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; theStornellithat 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 asine qua nonof 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 eccentricdirectoirecostume, 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.
Mr. and Lady Julia Ellis--she was an earl's daughter--English people of enormous wealth and amazing condescension, had for many years spent the winters in Rome. In former times the lady's eccentricities had given rise to much discussion; now she was an old lady with white hair, fine regular features and much too fat arms. Like all English women of her day she appeared in a low gown on all occasions of full dress, and was fond of decking her head with a pink feather. Her husband was younger than she was and had a handsome, thoroughly English face, with a short beard and very picturesque curly white hair. His profile was rather like that of Mendelssohn, a fact of which he was exceedingly proud. Besides this he was proud of two other things: of his wife, who had been admired in her youth by King George IV. and of a very old umbrella, because Felix Mendelssohn had once borrowed it. He had a weakness for performing on the concertina and had musical evenings once a week.
It happened that on the occasion when the Jatinskys first went to one of these parties Tulpin the Russian genius whose great work had served as the introduction to the Ilsenbergh tableaux, was elaborating a new opera to a French libretto on a national Russian story. He was, of course, one of those Russians who combine a passionate devotion to the national Slav cause with a fervent wish to be mistaken for born Parisians wherever they appear. The piano groaned under his hands, while sundry favorite phrases fromOrphée aux Enfersand other well-known works were heard above the rolling sea of tremolos. From time to time the performer threw in a word to elucidate the situation: "The czar speaks...." "The bojar speaks...." "The peasant speaks...." "The sighing of the wind in the Caucasus...." "The foaming of the torrent...." While Mr. Ellis, who believed implicitly in the opera, was heard murmuring: "Splendid! ... magnificent! The opera must be worked out--it must not remain unperformed!"
"Worked out!" sighed Tulpin with melancholy irony. "That is no concern of mine. We--we have the ideas, the working out we leave to--to--to others, in short. You must remember that I cannot read a note of music--literally, not a note," he repeated with intense and visible satisfaction, and he flung off a few stumbling arpeggios, while Mr. Ellis cried: "Astonishing!" and compared him with Mendelssohn, which Tulpin, who believed only in the music of the future, took very much amiss. AGrand Prix de Musique, from the French academy of arts at the Villa Medici, who had been waiting more than an hour to perform his "Arab symphony," muttered to himself: "Good heavens! leave music to us, and let us be thankful that we are not great folks!"
At last Lady Julia took pity on her guests and invited them to go to take tea; every one was only too glad to accept, and in a few minutes the music room was almost empty. Madame Tulpin, out of devotion, the Grand Prix out of spite, and Mr. Ellis out of duty were all that remained within hearing. In the adjoining room every one had burst into conversation over their tea; still, a certain gloom prevailed. Melancholy seemed to have fallen upon the party like an epidemic, and the subject that was most eagerly discussed was the easiest mode of suicide.
Tulpin rattled and thumped on; suddenly he stopped--the Jatinskys had come in, and their advent was such a godsend that even the genius abandoned the piano in their honor. They all three were smiling in the most friendly--it might almost be said the most reassuring manner; for Countess Ilsenbergh had not failed to impress upon them the very mixed character of Roman society, and, feeling their own superiority, they were able to cover their self-consciousness with the most engaging amiability. The two younger ladies were surrounded--besieged--and the strange thing was that the women paid them even greater homage than the men. Everything about them was admired: their small feet, their finely-cut profiles, their incredibly slender waists, the color of their hair, the artistic simplicity of their dresses--and bets were laid as to whether these were the production of Fanet or of Worth. But now there was the little commotion in the next room that is caused by the arrival of some very popular person. Zinka, without her mother, under her brother's escort only, came in and gave her slim hand with an affectionate greeting to the lady of the house.
"You are an incorrigible truant, you always come too late;" said Lady Julia in loving reproach.
"Like repentance and the police," said Zinka merrily; and then Lady Julia introduced her to Countess Jatinska.
"But you must help me with the tea; you know I always reckon on you for that," Lady Julia went on. "Give your charming countrywomen some, will you?"
Polyxena and Nini were sitting a yard or two off, surrounded by all the young men of Rome; Zinka was going towards them with her winning grace of manner when Sempaly happened to come up, and found himself so unexpectedly face to face with her that he had no alternative but to shake hands, and he could not avoid saying a few words. Of course--like any other man in his place--he made precisely the most unlucky speech he could possibly have hit upon:
"We have not met for some time."
She looked him in the face but of half-shut eyes, with her head slightly thrown back, and replied, with very becoming defiance:
"You have carried out the penance you began on Ash-Wednesday!"
"Perhaps," and he could not help smiling.
She shrugged her shoulders: "I had intended to break off our friendship," she went on, "but now that I see the cause of your faithlessness,"--and she glanced at the handsome young countesses--"I quite understand it. Will you at any rate do me the favor of introducing me to the ladies?"
"Fräulein Sterzl--" said Sempaly; but hardly had he uttered the words when a scarcely suppressed smile curled Polyxena's lip. Zinka saw the smile, and she saw too that Sempaly's manner instantly changed; he put on an artificial expression of intolerable condescension.
Zinka turned very pale, her eyes flashed indignantly as she hastily returned the young Austrians' bow and at once went back to her post. Sterzl, who was talking to Truyn in a recess and saw the little scene from a distance, frowned darkly. Sempaly meanwhile seated himself on a stool by his cousins and with his back to the tea-table where Zinka was busying herself.
"So this is the far-famed Zinka Sterzl!" exclaimed Polyxena: "She does credit to your taste, Nicki. But she allows herself to speak to you in a very extraordinary manner; it is really rather too much!" Sempaly made no reply. "She treats you already as if you were her own property."
"But Xena," said Nini, trying to moderate her sister's irony, "at least do not speak so loud." In a few minutes Mr. Ellis came to announce that Monsieur B. was about to play his 'Arab symphony,' and the company moved back into the drawing-room.
The evening had other treats in store; when Monsieur B. had done his place was taken by a young Belgian count who devoted all his spare time to the composition of funeral marches, who could also play songs and ballads, such as are usually confined to the streets of Florence or thecafés chantantsof Paris, arranged for the piano, and who gave a duet between a cock and hen with so much feeling and effect that all the audience applauded heartily, especially the Jatinskys to whom this style of thing was quite a novelty. Then Mrs. Ferguson sang her French couplets, Mr. Ellis played an adagio by Beethoven on the concertina, and then Zinka was asked to sing.
"What am I to sing? You know the extent of my collection," she said with rather forced brightness to Mr. Ellis.
"Oh! a Stornello. We beg for a Stornello," said Siegburg following her to the piano--"vieni maggio, vieni primavera," and Lady Julia seconded the request.
Zinka laid her hands on the keys and began. Her voice sounded through the room a little husky at first, but very sweet, like the note of a forest bird.
Never before had she sat down to sing without bringinghimto her side, even from the remotest corner of the room, at the very first notes; and now, involuntarily, she looked up to meet his gaze--but he was sitting by Polyxena, on a small sofa, in a very familiar attitude, leaning back, holding one foot on the other knee, and laughing at something that she was whispering to him. Zinka lost her self-command and was suddenly paralyzed with self-consciousness. She could not sing that song before him. Her voice broke; she forgot the accompaniment; felt about the notes, struck two or three wrong chords and at length rose with an awkward laugh:
"I cannot remember anything this evening!" she stammered.
Polyxena had some spiteful comment to make, of course, and Sempaly grew angry; he was on the point of rising to go to Zinka and console her for her failure, but before he could quite make up his mind to move, Nini had risen. In spite of her shyness she made her way straight across the room to Zinka and said something kind to her. Sempaly stayed where he was; but as they were leaving, he put on Nini's cloak for her, and said in a low tone: "Nini, you are a good fellow!" and he kissed her hand.
Sempaly's attentions had made Zinka the fashion; his sudden discontinuance, not merely of attentions, but of any but the barest civilities, of course, made her the laughing-stock of all their circle. The capital caricature that Sempaly had drawn of Sterzl and his sister that evening at the Vulpinis' was remembered once more; Madame de Gandry, to whom Sempaly had been very civil till he had neglected her for Zinka, showed the sketch to all her acquaintance, with a plentiful seasoning of spiteful insinuations. Every one was ready to laugh at the "little adventuress" who had come to Rome to bid for a prince's coronet and who had been obliged to submit to such condign humiliation.
The leaders of foreign society vied with each other in doing honor to the Jatinskys. Madame de Gandry set the example by giving a party at which Ristori was engaged to recite; Sterzl was of course, invited; his mother and sister were left out. It was the first time since Zinka's appearance at the Ilsenberghs' that she had been omitted from any entertainment, however select. Many ladies of the international circle followed Madame de Gandry's lead, wishing like her to make a parade before the Austrians of their own exclusiveness, and at the same time to be revenged on Zinka for many a saucy speech she had ventured to make when she was still one of the initiated--of the sacred inner circle. The Italian society of Rome did not of course trouble itself about all these trumpery subtleties, and behaved to Zinka with the same superficial politeness as before.
She, for her part, took no more note of their amenities than she did of the pin-pricks from the other side. If her feelings had not been so deeply engaged by Sempaly she would no doubt have taken all these petty social humiliations very hardly; but her anguish of soul had dulled her shallower feelings. There is a form of suffering which deadens the senses and which mockery cannot touch. It was all the same to her whether she was invited or not--she could not bear to go anywhere. The idea of meeting Sempaly with his cousins was as terrible as death itself. She was an altered creature. A shy, scared smile was always on her lips, like the ghost of departed joys, her movements had lost all their elasticity, and her gait was more than ever like that of an angel whose wings have been clipped.
Baroness Sterzl, of course, still drove out regularly on the Corso, and made the most praiseworthy attempts to keep up a bowing acquaintance with her former friends, and as often as she could she went out in the evening--alone. There was some consolation too in the proud consciousness of having quarrelled with Madame de Gandry and being on visiting terms with all the Roman duchesses. The only thing that caused her any serious discomfort was her sister Wolnitzka's persistent and indiscreet catechism as to the state of affairs between Zinka and Sempaly. She herself, out of mere idle bragging, had told Charlotte the first day of her arrival in Rome that Zinka's engagement was not yet made public.
Her aunt's coarse remarks and hints were fast driving Zinka crazy when Siegburg fortunately--perhaps intentionally, out of compassion for her--so frightened the mother and daughter, one evening when he met them at the palazetto, by his account of the Roman fever that they were panic-stricken, and fled the very next morning to Naples.
The member of the family who was most keenly alive to the change in their social relations, oddly enough, was Cecil. He had been wont to feel himself superior to these silly class-jealousies, and at the same time had a reasonable and manly dignity of his own that had preserved him from that morbid petulance which sometimes stands in arms against all friendly advances from men who, after all, cannot help the fact of their superior birth. Democratic touchiness is a disease to which, in the old-world countries where hereditary rank is still a living fact, every man who is not a toady is liable--from Werther downwards--when fate brings him into contact with aristocratic circles. Sterzl had moved in them so long that he was acclimatized; or rather, it had attacked him late in life, and, as is always the case when grown-up men take infantine complaints, with aggravated severity. He attributed all his sister's misery, not to his own want of caution and Sempaly's weakness of character, but to the tyranny of social prejudice; and he turned against society with vindictive contempt, making himself perfectly intolerable wherever he went. Being a well-bred man, accustomed all his life to the graces of politeness, he could not become absolutely ill-mannered--but as ill-mannered as he could be he certainly was: assertive, irritable, always on the defensive, he was constantly involved in some argument or dispute.
Even at home he was not the same; his pride was deeply nettled by Zinka's total inability to hide her suffering, while he felt it humiliating to be able to do nothing to comfort her. At first, in the hope of diverting her thoughts, he would bring her tickets for concerts or the theatre, and give her a thousand costly trinkets, old treasures of porcelain, carved ivory, and curiosities of art, such as she had once loved. She used to rejoice over these pretty trifles--now she smiled as a sick man smiles at some dainty he no longer has any appetite for. He could see how sincerely she tried to be delighted, but the tears were in her eyes all the while.
This drove Sterzl to desperation. At first he religiously avoided mentioning Sempaly in her presence, but as days and weeks passed and she brought no change in her crushed melancholy, he waxed impatient. He took it into his head that it would be well to open Zinka's eyes with regard to Sempaly. Sterzl himself was energetic, always looking to the future; he had it out with his disappointments and got rid of them, however hard he might have been hit. He had always let things roll if they would not stand, and then set to work to begin again. His great point in life was to see things as they were. Truth was his divinity, and he could not understand that to a creature constituted like Zinka, illusion was indispensable; that she still laid no blame on Sempaly, but only on the alteration in his circumstances--on her own unworthiness--on anything and everything but himself; that it was a necessity of her nature to be able still to love him, even though she knew that he was lost to her forever. His austere nature could not enter into Zinka's soft and impressible susceptibility.
So when he took to speaking slightingly or contemptuously of Sempaly on every possible opportunity she never answered him, but listened in silence, looking at him with frightened, astonished eyes and a pale face, like a martyr to whom her tormentors try to prove that there is no God. The result of Cecil's well-meant but injudicious proceedings was a temporary coolness between himself and his sister--a coolness which, on his part, lay only on the surface, but which froze her spirit to its depths, and all this naturally tended to add fuel to Sterzl's detestation of Sempaly. The two men were in daily intercourse, and now in a state of constant friction. Sterzl would make biting remarks over the smallest negligence or oversight of which Sempaly might be guilty, and was bitterly sarcastic as to the incompetence of a young connection of the Sempalys who had not long since been attached to the embassy.
"To be sure," he ended by declaring, "in Austria it is a matter of far greater importance that an attaché should be a man of family than that he should know how to spell." To such depths of clumsy rudeness could he descend.
Sempaly, without losing his supercilious good humor, would only smile, or answer in his most piping tones:
"You are very right; the view we take of privilege is quite extraordinary. We should form ourselves on the model of the French corps diplomatique; do not you think so?" For, a few days previously, the Figaro had published a satirical article on the presentation of a plebeian representative of the republic at some foreign court.
Well, Sempaly might have retorted in a much haughtier key--but the lighter his irony the more it exasperated Sterzl.
Countess Jatinska spent almost the whole of her stay in Rome on her sofa. When she was asked what she thought of Rome she replied that she found it very fatiguing; when the same question was put to her daughters they, on the contrary, declared themselves enchanted. Sempaly knew full well that in all Rome there was nothing they liked better than their ne'er-do-weel cousin. He displayed for their benefit all his most amiable graces; criticised or admired their dresses, touched up their coiffure with his own light hand, faithfully reported to them all their conquests, and made them presents of cigarettes and of trinkets from Castellani's.
When there was nothing else to be done he was ready to attend them--of course, under the charge of some older lady--to see galleries and churches, Polyxena had a way, that was highly characteristic, of rushing past the greatest works with her nose in the air and laughing as she repeated some imbecile remark that she had overheard, or pointed out some eccentricity of tourist costume. Nini took art more seriously, looked carefully at everything by the catalogue, and even kept a diary. Xena was commonly thought the handsomer and the more brilliant of the sisters, and Sempaly apparently devoted himself chiefly to her, but he decidedly liked Nini best. The hours that he did not spend with his cousins he passed at the club, where he gambled away large sums. Meanwhile, he was looking very ill and complained of a return of old Roman fever.
And what did the world say to his behavior? The phlegmatic Italians did not trouble themselves about the matter; Madame de Gandry and Mrs. Ferguson laughed over it; Siegburg pronounced it disgraceful, and Ilsenbergh called it bad taste to say the least. That he ought to have arranged to leave Rome everybody agreed. Princess Vulpini held long and lamentable conferences with General von Klinger--reproaching herself bitterly for not having seen the position of affairs long ago--but she had never attached any importance to Sempaly's marked attentions, having had no eyes for anything but Siegburg's devotion to Zinka, and she had taken a quite motherly interest in what she regarded as a good match for both.
Truyn was perfectly furious with Sempaly. All that he was to Zinka during these weeks can only be divined by those who have passed through such a time of grief and humiliation, with the consciousness of having a high-souled and tender friend in the back-ground. He was the only person who never aggravated her wound. He had the gentle touch, the delicate skill, which the best man or woman can only acquire through the ordeal of an aching heart. He came every afternoon with his little girl to take Zinka for a walk, for he knew that the regular drive on the Corso could only bring her added pain; and while the baroness, with outspread skirts, drove in the wake of fashion up to the Villa Borghese and the Pincio, these three--with the general, not unfrequently, for a fourth--would wander through silent and deserted cloisters or take long walks across the Campagna. Not once did Truyn bring a secret tear to her eye; if some accidental remark or association brought the hot color to her thin cheek he could always turn the subject so as to spare her.
One sultry afternoon, late in spring, Truyn and his two daughters--as he was wont to call Zinka and Gabrielle--with the soldier-artist were sauntering home, after a long walk, through the sombre and picturesque streets that surround the Pantheon. The neighborhood is humble and wretched, but over a garden wall rose a mulberry tree in whose green branches a blackbird was singing, and a few red geraniums blazed behind rusty window-bars, bright specks in the monotonous brown; above the roofs bent the deep blue sky; the air was heavy and hot, and full of obscure smells of gutters and stale vegetables. Somewhere, in an upstairs room, a woman sang a love-song of melancholy longing. Suddenly the blackbird and the woman ceased singing at the same time; a dismal howl and groan echoed through the street, and a mass of black shadows darkened the scene. Zinka, who had lately become excessively nervous, started and shuddered.
"It is nothing--only a funeral," Truyn explained, taking off his hat.
That was all--a Roman funeral, grim but picturesque--a long procession of mysteriously-shrouded figures, only able to see through two slits in the sack-like cowls that covered their heads, ropes round their waists, and torches or mystical banners in their hands--banners with the emblems of death. These were followed by a troop of barefooted friars, and last came the bier covered with a bright yellow pall, carried by four more of the shrouded figures, who bent under its weight as they shuffled along. The ruddy flare and the black smoke wreaths, the groan-like chant, the uncanny glitter of the men's eyes out of the formless hoods--ghastly, ghostly, and exhaling a savor of mouldiness and incense, like the resurrection of a fragment of the middle ages--the procession defiled through the narrow street. Zinka, half-fainting, clung to Truyn; Gabrielle, whose childish nerves were less shocked, watched them with intense curiosity and began to question a woman who stood near her in the crowd that had collected, in her fluent, bungling Italian:
"Who is it they are burying?" she asked at length.
"A woman," was the answer.
"Was she young?"
"Si."
"And what did she die of? of fever?"
"No," said the Roman shrugging her shoulders; and then she added, in the slow musical drawl of the Roman peasant:
"Di passione."
The procession had passed, the chanting had died away; the blackbird was singing lustily once more; they went on their way--Truyn first, with Zinka hanging wearily on to his arm, behind them Gabrielle and the general.
"Passione!is that a Roman illness?" she asked with her insatiable inquisitiveness.
"No, it occurs in most parts of the world," said the general drily.
"But only among poor people, I suppose?" said the child.
"No, it is known to the better classes too, but it is not called by the same name," said the old man with some bitterness, more to himself than to Gabrielle.
"Then it is wrong--a shameful thing to die of?" she asked with wide, astonished eyes.
Suddenly the general perceived that Zinka was listening; her head drooped as she heard the child's heedless catechism. He, under the circumstances, would have felt paralyzed--he would not have known what to say to the poor crushed soul; but not so Truyn. He turned to his companion and said something in a low tone. What, the general could not hear, but it must have been something kind and helpful--something which, without any direct reference to the past, conveyed his unalterable respect and regard, for she answered him almost brightly. Then he went on talking of trifles, remembering little incidents of his boyhood, characteristic anecdotes of his parents, and such small matters as may divert a sick and weary spirit, till, when they parted at the door of the palazetto, Zinka was smiling. "That he has the brains of a genius I will not say, but he has genius of heart, I dare swear!" thought the soldier.
Truyn had gone out riding with her two or three times across the Campagna, and she had enjoyed it; but one day they met Sempaly, galloping with his two handsome cousins over the anemone-strewn sward. From that day she made excuses for avoiding the Campagna--as though she thus avoided the chance, almost the certainty, of meeting him and them. Why then did she remain in Rome at all? Sterzl would not hear of her quitting it, because he thought that the world of Rome would regard it as a flight after defeat. His mother too, on different grounds, set her face against any such abridgment of their stay in Rome. Had she not taken the palazetto till the fifteenth of May?
And did Zinka, in fact, wish to go? She often spoke of longing to be at home again, but whenever their departure was seriously discussed it gave her a shock. She dreaded meeting him--and longed for it all the same. And in the evening when a few old friends dropped in to call--Truyn every evening and Siegburg very frequently--Truyn noticed that every time there was a ring she sat with her eyes fixed in eager expectation on the door. She still cherished a sort of hope--a broken, moribund hope that was in fact no more than unrest--the vitality of suffering.
Passion-week in Rome, and in all the glory and glow of an Italian spring. The glinting radiance brightens even the mystical gloom of St. Peter's, sparkles for an instant on the holy-water in the basins, wanders from the heads of the gigantic cherubs and the colossal statues down to the inlaid pavement, with the cold sheen of sunlight on polished marble. The hours glide on--the long solemn hours of Holy-Thursday in Rome; the last gleam of daylight has faded away, the vast cathedral is filled with almost palpable twilight and its magnificence seems shrouded in a transparent veil of crape. The stone walls look dim and distant, the fane seems built of shadows, and sacred mystery falls as it were from heaven, deeper and more solemn as the minutes slip by, to sanctify the spot.
In the papal chapel Zinka is kneeling with Truyn and Gabrielle, her eyes fixed on her hands which are convulsively clasped, and praying with the passion of a youthful nature whose yearning has found no foothold on earth and seeks a home in heaven. On both sides sit the prelates and dignitaries of the church in their carved stalls, inquisitive and prayerless foreigners crowd at their feet. The tragedy of the passion is being recited in a monotonous, inconclusive chant that dies away in the dim corners of the chapel.
The last of the twelve tapers on the altar is extinguished.... "Miserere mei" the choristers cry with terrible emphasis; and then, awful but most sweet, beginning as a mere breath and rising to a mighty wail of grief, comes a voice like the utterance of the anguish of the God of Love over the misery from which He can never release mankind. And before the majesty of that divine and selfless sorrow human sorrow bows in silence.
Zinka bends her head.--It is ended, the last sound has died away in a sob, the crowd rises to follow the procession which, with a cardinal at the head, wends its way through the church.
Truyn and the two girls quit the chapel; behind them the steps of the priests and choristers, drowned in their own echoes, sound like the rustling of angelic wings; the brooding, melancholy peacefulness has lulled Zinka's heart to rest; for the first time for many weeks she has forgotten....
"Most interesting, but the bass was hoarse!"
It was Polyxena Jatinsky who pronounced this summary criticism of the solemn ceremonial, close to Zinka. Zinka looked round; Sempaly with his aunt and cousins were at her side. They had attended the service in reserved places in the choir. Involuntarily yielding to an impulse of pain Zinka pressed forward, but Gabrielle had flown to join them; then she was obliged to stay and talk. The Jatinskys were perfectly friendly, Polyxena giving her her hand--Sempaly alone held aloof. On going out the air struck' chill, almost cold, on Zinka's face and she shivered. A well-known voice close behind her said rather brusquely:
"You are too lightly dressed and there is fever in the air. Put this round you," and Sempaly threw over her shoulders a scarf that he was carrying for one of the ladies.
"Thank you, I am not cold; these ladies will want the scarf," said Zinka hastily and repellently.
Polyxena said nothing; perhaps she may have thought it strange that in his anxiety for this little stranger, her cousin should forget to consider that one of them might take cold. But Nini exclaimed: "No, no, Fräulein Sterzl: we are well wrapped up."
At this juncture Truyn's servant, who had been seeking them among the crowd, told them where the carriage was waiting.
While Zinka, wrapped in Nini's China-crape shawl, is borne along between the splashing fountains, across the bridge of St. Angelo, and through the empty, ill-lighted streets to the palazetto, all her pulses are dancing and throbbing--and the stars in the sky overhead seem unnaturally bright. It is the resurrection of her pain and with it of the lovely mocking vision of the joys she has lost. Good God! how vividly she remembers them all--how keenly!--the long dreamy afternoons on the Palatine, the delicious hours in the Corsini garden--under the plane-trees by the fountain, where he talked about Erzburg while the perfume of violets and lilies fanned her with their intoxicating breath; the sound of his voice--the touch of his light, thin hand, his smile--his way of saying particular words, of looking at her in particular moments....
She is walking with him once more in the Vatican, in rapt enjoyment of the beauty of the statues; the Belvedere fountain trickled and splashed in dreamy monotony; golden sunbeams fleck the pavement like footmarks left by the Gods before they mounted their pedestals; there is a mysterious rustle and whisper in the lofty corridors as of far, far distant ghostly voices,--and then, suddenly, she is in front of Sant' Onofrio's; the air is thick with a pale mist. At her feet, veiled in the thin haze, indistinct and mirage-like, the very ghost of departed splendor, lies Rome--the vast reliquary of the world; Rome, on whose monuments and ruins every conceivable crime and every imaginable virtue have set their stamp; where the tragedies of antiquity cry out to the Sacrifice on Calvary.
They had stood together a long time looking down on it; then she had lost a little bunch of violets which she had been wearing and as she turned round to seek them she had perceived that he had picked them up and was holding them to his lips. Their eyes had met....
Yes! he had loved her! he loved her still--he must--she knew it. She told herself that, impulsive and excitable as he was, the merest trifle would suffice to bring him back to her; but whether it was worth while to long so desperately for a man who could be turned by the slightest breath--that she did not ask herself.
And through all the torturing whirl of these memories, above the clatter of the horses' hoofs and the rattle of the wheels over the wretched pavement, she heard the cry "miserere mei." But her thoughts turned no more to the God sacrificed for Man--the strongest angels' wings cannot bear us quite to heaven so long as our heart dwells on earth.
"Good-night," she said, kissing Gabrielle as the carriage drew up at the door of the palazetto.
"Will you let me have Nini's scarf for Gabrielle?" said Truyn. "I am afraid my little companion may catch cold."
"Oh! of course," cried Zinka, and she wrapped the child carefully in the shawl and kissed her again; "when shall I learn to think of anyone but myself?" she added vexed with herself.
Easter-Monday. All the bells in the churches of Rome are once more wagging their brazen tongues after their week of dumb mourning, and images of the Resurrection in every conceivable form--sugar, wax, soap--decorate all the shop windows.
Baroness Wolnitzka had returned fresher, gayer and more enterprising than ever from her visit to Naples, where she not only had had herself photographed in a lyric attitude leaning on a pillar in the ruins of Pompeii, but, in spite of her huge size which was very much against her taking such excursions, she had with the help of two guides and a remarkably vigorous mule, reached the top of Vesuvius. Thanks, too, to a cardinal's nephew with whom she had scraped acquaintance on her journey, with a view to making him useful, she had succeeded in obtaining--not indeed a private audience of the pope--but leave to attend a private mass--and receive the communion, in company with three hundred other orthodox souls, from his sacred hand.
This morning she had been to the palazetto to take leave of her sister--to ask once more after Sempaly--to give a full and particular account of the service at the Vatican--and to deliver a discourse on the philosophical value of the mass. Slawa, whose orthodoxy had been fanned to bigotry, and who on Easter eve had duly climbed thesanta scalaon her knees, had supplemented her mother's narrative with a variety of interesting details:
"It was most exclusive, quite our own set, and few families of the Polish colony--I wore my black satin dress beaded with jet and I heard a gentleman behind me say: 'That is the only woman whose veil is put on with any taste.'"
Sterzl had kept out of the way during their visit; Zinka had smiled amiably but had not attended: Baroness Clotilde had plied her sister with questions. Then the Wolnitzkas had left to go to the consecration of a bishop--also by invitation from the cardinal's nephew--the ladies were to be admitted to the sacristy and be presented with flowers and refreshments.
It was about six o'clock in the evening when General von Klinger was shown into the drawing-room of the palazetto. The room was not so pretty as it used to be; the furniture was all set out squarely against the walls by the symmetrical taste of the servants, and the flower vases that were always so gracefully arranged now never held anything but bunches of magnolias or violets; Zinka no longer cared to arrange them.
"I am so glad you happen to have come to-day," she cried as he came in. The brilliancy of her eyes and the redness of her lips showed that she was already suffering from that terrible spring fever which makes havoc with young creatures in the warm days of April and May. She was sitting by her brother on a low red sofa, as she had so often sat with Sempaly; the baroness was lounging in an arm-chair fanning herself; there was a sort of triumphant solemnity in her manner. Even Cecil, too, was evidently in some excitement though his air was just as frank and natural as ever.
"Good evening, general, what hot, trying weather!" drawled the baroness. "It is an extraordinary event to find us all at home together at this hour but we all have a sacred horror of the mob in the streets on a holiday afternoon."
"Oh, mamma!" interrupted Zinka, "it is not only the crowd--we wanted to enjoy our good fortune together; did not we, Cecil?"
He nodded and stroked her hair. "Yes, little Zini."
"Only think. Uncle Klinger--you knew, of course, that Cecil's book on Persia had attracted a great deal of attention--but that is not all. He has been appointedChargé d'affairesat Constantinople."
The general offered his congratulations and shook hands warmly with the young man.
"I could wish for nothing more exactly to my mind," said Cecil. "There is always something to do there; a man always has a chance of making his mark and getting on." He was sincerely and frankly satisfied and affected no indifference to the distinction he had earned.
"In five years we shall see you ambassador," exclaimed the general, with the happy exaggeration that is irresistible on such occasions.
"We do not go quite so fast as that," laughed Sterzl. "However, I hope to rise in due time. Will not you be proud of me, Butterfly, when I am 'your excellency!'"
"I am proud of you already," said Zinka, "and you know how vain I am, and how much I value such things!"
It was the first time for some weeks that the general had seen the two so happy together and it rejoiced his heart.
"And the climate is good," Sterzl went on, "one of the best in Europe; the foreign colony is friendly and pleasant. You will enjoy studying oriental manners from a bird's-eye view, Zini; and the change of air will do you good?"
"You will take me too?" she said turning pale.
"Why, of course. The bay of Constantinople is lovely and we can often sail out on it; then, in the autumn, if I have time, we will make an excursion in Greece. You will be quite a travelled person." He put his finger under her chin and looked with tender anxiety into her thin face; every trace of color had suddenly faded from it, and the light that her brother's success had kindled in her eyes had died out.
"It will be very nice--" she said wearily; "delightful--thank you, Cecil--you are always so kind ... when are we to start?"
"You might get off in about a week; the sea-voyage will not over-tire you, and you can stop to rest at Athens. In the hot season we can go up to the hills--" then suddenly he glanced sharply in her face and his whole expression changed; he added roughly, with a scowl: "but you need not come unless you like--stay here if you choose--I do not want to force you."
At this instant the maid appeared to announce the arrival of a case from the railway.
"The new ball-dresses!" cried the baroness in great excitement. "I am thankful they have come in time. I was quite in despair for fear I should not have my new gown in time for the ball at the Brancaleone's. It would have seemed so uncourteous to the princess.... Now let us see what Fanet has hit upon that is new...." And she rustled out of the room.
Zinka sat still, with a frozen smile, looking like a criminal to whom the day of execution had just been announced, and uneasily twisting her fingers.
"Of course, I like it, Cecil ... how can you think ... and on Wednesday week we can start--Wednesday will be best ... now I must go and see what my new dress is like ... do not laugh at me uncle; I must make myself look as nice as I can for my last appearance." And she hurried off; but on her way she stumbled against a table and a book fell to the ground. She stopped, picked the book up, turned over the leaves and laid it down; then, as if she wished to make up to her brother for some unkindness, she went back to Cecil and put her hand on his shoulder.
"I do really thank you very much," she said, "and I am glad--really and truly glad, and very proud of you...."
He looked up in her face and their eyes met--his lips quivered with rage--the rage of a lofty, generous, and masterful nature at finding itself incapable of making a woman dear to it happy.
Zinka shrank into herself "My ball-dress!" she faintly exclaimed, and she slipped out of the room.
For a few minutes the two men were silent. Presently the general spoke:
"Zinka is going to the Brancaleones' to-morrow?"
"Yes," replied Sterzl; "at least, she has promised to go. Whether she will change her mind at the last moment and stay at home, of course I cannot foresee."
"But she really seems to care about it this time," said the general. "At least she took an interest in her dress."
"Her dress!... she did not even know what she was talking about. She fled that we might not see her tears...." Sterzl broke out, losing all his self-control. Then he looked sternly at his friend as though he thought he had betrayed a secret But the old man's sad face reassured him. "It is of no use to try to act before you," he went on; "you are not blind--you must see how wretched she is--it is all over, general, she is utterly broken...." He started to his feet and after pacing the room two or three times stood still and with a helpless wave of the hands and a desperate shrug, he exclaimed: "There is nothing to be done--nothing!" Then he sat down again and buried his face in his hands.
Von Klinger cleared his throat, paused for a word and could find nothing better to say than: "In time--things will mend; you must have patience."
"Patience!" echoed Sterzl with an indescribable accent. "Patience!--yes, if I could only hope that things would mend. At first it provoked me that she should let everybody see ... know ... I thought she might have more spirit and self-command. But now.--Good heavens! she does all she can and it is killing her ... that is not her fault. If only she were resentful--but she never complains; she is always content with everything, she never even contradicts my mother now. And then, what is worst of all, I hear her at night--her room is over mine--walking up and down, very softly as if she were afraid of waking anyone--up and down for hours; and often I hear her sobbing--she never sheds a tear by day!..." he sighed. "And then--if it were for a man who was worth it all!" he went on. "But that blue-eyed, boneless, good-for-nothing simpleton!... I ought never to have allowed her to step out of her own sphere--I ought never to have allowed them to become intimate! I knew he was not worthy of her, even when, as I believed--but you will laugh at my simplicity perhaps--he condescended to be in earnest.--You cannot imagine what it is now to have to meet him every day,--to hear him ask every day: 'how are you all at home?'--I feel ready to choke ... I could crush him under foot like a worm!... and I am bound to be civil. I may not even tell him that he has insulted me."
The baroness here came back.
"Lovely!" she exclaimed, with her affected giggle, "quite perfect! Zinka has never had a dress that suited her so well."
"That is well!" said Sterzl vaguely, "where is she?"
"She is gone to lie down; she has a bad headache," minced the baroness. "The young girls of the present day have no stamina. Why, at her age I...."
The general was not in the mood to listen to her sentimental reminiscences and he took his leave. In the hall he once more wrung Cecil's hand: "Fortune has favored you," he said; "you have a splendid career before you, and in her new and pleasant home Zinka will forget.--I congratulate you on your new start in life."
Aye--his new start in life!