PRINCE ZINO CAPITO.
The smoking-room is a somewhat narrow apartment, with a large Oriental
rug before the broad double windows, with very beautiful old weapons in
a couple of stands against the wall, and with heavy antique carved
oaken chests. The broad low arm-chairs and divans are covered with
Oriental rugs and carpets which Rohritz, as he informs Stella, brought
from Cairo himself.
The two children, a little boy twelve years old, with tight red
stockings and very short breeches, and a little girl hardly three, in a
white gown, with bare legs and arms, help their mamma to serve the
coffee. Momond takes the ladies their cups, and Baby is steady enough
on her legs to trip after him with a face of great solemnity, carrying
the silver sugar-bowl tightly hugged up in her arms. After she has
happily completed her round she puts the sugar-bowl down before her
mother, with a sigh of relief as over a difficult duty fulfilled, and
smooths down her short, stiff skirts with a very decorous air. But when
her father, from the other side of the room, where he is talking with
Stella, smiles at her, she runs to him with a glad cry, forgetting all
decorum springs into his lap, and is petted and caressed by him to his
heart's content.
"Do you know whom that picture represents, Baroness Stella?" the host
now asks, pointing to a life-size photograph hanging beneath the
portrait in oil of a beautiful, fair woman. Although Stella had noticed
the photograph as soon as she entered the smoking-room, she pretends to
have her attention attracted by it for the first time.
"Yes, the likeness can still be recognized," she replies, bestowing a
critical glance upon the picture, "although if it ever looked really
like Baron Edgar Rohritz he must have altered very much."
"Of course," says Rohritz: "the picture was taken twelve years ago.
Edgar had it taken for our mother, just before he went to Mexico. When
he returned to Europe, three years later, our mother was dead, and he
was gray,--gray at twenty-seven! As he was always our mother's
favourite, I have hung his picture below hers."
"I maintain that photograph to be the handsomest head of a man which I
know," Therese interrupts her conversation with the Baroness to
declare. "We often dispute about it with my brother Zino, who always
cites the Apollo Belvedere as the highest type of manly beauty----"
"Because he himself resembles that arrogant fellow in the Vatican," her
husband interposes, dryly.
It is strange how constantly the elder brother recalls Baron Edgar,
although considerably older, and by no means so distinguished in looks.
Meanwhile, Therese runs on with her usual fluency:
"It is an immense pity that my brother-in-law cannot make up his mind
to marry. You really cannot imagine, ladies, the pains I have taken to
throw the lasso over his head. Quite in vain! And such superb matches
as I have made for him,--Marguerite de Lusignan, who has just married
the Duke Cesarini, and the charming Marie de Galliere,--in short, the
loveliest, wealthiest girls,--_tout ce qu'il y a de mieux_. Oddly
enough, the mothers liked him as well as the daughters. In vain! I
never have seen a man with so decided a distaste for matrimony as
Edgar's. Did you chance to hear of the scheme by which he contrived in
Graetz to rid himself of man[oe]uvring mammas?"
"Yes," says Stella, very coldly: "he spread abroad a report that he had
suddenly lost his property."
"A delicious idea," Therese laughs. "Do you not think so?"
Stella is silent.
"It never occurred to him to originate the report," Edmund interposes
now, rather irritably; "he was merely too lazy to contradict it. To
hear you talk, Therese, one would suppose Edgar to be the most
self-conceited coxcomb under the sun,--a man who spent his life in
defending himself from the attacks of matrimonially-inclined ladies.
But I assure you, Baroness Stella, that Edgar has not a trace of such
nonsensical coxcombry. Perhaps you know him well enough to make your
own estimate of his character."
"I know him very superficially," Stella replies, with a shrug.
"Why, I thought you spent several weeks last summer with him at
Leskjewitsch's," says Rohritz, looking at her in surprise.
Without making any reply to this remark, Stella opens and shuts her
fan, and says, with a slight curl of her lip, "His heroic opposition
seems overcome at last; for, as I learned lately from a letter from
Graetz, he has just been betrothed to a certain little Countess
Strahlheim."
"Who wrote you so?" Therese cries. "That interests me immensely! Oh,
the Machiavelli!"
"I had the intelligence from a Fraeulein von Gurlichingen," says Stella.
"Gurlichingen? Anastasia Gurlichingen?" asks the Baron.
"You know the Gurlichingen?" Stella asks, in her turn.
"Know her! Who does not know the Gurlichingen?" says Rohritz. "She is
the most restless phantom I have ever encountered, continually
fluttering to and fro through the world, always in the train of some
wealthy friend who pays her expenses. It has been her specialty
hitherto to sacrifice herself for consumptive ladies: she has haunted
Meran, Cairo, Corfu. There was no taint of legacy-hunting in her
conduct,--heaven forbid such a suspicion! Hm! my brother-in-law Zino
christened her the turkey-buzzard. If you owe your piece of news to no
more trustworthy source of information, Baroness Stella, I must take
the liberty of doubting its correctness."
"You know she is in Paris? She called upon me a little while ago, but I
was not at home," said Therese, turning to Stella. "Have you any idea
whom she is with now?"
"With the Princess Oblonsky," Stella replies.
"With the Oblonsky? Not with the former von Foehren?" husband and wife
exclaim simultaneously.
"Certainly!"
"What a joke!--with the Oblonsky!"
Therese almost chokes with laughter.
It is ten o'clock. The children have long since disappeared with their
_bonne_; the servant has brought in the tea-equipage. There is a pause
in the conversation, such as is apt to ensue when people have laughed
until they are tired. The Baron puts a fresh log on the fire and rakes
the embers together. The blaze flames and crackles; little hovering
lights and shadows dance over the old golden-brown leather tapestries.
Suddenly the door opens, and unannounced, with the _sans gene_ of close
relationship, a young man enters the room, tall, slender, with a
certain attractive audacity expressed in the lines about his mouth and
in his eyes which puts beyond question his resemblance to the Olympian
dandy. It is the Apollo of modern drawing-room dimensions, the Apollo
forty-four years old, already a little gray about the temples, with a
wrinkle or two at the corners of his eyes, in a coat of Poole's, a
gardenia in his button-hole, his crush hat under his arm,--Prince Zino
Capito!
"Pray present me," he says, after he has greeted his sister, and Stella
also, turning towards the Baroness.
"And you already know my new star?" Therese exclaims, in surprise,
after she has fulfilled his request.
The Prince looks full at Stella, with a look peculiar to himself, a
look in which admiration reaches the boundary of impertinence without
crossing it,--then says, smiling,--
"_Ca_, Sasa!" when he is in a good humour he calls his sister thus,
by the name which he gave her when he was a lisping baby in the
nursery,--"_ca_, Sasa, do you really suppose that I would have rushed
back from Lyons simply on the strength of the enthusiastic description
of your latest _trouvaille_ that you sent me in your note of
invitation? No, my little sister, I am too well aware of your liability
to acute attacks of enthusiasm not to receive your brilliant
perorations with a justifiable mistrust. I once had the pleasure of
seeing Mademoiselle very often, for a while," he continues, speaking
French.
"Where?--when?" asks Therese.
"Three years ago, in Venice. Baron Meineck lived at the Britannia,
where I also lodged, and Fraeulein Stella came to Venice to take care of
him.--They were sad days for you," he says, turning to Stella, very
gravely, and with a degree of cordiality which he can impart to his
voice when he chooses.
"And yet they were delightful days for me in spite of all," Stella
replies, her eyes full of tears, and turning away her head.
"Most certainly you can look back to that time with a contented heart,"
he continues, in the same sympathetic tone. "I never have seen a
daughter----" Suddenly he notices how the Baroness's glance rests upon
him, and, becoming aware of the delicate nature of the situation, he
finishes his sentence as best he can and tries to change the subject.
But the Baroness has lost her equanimity: it is always intensely
painful to her to know that she recalls to strangers the fact that her
husband in his last illness was obliged to forego her care; Capito's
words are like a reproof to her.
"Will you have the kindness to have a fiacre called for us?" she says,
turning to the host.
Resisting all entreaties to prolong her stay, and to take another cup
of tea, she pleads fatigue, the necessity of rising early, and so
forth. When Capito takes leave of her he asks permission to pay his
respects to the ladies.
But the Baroness begs him to give himself no further trouble with
regard to them, as she is scarcely ever at home,--whereupon she
vanishes on the arm of the host, and the Prince twirls his moustache
with a comical grimace.
"What annoys you, Zino?" Edmund asks on his return to the smoking-room;
and when the Prince enlightens him as to the extent of his lack of
tact, and the unfortunate family history of the Meinecks, he says,--
"I really do not see why Edgar considered it necessary to prepare us so
carefully for the absurdities of the old Baroness. It is quite possible
that she drove her husband distracted with her learning: nevertheless
in ordinary intercourse she is very agreeable, and a very handsome old
lady: she must have been handsomer in her time than her daughter."
"Do you think so?" asks Therese. "To me Stella seems charming."
"_Elle est tout betement adorable_," says Zino Capito, drinking his tea
out of the Japanese cup his sister has just handed him. "How good your
tea is, Sasa! in all Paris no one has such good tea as yours."
"You are very suspiciously complimentary," Therese rejoins. "What do
you want me to do for you?"
"Ask me to dine soon, and ask the Meinecks," Zino replies, with his
attractively audacious smile.
"No, I will not," Therese says, resolutely.
"And why not?"
"Because, as I now see, you would do all that you could to turn
Stella's brain. I thought you had outgrown such foolish tricks."
"Hm!" says Capito.
"I am going to do all that I can to marry her well," Therese declares.
"Hm!" Capito says again, but in a different tone.
"If you like, I will invite you to meet the Gurlichingen; she is in
Paris at present."
"Indeed! With whom is she travelling?
"With----" Therese looks full at him, with mirth in her eyes,--"with
the Oblonsky!"
"Ah! Have her lungs become affected lately?" Zino asks, indifferently.
"Not that I know of; but she probably covets respectability," says
Therese.
"_Ah, tiens! cela doit etre drole_. An entire change of system on
Stasy's part, then," says Zino, putting down his teacup, and rising.
"She seems to have abandoned the lucrative calling of a
turkey-buzzard," Rohritz remarks.
"Yes, and instead to have opened a laundry for the purification
of--caps which have fallen among--among nettles, in the vicinity of
mills.[1] Not a bad trade,--hm!"
******************
[Footnote 1: A play upon the French proverb, '_jeter son bonnet
pardessus le moulin_,' as much as to say 'to lose one's reputation.']
******************
"Going already, Zino?"
"Of course," says Zino, stretching himself and yawning as spoiled
brothers allow themselves to do in presence of their sisters. "If you
suppose I tore myself away from Lyons to drink tea with you, you are
mistaken. Be good, Sasa: when will you invite the Meinecks and myself
to dine?"
Therese, moving her forefinger to and fro before her face, makes the
Roman gesture of refusal.
"Oh, very well; as you please," Zino mutters in an ill-humour.
"Good-evening." "I wonder where I could meet her," he says, musingly,
before lighting his cigar in the coupe that awaits him.
"Strange!" Rohritz remarks to his wife; "Edgar described the young
Meineck to me as particularly gay and amusing."
"Indeed?"
"Now, for so young a creature, she seems to me particularly quiet."
"What would you have? Punchinello himself would grow melancholy with
such a life as hers."
Her husband reflects for a few moments. After a while he says, "I
wonder whether, after all, she was not a little smitten with Edgar?"
"Upon what do you base your conjecture?" Therese asks, in astonishment.
"She put on so extraordinarily indifferent an expression whenever he
was mentioned."
Therese laughs aloud.
"What is there to laugh at?" her husband asks, rather crossly.
"Forgive me, but you remind me of the Frenchman who proposed to a young
lady through her mother, and when he was asked by her what reason he
had to suppose that her daughter liked him, replied, 'I am quite sure
of it, for she always leaves the room as soon as I enter it.'"
"Laugh away; we shall soon see who is right. Moreover, Edgar must take
some interest in her, or he would not have recommended her to us so
warmly," replies Rohritz.
"Bah! he recommended her to us at the express request of our common
friend Leskjewitsch," his wife rejoins.
"True; but----"
"She is a child in comparison with him. He might be her father."
Edmund is silent for a while, and then says, "That is true; she is a
child,--and he is very sensible."