"I am glad to have found you," cried Truyn next morning as he entered Sempaly's room in the Palazzo di Venezia, and discovered him sipping his coffee after his late breakfast, with a book in his hand.
"I am delighted that you should for once have taken the trouble to climb up to me. I must show you my Francia--the dealer who sold it to me declares it is a Francia. But you look worried. What has brought you here?"
"I only wanted to know--to ask you whether you will drive out to Frascati with us to-day?"
"To Frascati!--This afternoon? What an idea!" exclaimed Sempaly; "and in any case I cannot join you for I am going to the Palatine at three o'clock with the Sterzls."
"Yes?" said Truyn looking uncommonly grave.
"May I offer you a cup of coffee?" asked Sempaly coolly.
"No thank you," replied Truyn shortly. He was evidently uneasy, and began examining the odds and ends at the table to give himself countenance; by accident he took up the book that Sempaly had been reading when he came in. It was Charles Lamb's Essays, and on the first page was written in a large, firm hand: "In friendly remembrance of a terrible quarrel, Zinka Sterzl."
"The child lost a bet with me not long since," Sempaly explained. "Another bet is still unsettled and is to be decided to-day at the Palatine." Truyn shut the book sharply and threw it down; then, setting his elbows on the table at which they were sitting, and fixing his eyes keenly on Sempaly's face he said:
"Do you intend to marry Zinka Sterzl?"
Sempaly started, "What do you mean?" he exclaimed; "what are you dreaming of?" But as Truyn said no more, simply gazing fixedly at him, he took up an attitude of defiance. He looked Truyn straight in the face with an angry glare and retorted:
"And suppose I do?"
"Then I can only hope you will have enough resolution to carry out your intentions," said Truyn, "for to stop half-way in such a case is a crime."
He drew a deep breath and looked at the ground. But Sempaly's face, instead of clearing, grew darker; he was prepared for vehement opposition and his cousin's calm consent, not to say encouragement, put him in the position of a man who, after straining every muscle to lift a heavy weight suddenly discovers that it is a piece of painted pasteboard. It completely threw him off his balance.
"Well, I must say!" he began in a tone of extreme annoyance, "you speak of it as if it were a no more serious question than the dancing of a cotillon. In plain terms the thing is impossible. What are we to live on? I have long since run through all my fortune, if I took what my brother would regard as so monstrous a step he would cut off all supplies, and Zinka is not of age. I might to be sure take to selling dripping to maintain my wife, which would have the additional advantage that my mother-in-law would cut me in consequence. Or perhaps you would advise me to let Dame Clotilde Sterzl keep us till Zinka comes into her money?"
"Well," says Truyn calmly, "if you can take such a reasonable view of the impossibility of your marriage with Zinka Sterzl, your behavior to her is perfectly inexplicable."
Truyn was still sitting by the little table on which the pretty coffee service was set out, while Sempaly, his hands in his pockets, was walking up and down the room, kicking and shoving the furniture with all the irritation of a man who knows himself to be in the wrong.
"Upon my soul I cannot make out what you would be at!" he suddenly exclaimed, standing still and facing his cousin. "Sterzl has never found any fault with my behavior and it is much more his affair than yours."
Truyn changed color a little, but did not lose his presence of mind.
"Sterzl, with all his dryness of manner, is an idealist," he said, "who would fetch the stars from heaven for his sister if he could. He has never for an instant doubted that your intentions with regard to her were quite serious."
"That is impossible!" cried Sempaly.
"But it is so," Truyn asserted. "He is too blind to think his sister beneath any one's notice."
"And he is right!" exclaimed Sempaly, "perfectly right--but the pressure of circumstances--of position--the duties I have inherited...."
He had seated himself on the deep inner ledge of one of the windows, with his elbows on his knees and his chin between his hands, and was staring thoughtfully at the floor.
"Allow me to ask you," he said, "what induced you to mix yourself up in the affair?"
"It has weighed on my mind for a long time," said Truyn, "but what especially moved me to speak of it to-day is the circumstance that last evening, before you came into the 'Falcone,' Mesdames De Gandry and Ferguson allowed themselves to speak in a way which convinced me that your constant intimacy with Zinka is beginning to do her no good."
"Oh! of course, if you listen to the gossip of every washerwoman," Sempaly interrupted angrily. And he muttered a long speech in which the words: 'Sacred responsibility--due regard for the duties imposed by Providence,' were freely thrown in. Truyn's handsome face flushed with contempt and at length he broke into his cousin's harangue, to which for a few minutes he had listened in silence:
"No swagger nor bluster.... The matter is quiet simple: Do you love Zinka?" The attaché frowned:
"Yes," he said fiercely.
"Then it is only that you have not the courage to face the annoyances that a marriage with her would involve you in?"
Sempaly was dumb,
"Then, my dear fellow, there is no choice; you must break off the intimacy, as gently but as immediately as possible."
"That I neither can nor will attempt," cried Sempaly, stamping his foot.
"If within three days you have not taken the necessary steps to secure your removal from Rome, I shall feel myself compelled to give Sterzl a hint--or your brother--whichever you prefer." Truyn spoke quite firmly. "And now good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Sempaly without moving, and Truyn went to the door; there he paused and said hesitatingly: "Do not take it amiss, Nicki--I could do no less. Remember that though the right is a bitter morsel, it has a good after-taste."
"Poor child, poor sweet little girl!" Truyn murmured to himself as he descended the grey stone stairs of the Palazzo de Venezia. "Is this a time to be talking of inherited responsibilities and the duties of position--now! Good heavens!" He lighted a cigar and then flung it angrily away. "Good heavens! to have met a girl like Zinka--to have won her love--and to be free!..."
He hurried out into the street, leaving the gate-porter astonished that the count, who was usually so courteous, should have taken no notice of his respectful bow; such a thing had never happened before.
He was a strange man, this grey-haired young Count Truyn; he had grown up as one of a very happy family and when still quite young he had been hurried, much against his will, into a marriage with the handsome Gabrielle Zinsenburg. He had never been able to reconcile himself to the empty wordliness of his life in her society; she was a heartless, superficial woman, some few years older than himself, who had staked everything on her hope of achieving a marriage with him. Within a few years they had separated, quite amiably, by mutual consent; he had given her his name and she gave him his child. His life was spoilt. He had a noble and a loving heart but he might not bestow it on any woman; he must carry it about in his breast where it grew heavy to bear. His love for his little girl, devoted as he was to her, was not enough to live by, and a bitter sense of craving lurked in his spirit. For many years he had lived a great deal abroad; his mind had expanded and he had shed several of his purely Austrian prejudices. At home he was still regarded as a staunch conservative because he always passively voted on that side; but he was only indifferent, absolutely indifferent, to all political strife, and smiled alike at the recklessness of the 'left' and the excitability of the 'right,' while in his inmost soul he regarded the perfecting of government as mere labor lost; for he was no optimist, and thought that to heal the woes of humanity nothing would avail but its thorough regeneration, and that men have no mind for such regeneration; all they ask is to be allowed to cry out when they are hurt, and shift their sins on to each other's shoulders.
It afforded him no satisfaction to cry out. His weary soul found no rest but in unbounded benevolence, and Sempaly's nature--experimental, groping his way through life--had seemed to him to-day more odious than ever.
"How can a man be at once so tender and such a coward?" he asked himself, "He is the most completely selfish being I ever met with--a thorough epicurean in sentiment, and has only just heart enough for his own pleasure and enjoyment."
The bet outstanding between Zinka and Sempaly was not decided that afternoon. Sempaly did not go to the Palatine, but excused himself at the last moment in a little note to Zinka. Truyn's words, though he would not have admitted it to himself, had made a very deep impression, and though he fought against it he could no longer avoid looking the situation in the face. To get himself transferred to some other capital, to give up all his pleasant idle habits here--the idea was intolerable! He felt exactly like a man who has been suddenly roused from a slumber bright with pleasant dreams. He did not want to wake, or to rub his eyes clear of the vision.
Was everything at an end then? Truyn had, to be sure, suggested an alternative: if he could but call up sufficient energy it rested only with himself to turn the sweet dream into a still sweeter and lovelier reality, and his whole being thrilled with ecstasy as this delightful possibility flattered his fancy. He was long past the age at which a man commits some matrimonial folly believing that he can reclaim the morals of some disrespectable second-rate actress, or that his highest happiness is to devote his life to his sister's governess who is a dozen years older than himself; when he contemplated the possibility of his marrying Zinka Sterzl after all, it was with the certainty that his feeling for her was not a mere transient madness, but that it had its roots in the depths of his nature. Every form and kind of enjoyment had been at his command and he had hated them all. Things in which other men of his age and position could find excitement and interest roused his fastidious nature to disgust. Life had long since become to him a vain and empty show, when he had met Zinka.... Then all the sweetest spirits of spring had descended fluttering into his vacant heart; a magical touch had made it a garden of flowers and filled it with fair, mad dreams of love. All the "sweet sorrow" of life was revealed to him in a new form ... And now was he to tread the blossoms into dust? "Give up seeing her--get myself sent away--never! I cannot and I will not do it," he muttered to himself indignantly as he thought it all over. "What business is it of Truyn's? What right has he to issue his orders to me?"
But when he had resolved simply to go on with Zinka as he had begun, to sun himself as heretofore in her smile, her gentleness, and her beauty, he was still uncomfortable. He felt that it would not be the same. Till now his heart had simply been content, now it could speak and ask for more; to try to satisfy it with this shadow of delight was like attempting to slake a raging thirst with the dew off a rosebud. He loved her now--suddenly and madly. Interesting women had hitherto utterly failed to interest him; they were like brooklets filled by the rain: the muddiness of the water prevented their shallowness being immediately perceptible; the storms of life had spoilt their clearness and purity; Zinka, on the contrary, was like a mountain lake whose waters are so transparent that near the shore every pebble is visible; and though, in the middle, the bottom is no longer seen, it is because they are deep and not because they are turbid, till their crystalline opacity reflects the sky overhead. And in the depths of that lake, he thought, lay a treasure which one alone, guided and blest by God, might hope to find. How he longed to sound it.
She was made for him; never for an instant had he been dull in her society; she satisfied both his head and his heart; all the bewitching inconsistency and contradictions of her nature captivated him; he had said of her that "she was like a little handbook to the study of women," she was made up of such a variety of characteristics. In the midst of her childlike moods she had such unexpected depth of thought, such flashes of wisdom; her wildest vagaries were so original and often ended so suddenly in wistful reverie; her little selfish caprices were the converse of such devoted self-sacrifice; her grace was so spontaneous, her voice so soft and appealing ... Well, but should he?... No, it must not be. Truyn had said it--he must quit Rome--the sooner the better.
He took his hat and went out to call on the ambassador and discuss the matter with him. His excellency was not at home and Sempaly betook himself to the club, where he lost several games at ecarté--he was greatly annoyed. Then he went home and sat looking constantly at the clock as though he were expecting some one; his irritation increased every minute.
"Bright May--the sweetest month of Spring; The trees and fields with flowers are strown-- Dear Heart, to thee Life's May I bring; Take it and keep it for thine own-- Nay--draw the knife!--I will not start, Pierce if thou wilt, my willing breast. There thou shalt find my faithful heart Whose truth in death shall stand confessed."
These words, sung in the Roman dialect to a very simple air, came quavering out of the open window of the drawing-room of the Sterzls' palazetto as Sempaly passed by it that evening; he had gone out to pay some visits, to divert his mind, and though his way did not take him along the side street in which the palazetto stood, he had not been able to resist the temptation to make a detour. It was a mild evening and the tones floated down like an invitation; he recognized Zinka's voice as she sang one of the melancholy Stornelli in which the peasants of the Campagna give utterance to their loves. It ceased, and he was just moving away, when another even sweeter and more piercing lament broke the warm silence.
"Or shall I die?--Poison itself could have
No terrors if I took it from thy hand.
Thy heart should be my death-bed and my grave."
The passionate words were sung with subdued vehemence to a rather monotonous tune--like a faded wreath of spring flowers borne along by some murmuring stream. He turned back, and listened with suspended breath. The song ended on a long, full note; he felt that he would give God knows how much to hear the last line once more:
'La sepoltura mia sara il tuo seno!....'
Now Zinka was speaking--it vexed him beyond measure that he could not hear what she was saying. It was maddening ... Good heavens! what a fool he was to stand fretting outside!
When he went into the drawing-room to his great surprise he was met by Sterzl.
"Back so soon?" he exclaimed as he shook hands with him.
"Yes, Arnstein had only two days to spare in Naples," replied Sterzl; "I was delighted to see him again, but--well, I must be growing very old, I was so glad to find myself at home again," and he drew his sister to him and lightly stroked her pretty brown hair. His brotherly caress added to Sempaly's excitement "No wonder that you like your home!" he was saying, when the baroness appeared with an evening wrap on her shoulders, a fan and scent-bottle in her hand, and, as usual, dying of refinement and airs.
"Not ready yet, Zenaïde? Ah, my dear Sempaly, how very sweet of you!" and she gave him the tips of her fingers.--"We were quite anxious about you when you so suddenly excused yourself from joining us. Zinka was afraid you had taken the Roman fever," she said sentimentally.
"Zinka has an imagination that feeds on horrors," said Sterzl smiling.
"I did think that you must have some very urgent reason," said Zinka hastily and in some confusion.
Sempaly looked into her eyes: "I was doing Ash-Wednesday penance, that was all," he said in a low voice.
"Well, to complete the mortification come now to Lady Dalrymple's," the baroness suggested.
"Oh, be merciful! Grant me a dispensation. I should so much enjoy a quiet evening," cried Sempaly.
"And I too," added Zinka. "I am utterly sick of soirées and routs. These performances give me the impression of a full-dress review, at which such and such fashionable regiments are paraded."
"Give us a holiday, mother; remember, it is Ash-Wednesday, and we are good Catholics," said her son.
"I had some scruples myself, but the Duchess of Otranto is going," lisped the baroness.
However, when Sempaly had assured her that the Duchess of Otranto was by no means a standard authority in Roman society she yielded to the common desire that they should remain at home, and withdrew to her room to write some letters before tea.
Most men have senses and nerves only in their brain while women, as is well known, have them all over the body; in this respect Sempaly was like a woman. He had senses even in his finger tips--as a Frenchman had once said, of him: "il avait les sens poète!" (a poet's nerves). The most trifling external conditions gave him disproportionate pleasure or pain. The smallest detail of ugliness was enough to spoil his appreciation of the noblest and grandest work of art; he would not have felt the beauty of Faust if he had first read it in a shabby or dirty copy. Now, when the baroness had left the room, there was no detail that could disturb his enjoyment in being with Zinka.
Sterzl had taken up his newspaper; Zinka, at Sempaly's request, had seated herself at the piano. She always accompanied herself by heart and sat with her head bowed a little over the keys and half-shut dreamy eyes. The sober tone of the room, with its tapestried walls and happy medley of knick-knacks, broad-leaved plants, Japanese screens, and comfortable furniture, formed a harmonious background to her slight, white figure. The light of the one lamp was moderated by its rose-colored shade; a subdued mezza-voce tone of color prevailed in the room which was full of the scent of roses and violets, and the heavy perfume seemed in sympathy with the gloomy sentiment of the popular love songs. Sempaly's whole nature thrilled with rapturous suspense, such as few men would perhaps quite understand. At his desire Zinka sang one after another of the Stornelli ... her voice grew fuller and deeper ...
"Do not sing too long, Zini, it will tire you," said her brother.
"Only one more--the one I heard from outside," begged Sempaly, and she sang:
"La sepoltura mia sara il tuo seno...."
The words trembled on her lips; her hands slipped off the last notes into her lap. Sempaly took the warm, soft little hands in his own; a sort of delightful giddiness mounted to his brain as he touched them.
"Zinka," he said, "tell me, do you feel a little of what your voice expresses?"
Her eyes met his--and she blinked, as we blink at a strong, bright light; she shrank back a little, as we shrink from too great and sudden joy. Her answer was fluttering on her lips when the door opened--the Italian servant pronounced some perfectly unintelligible gibberish by way of a name, and in marched--followed by her daughter and their Polish swain--the Baroness Wolnitzka.
"Oh, thank goodness, I have found you at home!" she exclaimed. "We counted on finding you at home on Ash-Wednesday. God bless you, Zinka!"
Zinka was petrified. Mamma Sterzl rushed in from an adjoining room at the sound of those rough tones.
"Charlotte!" was all she could stammer out, "Char--lotte ... you ... here!"
"Quite a surprise, is it not, Clotilde? Yes, the most unhoped-for things sometimes happen. We arrived to-day at three o'clock and called here this afternoon but you were out; so then we decided to try in the evening. It is rather late, to be sure, and I, for my part, should have been here long ago, but Slawa insisted on dressing--for such near relations! Quite absurd ... but I do not like to contradict her, she is so easily put out--so I waited to dress too."
And the baroness, after embracing her sister and her niece, plumped down uninvited on a very low chair.
She had dressed with a vengeance: a black lace cap was perched on the top of her short, grey hair, with lappets that hung down over her ears. Her massive person was squeezed into a violet satin gown, which she had evidently out-grown, and a lace scarf picturesquely thrown over her shoulders was intended to conceal its defects; her lavender-colored gloves were very short and much too tight, and burst at all the button-holes. Slawa had a general effect of tricolor, and she wore some old jewelry that she had bought of a dealer in antiquities at Verona. She had curled and piled up her hair after the antique and kept her head constantly turned over her left shoulder, to be as much like the Apollo as possible, at the same time making a grimace as if she were being photographed and wished to look bewitching.
Vladimir Matuschowsky's tall, slouching figure was buttoned into a braided coat; he held a low-crowned hat with tassels in his hand, and glared at the plain dress-coats of the other two men as though they were a personal insult.
"Monsieur Vladimir de Matuschowsky," said the baroness introducing him, "a ... a ... friend of the family." But she said it in French: when the Baroness Wolnitzka was at all at a loss she commonly spoke French.
Her sister, who by this time had got over her astonishment, now began to wish to dazzle the new-comers.
"Count Sempaly," she said, presenting the attaché; "a friend of our family ... my sister, the Baroness Wolnitzka. You have no doubt heard of the famous Slav leader Baron Wolnitzky, who was so conspicuous a figure in forty-eight."
Sempaly bowed without speaking; Baroness Wolnitzka rose and politely offered him her hand: "I am delighted to make your acquaintance," she said. "I have heard a great deal about you; my sister has mentioned you in all her letters and I am quite au courant."
Again Sempaly bowed in silence and then, retiring into the background while the mistress of the house turned to address Slawa, he said to Sterzl:
"I will take an opportunity of slipping away--a stranger is always an intruder at a family meeting," His manner was suddenly cold and stiff and his tone intolerably arrogant.
Sterzl nodded: "Go by all means," he replied. But Baroness Sterzl perceiving his purpose exclaimed:
"No, no, my dear Sempaly, you really must not run away--you are not in the least de trop--and a stranger you certainly can never be."
"It would look as though we had frightened you away, and that I will not imagine," added her sister archly.
So Sempaly stayed; only, perhaps, from the impulse that so often prompts us to drink a bitter cup to the dregs.
"Pray command yourself a little, Zini," whispered Cecil to his sister. "The interruption is unpleasant; but you should not show your annoyance so plainly."
Tea was now brought in; Sterzl devoted himself in an exemplary manner to his cousin Slawa, so as to give his spoilt little sister as much liberty as possible. Slawa treated him with the greatest condescension and kept glancing over her huge Japanese fan at Sempaly, who was sitting by Zinka on a small sofa, taciturn and ill-pleased, while he helped her to pour out the tea.
Baroness Wolnitzka gulped down one cup after another, eat up almost all the tea-cake, and never ceased an endless medley of chatter. The young Pole sat brooding gloomily, ostentatiously refused all food and spoke not a word; his arms crossed on his breast he sat the image of the Dignity of Man on the defensive.
"I am desperately hungry," Madame Wolnitzka confessed. "We are at a very good hotel--Hotel della Stella, in Via della Pace; we were told of it by a priest with whom we met on our journey. It is not absolutely first-class--still, only people of the highest rank frequent it; two Polish counts dined at the table d'hôte and a French marquise;--in her case I must own I thought I could smell a rat--I suspect she is running away with her lover from her husband, or from her creditors."
Out of deference to the "highest rank" the baroness had put her hand up to her mouth on the side nearest to the young people as she made this edifying communication. "The dinner was very good," she went on, "capital, and we pay six francs a day for our board."
"Seven," corrected Slawa.
"Six, Slawa."
"Seven, mamma."
And a discussion of the deepest interest to the rest of the party ensued between the mother and daughter as to this important point. Slawa remained master of the field; "and with wax-lights and service it comes to eight," she added triumphantly.
"I let her talk," whispered her mother, again directing her words with her hand, "she is very peculiar in that way; everything cheap she thinks must be bad. However, what I was going to say was that, to tell the truth, I did not get enough to eat at dinner--there were flowers on the table,"--and she reached herself a slice of plum-cake.
At this moment the door opened to admit Count Siegburg.
"Good evening," he began--"seeing you so brightly lighted up I could not resist the temptation to come in and see how you were spending your Ash-Wednesday."
He glanced around at the three strangers and instantly grasped the situation; but, far from taking the tragical view of it, he at once determined to get as much fun out of it as possible. After being introduced he placed himself in a position from which he could command the whole party, Sempaly included, and converse both with Madame Wolnitzka and her daughter. He addressed himself first to the latter.
"The name of Wolnitzky is known to fame," he said.
"Yes, my father played a distinguished part in forty-eight," replied Slawa.
"Siegburg--Siegburg?..." Madame Wolnitzka was meanwhile murmuring to herself. "Which of the Siegburgs? The Siegburgs of Budow, or of Waldau, or ...?"
"The Waldau branch," said Baroness Sterzl. "His mother was a Princess Hag," and she leaned back on her cushions.
"Ah! the Waldau Siegburgs! quite the best Siegburgs!" remarked her sister in a tone of astonishment.
"Of course," replied Baroness Sterzl with great coolness, as though she had never in her life spoken to anyone less than "the best Siegburgs."
Madame Wolnitzka arranged her broad face in the most affable wrinkles she could command, and sat smiling at the young count, watching for an opportunity of putting in a word. For the present, however, this did not offer, for her sister addressed her, asking, in a bitter-sweet voice:
"And what made you decide on coming to Rome?"
"Can you ask? I have wished for years to see Rome, and you wrote so kindly and so constantly, Clotilde--so at length ..." and here followed the history of the Bernini. "You remember our Bernini, Clotilde?"
Her sister nodded.
"Well, I had the Apollo, the head only, a copy by Bernini. It is a work of art that has been in our family for generations," she continued, turning to Siegburg as she saw that he was listening to her narrative.
"For centuries," added Madame Sterzl.
"I must confess that I could hardly bear to part with it," her sister went on. "However, I made up my mind to do so when Tulpe, the great antiquary from Vienna, came one day and bid for it."
Sterzl, to whom the god's wanderings were known, made some allusion to them in his dry way; on which the Baroness Wolnitzka shuffled herself a little nearer to Siegburg and addressed herself to him.
"You see, count, it was something like what often happens with a girl: you drag her about to balls for years, take her from one watering-place to another, and never get her off your hands; then you settle down quietly at home and suddenly, when you least expect it, a suitor turns up. I could hardly bear to see the last of the bust I assure you."
"It must indeed have been a harrowing parting," said Siegburg with much feeling.
"Terrible!" said the baroness, "and doubly painful because"--and here she leaned over to whisper in Siegburg's ear--"Slawa is so amazingly like the Bernini. Does not her likeness to the Apollo strike you?"
"I saw it at once--as soon as I came in," Siegburg declared without hesitation.
"Every one says so--well then, you can understand what a sacrifice it was ... it cuts me to the heart only to think of it. Oh! these great emotions! Excuse me if I take off my cap ..." and she hastily snatched off the black lace structure and passing her fingers through her thin grey hair with the vehemence of a genius she exclaimed: "Merciful God! How we poor women are ill-used! crushed, fettered ..."
"Yes, a woman's lot is not a happy one;" said Siegburg sympathetically.
"You are quite an original!" exclaimed her sister, giggling rather uncomfortably--for in good society it is quite understood that when we are suffering under relations devoid of manners, and whom, if we dared, we should shut up at once in a mad-house, we may do what we can to render them harmless by ticketing them with this title--"Quite an original. Are you still always ready to break a lance for the emancipation of our sex?"
"No," replied Madame Wolnitzka, "no, my dear Clotilde, I have given that up. Since I learnt by experience that every woman is ready to set aside the idea of emancipation as soon as she has a chance of marrying I have lost my sympathy with the cause."
"The emancipation of women of course can only be interesting to those who cannot marry," observed Sterzl, who had not long since read an article on this much ventilated question.
"And as there are undoubtedly more women than men in the world, legalized polygamy is the only solution of the difficulty," his aunt asserted.
"Mamma! you really are!..." said Slawa with an angry flare.
"Your views are necessarily petty and narrow," retorted her mother. "If I were speaking of the subject in a light and frivolous tone I could understand your indignation; but I am looking at the matter from a philosophical point of view--you understand me, I am sure, Count Siegburg."
"Perfectly, my dear madam," Siegburg assured her with grave dignity. "You look at the question from the point of national and political economy and from that point of view improprieties have no existence."
Sempaly sat twirling his moustache; Zinka first blushed and then turned pale, while the mistress of the house patted her sister on the shoulder, saying with a sharp, awkward laugh: "Quite an original--quite an original."
But Sterzl, seeing that Siegburg was excessively entertained by the old woman's absurdities, and was on the point of amusing himself still further at her expense by laying some fresh trap for her folly, happily bethought him that the only way to procure silence would be to ask Slawa to sing. So he begged his cousin to give them some national air. Siegburg joined in the request, but Slawa tried to excuse herself on a variety of pretexts: the piano was too low, the room was bad to sing in, and so forth and so forth ... at last, however, she was persuaded to sing some patriotic songs in which Matuschowsky accompanied her.
Her tall, Walkure-like figure swayed and trembled with romantic emotion, and faithful to the traditions of the "art frémissant"--the thrilling school--she held a piece of music fast in both hands for the sake of effect, though it had not the remotest connection with the song she was singing. Her mother sat in breathless silence; tears of admiration ran down her cheeks; like many other mothers, she only recognized those of Slawa's defects which came into conflict with her own idiosyncracy and admired everything else. When Slawa had shouted the last verse of the latest revolutionary ditty, which would have been prohibited in forty-eight, and Sterzl was still asking himself whether it was worse to listen to the mother's tongue or the daughter's singing, Matuschowsky, whose chagrin at the small approval bestowed on his and Slawa's musical efforts had reached an unendurable pitch, observed that it was growing late and that the ladies must be needing rest after all their exertions and fatigues. Madame Wolnitzka hastened to devour the last slice of tea-cake, brushed the crumbs away from her purple satin lap on to the carpet, rose slowly, and made her way with many bows and courtesies towards the door, taking at least half an hour before she was fairly gone.
When his relatives had at length disappeared Sterzl accompanied the two gentlemen, who had also bid the ladies good-night, into the hall, and said good-humoredly to Siegburg:
"You, I fancy, are the only one of the party who has really enjoyed the evening." Siegburg colored; then looking up frankly at his friend he said: "You are not offended?"
"Well--perhaps, just a little," replied Sterzl, with a smile, "but I must admit that the temptation was a strong one."
"And really and truly I am very sorry for you," Siegburg went on, with that ingenuous want of tact that never lost him a friend. "There is nothing in the world so odious as to have a posse of disagreeable relations who suddenly appear and cling on to your coat-tails. I know it by experience. Last spring, at Vienna, half a dozen old aunts of my mother's came down upon us from Bukowina like a snow-storm...." Sempaly meanwhile had buttoned himself into his fur-lined coat and said nothing.
The three days have gone by in which Truyn had desired his cousin to make up his mind--three days since the sudden descent of Baroness Wolnitzka scared away the sweet vision that till then had dwelt in Sempaly's soul and checked the declaration actually on his lips--but he has not yet requested to be removed from Rome. Truyn's eye has been upon him all through these three days, has constantly met his own with grave questioning, as though to say: "Have you decided?"
No, he had not decided. To a man like Sempaly there is nothing in the world so difficult as a decision; fate decides for him--he for himself! Never.
His encounter with the preposterous baroness might silence the avowal he was on the verge of uttering, but it was not so powerful as to banish Zinka's image once and for all from his mind. The silly old woman's chatter he had by this time forgotten; the Stornelli that Zinka had been singing still rang in his ears. For two days he had had the resolution to avoid the Palazetto, but he had seen Zinka for a moment, by accident, yesterday on the Corso. She was in the carriage with Marie Vulpini--she had on a grey velvet dress and a broad-brimmed mousquetaire hat that threw a shadow on her forehead and her golden-brown hair; she held a large bouquet of flowers and was chatting merrily with the little Vulpinis and Gabrielle Truyn; what pretty merry ways she had with children! His blood fired in his veins as their eyes met, and she blushed as she returned his bow. It was the first time she had blushed at seeing him. All that night he dreamed the wildest dreams,--and now he was taking a solitary early walk in the spring sunshine, on the Pincio, lost in thought, but snapping the twigs as he passed along to vent his irritation. More and more he felt that marriage with Zinka was a sine qua non of his existence. He had never in his life denied himself a pleasure, and now....
The brilliant March sun flooded the Piazza di Spagna, the waters of the Baracaccia sparkled and danced, reflecting the radiant blue sky, against which the towers of the Trinita dei Monti stood out sharp and clear. All over the shallow steps of the church models were lounging in the regulation peasant costumes, and blind beggars incessantly muttering their prayers. In front of the Hotel de l'Europe the cab-drivers were sweetly slumbering under the huge patched umbrellas stuck up behind their coach-boxes for protection against the sun or rain. Flower-sellers were squatted on every door-step, and here and there sat a brown-eyed, snub-nosed white Pomeranian dog. The Piazza was swarming with tourists, and Beatrice di Cenci gazed with the saddest eyes in the world out of a photographer's shop at the motley crowd and bustle.
Siegburg, in happy unconsciousness of coming evil, had just come out of Law's, the money changer's, and was inhaling with peculiar satisfaction the delicious pervading scent of hyacinths, when his eye was accidentally attracted by the fine figure of a young English woman who passed him in a closely fitting jersey. He was still watching her when a harsh voice close to him exclaimed:
"Good morning, Count,--what luck!"
He turned round and recognized, under a vast shady hat, the broad, dark face of the Baroness Wolnitzka. Though the day was splendidly fine she had on that most undressed of garments, originally meant as a protection against rain but subsequently adopted to conceal every conceivable defect of costume, and long since known to the mocking youth of Paris as a "cache-misère,' or--to render it freely--a slut-cover; and, though the pavement was perfectly dry, under this waterproof she held up the gown it hid, so high that her wide feet, in their untidy boots with elastic sides, were plainly displayed.
"Ah, baroness!" he said lifting his hat, "I really did not ..."
"No, you did not recognize me," she said calmly, "that was why I spoke to you. What luck! But you are in the embassy too?"
"Certainly."
"That is the very thing--I have a request to make then. My daughter is most anxious to have an audience of His Holiness. Slawa, you must know, is a fervent Catholic, though, between you and me, it is a mere matter of fashion. Now I, for my part, take a philosophical view of religious matters. At the same time I should be very much interested in seeing the Pope...."
"But the Pope is unfortunately more inaccessible than ever," said Siegburg, "besides, as I do not belong to the Papal Embassy I cannot, I regret to say, give you the smallest assistance."
"That is what my nephew says--it is disastrous, positively disastrous," At this moment Slawa joined them, emerging from Piale's library, in an eccentric directoire costume, with a peaked hat and feather, and a pair of gloves, no longer clean, drawn far up over her elbows.
"Ah, good morning," said she, offering the count her finger tips while Matuschowsky, who was in attendance, sulkily bowed.
By this time Siegburg, hemmed in on all sides, began to think the situation unpleasant.
"It is so delightful to meet with a fellow-countryman in a foreign land...." Slawa began.
"Quite delightful," replied Siegburg, thinking to himself: "How am I to get out of this?" when suddenly the absurdity of the thing came upon him afresh, for he heard the baroness once more: "Good morning, Count, what luck!" and at the same moment she bore down on no less a man than Sempaly, who had just come down the sunlit steps, and was crossing the Piazza lost in sullen meditation. "I beg your pardon," he muttered somewhat startled, "I really did not recognize you," and he gazed helplessly into the distance as though he looked for a rescue. But the baroness went on:
"I am so delighted to have met you--I have a particular request to make: could you not procure me admission to the Farnesina? The Duke di Ripalda is said to be all powerful...."
"I am sorry to say it is quite im----"
But at this instant a party of foreigners caught Sempaly's eye--two young ladies with a maid. The two girls, tall and straight as pine-trees, both remarkably handsome and dressed in neatly-fitting English linen dresses, were eagerly bargaining with an Italian who had embroidered cambric trimmings for sale, and they seemed to think it a delightful adventure to buy something in the street.
"Two charming girls! surely I know them," cried Madame Wolnitzka. "Are they not the Jatinskys?"
One of the young ladies, looking up, called out: "Nicki, Nicki!" half across the Piazza, with the frank audacity of people who have grown up in the belief that the world was created expressly for their use.
"Excuse me," said Sempaly with a bow to the baroness, "my cousins ..." and without more ado he made his escape.
"How long have you been here? Where are you staying?"
"We arrived this morning--Hotel de Londres--mamma wrote to you at once to the embassy ... Ah, here is another Austrian!" for Siegburg had contrived to join them. "Rome is but a suburb of Vienna after all! But tell me, who on earth were that old fortune-teller and her extraordinary daughter to whom you were both devoting yourselves so attentively?"
The Wolnitzky trio had in the meantime moved away. The baroness very gracious, Slawa very haughty, as became the living representative of the Apollo Belvedere--past the two handsome girls and down the Via Condotti. Suddenly Baroness Wolnitzka stopped:
"I quite forgot to ask Count Sempaly to get me an invitation to the international artists' festival!" she exclaimed, striking her forehead, and she promptly turned about, evidently intending to repair the omission; only Matuschowsky's decided interference preserved Sempaly from her return to the charge.
The scene is now the Pincio--between five and six in the afternoon, the hour when the band plays every day on the great terrace, while the crowd collects to watch the sun set behind St. Peter's. The reflection of the glow gilds the gravel, glints from the lace on the uniforms and the brass instruments, and throws golden sparks on the water in the wide basin behind the bandstand. The black shadows rapidly lengthen on the grass, and the palmettos, yuccas, and evergreen oaks stand out in rich, deep tones against the sky that fades from crimson to salmon and grey. A special set of visitors haunt the shady side of the Pincio; not the fashionable world: governesses and nurses with their charges, and priests--priests of every degree: the illustrious Monsignori with their finely chiselled features, their upright bearing and their elegant hands; monks, with their bearded faces comfortably framed in their cowls, and whole regiments of priestlings from the Seminaries in their uniforms of every hue; lank, lean figures, with sallow, unformed features.
Separated from these only by a leafy screen the beauty and fashion of Rome drive up and down--the residents in handsome private carriages, the foreigners in hired vehicles of varying degrees of respectability, or even in the humble, one-horse, hackney cab. The crowd grows denser every minute as the stream of Roman rank and wealth swells along the Via Borghese, across the Piazza del Popolo, and up the hill. On the top of the Pincio the carriages come to a stand-still; gentlemen on foot gather round them, bowing and smiling, the ladies talk across from one victoria to another--all sorts of trivial small-talk, unintelligible to the uninitiated. Up from the gardens which line the road from the Via Margutta, comes a fragrance of budding and growing spring; down below lies Rome, and lording it grandly over the labyrinthine mass of houses and ruins, solemn and severe, its crown touched by the last rays of the vanished sun, stands St Peter's.
Countess Ilsenbergh's carriage was drawn up side by side with that of Princess Vulpini; the newly-arrived party of the Jatinskys was divided between them; the countess mother reclining indolently with a gracious smile on her lips by the side of Countess Ilsenbergh, while the princess had undertaken to chaperon the young ladies. On the front seat, by his cousin Eugénie--Nini they called her--sat Sempaly. Siegburg was leaning over the carriage door, talking all sorts of nonsense, and relating all the gossip of Rome that was fit for maiden ears to the two new-comers; they, infinitely amused, laughed till their simple merriment infected even Sempaly, who had taken the seat coveted of all the golden youth of Rome--the seat next his beautiful cousin--in a very gloomy and taciturn humor.
Presently there was an evident sensation among the public; every one was looking in the same direction.
"What is happening?" asked Polyxena, the elder of the two Jatinska girls.
"It must be the Dorias' new drag, or the King," said Princess Vulpini, screwing up her short-sighted eyes. "No," said Siegburg, looking back, "neither. It is Baroness Wolnitzka!"
And in fact, Madame Sterzl's pretty landau, which she had placed at the disposal of her sister for the afternoon, was coming up the road, in it the Wolnitzkas, mother and daughter, both in their finest array. Slawa was leaning back, elegantly languid, while her mother stood up in the carriage and surveyed the world of Rome through an opera-glass. From time to time, either to rest, or because she suddenly lost her balance, she sat down; and then she filled up her time by examining every detail of the trimming and lining of the landau. It was this singular demeanor, combined with her very conspicuous person, that attracted so much attention to the Sterzls' vehicle--an attention which both mother and daughter, of course ascribed to Slawa's extraordinary resemblance to the Belvedere Apollo.
"Baroness Wolnitzka! the wonderful old woman we saw with you yesterday in the Piazza di Spagna?" cried Polyxena.
"Yes."
"Only think, Nicki," she went on to Sempaly, "mamma knows her?"
"Who is it that I know?" asked her mother from the other carriage.
"Baroness Wolnitzka, mamma; do you see her--out there?"
"Heaven preserve me!" exclaimed the countess fervently. "I do not feel secure of my life when I am near her. She fell upon me to-day in the Villa Wolkonsky."
"How on earth do you happen to know the old woman, aunt?" asked Sempaly irritably.
"Oh! my husband had some political connection with hers," the countess explained. "She is not to be borne, she stuck to me like a leech for half an hour."
"Your conversation must have been very interesting," said Siegburg.
"It did not interest me," replied the countess rather sharply. "She told me how much her journey had cost her, what she pays a day for carriage-hire, and that when she was young she had singing-lessons of Cicimara. And she chattered endlessly about her sister Sterzl who is living here 'in the first style and knows absolutely none but the crême de la crême'--you laugh!..."
"Well, mamma, you must confess that the association of such a name as Sterzl with the cream of society is irresistibly funny," cried Polyxena.
"It was anything rather than funny to me," said the countess ruefully. "By the way, though, she did tell me one thing--that her niece Zenaïde Sterzl ... Well, what is there to laugh at now?"
"Zenaïde Sterzl! the name is a poem in itself," cried Polyxena; "it is as though an English woman were named Belinda Brown, or a French girl called Roxalane Dubois."
"Well, it seems from what the old woman told me that the fair Zenaïde is about to relinquish the graceless name of Sterzl for one of the noblest names in Austria--that is the old idiot's story. It has not yet been made public, so she could not tell me the bridegroom's name, but Zenaïde is as good as betrothed to a young count--an attaché to the Austrian embassy. Who on earth can it be?--You ought to know!"
"Ah, ah! Is it you?" said Polyxena turning to Siegburg. But Siegburg shook his head, stroking his yellow moustache to conceal a malicious smile as he watched Sempaly's conspicuous annoyance. "Or is it you, Nicki?" the young countess went on--"I congratulate you on marrying into such a delightful family!"
But such a marked effect of embarrassment was produced by her speech that she was suddenly silent.
"I know nothing of it," said Sempaly with a gloomy scowl. "That old chatterbox's imagination is positively stupendous."
The play of light on the gold lace of the uniforms and the brass instruments is fast fading away and the sheen of the glossy-leaved evergreens is almost extinct. "Gran dio morir si giovane!" is the tune the band is playing. The sun is down, the day is dead, night shrouds the scene; the only color left is a dull glow behind St. Peter's like a dying fire.
"At the Ellis' this evening," Siegburg calls out to the ladies as he lifts his hat and turns away. The carriages make their way down the hill, past the Villa Medici, back into Rome, and their steady roar is like that of a torrent rushing to join the sea.