University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

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,

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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 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

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.]