A Siren

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

  CHAPTER VII

  The Teaching of a Great Love

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

  And Paolina herself? Did she approve of these visits made thus in theperfect seclusion of that old church at the hours when its doors wereshut to the public? Did she like the hours so spent in tete-a-teteconversation with the handsome young Marchese? She, who had so readilyfound the means to make the entreprenant Conte Leandro keep hisdistance, and had succeeded in disembarrassing herself of himaltogether,--could she find no possible means for avoiding theassiduities of the Marchese Ludovico; could she not at least haveinduced old Orsola to accompany her in the church of San Vitale, as shehad 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 churchnot uncommon to uneducated Italians. The fact was at all events that,even after Ludovico had, upon more than one occasion, brought therushing blood into the dark face of Paolina by surprising her at herwork on the scaffolding near the vaults of the church, old Orsola nevermade her appearance there. She was always at her place on one side ofthe fire during the visits of the Marchese to the quartiere in theStrada di Santa Eufemia in the evening; but it was equally true that shealmost always went to sleep.

  It is so natural and so desirable that the old should sleep under suchcircumstances and on such occasions! It is so evidently for the benefitof all the parties concerned, that the tendency may be reckoned amongthe instances of beneficent adaptation with which the whole order ofNature is filled!

  It can hardly be doubted,--Ludovico could hardly be blamed for thepersuasion--that Paolina did like his visits. It may be pretty safelyassumed that those blushes, which greeted the appearance of his headabove the planks as he climbed to the scaffolding, were not painfulblushes. How early in those eight months it came to pass that her heartleaped at the click of the huge old key in the lock, as the sacristanadmitted Ludovico by a turn of it which, as she had well learned,heralded his coming, it might be hard to say. Paolina herself could notprobably have told this to her own heart. But that such had come to bethe case long before the evening when the Marchese Lamberto sought hisnephew 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 tofear 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 anacquaintance with times, places, and national manners, would not quitejustify. But in these matters of national appreciation, of fitness andunfitness, and of propriety and impropriety, the nuances are so fine andsubtle, that it is somewhat difficult, in trying to explain them, to sayjust what one means without seeming to say more than one means.

  One thing is clear. Paolina was as thoroughly and essentially modest andinnocent a girl as ever breathed; but she was so "by the grace ofGod,"--from natural idiosyncrasy and instinctive purity of heart, thatis to say, rather than from teaching of any kind, or from any knowledgeof 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 shecould. So much the more, replies the prudent English matron, ought sheto have been extra careful lest the breath of misconception should evenfor 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 bestand purest in the highest lady of the land may be, and should be, alsothe heritage of lowliest. But such is not practically the feeling inthose 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 byany 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 thebeautiful in every one of its manifestations, to conceive that in thatfact any reason was to be found why a less nice conduct in such mattersshould be expected of her! And yet, for reasons which it would take avolume to elucidate, so it is, that in the countries where art is deemedto be most at home, and where it is in the largest degree the occupationof large sections of the people, it is deemed that a less strict rulewith reference to the matters under consideration is laid on them thanon others. What if a young female artist "perfectly free from ties," aswould be urged, and whose conduct in such a matter could hurtnobody,--what if such an one chose to form a tie not recognized by theChurch? The Church herself would look very leniently on the venialfault. And though Paolina was such as she has been described, it wasimpossible but that such notions, not specially set forth or taught, butpervading all the unconscious teaching of the world around her, shouldhave rendered her less sensitively anxious as to the possibility ofmisconception lighting on her, than an equally good English girl wouldhave been. Could she have been indifferent to the danger that slandershould tarnish her good name? asks an Englishwoman. But the whole worldin which she lived would not have felt it to be slander. It would havebeen too much in the ordinary course of things.

  How Paolina felt in the matter, Ludovico was made to understand on thatevening which has been so often referred to; and the reader may gatherfrom the conversation that passed between them.

  Paolina had worked hard all day. The mosaics in San Vitale were nearlyfinished. Ludovico had been with her on her scaffolding during the fewhours of light of the short afternoon. He had become sensible that theintercourse between him and Paolina had latterly been growing to be lessfrank, unreserved, and easy than it had been. He had once been quitesure that Paolina loved him with the whole force of a thoroughly virginheart. He had latterly begun almost to think that he had been mistakenin her. She would turn from him. She would fall into long silences. Shewas embarrassed in speaking to him; and it had often happened latelythat talk had passed between them, which had seemed as if they werespeaking at cross-purposes--as if there were something not understood ormisunderstood between them.

  And Ludovico had come to the house in the Strada di Sta. Eufemia thatevening, safely relying on the expectation that the Signora Orsola wouldgo fast asleep, and determined to bring matters to an understandingbetween 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 notsee 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 inhis.

  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 havetaught me the lesson which you have taught me--the lesson which you wellknow you have so thoroughly taught me, to love you. We neither of usdoubt of the love of the other. But--."

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

  Now the truth was that Ludovico often did doubt very much whetherPaolina really loved him. He did not understand the position in whichthey stood towards each other at all. Here was a little utterlyunpretending artist, dependent on no one but herself, owing no duty toany one, to wh
om he had been making love for the last eight months, ashe had never in his life made love before, who assured him that sheloved him; how was it that she had not been his mistress months andmonths ago? How to account for so strange a phenomenon? He knew verywell, that if the exact truth of his position with regard to the littleVenetian artist were known or guessed at by any of the men with whom helived, he would have appeared to them an object of the utmostridicule,--a dupe,--a fool of the very first water. What on earth couldhe have been about all the time?

  And there were moments in which he was tempted to think the same ofhimself; bitter moments of cynical world-wisdom, in which he scoffed athimself for having been led to play the part he had played for theselast eight months. He would resolve at such moments to "speak plainly"to Paolina; and, if such plain-speaking failed of the effect it wasintended to produce, to put her out of his mind and never waste a minuteor a thought upon her again.

  But such plain-speaking had never got itself spoken,--had seemed, whenhe was in presence of the intended object of it, utterly impossible tobe spoken. And as for the other alternative, he knew at the bottom ofhis 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 everknown in any other specimen of the sex he had ever become acquaintedwith. Something too there unmistakably was in his feeling towards hervery different from aught that he had ever felt before. What spell hadcome 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 ofher conduct?

  It really was necessary, however, that they should in some way come tounderstand each other. If he had been becoming for some time pastdiscontented with the state of matters between them, it was evident thatPaolina had been becoming ill at ease and unhappy also. In some fashionor other some more or less plain speaking was evidently needed.

  And Paolina herself? What was her feeling on the subject? Whence did herunmistakable malaise, distraught behaviour in Ludovico's presence,paling cheeks, hours of reverie, when she should have been busily atwork--whence did all this come? What was really in her mind when shetold him that doubtless they both loved each other, and then ended herwords 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 thesame time, deferential in his manner; and she had liked him. He haddelivered her from the Conte Leandro, and there had come into her mindcomparisons 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 thirdperson; there had been, as it were, a secret between them on thesubject; and hence had grown a bond of union. She had advanced fromliking to admiring. Thence to the consciousness that she was admired.She had gone onwards through the usual phases of surprising herself inthe act of thinking of him at all sorts of hours, and graduallydiscovering that he filled an immense portion of her lonely life therein 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 herbedside at night, and meditating on the words he had said and the looksbe had looked, after she had laid her head upon the pillow.

  She had thus quietly walked onwards into the deep waters of a greatlove, before any question had ever suggested itself to her as to whithershe was going, and whether there might not be danger of perishing inthose deep waters.

  Now nothing is clearer or more undoubted by every good andwell-conditioned girl among ourselves, than the certainty that any manwho unmistakably seeks to win her love either means and hopes to makeher his wife, or is merely fooling her for his own abominably selfishamusement, or is insulting her and endeavouring to injure her in amanner that makes it at once her duty and her inclination to spurn himfrom her with horror and loathing.

  But here, again, as the lawyers say, "locus regit actum." That which theEnglish girl feels, under such circumstances, so naturally, that shedeems it an inseparable part of her nature that she should so feel, shefeels because of the teaching of the whole social atmosphere in whichshe has lived. The Italian girl, in the position of Paolina, does notfeel it, because she has lived in a very different social atmosphere.

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

  But he had been striving to convince her that he loved her by everymeans in his power for months past, and had succeeded in so convincingher. Was he merely playing with her? That idea never entered into herhead. As she, with sad and transparent frankness, had told him, neitherof them could doubt the love of the other. What doubt could remain,then, as to the alternative? What doubt of the atrocious nature of hisdesigns and intentions towards her? No doubt at all. Ought she not,therefore, with the intensest scorn of what-do-you-take-me-for-sirindignation to have repelled the insult offered to her?

  Poor Paolina had no conception that any insult at all was offered to heror intended. Ludovico was minded to offer to her that which it was inhis power to offer, for her to accept if it suited her, or to decline ifit suited her not. The species of tie that he offered her was all hecould offer her. It was one very frequently offered and very frequentlyaccepted in similar cases. Had the possibility that she might one dayaccept such been suggested to her, it would have produced no horror inher mind. She had no conviction during all these eight months that shenever could or would accept such a position from any man. Why, then, didnot matters proceed harmoniously and smoothly between them? Why had notPaolina become Ludovico's mistress before this time? What was themeaning of the averted face, and of that broken off "but--" which shehad found it so difficult to follow with a completed sentence?

  The meaning was, that Paolina's own heart, during those hours of reveriefilled with the meditation of her love,--during those pourings forth ofher confessions of love to her heavenly confidant in her bedsideprayers;--during her nightly review of the love-passages of theday,--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 waswell persuaded, the Marchese could alone offer to her;--had revealed itto her, not in obedience to any moral principle; not by anywhat-do-you-take-me-for process of indignant virtue; but by aninstinctive feeling irresistible and not to be gainsayed, that the loveshe had to bestow must possess its object wholly and entirely, or not atall. It was quite a matter of course that Ludovico would marry some ladyin his rank of life. She was not ignorant of the position in which hestood with regard to the Contessa Violante. And his openness to her onthis subject is a curious indication of the very wide difference betweenthe mode in which the whole subject would be looked at by both partiesin the world in which they lived, and in our own.

  Philosophers, as the result of much learned observation and longreasonings, come to the conclusion that monogamy is best suited, on thewhole, to the nature, the requirements, and progressive improvement ofmankind. 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 atteaching her this with unmistakable clearness. She might pine, mightdie--might compel her heart to turn to stone;--might seek the refuge ofa cloister, which is the southern equivalent for suicide;--but she couldnot--she felt she could not live and be content to share her lover'slove with another. It was not any sensation of the nature of jealousy somuch as an unconquerable feeling that not to have all was to havenothing;--that she must have all and for ever; that she and he must beone;--one flesh and one spirit.

  Of course all this o
ught to be taught, and is taught to all respectablyeducated young persons in more regular and didactic fashion. But to poorlittle unschooled Paolina it was taught not less authoritatively by thegreatness and the purity of her own love.