 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
THE ICY VEIL;
OR, THE KEYS TO THREE HEARTS THOUGHT COLD.
On an afternoon of Autumn's tranquillizing and thoughtful
sweetness, the public band, in the Rosenthal of Leipsic, chanced
upon an air that troubled the tears of a lady among the listeners.
The music, which is sometimes stationed at a small garden nearer
the town, was, for that day, at the café, deeper in the wood; and
the small tables scattered around beneath the trees, were, at this
hour, covered by the coffee and ices of the crowd, an untouched
glass of sherbet (her apology for occupancy of a chair) standing
before the lady to whose heart the music, as it seemed, had an
errand. It was an hour every way delicious, and to all there who
had not, in their own bosoms, the discontent that dissolved the
spell, the gardens of the Rosenthal were, for that evening,
enchanted. The shadow under the thick grove was golden with
the coming sunset. The gaily-painted porticoes of the little
maison de plaisance looked festal with the addition of the bright
colors of shawls and bonnets, students' caps and soldiers' uniforms.
The avenues around were thronged with promenaders.
Flower-girls curtsied about with baskets of roses.
The lady in the simple straw bonnet was alone, except that a
kept her in sight. She was dressed with a skill detectable
only by those of her own class in life, and, to all eyes,
plainly; but the slender wreath of blue and crimson flowers
which lay well back between the bonnet and the oval of her
cheek, betrayed an unwillingness that the dark hair should be
robbed wholly of embellishing contrast, and her movements,
though habitual and unthought of, were those of unerring elegance,
impressed (indefinably but effectually) with a singular pride and
majesty. Beauty, such as is appreciable by common eyes, she
had not. The freshness of youth had departed; but, to the few
who know, at first sight, the lustrous up-gleaming from a warm
heart deeply covered, she would, at this moment, have seemed
more beautiful than in youth. The morning light throws a glitter
upon the surface of the sea, that pleases the thoughtless; but the
diver for pearls finds more beauty in the unglittering profoundness
of the sea's look at noon.
Betrayals by angels (it may be!) of what the pride would
wrongfully conceal, are the tears, so little subject to the bidding
of the eyes that shed them; and those to which the music of the
Rosenthal had so unexpectedly called upon to give testimony,
were destined to fulfil their mission. A new comer to the crowd
had taken his seat at a table under the portico—a young man of
remarkable beauty of person—and, at the same moment that,
with a start of surprise, he rose to address the lady as a recognized
acquaintance, her suffused eyes arrested his attention, and prevented
what would have been, at that moment, an evident
intrusion. Resuming his seat, and guarding against recognition,
by bringing the lattice of the portico between himself and his
discovery, he had leisure, during the playing of an overture of
Leipsic; and still more, at such a miracle of things out of place,
as tears in the cold eyes of a woman he had thought made of
marble!
With his fancy weaving cobwebs of conjecture on these points,
however, the attention of the stranger was, a second time,
arrested. A Tyrolese glove-girl, in the drooping hat and short
green petticoat of her country, had approached him with her box
suspended over her shoulder, and, with a second glance at her
face, he had smilingly removed his ring, and extended his hand to
be fitted with a specimen of her merchandise; availing himself of
the opportunity to study her features with the absorbing gaze of
an artist. His mind was pre-occupied, however. Hours after, the
peculiar value (artistically speaking) of the physiognomy he thus
unconsciously stored away, became for the first time apparent to
him, and he wondered that he could have parted, so carelessly, with
a face so full of meaning But his own features—beautiful to a
degree seldom seen in the person of a man—were destined to be
better remembered.
The music ceased suddenly, and the lady in the straw bonnet,
followed at a distance by her servant, took her way long the
meadow-path of the Rosenthal. After a few steps she was over
taken by the artist.
“The Countess Isny-Frere, or her apparition, I believe!” he
said, removing his hat and addressing her with the deference of a
ceremonious acquaintance.
She stopped suddenly, with a look that began in unwelcome
surprise, and ended in well-bred carelessness.
“I must rally, to think which it is that you see,” she replied,
“for (I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Tremlet, I believe)
out of Leipsic!”
“And may I ask, meantime, what Leipsic has done to deserve
a visit from the Countess Isny-Frere?” he gayly continued—but
the next instant he remembered that he had but just now seen
tears in the eyes of the stately person he was addressing, and his
tone and manner became suddenly thoughtful and subdued. The
transition was one of insensible ease, however—the certainty that
he was thus ministering to her chance mood giving him a confidence,
the key to which she was little aware of having herself
furnished; and, as they slowly paced the smooth walk of the
Rosenthal, the two, who had never before met but as formal acquaintances,
fell gradually far within the limits of ceremonious
reserve.
The darkly-shaded avenue that alternately touches and recedes
from the banks of the Elster, is like a succession of approaches
to lovely pictures—so beautiful are the sudden disclosures of the
secluded bends of the river, at the openings contrived for the
purpose. At each opening there is a seat beneath the trees, the
swift waters curling its eddies to the bank on which it is placed,
and he would be a cold observer of Nature who could pass such
landscapes without availing himself of the opportunity to loiter.
Seated in these successive nooks, and leisurely pacing the winding
alleys that intervene, Tremlet and the Countess had each the
leisure to weigh the expediency of extending acquaintance into
friendship; though, in the mind of each, an under-current of
wondering reverie kept pace with the conversation—each other's
capability of natural and tender thoughtfulness being a mutual and
most pleasurable surprise. To Tremlet, more particularly, the
riddle was inexplicable, for the Countess's simple and confiding
heartless leader of fashion. Her house, of all resorts of exclusiveness,
in London, was the one, he believed, the most heartlessly
frequented, and she herself known, even among her friends,
by the appellation of the “cold Countess,” was esteemed, by society
at large, as the pre-eminent model of a worldling—proud,
cautious, and passionless.
Tremlet's errand to Germany was briefly told. He was uniting
a partly professional object with a summer's excursion.
The great Fair of Leipsic had drawn him hither from the Rhine,
for in no other gathering in the world, perhaps, are there assembled
so many varieties of strange costume and physiognomy; and
in a week's jostling among the long-robed and bearded Hebrews,
the green-jacketed Tyrolese, the mild Hungarians, and the German
mountaineers and students, he looked to find novel subjects
for his pencil. But this was not all. He had been long seeking
a model of female beauty for an unfinished picture—one which
he designed for the chef d'æuvre of his pencil—and the peculiar
quality of maiden countenance that was necessary to its completion
had evaded, thus far, both his search among the living, and
his imaginative conception. As the subject of the picture had
been suggested by one of the wild legends of Tieck, he thought
it more probable that he should find the face also in the neighborhood
of the first inspiration.
“And, strangely enough,” he added, after a moment's pause
“I saw a glove-girl in the garden where I met you, whose countenance
impresses me more in remembrance than when I saw it
—possibly one of those faces that lack but the heightening of their
natural expression to become beautiful.”
He stopped abruptly, recalling musingly the singular countenance
morrow, and induce her to sit to him for a portrait of careful
study. The Countess at this moment chose the left of two paths
—the one which she took leading in the direction opposite from
the return through the Park.
“It is my turn at the confessional,” she said, “and”—(she
hesitated, coloring slightly)—“I presume it would be my best
policy, if I am not to part from you before going further, to be
frank as to the `wherefore' of my summering here at Leipsic.
Whole secrets,” she added, smilingly, “are better kept than
halves, and less dangerous if told.”
She resumed after a few steps onward.
“You will be surprised to discover how little mystery there
need be, properly, in what looks at first sight so formidably mysterious—my
giving up of friends and identity for four months in
the year—but my friends in England should be as welcome to the
secret as you will be, if they could comprehend it, or would give
any credit, indeed, either to the simplicity of my life here, or its
still more incredibly simple motive. You know how I live in
London. I lack nothing there that can be given to a woman of
wealth and position. But I have another home which is far
sweeter to me—a small house in a village adjoining this Park of
the Rosenthal. The exterior of this little retreat, which I will
presently show you, looks as it did when I first saw it—like the
house of a German villager—but the interior is, of course, suited
to my taste and liking. The village, by the way, is celebrated as
having been the residence of Schiller, who lodged for some time in
one of its humble houses, and wrote here his famous `Song to
Joy'—but it is a veritable village at this day, and, though a most
desirable residence, as standing on the skirt of a Park which
villagers—myself hardly a noticeable exception. Here I have a
faithful household of servants who know me but by the German
name of my husband's family—(by-the-bye, remember to address
me in conversation as Madame Isny)—and who serve me without a
question, as a widow who has reasons for being absent a great
part of the year. But the sunset is losing its brilliancy. Let us
hasten our steps towards this mysterious `whereabout' of mine.
Over a cup of tea, I may, perhaps, tell you its `why and wherefore.”'
A sudden turn from the graveled walk of the Park brought
them to a rude and picturesque bridge over a mill-stream, and a
narrow lane led thence to the village. The street upon which
they entered was a common thoroughfare, between irregular rows
of houses, each with its rough gate and shrubbery, and the humble
entrance to one of these, which was in no way distinguished
from the rest, was opened by the plainly dressed servant of the
Countess. A small garden, arranged after the common manner
of the country, separated the front door from the neighbor's wall.
The entry was of German simplicity, and a small room on the
right, in which the Countess first, with mischievous formality, requested
Tremlet to be seated, was uncarpeted and furnished with
the ill-contrived conveniencies of a German parlor—evidently
kept as a place of reception for any intrusive visitor whose curiosity
might be troublesome. But, from the landing of the dark
staircase leading to the second-story, Tremlet entered an apartment
occupying the whole upper floor of the house, and here he
recognized, at once, a fitting home for the luxurious habits of the
inmate. It was a blending of boudoir and library, in which there
was nothing merely for show, but everything for luxurious case—
contrivances for comfort—the mirror panels so multiplying the
recesses, and so deceiving the eye as to the space enclosed between
the walls, that it seemed a little wilderness of indefinable extent
and luxury. The single alteration that had been made in the
exterior of the house was in the long window, from the ceiling to
the floor, which was of a single plate of glass, so clear that it was
difficult to tell whether it was shut or open. This costly change
in the humble architecture was on the side opposite from the
street, invisible to the passers-by; and as the house stood on the
little acclivity of the village, the window commanded a lovely
reach over the Rosenthal, with glimpses of the Elster.
An artist of genius is more than half poet, and Tremlet's appreciation
of this unsuspected hiding-place of feminine caprice
was glowingly complete. Left alone for a few minutes, he smiled
as he buried himself in the silken cushions of a divan, remembering
how formally he had visited in London the presiding spirit of
this living romance, and how mistakenly from what he thus
hastily saw of her, he had pronounced upon her character as cold
and ostentatious. As yet, it is true, he was in the dark as to the
motive of this singular seclusion; but her conversation in the
Rosenthal had been of a thoughtful and unaffected earnestness,
that satisfied him completely of the elevation and purity of the
heart in which the motive had its source, however singular the
whim by which it found its way to development.
A most delicious strain of music commenced suddenly. It was
like that of a band stationed at just such a distance that the
articulation of the harmony and melody came, to the room in
which he sat, softened to the most dreamy degree short of indistinctness.
“That is Beethoven's Sonata to Giulietta,” said the Countess,
entering, “and it is one of the most eloquent replies of music to
the dumb questioning of a heart-ache that was ever vouchsafed to
mortal inspiration. You must not think it theatrical in me to
have surprised you with music,” she added with a deprecating
humility, that sat very gracefully on her proud lips, “for, to tell
you the truth, you have brought London eyes into my hitherto
unseen seclusion, and I cannot resist feeling, for the moment, that
the ideal of the spot is a little disenchanted. The music which
is ordinarily my only company, is so associated with my solitude
that it will re-conjure the spirit of the spot—but, meantime, let
me dissolve the mystery of its production.
The Countess touched a spring which threw open one of the
mirror panels of the library, and disclosed a little oratory, or
chapel, decorated simply with one female figure, of exquisite
sculpture, whose face was hidden in prayer—the cross and the
devotee both in chased silver. This again swung partly open,
and showed a closet in the wall, filled with musical cylinders like
the barrels of an organ.
“This, of course,” she said, “is but a musical box on an extended
scale, but it has very varied capabilities. It was constructed
for me by an ingenious Swiss, who changes or adds to its
numerous barrels at my pleasure; but I must own that I am as
little fickle in my musical likings as in my foundness for poems,
and I can scarce tire of a composition that has once moved me.
You are aware that several of the composers of Germany have
tried their hands upon `Songs without words,' in imitation of this
touching love-letter in music, which you have just heard, and
which Beethoven addressed to the high-born Giulietta. By this
—to my apprehension at least—they have advanced one chamber
if I may so express it, fills only the ante-chamber. I have had
all these `Songs without words' added to my little musical
oratory, and the barrels are so arranged that I can either select
the melodies I want, or let them follow in a chance succession of
several hours' continuance. I used to be fond of the harp; but
playing requires an effort—and to think luxuriously during music,
one should be the listener and not the player. Any trouble with
the procuring of music spoils it for me, and if the music is to be
used as an habitual accompaniment to reverie, some such obedient
automaton as this must be resorted to.”
Tremlet begged to listen to it in silence for awhile.
“It shall play while we idle over our tea,” said the Countess,
after a few minutes of silent attention—“possibly in that time it
may exorcise the English presence out of the room; but you are
too new a comer to be admitted at once to the full luxury of
silence.”
The closet of music, with its costly intricacy of mechanism,
was closed and left to play. Its effects, softened with the shutting
of the doors, were choral and orchestral, and, in wonderful
resemblance to the performances of a troop of admirable musicians,
it executed the delicious compositions chosen as food for
reverie. The twilight had meantime died away, and as the room
was flooded with a soft light from lamps unseen, Tremlet felt
himself fully subject to the influence of the spot.
“It is indeed a place where one might forget the world,” he
said at last.
“It is a place in which to rest from the world,” replied the
Countess, “and in that you have the key of the use to which I
devote it. You need not be reminded what London is—how
its fashionable display. Providence, I think, has confined to a
comparatively low level the hearty and joyous sympathies of our
nature; and it avenges the humble, that the proud, who rise above
them, rise also above the homely material for happiness. An
aristocrat I am doomed to be. I am, if I may so express it, irrevocably
pampered, and must live and associate with the class in
which I have been thrown by accident and education. But how
inexpressibly tedious to me is the round of such a life, the pains I
have here taken to procure a respite from it, may, perhaps,
partially convey to you. It is possible—probable indeed—that I
entertain at my house people who envy me the splendors I dispense,
yet who are themselves happier than I. To young people,
for whom it is a novelty—to lovers whose happiness is wholly
separable from all around them—to the ambitious who use it as a
convenient ladder—gay London life is (what any other life would
be with the same additions) charming. But, to one who is
not young—for whom love is a closed book, and who has no
ambition in progress—this mere society, without heart or joyousness,
is a desert of splendor. I walk through my thronged rooms,
and hear, night after night, the same ceremonious nothings. I
drive in my costly equipage, separated by its very costliness from
the sympathy of the human beings who pass me by. There are
those who call themselves my intimate friends; but their friendship
lacks homeliness and abandonment. Fear of committal, dread of
ridicule, policy to please or repel, are like chains worn unseen on
the tongues and hearts of all who walk the world at that level.”
Tremlet listened without reply, except in looks expressive of
assent.
“It has probably passed through your mind,” continued the
this, in a remote part of England. But I chose Germany for
several reasons. I was partly educated here, and the language
and habits of the people are like those of a native land to me.
My husband's relatives, on one side of the descent, are German,
and a presumed visit to these connections furnishes the necessary
excuse for absenting myself unattended. But, above all, the
people are different—the pervading magnetism of the common
air is as different as that of another planet. I see no society, it
is true. My musical oratory and my books are all the companionship
I have, within doors. But I go into the public gardens
of the Rosenthal, (as in Germany a lady may,) not only fearing
no intrusion, but receiving, as one of the crowd, my share of its
social magnetism. The common enjoyment of the music of the
band brings all in the crowd to a temporary common sympathy.
Rid thus of the `fine lady' separation between me and my kind,
which I feel in England like a frozen wall, my heart expands—I
cannot express to you how genially and breathingly! And now
is all this comprehensible to you?” asked the Countess, crushing
her handkerchief, with both hands upon her eyes, with the natural
suddenness of an impassioned child.
The reply was one that gave no check to the expansion of
heart on which she had entered.
“This is singular frankness on my part,” she continued. “I
presume I shall not discover immediately why I am thus unguardedly
confiding in one whom I have only known hitherto as
an acquaintance. It is an instinctive impulse, however, and I
trust it. I was hesitating before trying to express another charm
of this seclusion to me—partly because I feared I should find
some difficulty in putting my meaning into language, and more,
have, as yet, hardly dared to summon up for my own examination.
In this joyous out-of-doors society of Germany—in the
general distribution of complaisance and regard, the interchange
of kindly salutations between all classes, and the strong expressions
of good will in which ordinary politeness is usually phrased
—I find, somehow, a prolonging of the life-time of the affections
—a continuance of verdure, as it were, into the desert of the age
past loving. A wise woman submits, of course, with well-bred
outward acquiescence, when the world's manner informs her that
the love-summer of her youth is over. But it came upon me
when my heart was in the most prodigal flowering of its tenderness—when
my capacity to give love, at least, was growing, it
seemed to me, hourly, of more value and profoundness. To
abandon, then, all hope of loving—and with this unlavished wealth
too in the heart—was society's bitter exaction. I submitted. I
would not be the ridicule of the world, for pretensions to attractiveness
I had outlived, nor would I be a mark for such attentions
as are always ready for those who seem approachable through
weakness. I was a widow, wealthy, and without children; and,
if I would retain the pride of my position, and, particularly, if I
would defy the malice of the envious, I must either marry a man
older than myself or show the seeming of a heart beyond all possible
susceptibility. You yourself visited me in this latter character,
and you know how unshrinkingly, when in England, I
revolve and shine in my icy orbit! Oh, I have a thousand times
envied the beggar at my door! But this life must be lived on.
Walls within walls—circumstances and feelings I cannot now explain
to you—hedge in the necessity of my continuing the maintenance
of this conspicuous station in England. Respite, however—breathing
who so relentlessly measured my period of loveableness—to step
out from my fixed place among those of mature years, though
without a thought of resuming youth—to descend from the cold
height of exclusiveness, and claim, once a year, my common share
of common life and sympathy—for these privileges, and to relax
tongue and heart in weeks of luxurious silence and self-abandonment—I
contrived the retreat you have stumbled upon.”
“Did you think,” asked the Countess, touching the spring of
the enchanted closet, and with a gesture compelling silence for
the music, by way obviating reply—“did you think that this
formidable mystery had so little in it that was mysterious?”
With luxury, music and complete isolation fom the world, love
ripens apace. It was one morning, but a fortnight after the
chance meeting of the Countess and Tremlet, described in the
foregoing pages, that the artist found himself, for the first time
in his life, wholly unsusceptible of the seductive temptings of his
pencil. He could not paint. Something more critical than any
ordinary anxiety outweighed his art. There sat Jessonda, the
Tyrolese, in the posture in which she was daily placed—(for the
character her portrait was to represent)—the half-finished sketch
on his easel fairly breathing with a new vision of beauty—but he
saw, that day, neither the sketch nor Jessonda. The living original
might well have inspired him, however, for love more intense
than was expressed in her face and posture, never offered itself
to be pictured. So, indeed, the artist had interpreted it, if one
might believe his canvas—for her intense gaze of adoration was
well copied, though with the addition of a lofty refinement of intellect
breathing through the strangely expressive lineaments—
intellect portrayed before him.
With no suspicion of what so distracted his attention for that
day, however, Jessonda was troubled. In the usually absorbed devotion
of the artist to her portrait—in the flushed cheek and eager
eye with which he gazed on the face she saw copied from her
own—she had found stuff for dreams that made her capable of
jealousy when that picture was neglected. She had half risen
to leave him, when a servant entered with a letter. The door
closed upon her as he broke the seal, and Jessonda and his picture
were at once forgotten in the persual—
“My Dear Tremlet,—In the two days that I have exiled
you from my presence, I have exiled my happiness also—as you
well know without my confessing—but I needed to sleep and wake
more than once upon your welcome but unexpected avowal. I
fear, indeed, that I need much more time, and that reflection
would scarce justify what I am now about to write to you. But
my life, hitherto, has been such a succession of heart-chilled waitings
upon Reason, that, for once, while I have the power, I am
tempted to bound away with Impulse, after happiness.
“Of course you understand in this an acceptance of your offer.
But I have conditions to impose. It is possible that you may
withdraw your offer when you know them. Yet they are so
much of a character with our acquaintance, and with our intercourse,
for the month into which we have crowded an age, that
I have strong hopes of your not finding them distasteful. Let me
preface my exactions by some sort of apology, however—showing
you, that is to say, the ground work of the foible (if such you
think it) which is to be humored by your acquiescence.
“I have partially expressed to you, in conversation, how completely
to worldly expediency. For my present station, such as it is, I
have given gradually the entire provision made by nature for my
happiness—my girlish joyfulness, my woman's power of loving,
my hopes, my dreams, my sympathies, my person. I was forced
to sacrifice an early affection, to marry for title and fortune. I
have since been unceasingly called upon to choose between my
heart's wishes and freedom from humiliation. You will say
it was at my own risk if I preferred the latter—but in every important
crisis of option, the threatened evils looked appalling,
and the happiness comparatively partial. Meantime, (I am quite
ready to believe,) my pride has been thus fed to a disease.
“Of course there is something wrung from the world by these
sacrifices. To most victims, the wordly advantages are a sufficient
consolation. But fortune and title alone would not have
continued to tempt me. I could be happy without homage,
and with a hundredth part of the luxury I can command. But
there is another privilege, accompanying high station coldly maintained,
and bought by me with these same bitter sacrifices—a disdainful
independence of the world that has so robbed us! What
will you say if I tell you that this is what I am trying to preserve
to myself as a twin happiness with your love! What will you
think of me, if I confess to you, that the strongest feeling in my
bosom, till you wakened love there, was resentment against
society for the cruelties it has sown my life with! Individuals of
course are blameless of design against me, but the cruelty lies in
the pervading heartlessness of the class. In their mockery of
everything but that which dazzles them—in their polished rejoicing
over the downfall of any social superiority—lies the inevitableness
of the submissions I resent. Is it strange, then, that I wish to
pity? With the glow of tenderness now in my heart, I cannot
find the bitter words to express to you how much I value this
undeniable power of disdain—but this it is which seems to me the
only equivalent I have wrung from the world—this it is which I
look on as the true price of the heart sold, pulse by pulse, at the hateful
bidding of the opinions of the class I live in! And (for you have
already seen my drift) it is this privilege which an open marriage
with you would endanger. You are ten years younger than I.
Your character and tastes are peculiar. The qualities you love
in me, ripen only in the meridian of life. We shall be happy in
marriage, I have reason to believe. But the world would not believe
it! Oh no! The first knowledge of the step would be received
with a smile, and, with that smile, lightly as it would pass
around, would fall from me, like a dream, the ascendancy in which
lies my power.
“Of course you anticipate what I have to propose. I will but
name it to you now, and explain its possibility when we meet. It
is to marry you privately, here in Germany. After a week more
in this sweet retirement, (for my time here is nearly expired,) I
will leave you, and resume my apparently heartless life in England.
You shall return to England soon yourself, also apparently
single, and we will be known to the world but as we were—the
“cold Countess” Isny-Frere, and Tremlet, the unimpressible
artist. The secret can be kept. More difficult things are done
by the simplest people around us. Part of the year we will pass
in this retirement or another, and, with means so ample as mine,
and a character so little open to suspicion of such a secret, innumerable
varieties, in the masquerading part of our life, will always
be possible.
“Do you not see, my gifted and beautiful lover, how I thus add, to
the wealth of your affection, the jewel for which I sold all my
happiness till I met you? Do not feel offended that in your love
I have not forgotten it. We value what has cost us our heart's
blood, though it be but a worthless trifle to another. Oh, you
must let me preserve my icy veil between me and the world—
preserve it, for my heart to beat behind it, in a heaven of every
day affection. I plead for it with my whole soul—but—it is yours
to decide! I began my letter thinking that I should inflexibly
exact it. I could not hesitate, however, now, in a choice between
it and you. I will marry you openly if you so require.
“Come to me at sunset. Having once broken my wish to you,
I can venture to talk of it. And now—impatient to press my
lips upon your beautiful forehead—I record myself your
Another fortnight had elapsed. The golden light of another
autumnal sunset streamed into the painting room of Tremlet, at
Leipsic. Around, against the walls, stood unfinished sketches,
in oil, of the most peculiar faces and costumes that had been seen
during the crowded fair just over. A Jew from Poland, with his
shaggy fur cap, pelisse and shaggy beard; a Greek from Constantinople,
in flowing juktanilla and cap of scarlet; peasants and
peasant girls, with the sunny hair and strange dresses of mountain
Germany; pedlars from the Friuli, and Hungarians swathed
in twine and tatters, were here transferred from the street to canvas—material
to figure hereafter in groups of historical pictures.
But, among these rough sketches (that, rude as they were, still
showed the hand of the master) there was one subject finished
with careful study—a portrait of the Tyrolean glove-girl—true
to life, yet representing a quality of beauty rare as the second
matchless nobleness and grace—and the colors were fresh about
the lips, where he had retouched them within the parting hour.
The original of this “treasure trove” (for such was the face of
Jessonda to the artist) had just risen from the kneeling posture,
in which she had bent herself to his elaborate pencil for an hour
of almost every day since their first meeting in the Rosenthal;
and she stood looking alternately at her portrait and at him, with
compressed lips, and an expression far beyond a gratified curiosity.
With the eye of genius Tremlet had seen, in this girl's embryal
beauty, the look with which it would beam, were it perfected to the
utmost capability of its peculiar type; and she saw now, on the
easel, a beauty that could only be hers after years of culture, yet
of which she still felt as conscious as of the swelling heart under
her boddice of green. Her emotions had grown from day to day
more tumultuous. While the artist looked on her beauty as on
the fitting but cold and shuttered tenement of an unarrived angel
of intellect, she looked on his as on something already worthy of
the idolatrous worship of that angel. The coupling of the two
before her—herself, as made beautiful on canvas, and the artist,
as he stood breathingly beautiful in the glowing light of the sunset—was
an appreciation of fitness that might well have come to
a brain less enamored. Tremlet was as perfect in form and feature
as a sculptor's ideal of Antinous. His personal advantages
had (contradictorily enough) increased by undervaluing; for, of
the adulation that had been paid him in his first manhood, the
greater part, of course, had come from the thoughtless and silly,
and he had flung himself, with the reaction of disgust, upon the
cultivation of qualities less open to common appreciation. Absorbed
in his art, he had half lost the remembrance of his beauty;
added one grace more—that of a noble unconsciousness.
After a few years of seclusion, his eminent promise in the
art brought him back by a new gate to society, and it was as
Tremlet the distinguished artist, that he had been a formal visitor
at the house of the Countess Isny-Frere. His early shrinking
from superficial admiration, however, had left a habit in his manners
that acted like an instinctive avoidance of the gay and
youthful, and he passed for a dreamy man, as marble cold as he
was splendidly handsome. The Countess had exchanged with him
the politenesses of society without suspicion of his true nature. In
the masked procession of London life, spirits the most congenial
may walk side by side for years without recognition.
Upon Jessonda, the glove-girl, Tremlet had made an indelible
impression, the day she fitted his hand from her glove-case in the
garden of the Rosenthal. His manner to her was soft and winning,
without the forwardness against which she was habitually
armed; and, possessed herself of mental superiority in the rough,
she had recognized his nobleness without being able to define it.
Vivid as was her admiration, however, she would probably have
parted from him without the aspiring venture of loving him, if
she had not seen disclosed, in the daily progress of her picture,
an angel's ladder by which the heaven of an equality with him
might be reached. She felt, within her, a vague consciousness of
the character he had drawn in the elevated beauty of her
portrait. She was capable, she thought, to become like to
this heightened semblance of herself. It explained her waking
dreams. Her heart declared itself interpreted in the picture's
expression. But prophetic flattery, more bewildering was never
addressed to mortal—and it was little wonder that the heart of
pictured foreshadowing of what she might be, and from that to the
noble form that stood beside it, she saw, with a glowing soul, that
were it the picture of his wife, it would be a picture of his mate
by nature. The chasm between her present self and her arrival
at the lofty reach of this pictured equality, she shrank from
measuring. Hope threw before it its glittering veil. Ah, poor
Jessonda!
She took up from the floor her tall hat with its gold tassel.
The band of Tyrolese merchants were already on their way southward,
and she was waited for by her kinsmen at the gate of
Leipsic.
“When shall we meet again?” asked Tremlet, taking her two
hands kindly for a farewell.
She raised his hands hurriedly to her lips, choked back her
emotion with a strong effort, and pointed to the picture.
“Remember me by that,” she said, “not by what I am!
When you see me again I shall be like it!”
Another instant and she was gone.
Her voice lingered on the painter's ear, and, after a few minutes
of musing, he started to recall her, for her words suddenly
assumed a new meaning to him; but another thought checked
him, and he returned to his studio, oppressed with an embarrassing
sadness. He lighted his lamp and sat down to write
to his bride, who, a few days before, had preceded him on her
way to England.
It was five years after the acting of this chance romance at
Leipsic, when Europe became filled with the murmur of a
new renown; and, from her debút at Vienua, the great songstress,
Report spoke in wonder of the intellect that beamed through her
expressive beauty, but with still more emphatic wonder at such
passionate fervor in the acting of one whose heart seemed invulnerable
to love; and while articles of agreement were concluding
at Brussels for her appearance at the Queen's Opera, the exclusives
of London were delighted to know that they should first
have a privileged sight of the unsusceptible enchantress, for the
“cold Countess” had sent over a messenger to engage her for a
private concert.
A few days wore on, and her arrival in England was announced;
and, on the morning of the day on which she was to sing at the
concert of the Countess Isny-Frere, Tremlet the artist received,
at his studio, the following brief letter:
“I promised to return to you when I should resemble my picture.
It is possible that exile from your presence has marred
more beauty than mental culture has developed—but the soul
you drew in portrait has, at least found its way to my features—
for the world acknowledges what you alone read prophetically at
Leipsic. I have kept myself advised of your movements, with a
woman's anxiety. You are still toiling at the art which made us
acquainted, and, (thank God!) unmarried. To-night, at the
concert of the Countess Isny-Frere, I shall sing to you, for I
have taken pains to know that you will be there. Do not speak
to me till you can see me alone—but hear me in my art before
I abandon myself to the joy long deferred, of throwing myself
at your feet with the fortune and fame it is now mine to offer
you.
But Jessonda did not sing for the Countess that night. The
guests were assembled, and the leading performers of the opera
were there, to accompany the new prima donna, when a note
arrived, written apparently by her dame de compagnie, and announcing
her sudden and unaccountable illness. As she had been seen
driving in the Park that afternoon, apparently in perfect health,
it was put down as one of the inexplicable caprices common to
those intoxicated with sudden fame, and paragraphed upon, accordingly,
in the morning papers. The disappointment to the
Countess was less than to her guests—for she had lived, now
five years, in a world of happiness little suspected by the gay
world about her—but, slight as it was, she chanced long to remember
it by a coincidence. In her private journal, under the
same date with the record of so comparative a trifle as a public
singer's failure to appear at her concert, was recorded, with a
trembling hand, the first cloud upon her life of secret happiness
—her husband, Tremlet, having come to her, after the departure
of her guests that night, with a gloom upon his spirits, over
which her caresses, for the first time, had no power!
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |