 | CHAPTER XI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
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,
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 uppermost
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
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:—
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
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
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
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,
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
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?
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
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.
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
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
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.
| CHAPTER XI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |