A Siren Part 13

The Conte Leandro Lombardoni had made the utmost of the chance that had rendered him the earliest acquaintance of the beautiful Venetian in Ravenna, with the exception of Ludovico himself. He had chattered, and boasted after the manner of his kind. He had succeeded in finding out the lodging, which Ludovico had taken so much pains to conceal from him, and had endeavoured to establish himself on the footing of a visiting acquaintance in the Strada Sta. Eufemia. But it had come to pa.s.s, that a degree of intimacy had very quickly grown up between Paolina and Ludovico, which permitted her to let him understand that, he would render her an acceptable service by once again ridding her of the Conte Leandro, as he had done on that first day of their acquaintance. And the result was that, one evening, the gallant Conte, on knocking at the door of the house in the Strada di S. Eufemia, had it opened to him by his friend Ludovico,--and further, that he never came back there any more, or was heard again to make any allusion whatever to his Venetian acquaintances.

But what was no longer said jestingly before Ludovico's face was none the less said enviously, sneeringly, or knowingly behind his back. It was perfectly well understood by all the young men in Ravenna that he was desperately in love with the beautiful Venetian artist. As to the terms on which he stood with her there were differences of opinion. But by far the more accredited notion was that the affair was quite a normal and ordinary one; and that the charming Paolina was the young Marchese's mistress.

Would he give her up, when the marriage, which, as was well known to all Ravenna, his uncle had been arranging for him with the young Contessa Violante di Marliani, and which was expected to come off shortly, should be consummated? That was the more interesting point for speculation.

Would he, as really seemed not impossible, be mad enough to carry on with the Venetian girl to such an extent as to give umbrage to the family of the Contessa, and perhaps even endanger the match? This also was debated among his young peers of the Circolo, while he was pa.s.sing the hour in the Strada di Sta. Eufemia.

His uncle was far from being aware how far matters had gone with his nephew in this matter. But he knew enough to make him uneasy about it, and to lead him to endeavour to push on the match with the Contessa Violante by every means in his power: for the marriage with the Lady Violante was, in every point of view, a desirable one. The Cardinal Legate of Ravenna was a Marliani, and the young lady in question was his great-niece--the granddaughter of his only brother. She had lost both her parents at an early age, and now lived at Ravenna with a great-aunt,--the younger sister of the Cardinal, under his protection and wing, as it were. The family was not a rich one, but the Cardinal had worn the purple many years. He had held very lucrative offices in the Apostolic Court previously, and had doubtless ama.s.sed very considerable wealth, and the Lady Violante was his only heiress. Besides that, of course the position of her great-uncle as Legate rendered her all that was desirable as a match for the n.o.blest of the province--not to mention other grander possibilities in the background. The reigning Pontiff was a very aged man. The Cardinal di Marliani was thought to stand very well at Rome. Who knew what might happen? It would have been too monstrous if the hope of such a marriage as this were to be endangered by a silly fancy for the pretty face and slim figure of a little artist.

The Marchese Lamberto had felt his position to be a difficult one. He really did not know what line it would be wisest to take. Ludovico had spoken among his a.s.sociates at the Circolo in a manner which had effectually silenced all light allusion to the ladies in the Strada di Santa Eufemia. He could not speak exactly in the same tone to his uncle; but the hints that the Marchese Lamberto had from time to time thrown out to the effect that, under the circ.u.mstances of the case, he did not approve of his nephew's intimacy with the Signorina, Paolina Foscarelli, had been received in a manner by the younger man which had warned the elder that some caution was required in the task of guiding his nephew in this matter. He had never had much cause to be dissatisfied with his nephew's conduct, or with his behaviour towards himself: but some years before the present time, he had been made aware that the Marchese Ludovico was one of those whom it is easier to lead than to drive; and that any attempt at a little too much driving would be likely to lead to kicking, and perhaps to an entire breaking of reins and traces.

And, being a man of sense, he had acted on the hints thus given him with considerable success. The Marchese Ludovico had submitted on most occasions to be led with all desirable docility. But now, in this matter, wherein judicious leading was more than ever before in his life necessary to him, he seemed to decline to be led at all.

How could the perplexed Marchese do otherwise than frown when he was told that his nephew was not at the Circolo at that hour of the evening, knowing very well where such absence showed him to be? Yet he probably would have done, or attempted to do, some thing else,--or, at all events, the frown would have been a yet heavier and blacker one,--could he not only have guessed where his nephew was at that moment, but have also heard what was pa.s.sing in the little salottino of the Strada di S.

Eufemia.

Some account of the conversation there may perhaps serve the purpose of saving all necessity for a detailed account of the intercourse which had taken place between Ludovico and Paolina during the last eight months.

The story of it will be sufficiently understood from a peep at its result.

CHAPTER VII

The Teaching of a Great Love

Paolina had been working all day in the church of San Vitale. She had very nearly completed the copies she was to make there; and they were the most important in extent of all she had engaged to execute. It had been necessary to erect a scaffolding for the purpose of bringing the artist sufficiently near to her subject; and the permission to have this done had been obtained by the all-powerful interest of the Marchese Lamberto. Many an hour had Ludovico pa.s.sed on that scaffolding by the artist's side as she plied her slow and laborious task; and many a "Paul" had the old sacristan pocketed with a grin of understanding, as he had opened the door of the church to the young Marchese, the object of whose visit he had long since learned to understand.

And Paolina herself? Did she approve of these visits made thus in the perfect seclusion of that old church at the hours when its doors were shut to the public? Did she like the hours so spent in tete-a-tete conversation with the handsome young Marchese? She, who had so readily found the means to make the entreprenant Conte Leandro keep his distance, and had succeeded in disembarra.s.sing herself of him altogether,--could she find no possible means for avoiding the a.s.siduities of the Marchese Ludovico; could she not at least have induced old Orsola to accompany her in the church of San Vitale, as she had accompanied her in the gallery at Venice?

Perhaps old Orsola did not like climbing up a ladder to a scaffolding.

Perhaps she had the superst.i.tious dislike to an empty, and lonely church not uncommon to uneducated Italians. The fact was at all events that, even after Ludovico had, upon more than one occasion, brought the rus.h.i.+ng blood into the dark face of Paolina by surprising her at her work on the scaffolding near the vaults of the church, old Orsola never made her appearance there. She was always at her place on one side of the fire during the visits of the Marchese to the quartiere in the Strada di Santa Eufemia in the evening; but it was equally true that she almost always went to sleep.

It is so natural and so desirable that the old should sleep under such circ.u.mstances and on such occasions! It is so evidently for the benefit of all the parties concerned, that the tendency may be reckoned among the instances of beneficent adaptation with which the whole order of Nature is filled!

It can hardly be doubted,--Ludovico could hardly be blamed for the persuasion--that Paolina did like his visits. It may be pretty safely a.s.sumed that those blushes, which greeted the appearance of his head above the planks as he climbed to the scaffolding, were not painful blushes. How early in those eight months it came to pa.s.s that her heart leaped at the click of the huge old key in the lock, as the sacristan admitted Ludovico by a turn of it which, as she had well learned, heralded his coming, it might be hard to say. Paolina herself could not probably have told this to her own heart. But that such had come to be the case long before the evening when the Marchese Lamberto sought his nephew at the Circolo, and could not find him, can hardly be doubted.

Thus much having been admitted, it seems as if there might be reason to fear that Paolina may appear worthy of censure to those of her own s.e.x, to whom her story is here commended, to a degree which truth, and an acquaintance with times, places, and national manners, would not quite justify. But in these matters of national appreciation, of fitness and unfitness, and of propriety and impropriety, the nuances are so fine and subtle, that it is somewhat difficult, in trying to explain them, to say just what one means without seeming to say more than one means.

One thing is clear. Paolina was as thoroughly and essentially modest and innocent a girl as ever breathed; but she was so "by the grace of G.o.d,"--from natural idiosyncrasy and instinctive purity of heart, that is to say, rather than from teaching of any kind, or from any knowledge of good or evil. She was an orphan, the child of parents who were "n.o.body," and she was left in the world to find her own way in it as she could. So much the more, replies the prudent English matron, ought she to have been extra careful lest the breath of misconception should even for a pa.s.sing moment sully her. It is the sentiment of a people, who, "aristocratic" as they may be, do really feel that that which is best and purest in the highest lady of the land may be, and should be, also the heritage of lowliest. But such is not practically the feeling in those social lat.i.tudes where Paolina was born and bred.

The breath that tarnishes the clear mirror of a n.o.ble damsel's name, says and teaches that social feeling, brings dishonour to a n.o.ble race; and she has failed in her duty to her race. But who could be injured by any light word spoken or light thought of such an one as poor Paolina?

She was an "artist." What treason to art, what lese-majeste against the beautiful in every one of its manifestations, to conceive that in that fact any reason was to be found why a less nice conduct in such matters should be expected of her! And yet, for reasons which it would take a volume to elucidate, so it is, that in the countries where art is deemed to be most at home, and where it is in the largest degree the occupation of large sections of the people, it is deemed that a less strict rule with reference to the matters under consideration is laid on them than on others. What if a young female artist "perfectly free from ties," as would be urged, and whose conduct in such a matter could hurt n.o.body,--what if such an one chose to form a tie not recognized by the Church? The Church herself would look very leniently on the venial fault. And though Paolina was such as she has been described, it was impossible but that such notions, not specially set forth or taught, but pervading all the unconscious teaching of the world around her, should have rendered her less sensitively anxious as to the possibility of misconception lighting on her, than an equally good English girl would have been. Could she have been indifferent to the danger that slander should tarnish her good name? asks an Englishwoman. But the whole world in which she lived would not have felt it to be slander. It would have been too much in the ordinary course of things.

How Paolina felt in the matter, Ludovico was made to understand on that evening which has been so often referred to; and the reader may gather from the conversation that pa.s.sed between them.

Paolina had worked hard all day. The mosaics in San Vitale were nearly finished. Ludovico had been with her on her scaffolding during the few hours of light of the short afternoon. He had become sensible that the intercourse between him and Paolina had latterly been growing to be less frank, unreserved, and easy than it had been. He had once been quite sure that Paolina loved him with the whole force of a thoroughly virgin heart. He had latterly begun almost to think that he had been mistaken in her. She would turn from him. She would fall into long silences. She was embarra.s.sed in speaking to him; and it had often happened lately that talk had pa.s.sed between them, which had seemed as if they were speaking at cross-purposes--as if there were something not understood or misunderstood between them.

And Ludovico had come to the house in the Strada di Sta. Eufemia that evening, safely relying on the expectation that the Signora Orsola would go fast asleep, and determined to bring matters to an understanding between him and Paolina.

"You can hardly, I think, doubt, Paolina mia, that I love you dearly, far more dearly than anything else on the face of the earth. Do you not see and know that all my life is devoted to you? You do not doubt, darling, do you?" said Ludovico, as he sat holding one of her hands in his.

She sat silent for awhile, and with her face turned away from him, though she made no attempt to take her hand from his.

"You do not doubt it, Paolina?" he asked again.

"If I did doubt it,--if I had doubted it, Ludovico, you could not have taught me the lesson which you have taught me--the lesson which you well know you have so thoroughly taught me, to love you. We neither of us doubt of the love of the other. But--."

She still continued to sit with her face averted from him; and, after another pause, finished her speech only by a little sad shake of her head.

Now the truth was that Ludovico often did doubt very much whether Paolina really loved him. He did not understand the position in which they stood towards each other at all. Here was a little utterly unpretending artist, dependent on no one but herself, owing no duty to any one, to whom he had been making love for the last eight months, as he had never in his life made love before, who a.s.sured him that she loved him; how was it that she had not been his mistress months and months ago? How to account for so strange a phenomenon? He knew very well, that if the exact truth of his position with regard to the little Venetian artist were known or guessed at by any of the men with whom he lived, he would have appeared to them an object of the utmost ridicule,--a dupe,--a fool of the very first water. What on earth could he have been about all the time?

And there were moments in which he was tempted to think the same of himself; bitter moments of cynical world-wisdom, in which he scoffed at himself for having been led to play the part he had played for these last eight months. He would resolve at such moments to "speak plainly"

to Paolina; and, if such plain-speaking failed of the effect it was intended to produce, to put her out of his mind and never waste a minute or a thought upon her again.

But such plain-speaking had never got itself spoken,--had seemed, when he was in presence of the intended object of it, utterly impossible to be spoken. And as for the other alternative, he knew at the bottom of his heart, that it was as much out of his power to put it in practice, as it was to forget his own ident.i.ty.

Something there was in the girl different from anything he had ever known in any other specimen of the s.e.x he had ever become acquainted with. Something too there unmistakably was in his feeling towards her very different from aught that he had ever felt before. What spell had come over him? And what the deuce was the nature of her power over him?

And what the deuce was her own meaning, and feeling, and the motives of her conduct?

It really was necessary, however, that they should in some way come to understand each other. If he had been becoming for some time past discontented with the state of matters between them, it was evident that Paolina had been becoming ill at ease and unhappy also. In some fas.h.i.+on or other some more or less plain speaking was evidently needed.

And Paolina herself? What was her feeling on the subject? Whence did her unmistakable malaise, distraught behaviour in Ludovico's presence, paling cheeks, hours of reverie, when she should have been busily at work--whence did all this come? What was really in her mind when she told him that doubtless they both loved each other, and then ended her words with a "but," and a sad shake of her drooping little head?

She had found this man, her first acquaintance, in a strange land, good-natured, pleasant, kind, useful, handsome, protecting and, at the same time, deferential in his manner; and she had liked him. He had delivered her from the Conte Leandro, and there had come into her mind comparisons between the two men. He had been on her side in that matter; they had wished the same thing, and had accomplished it against a third person; there had been, as it were, a secret between them on the subject; and hence had grown a bond of union. She had advanced from liking to admiring. Thence to the consciousness that she was admired.

She had gone onwards through the usual phases of surprising herself in the act of thinking of him at all sorts of hours, and gradually discovering that he filled an immense portion of her lonely life there in the strange city, till she came to the stage of mingling the avowal "Gli voglio tanto bene" with her last prayers to Mary Mother by her bedside at night, and meditating on the words he had said and the looks be had looked, after she had laid her head upon the pillow.

She had thus quietly walked onwards into the deep waters of a great love, before any question had ever suggested itself to her as to whither she was going, and whether there might not be danger of peris.h.i.+ng in those deep waters.

Now nothing is clearer or more undoubted by every good and well-conditioned girl among ourselves, than the certainty that any man who unmistakably seeks to win her love either means and hopes to make her his wife, or is merely fooling her for his own abominably selfish amus.e.m.e.nt, or is insulting her and endeavouring to injure her in a manner that makes it at once her duty and her inclination to spurn him from her with horror and loathing.

But here, again, as the lawyers say, "locus regit actum." That which the English girl feels, under such circ.u.mstances, so naturally, that she deems it an inseparable part of her nature that she should so feel, she feels because of the teaching of the whole social atmosphere in which she has lived. The Italian girl, in the position of Paolina, does not feel it, because she has lived in a very different social atmosphere.

It is quite certain that Paolina,--if the question, whether it was in anywise on the cards that the Marchese Ludovico di Castelmare had conceived, or was likely to conceive, any project of marrying her, Paolina Foscarelli, had suggested itself, or had been suggested, to her at any time during those eight months,--would at once have replied to her own heart or to any other person, that such an idea was utterly preposterous and out of the question.

But he had been striving to convince her that he loved her by every means in his power for months past, and had succeeded in so convincing her. Was he merely playing with her? That idea never entered into her head. As she, with sad and transparent frankness, had told him, neither of them could doubt the love of the other. What doubt could remain, then, as to the alternative? What doubt of the atrocious nature of his designs and intentions towards her? No doubt at all. Ought she not, therefore, with the intensest scorn of what-do-you-take-me-for-sir indignation to have repelled the insult offered to her?

Poor Paolina had no conception that any insult at all was offered to her or intended. Ludovico was minded to offer to her that which it was in his power to offer, for her to accept if it suited her, or to decline if it suited her not. The species of tie that he offered her was all he could offer her. It was one very frequently offered and very frequently accepted in similar cases. Had the possibility that she might one day accept such been suggested to her, it would have produced no horror in her mind. She had no conviction during all these eight months that she never could or would accept such a position from any man. Why, then, did not matters proceed harmoniously and smoothly between them? Why had not Paolina become Ludovico's mistress before this time? What was the meaning of the averted face, and of that broken off "but--" which she had found it so difficult to follow with a completed sentence?

The meaning was, that Paolina's own heart, during those hours of reverie filled with the meditation of her love,--during those pourings forth of her confessions of love to her heavenly confidant in her bedside prayers;--during her nightly review of the love-pa.s.sages of the day,--her own heart, as it became clearer to her, had revealed to her, that she could not accede to any such proposal as that which, she was well persuaded, the Marchese could alone offer to her;--had revealed it to her, not in obedience to any moral principle; not by any what-do-you-take-me-for process of indignant virtue; but by an instinctive feeling irresistible and not to be gainsayed, that the love she had to bestow must possess its object wholly and entirely, or not at all. It was quite a matter of course that Ludovico would marry some lady in his rank of life. She was not ignorant of the position in which he stood with regard to the Contessa Violante. And his openness to her on this subject is a curious indication of the very wide difference between the mode in which the whole subject would be looked at by both parties in the world in which they lived, and in our own.

Philosophers, as the result of much learned observation and long reasonings, come to the conclusion that monogamy is best suited, on the whole, to the nature, the requirements, and progressive improvement of mankind. A pure-hearted woman, who loves with a true and great love, finds a shorter cut to the same conviction.

And the growing depth and earnestness of Paolina's love had arrived at teaching her this with unmistakable clearness. She might pine, might die--might compel her heart to turn to stone;--might seek the refuge of a cloister, which is the southern equivalent for suicide;--but she could not--she felt she could not live and be content to share her lover's love with another. It was not any sensation of the nature of jealousy so much as an unconquerable feeling that not to have all was to have nothing;--that she must have all and for ever; that she and he must be one;--one flesh and one spirit.

Of course all this ought to be taught, and is taught to all respectably educated young persons in more regular and didactic fas.h.i.+on. But to poor little unschooled Paolina it was taught not less authoritatively by the greatness and the purity of her own love.