 | CHAPTER IX. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
9. 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 leisurely
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
| CHAPTER IX. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |