers were non compos, I “peeled”
(as brother 'Phus calls it, when he strips for a fight), and let myself
be studiously perused by “Signor Valerio” for a couple of hours;
and his compliments to my little inequalities, and his efforts to
make a likeness of what he found perfect, made a charming morning
of it. I have been twice since, and even the clay model is not
yet done. This is to be cast in plaster, you know, and then will
come the finishing in marble—so that I have a long intimacy with
these same innocuous masculinities in prospect.
Now, of all this, my over-particular Blivins knows nothing. He
is to be pacified, when the bust is done, either by having it under
lock and key to himself (to begin with—for, of course, I can have
my own way about it, after awhile), or by having “Hebe” or
“Venus” engraved upon the pedestal, so that people may be let
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into his family secrets without knowing it. As to Mr. Fane's having
seen it, the dear honest fellow loves him so much that he
would not mind, I think, even if it had been the original!
I shall write to you of my remaining experiences in “sitting.” I
have a deal to learn myself, for I have not yet made out who or
what this “Signor Valerio” is, or how she and Mr. Fane happen to
be so very well acquainted. She seems pretty—but there's no
knowing what a woman is like till you see her in petticoats. For
these, and some other delightful matters, however, look to my
future letters. To bed, now, dear Kitty, goes your
Ever affectionate
'Phia Firkin.
And, with one of our hero's side-secrets thus confidentially
explained, we shall resume his more direct personal
experiences in another chapter.
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CHAPTER XIX.
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Of another new thread that had been strangely braided
into Paul's web of tangled life, during this month of
October, we must unravel the windings a little.
With the almost immediate departure of the Palefords,
for the Baths of Lucca, after the birthday breakfast, the
mystery of the portrait had been left unsolved. It was not
that Paul meant to maintain his incognito beyond the first
surprise; but the apt occasion for confessing himself the
painter had not come, amid the hurry and embarrassments
of leave-taking; and as, among the friendly commissions
given him to do in their absence, one was, to look around
upon the walls of the various studios and find other works
by which to identify this unknown pencil, a continuance of
the mystification, built upon his imaginary adventures in
search of it, became an amusing spice for his correspondence.
In reply to one of Paul's letters, in which he had hinted
at coming upon some traces of the unknown, Colonel
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Paleford had somewhat enlarged his commission. Mr. Ashly
had written to inform his friends that a maiden aunt, with
whom they were well acquainted, was on her way to
Florence; and, supposing, that, of course, by this time, the
painter of the admired sketch of Miss Sybil had been discovered,
he wished a portrait of this beloved relative by
the same hand. The Colonel's letter enclosed a note of
introduction for the artist (the name left in blank) to Miss
Winifred Ashly; and the new request to Paul was, that he
would take some additional pains to find the said artist,
deliver to him the instructions with the note, and inform
him that the lady-subject for his pencil was already arrived
and at the Hotel Europa.
Paul's first impulse was to confess to the authorship of
the sketch of Sybil, and put an end to the mystification at
once, by the return of Mr. Ashly's introductory note. But,
with a second thought arose a question: Why not present
the letter himself, and paint the picture? The opportunity
to make some beginning of a reparation to one whom he
felt he had greatly wronged—to complete and present to
him (if only as a grateful acknowledgment for his appreciative
praise) a portrait that would give him pleasure—
was a motive that, even by itself, seemed quite sufficient.
The ambition for a second approval, by the same discriminating
judgment from which, in fact, he had won his first
honors as an artist, of course, had its weight.
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But he found, too, that his long-hidden disquietude was
still at work. The lady to sit for the picture was an
Ashly—of the blood in which seemed to reside the recognition
of quality, to which irresistible instinct made him
subject—and the curiosity awoke to present himself anew
to this strange touchstone; or if it should not be found to
reside in her look, also, to familiarize himself, at least, with
the family features and character, and so strengthen his
power of analyzing what had been to him, and might still
be, such a phantom of humiliation. With the certainty
that the Palefords would still be absent for a month, and
the field thus entirely to himself, the project to take advantage
of this strangely presented opportunity seemed as
feasible as it was irresistibly tempting.
The filling up of the blank in the note of introduction,
the morning after the travesty was resolved upon, cost
Paul a puzzled twirl or two of his finger. It was, at last,
fairly written, however—Evenden—the association with his
simplest and most honest of friends seeming to serve as the
apology demanded by his conscience for the assumption of
a fictitious name. And with a courage that, for several
reasons, required the bracing of a strong will, “Mr. Evenden,”
at an early calling hour, sent up his card and note
of introduction to Miss Ashly.
The lady whom Paul was presently to see (we will make
use of his momentary delay in the ante-room to inform the
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reader) was the maiden aunt of the two of the name who
have already taken part in our story—the only sister of
Mr. Ashly, their father. She was, however, from the incidental
possession, in her own right, of a great portion of
what was nominally the estate, and the power of disposing
of it at her pleasure, a much more important personage in
the family than an elderly single lady is usually likely to
be. Her qualities of character, too, were quite in keeping
with her adventitious consequence; and, though endearing
and affectionate in her more familiar intercourse with her
relatives, she was generally thought by their acquaintances
to be of disposition and manners unapproachably cold and
imperious. Her habits were very independent, and sometimes
looked capricious and unsocial—her present journey,
unattended, to Italy, for instance, when any one of the
circle at home would gladly have accompanied her. Her
apparent mental necessity for isolation—showing itself not
only by refusal of the thrall of matrimony, but by avoidance
even of the briefer restraints of habitual companionship
or intimacy—had, of course, its human penalty of
loneliness; and from this she found refuge in music. It was
the one passion that took the overflow of what would not
be locked up in her soul.
With the announcement that Miss Ashly would receive
him, Paul followed the servant, and was ushered into the
presence of a tall lady in mourning—the light of the room
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so subdued, however, that he could distinguish only the
general outline of her features. Unable to decide, at first,
therefore, whether he was sitting for his own picture as
well as she for hers—whether or no it was the dreaded
look of an Ashly that was now bent upon him—his anticipations
of embarrassment naturally gave place to his habitual
ease of manner. Her voice made him formal, however.
It had the tardy and unemphasized utterance of thoughts
followed reluctantly, never anticipated, and not always
overtaken. Even in the phrasing of the ceremonious
common-places of reception, there was this same evidence
of an inner world more lived in—the manner for the outer
world (of intercourse with others) having the cold air of
the room uninhabited or re-entered but to receive strangers.
“And when and where am I to sit to you, Mr. Evenden?”
she asked, after expressing very decidedly the unwillingness
of her compliance with her nephew's request.
“Now and here,” said Paul, who had anticipated her
probable wishes for promptness in the matter; “a servant
is below with my drawing-board and easel, and if you will
allow me to ring your bell and order them up, we can
commence at once. As it is to be but a crayon sketch, I
thought I would not put you to the inconvenience of coming
to my out-of-the-way studio.”
“Thanks, my dear sir!” she replied, with an accent of
polite surprise, as she rang the bell on the way to her
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dressing-room; “your directness pleases me as much as
your charming thoughtfulness of my comfort. Both promise
well for your picture. I must leave you a moment,
for a little change in my toilette, and, meantime, perhaps,
you will make your arrangements as to light, etc. I will
be with you presently.”
But with the re-appearance of that tall figure, in the full
light with which the un-shuttered windows had flooded the
room in her absence, Paul did not resume his previous
readiness for his task. By his first clear look at her now
undisguised features, the lamp of genius within him seemed
suddenly extinguished! Yet she had even more beauty
than he had supposed. Though past the prime of life, her
un-emotional current of reserve and coldness had worn no
channels on her face. It had the shape and complexion of
comparative youthfulness. But the Ashly eye was there,
with its indescribable superiority, cold, fastidious, disdainful;
and, under its steady look, Paul felt his powers as an
artist—the evasive ideality of conception and the subtle
dexterity of hand—palsied as by a spell.
An hour passed—and another—and they were hours of
failure and vain effort, as to his work. But they were not
without their interest. She sat before him, and he had an
artist's privilege to gaze upon her face and analyze it. It
seemed to him as if it were the very face from which he
had received the look that turned the whole current of his
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life, so strong was the likeness. It was curious to study it
now. He sketched and erased, making little or no progress,
even in completing the outline; and pausing as long
between the touches of his pencil as was possible without
exciting her attention. To her inquiries from time to time
as to his success, he pleaded artistic difficulties, changes of
design in the pose, or of conception in the expression and
character. But, though discouraged as to favorably portraying
the face, and despairing, indeed, of ever completing
a picture of it, he did not the less gloat over his unlimited
privilege of studying it. He rejoiced, also, in his artist
liberty of silence—for, in the chance which it afforded for
the yielding of precedence in the selection of topics and
expression of opinion, it aided that deference which is the
first charm of conversation, and so made it likelier that he
should be himself agreeable to Miss Ashly, and without
the appearance of effort.
The sitting was concluded with an engagement for the
same hour on the following day; and the history of that,
as of the day following, was very much the same. Paul
had none but mechanical powers to bring to his work—no
inspiration and no caprices of thought or handling—but
he had the dogged industry of an iron will, and as much
skill of pencil as had become habitual; and, with these,
there was necessarily a progress in the portrait. It
approached a likeness; and Miss Ashly was apparently as
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content with it as she had expected to be, praising it more
than Paul knew it deserved—but another solution of his
secret and visionary problem was meantime working out;
and while he meant that this should be watched to its
extremest development, the intention to finally abandon
his picture, as a task he could not complete to his liking,
grew stronger and stronger.
With the close of the third day's sitting, Paul turned
from the steps of the hotel, for a solitary stroll in the
Ducal Gardens. He had a thought of discontent with
which he wished to be alone. The three long and favorable
opportunities of which he had now fully availed himself—
the interviews with Miss Ashly under circumstances
best calculated to test fully the question at his heart—had
confirmed his humiliation once more. As an artist, known
to her only by his manners and his introduction, he had stood
again before the tribunal of that cold grey eye; and, this
time with complete impartiality of position. If odds there
were, in the scale, they were in his favor. Yet, up to the
closing of the door, on that day's long interview, he had
never, for one minute, been acknowledged as an equal.
There was kindness, but it was condescension—courtesy
and even sociability, but with a graciousness stamping it
unmistakably as favor to an inferior. With the best courtliness
he could command, in his own manners, his best tact
of address, and a watchfulness too nervously awake to be
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mistaken as to the effect, he had tried his magnetism of
presence. There was nothing to prevent its being felt and
acknowledged, as the presence of a gentleman in her own
rank in life. And it had not been so acknowledged!
The morning of the fourth sitting found Paul on his way
to the Hotel Europa—but with no intention of resuming
his work. His errand, now, was merely to gather up his
materials and take a polite leave of Miss Ashly, with, perhaps,
a passing explanation, if necessary, as to the artistic
difficulties he had found, in obtaining a likeness, and consequent
discouragement and abandonment of it. A long
night of struggle had been enough. His mortification was
already given over to the past; for, with the intensity of
concentration which was his leading quality of mind,
trouble was speedily plummeted, and, as he crossed the
bridge of the Arno, he was thinking less of the spoiled
picture and his bitter lesson, than of work in which he
could complete his forgetfulness of it, and which he should
hurry back to resume at his own easel.
Arriving at the hotel, and impatient of delay, he did not
send up his name; but, presuming that he was expected,
according to engagement, he passed on, at once, to the
drawing-room; and a servant chancing to be coming out
at the moment, the door was thrown open, and he entered,
unannounced. An apology for intrusion was just coming
to his lips (for Miss Ashly was at the piano, and the low
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soft air which she was playing seemed to be so interrupted by
the noise of the door closing behind him that he expected her
momently to turn), when his movement was arrested by the
sweetness of the melody. He stood for an instant—observing,
at the same time, that the player was wholly unconscious
of his entrance—but, as he listened to the music,
willing to prolong his knowledge of what seemed to him
unusual skill upon the instrument, another call was suddenly
made upon his attention.
Miss Ashly's back was turned to him; but, by a
slow lifting of her head, with a passionate swell of
the music, the descending light of the half-shuttered
window fell full upon her features, making them, for
the first time, distinctly visible in the mirror beyond.
Paul glanced incidentally at the upturned face—but his
gaze suddenly became fixed! Was this the same face
with which he had become familiar? Did that mirror
reflect truly the face upon which he had spent weary
days of study, and, with the deeper look into which
(as he believed) he had but found confirmation of his
dislike? The same lines of feature were there—the
some color and setting of the large grey eyes—but, how
wonderful the change! If it were an outer mask that
had become miraculously transparent, revealing another
and a strangely unimagined face beneath it, the surprise
could scarcely have been greater. Miss Ashly's features—
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hitherto so cold and so forbidding—yet, now, with an
expression almost to fall down before and worship!
Paul took a step forward. Rapt in her reverie of
music (and it seemed like an improvisation of thoughts
dropping upon the keys)—the player was unaware of
his approach. He listened to what seemed a complete,
yet unconscious abandonment to utterance of feeling—
an alternation between mournfulness and tenderness—
but, to his wondering eye, the feeling was even more
passionately expressed in the countenance on which he
was gazing. Over the calm coldness of that dreaded
eye was now spread the warm softness of a tear unforbidden.
The still lips had an arch of intense sensibility
and pathos, which seemed to him unutterably
beautiful—the beauty of what was immortal shining
through. Even the marble-like rigidity of the finely
chiselled nostrils had given place to a tremulous expansion,
like the first quickening of inspiration to eloquence.
Paul thought no more of abandoning his picture. To
linger near, and study, and portray that face, and to
know more of that reserved and cold woman's unsuspected
depths of character, was his newly awaked and
passionate desire. He saw, with prophetic consciousness
of power, the portrait he could make—a portrait
of inner and more true resemblance—and through which
-- 228 --
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he felt that he could breathe the whole fire of his genius.
He only longed to paint her as she sat, at this moment,
forgetfully before him! But he should remember that
look, and reproduce some faint shadowing of its angel
sweetness, at least, in copying from her usual features
with his fresh eyes. His heart beat quick, and his fingers
felt dextrous and ready.
“Will Miss Ashly pardon me?” he said, interrupting
her as she came to a hesitating cadence in her playing.
And, in another instant, the lady was on her feet,
and his sitter of yesterday, stately and ceremonious
through all the embarrassment of her surprise, stepped
forward to receive him. But Paul mentally closed his
eyes to the Miss Ashly now preparing for her morning's
unwilling occupation; and saying little as she took her
accustomed place, hurried only to prepare his pencils,
erase what he had previously drawn, and begin anew.
And of this newly inspired sitting, and its results, we
can scarce tell all, without deferring the history to the
chapter which is to follow.
-- 229 -- p746-234
CHAPTER XX.
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Paul's labor upon the portrait he had been ready to
abandon, was by no means lost. His obstinate industry
for three days had supplied the correctness and relativeness
of proportion without which the most inspired picture
would be incomplete. He did not propose to change the
position of the figure or the aspect of the head and features.
The upturned face, which he had seen in the mirror,
though it might have formed a beautiful conception for a
St. Cecilia, would have seemed affected, to English eyes,
as a literal portrait. But, at the same time that the outline,
and the posture, and the features, were to be the
same, it was a wholly different chronicle of a life which
was now to be embodied in the expression—a wholly different
character, of which the self-same lineaments were to
be the presence and language.
And Paul's haunting phantom was forgotten as he pursued
his task on this fourth morning. Yet he might well
have remembered it, but for his knowledge of a look
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deeper than the exterior features from which he drew.
Miss Ashly had been interrupted at her impassioned music—
called away from the happiness of a pleasanter world—
for the business of this reluctant hour; and the cold grey
eye, if he had stopped at its forbidding and outer threshold
of expression, would have, more than before, seemed to
shrink from his companionship. But, in the far-reaching
enthusiasm with which he struggled to bring to light the
once-seen beauty beyond, he forgot the pride that was
nearer; and what that deeper nature's estimate of his own
quality of clay might be, was a question left unasked, and
unthought of, by his present glowing imagination.
But, of some difference in the manners, or at least, in
the presence or magnetism of the artist himself, Miss
Ashly, in her turn, began slowly to be aware. His gaze
had no longer the scrutiny from which she shrank—his
eye, somehow, was within the door which she had hitherto
locked against its intrusion. The feeling of resistance to
his long-continued and steadily-bent looks upon her features—
a feeling of which she had been so unpleasantly
conscious, that the repeated sittings for her portrait seemed
greater and greater penances, which only her love for her
nephew could make endurable—was entirely removed. It
affected even her posture, as the hour went on. She
turned more unconstrainedly to the light, and her features
relaxed, at the same time, into the repose of complete
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self-forgetfulness. With the first absolutely willing smile
which he had seen upon her face since the sittings began,
she spoke, as the clock on the mantelpiece struck for
noon.
“Wooing a likeness, I suppose, Mr. Evenden,” she said,
“is like other wooing; the willingness grows upon one.
You may continue your work, if you find yourself in the
vein. I am not tired.”
“Thanks to both the Misses Ashly,” replied Paul, bowing
ceremoniously as if to two persons; “though it is not
often that the slighted lady gives way with so good a grace
to her rival!”
His sitter seemed mystified, but waited silently, with a
very confiding look of inquiry, for an explanation.”
“I fear I shall scarce make you understand,” continued
Paul, “that I was mistakenly employed for three days
upon the portrait of another Miss Ashly—one, at least, with
a very different face, from this now upon my easel. It was
only to-day that I chanced to see, for the first time, the
countenance of her on whose portrait I am so much more
likely to be successful. And, to my great satisfaction, I
find, by the just-expressed willingness to prolong the
sitting, that the more coy lady is content to have been
discovered, and better pleased than the other to be the
subject of a picture.”
“And the plain prose of which is, I suppose, that you
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have seen, to-day, an expression you had not seen before.
I fear” (she continued, evidently feeling a little uneasy as
she thought about it) “that the compliment of your
thinking better of me upon acquaintance is outweighed by
the inference as to my general look and manners.”
Paul balanced, in his mind, for a moment, whether he
was well acquainted enough, yet, with the lady, to make
a frank avowal of his first impression—tempting as was
the opportunity it might give for a question as to the Ashly
look. But he deferred it.
“Why, I suppose,” he said, evading the personality by a
general remark, “that, to every character of any depth or
variety, there is an inner as well as an outer nature—the
character being none the less estimable because these are
apparently very different. Probably it is an accident of
education or circumstances, which of the two puts its
stamp upon the features and manners.”
“But still,” she said, “there would surely be more
dignity in an exterior that was a frank and full expression
of the whole character.”
“That would be true,” said Paul, continuing to apologize
to her for herself, “if the bad world we live in gave a
frank and full response to this whole expression. But, of
our gold, silver, and copper, the baser coin is sometimes
the most current and acceptable; and, with finding that
our more precious qualities are only wasted or undervalued,
-- 233 --
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we soon begin to hoard them away and show no sign of
possessing them.”
“Yet it seems a pity,” she suggested, “that, in consequence
of such concealment, two who are really congenial
should meet without mutual recognition, or, even that a
single person should go unappreciated through life, simply
because the manners give no clue to the character.”
“Why, chance (as we have found to-day) may reveal
the secret,” he argued, “even if to the quicker sense that
could best appreciate it, there be no betrayal of the hidden
nature, by sympathy or physiognomy. And what a luxury,
after all, to have an inner character, for those who are intimate
with us, of which the world knows nothing! How
delightful to have even different looks and manners for the
few by whom we are understood or the one to whom the
heart is given!”
“And, when portrayed, it should certainly be by one
who can get at that same inner likeness,” she added,
smiling on Paul very genially, “though, by the way, as I
have not seen your work of this morning, I do not know
whether my own inner countenance, as you are pleased to
consider it, is preferable to the outer and usual one. We
might easily differ, in our opinion of it, though I suppose
you will scarce allow my judgment, even of my own face,
to be more correct than yours, who have studied it so
much.”
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“No,” said Paul, “for, curiously enough, we are better
judges of any face than of our own. There are few things
people are more mistaken about than the impression their
faces make on others. Of the fidelity of the likeness you
would be better able to decide, however; for there is a
certain feel, independent of the eye, which infallibly recognises
resemblance. When you look on your own portrait,
you know whether you were ever conscious of what is
there portrayed. But this does not decide the choice
between the becomingness of different expressions which
are equally true, nor between the comparative desirableness
of the inner and outer countenances of which we were
speaking. And it is this defective memory of our own
looks (a man `straightway forgetting what manner of man
he is,' as the Bible says) which makes it so dependent on
chance circumstances, as I said before, whether or not the
story of an inner and better self is told in the features.
We are unaware of the gradual formation of our habitual
expression of face (none except very artful persons ever
making it a study or materially controlling it, I fancy), and
so, though involuntary, it is rather a chronicle of what
influences we have been subjected to than of our true
character. But,” added Paul, rising from his work and
setting back his easel, “it is time to come to the `improvement'
of my long sermon. Let me introduce you to yourself!
This unfinished sketch (and I shall require a sitting
-- 235 --
[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]
or two more to complete it, I believe) will represent you—
if not truly—at least as reflected in the mirror of my
present eyes!”
Miss Ashly looked silently on the sketch, while Paul
busied himself with laying away his materials for the day.
It was by no means a literal likeness of the lady who now
stood before it. Its wide departure from this common aim
of a portrait, impressed her, at first view, unfavorably.
But while she saw that it differed from her face as she
knew it in the glass, there was still the likeness of which
he had discoursed to her so artistically—the likeness of
what she felt to be herself—and this grew upon her as she
gazed. And it grew more and more wonderful to her how
he should have seen what was there portrayed. While
there was much that she would not have openly claimed,
in that expression—so high its order of beauty—she could
not but silently acknowledge it to be herself. It was the
face of an imaginative, sensitive, pure, and proud woman—
the pride so spiritualized and ennobled that it seemed like
a grace—and she could not but see, also, that, with all its
resemblance to what she felt true, as to ripeness of mind
and maturity, it was still glowing as with a youthfulness of
nature undiminished.
“I shall leave you alone with your other self,” said
Paul, approaching to take his leave; “for I prefer not to
hear your criticism on my sketch till you have compared
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it with the original—an original which it will require solitude
to see truly. To-morrow, at the same hour, then,
shall I have the pleasure of finding you?”
She held out her hand to him with a smile instead of a
reply, and, in the cordial pressure which he received from
those delicate fingers, he found approval enough for his
picture, without words. And with the glow of successful
genius—of hard-won triumph over obstacles and embarrassments—
Paul made his way, for the first time, content,
from that place of trial, homewards, across the Arno.
It was in a long and earnest conversation, preparatory to
the next sitting, that the incident of the mirror was told—
explaining to Miss Ashly the mystery of Paul's sudden
change of conception as to her character and expression of
face; and, with some little entreaty on his part, music was
now mingled in their morning's interview, as a renewal of
his inspiration. It was indeed a renewal of it! In her
secret devotion for years to the instrument now trembling
beneath her touch, she had acquired a skill of which she
was herself scarcely conscious—playing seldom, even for
listeners of her own family, but habitually and constantly
in her own apartments when alone—and it had become,
now, by much her more fluent utterance, readier and
more confident than her voice, and linked, as to promptness
and expressiveness, with the very pulses of her brain.
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She thought music! And her improvisations—or thinkings
aloud upon the piano—were of the character of
reverie, uncapricious, and of the unforced and natural
melody which is within reach of full sympathy and enjoyment
by the unscientific lover of music. To listen to her
was spirit-intercourse. The exchange of feeling and thought
seemed to be by that finer medium which angels have, better
than language.
It will be understood that this unsealing of an inner
sanctuary of thought-utterance, was more than a sacrifice
of a whim of secresy, for the better completion of a portrait.
With the constitutional reserve of Miss Ashly, the
possession of this secret accomplishment was an invisible
wall by which she was shut in from the world—by its practice,
in solitude only, as unapproachable as if encased in
crystal—and the admission of a stranger to this hidden
world was, from its very surprise and novelty, a full surrender
of confidence. Within it, her heart had not another
door! And, kept simple and unsuspicious, through
all her womanhood, as her imprisoned susceptibilities had
thus been, she was like a child let out of school, in her
frank joyousness of expansion and sympathy.
With this, and the peculiarity of Paul's nature, which
has been already explained (his disposition wholly to forget
what impression he might himself make, when once
interested to absorb the meaning or sweetness of another's
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mind), it is not wonderful that friendship grew apace.
The character of Miss Ashly seemed to him a beautiful
study, of which he was making a record in her features.
He gave his whole attention to an admiring analysis and
appreciation; and, with the double charm, that, while she
opened her heart without words, in her music, he expressed
his admiration without words by his pencil. For a woman
hitherto so cold and so proud, kept, by this very pride and
coldness, unsophisticated and genuine, there was resistless
fascination in such intercourse.
But these eight or ten days of constant and confiding
intimacy had not passed without peril to Paul's incognito.
It was very evident that Miss Ashly's curiosity, as to the
history and circumstances of the young artist, increased
with her friendship for him. Conversation without restraint,
each day for hours, gave naturally many opportunities for
allusions and leading remarks, and these, with the positive
questions which good-breeding allowed from time to time,
Paul parried, of course, as he best could, but with imminent
risk of detection. “Mr. Evenden” was at last established
in her mind, however, as an artist with no distinction
beyond his pencil, and dependent wholly upon it for
future support; and, last and not least, with no engagement
to marry. And these were facts, which, with some
of his beginnings in art, he could safely disclose—the
mystification consisting more in what he concealed, and, in
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the change of geography, when compelled to speak as a
countryman of her own.
With the history of the few days after the finishing of
the portrait, we will not detain the reader. Miss Ashly
made arrangements for having it retouched, before she
should take possession of it, on her return through Florence
(for she modestly insisted that he had made it much
too young for the portrait of an old maid, but Paul thought
not), and, after some delaying and deferring, she took her
departure for Rome. The following letter, which Paul
received from her, a fortnight after, will (with what we
have narrated) explain the share she had in what forms
the cobweb thread of our story—the exorcising, through
contact and more familiar knowledge, of the spell that had
seemed so formidable to Paul's self-appreciation, and which
had fortunately taken definite shape, at his first starting in
life, as the phantom of the Ashly eye.
Thus ran the letter from Rome:—
To Paul Evenden, Esq.:
My dear Friend,—I am the first to write, and for this very
new forwardness in myself, my pride naturally looks about for
excuses. The best I can find within reach is, that I am the idler
of the two. You would have written first to me (I will believe, at
least, till this letter has gone)! but for devotion to your pencils
and easel. While you are at your studio, toiling after some elusive
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shadow of beauty, I am alone in my room, weary of sight-seeing,
and with a day upon my hands.
But it was not likely that, for a mere letter of gossip, I should
make this unusual exception to my habits of reserve. I may as
well confess, perhaps, at once, that I am seated at my writing-desk,
just now, with a resolution (a very wavering one, as yet) to
express something in which I am far more interested than in the
passing of idle time. I do not know whether I shall find the
courage to write it—and, at any rate, I may seem to you to come
upon it rather abruptly—but it is, for me, the arrival at a point
which I have reached by steps almost imperceptible, and which
nothing but perpetual thought would have familiarized to the
pride that still shrinks from it. Will you, please, imagine for me
(what I should blunderingly explain, I fear) this wondrous transition
of my nature to its opposite extreme?
You have yourself to thank for the delusion under which, perhaps,
I am mistakenly troubling you at present. Without your
portrait of me, and your sweet persuasion of its truth while painting
it, I should have submitted, uncomplainingly, to Time's closing
of the gates behind me—the beauty which is in that picture, with
the youthfulness of heart of which it still tells the story, consigned,
warm and living, to the tomb of the Past! For I am “an old
maid,” Mr. Evenden! at the period of life when, thus labelled, we
are to be set on the shelf, and stop seeing and feeling.
Yet, I must say that the glow of your pencil's portrayal of me
is rather a confirmation than a surprise. I have never been conscious
of diminished youth. I recognise no loss of freshness in
my senses, no lessening of elasticity either in step or in spirits—
certainly no waning of interest in what is externally beautiful or
exciting—while to music and poetry I have a far more impassioned
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susceptibility than in years gone by. To my only confessor (my
piano) I have often poured forth the murmurs of a weary sense of
accumulation at my heart—affection uncoined and uncounted, that
could not be spent, and would not be wasted or forgotten. Why
I have not loved or been loved, with this lamp of feeling burning
at the altar, I know not. Possibly, because, of the two, who (you
tell me) inhabit this temple, there has been seen but the proud
and cold one, who for a while discouraged your pencil. Certain,
it seems to me that you are the first, by whom, in my whole life
hitherto, my inner self has been seen or understood.
And now, is it strange that I wish to belong to my first discoverer?
You have already anticipated what I would say. There
are objections. I have weighed them against my wishes and my
hopes. I am older than you. But in advance though I certainly
am, in years, I feel side by side with you in the youth of a heart
unwasted and kept back. You are wedded to your ambition in
art, but my fortune would enable you to pursue it even more
devotedly—or more at your ease and pleasure. And I have
weighed also the risk of being refused, against the possibility that
I might lose you through only your ignorance of the feeling you
had inspired. The result is this offer. I love you, and would be
yours.
I wait for your answer.
Yours, only,
Winifred Ashly.
-- 242 -- p746-247
CHAPTER XXI.
[figure description] Page 242.[end figure description]
Paul's embarrassment, on receiving the letter from the
stately spinster with the offer of her hand, was almost
enough to counterbalance the triumph it chanced to contain,
over his vampire thought of an Ashly. He became
conscious, now, for the first time, how exclusively he had
followed his own whim in the whole matter—the subtle
flattery of a happily idealized likeness having been
thoughtlessly sustained by his equally flattering deference
and conversation. He felt guilty. He would have made
an individual sacrifice, and not a small one, to repair the
wrong. But there were others interested, on both her side
and his own, for whose sake he must decline the offer,
while at the same time, he was not ready to reveal all the
motives upon which he had acted.
The portrait stood against the wall, and Paul sat before
it with his writing materials prepared for an answer to the
letter—his heart fairly on trial before the calm and noble
look which he had himself given to the features of Miss
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[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]
Ashly—when, by the measured step on the stair, he recognized
the approach of his friend Tetherly. Regretting,
with his first thought, that his present trouble involved the
secret of a lady, and so could not be submitted to the everready
counsel and sympathy of his friend, he closed his
portfolio, and was sitting unemployed before the portrait
when Tetherly entered.
“Found at your devotions, I am ready to testify,” he
said, as he gave Paul his two fingers, and pointed with his
stick at the drawing. “And well worthy of a man's worship
she seems to be,” he continued, after a moment, taking a
better point of view, and becoming wholly absorbed in his
gaze; “what name has botany for such bright flowers?”
“Then you think the face a good one?” asked Paul,
without answering his question, but with his curiosity
enlivened by praise so unqualified from one usually so
fastidious.
“I like it better than any face I have seen for a long
time,” said Tetherly; “though I should like to know whether
one of the principal charms I find in it is due to the
artist. Is there a woman in the world who looks so
unbreathed upon by the existence of any other human
being—so as if, in consciousness, at least, she has had a
whole planet to herself.”
Paul felt that what he had most labored to copy with
his pencil was thus put into language.
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“I thought it the main characteristic of the expression”—
“And is it your work then?” interrupted his visitor,
turning full upon him with a look of incredulous surprise;
“rather too well for your character of an `amateur artist,'
my dear Fane!”
“One may turn out a humbug by the mere force of
merit, then?” asked Paul, laughing heartily at the allusion
to the quarrel out of which his friend had helped him;
“but you have penetrated at once to the main-spring of
the lady's character, my dear Tetherly! She has, more
than most people, a world of her own. Or, to express it a
little differently, she requires to be so far sought through
the depths of her reserve and self-reliance, that the distance
amounts to as much.”
“Yet, she looks genial, even behind that reserve,”
pursued Tetherly; “Is this her habitual expression?”
“No,” said Paul, “for I had nearly finished her portrait,
as I thought, before I saw it at all. The face had even grown
unpleasing to me. You know the family look, for she is an
Ashly, and the nephew, who has the same stamp of
countenance, made the same unfavorable first impression
on yourself, if I remember.”
And here Paul explained to his friend the circumstances
which had brought Miss Ashly to him as a sitter, and gave
him the details, for the first time, of the early passage in
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[figure description] Page 245.[end figure description]
his own history, which was the key to his interest in the
Ashly physiognomy. The quiet Englishman listened very
thoughtfully; but his attention was still very evidently
absorbed by the picture before him; and he expressed, in
more than one way during the remaining few minutes of
his call, surprise at the possibility of the less favorable
impression which the artist had received from a face so
beautiful.
With the closing of the door upon him, Paul re-opened
his portfolio to resume the interrupted task. But as he
sat and turned over in his mind the match he had the
ungrateful necessity of declining, it suddenly flashed upon
him that there was a singular suitableness—in age, taste,
and character, and now by manifest predilection at first
sight of her portrait—between Miss Ashly and his friend.
The more he thought of it, the more they seemed made
for each other. And, by an irresistible impulse (for which,
with his aversion to meddling with other people's disposal
of their hearts, he afterward could never very naturally
account), he was inspired to attempt a transfer, to Tetherly,
of what that letter was to refuse for himself. He thus
wrote:—
Dear Miss Ashly:
Your letter to “Mr. Evenden” is herewith enclosed, and you
will be surprised to hear that there is no such person. The artist
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[figure description] Page 246.[end figure description]
who painted your portrait assumed the name (for an object which
shall be more fully explained to you hereafter), and it was in the
course of maintaining his incognito, that he thoughtlessly admitted
your supposition as to the freedom of his hand. He thus led you
into an error for which he hopes so to apologize as to be forgiven.
He is not at liberty, at present, to form any matrimonial engagement;
but he hopes that you will still allow him to retain the double
flattery which your letter contains—precious flattery both for the
artist and the man—and to burn incense to friendship, on an altar
which, under other circumstances, might have been sacred to love.
The explanation of the reasons for the incognito, is only deferred
till the dénoûment of a little drama of which it is just now a
part.
But, in the confidence with which you have inspired me as a
reader of character (to speak once more in my own person), I am
tempted to share with you the reading of another, which, like your
own, offered to me a problem, at first. I cannot resist coupling the
two, as mysteries of human nature chancing to be unravelled at the
same place and time, though I was not indebted, in this instance as
in yours, to the having a pencil in my hand, and features under
study for a picture. Not being a professed artist, Florence has been
to me the living gallery that it is to the traveller and student of
society; and you will pardon me if I designate yourself and this
other friend as two of its most priceless originals.
Mr. Tetherly (the gentleman whom, without his consent, I am
proposing to introduce to you) might make your acquaintance in
the ordinary way. He is a friend, already, of your nephew's, I
know. But, with such chance introduction, you would each take
a wholly erroneous impression of the other, and would part, of
course, more strangers than before—the veiled countenance and
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qualities, of each, being (if I am not mistaken) just that of which
the other might be most appreciative. By recalling the difference
between my own first sketch of yourself and the portrait which
conveyed my subsequent conception of your features, you will believe
that, even with the most open eyes, two human countenances
may require an interpreter to exchange language understandingly.
Would it prepossess you at all in my friend's favor if I were to
begin by saying that he has just the quality of your sex in which
our own is so likely to be your inferior—a most sensitive and refined
delicacy and modesty? It is the somewhat morbid action of
this quality that produces the sleepless self-depreciation which is
his main characteristic, and under which his beautiful nature is
effectually masked. The dread that he will be credited with some
excellence which he does not possess, or that he may heedlessly
take advantage of some privilege to which he is not fairly entitled,
amounts to a nervous disclaimer perpetually visible in his manners;
and, to the superficial observer, this seems but a bluff antagonism,
eccentric and unsocial. Give him but the opportunity to serve
you, by a genial acting out of his better and more confident self,
and he changes as effectually as did the portrait of Miss Ashly
under my suddenly enlightened and wholly reinspired pencil.
Of Mr. Tetherly's more obvious qualities as a man, the devoted
friendship of so eminent and discriminating a person as the English
minister is warranty enough. His Excellency is not likely to have
crowded his attention and preference with such flattering constancy
and perseverance on an unworthy subject. It is only strange that
one so admirably suited to make happy the most highly endowed
and tender of female natures (really quite the most model man I
know of for a husband) should be apparently fated to die single.
It seems to me, indeed, one of those needless irrecognitions of
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fitness which have only to be pointed out to be wondered at and
remedied. Without taking him into our confidence, at all, may I
not present him to you, on your return to Florence, and so let him
submit unconsciously to one more trial of his horoscope? If I am
at all a judge of character and suitableness, no two hearts were
ever formed to beat more in harmony than this unappropriated
bachelor's and your own.
The letter I enclose to you (addressed to an unfound “Mr.
Evenden”), may be returned to your portfolio as if never truant
from thence—though, with actual life rather than romance to guide
us, I think we might even venture to treat it openly, as but an
erased page of love. Previous passions are confessable, I think,
as being but the schooling which has made us ready for better
lessons; and, with the inexperienced, especially, a rash love is a
likely and liberalizing prelude to a ripe and well-considered one.
At present, it seems to me that it will only be necessary for you to
look upon Mr. Tetherly to understand the natural progression by
which he should take precedence of Mr. Evenden,” though, as I
said before, the existence of that gentleman and the letter addressed
to him, may be secrets, if you please, for yourself only.
I retain your portrait, for a final sitting, on your return; and I
shall take that opportunity, with your permission, to bring about
what will seem, to Mr. Tetherly, a chance introduction to you. It
will scarce be to him like the beginning of acquaintance, however,
as he has fairly fallen in love with your picture, and what with our
discussion of its expressed characteristics and his own thoughtful
and enamored study of its expression and meaning, will look upon
you by no means as a stranger. And so, having (last, but not
least) confessed to what was the real prompting of the main burden
of my letter, I will beg your pardon for its eccentric freedom, dear
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Miss Ashly, and (reserving, for the present, the more prosaic histories
of myself and my friend), remain
Yours most sincerely,
Paul Fane.
[We are compelled, occasionally, to take our measure,
for a chapter, rather by incident than by length of description,
and we will beg the reader's pardon for entering
upon the next phase of our story in another chapter.]
CHAPTER XXII.
It was during the week that intervened between the
dispatch of the foregoing letter and the return of Miss
Ashly to Florence; and Paul was using his privilege, for
the morning, at the easel placed for him in the private
studio of the Princess C. The hours waxed on, toward
noon, and he was ostensibly busy with his pencil; but he
had gone there with a burden on his thoughts which was
not to be unladen through his Art, and to give utterance
to which, as yet, he had not found the apt first word
required by his sensitiveness.
With any mere embarrassment of distinctions in politeness,
or question calling for more practised knowledge of
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the world, Paul had a reference both kindly and reliable
in his friend Tetherly; but he had received two letters,
the previous evening, involving, between them, a point of
feeling, such as only the heart of a woman could give
counsel upon. And yet, now, while he thanked heaven
for the friendship within reach—combining the wisdom
and disinterestedness of a lofty nature with the exquisite
tenderness of woman—the conversation made its way but
gradually toward the subject nearest his heart.
“I see it is `invita Minerva,' this morning,” said the
sculptress, dropping her moulding-stick to her side, and
stepping back to get a remoter look at the clay bust she
was moulding; “your pencil shows a hand as unwilling as
mine.”
“I wish the pencil were as successful as its rival,” replied
Paul. “And I must ask leave,” he continued, turning
from his drawing to come in front of the mouldingstand,
“while the model is still nominally unfinished, to
flatter my chum Blivins with an introduction to it. We
might thus make doubly sure of what ought to be
achieved by the expression only—his admiring consent
to its existence. There never was a purer representation
of woman.”
“Why, it could not be otherwise and be true to Nature's
imprint on the original,” said the princess; “she has fearlessness
and playfulness, two of the most reliable signs of
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innocence. A lover should not object to such a portrait.
Her desire to be thus modelled is very far from an indelicacy.
It is her pride in what she recognises in herself as
beautiful—vanity, if you please, and somewhat underbred
in its exhibition—but, with purity quite unalarmed, seeking
admiration.”
“My friend Blivins has the more common standard of
modesty, however, demanding great show of concealment
and entrenchment.'
“A show that oftenest indicates pretence and conscious
uncertainty—if gentlemen did but know it. Hypocrisy in
all things talks loudest. Now what could be more unoffending
to the eye of genuine purity than thus much of
the form of this fearlessly innocent creature? The playful
humor with which she frolicked, at her first sitting,
corroborated, for me, this impression of her character.
And I have tried to give pure and unconscious fearlessness
to the countenance, as Nature has done. It would
pass, I think, for an ideal of a most spotless American
Hebe.”
“Yet we are about to show you a higher model of one,”
said Paul, one of whose pent-up subjects was thus
approached. “Another Hebe—the young girl who was
my boyhood's ideal of what was purest and loveliest—is to
be here to-morrow.”
“Ah, indeed! And that is the happiness which so
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hinders industry, this morning, I suppose?” asked the princess,
with a smile.
“It acts upon my pencil, I confess,” was the reluctant
reply, “but not altogether as a hindrance of happiness.
Longing, as I certainly do, to see this playmate of my
childhood, it will be under a restraint which I look forward
to with great embarrassment.”
“Another love?” inquired his friend, with a smile.
“Not exactly—though it will certainly bear the look,
and perhaps have to be admitted and acted upon as one.
It is a dilemma, to tell the truth, in which I am very much
in need of your womanly advice.”
The countenance of the princess assumed the look of
truthful earnest which was so prompt to appear, at any
call, keeping her eccentricities, as well as her rank and
fashion, subject to the language of her genuine human
heart; and Paul, with his confidence fully responsive to
the large, calm eyes bent upon him, proceeded to tell
his story.
The more recent news from the Palefords had given
less favorable reports of the condition of their invalid.
With the close of the season, and the usual dispersion
of the company at the Baths, she had not been considered
strong enough to return to their home near
Florence, and it was now understood that she was failing
fast, and that they were but awaiting, at Lucca,
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the fatality daily expected. With so melancholy an
event for exchange of sympathy, the correspondence
had both saddened and lessened, and Paul was looking
for one of the colonel's brief and friendly missives from
the sick-room, when, to his great surprise, he received,
from the invalid herself, a letter, evidently written at
intervals, and forwarded at last without the knowledge
of those around her. It was scarce legible, from the
weakness with which the pen had been held, but Paul
had conned well its broken periods, and he read thus to
his thoughtful listener:
My dear Mr. Fane:
Without dating my letter precisely from Spirit-land, I may almost
claim a hearing from thence—so nearly arrived thither that I begin
to see with the unworldly eyes of that better existence, and finding
something to look back and say, which you will first read probably,
when I am already there. It will be written with the
trembling hand of departure, and at broken moments, stolen from
the watchfulness of the dear one of whom I wish to speak; but I
trust to find strength and opportunity, as I go on, and to trace,
with this last use of pen and ink, words which your kindly eyes
may manage to decipher. If I mistake not, there will be an intuition
at your heart that will even anticipate my meaning; and, pray
believe that, if it be possible to return to earth through the records
of thoughts that go with us to heaven, these ill-traced words will
speak to you also with a spirit-presence.
In hereby bequeathing to you what influence I may have toward
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entrusting you with the happiness of my child (the object of my
letter), I do but and my blessing, perhaps, to what would otherwise
just as certainly be yours. The evidence that she loves you
has been such as you could not be blind to; and—with her
reserved pride, and the truth of a woman's instinct—I cannot suppose
her belief, in the feeling she thus confidently reciprocates, to
be an error. You love my dear Sybil, do you not?
But there are cobwebs across your path, which, by scruples of
romance or delicacy, may be magnified into barriers impassable.
The first of these, you will be surprised to hear, is her father's
more worldly ambition for her. Fond as he is of you, personally
(loving you, I believe, with a friendship that would make a sacrifice
of anything, merely his own, to serve you), he is distrustful of
the prospect for happiness with your confessedly very limited
means. He thinks Sybil is of the type requiring rather the elegancies
of profusion—freedom, at least, from all care. He fears
your both waking, soon and sad, from a dream it were wiser to
prevent.
With the memories of my own life of trying reverses, I am, of
course, fully aware of what spells, without wealth, are left unwoven.
They are many, it is true; and I could well wish, for you
and Sybil, that there were independence of means, on one side or
the other. But there are elements of happiness far more important
to a sensitive and refined nature, for the securing of which, if
need be, the risk of poverty may wisely be run. Even if I had
not been always a better judge of this, as a woman, I could now
claim a truer view, as seen with the disillusionizing retrospect from
Death's door.
Oh, how many are the hours for which wealth has no beguiling!
How often might a word, or a look, send a light into the heart
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which could come from no blaze of jewels—enter by no lofty window!
Pardon me, but there are so few of your sex, particularly
of the wealthy and powerful, who have, for woman, the ingrained
deference, the never-lessening honor, which form her atmosphere
for happiness! It is rare, because it is something which can hardly
be learned. It must be instinctive, a finer fibre of character born
of poetry and tenderness, but strengthened and polished by the
trials and studies which make a man chivalric and intellectual.
Woman herself does not give the key to it. In the compliance
and natural impressibility of her gentler nature, she allows it to be
forgotten how pure she would rather be—how more delicate and
more sensitive may be the heart whose want is left obediently
unasserted.
I am not sure, my dear Mr. Fane, that, in the fitness which I
see in you, as the match which my heart requires for that faultless
child, I have not given great weight to your genius. The difference
which this would make in a lover's appreciation of her, was
shown in your inspired portrait—the picture of what she is like,
to your eyes—representing her as the angel that she seems to her
mother. This touches a tender spot, for me! With the thought
of giving over, to any human being, the uncontrolled and irreversible
possession of one so unspeakably precious, one so unbreathed
upon in her purity and loveliness, there comes a dread which is
almost like a fear of desecration, and which exacts hallowed reverence
in the one who is to be trusted with her. From a lofty-hearted
mother of your own, you have taken, I know, a blessed
estimate of woman. And, with this, and the idealizing elevation
of genius, you have (what I already said was the rarest quality in
men) the deference and honor for our sex, in which the timid
breath of happiness is drawn trustfully and freely.
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Between yourself and Sybil, I know, there has been, as yet, no
open avowal of love. In the scruple as to your means of support
for a wife (which I feel safe in believing to be the only reason for
your hesitation), there is a barrier which might become insurmountable
without the encouragement which I here give. I think
you may safely put it aside. With the feeling that Sybil now has
for you, her happiness, I am very certain, would be best assured
by sharing your lot—half of the right fate, with any trials, being
better than the half of the wrong one, with wealth and splendor.
I am sure that she thinks so. I write it here, that you may have
the record of her mother's thought and wish, to outweigh the
more worldly hesitancy of her father—his over-fond caution, and
your over-generous delicacy likely to combine, I fear, in what
would be but a mistaken tenderness of prudence.
“Have I said enough, dear Mr. Fane? Will what I have said
give you my priceless daughter, with a mother's blessing? I write
with my eyes full of their last tears—my heart full of what will go
with me, please God, to a better world! Farewell! keep my child
company on her way to join me, and let me meet you hereafter,
as two who were made one for Heaven, by having passed their
lives in this world blessedly together! Keep her pure! Be as
pure! And may God bless you, united! While this trembling
hand can write it,
Yours affectionately,
Gertrude Paleford.
The princess drew her hat more over her eyes, as Paul
laid the letter on his knee, but there was a gleam of light
upon their moist surface, which flashed out of the shadow.
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“A singular and beautiful bequest,” she said, “to which
there should be but a prompt acceptance, if all be as she
thought.”
“Which I fear it is not,” said Paul, “though, upon the
possibility (if it were for Miss Paleford's happiness), I
should be ready, of course, to stake all that is involved
merely of my own. Before I say more upon this point,
however, let me read an extract from the letter, received
at the same time, announcing the coming of my friends from
America.”
And Paul opened his mother's letter, and read from the
two concluding pages as follows:—
Mrs. Cleverly will remain for some time in Florence; and, for
you to have Mary Evenden there, in the midst of objects and
associations of such common interest to you both, will, of course,
be delightful. The Arts—always a sufficient feast to share even at
home—will be like an intoxication of sympathy where their charms
are perfected by the world's masterpieces. But, my dear Paul,
a thought here takes shape, which has been to me, for some time,
“a shadow on the wall.” More or less haunted by it for years,
and dismissing it constantly as a subject that would be more manageable
by-and-by, I must express it now as a new anxiety—though
very possibly, in your mind it is a familiar matter, long ago recognized
and disposed of. The more needless my nervousness shall
thus prove to have been, however, the better pleased I shall be.
It is not the same Mary you left, who comes to you, now, in
Florence. Has it occurred to you, that the child, who has been
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all her life like a sister, with nothing to change the feeling while
the first dream was uninterrupted, is to meet you again, after a
long and endearing absence, as a woman? From some changes
that I see, I doubt whether she will even look the same to you.
She is fuller; and with the maturing of her form, her eyes and
manner have a different expression.
I have thought, always, that there was a peculiarity rather remarkable
in Mary's sentiment towards you. All through your boyhood,
and till you left us for Europe, she had an interest in you, which
(as you must have known), absorbed every faculty of her nature;
but while this, by its quantity of affection, should be love, it was,
in its quality wholly, intellectual. She had an idolatry for what
she thought to be your genius; and, though not without a child's
caressingness and affectionateness, I looked in vain for any sign of
preference, as manifested commonly in personal admiration, jealousy
of attention to others, watchfulness of looks, etc., etc. Your
secret devotion to Art was, to her, the life and presence of your
second and inner nature; and if this could have been found separately
embodied from what others knew as my son Paul, I think
your mere outward person would have been easily estranged from
her thoughts.
But now, how are you to meet? That which Mary loved in you
is, more than before, your outward identity—you are, much more
completely and admirably, Paul the artist. The time of her
absence from you has been passed in the studious heightening of
the taste by which she appreciates your genius; she will be as
much readier than before to give her whole soul to Paul the artist,
as he is worthier than before to be so absorbingly worshipped.
Then, even if she were not the strangely single-hearted creature
that she is—(capable, I truly believe, of but one devotion in a
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lifetime)—the atmosphere in which you meet is, in itself, an inevitable
renewal of the sympathy which united you. Florence is the Eden
of Art, in which you will both feel it to be the happiness of the
blest to be permitted to walk together.
And is the newly-awakened woman to take no part in this?
Already yours by taste, intellect, and habit of childhood, is she at
all unlikely to find a new feeling at her heart for the matured man
that you are, and love you with her outward and more common
nature, tenderly, passionately, and overwhelmingly? This is an
important question for me, my dear son! Mary was entrusted to
us with a confidence which makes my “watch and ward” over her,
even more responsible than a mother's. In the prosperity and
happiness of such a love as this would be for her, I should feel
every sympathy of my heart, as well as every pulse of my sense
of duty fully interested. The bare possibility that one so precious
might love unhappily a son of mine, is, as I said before, at present,
my fearful “shadow on the wall.”
But, perhaps, my imagination—here, in my solitude, without
you—is conjuring up needless phantoms of improbability. You
have been away so long, and have been subjected to so many new
and dazzling influences, that I naturally feel uncertain of my
knowledge of you. If, as I most fervently hope and pray, you
still feel the boy's devotion to this most lovely and gifted of
friends and playmates, and are prepared to fulfil, to the heart of
the woman, the promise that was planted and nurtured so long
and uninterruptedly in the fancy of the child, my anxieties are
happily needless. At least, my dear boy, I have thus possessed
you of my thought upon the subject. Do not meet Mary till you
have fairly asked yourself the question, as to the venture it will be.
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Paul closed the letter from his mother, and placed it,
with the one he had previously read, in the hand of the
princess—the two strangely co-incident appeals to his
decision, upon which he so needed counsel—but the conversation
was not readily resumed.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The tête-à-tête reverie (for both were perplexed with
thoughts which struggled in vain for precedence in
words) was interrupted, at last, by the princess's rising,
with a smile, and returning to the model on which she
had been at work.
“It shows how limited is Art, after all,” she said
“that we cannot express, in marble or on canvas, the
two-person identity, which gives so much trouble in love.
How would any likeness of you, for instance, resemble
both Mr. Fane the attaché and my friend Paul the artist—
two very separate gentlemen, who have inspired, it appears,
very different passions in two wholly unlike and separate
ladies! I venture to say (though both the attaché and
the artist inhabit the one body), you look wholly different
to the eyes of the two.”
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“Yet,” said Paul, with a still very abstracted air, “I
have not willingly concealed, either the man of society or
the artist—though it would appear that I am but one of
these at a time. Your highness still leaves me in my
dilemma, however. By which of the two letters I have
now read to you, does my honor most bind me to be
guided?”
“Why, to tell the truth,” she replied, after a moment
of hesitation, “if the claims of both are not fairly equal,
they are both, at least, so strong, that a preference of
either must seem an injustice to the other. Mrs. Paleford
would seem to have written without consulting her
daughter—but she assumes that there is a mutually understood
passion between you and Sybil, and that the girl's
happiness depends on marrying you.”
“Possibly a very incorrect opinion on the part of Mrs
Paleford,” said Paul (contending, as he spoke, with his
self-reproving memory of the birthday breakfast), “for,
though chance circumstances may have given me a
temporary favor in the young lady's eyes, her ideal of
me (as you just now said) is but a partial and imperfect
one. I am not the complete and mere man of society
that she then took me to be. Would her happiness be
best consulted by a marriage (even if she should prove
to wish it), with one she but half understands?”
“Why, in finding you to be more than she first loved
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you for being,” said the princess, with a mischievous
look of gravity, “I question the probability of a disappointment.
Very few marriages have surprises on that
side.”
“But may she not think the artist rather a subtraction
from the man of the world than an addition to his
merits? She looks upon Art, at present, as a mere
amateur accomplishment of mine—like a taste for autographs
or minerals. It may be a surprise the other
way, to find that the outer and more courtly world,
to which she had supposed me to belong altogether,
must lessen gradually in interest—the inner and artist
world, for which she has no sympathy, assuming proportionately
greater importance.”
“Are you sure that she has no taste for Art, then?”
asked his friend.
“The good taste of a refined education, undoubtedly,”
proceeded Paul, with the monotone of one thinking aloud;
“she could scarce be her mother's daughter without that.
But—as your highness well knows—there must be more
than mere taste, to produce the sympathy which is demanded
from love by an intellectual inner nature. The
artist, to be happy, must be more loved for his genius
than his person. The productions of his pencil must be
more endearing than his manners or social accomplishments.
And what would be more melancholv for herself,
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than to find the progress of life to be only the widening
of a chasm of dissimilarity—her husband requiring, more
and more, that love on the altar of genius which she has
no fire of sympathy to kindle!”
“Yet is not her present preference for you an instinctive
appreciation of your whole nature?” inquired the princess,
evidently interested for the heart under discussion.
“That Miss Sybil entertains for me partly the fancy or
natural liking upon which girls oftenest marry,” said Paul,
“I think very probable. But her preference is partly also
the expression of an antagonism. Her imaginary horror
chances to be what is commonly called a `mercenary
match,' and, with my avowed poverty, her girlish romance
is, of course, enlisted, as her love would be disinterested.
But poverty is not an attraction that would wear bright
with time and using.”
“Nor would the contrary,” said the princess significantly.
“But the contrary, at least, gives the means of trying
other resources for happiness,” insisted Paul. “Except to
very impassioned natures, a romantic love is scarce a
necessity; and wealth has many a compensation for the
heart that has failed of its youthful ideal. And I am
by no means sure that my rival, Mr. Ashly, might not
develop so as to become even the romantic ideal of Miss
Sybil's maturer fancy.”
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“What—is there a wealthy lover in waiting for her?”
inquired the princess, to whom this part of the argument
was new.
Paul gave the history of the rivalry at the birthday
breakfast (narrated in a previous chapter), but without
confessing fully to the motive which had prompted his
own successful playing of the lover.
“Pardon me,” said his friend (as he concluded with
the account of Mr. Ashly's appreciation of the portrait),
“pardon me, my dear Mr. Fane, but you seem to me,
now, to have incurred a responsibility I had not before
soen. With so intentional a winning for yourself of the
young lady's preference, especially as it amounted to the
shutting off of another lover, you are bound not to disappoint
that preference, should it remain constant to
you.”
“But suppose the displaced lover could be reinstated?”
replied Paul, somewhat perplexed, but giving voice to his
secret hope of repairing his wrong to Mr. Ashly.
“Ah! there you express what offers a loophole of
escape for you,” assented his reproving listener; “though
young ladies' hearts are not very transferable commodities,
especially by the holders themselves. I will not aks how
you propose to reinstate Mr. Ashly, for that, at least, must
be a very delicate management of your secrets as a lover;
but (if you will excuse a woman's curiosity) I should like
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to get some clear idea of the greater certainty of happiness
which you are promising yourself from this better
love in the background.”
Paul smiled, and balanced his pencil upon his finger for
a moment or two of silence.
“I have had,” he said at last, “what most lovers have
not—a fair trial of my promised happiness. Mary Evenden
was brought up with me as a sister, and has shown,
by years of constancy, her appreciation of the inner nature
for which I desire to be loved.”
“And were you sure, always, of the secret spring of her
sympathy with you? Might it not have been an instinctive
natural affection, to which you yourself gave the name you
wished it to bear? How sure are you that it was wholly
intellectual?” questioned the princess.
Paul pressed his hand upon his eyes, and forced back all
his memory upon the days in his hidden studio at home.
“It may be an abstraction of a somewhat visionary boyhood,”
he thoughtfully went on to say, “but, to me the
most dream-craved sweetness of love, as well as its coldly
measured best dignity and elevation, consists in its being
inspired by the qualities of the mind only. Perhaps there
is a refinement of vanity in not being willing to be admired
for what any one else can do as well. I certainly could
never feel a value for interest I had awakened merely by
my manners or flatteries, or by the mere animal magnetism
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of youth and unexplained sympathies. And, in Mary
Evenden's difference, in this respect, from all others who
were partial or kind to me—the difference which was the
secret of her enduring fascination—I could not have been
mistaken, I think.”
“Yet lovers are but poor anatomists of their own happiness,”
still objected the princess.
“It was the reasonableness of my happiness which made
part of its charm,” Paul pursued his confession by insisting.
“There was no intoxication of the fancy—no effervescence
of feeling, the sparkle of which was lost in calmer
hours. It was gentle and well-considered attention, given
to that which was noblest and purest in my nature.
Every thought was recognized as it fell from the lips,
every expression as it breathed through the features, every
gleam of inspired work as it guided the pencil. And oh!
who can describe the luxury of this intimate companionship
of appreciation? Who (since, as your highness
asserted just now, there may be two persons in one) can
weigh, for an instant, the love for the mortal against that
for the immortal—the love for grace and personal agreeableness
that lessen and disappear as life gets on, against
that for talent and intellectual acquirement, which, on the
contrary, while life lasts, continue to ripen and grow more
admirable?”
“A beautiful picture,” said the princess, with a smile,
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“and, I have no doubt, faithfully descriptive of the intimacy
you so tenderly remember. But pray do not forget
that the `mortal' is slighted while the `immortal' is thus
exclusively attended to, and that Nature does not long
permit such partialities without a murmur. Intimate as
you were, it is my impression that there is a Miss Evenden
and a Mr. Fane who are yet to make each other's acquaintance.
The chrysalis which you have both passed through,
since your separation, will present each a stranger to the
other—two strangers who may, very possibly, not be content
with the old love which is not altogether suited to
their new tastes.”
Paul shook his head incredulously, while he smiled at
the princess's scepticism of what, to him, was like a
religion.
“You must excuse me,” she continued (moulding indolently
upon her model as she gave vent to her speculations
on the problem he had submitted to her), “but I think
your coming renewal of intimacy, with your old playmate,
a little critical. I am not certain that you would become
lovers again, even if your proposed disentanglement from
Miss Paleford had left you quite free to look forward to it.
Commencing again, from habit, with the exchange of
merely intellectual sympathies, there would be, on both
sides, insufficiency and disappointment. You are, both of
you, of the higher class of natures which require love in
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all its completeness—demanding fullness of acknowledgment
of all qualities, personal and intellectual, and entireness
of appreciation and admiration.”
“Love not often found,” said Paul, musingly, as he
strove to lay aside his own theory and adopt, for the sake
of frank argument, that of his companion.
“No!—you would scarce more than complete such an
ideal lady-love by a pouring of both these young hearts—
Sybil's and Mary's—into one. I suppose, in fact” (continued
the still busy sculptress, with an arch look from
under her hat), “that the two might love on—each having
the monopoly of all she admires in you, without interference
with the other.”
“Ah, pray do not make me out a flirt and vaurien, even
in theory!” interrupted Paul, deprccatingly.
“Your alarm is needless,” said the princess, “for my
theory was both carelessly and incorrectly stated. It need
not be `love' by which you should thus accept the sympathy
and reciprocity of two natures. Or, if you accept
love from the one heart, it would show very little self-control
or elevation of nature if there could not be friendship—
at least unexceptionably pure—with the other. Remember
I am reasoning in the dark as to your own particular
position, not having seen Mary Evenden, and not knowing
whether she is in herself one of these rare completenesses—
responsive to all that requires sympathy, either in the
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intellect or the man; but, in most instances that have
come to my knowledge, such has not been the happy destiny
of genius. Its two-fold nature has not often found,
in one heart and mind, all its needs of recognition and
reply.”
“You make genius out to be naturally the most unhappy
of lovers,” said Paul, beginning to be amused with
the generalizing that had digressed from his own more
special troubles.
“Perhaps so,” continued the fair disputant, after a
moment's pause; “and I am inclined to think that genius
could (better than other natures, and certainly better for
itself), do without what is called `love,' altogether. The
main portions of the sympathy it needs might be found in
intimacies which could correctly and irreproachably be
called `friendships;' and its motives and conduct are
oftenest misunderstood, because it requires, from these
friendships, a tenderness of mental sympathy which seems,
to common observers, possible only with love. I do not
think the most intimate friends of men of genius need to
be of the opposite sex. It is only because women's minds
are more delicate and impressible, that it commonly is so.
But, by either wholly ignoring love (or classing it among
the instincts that are kept subdued and out of sight) while
the sympathies of the mind are declared to be of no sex,
but to have full and free liberty to choose and act without
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reproach, the intellectual world would breathe its more
native and proper element.”
“Of which higher philosophy you, yourself, my dear
princess,” said Paul, with a low inclination of his head,
“are a charming proof and illustration. Yet I wish, out
of your beautiful speculations, I could draw some definite
advice as to my best course of conduct to-morrow. Shall
I leave Florence without awaiting the coming of Mary
Evenden (in obedience to the warning which my mother's
letter intended to give me), not seeing her while my honor
is involved to give preference to another—or would there
be more rudeness than tenderness of consideration in so
manifest an avoidance, and, should I stay, therefore, and
trust to the chances of open extrication from my dilemma?”
“Very fairly stated,” said the princess; “and I will
take the responsibility of giving a definite answer. Stay
in Florence! See Mary Evenden to-morrow! But, understand
me, I am am not speaking thus venturesomely without
some hope of assisting you. With your leave, I will
myself become your rival, not as a lover, but (according to
my theory just laid down) as a friend. To leave her alone
with you, a stranger in Florence, with only your attendance
and society, would make, whatever risk there is, more
imminent, to say the least. But you say she is an artist,
as well as ourselves. Bring her to my studio, and let me
make a sister-artist's appeal to her ready sympathies! I
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can thus occupy somewhat — perhaps engross, almost
wholly—her attention and enthusiasm. If I interest her,
as I thus hope to do, you will be left to yourself for a
while, and the opportunity which you wish is secured to
you, is it not?”
There was generous and kindly considerateness, as well
as wisdom, in this thought of the princess's; and Paul took
his leave, after gratefully accepting both the advice and its
proffered aid. And to this eventful morrow he looked forward,
for the remainder of the day, with thoughts of far
less sadness and perplexity than before.
CHAPTER XXIV.
It was not for several days, after the interview described
in the last chapter, that Paul received, from one of the
hotels upon the Arno, the expected message, announcing
the arrival of his friends. The death of Mrs. Paleford
had meantime occurred, as anticipated; and, with the
proffer of aid and sympathy which his intimacy with
the family called upon him to make—his reception of
them on their return with the body to Florence, and his
almost filial share in the melancholy arrangements and
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last offices to the dead—the delay and its leisure had
been timely, and the interval had been sufficiently en
grossed with thought and feeling. He had followed the
lost mother to the grave with an emotion which the two
chief mourners (ignorant of the dying bequest that was
now so heavy on his heart) could but little understand.
Like the parting of a dark cloud, however, was the
sudden gleam of light into his mind with the news
that Mary Evenden had come; and it was not difficult
for one of his elastic temperament to throw all sad
thoughts behind him as he hurried rapidly to the hotel
where he was to see, once more, the face that had been
dearest to him through years of romantic boyhood. It
was not in Florence that he walked, as he made his
way eagerly through the crowd. A memory of home
glowed like a halo around him, shutting out all that
was not filled with the presence of his mother's voice and
smile.
On arriving at the hotel, Paul impatiently followed
the waiter by whom he sent up his name, and a glimpse
through the opening door showing him the well-known
features of Mrs. Cleverly, he entered at the same moment
that he was announced. A rush forward, and a kiss of
respectful tenderness upon the held-out hand of the dear
and kind matron, and he turned hurriedly to take Mary
like a sister to his arms—but the movement was suddenly
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paralysed, and, with an instant's hesitation, a bow of
ceremony took the place of the intended caress! There
were two ladies beside his old friend at the breakfast-table—
one of them Mary, but the other the Miss Ashly
of his long-cherished dread—the cold-eyed English girl
who had first given the alarm to his boyish pride of
nature!
“You remember Miss Ashly, whom you met at my
house?” said Mrs. Cleverly, thinking it necessary to reintroduce
Paul, as she saw his hesitation.
He relinquished the warm pressure of Mary's hand
which he now held in his own, and very formally renewed
his salutation to the politely undisturbed lady.
With the icy bar which her presence had so abruptly
put upon his overflowing heart, conversation, even with
Mary, was now stiffened to the formalities of courtesy.
Mrs. Cleverly, during her short stay in London (it was
afterwards explained to Paul) had fallen in with her old
friends the Ashlys, and, with the pleasant accounts which
they had been lately receiving from Florence, Miss Mildred
expressed a desire to put herself under the convoy
of the American party and join her aunt in Italy—a
proposition, of course, very readily acceded to. In their
letters written on the way, this addition to their company
had not been mentioned, however; and thus, accidentally
and without warning, Mary had brought with her the very
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barrier which mysteriously divided her from Paul at his
departure for Europe!
Paul, when his first greetings were over, made a fourth
at the table; but, in spite of the glow of affectionate
welcome at his heart, longing for expression, he was
conscious of an irresistible influence upon his manners.
He was the polished and indifferent attaché, even in
questioning and listening to Mary Evenden alone. There
was a presence at the table which no one else felt or
understood, and to which he had been mysteriously subject,
before, and was now subject, again.
Miss Ashly had very quietly confessed to not remembering
having met Mr. Fane; and to her, for the first
half hour, he was evidently but a stranger—an American
gentleman with whom she had no topic in common—
though one to whom she was bound to be civil, from
his intimacy with her friends. She sat, half-absently,
pushing the crumbs about in her plate, with a fork held
daintily in her taper fingers, and giving but limited
attention to the exchange of home news and personal
inquiry going on around her. At one of the rotations
of politeness, however, by which it became due to the
third lady that some remark should be addressed to her
also, Paul alluded to the Palefords, and their bereavement.
“Ah, you know the Palefords?” she said, with her fork
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held still, for a moment, while she opened those large grey
eyes upon the stranger.
The mention of the mourning scenes in which he had
taken part led to other matters in connection with the
subject, and it soon became evident to Miss Ashly that
Mr. Fane had a very minute intimacy of knowledge as
to her old friends and their circumstances. Paul could
not but notice, however, as he made some reference to
the celebration of the birth-day, that his listener's eagerness
to hear something of her brother's share in that
festivity became very keen, and that her interest in
Sybil was of an affectionate tenderness which betrayed,
to his sharpened perception, a sympathy in the secret
of a love. He was very sure, from an incidental remark
or two, that young Ashly had taken his sister into his
confidence, and it was encouraging to the hopes of Paul
for the brother's success, that there had evidently been
no mention to her of himself, the rival of that day.
With the account of the entertainments at the English
embassy, and the many particulars relative to Colonel
Paleford, and to her brother's gaieties in Florence, it
grew clearer every moment that the points of mutual
interest between Miss Mildred and Mr. Fane were more
numerous than was at first anticipated; and the conversation
at the breakfast-table, at last, was entirely given over
to these two, so much the least acquainted.
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“Oh, then, you know my Aunt Winnie?” exclaimed
Miss Ashly, once more with pleased surprise, as some
reference was made to the Palefords' expectation of seeing
her, now that they were once more at Casa G—.
There was a little gratification of a love of mischief in
the grave quietness with which Paul showed his confidential
knowledge of Miss Winifred—her plans of travel,
her manner of passing her time, her recent impressions
of Italy, her newest likings and dislikings, health, spirits,
and other matters upon which her habitually reserved
letters left her relatives rather annoyingly in the dark.
That this American friend of Mrs. Cleverly's knew her
aunt more intimately than any gentleman of their acquaintance
at home, and that she had talked familiarly
to him of herself, in a way quite unprecedented for her
usual habits as known to her family, became gradually
more apparent to the astonished niece. The climax was
reached, however, by the reply to a question as to her
probable arrival in Florence.
“By her last letter to me,” said Paul, “I am to expect
her a week from to-day; and, by the way, I was to engage
for her the very apartments into which the landlord has
chanced to put you. She occupied them when here
before.”
Miss Ashly sat silent for a moment or two, manifestly
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embarrassed how to suit her manner to one who was so
much less a stranger than she had thought him.
“Pardon me, Mr. Fane!” she said, at last, turning to
him with a smile and very frank opening of her large
calm eyes; “you seem to know everything—will you
allow me to ask you one more question? My brother,
when here, saw a portrait of Miss Paleford with which
he was very much delighted—so delighted, in fact, that
he wants pictures of us all by the same hand. My aunt,
I believe, has already sat to him, and I have half promised,
if I like hers, to sit to him myself. Do you know this
artist?”
Paul did not feel quite ready to give up the more
agreeable indefiniteness of his position as a chance acquaintance
of Miss Ashly's. To confess himself the artist
would give him a new part to play, and one for which he
felt that he required a little preparation.
“I know him very well,” he said, rising from the table,
after an instant's hesitation, “and I am quite sure, now I
think of it, that he would like, as soon as possible, to have
your opinion of that still unfinished portrait of your aunt.
His studio is near by, and, if you will allow me, I will send
over and get it.”
Paul rang for a servant, and, writing a line to Blivins
upon a card, dispatched him for the crayon—perseveringly
addressing his conversation to his American friends, during
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the man's absence, so as not to be embarrassed with further
questions as to the unknown painter.
The messenger reappeared in a few minutes.
“You will excuse me,” said Paul, closing all except one
shutter, “if, as an amateur artist myself, I do my friend
the justice to arrange the windows artistically. The drawing
was made in this room, and we can give it its original
light, which is a great advantage.”
“What, were you present, then, at my aunt's sittings?”
exclaimed, with still another surprise, the puzzled English
girl.
“Yes; and I chanced to be consulted as to the pose of
the head,” Paul added, quietly, “so I can arrange it for
you with great precision!”
And, setting a chair on the spot where, a few days before,
had stood his easel, he placed the crayon in the exact light
in which it had been drawn.
Miss Ashly looked at it, steadily and in silence. It
was Paul's policy, of course, to show no more than a third
person's natural desire for the expression of her opinion,
but it was with difficulty he could now conceal his eagerness
of curiosity.
“It is a very graceful drawing,” said Mary, giving it,
evidently, very slight attention.
“Quite a lady-like person,” said Mrs. Cleverly.
Paul did not immediately remember that the picture
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was to impress mainly by the character of its resemblance
to the original, and that his friends, having never seen
Miss Winifred Ashly, could be judges only of its mechanical
execution. He felt, somehow, a resentment at what
seemed to him the inappreciative coldness of Mary's
remark.
“I am sorry my father is not here to see this,” commenced
Miss Ashly, at last, in a kind of soliloquy, as she
leaned over the back of a chair, gazing at the picture;
“the ideal of our family physiognomy is so admirably
expressed!”
“But what do you think of it as a likeness?” Paul
asked, merely to cover, by an indifferent question, his
eagerness to hear her talk more upon the subject.
“Why, it is my aunt, certainly!” she replied, hesitatingly;
“but,” she continued, presently, with a smile, “it is
more as I should expect her to look, in Heaven, hereafter,
than as she seems to common eyes in our present
world.”
“So flattered, do you think?” said Paul.
“Not at all untruly flattered,” proceeded Miss Ashly,
seeing, evidently, with very much her brother's eyes, and
hitting, by this discriminating remark, the very edge of
Paul's demand for appreciation of his picture; “nothing is
added to the original elements of the expression. It is
truthfully, her face—wonderfully so—but, with an inspired
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subtlety of art, heightened and spiritualized. I have seen
my aunt look as this does, when a fine passage of poetry
had been read to her, or when listening to the voluntary in
church, or even when improvising upon the piano, by herself;
but it is a rare look, and one a stranger is not at all
likely to see. How this charming artist ever detected it,
is one marvel to me, and it is a still greater marvel how
he had the skill to arrest and embody anything so momentary
and evanescent.”
That such delicious praise could be uttered by the lips
he saw before him, was to Paul a surprise for which he
could scarce credit his senses! The indifference—almost
the scorn—of her whom he had felt to be the coldest and
proudest of her sex, changed to the very elixir of flattering
appreciation! He looked at Miss Ashly. The calm, grey
eye, which had seemed so icy and distant, was now fixed
softly and admiringly on his work—the very arch of pride
in that mouth so haughtily immovable was unbent to an
expression of susceptibility and sweetness.
“I have seen your brother's face when it had somewhat
of the same character,” said Paul, so bewildered that he
scarce knew what he uttered.
Miss Ashly stepped into her room, and returned in a
moment with a miniature.
“This,” she said, opening and handing it to Paul, “was
taken by one of the first miniature painters of Paris, and
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we have thought it a good likeness of my brother. Yet, a
comparison of it, merely as a conception of character, with
that of my aunt, shows the difference which I feel to exist
between the two artists. One was a good workman, and
painted what he saw—the other was an inspired reader of
the soul.”
But a sudden thought entered Paul's brain, as he heard
these charming words, holding the miniature in his hand.
“Could you spare this little work of art,” he asked,
“for the few days of your proposed visit to the Palefords?
The contrast you have just drawn would interest the
painter of the other picture, and I should like”—
“Oh certainly, certainly!” she interrupted Paul by
exclaiming; “pray take it to him, if you please, for it will
show him exactly what I do not want, in his picture of
me. In my dull face” (she continued, smiling) “he might
not find it so easy to overcome the literalness of the
Ashly features.”
“Then you will sit to him?” echoed Paul.
“I should lose an invaluable opportunity, if I did not,”
she replied (as Mrs. Cleverly called to her to get ready for
some shopping they were to do together before sight-seeing),
“and, if you please, Mr. Fane, I will trouble you,
further, with the arrangement of this matter. If you will
express to him how delighted I am with my aunt's portrait,
and say that I will hold myself ready to sit at any
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time that suits his convenience, after my return from Colonel
Paleford's, I will really be very much obliged to
you.”
Enchanted as he was with his success, thus far, Paul
buried his eyes in the miniature as the ladies left the
room—his genius fully at work already on the conception
with which it had inspired him. Guided by this faithful
copy of the features, and remembering the expression of
young Ashly's face as he saw him when he was gazing on
the portrait of Sybil, he felt that he could repeat, in a
sketch drawn even without the original, the triumph he
had achieved in the picture of Miss Winifred. He could
express with his pencil (what he could not in words) his
deeper reading of the character of Sybil's lover, and, by
presenting this to her, he could, perhaps, forward his
rival's suit, and, at the same time, do something toward the
reparation which he owed him. A very closely locked
door of his tangled destiny seemed opening with this new
opportunity.
“Shall we take a walk while they are gone!” suddenly
broke in a gentle voice upon his reverie.
The color flushed into Paul's face as he remembered
that he was alone with Mary—for the first time since so
long a parting, and requiring to be reminded of it!—and
with a confused vehemence, expressing rather more willingness
than was quite natural, he sprang to his feet with an
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assent. The Ducal Gardens were close by—they had the
morning before them—it would be very delightful—would
Mary get her bonnet at once and come out in the noon
sun, so pleasant at that time of year!
But, over this confidential walk in the most beautiful
garden-wilderness of the world—a first unrestrained interview,
and between two so bound, by many a reason, to be,
then and thus, happier than in their whole lifetime before—
there hung, somehow, an insurmountable restraint!
Conversation, of course, was abundant enough, with the
inquiries that each had to make. Of mere information to
exchange, there was quite sufficient to occupy the time—
precluding, at least, the risk against which was given the
warning of his mother's letter—but, over and above the
choice of topics, and with no approach to love-making any
way likely or possible, there was still room for a sympathy
of the most tender confidingness and frankness; and this,
inexplicably and mortifyingly, Paul felt to be wanting!
One vampire thought after another was struggled with,
in the voiceless background of his mind, during that
haunted walk. The chance disparagement of the work of
his pencil by Mary, while another had so keenly appreciated
it—the presence of Miss Ashly with its unrevealable
secret of influence—the solemn bond resting upon him
with the dying words of Sybil's mother, and binding him
not to love the unsuspecting creature at his side—the
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plot, which he had framed with the princess to prolong or
secure her sisterly indifference, and the policy that would
now be necessary for his own conduct, with these sacred
and opposing claims calling equally upon his most delicate
honor—these were phantoms present at his reunion with
Mary, and not the less chilling in their influence upon the
happiness of the hour, because her share in them must be
untold. He felt reproached by every look from her soft
eyes. In spite of every effort, he was conscious that he
seemed, to her, abrupt and unlike himself. And, at her
first expression of fatigue he was relieved, to turn once
more toward the streets, where the novel objects of a
strange city would preclude thought—leaving, presently,
at her room-door, the one whom, but a few hours before,
he would have said he most wished to see, of all persons
in the world, and (to his own astonishment as he realized
it), rejoicing to be alone.
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CHAPTER XXV.
[figure description] Page 285.[end figure description]
Mrs. Cleverly had been several days in Florence;
and, in the drawing-room of the suite of furnished apartments
which she had taken for the season, were collected
four or five persons, who, though they had seemed to
come very naturally together, were of very varied character
and sympathies. It was the evening of the court
reception and ball. Paul's friend the princess had kindly
offered to present his two countrywomen, while the English
minister was to present Miss Ashly; and they were
all here assembled, as the most convenient point of reunion,
and were to have a cup of tea together before starting for
the palace.
There was a restraint on the spirits of the company.
The stiffness of the court costumes, seeming so out of
place around a private tea-table, had something to do
with it—the English minister and Paul, of course, in
their full diplomatic uniforms, and Mrs. Cleverly and
the princess in an array of ornament unusual even for
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themselves. But Miss Ashly, who was staying with the
Palefords, had been accompanied to town by her friend
Sybil (to pass the night with her at Mrs. Cleverly's,
and take her back, after the court-ball, to Casa G—),
and, there, at the table, she now sat, in her dress of the
deepest mourning, an unconscious contrast of sadness that
was almost like a reproof to the gay adornments around
her.
It was not without some difficulty that Mary Evenden
had been persuaded to make one of the party, that night
She had no taste for gaiety, particularly of the ceremonious
and ostentatious kind, and usually begged off, not
only from Mrs. Cleverly's acceptances of hospitalities, but
from the operas and public amusements, in the various
cities through which they had passed. Consistency was
one of her leading traits; and, as a humble clergyman's
daughter, she made the choice always which her father's
eye would approve—her natural taste, moreover, being
almost exclusively artistic, and nothing giving her pleasure,
in the way of amusement, unless tributary to this. To her
constantly expressed wish that she might be allowed, by
her friend, to be her private companion only, taking
advantage of their stay in different places to see what
was collected of the arts for study and improvement,
but otherwise wholly unobserved and uncared for, Mrs.
Cleverly was usually considerately yielding—but of this
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court-ball, in a palace which was the very sanctuary of
Art, the good chaperon had made a point. She was sure
Mary would be agreeably surprised with the splendors she
would see, and thank her afterwards for having insisted
upon her going.
Silent and ill at ease sat Mary, under that reluctant
preparation for pleasure, however. While the restraint,
upon the others of the circle, merely made them more
coldly courteous and self-possessed, it was, to her, an
embarrassment that amounted to an awkwardness. She
held herself in a constrained position, robbed of all her
natural grace by the dress to which she was so unaccustomed;
and over her features, in which there was
usually so calm and healthful a distribution of color,
there was now a feverish flush, confusing and obscuring
altogether the intellectual delicacy of the expression.
Of that spiritual elevation of beauty, which Paul had
described so glowingly a few days before to the princess,
and which his imagination had kept so long, as the
cherished ideal by which all others were excluded from
his heart, there was now scarce a trace! Mary Evenden—
he was mortified and irritated to see—looked even
common-place and inferior.
But, with every effort to shut at least the eyes of his
taste and imagination, it was impossible not to see the
contrast that was beside her. Sybil Paleford, from
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various incidental causes, had probably never before been
so beautiful—certainly, to Paul, had never seemed so
miraculously supplied with all he had before thought
possible as heightening additions to her beauty. Among
these over-gay costumes, her deep mourning had, in the
first place, a singularly marked impressiveness; but, to
her peculiar character of loveliness, it was, in itself, of
all possible adornments, the most harmoniously becoming.
In the two or three happy combinations of costume and
expression which had, already, to his artist eye, made
this marvellously fair creature seem as complete as
Nature could allow one mortal to be, there was still
room for the shade of thoughtful sadness, which now,
so touchingly and so intellectually, overspread her tranquillity
of feature. It was the charm (he could not but
allow) which he had thought belonged alone to Mary
Evenden—the look of the soul ever uppermost, and the
outer form and its senses quite forgot! Yet there they
now were—side by side—Mary Evenden and Sybil Paleford—
and how could the comparison between them,
unfavorable in all points to the one he was most bound
to prefer, be denied or resisted?
The carriages were announced, and leave was to be
taken of the one not included in the gay party; and the
actual resentment that Paul felt, at the disparagement contained
in this picture of contrast, might have shown itself
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in his colder good-night and less cordial pressure of the
hand—but there was a keen observer on the watch. The
princess, his friend and confidant, had seen the comparison,
as well as he. She knew that, with the natural generosity
of affection, he would seek to compensate to Mary for the
chance wrong she was thus suffering, and that this, both
as a tenderness to her and an undeserved slight to Sybil,
would be a hindrance to their well-laid plans for present
neutrality. Taking Paul by the arm, therefore, she became
an inevitable interruption to anything but a formal good-night,
while she prevented his very possible offering of
that arm to Mary—and (quite unconscious of the dramatic
extent of the chaperonage which she was thus sharing with
the princess) Mrs. Cleverly, in an eventful minute or two
more, was on her way to the palace, with her party.
To the imaginative sculptress, the web of destiny, thus
being woven, had assumed quite the excitement of a
romance; but her sympathies had changed sides, since
the morning over their work—when Paul had made confession
of his embarrassments. She had, at that time, felt
more interested for his fate as connected with Miss Paleford—
thinking it the love with which, on a whole, he was
likeliest to be happy. But, on the first day after the arrival
of his friends, Paul had taken Mary to the studio of
“Signor Valerio,” with full initiations into the secrets of
the place; and to the spells of Art which there had all
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their magic, and for which her whole life had so prepared
her, he had delivered her over—his own engrossing work
at the other studio (according to the princess's plan) being
pleaded as his excuse for long mornings of absence.
But while, to the enthusiastically artistic girl, this romantic
opportunity of play for her leading passion was like a
strange fulfillment of a dream, Mary was, herself, a subject
of close study and interest to her new friend. She and the
princess, in fact, were curiously adapted for a sudden and
unreserved intimacy. One was by nature what the other
had become by completeness of culture—one had never
learned what the other had spent her life in unlearning.
Both were absolutely unaffected and simple—the link of
resemblance which thus united them, however, being the
meeting of two extremes. The princess, alone, of course
understood the riddle. To the wild-flower American girl,
the precious gem of character which so imitated her own
was as natural as herself; and, with the most confiding
unconsciousness, she made herself as much at home in the
studio of the high-born sculptress as she would have done
in Paul's attic with his mother.
In the exquisite appreciation of her genius, by so fresh-hearted
and innocent a creature, the princess had found an
enchantment that was new, even to herself. She had cultivated,
hitherto, an Eden of solitude, on this point. Paul
was the first, from her own level of society, who had been
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admitted to the full knowledge of her artistic life; but (of
the other sex, and a citizen of the gay world which she
strove to shut out)—he was, of course, somewhat to be
guarded against as a flatterer—who might turn into a
lover; and, particularly as an admirer of her genius,
whose admiration of beauty in statuary might be colored
insensibly by passion. But, of the lovely forms which she
had created with such skill of hand and such patient
breathing of inspired thought into marble, here was what
seemed like an embodiment of the very light of heaven
that fell upon them—like the very atmosphere that enveloped
them, taking shape and telling fondly of its privilege
and pleasure. For truth and completeness, indeed, Mary's
impressions were just such as light and air might receive
and tell of. The princess felt that never could exist, in
this world, praise and appreciation so pure and precious!
Mary's own genius sprang at once to this new field of
Art. Sculpture had been a study kept always, till now,
out of reach of her familiar knowledge and sympathies.
She had thus, however, passed through its most valuable
novitiate—discipline of hand and eye by practice with the
pencil. It was as a scholar by whom all the elements had
been well acquired, that she was ready for this branch of
Art; and the luxuriousness of the school in which she now
found herself, the beauty of the models with which she was
at liberty to pass her hours, and the generous willingness
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and courtesy of the accomplished teacher at her side, gave
it all an inexpressible fascination for her. She commenced
her first lesson, in moulding the clay, on the first day that
Paul left her with “Signor Valerio;” and, in the three or
four long mornings that she had now passed in an atmosphere
so exquisitely to her taste, there had been compressed
almost the happiness of a life-time. And it was not strange
that, after one of these mornings of unembarrassed completeness
of enjoyment, the preparation for a court ball—
with the stiffness of unaccustomed dress, the adornment by
borrowed jewels, and the necessity (as she thought) of different
manners and conversation—was, to Mary, little better
than a painful bewilderment. It had taken all the
gratitude that she felt for Mrs. Cleverly, to yield to the
good lady's wishes by the consent to go, but it required
more nerve than she could command to appear like herself
under restraints which, to body and mind, were so wholly
distasteful.
The arrival and entree had their usual routine of awkwardness
for the inexperienced, and, in looking on at the
presentation, Paul could not but see a second contrast very
unfavorable to Mary in the quiet ease and self-possessed
grace and dignity of Miss Ashly; but, the ceremony over,
he had thought to draw aside his embarrassed playmate
and friend, and, stationed at some unobserved point of
view, pass his evening in diverting her thoughts with
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comments on the scene and its characters. He made his
way, accordingly, to the side where the presented guests
fell back from the immediate neighborhood of the Grand
Duke, and was about offering his arm to Mary.
“Pardon me!” said the Princess, stepping between them,
with a playful imitation of a gentleman's bow, “Signor
Valerio is to have the honor! And, my dear Fane,” she
continued, in an under tone, as he made room for her,
“please, do not approach us again till the close of the ball.
I will myself see that Miss Evenden is amused, and, for
this evening, you chance to be the worst company she can
have!”
And, taking Mary off to one of the raised seats at the
end of the long hall, she seated herself by her side, and
began what she understood better than almost anybody
else in the world—making the most of what enchantments
came along with music and the hours.
Paul discovered, presently, after a short fit of absent-mindedness,
that he was in very close neighborhood to
Miss Ashly. She smiled as his eyes met hers.
“You look very inconsolable, Mr. Fane!” she said; “but
the princess thinks, probably, that Miss Evenden has come
abroad for something else beside seeing her own countrymen.”
“Consolable, I assure you,” said Paul, offering his arm
very promptly, “if I may be allowed to plead that the
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same barrier does not prevent my playing the happy
shadow to Miss Ashly.”
“I was just going to propose the same thing to you, in
substance,” she said, emphasizing the play of words upon
his expression—“that is to say, I was wishing your company,
and for more substantial reasons than either making
you happy as a shadow, or securing attention to myself. I
wish, in fact, to interest you in the happiness of a certain
third person.”
Paul expressed his assent simply by a grave earnestness
of look and movement, as he led the way to a promenade
through the less crowded rooms. He was, for the moment,
uncertain of his position. Miss Ashly had been three or
four days at Casa G—, and he did not know how much
more she had learned, in that time, of his intimacy with
the family. He was not even certain, as yet, whether they
had chanced to mention to her what they themselves
knew—who it was that had painted the portraits of Miss
Paleford and Miss Winifred. Her first remark relieved
him upon this latter point, however.
“To defer my important request, for a moment,” she
said, “may I ask whether you have executed the commission
with which I troubled you—making an engagement
for my sittings, with your friend the painter?”
Paul drew a breath of relief. It was important for the
completeness of the secret experiment of his life—(the
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experiment he shamed to own, which had been to him of
keener zest, thus far, than the trials of love or genius)—
that, to Miss Ashly's confidence, and to whatever degree of
intimacy she was likely to allow upon a common ground
of acquaintance, he should first try his claim as a gentleman.
As an artist, and especially as one to whom she
was herself to sit for a portrait, there might be condescention
in her politeness, or there might be vanity in the
desire to please. He wished, for this evening, at least, to
be upon the mere footing which society would ordinarily
give him, as to any question of relative position, and—this
ground-work now settled—he had nothing to do, of course,
but to be as agreeable as was any way possible to Miss
Ashly, who (unsuspicious of the problem she was solving)
leaned at present so confidingly on his arm.
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CHAPTER XXVI.
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It was evidently with her mind very much upon something
else, that Miss Ashly pursued the conversation, as
she and Paul lingered along by the pedestals of the statues,
or stopped to look at one and another of the “old masters”
that lined the walls. They talked of Florence and its
climate, the looks of the grand duke, Austrian politics in
Italy, the fashions and the pictures.
“Did I understand you,” she said, at last, reverting to
the subject which Paul had skillfully digressed from, “that
this artist friend of yours speaks English?”
“It is his native language,” said Paul, very safely.
“Ah, an Englishman! I might have known that, however,”
she went on presently to add, “for no foreigner
would have read so well the physiognomy of an English
family. I forget whether you mentioned his name?”
Paul was staggered. Here was a direct summons to
surrender his secret! He felt the betraying blood flush
into his temples, but presently made half a confession,
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thinking it might be just possible that she would not jump
to the conclusion at once.
“Why, to tell the truth, he is a former acquaintance
of yours,” he said, “but I was not to tell you his name.
He was curious to know whether you would remember
him.”
Miss Ashly's answer poured oil upon the long-hidden
irritation at Paul's heart!
“He is modest—for a man of his genius—certainly,”
she said, with a smile of evident pleasure at the compliment
she had found for herself in the explanation. “He must
bear the mark of his superiority, of course, for observant
eyes, and such men are not easily forgotten. I should feel
very much ashamed to have met the painter of those pictures—
even to have had the pleasure of his acquaintance
(as you say I have)—without recognizing his quality;
besides” (she added, after a moment's pause), “he must
be a very high-bred man, by the air of birth and breeding
which he has given to his subjects, and which can be
alone given by the instinct of the artist's own habits and
manners.”
The contradiction to all this, which had stuck in Paul's
memory like the barb of an arrow—(her own lack of
recognition of that same artist once and complete forgetfulness
of him now)—was not enough to spoil the sweetness
of her words. But he wished to prolong a little, the
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window-opening she had given to the closeness of his
heart.
“And do you think,” he asked, “that the quality of the
man is always recognizable, in the ordinary acquaintance
of society?”
“Yes,” she replied, after a moment's turning the
question over in her mind, “I think we usually recognize
superiority—at least, I have always thought I did, myself,
though we by no means pay homage to it always,
or even show that we are conscious of its presence. A
woman's pride, policy, vanity, reserve, diffidence, or any
one of a hundred reasons, may prevent her giving the least
sign of being aware that a man she could admire is near
her—but she treasures none the less the memory of having
met him.”
“A myth of consolation very sweet to believe in,” murmured
Paul.
“And that reminds me of the request I was intending
to make of you, Mr. Fane,” said Miss Ashly, dropping his
arm and taking a seat for a tête-à-tête—“a request which
I will preface with the apology that Colonel Paleford told
me you had more influence than any one else in the matter
it refers to.”
“My friend, the colonel, honors me,” said Paul, “whatever
the matter be—though I wonder”—
He hesitated, for (in his surprise at Colonel Paleford's
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frankness in confessing, as well as sagacity in divining that
influence), he was about to betray his anticipation of what
it would be more delicate for Miss Ashly to speak of first.
She proceeded after waiting a moment for the unfinished
sentence.
“I should add, perhaps, that it seemed to be an expression
let slip unguardedly by the colonel, and that he turned
the conversation, unwilling, apparently, to say more upon
the subject. But,” she added, with a smile, after an
instant's hesitation, remembering the discovery I had
already made, of your power of magnetizing—(my Aunt
Winnie's familiar confidence being a very wonderful conquest,
I assure you, Mr. Fane!)—I thought the influence
he ascribed to you very probable. At all events, with the
importance of the object in view, it was worth while to try
to enlist it in our favor.”
“And this object?”—inquired Paul, already anticipating
her answer.
“Is the winning of Miss Sybil Paleford for my brother.”
As Miss Ashly thus briefly expressed her wish, she looked
very scrutinizingly at Paul, evidently with a curiosity as to
whether he had any feeling of his own to which this proposition
might run counter. The tone of his reply, was
very reassuring, to her.
“You will be surprised to hear that I had already a plot
in hand to bring the match about.”
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But as he made this mere reference to the portrait of
her brother (which he had been employed upon for four or
five days), Paul became, for the first time, aware of a lurking
reluctance in his hitherto willing task of furthering the
love of Mr. Ashly. The image of Miss Paleford, as he had
seen her that evening in her mourning dress, and with the
exquisite sadness of a mourning heart impressed upon her
beautiful features, strangely took the place at present, of
all his previous impressions of her—displacing, too, unaccountably
to himself, the image of Mary Evenden, which
had hitherto filled all the foreground of his fancy. He
could see no other Sybil Paleford than the beautiful
mourner—no other face, than hers with its tender pensiveness,
even as he looked now at Miss Ashly. There had
been a moment's pause, only, during which these sudden
convictions had crowded upon his mind. It was interrupted
by a laugh from his wondering companion.
“You make me feel,” she said, “like the traveller in the
German story, who could never knock at a door without
the same man's making his appearance on the inside. I
find you before me, somehow in all my supposed secrets.
May I ask what project it is, in my brother's favor, for
which (let me say beforehand), I am already very grateful?”
“I must reserve the disclosure of it, with your permission,”
said Paul—“the principal wheel of the machinery
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not being as yet, very certain of completion. But (if I
may venture to ask the question), are we quite sure that it
is to be `a course of true love' which is to be made to
`run smooth' with our aid and contrivance?”
Paul scarce confessed to himself the real motive which
lay hidden under this apparently very considerate question—
the hope, that, in Miss Ashly's fuller explanation of the
probabilities of the match, he might find some excuse to
himself for less zeal in its favor. Her reply gave somewhat
of a new color to her own interest in it, and—(what
with the significancy of the gift of which he now found the
bestowal in his own hands, and the side-inferences as to
his own value by the same standard, in the mind of the
Aunt)—he listened more attentively even than Miss Ashly
was aware of—interrupting her only by monosyllables of
surprise or encouragement.
“As to my brother,” she commenced, “there is no doubt
but what he is very thoroughly in love. It is, I believe,
the first time in his life, and his temperament is phlegmatic
and unimpressible; and so it is likely to go seriously
with him—either for happiness or disappointment. He
has made a full confession of his feeling on the subject, to
me, and I have very naturally, the earnestness of a confidante
in his cause. But, aside from this, and, aside from
the devotion of an affectionate sister to his happiness, there
is a family pride enlisted in the matter—outweighing in
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this case (if I can manage to explain its peculiarity to
you), most of the ordinary desirablenesses of a match.”
Paul turned his inquiring eyes more fully towards her as
she paused, for he was not aware that the relative position
of the two families was so much in favor of the Palefords.
“It is not the common family pride, that would seek
honor by alliance with high descent, you will understand,”
she continued. We are vain enough to think our own
blood better than that of most of the titled families around us—
at least sufficiently pure to give distinction to any with
which it chose to mingle. But, with the best blood, there
should be also the best look of personal superiority; and
this (I may say to you Mr. Fane, since you have brought
me to the confessional), is a hobby that amounts to a
monomania in our family. With the other usual considerations
already provided for—wealth enough and blood
pure enough—we wish all who belong to us to look it,
undeniably. The Ashlys and their descendants must, if
possible, be kept recognizable by their exterior—wherever
seen, wearing the superiority which tells its rank unasserted.
We think it due to our race accordingly, while
we represent it, to engraft nothing upon it that is not
perfect in its physique—healthy, beautiful, and of noble
presence.”
“All of which Miss Paleford certainly is,” echoed
Paul.
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“Yes, and the match is very agreeable to us in other
respects,” she continued. “The Palefords and Ashlys
have been friends and neighbors for centuries, and we
know all their qualities of character. They are incapable
of pettiness or guile—essentially lofty-natured, frank, brave
and true. Gentler or purer blood beats in no heart on
earth than in Sybil Paleford's!”
As Miss Ashly's cold eye kindled with the glow of
this generous tribute to her friend—her neck lifting
unconsciously from the bend forward that was usually
somewhat ungraceful, and her proudly cut mouth changing
from its habitual disdain to a less curving arch of genial
enthusiasm—Paul took the imprint upon his memory
of what he should reproduce in her portrait. She had
given the mysterious artist a “sitting,” unaware. But
there was more than this, and more than sympathy of
homage to beauty, in the apparently absorbed attention
of the courteous attaché. In spite of a half-conscious
reluctance at his heart, Paul felt that resistless welding
of a new link to the heart which comes with timely
corroboration by another's praise. His freshly received
impression of Sybil's beauty and character—as new that
evening as if he had never before seen her—was graven
in, by this eloquent homage (from one who chanced to
be, for him, the highest authority of her own sex), as
by the point of a diamond. But his zeal of partnership,
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in the task of securing her love for another, grew colder
as he listened.
“To one side, then, certainly, I think,” recommenced
Miss Ashly, “the match would bring happiness—to my
brother, and to his home and kindred. We know, also,
that it would be a most welcome alliance to Colonel
Paleford.”
“Great make-weights in the scale!” said Paul, giving
voice with an effort to a conviction which he could not
shut out.
“Are they not? And, against these and my brother's
wooing, which, if not very demonstrative, is, at least,
sincere and undivided, there is only (as I inferred from
what Colonel Paleford said) the obstacle of a romantic
whim—a girlish horror of making a mercenary match,
and consequent distaste to my brother as a man of
fortune!”
“To be overcome, I take it, if at all, by touching the
romance of her nature, in some way,” said Paul, talking
very mechanically, but, at the same time, expressing his
sincere opinion on the point.
“You have already given it thought, I have the
woman's instinct to see,” said Miss Ashly, with a smile.
“And is the project you have in hand (if I may venture
to make the inquiry), based upon this key to our affections?”
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“If successful,” he replied, “it will cause Mr. Ashly to
be seen by Miss Paleford with just that difference—a
romantic sentiment in his face instead of its habitual
imperturbability.”
“You are a magician—I am quite prepared to be
convinced!” said Miss Ashly; “and” (she continued,
turning to Paul with a genial relaxation of her proud
features, but in the expression of which his keen eye
saw lurking the something still withheld—the still unsurrendered
reservation of an habitual consciousness of
superiority), “it is with this excuse that I account to
myself for such extraordinary confidence in a stranger.
Bless me, Mr. Fane! how little I have known you,
after all! And to be telling secrets to you in this
way! And asking a favor of you, too, which I really
do not think I could ask of another man living!”
Paul bowed very low, with a mock look of incredulity.
“It is my friend the necromancer, however—not a
Mr. Fane of a week's acquaintance—whom I thus wonderfully
trust,” she added playfully, as she rose from
her seat, “and, if we eventually owe to you this jewel,
so coveted to grace the Ashly name, I shall, at least,
feel a life-long gratitude to your kindness (that is to
say, to your hocus-pocus!)—and I leave it hopefully in
your hands. I suppose,” she asked, as Mrs. Cleverly came
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in sight, evidently in search of them, “we can take no
farther counsel as to your project, at present?”
“Not till we meet at your aunt's, with the nameless
artist,” answered Paul, very mystifyingly, and the next
moment, addressing a remark to Mrs. Cleverly, and so
ending the tête-à-tête with Miss Ashly, leaving her, however,
still more puzzled than before by his closing words.
The remainder of the evening passed off very dreamily
to Paul, though he was mechanically and very acceptably
unremitting in his attendance upon Mrs. Cleverly. In
their promenades he came several times in sight of Mary
Evenden; and he was somewhat surprised, with all his
abstraction, to see how her eyes failed to follow him,
after each sisterly glance of recognition; but, with the
princess and her circle of friends, she seemed absorbed
and entirely at her ease; and Paul could not but feel
that his attentions (which he was to show her but for
the peremptory orders to the contrary), were anything
but missed! “Signor Valerio,” to whose side she kept
close, was sufficing for her present happiness, without a
doubt—he saw it in the face he knew so well. But there
was a stronger feeling than jealousy in his heart, which
took the uppermost place again, as, each time, she passed
out of sight; and, with this feeling, at last, Paul found
himself struggling, as the morning broke on his sleepless
eyes after the ball.
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CHAPTER XXVII.
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From various circumstances, there had been a brief
calm in the troubled waters of Paul's destiny. The delay
of Miss Winifred Ashly in returning to Florence, had
deferred, from time to time, the proposed “sitting,” which
was to be given to Miss Mildred Ashly at her aunt's rooms;
and a slight illness of Paul's, with the mourning seclusion
of the inhabitants of Casa G—, had just sufficed to prevent
his meeting, for a week or two, with any of the Paleford
circle. His illness, however, though dispiriting and
unfitting him for visits, had not wholly confined him to his
lodgings; and, joining Mrs. Cleverly and Mary Evenden
over their breakfast, on his way, he had usually crept
around to Blivins's studio, and beguiled the day with
irregular labor at his easel. He had thus finished (with
the aid of the miniature) the portrait of Mr. Ashly, which
was to act as his atonement for a rivalry unjustly resentful;
and, though, as a piece of artistic work, it was now very
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satisfactory to his eye, he had achieved it through many
struggles with himself and with very conflicting feelings.
His friend Tetherly having gone to Rome (taking with
him a note of introduction to Miss Winifred, with whose
portrait he had been so captivated); Blivins, silently at
work as usual, made happy by the constant company of
his brother artist; Mary Evenden entirely absorbed with
“Signor Valerio's” teachings in Art, and Mrs. Cleverly
abundantly attended to, by friends of her own whom she
had met at court; Paul was pretty much at the mercy of
his own thoughts. He had found these, and his comparative
solitude, rather more burthensome than he could well
bear—on one cloudy and gloomy day—and, rather as a
relief of desperation than with any feeling of readiness for
the task, he sent a note to Casa G—, making an
appointment for the expected “sitting.” With their leave,
he wrote to say, the nameless artist would come out on the
morrow and make, there, a commencement of Miss Ashly's
portrait, instead of waiting longer for her aunt's return
from Rome.
The messenger had returned with a very willing assent
to the proposition; and, early in the forenoon of the next
day, Paul was in the vetturino of his friend Giuseppe,
going round by Blivins's studio to pick up his materials,
on the way to Casa G—; when, at the corner of the
Duomo, he was met by the princess, driving in to her own
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daily occupation. To stop and exchange kind inquiries
was a matter of course; but it ended in the drawing up of
the vehicles to the door of the cathedral, the two occupants
taking arms for a confidential stroll and tête-à-tête
under the dim shadows of the long and vaulted aisles. On
hearing where Paul was bound, with his morning errand,
the philosophic sculptress had thought of something it was
perhaps timely to speak of, as to the secret of which she had
been made the confidant.
“You will see Miss Paleford to-day,” she said, as they
paced slowly along over the tesselated floor.
“I presume she will be present during the sitting,” he
replied, coloring slightly, “though I should certainly be
less embarrassed with my work if she were not. I should
very much prefer, indeed, that the portrait of Mr. Ashly,
which I take with me, should be first presented to her in
my absence, and by his sister.”
“And what portion of this two-fold embarrassment
would be removed,” asked the princess, “if Miss Paleford
were no longer the forbidden water at the lip of my friend
Tantalus?”
Paul hesitated a little, with the consciousness of the
truth of what was thus boldly assumed by the question, for
there was a degree of truth in it, at least, of which he had
not yet made confession, even to himself.
“There would be less embarrassment—certainly!” he
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said, with a smile, followed by a look of very puzzled
inquiry.
“I do not know how agreeable it will be to you,” continued
the princess, “even to know that you are at liberty
to love the one lady, since it involves the possible mortification
that you are not loved by the other.”
Paul half stopped in his walk, but she proceeded without
noticing his surprise.
When we conversed last upon the embarrassments in
the matter, we took for granted that the two claims for
your heart—one made by your mother's letter, and one by
Mrs. Paleford's—were based upon knowledge that could
scarce be mistaken; and, as to Mary Evenden, I not only
thought her attachment to you a matter of course, but, on
seeing her, I changed my opinion as to the one who was
most ready to make you immediately happy. My judgment
and my sympathies all went with your early playmate.”
“Well?” inquired Paul, stopping short, in astonished
expectation.
“Well,” said the princess, “it is my belief, now, that
there is no tender passion whatever, in Mary's childish
attachment to you—a regard for her happiness, therefore,
if I am correct, being no obstacle, at present, to your loving
some one else.”
With all the hidden willingness that there might have
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been for this news, Paul found its open announcement
somewhat staggering.
“I do not know that I can fully explain it to you,” the
princess went on to say, “for it proves an unsusceptibility,
which I do not myself quite comprehend; but I have been
wholly absorbed, of late, in my study of this lovely girl's
nature; and, what with her complete confidingness and unreserve
towards me as a woman, and my own skill gained
by habitual curiosity in the analysis of character, I do not
think I am mistaken in my inference.”
Paul could not but admit that better authority was
hardly possible.
“I was first led to give a thought to it,” she continued,
“by observing, at the court ball, the contented unconsciousness
and tranquillity with which she saw the entire
monopoly of your attentions by another lady—drawn off
into a corner, as you were, by Miss Ashly, and evidently
giving the most deferential interest to the topic between
you. This looked a shade beyond what I could believe,
even of transatlantic disinterestedness, in love; but I still
thought it possible that the evening's jealousy might have
been exhausted upon the lovely Niobe in her mourning
weeds, whom we had seen at the tea-table.”
It grew evident to Paul that he had been very sagaciously
watched.
“The occasional mention of Miss Paleford, which I
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made in the course of the next day, satisfied me, however,
that of this more trying and undeniable eclipse, she had
been equally unconscious; and, with this confirmation of
my wonder, I began to look upon it as a problem worth
the studying—no less from fidelity to the confidence you
had reposed in me, than from the novelty of woman's
nature, which it promised curiously to develop. Over our
work, therefore, in these long mornings, I have so managed
as to turn the conversation upon the abstract theory of
love—the personal experience and habit of thought being
called upon, of course, for illustration and argument.”
“And she ignores the tender passion, altogether, you
say?” asked Paul, rather skeptically.
“Not in others,” replied the princess; “and that is one
of the points that puzzle me; for she seems to have given
it constant study and observation as an important element
of Art. She wishes to know why the best statues have
been moulded and the best pictures painted, from the
kindling of this fire in the blood and brain—wondering,
with the coolest philosophy of self-knowledge, why she herself
feels no glimmer of such inspiration.”
“Yet she is very affectionate in her nature,” Paul
musingly said.
“It was the distinction she made, in her argument,”
pursued the princess, “that, with affection for her friends
which would sacrifice even her life for them if necessary—
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affection which had neither stint nor reserve in its devotedness—
she still felt no instinct of the love that was expressed
in Art and described in poetry. And she expressed her
wonder, not only at the absence of any feeling which she
could recognise as love, but at her strongly instinctive preference
for a life without it. She said that, spite of reasoning
and poetry to the contrary, it seemed to her like a
general law from which the few higher natures should be
exempt—as there were those who were not subject to the
curse of getting their bread by the sweat of their brow—
and that the life of genius, particularly, could not seem
privileged or intellectually set apart and perfected, without
freedom from an influence so common—with all its
commonness and sensuality, too, so overpoweringly engrossing.
And the statuary in my little studio,” the princess
smilingly continued, “served her for illustrations of her
meaning—the figure of my Antinoüs, especially, which
she thought was too beautiful for love. How is it, she
asked, that I can pour out my whole soul in appreciation
and admiration of the beauty of that form, and yet feel
that it has attained its highest point of expression and
inspiration by its insensibility to love?”
“Pleased, of course, with your Daphne—flying from
love,” Paul added.
“It was upon Miss Evenden's turning to this,” said the
princess, “that I took advantage of the opportunity to get
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from her—quite accidentally, as it appeared—the confession
I have yet to tell you of. As she stood near the
pedestal of Daphne, with the moulding-pencil in her hand,
pointing to the refusal expressed in the movement of the
shoulders, I hinted at a possible similarity between this and
a future consciousness of her own—at a proposal from Mr.
Fane, or somebody else.”
“And did she then speak of me?” Paul asked, very
eagerly.
“Take a long breath for fortitude to listen, my unloved
friend!” the princess proceeded, half playfully, half doubtingly.
“She expressed herself with the most naïve definiteness
and simplicity as to the very gentleman in question—
complimenting you, however, with calling it the very
case in point, for her argument. There was Paul, she said,
whom she had every reason in the world to fall in love
with. She believed, from certain indications, that his
mother expected it of her — she thought it probable,
indeed, though he had never spoken on the subject, that
Paul expected it himself. Yet she had hoped that, in his
absence, he would form a passionate attachment to some
one else, leaving her to resume her sister's place in his
affection on his return. She would have been much happier
to have found him married, on her arrival in Florence.
There was at present a restraint between herself and her
old playmate (she added, after a little hesitation, quite
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sadly), and she could only explain it by the want of sympathy—
her own unavoidable lack of response to some feeling
he had been cherishing towards her.”
Paul felt that there was light thus thrown on much that
he had found inexplicable, in Mary's manner. He listened
with expectant attention.
“I must salve the wound for you, however,” the princess
proceeded, with her tone of natural and earnest kindness,
“for the charming girl went on most eloquently to picture
her companionship with your genius—spoke glowingly of
the sweetness of what came from your loftier mind—
thought you would be perfect if you could become indifferent
to all life but that of intellect;—and declared that she
anticipated that sublimation of your nature, and her own
fellowship with it, as her greatest resource for happiness in
coming years.”
“And is it possible, then,” asked Paul, whose interest in
Mary (as a problem he had failed to decipher) began to be
awakened, “that there can be a woman's heart wanting to
a nature otherwise of such completeness?”
“Her luxuriant beauty would certainly tell a different
story,” said the princess, “and that is what puzzles me.
She is of faultlessly free development, in her figure—of
the fullness of lip and features which is thought usually to
indicate susceptibility—her motion is almost voluptuously
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pliant and unguarded—and the expression of her deep
blue eye is even remarkable for its feminine tenderness.
There should be a woman's heart under such a covering!”
“Dormant, perhaps!” suggested Paul.
“Why, if so, you have strangely failed to awaken it,”
replied his friend, “but it may be only a stronger instance
of that unequal tardiness of Nature which I have often
observed. We are not born with all our faculties ready to
begin; nor do the after-awakenings come to all natures
alike—that is, with the same order of succession or length
of delay. I believe” (she added with a smile of inquiry)
“the moustache of your lordlier sex develops sooner on
some lips than on others. The mental faculties, we know,
are very irregular as to their time of ripeness, and even as
to their first indication of existence. Poetry wakens late,
in some bosoms. Why should not Passion—in the coldly
pure heart of woman, spell-bound also by her very balance
and harmony of fullness and completeness—waken still
later than the faculties which are called upon by her education?
It would not be wonderful if it should slumber
till comparatively late in life—and, indeed, I have known
more than one instance of a romantic first love kindled
after youth was well past.”
Paul might have given an instance of this, if he had
been at liberty to speak of Miss Winfred Ashly—but the
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passing thought and its association reminded him of the
errand he was bound upon, and he hastened to close the
conversation by reverting to its main point.
“Your kind counsel, then,” he said, “releases me altogether
from one of my two obligations—enjoining upon
me, of course, to devote myself exclusively to the fulfillment
of the other—not loved by Mary Evenden, I may
freely take my chance of being loved by Sybil Paleford?”
“Pardon me,” said the princess, “if I guard you against
too sweeping an interpertation of what you term my `counsel.
' I have meant merely to advise you of the fact that
you were equitably at liberty to accept the dying mother's
bequest, and love Miss Paleford. While my reason gives
you this for your guidance, however, my imagination and
feeling lean quite the other way.”
Paul had too much on his mind for expression, but he
looked inquiringly at the princess.
“I mean that I think it would be the most beautiful of
romances, to make a love-vigil of Mary Evenden—to watch
and wait for the waking of her sleeping heart. With so
much already won—the mind quite devoted to you, and
the fair creature all yours except the lacking consent of
passion yet unawakened—it seems but a story of which
the sequel is withheld.”
“Wedlock to be deferred, to close the book?” asked
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Paul, with a smile, as he handed his friend into her carriage.
“Not necessarily,” she said. “Mary Evenden might be
very happy as a wife, with only sympathy of tastes and
pursuits; and a life passed in hoping still to touch the
heart, would turn many a forced match into poetry.”
Paul beckoned to his vetturino, as the princess drove
off with this final addition to her tangle of contradictory
suggestions; and, in a few minutes, freighted with his
materials from the studio, he was on his way to Colonel
Paleford's; very little prepared, either by what he had now
heard or by his state of health and spirits, for the drama
of accumulating events opening before him.
-- 319 -- p746-324
CHAPTER XXVIII.
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On arriving at Casa G—, Paul found Colonel
Paleford sitting solitary and thoughtful under the roofed
gateway at the entrance of the vineyard, and it was
evidently a relief and pleasure to him to see his friend.
In the course of a few minutes' conversation, on their
way to the house, it chanced to be mentioned that the
secret of the nameless artist had been kept. They had
not felt at liberty to speak of it without Paul's permission—
Miss Ashly, of course, at present, expecting a visit from
a stranger.
The light of the little drawing-room was soon arranged,
and the easel and its belongings made ready for “the
sitting.” They still waited for the appearance of the
ladies; but, in taking up his pencil, as they conversed,
Paul found, both how ill he was, and how much his
depressed spirits had been already tried, that day. By
the nicely understood feel of his wand of genius, he
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was reminded of his trembling hand, and of the doubtfulness
of the calm of inner strength that was to be
particularly needed for the critical ordeal before him.
With the long-cherished dream of his youth just crushed
in his heart—a fresh touchstone to be applied to the
point of his secret pride and weakness—the cause of his
now most dreaded rival to be magnanimously forwarded
by a plot of his own contriving—and the skill of the
artist, notwithstanding all these deranging and disturbing
causes, expected to confirm, by his present work, its
previous triumphs of art and discrimination—he literally
felt the strength insufficient. He was about to confess
as much, at an expression of sympathy from Colonel
Paleford, who had remarked his paleness and debility,
when Miss Ashly's step was heard upon the stair.
The greeting was frank and cordial, as she entered, with
the pressure given by her hand to Paul's.
“A very artistic arrangement,” she said, looking round
upon the half-darkened room, “but where is the artist?”
Paul took the pencil from the little shelf of the easel
standing near him, and, with a bow of mock ceremony,
made the sign of the cross upon his own forehead.
“Our friend Fane,” said Colonel Paleford, smiling at the
blank incredulity with which the silent announcement was
received, “is the nameless artist we have been admiring all
this while!
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“And the picture of Miss Sybil?” asked the astonished
guest, beginning already to be formal.
“Was his work, I believe!” said the colonel.
“And my aunt!” she almost breathlessly added.
“Miss Winifred Ashly did me the honor to sit to me,
also,” said Paul, with the deferential air of an employed
artist.
There were too many things to remember, and to rearrange
in accordance with this startling surprise, for
Miss Mildred Ashly to recover very readily. She looked
at the easel and at Paul alternately, and seemed to be
trying to identify them with something in her mind.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed with her scrutiny, he
went to his portfolio-case which leaned against the
wall.
“And here,” he said, producing his crayon copy of
her brother, and setting it upon the drawing-board, “is
a present from the same nameless artist, which I presume
will be very welcome to Miss Paleford. I have endeavored
to show, in my crayon portrait, the enthusiasm
and nobleness of Mr. Ashly's face—wanting which, I
thought that the miniature you lent me had done injustice
to his hidden qualities and character.”
There was an involuntary utterance of admiring pleasure
by Miss Ashly, as she first looked at the drawing; but a
recovery of her attitude of reserve, a moment after, and
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a just perceptible return of her long-remembered and
indescribable impenetrability of countenance, once more
staggered Paul. He was not reassured or comforted,
even by the expressive movement of Colonel Paleford,
who, after looking a moment at the portrait of Mr.
Ashly, passed near where stood the young friend whom
he thus considered generously disinterested, silently pressing
the hand that Paul was resting on his hip.
The pause became embarrassing.
“I have your own portrait already in my mind, Miss
Ashly!” said Paul, wishing to change the subject, and feeling
that he must begin soon upon his morning's work, or
lose the strength for it altogether; “I have chanced to
see you, also” (he added, with forced playfulness), “when
the inner face of the Ashlys shone through.”
But this significant and rather desperate betrayal of
his secret thought, as to the present and outer look of
the Ashly features, seemed but to confirm her hesitating
reserve.
“Pardon me, Mr. Fane!” she said, “I was not aware
upon whose attention I was—making such demands!
It had not occurred to me that your valuable time was
that of—an artist. I, really—you must excuse me,
Mr. Fane!—I could only sit to you—professionally!”
“There was in this broken explanation (and particularly
in the concluding word, and in the accent and look with
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[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]
which it was uttered), a whole volume for Paul's well-prepared
comprehension to read. He saw at once the full
length and breadth of the feelings now struggling in Miss
Ashly's mind, and he felt that the line between himself
and her—the long hated line of difference of rank and
position—was re-drawn as with a pen of fire. There was
but this softening of it, that, as an attaché and with the
opportune power of rendering very important service, he
had been unquestionably taken into her confidence; but
even this might be attributed to overruling reasons of
interest, and it was an admission of equality and willing
obligation, now very suddenly withdrawn, on discovering
him to be an artist. With the rapid crowding of this
unwelcome conviction on his mind, Paul's natural promptitude
at grappling with uncertain shadows came to his
aid.
“If Miss Ashly chooses to be my first customer,” he
said, quietly, “she is very welcome to so honor me!
Though I have not painted portraits for money, thus far,
it was because I was an apprentice in Art. It is to be my
profession!”
Paul caught sight of Colonel Paleford's face, as he
turned to his easel to arrange for a beginning, in apparently
undisturbed accordance with Miss Ashly's wish;
and there was an approval in the old soldier's calm eye,
which repaid him for much that he was suffering unseen.
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But the entrance of Miss Paleford turned the attention
for a moment. She glided in with her usual stately grace,
as freshly and simply cordial as she was renewedly and
wonderfully beautiful; and her father, exercising his polished
tact as a man of the world, stated the embarrassment
to her, mock seriously, as an amusing scruple of overdelicacy
on the part of Miss Ashly.
“Suppose we compromise the matter, my dear Mildred,”
said the unsuspecting Sybil, “by your accepting the portrait
from me? I am quite at liberty, I am very sure, to accept
it, myself, from Mr. Fane, and we shall thus bridge over
the chasm, without calling that hateful `money' to our
aid.”
“But you are not aware, my child,” said the Colonel,
“how deeply you are in Mr. Fane's debt, already. He has
done a masterpiece of work for you, which you have not
yet seen. There” (the father continued, as Paul set the
portrait of Mr. Ashly on his easel) “is what, he thinks,
represents truly the brother of our friend.”
It was a long and silent gaze now bent upon that crayon
portrait by Sybil Paleford. In every one of the three
hearts, beating almost within hearing of hers, there was a
throb of suspense, of which each dreaded the betrayal as a
secret of his own—and the voice of the beautiful mourner
first broke the silence:
“How strangely admirable!”
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Paul heard—and saw the look given to his work by the
large soft eyes that were now the world to him—and, by
those expressive words, he knew that the dreaded success
of his artistic effort was complete, his own genius throwing
a new and more favorable light upon the character and
features of his rival. He forgot, in the anguish of the
moment, Miss Ashly and her torture of his pride! It
would be necessary, in another instant, to meet and answer
Sybil's look, or the expression of her thanks in words.
He nerved resolution and summoned up the calmness for
lip and eye.
But Nature was overtasked! The giddiness of the
enfeebled invalid had already reminded him, once or twice,
that he had both fasted longer than usual, and passed his
accustomed noon hour of repose from mental labor. His
sight was not clear without an effort, and his brain grew
faint. Suddenly his feet felt uncertain under him. Miss
Paleford turned to speak, and he made one struggle to
seem as he had been gathering strength to seem at that
crisis—but it was too late. Around swam all the objects
in the room—furniture, people, windows—and Paul fell
senseless to the floor.
It appeared to be twilight when consciousness once more
lifted the eyelids of the sleeper. He found himself alone,
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and lying upon the broad cushions of a lounge, in a room
that seemed not at first familiar to him; but which the
sight of his easel in the corner, and the portrait of Mrs.
Paleford on the wall, soon recalled to him as the drawing-room
of Casa G—. He gradually remembered the
errand with which he had come thither, and the trials and
combining circumstances of that morning, to him so eventful;
and he then recalled his debility by illness, and the
sudden failure of his strength, while preparing to take a
first sitting from Miss Ashly; and the truth became evident.
He had fainted, for the first time in his life, and,
falling asleep while yet scarce conscious of his restoration,
had been left by the family to his repose.
Languid and spiritless, Paul lay, struggling with his fast
up-crowding thoughts. Not a sound was to be heard; and,
as he became more used to the shadows of the dim-lighted
room, he once more rallied his remembrance of each well-known
article of furniture and ornament; and, by aid of
these associations, recovered, link by link, the chain of
resolve and duty which had there been bound about his
heart. It was difficult. He could not but confess to himself—
more than ever before, as he lay undisturbed, with
the atmosphere of that beauty-haunted and dream-hallowed
house silent around him—that he loved her who was the
angel of the place. The mother, whose tender look now
fell upon him from the portrait on the wall, seemed again
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to offer her dying gift—the priceless daughter's love, which
it had been his bitter task to assist his rival more certainly
to win. The release given to him in the knowledge of the
indifference of Mary Evenden—no longer a surprise—
seemed a welcome ordaining of Fate, in his destiny of
love. His whole soul, as he now lay, re-waking and fancy-wild,
upon that invalid couch, sprang to Sybil Paleford.
But there was a sudden revulsion to the incomplete and
wayward tide of his returning thoughts. He remembered
her countenance and her expressive words as she had
looked at his portrait of Mr. Ashly! His heart sickened
and grew dark. The possibility—nay, the certainty almost—
that his own unclasping of that locked book, and his
own laying open of the hidden leaves of character, had
induced her to read with new eyes, and with approval
unfelt before! It seemed to him more and more fatally
true, as he recalled the scene, that, to the gaze of the
admiring mourner, it was a revelation of Mr. Ashly's countenance
and inner nature which was welcomed with delight.
Her looks, her words, said it. They had betrayed unmistakably
the dawn of a new feeling. She already loved the
absent brother of her friend!
With these conflicting and darkening feelings brooding
over the feeble beatings of his heart, Paul was startled by
the scarce perceptible moving of the latch. The door
opened timidly, and, with the streaming of the dying glow
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of the west into the darkened room, he saw the outlined
form of Sybil in her mourning weeds. She stood listening
for a moment, and then noiselessly and softly entered.
Paul did not stir. It occurred to him that the desk of
Colonel Paleford was near the head of the couch on which
he lay, and there might be something wanted from this, to
bring those gliding feet thus noiselessly into the room.
She probably thought to achieve her errand, and pass out
without disturbing the sleeper.
With closed lids, and the thought that, by the delicacy
which propriety required, he should make no stir, nor
speak, except in answer, Paul lay breathlessly still. The
spirit-ear of love, even without the whisper of her moving
dress, would have told him of her approach! His heart
beat faster and warm, as the folds of her rustling weeds
touched the arm that hung languidly over the couch. The
desk was near, but she stood turned to his pillow. He
thought his pulse would become audible! Her gaze was
on his face. He thrilled with the flood of light from her
soft eyes—his lips and brow bathed as by a magnetism of
indescribable thrill. Suddenly she stooped. He felt her
warm breath upon his cheek. Two swift kisses were
impressed upon his eyes—and, like a shadow of a cloud,
she vanished from the room!
To thank God for the night that was before him—to
long for the morning to stay away, and for life to be but
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[figure description] Page 329.[end figure description]
the prolonging of that sweet dream and the wild joy he
had now to be alone with—to wrap himself in bliss beyond
words, with the certainty that Sybil Paleford loved
him—was Paul's tumult of thought, with those kisses on
his eyes!
CHAPTER XXIX.
With the invalid return of the artist to Florence, the
next morning, the first sitting of Miss Ashly for her portrait
reverted to its original place of appointment, the
apartment of her Aunt Winifred; and, as Paul was likely
to have the earliest knowledge of the arrival of the
reserved spinster from Rome, the family at Casa G—
were to depend on him for their news and for the arrangement
of their visits to town. Looking forward with some
dread at present, to any fresh trial of his nerves—(such as
full control over his pencil would be, in the united presence
of the aunt and her niece, and probably Miss Paleford)—
he was very glad of the respite given him by a few days
of unaccountable delay. Miss Ashly neither came nor
wrote to countermand her engaged apartments. Sitting
over his coffee, one morning, however, and giving reins to
his sensitive imagination—wondering whether the
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eccentric lady might not have flitted rapidly through, on a sudden
return to England, or started to refresh her content
with single blessedness by a visit to the Orient and Lady
Hester Stanhope—perhaps taken ill with the malaria at
Rome, perhaps gone into a convent, perhaps attacked by
the banditti in the mountains—Paul was relieved of his
uncertainty by a fresh surprise. The servant whom he had
sent to the post, returned with the following letter from
her:—
Rome, —, —.
My dear Mr. Fane:
I presume it will somewhat startle you to see the signature
to this letter—(“Winifred Tetherly,” if, before arriving at the
bottom of the page where I am to write it, I do not first awake from
a dream)—though, for what is but a prompt following of your
advice, you have no very reasonable ground for surprise. To help
a lady to a husband you will think, is as easy as to pass the salt—
so easy, and for one who thought herself the most difficult woman
in the world, that I am not yet fully persuaded of it myself. But I
must at least, tell you the story of an event which (according to
my present strong impression and belief), has prevented me from
keeping my appointment with you as Miss Ashly.
I may confess to having felt somewhat offended at your proposal
of Mr. Tetherly to me, in your reply to my first letter. It was partly
a disparagement of yourself to think another could take your place
so easily, but it was still more an unflattering comment on my
readiness for a lover. When his card was brought to me with
your note of introduction, ten days ago, I presumed there was a
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[figure description] Page 331.[end figure description]
complete understanding between you, and I should have declined
receiving his visit altogether, but that I was not willing to betray
that I had taken offence.
With the discovery (which I made almost immediately) that
you had not only kept my secret, but had breathed nothing to him
of your own foreshadowing of his destiny, Mr. Tetherly, of course,
was put upon the ground of a simply well introduced new acquaintance.
And I did not, at first, particularly fancy him. His features
and bearing struck me as not being of a very patrician cast, and his
voice seemed to lack the indefinable semitone which forms the
cadence of high-breeding. Then he was not distinguished for
anything—a proud woman's strongest objection to a man. My
faith in the hidden qualities of any character with which you have
exchanged a friendship, alone kept my judgment suspended after
this first unfavorable impression.
You know how full Rome is of common idling ground. We
met at the Coliseum—we met at the galleries and studios—we met
in St. Peter's wildernesses of aisles and chapels—always accidentally,
I thought. There was a certain pleasure, which I did not
analyze at first, in what there was of you in his mere presence—
having come from you so recently—and I looked into his eyes as
he talked, with the interest I should feel in a mirror that had just
reflected you. And so began, not my liking of him, but my
understanding of him; for I found that he saw with your peculiar
eyes, and thought and felt with (how shall I describe it?) your
peculiar religion of appreciation. There was in his sincere deference—
his sweet and hallowing reverence of look and tone—a something
better and nobler than the stamp of high-breeding which I
had missed—the unsandalled feet, as it were, which my artificial
eyes had found so bare, being but the acknowledgment of holy
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ground. It is so sweeter than all the flattery to a woman to be
approached as sacred! And in his earnest seriousness of attention,
and the subdued and unwavering completeness of his belief in me,
and worship of the heart I had to bestow, there was a persuasion
against which my pride-barriers were weak. I began to listen to
him as I thought I should never listen to mortal voice again.
This was ten days ago, and I am now—married! Time, I
believe, is of all degrees of compressibility—“a year in a day,”
common, at least, in the almanac of the heart. I feel as if had
known Mr. Tetherly from the time when I might have known him—
the time when we might have loved—if we had met, that is to
say, with the removal of our masks by your magician's wand. He
would never have seen my heart but by your pencil's portrayal of
it, I am very sure. His own would have been certainly misinterpreted
by me but for your reading of it. And, even as it was, I
should not have been “in tune” for loving him, I fear, but that I
had played the symphony to you!
We have married suddenly. It was not merely because neither
of us had any time to waste (as the world will say), but there might
have been difficulties if it had not been put at once past interference
by relatives and friends. And this brings me to a request I have
to make of your kindness. My niece is with the Palefords. Will
you announce my marriage to her, and with your own estimate of
my husband? The habits of reserve in our family would prevent
me from making any explanation of what they were not prepared
to appreciate. You have doubtless, by this time, brought your
magnetism of influence to bear upon Mildred, and she will take,
from you, the opinion of Mr. Tetherly which, it is very necessary,
should await us at home. As the coolnesses in our Ashly blood are
life-long, you may thus do the family a timely service, the value of
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which, to those who are living, could, I think, scarcely be overrated.
But, ah! if the magnetism you are thus to exercise over my niece
could be warmed into love! If Mildred (who has never yet felt a
tenderness for mortal man, I believe) could feel the wave of your
magician's wand, and, while endeared to you by being under your
spell, win you to add one more flower—yourself—to our family tree!
Tetherly tells me it is a childish attachment which at present binds
you, and which, he thinks, will not end in marriage. Mildred has
a heart's current, strong and warm, beneath her surface of ice.
Will you not look at her with your discerning and tender eyes?
The citadel I thus propose for your conquest is proud and strong, I
know. For any passing knight-errant, with a stranger's crest and
plume, it would be hopelessly impregnable. But you have a friend
within the gates—a shield you have already pierced hanging broken
in Ashly hall! Mildred would be half your captive, even when
sounding her first defiance.
My pen was just lifted to erase these few sentences last written.
What I am thus proposing to you—like what I have proposed to
you before—is against all rules of love in books, as it is most
signally against all my previous nurture and instincts. I simply
know that I am still natural and true—though, like the butterfly,
on his new wings, with only his memory as a worm, I am surprised
that the air should sustain me.
Yet why should I not own that I have loved you? Why may I
not desire, since I could not have your love, to have your life passed
near me, with the love left out? For that much of a mind and
heart that is made one's own by wedlock is but a small part of what
was loved in the lover—hardly lessening what is to be lived with in
the friend. The heaven where they “neither marry nor are given
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in marriage”—intercourse with the completeness of which, mind
and soul are quite content—may be foreshadowed in this world.
What I might daily and freely share, were you married to one of
my kindred—your looks, your thoughts, your words, your presence,
your genius, with all its gifts of insight and appreciation—would be
making you bountifully mine! And with Tetherly's partaking, too;
for he loves you—that much—as well as I.
We shall follow close upon this letter to Florence, and you will
please retain for me, therefore, the apartments already engaged.
The remaining sittings for my portrait can thus be taken with the
same light. (Shall I look to you the same?) Mildred is to sit to
you there, also, I understand. And of course you will see the need
of immediateness in your announcement of my marriage to her.
It will be a carefully woven woof of tact and kindness, I well know—
but will you not broider upon it, also, a flower for yourself?”
“Ah, what a letter this is—from me to any man! I could not
write so to Tetherly—quite yet! But, my dear Mr. Fane, the
grating of my heart's long-locked convent cell let you in like the
sunshine. Though my veil is just thrown aside that I may come
out, you are less a stranger than the open day which meets me at
the door.
May God bless you—whether you are to be the light of our dark
Ashly eyes or not!
Yours most truly,
Winifred Tetherly.
It was fortunate for Paul that immediate and comparatively
simple action (the visit to Casa G—) was
his first duty after the reading of this letter. He was
-- 335 -- p746-340
[figure description] Page 335.[end figure description]
not ready, either with nerves or opinions, to think of all
it called upon him to realize. He mechanically went
about his preparations for a day in the country, with
the Palefords. And in another hour, he was whirling
over the bridge of the Arno, the once-more strangely
thoughtful and silent passenger in the vetturino of his
friend Giuseppe.
CHAPTER XXX.
Any secret embarrassment that there might have been,
in the meeting of Paul with the bride and bridegroom,
was quite overlaid by the grateful pleasure with which
they acknowledged the success of his delicate mission to
Casa G—. Tetherly had been made fully aware of the
importance of it, and it was a new tie between him and his
friend; for the possibility of a cold reception by the most
influential member of the family into which he had married,
had been the phantom of unrest to his honeymoon,
thus far—his particularly sensitive nature dreading nothing
so much as the position of a just tolerated intruder. In
spite, however, of interested reasons why there would have
been objections to Miss Winifred's marrying at all, and in
spite of the bridegroom's disadvantages of family and
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position, the meeting with Miss Mildred, on their arrival in
Florence, was every way cordial and satisfactory. The
truth was, that Paul had touched the secret spring of
family pride with which he had confidentially been made
acquainted by the niece herself, dwelling mainly on the
perfection of manly proportion, in Tetherly's person, and
on his rare loftiness of nature as to all qualities that contribute
most to form the inborn nobleman.
The finishing of the portrait of the bride was now a
pleasant side-current of occupation; and the deferred
sitting of Miss Ashly, at her aunt's apartments, followed
in due course, as previously arranged. But this latter
part of his artistic engagement was, in more than one way,
a critical trial of Paul's self-control. The footing of distance
and ceremony on which he now stood with Miss
Mildred was very difficult to harmonize with the confiding
intimacy of the Tetherlys, and still more with the influence
of Miss Paleford's presence, she coming to town most
commonly with her friend. The watchful discrimination
necessary to suit his words and manner to such varied
degrees of intimacy, promised at first to be fatal altogether,
to that concentration of thought so important to the success
of his pencil. Between his genius, too, and his feeling
toward Miss Ashly, there was a struggle as to the phase of
character which that picture was to portray. In fact, after
the first sitting, he found it indispensable that there should
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be some other object of attention than himself in the room—
something to scatter the focus of all eyes and thoughts
bent upon his work—and it occurred to him, at last, that
the presence of his friend Bosh might serve this purpose.
It was not uncommon for two artists to make drawings
from the same subject; and, on Paul's requesting the
privilege—as a favor to a brother student in whom he
was interested, and who was to profit especially by the
comparison thus made instructive between his own work
and his friend's—the ladies at once assented.
As a fresh drop of oil upon Bosh's sorest annoyance,
this was incidentally useful. He required soothing, from
time to time, upon the point of Paul's having friends and
acquaintances who were not also his own. The presence
of Mary Evenden, lately, in the studio of “Signor Valerio,”
had been also a conciliatory advantage; for, with the
atmosphere of sainted purity which the presence of this
fair creature threw over the room, the jealous artist was
safely introduced to the model-bust of his lady-love,
without taking offence. And the knowledge that it was
the work of a female hand (of “Signor Valerio,” a lady
in disguise) was so certified to Bosh by Mary's familiarity
with the place, that he was less reluctant to forego a
presentation to the princess herself, which, though it would
have better pleased his dignity, might have been an objectionable
intrusion upon her highness's privacy of pursuit.
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With his easel in the rear of Paul's, at somewhat a
different angle of light, but getting pretty much the
same view, Bosh went industriously to work, on the
morning of the second sitting. There was great relief,
both in the amusing study which he himself afforded
to the ladies, and in the interest of the two pictures.
But Paul soon began to discover that he was to draw
an unforeseen advantage from the twin portraiture.
Blivins was a literal artist, as to expression. He had
neither imagination nor penetration into character. While
he flattered the complexion and features, therefore, as
far as was any way reasonable, he told the most uncompromising
truth as to the superficial impression. It was
how his sitter looked, to people in general. Of course,
between his likeness and Paul's there was all the difference
of a lady painted with a mask or without one.
Miss Ashly came round, from time to time, and informed
herself of the progress of the artists. But her manner
softened very perceptibly to Paul, as she saw the more
generous and nobler depths of her nature coming out
under his pencil. With a constant and self-denying effort,
he remembered her as she had looked when speaking to
him of Sybil Paleford; and, while he consulted her
present face for its lines and shadows, he drew only
upon the countenance in his memory for its language
and meaning. To the two artists, she was evidently as
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different a creature as could well be imagined; but, in
feeling provokingly conscious of the fidelity of Mr. Blivins's
likeness, she was far more conscious of the truth of Mr.
Fane's. Her heart told her that he had profoundly read
what was written on its inmost page; and, by this proof
of his superiority of genius to what constituted a literal
copyist, like the other artist, she now understood by what
spell he had so controlled her. And, that the same
spell—rejected as it had been for a while—was now
resuming its power over her, Paul saw with an inexpressible
soothing of his pride.
Another subject, however, of far deeper interest than
either Paul or the two portraits of herself, began to
engross the attention of Miss Ashly. The different persons
who were present at these artistic matinées, were not
collectively aware how curiously each had some secret reason
for affectionate familiarity and intimacy with Paul. In
every heart (except Miss Mildred's own) he had a hidden
niche of grateful attachment—giving, in spite of all the
commonplace-ness of well-bred gossip, a deeper tone to
the words and manner with which he was occasionally
addressed. Her aunt's confidingness of look and voice, in
conversing with him, was simply an inexplicable wonder
to the observing niece. But all this might still have been
left to pass in silent surprise, as merely another exercise of
what she had herself experienced of Mr. Fane's power of
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magnetism, but for the atmosphere of unreserve which it
created, and in which the unguarded nature of Sybil
Paleford expanded with unmistrusting simplicity. “The
unvoiced persuasion to show her heart,” such as the flower
feels in the air of spring, was in the manner of all around
her.
It was on the last day of the sittings, and the portrait of
Miss Mildred was finished, to all eyes but the artist's. The
approaching conclusion to what had so pleasantly drawn
them together, morning after morning, was regretted by
all; and to the manner of all, except one, it had given a
softer shade of thoughtfulness and sentiment. With each
succeeding day, to Miss Ashly, the unconscious betrayal of
Sybil's feelings towards Paul had become clearer; and,
with the kindly softening of the general key-note of conversation,
there was an outrunning sympathy, in the frank
girl's face and tone, which brought the long-resisted suspicion
almost to the full.
The effect which this unpleasantly increasing conviction
was producing on his subject, as she sat, grew embarrassing
to Paul's pencil, however. He was coming to the last
touch or two which should set the confirming seal and
cipher on the character of the expression. For this critical
point, more than for all the labor that had gone before,
he required that the face before him should be his copy.
But how different was it now, even from the countenance
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which had been literally transferred to the canvas of his
friend Blivins! In the eye there was a more stony hardness
of concealment—in the nostril a scarce perceptible
line of more resentful inflation—and in the haughty lip a
curl of indomitable pride wholly unmistakable! To modify
or ignore characteristics so decided, seemed to have grown
suddenly absurd. The drawing scarce looked any longer
to be a likeness.
With his pencil wavering in the twirl of his fingers, and
his power of abstraction fast yielding to the more forcible
character of what he saw, Paul thought he would make a
last trial to forget the face before him, and recall, for a finishing
touch, the memory of its expression which he had
once treasured away. It cost a struggle, and he became,
for a moment, disregardful of all but his inner thought.
There was a slight wave of his hand, intended, half-consciously,
as a courteous intimation to his sitter that she
need no longer keep her chair; and he then stepped
quickly back and seated himself, and, with the effort to
rally his recollection, pressed his hand before his eyes.
But, to the watchful and beautiful mourner who had
seen his strength fail him, but a few days before, and who
had still, secretly, a tender care and remembrance of him
as an invalid, this sudden change of posture and the pressure
of the fingers on the eyelids, were signs of illness.
“Dear Paul!” she murmured, in sounds that just escaped
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her lips, as she rushed with one bound across the room, and
clasped his head in her hands.
But, though the instant rise of Paul to his feet made
her mistake apparent, and there was a laugh of familiar
amusement among the less attentive company, the two
expressive words so indistinctly uttered had not escaped
the ear of Miss Ashly. Nor had the single instant's
exchange of looks between the two, as they stood together
by the easel, escaped her eye. It was a half-playful assurance
of Sybil's that such would be the loving earnestness
with which, if he were indeed ill or sad, she would forget
the whole world to spring to his side; it was an acknowledgment
of Paul's, that, with all his heart, for that moment
at least, he gratefully and fondly worshipped her.
There was an instant's parting and closing of the tightly
compressed lips of Miss Ashly, seen by Paul with a chance
turn of his head, at the next moment—the smothered
utterance of an outburst of impatient pride—but, though
wholly inaudible to all around, it was, to his sharpened
perception, as clear as if the vibration of air had written it
on the wall—the gasping admission that she knew, at last,
that Sybil loved him!
The game of cross-purposes of which Paul's life seemed
to be a most obstinately tangled example, was still played
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on, in the few following days, and with a somewhat trying,
but more quiet variation.
With the finishing of the portraits for his friends, and
the success with which his genius for Art was now undeniably
stamped, the responsibility of the son to his mother,
as well as to himself, made its call upon him. He felt that
it was time to relieve her of the burden of his support—
that, with the timely seizure of opportunity, his ambition
demanded that he should commence his profession now.
There seemed to be both reasons and facilities for his trying
his wings first in Europe—deferring the return to his
own country for a couple of years, or till his views of Art
had become correctly and definitely confirmed—but, in the
question of where the scene of his first efforts should be,
or in what city he should first open his studio as a portrait-painter,
he found that his heart must have a share. Sybil
Paleford—it must be with reference to her that this movement
must be decided upon! To be near her, or far from
her—there was indeed a problem of happiness to be solved
by that! Prompt and uncompromising with himself as
Paul was, in his decisions for his own welfare only, there
was a few-days' struggle on this subject, which was, for a
while, of very doubtful termination. Before giving the
result to the reader, let us follow another thread that was
weaving, little regarded by him, at the same time.
The Tetherlys, since their arrival in Florence, had been
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occupied very fully with receiving the hospitalities extended
to them as bride and bridegroom; but they seemed to have
but one mind as to the necessity of seeing Paul at their
table, at least once a day. He was very certain to pass
the evening with them, in company; but if they were not
to meet at dinner, he must breakfast with them—Miss
Mildred most commonly being one of the party. By the
pressure of the bride's engagements, too, or by some apparent
accident, it oftenest happened that the niece, after
dinner or breakfast, was left to Paul's attentions exclusively,
and a daily tête-à-tête for an hour or two, seemed,
somehow, curiously certain to come to pass.
As will be easily understood, Paul had only a portion of
a mind to give to Miss Ashly, with the struggle of his
tenderer interests going on beneath the surface—his companionship,
of course, amounting merely to an exercise of
the habitual civility of his manners, with the instinctive
earnestness of sincerity, and willingness to be impressed,
which formed the language of his nature. In proportion
to his retiracy and apparent willingness to withdraw from
any intricate reciprocation of thought or feeling, however,
his proud companion seemed to relax her reserve, and
grow kindly and genial. Paul became aware, without
reasoning upon it, at first, that his footing in Miss Ashly's
regard and confidence, grew daily more assured and agreeable.
But, while the growing discovery still reached the
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hidden weakness at the bottom of his heart, it was, for
the time, at least, of very secondary interest. He hardly
realized it enough in fact, even to connect it with the recollection
of the good-natured proposal in Mrs. Tetherly's letter—
the thought of playing the lover to Miss Ashly having
been dismissed with a smile; but still, her aunt having
undoubtedly followed up her own wish at present, by the
exercise of secret influence in his favor.
It was a sunset with the promise of a coming spring in
its softness and warmth, and Paul sat with Miss Mildred in
the balconied window looking down upon the Arno. Mrs.
Tetherly, with whom they had dined, had pleaded an
engagement and taken her carriage to be gone for an
hour; Tetherly had strolled over to the English Embassy
for his daily gossip upon news and politics; and the two
younger guests were once more tête-à-tête, without any particular
willingness or contrivance of their own.
An inquiry after Miss Paleford, who had not accompanied
her friend to town that day, very naturally suggested
another question as to Mr. Arthur Ashly—a letter announcing
his intended speedy return to Florence having been
received a few days before.
And, apropos of Sybil and my brother, Mr. Fane,” said
Miss Ashly, in whose mind the mention of these two together
seemed to break down suddenly a barrier of reserve, “I was
silly enough not to remember, when I once sought your
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influence for the prospering of Arthur's passion, that so
lovely a girl was most probably, also, a preference of your
own.”
“I gave you proof, I believe,” said Paul, with a smile,
that my interest in his behalf was quite sincere.”
“True—your admirable portrait of him,” she replied, in
a tone and with a look of apology, “but what is the work
of the pencil—most eloquent plea, as yours certainly was,
in a rival's favor—when the painter follows it up by outrivalling
the picture?”
“I had no thought of doing so at the time,” said Paul,
“allowing for the sake of argument, that your supposition
is correct. Mr. Ashly was absent, however, when his portrait
and I came into competition. Possibly, in a rivalry
with his more persuasive and living presence, the result
might have had less the appearance of being in my favor.”
Miss Ashly started, and gave Paul a quick and penetrating
look. The possibility he suggested seemed a new
thought to her, but she was doubtful of the willingness for
that different result which his words seemed to imply.
“You will pardon me, if I do you injustice,” she said
presently, with an effort at frankness, which he saw cost all
the self-mastery she possessed, “but I did not think you—
I do not think any human being in fact—capable of disinterestedness
toward a rival in love. To be frank with you,
I have talked this over with Colonel Paleford—differing
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from him somewhat. He thought you sincere in your furtherance
of my brother's suit; though I believe, he has
been a little staggered in his belief of it—or rather the
probability of it—by since becoming aware of Sybil's own
interest in the matter. For—pardon me!—do you not
know that she loves you, Mr. Fane?”
“Allow me to alter your question a little,” said Paul,
“by the addition of the probability in your brother's favor
which I have just suggested:—Would Miss Paleford love
Mr. Fane—(a confession she has never yet framed into
words, I give you my honor!)—if Mr. Ashly had fairly
tried the winning of her, with the field to himself?”
The proud sister rose to her feet, and took one turn
across the room. The intensity of interest for her brother,
and for the cause on which she had so set her heart, was,
evidently, for the moment, less powerful than the haughty
refusal of soul to even accept what must be thus significantly
yielded. “From him!” “From an artist!” looked
her fierce eyes, as she turned away.
But there was a change, like the sky's clearness after the
passing of a thunder-cloud, in the smile with which she
returned. The hidden qualities of heart that Paul had
seen down to, and brought to the surface, in his portrait of
her, had surged uppermost, and were now shining brightly
through her features. He had said little—he had offered
nothing—but the whole book of his inner nature, and of
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his feeling as to the subject before them, was read by her
at a glance.
“Inexpressibly generous to grant,” she said, taking his
hand with a warm grasp in both her own, “but I will ask
it of you!”
With a silent and respectful pressure of his lips to the
slight fingers drawn with such nervous closeness to his
own, Paul placed in her hand a letter which he already
held prepared.
“Here,” he said, “is what I have written on this very
subject to Colonel Paleford. For the last few days it has
been my one thought, sleeping and waking—with how
much of trial and effort, I need not say—but it is done!
I was to send it to him to-morrow, and it was written for
his eyes only; but our conversation has made me willing
that you should first read it, and you will, perhaps, take it
to him to-night, on your return. Let me leave it with
you!”
Paul bowed, and lifted once more to his lips the hand he
held, and in another moment was alone in the street—
alone in the whole world, it seemed to him—with his overcrowded
heart.
And, coming close to the balconied window, where she
could see by the lessening twilight, Miss Ashly read as
follows:
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Florence, —, —.
My dear Colonel:
When I once before had occasion to trouble you with a letter, it
was (if you remember) to explain my waiving of a happiness to
which I had properly no claim—a place at court, of which your
daughter generously supposed that I might do the honors. A
false position of a still more delicate nature is my embarrassment,
at present—a much higher happiness, and accorded to me
also by the noble generosity of your family—and to waive this
also, as unquestionably and entirely, would, perhaps, be my simple
duty in now writing to you. But there is a presumptuous qualification
of this second disclaimer, upon which I believe I must venture,
though I do so by placing myself and the consequences
entirely in your hands.
The enclosed most sacred letter, which I received from the
mother-angel of your household, just before she was lost to your
sight, will explain to you, at least, what may be too credulous an
estimate of my responsibility to her child. Mrs. Paleford, with her
kind and unworldly eyes, looked upon me as one with whom she
could entrust the life and happiness most precious to her—(may
God make me worthy of so hallowing a belief in my truth and
goodness!)—and she even encouraged me to feel that there might
be already awakened for me, in the heart of her daughter, an
unconfessed preference. That this gives me the privilege to say
to you what I might not else find the courage to say—that I love
the wondrously beautiful and pure creature of whom it speaks
with my whole heart—will be a pride to remember, though it may
be a love that would not otherwise find a voice.
But, though I have never spoken of love to your daughter, and
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she has never spoken of it to me, you will pardon me if I offer
some reasonable introduction for the proposition I have to make,
by suggesting—(thus, to you only)—the possibility that capricious
Nature may have made this unambitious disposal of her heart!
The lover's eyes are full of hope, and you will understand me,
therefore, with the proper allowance and with your ever-courteous
indulgence, when I declare my belief that Miss Sybil is not indifferent
to me. I believe it upon the sweet evidence which, to a
lover, is more precious than words.
The return of Mr. Ashly to Florence, expected daily, is, however,
the renewal of addresses more worthy of her, I need not be at the
trouble to confess. The outside reasons for a preference of this
gentleman—fortune, position, birth, and family intimacy—are very
powerful; and, were her character any other than the wonder of
unsunned freshness of peculiarity that it is, I should simply leave
to another the prize that was not for my approaching. But Miss
Sybil is one of those rare women who wear the humblest flower
where the costliest gem would be denied a place. It is possible, as
I have given you my ground for believing, that I may be more
loved than Mr. Ashly—just possible (I quote her mother's belief in
supposing) that the devotion of my life to her happiness may be
more welcome than his.
But Mr. Ashly has not yet had a fair trial, either of his qualities
or his powers of pleasing. Opportunity, indeed, has been so
much in my own favor, thus far, that the preference over him,
even if it were not ungenerous in me to claim it, would be an
unwise haste toward your daughter. He has a noble and deep
character, hidden under a mask of pride and incommunicativeness.
I have endeavored to show, in my portrait of him, what I am
very sure that more intimacy would develop. Miss Paleford
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should, at least, know truly the value of what she has the free
choice to refuse or make her own.
You will have anticipated what I wish to say, my dear friend!
With Mr. Ashly's arrival, I shall take my departure from Florence.
It is the time for the entrance upon my profession, and the reason
for a change of place will seem natural to your daughter. I leave
to your courtesy and kindness, entirely, the making of my adieus
to her—knowing, of course, that you will so shape them that I
shall seem neither neglectful of her, nor forgetful of the hospitality
of your home. I shall go to England, I think—my views of
Art seeming most suited to the taste of your countrymen—and I
shall pass a year or two, probably, in that country, before returning
to my own. But I will keep you advised of my movements.
My life—and you know precisely what it is to be, with my profession
and nothing more—shall be kept ready, at your call (and a
year or two will decide it), either to take up its bitter task of forgetfulness,
or to be made blest with the love which I may, meantime,
dream of. With no more farewell than this, but with inexpressible
thanks for all your friendship has been to me, I thus
abruptly take my leave.
May God bless you and your peerless daughter, my dear colonel,
and pray believe me, ever yours most gratefully and devotedly,
Paul Fane.
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CHAPTER XXXI.
[figure description] Page 352.[end figure description]
With the next day's arrangements for departure from
Florence, Paul found that his leave-takings of intimate
friends were to be less general than he had anticipated.
The Tetherlys at once concluded to bear him company
on his journey. Blivins, in a week or two, was to follow
the Firkin family to France, where his marriage to Miss
Sophia was to take place. With the season a little more
advanced, the Princess C— proposed to change her
studio to Paris, where she might have all the facilities
of Art, and, at the same time, be within reach of the
society of London and the French capital. And Mary
Evenden hoped, there, to resume her studies with “Signor
Valerio,” as Mrs. Cleverly, after a short trip to Rome and
Naples, was to join the rest of the gay world, in centering,
for the first months of summer, near the Tuileries and St.
James's.
Miss Ashly came to town to be present at the departure
of the Tetherlys, and she was the bearer of a letter to Paul
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from Colonel Paleford. She had evidently relied upon an
opportunity to speak to him alone for a moment, probably
to acknowledge, in words, the accordance of her feelings
with the communication to Sybil's father, which she had
been permitted to read; but Paul's heart was too full of
all that made up his farewell to Florence, that morning,
and he carefully avoided the tête-à-tête, entrenching himself
within the forms of kindly ceremony and politeness.
He took the letter she had brought for himself, as she
stood at the carriage-door, at the last moment, and it was
not till the first stoppage, at a secluded albergo in the
mountains, that he stole away to a lonely spot, under
the trees, and had the courage to break the seal. The
colonel thus wrote:
Casa G—, —.
My dear Fane:
Your letter was so in accordance with what had already passed
between us, that I was not surprised at its tone and contents.
There was a startling unlikeness, in it, to the common language
of lovers, as well as to the common usage of the world, but we
were prepared for its delicate generosity, by knowing the standard
up to which you live. Allow me to begin by thanking you, frankly,
and with all my heart, for the fresh proof of it which touches me
so nearly—adding, however (though the explanation is scarce
necessary), that, if it were a question of my own happiness only,
I should not accept so unreservedly this sacrifice of yourself. For
my daughter, I must be even less magnanimous toward a friend
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than were else possible. I am sure you will understand how much
harder this proof of affection is than the other extreme.
But will you allow me to say, also, my dear Fane, that I love my
daughter too well to be worldly in my anxiety for her welfare?
You will hardly believe, perhaps, that the sacred letter, which you
enclosed to me, was, in its impulse and purpose, the echo to my
own heart's most earnest prayer—varied but by the different view
of the same blessing and the road to reach it, as seen by sadder,
and perhaps wiser eyes. Mrs. Paleford (may God soften to me her
irreparable loss!) looked into her own conscious heart for her
daughter's image. She thought her what she felt herself to be—
that, and that only. And, were it so, I ask to be believed when I
say, that, as the father of Sybil, I would now sign, and send to you
again, her mother's precious letter of blessing and bestowal.
While, however, as there is little need to say, I think you
abundantly worthy of my daughter, and the future career and
destiny, whatever it may be, which is toned and guided by qualities
like yours, abundantly worthy of her sharing, I must still think
(you will pardon me for insisting) that your mode of life and your
tastes are not those in which she is likeliest to find happiness.
That she loves you, at present, I have very little doubt. Your
departure from Florence will leave a dark cloud on her heart.
But it is the love of a child, and of instinct; and it is for your
exterior of graces and genial courtesy. She has not reasoned upon
it. She loves you for the least of what constitutes your character—
the least of what your life is to develop. With the first choice of
the many different doors, that open away from the common vestibule
of youth, your paths would divide. You will close all behind
you, on your way to that inner sanctuary where burns only the
lamp of genius—she will turn rather where the lofty dome lets in
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the splendors of sunshine. For your concentration, it must be the
dim silence of a cell—for her joyousness of expansion, it must be
the music unimprisoned but by the columns of a palace.
A wife, my dear Fane, must live in the same world as her husband
to be happy with him; and it is from the difficulty of this,
that the wives of men of genius are seldom happy. Sybil has
neither a predominant imagination nor a natural love of seclusion;
and while, therefore, if she had these essential qualities, she could
be blest only by such a husband as yourself, she is wholly unsuited
to you, wanting these. Then, guardedly as her tastes and habits
have been kept simple, by her education and by my limited means,
she is innately luxurious and prodigal. She feels, as she looks, a
queen—with no instinctive sense, apparently, that there can be
any propriety of limit to her possession of what naturally befits her.
Capable of sacrificing her life for you, therefore, at any crisis that
could call upon her devotion, she would unconsciously sacrifice
yours by slow degrees, where the call was made only on her economy.
You will have seen, by this, why I differed from the sacred
thought which prompted Mrs. Paleford's letter to you, and why I
still give my preference to your wealthier and less gifted rival.
Mr. Ashly's sphere of life is Sybil's own natural and befitting
sphere, and, in all that forms his pride and his daily occupation
and enjoyment, she can fully and freely share. His character you
know, for you have studied and most skillfully represented it, in its
best light, with your pencil. The only problem is the result of the
experiment you have so generously given us the opportunity to
try—dependent, after all, on that most willful of capricious things,
a woman's heart. If Sybil has conceived a life-long passion for
you (as is very possible), and if Mr. Ashly fails, consequently, to
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supplant you in your absence, I will gladly send you the welcome
which my own heart yearns already to give you. To me, as you
must know, you would be far the more agreeable of the two, as
son, friend, and companion. We are both leaving ourselves out
of the question, however—you, thank God, as well as I—and the
happiness of my beautiful Sybil is the sacred chalice to be held
high by our united hands till its place is chosen. God bless you
for your nobleness to her, and for your truth of friendship to me;
and believe me, my dear Fane, always faithfully yours,
Basil Paleford.
The travelling carriage resumed its way, after the noon
halt in the mountains; and Paul, with the secret contained
in the foregoing letter to be kept from the Tetherlys, was
an absent-minded companion on that journey. They had
silent sympathies in common, however, and the scenery and
the incidents of the road gave them topics enough, when,
to invent conversation would have been difficult. And so,
with the lapse of days that were to Paul like an unrealized
dream, they arrived duly in Paris.
With the proceeding thence, after a short stay, to London,
and with Paul's establishment there, and his first professional
year, the reader is not to be troubled. It was a
broken interval in the thread of our story. The letters
and introductions of the young artist were more than sufficient
for his wants, and it was the usual course of things
in a career whose flattering outset is made easy by
-- 357 -- p746-362
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kindness. With the intention to tell only that portion of his
history which were else untold, we pass over this period
therefore, and, in our next chapter, take up the broken
thread farther on.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Some eighteen months after Paul's arrival in London, he
sat one morning among his pencils. He was not very
well disposed for work, but it was at least a lesser evil, for
he shrank from being left alone with his own thoughts.
The copy that he was making of his former portrait of
Mrs. Tetherly, was to be one in the collection of his drawings
which was to grace the boudoir of the bride—his
friend Colonel Paleford's daughter Sybil, having been married,
a month before, to Mr. Arthur Ashly, and this preparatory
addition to her new home in England having
been among her wishes expressed when first affianced.
The copy was nearly finished; but, to give an improving
touch to it, Paul had requested a sitting from his friend,
the original, her face having very much softened and
genialized with the union which had proved to her so
happy. The artist's continued and close intimacy with the
Tetherlys, had enabled him to watch well the development
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of her expression; for, though residing mostly at their home
in the country, they were often in London, and never without
passing a part of every day with him who had brought
them together. Arriving in town the previous evening,
after an unusually long absence, Mrs. Tetherly had sent
word that she would be early at the studio, for the renewed
sitting which Paul had written to request; and he now
waited her coming.
But, pencils were reluctant, with the heart far away;
and, leaving his copy, Paul went to his desk—remembering
a still unread letter of some interest, which had been
given to him for his perusal, and, in the press of other matter
forgotten. An American family, on their first foreign
tour, had recently come to him with a note of introduction
from his friend Bosh; and, by the eldest daughter, Miss
Katherine Kumletts, he had been indulged with a sight of
her friend 'Phia Firkin's correspondence while abroad—
this last unread letter being at the time mislaid, but afterwards
found and handed to Paul, while he was showing his
new friends the wonders of the Zoölogical Gardens. It
was written by the present Mrs. Blivins, shortly after her
marriage, and dated at Paris where the ceremony took
place:—
Dearest Kitty:
I date once more from Paris, though, in your last, you say
I should have signed myself, “your affectionate snail,” so slow am
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I at crawling towards home. Please have some hopes, of me,
however, as I am, at present, a bivalve, and, of course, with new
laws of motion—flattened into this new character (I liked to have
forgot to tell you) on the first of May, by the Rev. Mr. Sprinkle,
of the English chapel—my beloved Wabash being the other shell,
and connubial bliss, of course, the mutual oyster between us.
Yes, Kitty, I am married—I believe. It is hard to realize, particularly
with only the same sized pen in one's quite unaltered
fingers. Things look very little different, my dear! I don't open
my eyes any wider, that I know of. Just as much salt and pepper
to make things taste nice, and no less sugar in my tea, I give you
my honor! But the servants say, “Madam” to me, and mamma
has stopped keeping such a bright look-out. So I suppose I am
either more or better than I used to be. Though Kitty (by the
way), what is the arithmetic of thinking more of yourself for
becoming a half? Your faithful 'Phia was a “whole souled girl,” I
believe you always said, yet, as papa would express it, I am only
the “fifty per cent.” of my devoted Bosh, since I am married to
him. Just cipher me that little sum, dear!
There is not much to tell you about the ceremony. I knew very
well what it was to be, but, somehow one can't help expecting the
astonishing minute—a sort of dropping away of some platform
from under one, as it were, when the fatal knot is fastened. I had
my handkerchief already to cry, and could only blow my nose
with the poor disappointed thing! I really think there should be
a bit of ice dropped down one's back, or a shower-bath, or a pin
stuck into one, by the bridesmaid, or something to bring the
nerves to a climax. It looks hard-hearted to take it quite so easy—
now, don't it?
The groomsman, I should have mentioned to you, was Mr.
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Fane—come all the way from London to officiate at his friend
Blivins's wedding. He looked paler than I had ever seen him;
and as my Wabash looked considerably redder, the contrast was
even more striking than usual. In fact, the glow of happiness is
the least becoming complexion to a man, I have generally observed.
And Mr. Fane did everything so beautifully! Ah, Kitty! there
are men one has no idea of marrying, who are still very pleasing to
contemplate!
Now, I know very well what you are saying! I might have had
the pale cheek to kiss, instead of the red one, you think—or, as
brother 'Phus, with his tandem, would express himself, I might
have put the wheel-horse on the lead. You are mistaken, my dear!
for, in the first place, I couldn't, and, in the next place, I wouldn't
if I could. For me to have set my cap for Mr. Fane (as I once
wrote to you I had some thought of doing)—la! Kitty! it would
be like a clam's having a passion for a bull-frog. We should never
sing the same tune, and then he would be jumping out of my reach
every minute. You should have put your two sharp eyes upon Mr.
Fane to understand it, for it is not because he is a bit grander than
other people. I think, indeed, that my Wabash (with the present
addition to his daily bread, at least) feels “some punkins” above
him. Then he is so quiet and deferential that you feel quite as
tall, if not taller, when he is done looking at you. But, still, after
talking with him a little, I always have a strange consciousness
that he has come out of some inner world to speak to me—a feeling,
somehow, as if he was to return to his unseen parlor friends,
when he has done talking with me in the entry. Very pleasant,
for a change, to see such a man, my dear, but who could tie her
nightcap quite at ease in his wonderful company?
No, no, Kitty!—never give all your money for half the article!
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Blivins is all mine, from the bald bump of reverence that makes
the top of his head look like the lid of the old coffee-pot at school,
down to his great toe, that I could dress up and make a baby of,
if I wanted a plaything, this very minute. He believes in me too,
with all there is of him, and it is a comfort to know that one's
worshipper has no spare faith in want of another altar. I expect
to settle down into a very plain case of happiness, when I get
home, and I want a husband (as they say when they advertise for
a doctor's horse) “warranted to stand without hitching.”
I know a little more of Mr. Fane than what I have just told you,
however. Blivins gets very eloquent (and it is the greatest pleasure
to me, in matrimony, thus far, that the dear fellow lies awake
at night and tells me all his secrets)—very eloquent, indeed, in
talking of a certain romantic attachment of his friend Paul's. He
(Blivins, you understand) quite frightens me—the way he sits up in
bed and bangs his hand down on the counterpane, declaring they
will yet be married! But I have an opinion of my own, for I
overheard a conversation between Mary Evenden (the girl he
refers to) and “Signor Valerio” (the lady in disguise, who took
my bust), on this very subject. They were both so occupied in
copying those perfections of mine which have no ears, that they
forgot I could hear also, I suppose; but, at any rate, they talked
as freely as if I and the two clay models of me were deaf and blind
alike. And what do you think this pretty Miss Mary insisted
upon? Why, that she loved Mr. Fane's genius, but wished some
one else to have the rest of him! This double idea of the same
gentleman explained to me the feeling I had, as to his belonging
to some other world—but how funny, if she has him in that world,
she shouldn't want him in this one, too! The fact is, I suppose,
that he and his genius amount to two individuals, and the innocent
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little thing dreads polygamy; but, for my part, if I were to run
the risk of such a dreadful crime at all, I should at least take the
live man, in his visible shoes and stockings, to begin with. If his
invisible genius chose to mouse round, to be loved a little, now
and then (say it was Blivins), I don't believe the two Blivinses
need interfere, and I'll warrant I could find what extra affection
would be necessary, without robbing anybody. What says your
instinct on that subject, my dear Kitty?
One little query, by the way, before I bite my lips to stop thinking
of Mr. Fane: Might I not have woke up, some morning (supposing
I had married the visible Paul No. 1), and found myself
grown intellectual enough to belong to his other world, so as to
feel quite at home with the invisible Paul No. 2? And might not
Miss Evenden, in the same way, marry No. 2, and wake up some
morning and find herself just as much at home with No. 1? I give
you the subject to write a composition upon, my dear! “Please
mind your stops, and write it legibly!”
We turn our faces homeward next week. I shall be glad to
smell republican air once more. This is not the side of the water
where a woman is thought much of, “free gratis for nothing;”
and, in fact, unless you want his particular love made to you, a man
over here has no very remarkable pleasure in your society. Give
me the American beaux, who value the women they have “taken
no stock in” as high as they do their own investments. I think I
shall be content with a one-horse life and Blivins—though I have
been a whole team, you may say, ever since we left school. I
begin to feel less universally inclined, my dear! Prairie-loving is
all very well for awhile, but one's heart aches, after all, for something
with a fence round it. And Blivins, as somebody in Shakspeare
says of his very plain dog, is “a poor thing but mine own.”
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Good-bye, dear Kitty, and with my husband's second-best love
to you,
Yours, most affectionately,
'Phia Blivins.
Paul had scarce finished reading the letter of the
“hoosier” belle and bride, when the pull-up of a carriage
at the door of his lodgings announced the arrival of Mrs.
Tetherly; and in the cordial greeting of his unceremonious
and genial friend, and in the work for which his pencils
were all in readiness, the rather suggestive theories of Mrs.
Blivins were soon forgotten.
“My dear Fane!” said Mrs. Tetherly, at last, with an
appealing smile, after a few minutes of complete silence,
during which he had given his best touch to the new
shade of expression in her face, “I have your forgiveness
and something else, to ask of you.”
“Granted, before asking,” replied Paul, half absently.
“Not so fast,” she resumed; “I am not sure even of my
pardon for what I have done; and, much less, of your
assent to what I propose to do.”
“How can so worthless and stray a waif as I am, at this
present hour,” sadly and slowly uttered Paul, with a return
to the weight that had all day pressed upon his heart, “be
otherwise than willing to be floated anywhere, by any
chance tide that should undertake his destiny?”
Mrs. Tetherly made a playful gesture of relief.
“You have described my venturesome service so well,”
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she said, “that I shall only have the trouble of explaining
it to you a little more fully. I have `undertaken your
destiny,' my dear friend—simply making love for you, that
is to say, and without asking your permission!”
Paul dropped his pencils, and listened, in puzzled silence
and surprise.
“I will make a short story of it,” she went on to say,
“and I will not hear your answer till you have had time to
think of it—half a day, at least—for we dine at six, and
the afternoon is before you. I once ventured, if you
remember, to write something to you about Mildred.
You gave me no answer, and we never talked of it;
but I have, nevertheless, cherished my little project of
bringing you together—the favor you have made with
her, since, by your conduct in some critical matters, very
much brightening the probabilities. Well—a day or two
ago, we were gossiping rather more confidentially than
usual, Mildred and I. Tetherly had once told me something
of a secret interest in her, which you had treasured
from the time of first meeting her in America. It is true,
he said it was less a tender passion than the resentment
for an imaginary slight—showing itself in a desire to make
a different impression upon her, for pride's sake—but the
ambition to please her was enough for my argument. I
assumed the point, or rather left it to her inference, that
there was a hidden passion under it all.”
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“My dear Mrs. Tetherly!” exclaimed her astonished
listener.
“Yes—and you shall hear the result, substantially and
fairly. Our confab was long, and very confidential; and
she confessed to me something like this: that she had
not thought of loving you—that she never was aware
of feeling a tender passion for any man—but, that chance
had given her rare opportunities of testing your more
hidden qualities of character (tests without which she
would be willing to trust her happiness in no man's
hands), and, of all the men she had ever known, you
certainly seemed to her, at present, the most worthy to be
loved.”
Paul rose to his feet, unable to speak, but the pressure
of a cold finger of iron—hopeless and pitiless—seemed
taken from the life-nerve at his heart. He paced the room
hurriedly, while his companion went on:
“Pardon me—a woman and a relative, and knowing
Mildred better than you possibly can—if I prescribe to
you the light in which you should look upon this confession.
It is not in her nature to make a warmer one.
It says everything for her—enough, at least, to assure
you that it would be the foundation of a love that would
last a lifetime. Besides, my dear Fane, it reveals the fact
that you might win her—and how worthy Mildred is, of
any man's winning, I need not tell you, after the portrayal
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[figure description] Page 366.[end figure description]
of her inmost heart, which you have given with your pencil.
Do not reply! I will not hear you till we are alone
together again. But one request more.”
Paul was too busy with conflicting thoughts to utter a
word. He stood, with knit fingers and closely-pressed lips,
to listen.
“We are going to-morrow to Raven-Park, for a couple
of days—ten miles from London, you know, and the residence
of a bachelor-cousin of our family. Tetherly has
an invitation for you, and we will take you down with us.
Mildred is there already. It will, at least, be an opportunity
for you to meet. No refusal, now! I will not listen
to it. Make your arrangements to go, and so adieu till
six! God bless you, my dear Fane!”
And in another moment, and without word or sign from
Paul, except only a mechanical return of the pressure of
her hand, Mrs. Tetherly was gone.
-- 367 -- p746-372
CHAPTER XXXIII.
[figure description] Page 367.[end figure description]
The company at Raven-Park was principally a family-gathering.
Tetherly gave a list of the guests and their
peculiar points of character, before leaving Paul in his
room to dress for dinner; and, as he closed the door, Paul
fell to wondering how he had so mechanically consented to
be brought where he was, and, particularly, how he had
given in, ever so tacitly and reluctantly, to Mrs. Tetherly's
improbable scheme. The approaching meeting with Miss
Ashly, he felt, was to cost him an effort, inestimably as he
had prized the confession of preference and esteem for him
which she had made to her aunt. But, had the removal
of that long festering sting from his heart left it more
impressible? Would the victory of his pride warm into
love? The colder judgment, sitting in the background of
his troubled thoughts, said “no;” while, so utterly adrift
and unloved did he feel in the world, since the marriage
of Sybil Paleford, that even this vague semblance of happiness
looked attractive. To turn over the blotted leaf of
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his heart, and forget it if he could, but to offer the next
blank page as a tablet whereon Fate was free to write, was
the resolve plucked at the last moment from the perplexities
of his thoughts, as he descended to the drawing-room.
The greeting from Miss Ashly, as she stood among eight
or ten of her relatives, all strangers to Paul, was, of course,
only a friendly cordiality. He intended to approach again
the hand that pressed his so warmly, but his presentations,
right and left, by his host, Sir John Morford, were scarce
ended, when the door of the dining-room was thrown open,
and he took his chance of neighborhood at dinner by giving
his arm to the nearest lady.
But, with Mrs. Tetherly on the right hand of Sir John,
and engrossed of course—Tetherly between two aunts on
the same side of the table with himself—Miss Ashly
directly opposite, and to be talked to, if at all, with an
audience of five or six indifferent listeners—and himself
between two profiles, which his artistic eye discovered, at a
glance, to belong to two wooden and well-bred mediocrities—
Paul ate his soup with small promise of pleasure. The
usual refuge would have been easy. He could have taken
his thoughts into his own brain—(serving out the dried
raisins of well-preserved commonplaces, instead of fresh
grapes plucked from the vine of the present moment)—but
that his old pride-wound was still sensitive, though healed.
Miss Ashly's cold grey eyes were seeing him in a new
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light, and trying him, inevitably and for the first time, by
the standards among which she had been brought up. He
was piqued, not only to appear to advantage, but contentedly
at his ease.
Master of appearances, as Paul constitutionally was,
however, he was not master of his own nervous susceptibility.
The respective estimate which he formed of himself
and those around him, did not at all agree with their
respective estimate of themselves and him; and this difference,
which, under ordinary circumstances, would simply
have amused him, acted upon him, while so much was at
stake, with the republicanism of Nature. He was outvoted.
It was perfectly evident to him that his neighbors
were eating their dinner under the full impression of their
social superiority to both Tetherly and his friend the
American artist—and in the very small minority of his
own opinion to the contrary, there was no consciousness of
power. While he talked with a most voluble and successfully
affected brilliancy, therefore, he was secretly writhing
under the sense of being condescended to by those whom
he amused.
And, even in the very natural blindness of Miss Ashly to
the torture of his position, there was an aggravation of it.
She was evidently looking at him with nothing but approbation—
having been relieved, at first, of some little uneasiness,
from awkwardness anticipated, but, when this was
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removed, charmed with his ease and agreeableness. Her
smile across the table was as genial and kindly as it was
any way capable of being. Yet why should she not see
(Paul's pride insisted on asking), that there was insult and
contemptuous injustice for him, in the very different sort
of kindness—the condescending toleration—of the manner
of her relatives? He tried in vain to still the gnawing of
it. He remembered over and over again, that, for the two
years he had been in England, he had associated almost
only with those who, by court standards, were the superiors
of her family—made quite at home, by his genius, in
houses of the more exclusive nobility where the lesser aristocrats
around him never set foot—yet the thought was of
no avail. They were Ashlys—of the blood of the proud
woman who had given the first life-sting to his pride—and
by that silly yet ineffaceable memory of his boyhood's
mortification, they had the power to humiliate him.
The dinner seemed interminable to Paul; but the ladies
at last left the table; and, with Miss Ashly's disappearance,
the “amusing American artist,” as her uncles and cousins
had all thought him, became suddenly silent. With the
silver fruit-knife for a pencil, he wrote or sketched, very
absently, on the bottom of his plate, his eyes sheltered
with the hand that supported his forehead. His friend
Tetherly was deep in politics, with their host, at the other
end of the table. How he could ever have consented for
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an instant to think of marrying Miss Ashly—binding himself
to breathe, even for a second time in his whole life, the
hell of such an atmosphere of relationship—was working
the curl of Paul's lip into something like a smile of bitterness,
when, suddenly, along the gravel-path under the window,
came the quick rattle and pull-up of a post-carriage,
silencing the conversation all around.
The butler entered presently, and leaned over with an
audible whisper:
“Mr. and Mrs. Ashly, from Florence, Sir John! They
have been to dinner, and will have the pleasure of meeting
you at tea.”
Sir John nodded. Tetherly gave his friend a look that
he meant should be congratulatory of a mutually pleasant
surprise. The guests fell to discussing how long Arthur
could have been in coming from Switzerland, where he
had been passing his honey-moon—whether he would take
to hunting or politics, now that he had brought his wife to
England for a permanency, and was to reside at Ashly
Hall—when “Mrs. Arthur” would probably be presented
at court, and what a talk her beauty would undoubtedly
make—whether their first son would be named after the
Morford or Ashly branch, and how the Paleford and Ashly
blood would cross, as to features and character. The presence
of the still silent American was quite forgotten by the
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half dozen gentlemen at his end of the table, as they sat,
with a fresh family topic, over their wine.
Paul felt his eyes grow hot and blind, with the burning
flush to his brain and temples. Sybil Paleford under the
same roof—a wife—and to be met with the unbetraying
politeness of indifference, in a drawing-room, and before
strangers! The clenched fingers with which he almost
broke in two the knife in his hand—the bloodless lips of
the face bent low to the table—told the effort that it cost
him for self-control. To rush from the sight of those
around him—to fly from the house and escape the agony
of that meeting—was the wild, fierce impulse of heart and
brain.
He thanked God that no one spoke to him—that he
could be silent and alone with his anguish, though in the
presence of unsympathizing men—that there was time to
rally, and grow calm, and nerve for the bitter trial now
inevitable—the trial of congratulating her upon her marriage!
Sybil Ashly, the woman he loved most on earth, a
bride—nay, a wife, and scarce a bride any longer, but
already accustomed to the happiness of that new name,
and now to be seen presently by him, and watched for
hours in the familiar interchange of endearments with
another!
And yet the secret of what he was to suffer was between
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herself and him. Miss Ashly, it was true, knew the sacrifice
he had made to leave that matchless girl for another's
winning; but she did not know the proof of Sybil's love
for him, hidden (still wordless and scarce believed) in the
very depths of his soul—those swift, warm kisses on his
eyes, as he lay (she thought, insensible!) in the twilight
of that day too trying! Tetherly and his wife had known
little or nothing of his passion for Sybil. Ashly, the husband,
had looked upon it as a caprice of girlish attachment,
which he had only to make serious love to overcome—
even Colonel Paleford having concealed from him
the critical improbability of his success, and the full depth
of Paul's magnanimity of relinquishment.
And what was the story of that wooing? How was
she—Sybil Paleford, into whose willing eyes he had
poured such glowing devotion from his own, under Italy's
love-kindling sunsets, dreamy moonlights, and calm, sweet
mornings—how was she persuaded to forget him? That
it was not a resentment, and not because his motives were
misunderstood, he was certain. Colonel Paleford was a
man of too high honor not to have done him full justice
in the farewell of which he was the bearer to his daughter.
And there would have been some show of reason for the
acceptance of Mr. Ashly, too, if the wealth of which she
thus became the mistress, were necessary for the support
of her father—but, with his moderate competency, he had
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preferred to remain in Italy, and end his days in that
milder climate; his daughter and her husband to pass the
winters with him there. Was Paul's romance of belief in
woman's unworldliness of love to be thus shaken? Had
the girlhood, so independent of a court, and so disinterested
in the manifestation of a persevering preference for a poor
artist, passed into a womanhood of selfishness—a taste
only for luxury and display? On this one wild dream he
had built, unconsciously, but wholly and believingly, his
hope of inspiring the passion pictured in his ideal. By
Sybil Paleford, or never in this world, he had thought to
be romantically loved. This was the life-enigma, stored
away—hidden in his inmost heart—but, with all its uncertainty,
most fondly and resistlessly trusted.
It was well for Paul, that, in the hour of unobserved
self-absorption given him by the gentlemens' remaining at
table, his crowding thoughts had time to traverse their
tumultuous circle and come round again to his composure
of disappointment. Upon the sad misgiving that Sybil
was, after all, more like others than he had dreamed her
to be—that she had loved him when near, and soon forgot
him for another when he was gone—he once more became
self-possessed, and calm outwardly. His love-dream for
life was over, but, with the certainty of that, he could at
least entomb its wreck in his own memory. It was in the
past, and he could hide it from the world.
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The long windows to the floor were all open, for it was
a warm October night, with a brilliant moon; and, as the
guests followed Sir John into the drawing-room by the
folding-doors, Paul stepped out upon the long piazza that
ran the length of the house. The formidableness of a
deliberate approach, to give, with the other gentlemen, his
welcome to the new arrivals, rather staggered his courage.
If he could enter at the side, by one of the windows opening
upon the lawn, and speak to the bride—to Mrs. Ashly—
when the attention of the company was less concentrated
upon her, he thought the embarrassment might be
less. At least, he might bathe his hot eyes in the fresh,
calm air of night, and, from the stars, familiar to his happier
hours, get a thought, perhaps, to help build the barrier
that he needed.
The brilliant flood of light, from the windows of the
drawing-room, made the foliage of the low-hanging trees
upon the lawn too golden for even the moonlight to be
perceptible; and the stars, up through the glow of the
atmosphere immediately around the house, were scarce
visible at all. Paul leaned over the railing for a moment;
but the concentration of the light and the sound of voices
drew him insensibly onward, and, passing one or two pillars
of the colonnade, he came suddenly upon the window
commanding a full view of the company within.
A sense of alarm—a staggering of the brain-poise for a
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moment—but he remembered that he was still outside, in
the darkness. He was not within the four walls which
bounded the light for those in her presence. He was not
visible, to her! But she, to him, through that open win
dow!—oh God, how beautiful she once more beamed, a
wonder, upon his eyes! Had he forgotten how surpassing
was that beauty! Or had Sybil, with her new happiness—
her happiness as Ashly's wife—grown more fair? Fairer
she certainly seemed to him, even than he had dreaded,
with his artist's memory and poet's imagination, that, as a
bride, she would appear. Her type of beauty—(he marvelled
as his eyes refused to see, but still saw it!)—was
completer than when he loved her. It was higher beauty,
now, than when she had turned from court homage to
think only of him—higher beauty, in England and as an
Ashly, than, under the passionate sky of Italy, giving a
joyous girl's first heart-waking to Paul Fane! She was
paler, now, and more calmly and strangely noble.
Waiting his opportunity to speak to her, without all
eyes upon the unsuspected trial of his courage, he still
stood, an unobserved spectator of the scene, by the column
of the piazza. The tribute to Mrs. Ashly's remarkable
loveliness was universal. In her white evening dress as a
bride, and with a coronet of costly pearls circling the
shadow of her golden hair — her exquisitely moulded
shoulders and arms fairly dazzling with their glowing
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and fine-grained whiteness, in the light, and her completed
fullness of figure as a woman without a fault, either of
sculpture-line or queenliness of mien—she sat at a slight
angle of turn from the window where Paul stood, but, by
the next window, apparently, when not occupied with conversation,
looking out upon the lawn. Around her chair,
more or less distant, but with their eyes fixed upon her,
stood the gentlemen who had just been presented—Sir
John at the right arm of her fauteuil, and the bridegroom
leaning upon its carved back, looking down upon her as
she sat beneath him. Paul gave to the happy man one
look of his practised and searching eye! He had studied
that face too well as an artist to misread it now. The
Ashly iciness of repose had come uppermost again. With
his cold and habitual contemptuousness, the bridegroom
was blest! He was secure in his freely-acknowledged
happiness! But, even on the torturing throe of uncontrollable
envy and jealousy, which Paul was guilty of feeling,
for the moment, there was a gleam of wicked light.
In that circle of men—the well-dressed, well-mannered,
unexceptionably aristocratic gentlemen who now stood
around her—her relatives and intimates for life—there
was not one, who, by the instinct of her nature, would ever
seem her equal. They were her inferiors—nay—thank
God! they were even his! With the husband who stood
behind her, there, in lordly possession—however he might
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now be enriched, beyond all possibility of being again
reached or mated, for value of life by a poor artist—he
had once compared himself and felt worthier than an
Ashly of her love.
A step approached from behind, as this dark thought
gave place to nobler feelings; and Tetherly, coming in
from his cigar upon the lawn, slipped his arm into Paul's,
to have his company at the tea-table. Mrs. Tetherly
presided at the urn in the corner; but, on their way,
the two gentlemen together gave their first greeting to
the bride—the anticipated embarrassment, and scarce controllable
emotion of Paul, being fortunately and wholly
veiled under the confusion of that double welcome.
Tetherly was constitutionally ceremonious. Paul took
the tone of his manner, and was ceremonious, too. He
noticed that Mrs. Ashly's voice did not utter his name
audibly, though her lips moved. The pressure of her
hand was uncertain. She replied to his one question
of her father's health, with a tone that, to him, seemed
forced and mechanical, but in no way likely to seem
other than commonplace to those around; and, feeling
Mr. Ashly's eye very steadily fixed upon him, Paul shook
hands with the bridegroom, and, echoing his friend's
welcome of him to England, passed on. The ordeal was
over—he scarce knew when, or how!
“My dear Paul!” said Mrs. Tetherly, in an under-tone,
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as she handed him a cup of tea, “thank God for the old
magnetism, as strong as ever! She loves you!”
Paul had but one image in his bewildered thoughts, and
he looked at his friend in dumb amazement.
“I have been talking with Mildred,” she continued,
“and she confesses to having wholly disparaged you,
even with her already confessed, but hitherto measured
preference. The comparison with our dull kinsfolk, to-day,
has revealed to her your better clay.”
“My dear friend!” exclaimed Paul, with the expostulatory
tone of mere politeness, but scarce collecting his
scattered senses sufficiently to comprehend the meaning of
his zealous and partial friend.
“For her, a full confession—let me assure you!” added
Mrs. Tetherly, with a look over her shoulder as she rose
(for Sir John had taken her hand at the moment to lead
her to the piano), “but au revoir! and more of it by-and-by.
She is alone, at this moment,” she added, pointing to
her niece, sitting thoughtfully at an open window.
But Paul was not equal even to the ordinary effort of
conversation—much less to the difficult exercise of tact
and delicacy which would be required by his present
position toward Miss Ashly. His mind and heart, in
spite of all struggle of judgment and principle against
it, were now full of burning thoughts of another. To
escape from looking longer upon that peerless bride was
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the present prompting of his conscience—the cruel need
of his weakness and passion. That he should take an
early and unceremonious leave, with the morrow's morning—
never again to see Sybil Paleford—Sybil Ashly—if
it were possible to be avoided—he resolved, of course;
but, for that evening, he was to breathe the air of
bewildering nearness to her, and to be included in the
same hospitality; and, that night, he was to pass, under
the same roof with her glorious beauty, in all its enchantment—
ay, in all its happiness! And, with this torture
of thought crowding on soul and brain, with anguish too
intolerable to be concealed, he needed darkness around
him. The unwitnessing or unrevealing stars were the only
company he could bear.
Like a far-extended floor of the drawing-room, the
closely-shaven lawn of Raven-Park extended away, its
limits lost in the wilderness of thickets and noble trees;
and, from shadow to shadow of the leafy breaks in the
moonlight, Paul now wandered, thanking God to be alone.
The night was soft and breathlessly still. The music of
the electric fingers of his friend, pouring from the open
windows, was audible in its mellowed and best effect
throughout the grounds. He was conscious, at last, of
being soothed by this continued and unseen ministration;
and seating himself upon the railing of a bridge over a
serpentine stream—the outlet to a sheet of artificial water
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on the edge of the lawn—he gave his thoughts up to the
music.
But, a sudden fear began to take possession of Paul's
nervously excited brain. Surely she would not play that
romance! Would not common pity—would not instinct—
would not the guardian angels on the watch—Sybil's
mother—Heaven in its mercy—prevent the wakening of
that, now?
She who was at this moment bewitching the formal
air of Raven-Park, was no ordinary player. Paul had
caught, for her portrait, the expression of the rapt genius
that found its way to the ivory keys through her nervous
and pliant fingers. But her inspiration did not find vent
alone in following the music-thoughts of the great masters.
She was an improvisatrice upon the instrument—the pulses
of her brain not more effortless than the strings, in the life
they drew from her. Her playing was usually capricious.
For indifferent listeners it would be oftenest a mélange—
the airs of operas, old songs, waltzes, and any chance-remembered
compositions, woven together. To those she
loved, however, and to whom she played confidentially,
it was a pouring out of her own heart in an irregular
improvisation—varying, according to her mood, but
oftenest rising, toward the close, into the most passionate
utterance of the feeling so long chained within her.
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The overflowing heart, locked and frozen for half a life
under the ice of her reserve, thus found a voice.
But she would sometimes take a theme—giving the
hint of a story, she would tell it afterwards in music. And
of this more sympathetic and descriptive improvisation,
both Paul and Sybil Paleford had been exceedingly fond,
in the days they had passed together at Florence—one
strange romance, particularly, possessing for them a singular
fascination, though it was seldom given but at the last
hour by the excited player, and with feelings wholly abandoned
to the theme. It represented a love, timid in its
waking, but strengthening without the chance for an
avowal, and growing, by suppression, into madness—based
upon a German story of great wildness and beauty. The
exchange of feeling that had never been made in words,
by Paul and Sybil, had been passed and repassed between
them, on that music's electric magnetism, in eloquence of
fire!
The player, as Paul now recognized, was becoming
gradually unconscious of listeners. By the flitting forms
passing to and fro between himself and the windows, he
could see that the company had been enticed out upon the
lawn by the loveliness of the night; and Mrs. Tetherly,
left alone in the room, had probably abandoned herself
to the witchery of the instrument. It was changefully
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expressive of reverie—sad for a moment or two, then
strong or brilliant; but, at last (and it was this which had
startled Paul with such sudden alarm), hovering with
evident absent-mindedness over the commencement of the
German story. To the touching and melancholy air that
ran through it she made a dreamer's capricious approaches,
now rushing upon it by an unmistakable note or two, then
turning off with some whim of variation, as if abruptly
forgetful of what she had thought to play. Would she,
indeed, venture upon it? Would she not remember that
there might be a heart beating within sound of those ivory
keys, whose secret, whose dumb sad prisoner, it would
drive wild in its cell?
But, as Paul stood, risen to his feet, and listening with
the alarm of nervous expectation, a flowing figure in white
came with uncertain movement toward the shadow of the
gigantic willow overhanging the bridge. At the step with
which she crossed the line of shade made upon the broad
lawn by the clump of trees nearest to him—emerging suddenly
into the radiant light of the clear full moon—he
saw that it was the bride. She came alone. Yet how
unlike herself, as he had seen her in that drawing-room, a
half hour before! Her head was bent low, as if to be
blind to the bright night around her, and, with fingers
tightly interlocked, the palms of her hands were turned
downwards with convulsive struggle before her. The air
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of stateliness and repose was no longer there. With
shoulders drawn forward, and face unseen in its depressed
turning from the moon, there was only her bridal wreath
with its glittering pearls, to make certain that it was
she.
Hid, himself, in the dark shadow of the drooping
branches that fell like a curtain around him, Paul checked
the impulse to speak and warn her of his neighborhood—
but, on that instant of stillness, burst suddenly the clear
melody of the dreaded romance! It began with a mournful
and sustained sweetness—a love-telling which they had
both declared wholly irresistible. The bride started and
looked back. Imploringly and tenderly the wondrous wail
of the lover's unheard prayer rose upon the stillness. She
lifted her head more eagerly to listen. Another advancing
step, to place her hand upon the railing of the bridge, and
Paul's voice broke the silence. It was her name only—
her new name—uttered with the instinctive impulse that
he had no right to leave her longer unaware of his presence.
But, with a single start of surprise, and a syllable—
the one sweet syllable he had never thought to hear from
her lips again—his own familiar name—the step with
which he was about to pass and leave her to her solitude
was arrested.
She looked into his face for one moment—the wild
notes rose upon the air with the despairing madness of the
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lover—the madness of which they had both learned to
interpret the musical intensity of expression—and, with a
short quick scream, but with terrible suddenness and
vehemence, she flung her arms about his neck. One close
clasp—one more utterance, each of the other's name—and
the form within his bewildered hold began to weigh upon
his arms. The head fell aside insensibly. Approaching
feet told him that the scream had been heard over the
lawn. A fleck of moonlight streamed down through the
branches upon the pale features and closed eyes. One
long look—one maddening, clinging kiss to her insensible
lips—and, laying her gently down where the coming
friends would find her, Paul fled into the darkness. The
grove and its deep shadows, beyond the lawn, received
him. He could not, even for aid to her, meet human
faces. To be alone—alone, with his own wicked, but oh!
delirious joy of madness—out-frenzying, in its passionate
intensity, even the madness of the music—he felt to be his
thirst, with that kiss upon his lips. The night was short.
The moon set upon the woods of Raven-Park, and the sun
rose, in what, to that wondering guest, were but successive
moments.
With the opening of the doors by the servants, Paul
passed to his room; and, leaving a hurried note of apology
and farewell, which Tetherly would make acceptable to
their host, but promising to his friend a better explanation
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of his sudden departure when they should meet, he was, in
a few minutes, alone on his way to London.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
It was a month after the visit to Raven-Park, and London,
though, to the out-door observer, as crowded as ever,
was, according to the Court Journal, “quite empty.” The
Ashlys, among others, who had “the old place” to go
down to, were “down in the country;” and Tetherly, by
every mail or two, was writing urgently to his friend Fane,
to accept the invitation to the great family gathering at
Ashly Hall, and thus join him for a few weeks of hunting,
shooting, and Christmas-keeping.
But Paul was busy with a purpose which he had not yet
communicated to his friends the Tetherlys. He was preparing
to return to his own country; and the completion of
the various professional commissions which, with his nearly
two years in England, had largely accumulated on his
hands, occupied his time so fully that he could very easily
plead a pressure of engagements. As the thought of
home grew upon him, even a contemplated trip to Paris,
to take his leave of the most intimate friend he had found
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in Europe, the Princess C—, was reluctantly abandoned.
He wrote to her, instead. And, to that letter—(simply an
adieu of grateful friendship, with which it is not necessary
to detain the reader)—the following was her characteristic
reply:—
Paris, —, —.
My dear Fane:
The sadness at the news of your letter, is so struggling for
the present with my resentment at your not coming to say adieu to
us, that I am doubting whether this will turn out a scolding or a
farewell. I can scarce see to write, for the tears that are in such
a silly hurry to forgive you—but how dreadfully unkind and hard-hearted
of you, to think of going without a word of good-bye! Is
it quite safe, do you think, to commit yourself to the retributive
ocean with a sin of such enormity on your shoulders?
But why do you go? I know little of your country, except
what I have learned from common opinion (and an occasional talk
with Mary Evenden and Mrs. Cleverly), but it seems to me that
you are much more in your proper place where you are. The statue
should not return to its quarry, my friend! If there were any
great question at stake—any call on your patriotism—it might be
different. Were the “stars and stripes” in danger, or were your
countrymen likely to starve or become paganized, without you,
there might be reason in flying home to turn your pencil into a
sword, or your palette into a loaf of bread or a Bible. America
is, still, pretty free, I hear however; and plenty to eat for everybody;
and no one has any occasion to continue a sinner, there,
except from pure choice, and in the exercise of his republican liberty!
So, why desert the temple where your genius has its fitting
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pedestal, to go back to the cave where at best you will only serve
your country by seeming as patriotically unhewn as the stones
around you.
Observe, I mean no disparagement to America! The greatest
heroes of Europe began as babies (I have always understood);
and previous to their great achievements and glory, had worn the
unmentionable varieties of raiment rendered necessary by the
early stage of their progressive manners. History, of course, will
give your infant republic the usual century or two of cradle-rocking
and nurse-needing—passing over in silence, or without coming to
particulars, everything except the great infantine epochs, the
national weaning, rash, measles, and vaccination. And (seriously),
that there are great elements maturing under the rough surface—
great seed germinating among the weeds which America has had no
time as yet to eradicate—I fully believe. Pray consider me as
paying all honor to your transatlantic probabilities!
To return to yourself—it is not altogether the price you are to
receive for your pictures—not that, nor even the quantity of
renown with it—that is to make you happy, my dear Fane! For
an artist of your quality, most particularly, there must be discriminating
appreciation in the very atmosphere. You must be conscious
of appreciative eyes, always waiting for what you do. Call
it vanity, if you please, but inspiration faints for lack of praise
from judicious lips. And are you to have this (for your Europetrained
pencil), in a country of no leisure? With nothing but
hurry and money-making around you, are you to feel sympathy, or
breathe freely?
Yet, you will go! Oh, I have moulded too often the quiet lines
of your very complying-looking mouth, not to know that there is
a will of steel within the velvet scabbard. You will go—and I
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shall not see you first—for so you have made up your mind—but,
one word as to the more yielding heart you are to take with you,
after all! It will be more at home than your pencil in America—
indeed, the less play for the genius the more for the heart, is a
“Q. E. D.” in the mathematics of love.
Mary Evenden has been with me, as you know, for nearly two
years. I need not tell you how well I have studied her, in that
time. She was a new book of Nature to me, and I learned her by
heart. The wonder that she was!—a most lovely creature, with a
consciousness in the brain only! a woman whose heart beat to her
intellect alone! We have studied beauty together, as nothing but
sculpture can well teach it. But she herself being, as I say, an
intense study to me, I have seen the gradual deepening of her
character with her sense of beauty—and its warm sunshine (let
me tell you) has been tinting the leaves of a heart yet to flower.
The forgotten woman within that symmetry of sleeping Ariadne is
ready to awake. She must love soon—and with a new-blown
though belated freshness and fulness that will give a noon with
the dew of morning. Are you curious enough in your knowledge
of our sex to see the value of a phenomenon so rare?
And yet you came so near one of those loves of instinct, to
which genius, at least, should be the exception! Miss Paleford—
how beautiful she was!—how noble!—how romantically proud and
pure! Yet she forgot you—(with not much time either!)—and
for a man who was not much to be forgotten for! Would Mary
Evenden, with her soul first wrapped up in your genius, wake, at
last, to your lovableness as a man, and then forget you in a year!
You see what I wish to foreshadow for you. Mrs. Cleverly goes
soon home to America, and Mary with her. Watch this fair girl,
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my dear Fane! and wake, for yourself, the love that, half-won
already, dreams of you unconsciously while it slumbers.
It is for me that your departure is the saddest. America is far
off, and it will be long before you return to Europe—if ever. I
shall not see you again in this world, or I shall see you when I am
old and changed. And it were not because you had ever positively
thought me to be beautiful, that this latter alternative were
painful, but because the memory beautifies with time and absence,
and we do not even meet with the eyes with which we parted—
expecting more, besides not having seen the reconciling gradations
with which there has become less. Spite of the most loyal attachment—
the most faithful constancy—you would not see me, after
ten years or twenty, without wondering (vexed with yourself, perhaps,
that you were compelled to do so) how you had ever paid
the homage to me which you still remembered—how the ideal
which you had so long cherished, and which had thus suddenly
vanished, never to return, had possibly found form and color!
For I have, thus far, contrived to charm your eye, I know very
well; and I should continue to charm it, were you not absent long.
Part, however, though, it appears, we must (and, if for more
than a year or two, I would rather it should be for ever), we have
something even more precious to preserve than the hope of meeting
again—the memory, my dear Paul, of a friendship irreproachable!
I began, thinking it would not be so, I confess. My life, as
you know, is all darkness within, as it is all sunshine without; and
the forbidden moonlight I had dreamed of was in your tenderness
of looks and ways. But as your mind gradually elevated the tone
of courtesy between us, overruling and correcting the first superficial
fascination of your manners and person, I found reverence
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for woman among the graces that had pleased me. I was hedged
about, for you, with the sacred circle of purity—of the light of
which I had been (God forgive me!) ready to be forgetful. It
was necessary to be still pure, to be so thought of still. And this,
to me, was the renewal of a dream!
Yes, for I had begun life with romantic, but sinless friendship
for my vision of happiness—the sacrifice of name and hand for
court policy and fortune, but the belief that I was thus free of
control, and could choose where I would for a pure interchange of
heart. I went on trustingly. I tried many of your sex—less and
less joyfully or believingly, each one—and when we first met, you
and I, it was a long dream, well-nigh over. I was weary of making
friends, finding them unworthy, and rejecting them. Though surprised
into an irresistible preference and tenderness for you, I felt
no confidence in the nature of the return.
“Ah, with a deference like yours—tempting a woman to be only
what she wills to be—most of my sex would run little risk! I knew
your nature—its passion, and its adventurousness—and that the
world to you was new, and to be well tried. A word from my lips
would have broken the spell, I was, many a moment, tremblingly
aware. But there was ever between us that unseen wall of adamant—
your honoring deference, your blind belief in me—and,
with unblemished memories of each other, thank God! we are
parting now!
I have now confessed to you, I repeat, what an experiment this
has been to me—an experiment as to you, but no less as to myself.
Pursuits and tastes in sympathy—opportunities without restraint—
incidental circumstances in the situation of both facilitating an
intimacy—and (I may say now) yourself, for lovableness, quite
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unsurpassed in my knowledge of men—it was an ordeal study of
your standard of woman, as it was of the strength to be true to it,
in my own soul. Through, oh, what temptation and passion I was
to represent, for you, that standard's unsullied brightness! There
were times (we may remember them if we are to meet no more!)
when the heart seemed too human for the test. I have driven into
the marble with my chisel, when at work, with you by my side,
many an impulse, that, with but one nerve unguarded, would have
flung the inspiration around your neck! I saw your own thought—
the rally against your own share of the moment's trial, in the
curve of the trembling lip, that still told of your honor for woman.
My triumph was in it! I was strong again. And I know, now,
thank God! that there may be friendship sweet and pure, even
though the wild love that might embitter it has stood near and
ready.
But the curtain has dropped upon our drama, at last. We retire,
to hat and shawl ourselves like other people, and take our common
way upon the sidewalk, with the crowd. Though our audience of
hopes and fears is dispersed, however—the lights out, and the
orchestra vocal no longer—let us keep the interest of the play
under our own shut eyelids, for a dream and a memory! You will be
to me, always, the unsuspected hero of my most trying life-drama.
Let me be something, to you, longer remembered than the foot-lamps
that are to burn for us no more! Let me be to you, as you
will certainly be to me, a romance of the past.
For news—I have a statue of Egeria in model, that I had thought
you were to see. Its inspiration will be wanting, I fear, now that
you are to be gone when it is finished. I worked so much better
with the thought of your sweet earnest eyes over my shoulder!
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But, farewell, my dear Paul! I would write these tears into my
parting words, if I knew how. My heart follows you, believe me!
May God bless you!
Yours, with affectionate devotion,
C—.
P. S. Mary Evenden has come in before my letter was sealed.
She sends her love to you, with a message. Mrs. Cleverly, hearing
of your proposed departure, wishes to go home (she and Mary)
under your kind care. This is only to inform you of her intention.
She will write to you, herself, as to the arrangements for the
voyage, the joining you in London, etc., etc.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The delay of Paul's voyage homeward, in consequence
of Mrs. Cleverly's intention of taking passage with him,
weighed heavily on his already depressed spirits. It would
have been a mere trifle at any other time to be thus
detained; but, with his labors completed, and a couple of
weeks of comparative leisure on his hands, there was awkwardness
in still excusing himself from a flying visit, at
least, to Ashly Hall. He might have run over to Paris, to
accompany his friends to England; but the letter of the
princess (written on the supposition that she was to see
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him no more) had a kind of obituary tenderness, after
which he felt a delicacy in again making his visible
appearance to her. Overworked with the completion of
his professional commissions, and his pencil, of course, distasteful
as a refuge from depression—London Novemberish,
and his acquaintances and friends out of town—he
was fairly driven to the wall by his melancholy. In this
extremity of mood, one foggy and dull morning, he closed
the shutters upon the imperfect struggles of the sun to
make a day, lighted his candles, and had recourse to his
one habitual comfort when all else failed—the society of
his mother. With the world shut out, he thus opened his
heart to her:
London, —.
My dearest Mother:
You are thinking of me to-day, I know, as half-way across
the water. I was to have sailed a fortnight ago (as I wrote
you), and should have been happy indeed to do so, but for Mrs.
Cleverly's delays at Paris. She and Mary are to come with me,
and the good lady's milliners and dress-makers, I suppose, have
been less prompt than her kindnesses. Boston is to be kept astonished
for a year or two, of course, with the fashions she brings
home—the tribute to the magnificent great heart that beats under
her “latest fashion,” being as little thought of by herself, as it is
by the goodness-blind world she cares only to dazzle.
I shall be with you soon, however, God willing. And, I am very
certain, it will be to leave you no more! Once at home again,
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and, with the lessons I have learned, I shall be like the caterpillar
who has made a chance flight on a balloon—not very impatient
even for the elevation with my own wings as a butterfly. I have
been out of reach of the dew of your tears, and of the soft moss
and violets of your every day's love, dearest mother!
Of course I am not so much of a child as to run prematurely
home, leaving my manhood's errand of ambition unperformed. If
it were better for my development of genius to remain longer in
Europe—one year or twenty—I would choke down the homesickness
now busy in my throat, I am sure you will believe. But, very
deliberately, and looking at it from all points of view, I think my
own country is my mind's native air. After trying its lungs in the
perfumed atmospheres of Europe—(and trying them, I confess, by
arts of inhalation not elsewhere to be learned, and necessary for
their full trial of expansibility)—I find my American soul and
brain, as well as my American heart, taste, and temper, pining for
America to breathe in.
I have had success in Europe—in England more particularly—
to my full deserving, I am very free to own. But, when I think
to what I half or wholly owe it, I would rather bury all but the
lesson! It is not to myself, nor to my pencil, that I owe what I
may call my present prosperous reputation. I owe it mainly to
adventitious causes—causes to whose aid and kindness I am properly
grateful, of course, but to which I would rather not be longer
indebted. I have painted many pictures, and for “noble” sitters.
And to paint on, and for the same class of “patrons,” looks more and
more possible, every day. I have found it easy to continue at the
level upon which I began my English recognition and appreciation.
But I began where I never could have reached by my own merit
only. I came with court introductions which were wholly
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unprofessional and accidental—dining with dukes and marquises, and
then patronized as an artist for having been their guest. My
zealous friends were all aristocrats, and they have brought aristocracy
to sit to me.
And what better would I have?—perhaps you ask, dearest
mother! Till you have thought of it—perhaps till you have tried
it—this would seem happiness enough. And I scarce think I shall
be successful in explaining to you, even now, why such “bread
and butter” is to be “quarrelled with.”
To be appreciated below my present level, seems to me the
liberty I want. And this, with the false lustre of my present false
position, I should, at least, never believe myself to be. To pass
up from one stratum of society to another, in this country, is difficult
enough. My republican pride would have fretted at that, if
I had not chanced, as the proverb has it, “to come in at a window.”
But to be ever honestly at home, on the stratum below
where you have once been conspicuous or acknowledged, is quite
as difficult. You are looked at through the eyes of your grand
acquaintances, by all whom those acquaintances look down upon.
Whatever might have been their decision as to your merit, if you
could have appealed to it without influence or favor, it is inseparable
from illusion, as it is. And so naturally does it seem to be a
result of aristocratic institutions—the making each class take its
tastes and estimates of talent from the class above—that there is
almost no such thing as individual and independent opinion. They
think by classes. They believe in you by recommendation of
higher authority than their own judgment.
Perhaps it is the instinct for my natural level, that makes me
yearn for the appreciation of those who are not “grand folks”—
not lordships and ladyships. But while condescension or patronage
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makes tinsel of the admiration it bestows, the admiration is even
more untruthful and unworthy which is paid from servility, and
prompted by obsequious imitation. There are exceptions, no
doubt, to this subserviency to rank, but I have not found them.
Following my longing for holier sympathy, I have again and again
picked out Nature's nobility from the middle class—gifted, refined.
and apparently high-hearted, men and women, such as I wished
for friends—and my disappointment has been thus far invariable.
More than for all else, I found myself valued for my familiar
acquaintance with great people.
But, while this looks as if high life in England were the most
appreciative of Art—as if court air, on the whole, were the most
natural element of genius—there are conditions, even to the
enjoyment of this, which, to republican lungs, make it quite
unbreathable. I have been astonished to know that some of the
most eminent men of genius, here, never think of taking their
wives into the society they frequent. Artists and authors—names
known the world over—go nightly to the parties of the nobility,
and stay at the country-houses of their great acquaintances, leaving
at home wives and daughters who are uninquired after and
unthought of. It is looked upon as a very convenient and proper
economy for the usual poverty of a man of genius; and they
number it among the refinements of good-breeding to practise a
“delicacy on such subjects”—inquiring neither into the extent of
an artist's or author's wardrobe, nor into the family or debts with
which he may chance to be encumbered.
I am coming home, dearest mother, to be happy in American
liberty—the liberty not only of sinking to where, by the laws of
specific gravity, I belong, but of being looked at, after I get to
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that level, through one pair of eyes at a time. The liberty to rise,
or the liberty to fall, and, at any level, to be judged of by the
simple individual opinion, without class condescension, class servility,
or class prejudice, seems to me to be American only. The
hell of social life, and of all life, is false position—I am fully persuaded—
and, in England, an artist, at least, can have nothing else.
But I have said enough of this. You will think the London fog,
from which I fled to pen and ink, has overtaken me!
And now, with my head upon your lap, what else shall I confess
to you, dear mother?
My heart, as well as my pride and my pencil, has had its lessons
since I left you. It has been instructive to all three “to see the
world.” I have been beloved, and I have loved; and I come
home, not only without a wife, but, for preference, very much
where I started. I despair of ever being loved by one woman for
all that I should wish to be loved for. Only a corner seems to be
wanted in the house of which we offer the whole. Those who
have shown partiality for me, hitherto, have done so for such different
reasons! One loved me for my appreciative discrimination
and flattery of portrayal, and, her I changed into a friend; one,
for the proof I had chanced to give of qualities of character she
thought rare (and, by her final preference, I was repaid for a long
remembered scorn); one for my personal magnetism, felt only
when near, and her (loving her most of all, and wildly and passionately
I shame to say!) I helped give to the bridegroom now
happy with her; and there was a fourth who has confessed to
a sacred friendship for me that might have been love, and this
last precious tribute was to you—for what I had learned of you—
for my honor of woman and my never-wavering deference of belief
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in her. Then there was Mary Evenden, who, when I started on
this triple pilgrimage (of heart, pride, and pencil), loved me for
my genius only—and who loves it still, or more (and that only),
now that we return together—and for her I felt no passion at
home, and I feel none now. Yet with my sad knowledge of the
incompleteness of all love, I should be happiest, perhaps, with
what she would not fail me in. I have a presentiment sometimes—
reasoning upon it only, and with the pulse of my heart shut
down—that the mind's love (if there must be one quality among
many to be alone valued and appreciated), is the best worth securing
and living for. She would begin with it, at least—our pure,
sweet Mary!
So much for the heart and pride I bring home to you. My
pencil, I think, will return also, to breathe in its native air more
freely. The architecture of the great temple of Art is undoubtedly
more complete on this side the water. But, while, in it, one artist
is but a brick—bricks sustaining him below, but immovable bricks
pressing on him from above—in America he is the tent pitched in
the desert, with the sunshine and air all around him. I feel the
want of this singleness and free fame. Genius develops here, and
is rewarded, by schools—a gregariousness of effort and dependence
which (for me, certainly) smothers all hope of individuality and fire.
Though I know I have improved in the knowledge and dexterities
of Art, while abroad, I wait till I get home for the inspiration to
conceive what shall be only my own, and achieve in it a triumph.
Republican air must loose the blood in my now fettered wrist and
brain.
I will keep my letter open, to add to it any news I may get to-morrow,
as to our voyage and movements. Perhaps I may have
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need to turn over another leaf of my sadness, for your kind reading,
if kept longer in suspense. For to-day, however, farewell, and, that
God may preserve you to bless once more these weary eyes, prays
fervently, dearest mother, your affectionate
Paul.
A postscript to the foregoing letter announced the
arrival in London of Mrs. Cleverly and Mary, and the
date of their proposed embarkation for the voyage.
Contrary to Paul's wishes, his friends the Tetherlys
became aware of his intention to steal off thus quietly,
and, by Mrs. Cleverly's delays, they were enabled to
hear of him as still in London, after his written farewell.
They came down to Liverpool from Ashly Hall,
to bring him the kind adieux of Miss Mildred and Mr.
and Mrs. Arthur Ashly, and to see the last of him on
the English shore. But, by both of them, it was a
farewell hard to utter. By him it was still harder to
receive and respond to. The leaning of the ship to
the pressure of the fair wind, and the last waving of
the hands, as the returning pilot-boat took those two
dear friends from his sight, was a relief to a heart
overburdened.
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With the close of that voyage, and the return of
the American artist, Mr. Paul Fane, from Europe, we
come upon that part of his history that is already
known. The entrance upon his profession, after his
few years of foreign study and travel, was naturally
the earliest point at which Fame, in his own country,
would recognise his career, and, with that, commences
commonly what knowledge of him is now upon men's
lips. His adoption of a style of Art peculiarly his
own, his doubtful success for a while, his marriage
to Miss Mary Evenden, and his struggles with poverty
and misappreciation (her love and completeness of
sympathy forming the whole sunshine of his life, to
himself, as it did its most visible beauty and poetry
to the eyes of others)—all this is in hearsay while
he is living, and (should his pictures live after him)
likely to be written of, by-and-by. There were apprenticeships
little understood, however—trainings of his
heart and pride, as well as of his pencil—which, the
author has thought it might be curious to tell. This
book has accordingly confined itself to those secret
mouldings of his genius and character “which were
else untold;” but, by the reader's acquaintance with
which, he will be enabled to comprehend the impulses
to Fane's artistic career and style, as well as the
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motives for some peculiarities in his life and manners.
If it has not turned out to be as much of a “romance”
as was expected, it is because the real life, of this our day,
faithfully pictured, seldom is.
THE END.
