University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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—

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

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.