Friedrich de la Motte Fouque - "Sintram and His Companions"

Talbot Mundy - "Told in the East"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "The Two Sides of the Shield"

William Shakespeare - "Cymbeline"

A Siren

T >> Thomas Adolphus Trollope >> A Siren




"Oh, hang the Contessa Giulia! In any case, it is too late to go to
her now, and I am sure I shall like much better to stay here," said
Leandro.

"Very likely. But you forget that it may not be equally agreeable to
these ladies that you should remain here, and they just arrived from
a journey too," said the Marchese Ludovico, who was inwardly cursing
his folly in having brought his friend with him on this errand,
which he unquestionably would not have done had he had the remotest
idea what manner of ladies they were that his uncle had deputed him
to attend on.

"By-the-by, Leandro," he said, suddenly, as he was moving towards
the door, "you must come with me--after all; for now I remember that
the rooms I had in my mind were let a short time since, and the best
thing we can do will be to go and look at those you spoke of."

"Oh! I will tell you where they are--" said Leandro.

"No, no! that won't do at all; come--come along. I won't go there
without you. Come!" said the Marchese.

And this was said in a manner that had the effect of making Leandro
take leave of the ladies, with many hopes that they might meet again
ere long.

Very soon after the two young men were in the street together,
Ludovico protested that he must call at the Circolo before attending
to the business they were on; and when he got there he pretended to
be obliged to run home for a minute to the Palazzo Castelmare, which
was hard by, saying that he would return and rejoin the Conte
Leandro in less than five minutes. And very heartily did that
deceived gentleman abuse his friend, when he had waited an hour, and
found that he did not return at all. Then, poor gentleman! he knew
that he had been bamboozled,--cruelly treated, as he said himself.
And he perfectly well understood his dear friend's object, too!

"Such an intolerable, abominable coxcomb as that Ludovico is! As if
he fancied that nobody was to have a chance of speaking to that
pretty girl but himself. As if he thought that he had the ghost of a
chance with a woman, if I thought it worth while to cut him out!"
grumbled the gallant, gay Leandro to himself.

The Marchese Ludovico, meanwhile, the instant he had succeeded in
freeing himself from his companion, darted off in search of an
apartment, which he thought would just suit his fair clients;
hurried back to them, at the inn; and had them installed in their
new quarters by that evening.

"I am sure I do not know how to thank you enough for all your
kindness, Signor Marchese. I do not know what we should have done
without it," said the Signora Orsola.

"For all your kindness!" repeated Paolina, with a look and an
emphasis which, while it expressed her gratitude, left him at no
loss to understand what part of all he had done for them had chiefly
seemed to the pretty Paolina to merit her special thanks.

And these were the facts and the circumstances that had brought
about a state of matters which left the Marchese Lamberto and the
gossips of the Circolo in no doubt where the young Marchese Ludovico
had gone to pass his evening, when his uncle sent for him to the
club for the purpose which the reader wots of, and failed to find
him there.



CHAPTER VI

The Beginning of Trouble


Nearly eight months had elapsed between that day when the Signora
Orsola and the Signorina Paolina were installed in their new lodging
and the day when the Marchese Ludovico was sitting in the more than
modest little room over a miserable morsel of fire, with the two
Venetians, when his uncle sent for him to give him the hint about
any inconvenient gossip that might be whispered concerning the
Signora Bianca Lalli, in accordance with the suggestion of the
impresario.

The Marchese Lamberto had made the personal acquaintance of the
young artist, who had been recommended to his protection very
shortly after the day on which he had deputed his nephew to find a
lodging for her; and he had instantly become aware that he had made
a mistake in so doing;--that he would certainly have deemed it
better to take that care upon himself rather than have confided it
to the young Marchese, if he had had the least idea what sort of
person the Venetian artist was. Nevertheless, be had been very
strongly impressed with the propriety of Paolina's manner and
bearing, and after one or two more interviews, with the thorough
modesty of her mind, and purity and dignity of her character. And
the Marchese was a man well competent to form a sound judgment of
such matters.

He had no reason to think that the young man, his nephew, was as
prudent, as steady, as little liable to the influence of female
beauty, as cold, if you will, as he himself had been at the same
age. On the contrary, the character, which the Marchese Ludovico had
made for himself in Ravenna, was a rather diametrically opposite
one. But he was strongly of opinion that in any enterprise of an
illegitimate nature which his nephew might attempt with the young
artist, he would have his trouble only for his pains. And, of
course, any enterprise of any other nature was wholly out of the
question.

Still, as the months went on he would have been far better contented
that his nephew should have been less often at the home of the two
Venetians. There were circumstances which made such visits
especially inexpedient at the present time. He knew that the young
man was there much oftener than he judged to be in any way
desirable; and the young man was there much oftener than his uncle
knew. The Marchese Lamberto was still very much persuaded that
Paolina had not been led by his nephew into any false step of a
seriously blamable nature. But this was by no means any reason with
the Marchese for approving of his nephew's conduct. The intercourse
was altogether objectionable. Talk was engendered,--talk of an
undesirable description; and this was excessively disagreeable to
the Marchese, who had views for his nephew which might be seriously
compromised by it. A liaison of the kind, let the real nature of it
be what it would, was in any case discreditable to his nephew and
heir, and damaging more or less to the position which he wished to
see the young man occupy in the town. It was especially so, as has
been said, at the present conjuncture.

Then, of course, it could not be otherwise than injurious to the
girl. She had, in some sort, been recommended to his care. And it
disturbed him much, that the conduct of his nephew should be the
means of damaging her reputation.

Yet the Marchese, being a man of sense, knew very well that it would
not have done any good to attempt to exercise any such authority
over the young man as to forbid him to visit the lodging of the
Venetians. In the first place, such a step would, according to the
notions and ways of looking at things of the society in which he
lived, have placed him himself in a very ridiculous light;--a danger
which was not to be contemplated for an instant! And, besides, the
Marchese was very well aware that even if such an attempt did not
cause his nephew to assume a position of open rebellion, it would
only have the effect of making him do secretly and still more
objectionably what he did, as it was, comparatively openly.

Comparatively, it must be said; for Ludovico was very much more
frequently at the little house in the Strada di S. Eufemia than his
uncle wotted of.

Not much more frequently, however, than was very well known by most
of his contemporaries and fellow-habitues of the Circolo,--by pretty
well the whole of the "society" of Ravenna, that is to say. And in
the earlier part of the time in question,--of the eight months, that
is, from the March in which the young artist came to Ravenna, to the
November in which Signor Ercole Stadione had made his journey to
Milan there had been plenty of joking and raillery about Ludovico's
enthralment by the "bella Veneziana," and many attempts to compete
with him for so very attractive and desirable a "buona fortuna." But
all this had only been at the beginning of the time. Ludovico had
taken the matter in a tone and in a humour, that had soon put an end
to all such joking and to all such attempts. It was in all ways easy
for him to do this. He was popular, and much liked among the young
men, in the first place. His social position, as the heir of one of
the first families of the province whether for wealth or nobility of
race, and of a man of such social standing as his uncle, made it a
very undesirable thing to quarrel with him. And even without any of
such vantage-ground of position, Ludovico di Castelmare was a man,
whose path it would have been dangerous to cross in such a matter as
this, and who was very well capable of affording to any woman, in
whom he was interested, a very efficient protection against any such
offence as the most enterprising of the jeunesse doree of Ravenna
might have been disposed to offer her.

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 pass, 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 passing 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 amassed 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 noblest 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 associates 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 circumstances
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 passing 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 passed
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 disembarrassing herself of him
altogether,--could she find no possible means for avoiding the
assiduities 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 superstitious 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 rushing 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 circumstances 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 assumed 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 pass
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 sex, 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 God,"--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 "nobody," 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 passing 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 latitudes where
Paolina was born and bred.

The breath that tarnishes the clear mirror of a noble damsel's name,
says and teaches that social feeling, brings dishonour to a noble
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 nobody,--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 passed 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 embarrassed in
speaking to him; and it had often happened lately that talk had
passed 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
assured 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 identity.

Something there was in the girl different from anything he had ever
known in any other specimen of the sex 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?

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