 | CHAPTER XXI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
21. CHAPTER XXI.
Paul's embarrassment, on receiving the letter from the
stately spinster with the offer of her hand, was almost
enough to counterbalance the triumph it chanced to contain,
over his vampire thought of an Ashly. He became
conscious, now, for the first time, how exclusively he had
followed his own whim in the whole matter—the subtle
flattery of a happily idealized likeness having been
thoughtlessly sustained by his equally flattering deference
and conversation. He felt guilty. He would have made
an individual sacrifice, and not a small one, to repair the
wrong. But there were others interested, on both her side
and his own, for whose sake he must decline the offer,
while at the same time, he was not ready to reveal all the
motives upon which he had acted.
The portrait stood against the wall, and Paul sat before
it with his writing materials prepared for an answer to the
letter—his heart fairly on trial before the calm and noble
look which he had himself given to the features of Miss
the approach of his friend Tetherly. Regretting,
with his first thought, that his present trouble involved the
secret of a lady, and so could not be submitted to the ever-ready
counsel and sympathy of his friend, he closed his
portfolio, and was sitting unemployed before the portrait
when Tetherly entered.
“Found at your devotions, I am ready to testify,” he
said, as he gave Paul his two fingers, and pointed with his
stick at the drawing. “And well worthy of a man's worship
she seems to be,” he continued, after a moment, taking a
better point of view, and becoming wholly absorbed in his
gaze; “what name has botany for such bright flowers?”
“Then you think the face a good one?” asked Paul,
without answering his question, but with his curiosity
enlivened by praise so unqualified from one usually so
fastidious.
“I like it better than any face I have seen for a long
time,” said Tetherly; “though I should like to know whether
one of the principal charms I find in it is due to the
artist. Is there a woman in the world who looks so
unbreathed upon by the existence of any other human
being—so as if, in consciousness, at least, she has had a
whole planet to herself.”
Paul felt that what he had most labored to copy with
his pencil was thus put into language.
“I thought it the main characteristic of the expression”—
“And is it your work then?” interrupted his visitor,
turning full upon him with a look of incredulous surprise;
“rather too well for your character of an `amateur artist,'
my dear Fane!”
“One may turn out a humbug by the mere force of
merit, then?” asked Paul, laughing heartily at the allusion
to the quarrel out of which his friend had helped him;
“but you have penetrated at once to the main-spring of
the lady's character, my dear Tetherly! She has, more
than most people, a world of her own. Or, to express it a
little differently, she requires to be so far sought through
the depths of her reserve and self-reliance, that the distance
amounts to as much.”
“Yet, she looks genial, even behind that reserve,”
pursued Tetherly; “Is this her habitual expression?”
“No,” said Paul, “for I had nearly finished her portrait,
as I thought, before I saw it at all. The face had even grown
unpleasing to me. You know the family look, for she is an
Ashly, and the nephew, who has the same stamp of
countenance, made the same unfavorable first impression
on yourself, if I remember.”
And here Paul explained to his friend the circumstances
which had brought Miss Ashly to him as a sitter, and gave
him the details, for the first time, of the early passage in
Ashly physiognomy. The quiet Englishman listened very
thoughtfully; but his attention was still very evidently
absorbed by the picture before him; and he expressed, in
more than one way during the remaining few minutes of
his call, surprise at the possibility of the less favorable
impression which the artist had received from a face so
beautiful.
With the closing of the door upon him, Paul re-opened
his portfolio to resume the interrupted task. But as he
sat and turned over in his mind the match he had the
ungrateful necessity of declining, it suddenly flashed upon
him that there was a singular suitableness—in age, taste,
and character, and now by manifest predilection at first
sight of her portrait—between Miss Ashly and his friend.
The more he thought of it, the more they seemed made
for each other. And, by an irresistible impulse (for which,
with his aversion to meddling with other people's disposal
of their hearts, he afterward could never very naturally
account), he was inspired to attempt a transfer, to Tetherly,
of what that letter was to refuse for himself. He thus
wrote:—
Your letter to “Mr. Evenden” is herewith enclosed, and you
will be surprised to hear that there is no such person. The artist
shall be more fully explained to you hereafter), and it was in the
course of maintaining his incognito, that he thoughtlessly admitted
your supposition as to the freedom of his hand. He thus led you
into an error for which he hopes so to apologize as to be forgiven.
He is not at liberty, at present, to form any matrimonial engagement;
but he hopes that you will still allow him to retain the double
flattery which your letter contains—precious flattery both for the
artist and the man—and to burn incense to friendship, on an altar
which, under other circumstances, might have been sacred to love.
The explanation of the reasons for the incognito, is only deferred
till the dénoûment of a little drama of which it is just now a
part.
But, in the confidence with which you have inspired me as a
reader of character (to speak once more in my own person), I am
tempted to share with you the reading of another, which, like your
own, offered to me a problem, at first. I cannot resist coupling the
two, as mysteries of human nature chancing to be unravelled at the
same place and time, though I was not indebted, in this instance as
in yours, to the having a pencil in my hand, and features under
study for a picture. Not being a professed artist, Florence has been
to me the living gallery that it is to the traveller and student of
society; and you will pardon me if I designate yourself and this
other friend as two of its most priceless originals.
Mr. Tetherly (the gentleman whom, without his consent, I am
proposing to introduce to you) might make your acquaintance in
the ordinary way. He is a friend, already, of your nephew's, I
know. But, with such chance introduction, you would each take
a wholly erroneous impression of the other, and would part, of
course, more strangers than before—the veiled countenance and
the other might be most appreciative. By recalling the difference
between my own first sketch of yourself and the portrait which
conveyed my subsequent conception of your features, you will believe
that, even with the most open eyes, two human countenances
may require an interpreter to exchange language understandingly.
Would it prepossess you at all in my friend's favor if I were to
begin by saying that he has just the quality of your sex in which
our own is so likely to be your inferior—a most sensitive and refined
delicacy and modesty? It is the somewhat morbid action of
this quality that produces the sleepless self-depreciation which is
his main characteristic, and under which his beautiful nature is
effectually masked. The dread that he will be credited with some
excellence which he does not possess, or that he may heedlessly
take advantage of some privilege to which he is not fairly entitled,
amounts to a nervous disclaimer perpetually visible in his manners;
and, to the superficial observer, this seems but a bluff antagonism,
eccentric and unsocial. Give him but the opportunity to serve
you, by a genial acting out of his better and more confident self,
and he changes as effectually as did the portrait of Miss Ashly
under my suddenly enlightened and wholly reinspired pencil.
Of Mr. Tetherly's more obvious qualities as a man, the devoted
friendship of so eminent and discriminating a person as the English
minister is warranty enough. His Excellency is not likely to have
crowded his attention and preference with such flattering constancy
and perseverance on an unworthy subject. It is only strange that
one so admirably suited to make happy the most highly endowed
and tender of female natures (really quite the most model man I
know of for a husband) should be apparently fated to die single.
It seems to me, indeed, one of those needless irrecognitions of
remedied. Without taking him into our confidence, at all, may I
not present him to you, on your return to Florence, and so let him
submit unconsciously to one more trial of his horoscope? If I am
at all a judge of character and suitableness, no two hearts were
ever formed to beat more in harmony than this unappropriated
bachelor's and your own.
The letter I enclose to you (addressed to an unfound “Mr.
Evenden”), may be returned to your portfolio as if never truant
from thence—though, with actual life rather than romance to guide
us, I think we might even venture to treat it openly, as but an
erased page of love. Previous passions are confessable, I think,
as being but the schooling which has made us ready for better
lessons; and, with the inexperienced, especially, a rash love is a
likely and liberalizing prelude to a ripe and well-considered one.
At present, it seems to me that it will only be necessary for you to
look upon Mr. Tetherly to understand the natural progression by
which he should take precedence of Mr. Evenden,” though, as I
said before, the existence of that gentleman and the letter addressed
to him, may be secrets, if you please, for yourself only.
I retain your portrait, for a final sitting, on your return; and I
shall take that opportunity, with your permission, to bring about
what will seem, to Mr. Tetherly, a chance introduction to you. It
will scarce be to him like the beginning of acquaintance, however,
as he has fairly fallen in love with your picture, and what with our
discussion of its expressed characteristics and his own thoughtful
and enamored study of its expression and meaning, will look upon
you by no means as a stranger. And so, having (last, but not
least) confessed to what was the real prompting of the main burden
of my letter, I will beg your pardon for its eccentric freedom, dear
of myself and my friend), remain
[We are compelled, occasionally, to take our measure,
for a chapter, rather by incident than by length of description,
and we will beg the reader's pardon for entering
upon the next phase of our story in another chapter.]
| CHAPTER XXI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |