A NEW ACQUAINTANCE?
The lesson at an end, the members of della Seggiola's class have no
more acquaintance with one another than have people who have travelled
together by railway after they have left the train. The soprano with
her slovenly duenna in a long French cachemire shawl, the Italian with
his two sisters, one on each arm, all fly apart like bits of lead from
an exploding shell.
A saucy smile about his mouth, Capito walks beside the two girls; he
softly hums to himself '_La ci darem la mano!_'
"You sang well, Zino," Natalie remarks, after a while. "Della Seggiola
was absolutely enthusiastic."
"What good did it do me?" says Zino, shrugging his shoulders. "It gave
him a reason for politely turning me away."
"He was afraid you might agitate Miss Frazer: she suffers already from
her heart," Stella says, with her usual audacity in alluding to
uncomfortable topics.
"On the whole, della Seggiola was right," Natalie declares: "it would
not have been becoming for you to join the class."
"'Tis odd how often the pleasantest things in this world are
unbecoming," Zino murmurs.
"Do you really think it would have been so very pleasant to hear us
practising away at the same things twice a week?" Stella asks, gaily.
"Without giving him time to reply, Natalie begins to cross-examine him
upon his impressions of della Seggiola's method of instruction.
"What do you think of him as a teacher?" she asks.
"He sings delightfully," Zino replies, somewhat vaguely.
"Yes, but he is too lax as a teacher; he is not strict enough,--does
not suit to their capacity the tasks he imposes upon his pupils."
"Do you think so?" says Zino. "On the contrary, I thought he exacted
far too much of his scholars' capacity."
"How so?" Natalie asks, rather offended.
"He required you to be coquettish, and that fellow--what was his
name?--Trappenti--to be seductive. Rather too difficult a task for both
of you, I should think," says the Prince.
Natalie frowns:
"I thought della Seggiola's remarks to-day highly unbecoming."
"Of course, when you were singing a love-song, to require you to
imagine yourself in the place of the singer,--_c'est de la derniere
inconvenance_. Moreover, it was exacting more than you were capable of
performing,--that is, so far as I know." And, with a quick turn of the
conversation which would be quite inexcusable in any one else, he looks
her in the face, and asks with a light laugh, as if the question
concerned something infinitely comical, "Do tell us,--it will interest
Baroness Stella too, I am sure,--you are twenty-five years old----"
"Twenty-six," Natalie corrects him.
"Twenty-six, then. Were you ever in love?"
To the Prince's no small surprise, Natalie turns away her head at this
question, and, blushing to the very roots of her hair, mutters angrily
between her set teeth, "You are intolerable to-day!"
"Ah, indeed!" says Prince Zino, with a merry twinkle of his eyes. "It
must be with one of the lithographic portraits hanging in the corridor
in your home at Jekaterinovskoe,--Orlow, or Potemkin. By the way, 'tis
a great pity you blush so seldom, Natalie: it becomes you charmingly."
At the next street-corner Stella's and Natalie's ways separate, to the
great vexation of the Prince, seeing that he too must of course take
his leave of the beautiful Austrian. But, if he can no longer enjoy the
pleasure of talking with Stella, he resolves to please himself by still
keeping her in sight. Instead of remaining with his cousin and quietly
going his own way, he decides to walk along the same street with
Stella, on the other side of the way.
Natalie, who understands his little man[oe]uvre perfectly, looks after
him before turning her corner, and shakes her head. "I wonder how many
times he has been in love before?" she thinks. "Poor little star! she
is very pretty. I trust she may be more sensible than I."
Meanwhile, Zino and Stella walk leisurely along on opposite sides of
the Rue des Petits-Champs.
"How well she walks! what a fine carriage she has!" he murmurs, never
losing sight of her. "Her movements have such an easy grace, and now
and then a dreamy, gliding rhythm about them; 'tis music for the
eyes. And then such colour,--the fair face with its black eyes and red
lips, the gold of the hair setting off the exquisite glow of the
complexion,--she is enchanting!"
Zino is one of those men whose sensuality is refined and idealized by
the admixture of a purely artistic and aesthetic appreciation of the
beautiful. The worship of the beautiful is, as he is fond of declaring,
his own special, private religion; the paroxysms of enthusiasm which
this worship was apt to cause in him in former years have long since
grown rarer and rarer. But to-day he is distinctly conscious of the
slow approach of an attack.
"Bah! it will pass away," he says to himself, "as all such attacks do;
it can lead to nothing. But all the same she is bewitching!"
Thus both go their ways,--he with his eyes, quite intoxicated with
beauty, riveted upon her face and figure,--she, as he is rather annoyed
to perceive, so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be utterly oblivious
of his vicinity. Between them, around them, swarms Parisian life, with
its bustle and noise; on the pavements pass neat grisettes by twos and
threes, their smooth hair uncovered, either coming from or going to
breakfast, men with dirty grayish-white blouses, servant-girls in white
caps, Englishwomen with long teeth, and Parisians of all kinds,
recklessly pressing on towards some aim known to themselves only; in
the middle of the street there is a hurly-burly of every kind of
vehicle, from little hand-carts, laden with fish, flowers, oranges, or
vegetables, and pushed by women with bent backs, to omnibuses as
big as small houses, their tops reaching above the shop-windows, and
dragged with difficulty by the strongest horses. Here and there some
one is running after one or other of these conveyances, a breathless
day-governess, helped up by both hands to the back platform by the
conductor, or a notary with a leather wallet under his arm, who climbs
to the top with the agility of a monkey.
These tops are crowded. Beside respectable business-men with
clean-shaved cheeks and thick sausage-like moustaches are seated all
sorts of Bohemians, half-students, half-artists, pale and thin, with
melancholy eyes in faces weary with cheap pleasures, a strange and
genuinely Parisian species of human being, always eager for any
variety, be it a ball at Bulliers or the overthrow of a government, a
restless, excitable, shallow, sparkling crowd, which might be called
the oxygen of Paris in contrast with its hydrogen. And beside the huge
city omnibus there toil, slowly, heavily-laden carts to which are
harnessed long trains of huge white Norman steeds, with blue sheepskins
upon their backs and bells around their necks, bells which have a
rustic simple sound amid all the demoniac clatter of Paris, like the
clear voices of children heard in some Bacchanalian revel. Tall, sturdy
Normans in white, flapping broad-brimmed hats walk beside them, shaking
their heads as they look down upon the wealthy degradation and the
sordid misery of the filigree population of Paris.
The January sun shines above it all. There in the fresh cold air is an
odour of oranges, fish, and flowers. Stella stops beside a flower-cart
to buy a bunch of violets. Zino pauses to watch her. Amid the noise of
the street he cannot understand what she says, but through the roar of
the mid-day crowd, the loud pulsation of the great city stronger at
this hour than at any other, he distinguishes brief detached notes of
her gentle bird-like voice. How cordial the smile she has just bestowed
upon the flower-girl!
"If she smiled at me like that I should give her the entire cart-full
of flowers. I wonder if I might send her a bouquet to the 'Negroes?'"
Stella, with a charming shake of the head, has just taken out her
purse, when a lumbering omnibus interposes between her and Zino's
admiring gaze. The omnibus is followed by a cart, then by another, and
another. At last the view is once more uninterrupted; but where is
Stella? There she stands, pale, agitated, her eyes cast down, beside a
tall, thin, consumptive-looking woman in shabby black, leading by the
hand a little girl,--a woman with golden hair, and features in which,
pinched and worn though they be by many a bitter experience, a striking
likeness may be traced to Stella's beautiful profile.
"Where did she pick up that acquaintance?" the Prince asks himself; but
before he can decide where and when he has seen that woman before,
Stella and the stranger have vanished in a little confectioner's shop.