 | CHAPTER XXII. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII.
It was during the week that intervened between the
dispatch of the foregoing letter and the return of Miss
Ashly to Florence; and Paul was using his privilege, for
the morning, at the easel placed for him in the private
studio of the Princess C. The hours waxed on, toward
noon, and he was ostensibly busy with his pencil; but he
had gone there with a burden on his thoughts which was
not to be unladen through his Art, and to give utterance
to which, as yet, he had not found the apt first word
required by his sensitiveness.
With any mere embarrassment of distinctions in politeness,
or question calling for more practised knowledge of
in his friend Tetherly; but he had received two letters,
the previous evening, involving, between them, a point of
feeling, such as only the heart of a woman could give
counsel upon. And yet, now, while he thanked heaven
for the friendship within reach—combining the wisdom
and disinterestedness of a lofty nature with the exquisite
tenderness of woman—the conversation made its way but
gradually toward the subject nearest his heart.
“I see it is `invita Minerva,' this morning,” said the
sculptress, dropping her moulding-stick to her side, and
stepping back to get a remoter look at the clay bust she
was moulding; “your pencil shows a hand as unwilling as
mine.”
“I wish the pencil were as successful as its rival,” replied
Paul. “And I must ask leave,” he continued, turning
from his drawing to come in front of the mouldingstand,
“while the model is still nominally unfinished, to
flatter my chum Blivins with an introduction to it. We
might thus make doubly sure of what ought to be
achieved by the expression only—his admiring consent
to its existence. There never was a purer representation
of woman.”
“Why, it could not be otherwise and be true to Nature's
imprint on the original,” said the princess; “she has fearlessness
and playfulness, two of the most reliable signs of
Her desire to be thus modelled is very far from an indelicacy.
It is her pride in what she recognises in herself as
beautiful—vanity, if you please, and somewhat underbred
in its exhibition—but, with purity quite unalarmed, seeking
admiration.”
“My friend Blivins has the more common standard of
modesty, however, demanding great show of concealment
and entrenchment.'
“A show that oftenest indicates pretence and conscious
uncertainty—if gentlemen did but know it. Hypocrisy in
all things talks loudest. Now what could be more unoffending
to the eye of genuine purity than thus much of
the form of this fearlessly innocent creature? The playful
humor with which she frolicked, at her first sitting,
corroborated, for me, this impression of her character.
And I have tried to give pure and unconscious fearlessness
to the countenance, as Nature has done. It would
pass, I think, for an ideal of a most spotless American
Hebe.”
“Yet we are about to show you a higher model of one,”
said Paul, one of whose pent-up subjects was thus
approached. “Another Hebe—the young girl who was
my boyhood's ideal of what was purest and loveliest—is to
be here to-morrow.”
“Ah, indeed! And that is the happiness which so hinders
with a smile.
“It acts upon my pencil, I confess,” was the reluctant
reply, “but not altogether as a hindrance of happiness.
Longing, as I certainly do, to see this playmate of my
childhood, it will be under a restraint which I look forward
to with great embarrassment.”
“Another love?” inquired his friend, with a smile.
“Not exactly—though it will certainly bear the look,
and perhaps have to be admitted and acted upon as one.
It is a dilemma, to tell the truth, in which I am very much
in need of your womanly advice.”
The countenance of the princess assumed the look of
truthful earnest which was so prompt to appear, at any
call, keeping her eccentricities, as well as her rank and
fashion, subject to the language of her genuine human
heart; and Paul, with his confidence fully responsive to
the large, calm eyes bent upon him, proceeded to tell
his story.
The more recent news from the Palefords had given
less favorable reports of the condition of their invalid.
With the close of the season, and the usual dispersion
of the company at the Baths, she had not been considered
strong enough to return to their home near
Florence, and it was now understood that she was failing
fast, and that they were but awaiting, at Lucca,
event for exchange of sympathy, the correspondence
had both saddened and lessened, and Paul was looking
for one of the colonel's brief and friendly missives from
the sick-room, when, to his great surprise, he received,
from the invalid herself, a letter, evidently written at
intervals, and forwarded at last without the knowledge
of those around her. It was scarce legible, from the
weakness with which the pen had been held, but Paul
had conned well its broken periods, and he read thus to
his thoughtful listener:
Without dating my letter precisely from Spirit-land, I may almost
claim a hearing from thence—so nearly arrived thither that I begin
to see with the unworldly eyes of that better existence, and finding
something to look back and say, which you will first read probably,
when I am already there. It will be written with the
trembling hand of departure, and at broken moments, stolen from
the watchfulness of the dear one of whom I wish to speak; but I
trust to find strength and opportunity, as I go on, and to trace,
with this last use of pen and ink, words which your kindly eyes
may manage to decipher. If I mistake not, there will be an intuition
at your heart that will even anticipate my meaning; and, pray
believe that, if it be possible to return to earth through the records
of thoughts that go with us to heaven, these ill-traced words will
speak to you also with a spirit-presence.
In hereby bequeathing to you what influence I may have toward
letter), I do but and my blessing, perhaps, to what would otherwise
just as certainly be yours. The evidence that she loves you
has been such as you could not be blind to; and—with her
reserved pride, and the truth of a woman's instinct—I cannot suppose
her belief, in the feeling she thus confidently reciprocates, to
be an error. You love my dear Sybil, do you not?
But there are cobwebs across your path, which, by scruples of
romance or delicacy, may be magnified into barriers impassable.
The first of these, you will be surprised to hear, is her father's
more worldly ambition for her. Fond as he is of you, personally
(loving you, I believe, with a friendship that would make a sacrifice
of anything, merely his own, to serve you), he is distrustful of
the prospect for happiness with your confessedly very limited
means. He thinks Sybil is of the type requiring rather the elegancies
of profusion—freedom, at least, from all care. He fears
your both waking, soon and sad, from a dream it were wiser to
prevent.
With the memories of my own life of trying reverses, I am, of
course, fully aware of what spells, without wealth, are left unwoven.
They are many, it is true; and I could well wish, for you
and Sybil, that there were independence of means, on one side or
the other. But there are elements of happiness far more important
to a sensitive and refined nature, for the securing of which, if
need be, the risk of poverty may wisely be run. Even if I had
not been always a better judge of this, as a woman, I could now
claim a truer view, as seen with the disillusionizing retrospect from
Death's door.
Oh, how many are the hours for which wealth has no beguiling!
How often might a word, or a look, send a light into the heart
Pardon me, but there are so few of your sex, particularly
of the wealthy and powerful, who have, for woman, the ingrained
deference, the never-lessening honor, which form her atmosphere
for happiness! It is rare, because it is something which can hardly
be learned. It must be instinctive, a finer fibre of character born
of poetry and tenderness, but strengthened and polished by the
trials and studies which make a man chivalric and intellectual.
Woman herself does not give the key to it. In the compliance
and natural impressibility of her gentler nature, she allows it to be
forgotten how pure she would rather be—how more delicate and
more sensitive may be the heart whose want is left obediently
unasserted.
I am not sure, my dear Mr. Fane, that, in the fitness which I
see in you, as the match which my heart requires for that faultless
child, I have not given great weight to your genius. The difference
which this would make in a lover's appreciation of her, was
shown in your inspired portrait—the picture of what she is like,
to your eyes—representing her as the angel that she seems to her
mother. This touches a tender spot, for me! With the thought
of giving over, to any human being, the uncontrolled and irreversible
possession of one so unspeakably precious, one so unbreathed
upon in her purity and loveliness, there comes a dread which is
almost like a fear of desecration, and which exacts hallowed reverence
in the one who is to be trusted with her. From a lofty-hearted
mother of your own, you have taken, I know, a blessed
estimate of woman. And, with this, and the idealizing elevation
of genius, you have (what I already said was the rarest quality in
men) the deference and honor for our sex, in which the timid
breath of happiness is drawn trustfully and freely.
Between yourself and Sybil, I know, there has been, as yet, no
open avowal of love. In the scruple as to your means of support
for a wife (which I feel safe in believing to be the only reason for
your hesitation), there is a barrier which might become insurmountable
without the encouragement which I here give. I think
you may safely put it aside. With the feeling that Sybil now has
for you, her happiness, I am very certain, would be best assured
by sharing your lot—half of the right fate, with any trials, being
better than the half of the wrong one, with wealth and splendor.
I am sure that she thinks so. I write it here, that you may have
the record of her mother's thought and wish, to outweigh the
more worldly hesitancy of her father—his over-fond caution, and
your over-generous delicacy likely to combine, I fear, in what
would be but a mistaken tenderness of prudence.
“Have I said enough, dear Mr. Fane? Will what I have said
give you my priceless daughter, with a mother's blessing? I write
with my eyes full of their last tears—my heart full of what will go
with me, please God, to a better world! Farewell! keep my child
company on her way to join me, and let me meet you hereafter,
as two who were made one for Heaven, by having passed their
lives in this world blessedly together! Keep her pure! Be as
pure! And may God bless you, united! While this trembling
hand can write it,
The princess drew her hat more over her eyes, as Paul
laid the letter on his knee, but there was a gleam of light
upon their moist surface, which flashed out of the shadow.
“A singular and beautiful bequest,” she said, “to which
there should be but a prompt acceptance, if all be as she
thought.”
“Which I fear it is not,” said Paul, “though, upon the
possibility (if it were for Miss Paleford's happiness), I
should be ready, of course, to stake all that is involved
merely of my own. Before I say more upon this point,
however, let me read an extract from the letter, received
at the same time, announcing the coming of my friends from
America.”
And Paul opened his mother's letter, and read from the
two concluding pages as follows:—
Mrs. Cleverly will remain for some time in Florence; and, for
you to have Mary Evenden there, in the midst of objects and
associations of such common interest to you both, will, of course,
be delightful. The Arts—always a sufficient feast to share even at
home—will be like an intoxication of sympathy where their charms
are perfected by the world's masterpieces. But, my dear Paul,
a thought here takes shape, which has been to me, for some time,
“a shadow on the wall.” More or less haunted by it for years,
and dismissing it constantly as a subject that would be more manageable
by-and-by, I must express it now as a new anxiety—though
very possibly, in your mind it is a familiar matter, long ago recognized
and disposed of. The more needless my nervousness shall
thus prove to have been, however, the better pleased I shall be.
It is not the same Mary you left, who comes to you, now, in
Florence. Has it occurred to you, that the child, who has been
the first dream was uninterrupted, is to meet you again, after a
long and endearing absence, as a woman? From some changes
that I see, I doubt whether she will even look the same to you.
She is fuller; and with the maturing of her form, her eyes and
manner have a different expression.
I have thought, always, that there was a peculiarity rather remarkable
in Mary's sentiment towards you. All through your boyhood,
and till you left us for Europe, she had an interest in you, which
(as you must have known), absorbed every faculty of her nature;
but while this, by its quantity of affection, should be love, it was,
in its quality wholly, intellectual. She had an idolatry for what
she thought to be your genius; and, though not without a child's
caressingness and affectionateness, I looked in vain for any sign of
preference, as manifested commonly in personal admiration, jealousy
of attention to others, watchfulness of looks, etc., etc. Your
secret devotion to Art was, to her, the life and presence of your
second and inner nature; and if this could have been found separately
embodied from what others knew as my son Paul, I think
your mere outward person would have been easily estranged from
her thoughts.
But now, how are you to meet? That which Mary loved in you
is, more than before, your outward identity—you are, much more
completely and admirably, Paul the artist. The time of her
absence from you has been passed in the studious heightening of
the taste by which she appreciates your genius; she will be as
much readier than before to give her whole soul to Paul the artist,
as he is worthier than before to be so absorbingly worshipped.
Then, even if she were not the strangely single-hearted creature
that she is—(capable, I truly believe, of but one devotion in a lifetime)—the
renewal of the sympathy which united you. Florence is the Eden
of Art, in which you will both feel it to be the happiness of the
blest to be permitted to walk together.
And is the newly-awakened woman to take no part in this?
Already yours by taste, intellect, and habit of childhood, is she at
all unlikely to find a new feeling at her heart for the matured man
that you are, and love you with her outward and more common
nature, tenderly, passionately, and overwhelmingly? This is an
important question for me, my dear son! Mary was entrusted to
us with a confidence which makes my “watch and ward” over her,
even more responsible than a mother's. In the prosperity and
happiness of such a love as this would be for her, I should feel
every sympathy of my heart, as well as every pulse of my sense
of duty fully interested. The bare possibility that one so precious
might love unhappily a son of mine, is, as I said before, at present,
my fearful “shadow on the wall.”
But, perhaps, my imagination—here, in my solitude, without
you—is conjuring up needless phantoms of improbability. You
have been away so long, and have been subjected to so many new
and dazzling influences, that I naturally feel uncertain of my
knowledge of you. If, as I most fervently hope and pray, you
still feel the boy's devotion to this most lovely and gifted of
friends and playmates, and are prepared to fulfil, to the heart of
the woman, the promise that was planted and nurtured so long
and uninterruptedly in the fancy of the child, my anxieties are
happily needless. At least, my dear boy, I have thus possessed
you of my thought upon the subject. Do not meet Mary till you
have fairly asked yourself the question, as to the venture it will be.
Paul closed the letter from his mother, and placed it,
with the one he had previously read, in the hand of the
princess—the two strangely co-incident appeals to his
decision, upon which he so needed counsel—but the conversation
was not readily resumed.
| CHAPTER XXII. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |