The Brancaleone Palace, on the slope of the Quirinal, is one of the finest in Rome, and particularly famous for its gardens, laid out in terraces down the side of the hill, with the lower rooms of the palazzo opening on to the uppermost level. The dancing was in a large, almost square, room adjoining a long vaulted corridor full of old pictures relieved here and there by the cold severity of an antique marble statue. It was lighted by marvellous chandeliers of Venetian glass that hung from the ceiling. At the end of the corridor two steps led down into an anteroom, dividing it from a smaller sanctuary where the gems of the Brancaleone collection were displayed--mixed up, unfortunately, with several modern monstrosities--and from this room a door opened into the garden.
Zinka arrived late. A transient and feverish expectancy lent her pinched features the brilliancy they had lost while her timid reserve gave her even more charm than her former innocent self-confidence, and her dress was certainly wonderfully becoming. Nor had she lost all her old popularity, for she was soon surrounded by a little crowd of Roman 'swells;' one or two even of the Jatinskas' admirers deserted to Zinka.
Truyn was not present; the cold his little girl had caught at St. Peter's had developed into a serious illness, and he could not leave her.
Zinka, with her gliding grace, her small head held a little high, and her softened glance, was still pretty to watch as she danced, and attracted general attention. The music, the splendor of the entertainment, the consciousness of looking well put her into unwonted spirits. She sent a searching glance round the room--no, he was not there. Sterzl stood talking with the general, delighted with her little triumph and charming appearance; then he was congratulated by several men of distinction on his recent promotion. He thanked them with characteristic simplicity and sincerity--the evening was a success for him too. Not long after midnight he left to attend to pressing business--matters were in a very unsettled state--and went to the embassy.
Within a short time Sempaly came in. He had spent the previous night, as was very generally known, at cards--this was a new form of dissipation for him--he had lost a great deal of money, and he looked worn and out of spirits. He did not care for dancing and came so late to ask his handsome cousins for the cotillon that they were both engaged--a result to which he was so manifestly indifferent that Nini actually wiped away a secret tear. He was now standing with his fingers in his waistcoat pockets and his glass in his eye, exchanging impertinent comments with a number of other young men, on the figure of this woman or that girl, and trying to imagine himself in the position of the fabulous savage who found himself for the first time in a civilized ball-room.
Suddenly he was silent--something had arrested his attention.
The band was playing a waltz at that time very popular: "Stringi mi," by Tosti. The room was very hot; it was the moment when the curls of the young ladies begin to straighten, and their movements--at first a little prim--begin to gain in freedom; when there is an electrical tension in the air suggestive of possible storms and the most indifferent looker-on is aware of an obscure excitement. Crespigny and Zinka spun past him--Zinka pale and cool in the midst of the emotional stir around her. She was not living in the present--she was in a dream. Suddenly Crespigny, who was not a good dancer, stumbled against another couple, caught his foot in a lady's train and fell with his partner. Sempaly pushed his way through the dancers with blind force and was the first to help Zinka to her feet. Without thinking for a moment of the hundred eyes that were fixed upon him he leaned over the young girl--her power over him had risen from the dead. She, bewildered by her fall, did not perhaps at first see who it was that had helped her to rise; she clung to his arm with half-shut eyes; then, as he whispered a few sympathizing words, she looked up, started, colored, and shrank from him.
"A very unpleasant accident," said some of the ladies.
Sempaly had taken possession of Zinka's slender hand and drew it with gentle insistence through his arm; then he led her out of the heated ball-room into the adjoining gallery.
The accident for which she had besieged Heaven with prayers had happened--the accident which threw him once more in her way. His old passion was awake again; she saw it--she could read it in his eyes. She summoned up all her self-command to conceal her happiness--not so much out of deliberate calculation as from genuine timidity and womanly pride. He talked--saying all sorts of eager, sympathetic things--she asked only the coldest and simplest questions. He had fetched her a wrap and with the white shawl thrown around her he led her from one room to another among the fan-palms and creamy yellow statues. Now and then she spoke to some acquaintance whom they met wandering like themselves, but these were fewer and fewer. The supper-room was thrown open and every one was gone to the buffet.
Zinka's coldness, for which he was not at all prepared, provoked Sempaly greatly. He felt with sudden conviction that there could be no joy on earth to compare with that of once holding her in his arms and kissing her--devouring her with kisses. This image took entire possession of him and beyond the possible fulfilment of that dream he did not look. That joy must be his at any cost, if the whole world were to crumble at his feet.
"Zinka," he said in a low tone, "Zinka--Lent is over--Easter is come."
"Yes? what do you mean?" she said coldly, almost sternly.
"I mean," he said, and he looked her straight in the face, "that I have fasted and that now I will feast, and be happy."
They were in a small room--a sort of raised recess divided from the ball-room by a row of pillars; they were alone.
A joy so acute as to be almost pain came over Zinka. It blinded and stunned her; she did not speak, she did not smile, she did not even look up at him; she could not have stirred even if she had wished it--she was paralyzed. He thought she would not hear him.
"Zinka," he urged, "can you not forgive me for having jingled the fool's cap for six weeks till I could not hear the music of the spheres? Can you not forgive me--for the sake of the misery I have endured? I can bear it no longer--I confess and yield unconditionally--I cannot live without you...."
Zinka was not strong enough to bear such emotion; the terrible tension to which for the last quarter of an hour her pride had compelled her gave way; she tottered, put out her hands, and was falling. He put his arm round her and with the other hand pushed open a glass door that led into the garden.
"Come out, the air will do you good," he said scarcely audibly, and they went out on to the deserted terrace. His arm clasped her more closely and drew her to him. Involuntarily he waited till she should make some effort to free herself from his hold; but she was quite passive; she only raised a tear-bedewed face with a blissful gaze into his eyes, and whispered: "I ought not to forgive you so easily...." and then, with no more distrust or fear than a child clinging to its mother, she let her head fall on his shoulder and sobbed for happiness. A strange reverence came over him; the sound of some church bell came up from the city. He kissed her with solemn tenderness on the forehead and only said:
"My darling, my sacred treasure!" She was safe.
When the general came out of the card-room to look once more at the dancers before he withdrew, the cotillon, with its fanciful figures and lavish distribution of ribbons and flowers, was nearly over.
"What a cruel idea!" he heard in a lamentable voice from one of a row of chaperons, "to give a ball in such heat as this!"
It was the baroness, who was searching all round the room with her eye-glass and a very sour and puckered expression of face. Siegburg, who, as the general knew, was to have danced the cotillon with Zinka, was sitting out; when von Klinger asked him the reason he answered very calmly, that "he believed Zinka had felt tired and had gone home," But the way in which he said it roused the old man's suspicions that he put forward this hypothesis to prevent any further search being made for Zinka. He had seen her last in the corridor with Sempaly, and he hurried off to find her. He sought in vain in all the nooks hidden by the plants; in vain in the recesses behind the pillars--but the door to the garden was open. This filled him with apprehension--he went out, sure that he must be following them.
The air was oppressively sultry and damp; it crushed him with a sense of hopeless anxiety. The scirocco had cast its baleful spell over Rome.
Northerners who have never been in Rome have no idea of the nature of the scirocco; they suppose it to be a storm of hot wind. No.... it is when the air is still and damp, when it distils but does not waft a heavy perfume that the scirocco diffuses its poison: a subtle influence compounded of the scent of flowers that it forces into life only to destroy them--of the mists from the Tiber whose yellow flood--like mud mixed with gold, which rolls over the corpses and treasure that lie buried in its depths--of the exhalations from the graves, and the perennial incense from all the churches of Rome. The scirocco cheats the soul with delusive fancies and fills the heart with gloom and oppression; it inspires the imagination with dreams of splendid achievement and stretches the limbs on a couch in languor and exhaustion. It penetrates even the cool seclusion of the cloister and breathes on the pale cheek of the young nun who is struggling for devout aspiration, reminding her of long forgotten dreams.
All that is melancholy, all that is cruel and wicked in Rome--much, too, that is beautiful--is engendered by the scirocco. It is creative of glorious conceptions and of hideous deeds. One feels inclined to fancy that on the day when Caesar fell under the dagger of Brutus Scirocco and Tramontane fought their last fight for the mastery of Rome--and Scirocco won the day.
A dense grey cloud hung over the city and veiled the sinking moon. A cascade that tumbled from basin to basin, down the terraced slope of the Quirinal, plashed weirdly in the deep twilight of the earliest dawn, which was just beginning shyly to vie with the dying moon. Light and shade had ceased to exist; the whole scene presented the dim, smudged effect of a rubbed charcoal drawing.
The general sent a peering glance through the laurel-hedged alleys that led down the hill. Above the clipped evergreens, rose huge ilexes, wreathed to the very top with ivy and climbing roses. Here and there something white gleamed dimly in the grey--he rushed to meet it--it was a statue or a white blossomed shrub. Roses and magnolias opened their blossoms to the solitude, and the scent of orange-flowers filled the heavy air, stronger than all the other perfumes of the morning. Now and then, like a faint sigh, a shiver ran through the leaves--the fall of a dying flower.
The old man held his breath to listen; he called: "Zinka--Sempaly!" No answer.
Suddenly he heard low voices in a path known as the alley of the Sarcophagus and thither he bent his steps. The sullen light fell through a gap in the leafy wall on Sempaly and Zinka, seated on a bench, hand in hand, and talking familiarly, forgetful of all the world besides.
Zinka was the first to see him; she was not in the least disconcerted.
"Oh! Uncle Klinger!" she exclaimed. "Mamma is waiting for me, I dare say!--but do not scold me, I entreat you--."
Thank God for those happy innocent eyes that looked so frankly into his!--On purity like hers Scirocco could have no power! No--he could not be angry with her.--Buthe!
"Sempaly!" cried the old man indignantly: "What possesses you?"
"I have at length made up my mind to be happy," said Sempaly with feeling, and he raised Zinka's hand to his lips. "That is all."
"And I ought not to have forgiven him so easily--ought I?" murmured Zinka, quailing at the general's stern frown, and her head drooped.
"Zinka has been missed, you know how spiteful people are!" exclaimed von Klinger angrily, ignoring the sentimentality of the situation. Sempaly interrupted him with vehement irritation.
"What I should like to do," he said half to himself, "is to go straight back to the ball-room, and tell my most intimate friends at once of our engagement!" But even as he spoke he reconsidered the matter; "but I cannot," he went on, "unfortunately I cannot. I must even entreat you, Zinka, to keep it a secret even from your own household."
"Come, at once, with me," said the general drily, "my carriage is waiting in the Piazza. If I am not mistaken there is a little gate here which leads on to it... Yes, here it is. I will tell your mother, so that others shall hear it, that you felt ill and left before the cotillon began and that Lady Julia took you home."
When Zinka was safely on her way to the palazetto in charge of the general's trusty old coachman, the two men looked each other in the face.
"Outrageous!" growled the general furiously. Sempaly turned upon him quickly:
"Think what you will of me," he said, "but do not let the shadow of a suspicion rest on Zinka. You know that if you hold up a cross to the devil himself, his power is quelled."
Without answering a word the general hurried past Sempaly and straight into the ball-room; but he found time to lock behind him the alcove door leading into the garden. In the ball-room he was met by the baroness who anxiously asked him:
"Where is Zinka? have you seen Zinka?"
"Zinka felt shaken and upset by her fall--she went away a long time since, with Lady Julia who took her home."
He spoke very distinctly and in French, so that several persons who were standing near might hear him. "She might have let me know," exclaimed the baroness peevishly.
"We looked for you, but could nowhere find you," said the general. Never in his life before had he told a lie.
At some unearthly hour next morning he called on Lady Julia to confide to her the mystery of the night's adventure, that she might not contradict his story; as he had actually put Zinka into her carriage there seemed to be no other danger. Though she disliked the falsehood as much as he did, she was quite ready to confirm the fiction; at the same time she could not help saying again and again:
"Poor little thing! I hope it may all come right!"
"Dearest Zinka, my own sweet little love,
"My brother arrived in Rome last night; he is on his way to Australia and I am thankful to say stays only a few days. So long as he is here I must make every sacrifice and hardly see you at all, for he must know nothing of our engagement. Now, shall I tell you the real sordid reason why I cannot speak to him of my happiness?--during these last few miserable weeks, simply and solely to kill the time, I have gambled and have always been unlucky, and I have got deeply into debt. My brother will pay, as he always has done, so long as the conditions remain unchanged. But ... however, it is not a matter to write about. Believe this much only: that his narrow views can never affect my feelings towards you; though I may seem to yield, for I think it useless to provoke his antagonism. As soon as he has sailed there will be nothing in the way of our engagement and we will be married immediately. To an accomplished fact he must surrender. If I possibly can, I will see you this evening at the palazetto--just to have one kiss and a loving word. Till then I can only implore you to keep this absolutely secret.
"Your perfectly devoted
"N.S."
This was the note that Zinka received the morning after the ball, as she was breakfasting alone in her own room, rather later than usual, but with a convalescent appetite. The color mounted to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed indignantly. Coldness and neglect she had borne--but the meanness and weakness--the moral cowardice--that this note betrayed, degraded him in her eyes till she almost scorned him. She felt as though a sudden glare had shown her the real Sempaly--as though the man she loved was not he, but some one else. The man she had loved was a lofty young god who had chosen to descend from his high estate to break the heart of an insignificant girl who ought to have thought herself happy only to have gazed upon him; but this was a boneless, nerveless mortal, who could stoop to petty subterfuge for fear of having to face the wrath of his brother.
She was furious; all the pride that had been crushed into silence by her dejection was roused to arms. She went to her desk and wrote as follows:
"I am prepared to marry you in defiance of your brother's will, but I could never think of becoming your wife behind his back. I am ready to defy him, but I do not choose to cheat him. It is of no use to come to the house this evening unless you are quite clear on this point. I could not think of marrying you unless I were perfectly sure that I was more indispensable to your happiness than your brother's good will. You must therefore consider yourself released from every tie, and regard the words you spoke yesterday in a moment of excitement as effaced from my memory. Ever yours,
"Zinka Sterzl."
Zinka enclosed this peremptory note in an envelope, addressed it, rang for her maid and desired her to have it sent immediately to the Palazzo di Venezia.
"And shall I say there is an answer?" asked the girl.
"No," said Zinka shortly.
No sooner had the maid gone on her errand than the hapless Zinka felt utterly wretched and almost repented of having written so indignantly... She might have said all that was in the note without expressing herself so bitterly. She thought the words over, knit her brows, shook her head--and at that moment her eye fell on another letter which had been brought to her with Sempaly's, and which she had forgotten to open. She saw that the writing was Truyn's. She hastily read the note which was a short one.
"Dear Zinka:--My poor little girl has been much worse and the doctor gives me very little hope. She constantly asks for you, both when she is conscious and in her delirium. Come to her if you can. Your old friend,
"Truyn."
"P. S. It is nothing catching--inflammation of the lungs."
Zinka started up--she forgot everything--her happiness, her grief, Sempaly himself--remembering only Truyn's indefatigable kindness and the sorrow that threatened him.
"Nothing catching...." she repeated to herself: "poor man! he thinks of others even now--it is just like him. While I ... I?" She colored deeply, for she recollected how that evening the child had sat shivering by her side and she had not noticed it.
"I had my head turned by a kind word from him...." she thought vexed with her own folly.
In a very few minutes she was hurrying across the Corso towards the Piazza di Spagna. Her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her. Zinka almost flew, heeding nothing and looking at no one, till, in the Piazza di Spagna, she came upon a group of persons coming out of the Hotel de Londres and felt a light hand on her arm. Looking round she saw Nini.
"Good-morning. Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked the young countess pleasantly.
"Good-morning," said Zinka hastily, "I am in a great hurry--I am going to the Hotel de l'Europe; Gabrielle Truyn is very ill--she wants to see me."
But at this moment Zinka perceived a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a very handsome face and haughty expression, standing close to Nini. He was gazing at her with perfectly well-bred admiration, and Nini introduced him as Prince Sempaly. Then she saw that Nicklas Sempaly was just behind, with Polyxena. His eyes met hers with a passionate flash, but he only bowed with distant formality. Zinka had no time to think about his manner, she was hardly conscious of his presence--all she felt was that she was being detained.
"You must excuse me," she said, smiling an apology to Nini and shaking hands warmly with her without stopping to think of the formalities of caste. "Poor Count Truyn is expecting me." And she hurried on again.
"Who is that sweet-looking girl, Nini?" asked the prince, "for, of course, you omitted to mention her name."
"Fräulein Sterzl," replied Nini, "the sister of one of the secretaries to the embassy."
"Sterzl," repeated the prince somewhat flatly.
"Zenaïde Sterzl!" said Polyxena over her shoulder.
But the ironical accent emphasis she laid on the odd mixture of the romantic and the commonplace was thrown away upon Prince Sempaly, who was much too fine a gentleman to laugh at his inferiors; all he said was:
"Sterzl? I seem to know the name. Sterzl--I served for a time under a Colonel Sterzl of the Uhlans. He was a very superior man."
Zinka meanwhile was flying on to the Hotel de l'Europe. In the sun-flooded court-yard stood two rose-trees, a white and a red--two brown curly-headed little boys were fighting a duel with walking-sticks in a shady corner--two English families were packing themselves into roomy landaus for an excursion and sending the servants in and out to fetch things that they had forgotten. The air was full of the scent of roses, and sunshine, and laughter; but one of the Englishwomen hushed her companion who had laughed rather loudly and pointing up to one of the windows said: "Remember the sick child."
A cold chill fell on Zinka's heart--she ran up the familiar stairs. In Truyn's drawing-room sat Gabrielle's English governess--anxious but helpless.
"May I go in?" asked Zinka.
"No, wait a minute--the doctor is there." At this moment Truyn came out of the child's room with Dr. E---- the German physician, and conducted him down-stairs. Truyn had the fixed, calm, white face of a man who is accustomed to bear his sorrows alone.
When he returned he went up to Zinka and took her hand: "She asks for you constantly," he said, "but do you think you can prevent her seeing that you are unhappy and alarmed?"
"Yes--indeed you may trust me," said Zinka bravely, wiping away her tears; and she went into the child's room "as silent and bright as a sunbeam."
Some one must have seen Zinka and Sempaly in the course of their moonlight walk or else have found out something about it in spite of the general's precautions; this was made evident by an article which came out on the Friday after the ball in a French 'society paper' published weekly in Rome. The title of the article was "a moonlight cotillon;" it began with an exact description of Zinka, of whom it spoke as Fräulein Z---- a S--l, the sister of a secretary in the Austrian Embassy; referred to the sensation produced by her appearance as Lady Jane Grey, spoke of her as an elegant adventuress--"a professional beauty"--and hinted at her various unsuccessful schemes for winning a princely coronet; schemes which had culminated in a moonlight walk, a few nights since, during a ball at the house of a distinguished member of Roman society, and which had outdone in audacity all that had ever been known to thechronique scandaleuseof Rome. "Will she earn her reward in the form of a coronet and will the pages of 'High Life' ere long announce a fashionable marriage in which this young lady will fill a part?--that is the question," so the article ended.
"High Life,"--this was the name of the paper graced by this effusion--was scouted, abused and condemned by everybody, covertly maintained by several, and read by most--with disgust and indignation it is true, but still read. On this fateful Friday every copy of "High Life" was sold in no time, and before the sun had set Zinka's name was in every mouth.
What said the world of Rome? Lady Julia cried, had some tea, and went to bed; Mr. Ellis said "shocking!" assured his wife that he was convinced of Zinka's innocence, and that it would certainly triumph over calumny; after which he quietly went about his business and spent two whole hours in practising a difficult passage on the concertina.
It was the Brauers--the Sterzls' old neighbors before mentioned--who contributed chiefly to the diffusion of the article, supplementing it with their own comments. They had some acquaintance among the "cream" of Rome, though they had not been invited to the ball at the Brancaleone palace. Frau Brauer assumed a tone of perfidious compassion: it was a terrible affair for a young girl's reputation, though, for her part, she could see nothing extraordinary in a moonlight wandering with an intimate friend. Her husband, to whom the Sterzl family had paid very little attention--the baroness out of conceit, and Cecil and Zinka because he was in fact intolerably affected, pompous and patronizing--said with a sneering smile that he had never seen anything to admire in that little adventuress, with her free and easy innocence--pushing herself into society she was not born to. He had always thought it most unbecoming; and it must be a pleasant thing indeed for the Duchess of Brancaleone to have such a scandalous business take place in her house--she would be more careful for the future whom she invited!
Madame de Gandry and Mrs. Ferguson thought the article very amusingly written--not that they would ever have said a word about such a piece of imprudence--for really no one was safe! To be sure any evil that might be written against them would be a lie--a pure invention--which in Zinka's case was quite unnecessary ... So they sent the paper round to all their friends as a warning against rushing into acquaintance with strangers: "One cannot be too careful." Zinka had seemed to them suspicious from the first, for after all she was not "the real thing."
All these spiteful and cruel insinuations they even ventured to utter in the presence of Princess Vulpini, in the general's atelier, the spot where all that circle concentrated whenever anything had occurred to excite or startle it, and they made the princess furious.
"I am an Austrian myself," she said, "and was brought up with ideas of exclusiveness which are as much above suspicion as they are beyond your comprehension. I am strictly conservative in all my views. But Zinka is elect by nature--an exceptional creature before whom all such laws give way. I should have regarded it as pure folly to sacrifice the pleasure of her acquaintance for the sake of a social dogma."
"Exceptions always fare badly," murmured the general.
Countess Ilsenbergh, who was as strict on points of honor as she was on matters of etiquette, was deeply aggrieved by the article; she expressed herself briefly but strongly on the subject of the freedom of the press, and confessed that, whether Zinka were innocent or guilty, things looked very ugly for Sempaly.
The count rushed into eloquence giving an exhaustive discourse on the whole social question.
"Princess Vulpini is quite right," he said. "Fräulein Sterzl is a bewitching creature, quite an exception--and if any departure from traditional law is ever permissible it would be so in her case. But the general too is right; exceptions must always fare badly in the world, and we cannot endanger the very essence and being of social stability in order to improve the position of any single individual. Above all, we must never create a precedent." And he proceeded to enlarge on the horrible consequences which must result from such a mixture of classes, referred to the example of France, and proposed the introduction of the Hindoo system of caste, in its strictest application, as a further bulwark for the protection of society in Europe and the coercion of ambitious spirits. His wife, at this juncture, objected that European society had not yet reached such a summit of absolute exclusiveness as he would assume, and that, consequently what was immediately needed was not any such far-reaching scheme for its protection, but some plan for dealing with the disagreeable circumstances in which its imperfection had at this time placed them.
He replied that the matter lay in a nutshell; either the story in 'High Life' was a lie, in which case Sempaly had nothing to do but to deny it categorically, to prove an alibi at the hour mentioned and to horsewhip the editor--or, the facts stated were true, and then--under the circumstances--there was nothing for it--but ... "the lady's previous character was quite above suspicion--there was nothing for it--but...." and he shrugged his shoulders.
"But to make Fräulein Sterzl Countess Sempaly!" cried Madame de Gandry. "Well, I must say I do think it rather too much to give an adventurous little chit a coronet as a reward for sheer impudence. But I beg your pardon, general,--I had forgotten that you are a friend of the family."
"And I," exclaimed the general beside himself, and quite pale with rage, "I, madame, was within an ace of forgetting that I was listening to a lady!"
Princess Vulpini interposed: "You yourself said, madame, that you had always avoided any acquaintance with Zinka; now I have known her intimately, and seen her almost every day; I have observed her demeanor with men--with young men--and heard her conversation with other girls, and I can assure you that the word impudence is no more applicable to her conduct than to that of my little girl of three.--And if she did, in fact, go into the garden with my cousin the night of the ball, it is a proof simply of romantic thoughtlessness, of such perfect, unsuspicious innocence that it ought of itself avail to protect her against slander. I spent last night with Zinka, by the bedside of my little niece who is ill, and no girl with a stain on her conscience could look so sweetly pure or smile with such childlike sincerity. I would put my hand in the fire for her spotless innocence!"
The princess spoke with such dignity and warmth, and while she spoke she fixed such a scathing eye on Madame de Gandry, that the Frenchwoman, abashed in spite of herself, could only mutter some incoherent answer and withdraw with Mrs. Ferguson in her wake.
The four Austrians were alone.
"The person who puzzles me in this business," said the princess, "is Nicki Sempaly. As soon as this wretched paper came into my hands I sent it to his rooms. There I heard that he had just gone out with the Jatinskys. I went to the Hotel de l'Europe to talk it over with my brother, but he had gone to lie down and I had not the heart to wake him. Besides, he could have done no good, and I could not bear to disturb his happiness over his child's amendment.--So I came to unburden my heart to you, general."
"Sempaly cannot have seen it yet," suggested Ilsenbergh. The princess shrugged her shoulders. Countess Ilsenbergh once more expressed her opinion that "it was a very unpleasant affair and that she had foreseen it all from the first," after which, finding that it would be difficult to prevent her husband from delivering another lecture, she rose to go.
At this instant Prince Vulpini came into the studio with a beaming countenance. "Ah! here you are! I saw the carriage at the door as I was passing.--Have you heard the latest news?"
"Sempaly is engaged to Zinka?" cried his wife.
"No!" cried the prince; "the wind last night tore down the national flag on the Quirinal. Hurrah for the Tramontana!"
A few minutes later the general was alone; after a moment's hesitation he took up his hat and hurried off to the palazetto to see how matters stood there. He was one of those who had been the latest to hear of the slanderous article and at the same time to be the most deeply wounded by it. But perhaps by this time Sempaly had engaged himself to Zinka, he said to himself, and he hastened his pace.
It was the baroness's day at home. The silly woman was sitting dressed and displayed--a grey glove on one hand, while with the other she pretended to arrange a dish of bonbons.
"How kind of you!--" she exclaimed as the general entered the room. The stereotyped formula came piping out of her thin lips without the smallest variation to every fresh visitor, as chilling and as colorless as snow.
He had hardly greeted the baroness when he looked round for Zinka--at first without seeing her; it was not till a bright voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, uncle, come and give me a kiss," that he discovered her, in the darkest corner of the room, leaning back in a deep arm-chair and looking rather tired and sleepy but wonderfully pretty and unwontedly happy.
"I am so tired, so tired!--you cannot think how tired I am," she said, laying his hand coaxingly against her cheek, "and mamma is so cruel as to insist on my staying in the drawing-room because it is her day at home, and I was sound asleep when you came in, for thank heaven! we have had no visitors yet. I sat with Gabrielle all last night and the night before without closing my eyes; but then I was so glad to think that the little pet would not take her medicine from anyone but me; and last night, at length, in the middle of one of my stories, she fell asleep on my shoulder. But then in order not to disturb her I sat quite still for six hours. I felt as if I had been nailed to a cross--and to-day I am so stiff I can hardly move." And she stretched her arms and curled herself into her chair again with a pretty caressing action of her shoulders. "You ought to have stayed in bed," said the general paternally. "Oh dear no! why I slept on till quite late in the morning. Besides, my being tired is of no real importance; the great point is that Gabrielle is out of danger: Oh, if anything had happened to her!..." and she shuddered; "I cannot bear to think of it. Count Truyn is firmly convinced that I have contributed in some mysterious way to the child's amendment, and when I came away this morning he kissed my hands in gratitude as if I had been the holyBambinohimself. I laughed and cried both at once, and now I am so happy--my heart feels as light as one of those air balls the children carry tied by a string, that they may not fly off up to the clouds. But why do you look so grave? are you not as glad as I am, uncle that...."
The baroness who had been looking at her watch here expressed her surprise that not a living soul had come near them to-day.
"You are evidently not a living soul, uncle--nothing but my dear grumpy old friend," said Zinka with her pathetic little laugh. There was something peculiarly caressing and touching about her to-day; the old man's eyes were moist and his heart bled for the sweet child.
Outside the door they heard a heavy swift step--the step of a man in pressing but crushing trouble; the door was torn open and Sterzl, breathless, green rather than pale, foaming with rage, stormed in--a newspaper in his hand.
"What is the matter--what has happened?" cried Zinka dismayed. He came straight up to her and stared at her with dreadful eyes.
"Were you really in the garden with Sempaly during the cotillon?" he said hoarsely.
"Yes," she said trembling.
He gave a little start and shuddered--tottered--then he pulled himself up and flung the newspaper at her feet--at hers--his butterfly, his darling!
"Read that," he said.
Von Klinger tried to seize the paper, but Sterzl held him with a firm hand. "Your leniency is out of place," he said dully; "shemay read anything."
Zinka read; suddenly she sprang up with a cry of horror and the paper fell out of her hand. Even now she did not understand the matter,--exactly what she was accused of she did not know; only that it was something unwomanly and disgraceful.
"Cecil!" she began, looking into his face, "Cecil...." and then she covered her face, which from white had turned crimson, with her hands. He meanwhile had felt the absolute innocence of the girl, and was repenting of his rash and cruel wrath.
"Zini," he cried, "forgive me--I was mad with rage--mad." And he tried to put his arm round her. But she held him off.
"Leave me, leave me," she said. "No, I cannot forgive you. Oh Cecil! if all the newspapers in the world had said you had cheated, for instance--do you think I should have believed them?"
He bent his head before her with a certain reverence: "But this is different, Zini," he said very gently; "I do not say it as an excuse for myself, but it is different. You do not see how different because you are a child--an angel--poor, sweet, little butterfly," and he drew her strongly to his breast and laid his lips on the golden head; she however would not surrender and insisted on freeing herself.
"What on earth is going on?" the baroness asked again, for the twentieth time. Getting, even now, no reply, she picked up the newspaper that was lying on the floor, caught sight of the article, read a few lines of it, and broke out into railing complaints of Zinka--enumerating all the sins of which Zinka had been guilty from her earliest years and particularly within her recent memory, and ending with the words: "And you will ruin Cecil yet in his career."
"Be quiet, mother;" said Cecil sternly. "My career is not the present question--we must think of our honor and of her happiness," and leaning over the fragile and trembling form of his sister, he said imploringly:
"Tell me, Zini, exactly what happened."
She had freed herself from his clasp and was standing before him with her arms folded across--rigid though tremulous--and her voice was cold and monotonous as she obeyed him and gave with naïve exactitude her short and simple report, blushing as she spoke. When she had ended Cecil drew a deep breath.
"And since that you have heard nothing of Sempaly?" he asked.
"The next morning he sent me a note."
"Zinka, do not be angry with me ... show me that note."
She left the room and soon returned with the letter which she handed to Sterzl. He read it through with great gravity and marked attention then knitting his brows he slowly folded it up and turned it over.
"And you answered him?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And what did you say?"
"Very little--that I was quite prepared to marry him without his brother's consent, but behind his brother's back?--No!"
In the midst of his trouble a flash of pride lighted up Sterzl's weary eyes. "Bravo, Zini!" he murmured, "and he took this answer in silence?"
Zinka paused to think:
"Yes...." she said; "but no.--He sent me a note to the Hotel de l'Europe."
"And what does he say in that?"
"I have not read it yet; it came just at the moment when Gabrielle was at the worst and then I forgot it--but here it is...." and she drew it out of the pocket of her blue serge dress. Sterzl shook his head and glanced with a puzzled air at his sister; then he opened the note. It was as follows:
"My darling little treasure, my haughty indignant little sweetheart:
"Immediately on the receipt of your note I rushed to see you. The porter told me that you were not at home but with your poor little friend Gabrielle. Of course I cannot think of intruding on you there, though I would this day give a few years of my life for a sight of you--for one kiss. Sooner than lose you I am ready to throw up everything. Command and I obey ... but no, I must be wise for us both; I must wait till my affairs are somewhat in order. There is no help for it--I can only ask your forgiveness. I kiss your hands and the hem of your garment--I am utterly unworthy of you, but I love you beyond words.
"Sempaly."
When Sterzl had read this highly characteristic letter he slowly paced the room two or three times, and finally stood still in front of his sister. Then, taking her hand and kissing it fondly, he said:
"Forgive me, Zini--I am really proud of you. You have behaved like an angel ... but he--he is a contemptible sneak."
But this she could not stand. "I do not defend him," she exclaimed vehemently, "but at any rate he loves me, and he understands me.--He, at any rate, would never have suspected me ... and ... and...." But it was in vain that she paused for a word--she could say nothing more in his favor; but she called up all her pride, and holding her head very high she left the room; as soon as she was outside they could hear her sob convulsively.
The baroness rose to follow her, but Cecil stood in her way.
"Where are you going?" he asked sternly.
"To Zinka; I really must make her see what mischief she has done. It is outrageous ... why, at thirteen I should have known better!" Sterzl smiled bitterly:
"Very likely," he said, "but I must beg you to leave Zinka to herself; she is miserable enough without that."
"And are we to submit to her heedlessness without even reproving her for it?" said the baroness indignantly.
"Yes, mother," he said decidedly; "our business now is not to reprove her, but to protect and comfort her."
At this juncture dinner was announced. Sterzl begged the general to remain and dine with them, for he had, he said, several things to talk over with him. He evidently wished above everything to avoid being alone with his mother. Before sitting down he went to Zinka's room to see whether she would not eat at least a little soup; but he came back much distressed.
"She would hardly speak to me," he said; "she is quite beside herself." And he himself sat in silence, eating nothing, drinking little, crumbling his bread and playing with his napkin. Each time the door opened he looked anxiously round.
The meal was short and uncomfortable; when they had returned to the drawing-room and were drinking their coffee the servant brought Sterzl a letter. Cecil took it hastily, looked at the address, and, not recognizing the writing, at last opened it. It contained only a half-sheet of note-paper, with a cleverly sketched caricature: Sterzl himself as auctioneer, the hammer in one hand a doll in the other, and before him the coroneted heads of Rome. Sterzl at once recognized the likeness, though his lank figure was absurdly exaggerated, and his whole appearance made as grotesque as possible. He only shrugged his shoulders and said indifferently:
"Does any one really think that such a thing as this can hurt or vex me now? Look, general--Sempaly, no doubt, is the ingenious artist of this masterpiece."
The general took the paper, and would have torn it across to prevent Sterzl from examining it any further; but before he could do so Cecil, looking over his shoulder, had snatched it out of his hand.
"There is something written on it!" he said, deciphering the scribble in one corner, in Sempaly's weak, illegible hand-writing: "Mademoiselle Sterzl, going--going--gone--!... Ah! I understand!"
His face grew purple and he breathed with difficulty.
"To send you this is contemptible," cried the general; "Sempaly drew this before he had ever seen Zinka.... I know it, I was present at the time."
"What difference does that make?" said Sterzl; "if this is the view people took of me and my proceedings! Well, and after all they were right--I should have liked to see my sister brilliantly married--I meant it well ... and I have made myself ridiculous and have been the ruin of the poor child."
His rage and misery were beyond control; he walked up and down, then suddenly stood still, looking out of the open window; then again he paced the room.
"Sempaly is incomprehensible," he began, "quite incomprehensible! I had no very high opinion of his character--particularly lately; but I could not have supposed him capable of such baseness and cruelty. What do you gather from his not coming here to-day?"
"He simply has not happened to see the paper," the general suggested. "He is gone on some expedition with his brother and his cousins."
"Well, but even supposing that he has not read this article," said Sterzl, "it still is very strange that, as matters stand between him and Zinka, he should have let two days go by without making any attempt to see her."
The general was silent.
"You know him better than I do," Cecil began again presently, "and, as Zinka tells me, you were present during some part of this romantic moonlight promenade. Do you think he seriously intends to marry her?"
"I know that he is madly in love with her, and even the Ilsenberghs, who were discussing the matter at my house with the Princess Vulpini, saw no alternative for him--irrespective of his attachment to her--but to make her an offer."
"We shall see," murmured Sterzl. He looked at the clock: "half past nine!" he exclaimed. "This is becoming quite mysterious. I will try once more to see him at his rooms; his chasseur will perhaps know when he is expected to return home. Would you mind remaining here?" he added in a low voice; "keep my mother from going to Zinka; the poor child cannot bear it;" and he hurried off.
In about half an hour he returned.
"Well?" asked the general.
"He set out at one o'clock for Frascati, with the prince, the Jatinskys, and Siegburg," said Sterzl gloomily. "When I asked whether he was to be back this evening the man said certainly, for he was to set off to-morrow morning with his excellency the ambassador. He has been afraid to declare his engagement for fear of a scene with his brother--he is gone out of Rome for fear of a scene with me--'High Life' was lying open on his writing-table."
They heard the light rustle of a dress. Sterzl looked round--behind him stood Zinka with tumbled hair and anxious, eager, tear-dimmed eyes.
"Zinka!" he cried, stepping forward to catch her; for her gaze was fixed, she staggered, put out her hands with a helpless gesture and fell into his arms. He laid her head tenderly on his shoulder and carried her away.