University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

From various circumstances, there had been a brief
calm in the troubled waters of Paul's destiny. The delay
of Miss Winifred Ashly in returning to Florence, had
deferred, from time to time, the proposed “sitting,” which
was to be given to Miss Mildred Ashly at her aunt's rooms;
and a slight illness of Paul's, with the mourning seclusion
of the inhabitants of Casa G—, had just sufficed to prevent
his meeting, for a week or two, with any of the Paleford
circle. His illness, however, though dispiriting and
unfitting him for visits, had not wholly confined him to his
lodgings; and, joining Mrs. Cleverly and Mary Evenden
over their breakfast, on his way, he had usually crept
around to Blivins's studio, and beguiled the day with
irregular labor at his easel. He had thus finished (with
the aid of the miniature) the portrait of Mr. Ashly, which
was to act as his atonement for a rivalry unjustly resentful;
and, though, as a piece of artistic work, it was now very

satisfactory to his eye, he had achieved it through many
struggles with himself and with very conflicting feelings.

His friend Tetherly having gone to Rome (taking with
him a note of introduction to Miss Winifred, with whose
portrait he had been so captivated); Blivins, silently at
work as usual, made happy by the constant company of
his brother artist; Mary Evenden entirely absorbed with
“Signor Valerio's” teachings in Art, and Mrs. Cleverly
abundantly attended to, by friends of her own whom she
had met at court; Paul was pretty much at the mercy of
his own thoughts. He had found these, and his comparative
solitude, rather more burthensome than he could well
bear—on one cloudy and gloomy day—and, rather as a
relief of desperation than with any feeling of readiness for
the task, he sent a note to Casa G—, making an
appointment for the expected “sitting.” With their leave,
he wrote to say, the nameless artist would come out on the
morrow and make, there, a commencement of Miss Ashly's
portrait, instead of waiting longer for her aunt's return
from Rome.

The messenger had returned with a very willing assent
to the proposition; and, early in the forenoon of the next
day, Paul was in the vetturino of his friend Giuseppe,
going round by Blivins's studio to pick up his materials,
on the way to Casa G—; when, at the corner of the
Duomo, he was met by the princess, driving in to her own

daily occupation. To stop and exchange kind inquiries
was a matter of course; but it ended in the drawing up of
the vehicles to the door of the cathedral, the two occupants
taking arms for a confidential stroll and tête-à-tête
under the dim shadows of the long and vaulted aisles. On
hearing where Paul was bound, with his morning errand,
the philosophic sculptress had thought of something it was
perhaps timely to speak of, as to the secret of which she had
been made the confidant.

“You will see Miss Paleford to-day,” she said, as they
paced slowly along over the tesselated floor.

“I presume she will be present during the sitting,” he
replied, coloring slightly, “though I should certainly be
less embarrassed with my work if she were not. I should
very much prefer, indeed, that the portrait of Mr. Ashly,
which I take with me, should be first presented to her in
my absence, and by his sister.”

“And what portion of this two-fold embarrassment
would be removed,” asked the princess, “if Miss Paleford
were no longer the forbidden water at the lip of my friend
Tantalus?”

Paul hesitated a little, with the consciousness of the
truth of what was thus boldly assumed by the question, for
there was a degree of truth in it, at least, of which he had
not yet made confession, even to himself.

“There would be less embarrassment—certainly!” he

said, with a smile, followed by a look of very puzzled
inquiry.

“I do not know how agreeable it will be to you,” continued
the princess, “even to know that you are at liberty
to love the one lady, since it involves the possible mortification
that you are not loved by the other.”

Paul half stopped in his walk, but she proceeded without
noticing his surprise.

When we conversed last upon the embarrassments in
the matter, we took for granted that the two claims for
your heart—one made by your mother's letter, and one by
Mrs. Paleford's—were based upon knowledge that could
scarce be mistaken; and, as to Mary Evenden, I not only
thought her attachment to you a matter of course, but, on
seeing her, I changed my opinion as to the one who was
most ready to make you immediately happy. My judgment
and my sympathies all went with your early playmate.”

“Well?” inquired Paul, stopping short, in astonished
expectation.

“Well,” said the princess, “it is my belief, now, that
there is no tender passion whatever, in Mary's childish
attachment to you—a regard for her happiness, therefore,
if I am correct, being no obstacle, at present, to your loving
some one else.”

With all the hidden willingness that there might have

been for this news, Paul found its open announcement
somewhat staggering.

“I do not know that I can fully explain it to you,” the
princess went on to say, “for it proves an unsusceptibility,
which I do not myself quite comprehend; but I have been
wholly absorbed, of late, in my study of this lovely girl's
nature; and, what with her complete confidingness and unreserve
towards me as a woman, and my own skill gained
by habitual curiosity in the analysis of character, I do not
think I am mistaken in my inference.”

Paul could not but admit that better authority was
hardly possible.

“I was first led to give a thought to it,” she continued,
“by observing, at the court ball, the contented unconsciousness
and tranquillity with which she saw the entire
monopoly of your attentions by another lady—drawn off
into a corner, as you were, by Miss Ashly, and evidently
giving the most deferential interest to the topic between
you. This looked a shade beyond what I could believe,
even of transatlantic disinterestedness, in love; but I still
thought it possible that the evening's jealousy might have
been exhausted upon the lovely Niobe in her mourning
weeds, whom we had seen at the tea-table.”

It grew evident to Paul that he had been very sagaciously
watched.

“The occasional mention of Miss Paleford, which I

made in the course of the next day, satisfied me, however,
that of this more trying and undeniable eclipse, she had
been equally unconscious; and, with this confirmation of
my wonder, I began to look upon it as a problem worth
the studying—no less from fidelity to the confidence you
had reposed in me, than from the novelty of woman's
nature, which it promised curiously to develop. Over our
work, therefore, in these long mornings, I have so managed
as to turn the conversation upon the abstract theory of
love—the personal experience and habit of thought being
called upon, of course, for illustration and argument.”

“And she ignores the tender passion, altogether, you
say?” asked Paul, rather skeptically.

“Not in others,” replied the princess; “and that is one
of the points that puzzle me; for she seems to have given
it constant study and observation as an important element
of Art. She wishes to know why the best statues have
been moulded and the best pictures painted, from the
kindling of this fire in the blood and brain—wondering,
with the coolest philosophy of self-knowledge, why she herself
feels no glimmer of such inspiration.”

“Yet she is very affectionate in her nature,” Paul
musingly said.

“It was the distinction she made, in her argument,”
pursued the princess, “that, with affection for her friends
which would sacrifice even her life for them if necessary—

affection which had neither stint nor reserve in its devotedness—she
still felt no instinct of the love that was expressed
in Art and described in poetry. And she expressed her
wonder, not only at the absence of any feeling which she
could recognise as love, but at her strongly instinctive preference
for a life without it. She said that, spite of reasoning
and poetry to the contrary, it seemed to her like a
general law from which the few higher natures should be
exempt—as there were those who were not subject to the
curse of getting their bread by the sweat of their brow—
and that the life of genius, particularly, could not seem
privileged or intellectually set apart and perfected, without
freedom from an influence so common—with all its
commonness and sensuality, too, so overpoweringly engrossing.
And the statuary in my little studio,” the princess
smilingly continued, “served her for illustrations of her
meaning—the figure of my Antinoüs, especially, which
she thought was too beautiful for love. How is it, she
asked, that I can pour out my whole soul in appreciation
and admiration of the beauty of that form, and yet feel
that it has attained its highest point of expression and
inspiration by its insensibility to love?”

“Pleased, of course, with your Daphne—flying from
love,” Paul added.

“It was upon Miss Evenden's turning to this,” said the
princess, “that I took advantage of the opportunity to get

from her—quite accidentally, as it appeared—the confession
I have yet to tell you of. As she stood near the
pedestal of Daphne, with the moulding-pencil in her hand,
pointing to the refusal expressed in the movement of the
shoulders, I hinted at a possible similarity between this and
a future consciousness of her own—at a proposal from Mr.
Fane, or somebody else.”

“And did she then speak of me?” Paul asked, very
eagerly.

“Take a long breath for fortitude to listen, my unloved
friend!” the princess proceeded, half playfully, half doubtingly.
“She expressed herself with the most naïve definiteness
and simplicity as to the very gentleman in question—complimenting
you, however, with calling it the very
case in point, for her argument. There was Paul, she said,
whom she had every reason in the world to fall in love
with. She believed, from certain indications, that his
mother expected it of her — she thought it probable,
indeed, though he had never spoken on the subject, that
Paul expected it himself. Yet she had hoped that, in his
absence, he would form a passionate attachment to some
one else, leaving her to resume her sister's place in his
affection on his return. She would have been much happier
to have found him married, on her arrival in Florence.
There was at present a restraint between herself and her
old playmate (she added, after a little hesitation, quite

sadly), and she could only explain it by the want of sympathy—her
own unavoidable lack of response to some feeling
he had been cherishing towards her.”

Paul felt that there was light thus thrown on much that
he had found inexplicable, in Mary's manner. He listened
with expectant attention.

“I must salve the wound for you, however,” the princess
proceeded, with her tone of natural and earnest kindness,
“for the charming girl went on most eloquently to picture
her companionship with your genius—spoke glowingly of
the sweetness of what came from your loftier mind—
thought you would be perfect if you could become indifferent
to all life but that of intellect;—and declared that she
anticipated that sublimation of your nature, and her own
fellowship with it, as her greatest resource for happiness in
coming years.”

“And is it possible, then,” asked Paul, whose interest in
Mary (as a problem he had failed to decipher) began to be
awakened, “that there can be a woman's heart wanting to
a nature otherwise of such completeness?”

“Her luxuriant beauty would certainly tell a different
story,” said the princess, “and that is what puzzles me.
She is of faultlessly free development, in her figure—of
the fullness of lip and features which is thought usually to
indicate susceptibility—her motion is almost voluptuously

pliant and unguarded—and the expression of her deep
blue eye is even remarkable for its feminine tenderness.
There should be a woman's heart under such a covering!”

“Dormant, perhaps!” suggested Paul.

“Why, if so, you have strangely failed to awaken it,”
replied his friend, “but it may be only a stronger instance
of that unequal tardiness of Nature which I have often
observed. We are not born with all our faculties ready to
begin; nor do the after-awakenings come to all natures
alike—that is, with the same order of succession or length
of delay. I believe” (she added with a smile of inquiry)
“the moustache of your lordlier sex develops sooner on
some lips than on others. The mental faculties, we know,
are very irregular as to their time of ripeness, and even as
to their first indication of existence. Poetry wakens late,
in some bosoms. Why should not Passion—in the coldly
pure heart of woman, spell-bound also by her very balance
and harmony of fullness and completeness—waken still
later than the faculties which are called upon by her education?
It would not be wonderful if it should slumber
till comparatively late in life—and, indeed, I have known
more than one instance of a romantic first love kindled
after youth was well past.”

Paul might have given an instance of this, if he had
been at liberty to speak of Miss Winfred Ashly—but the

passing thought and its association reminded him of the
errand he was bound upon, and he hastened to close the
conversation by reverting to its main point.

“Your kind counsel, then,” he said, “releases me altogether
from one of my two obligations—enjoining upon
me, of course, to devote myself exclusively to the fulfillment
of the other—not loved by Mary Evenden, I may
freely take my chance of being loved by Sybil Paleford?”

“Pardon me,” said the princess, “if I guard you against
too sweeping an interpertation of what you term my `counsel.'
I have meant merely to advise you of the fact that
you were equitably at liberty to accept the dying mother's
bequest, and love Miss Paleford. While my reason gives
you this for your guidance, however, my imagination and
feeling lean quite the other way.”

Paul had too much on his mind for expression, but he
looked inquiringly at the princess.

“I mean that I think it would be the most beautiful of
romances, to make a love-vigil of Mary Evenden—to watch
and wait for the waking of her sleeping heart. With so
much already won—the mind quite devoted to you, and
the fair creature all yours except the lacking consent of
passion yet unawakened—it seems but a story of which
the sequel is withheld.”

“Wedlock to be deferred, to close the book?” asked

Paul, with a smile, as he handed his friend into her carriage.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “Mary Evenden might be
very happy as a wife, with only sympathy of tastes and
pursuits; and a life passed in hoping still to touch the
heart, would turn many a forced match into poetry.”

Paul beckoned to his vetturino, as the princess drove
off with this final addition to her tangle of contradictory
suggestions; and, in a few minutes, freighted with his
materials from the studio, he was on his way to Colonel
Paleford's; very little prepared, either by what he had now
heard or by his state of health and spirits, for the drama
of accumulating events opening before him.