STELLA'S FAILURE.
Like most of the salons of foreigners in Paris, even of the most
distinguished, that of the Lipinskis produces the impression of a
social menagerie. Artists, Americans, diplomatists, stand out in strong
relief against a background of old Russian acquaintances. French people
are seldom met with there. Scarcely three months have passed since the
Lipinskis took up their abode in Paris, and they have not yet had time
to organize their circle. The agreeable atmosphere of every-day
intimacy which constitutes the chief charm of every select circle is
lacking. The Russians and the elderly diplomatists gather for the most
part about the fireplace, where Madame Lipinski holds her little court.
She is an uncommonly distinguished, graceful old lady, who had been a
celebrated beauty in the best days of the Emperor Nicholas's reign, and
had played her part at court. One of the Empress's maids of honour, she
had preserved in her heart an undying, unchanging love for the
chivalric, maligned Emperor, so sadly tried towards the end of his
life. She wears her thick white hair stroked back from her temples and
adorned by a rather fantastic cap of black lace; her tiny ears,
undecorated by ear-rings, are exposed,--which looks rather odd in a
woman of her age. As soon as she becomes at her ease with a new
acquaintance she tells him of the annoyance which these same tiny ears
occasioned her at the time when she was maid of honour. The Empress
condemned her to wear her hair brushed down over her cheeks, merely
because the Emperor once at a ball extolled the beauty of her ears.
"She was jealous, the poor Empress," the old lady is wont to close her
narrative by declaring, and then, raising her eyes to heaven, she says,
with a deprecatory shrug, "Of me!" What she likes best to tell,
however, is how the Emperor once, when he honoured her with a morning
call, had with the greatest patience kindled her fire in the fireplace,
whereupon she had exclaimed, "Ah, Sire, if Europe could behold you
now!"
The artistic element collects about Natalie.
On the day when Edgar and Zino are sent to the Lipinskis' to observe
Stella and Monsieur Cabouat, the artistic element is represented by a
pianist of much pretension and with his fingers stuck into india-rubber
thimbles, and besides by Signor della Seggiola.
Della Seggiola, without his gray velvet cap, in a black dress-coat,
looks freshly washed and--immensely unhappy. His comfortable, barytone
self-possession stands him in no stead in this cool atmosphere: he has
no opportunity to produce the jokes and merry quips with which he is
wont to enliven his scholars during his lessons. Restless and awkward,
he goes from one arm-chair to another, is absorbed in admiration of a
piece of Japanese lacquer, and breathes a sigh of relief when he
is asked to sing something, which seems to him far easier in a
drawing-room than to talk.
The pianist, on the contrary, needs a deal of urging before he consents
to pound away fiercely at the Pleyel piano as though he were a personal
enemy of the maker.
"I have a great liking for artists," Madame Lipinski, after watching
the barytone through her eye-glass, declares to her neighbour Prince
Suwarin, who is known in Parisian society by the nickname of _memento
mori_, "but they seem to me like hounds,--delightful to behold in the
open air, but mischievous in a drawing-room. One always dreads lest
they should upset something. Natalie disagrees with me: she likes to
have them in the house; she is exactly my opposite, my daughter."
In this Prince Capito agrees with her, and hence his regard for
Natalie.
It is about half-past ten when Edgar and Zino enter the Lipinski
drawing-room. After Edgar has paid his respects to both ladies of the
house,--a ceremony much prolonged by Madame Lipinski,--he looks about
for Stella, and perceives her directly in the centre of the room,
seated on a yellow divan from which rises a tall camellia-tree with red
blossoms, beside Zino. He is about to approach her, when he feels a
hand upon his arm. He turns. Stasy stands beside him, affected,
languishing, in a youthful white gown, a bouquet of roses on her
breast, and a huge feather fan in her hand.
"What an unexpected pleasure!" she murmurs.
As just at this moment a young lady, a pupil of the pianist, has seated
herself at the piano, to play a bolero, Edgar is obliged to keep quiet,
and cannot help being detained beside the wicked old fairy; nay, he is
even pinned down in a chair beside her.
The assemblage listens in silence to the young performer's first
effort; but when the Spanish dance is followed by a Swedish 'reverie'
the silence ceases. The hum of conversation rises throughout the
room,--conversation conducted in that half-whisper which reminds one of
the low murmur of faded leaves. The first to begin it was Zino.
"I do not understand how such delicate hands can have so hard a touch,"
he whispers, leaning a little towards Stella, with a significant glance
towards the narrow-chested little American at the piano. "Dummy
instruments ought always to be provided for these drawing-room
performances of young ladies: there would be just as much opportunity
for the performers to display their beautiful hands, and the misery of
the audience would be greatly alleviated."
Stella laughs a little, a very little. She is melancholy to-night. Zino
thinks of the sword of Damocles suspended above her fair head, and
pities her. For a moment he is compassionately silent; then, espying
Anastasia, he says, "I should like to know how the Gurlichingen comes
here. She is a person of whom, were I Natalie, I should steer clear."
"To steer clear of the Gurlichingen against her will is almost as
difficult as to steer clear of an epidemic disease; she steals upon us
perfectly unawares," says Stella, with a slight shrug.
"Of all antipathetic women whom I have ever encountered, the
Gurlichingen is the most antipathetic," the Prince boldly asseverates.
"Her smile is peculiarly agreeable. It always reminds me of Captain
White's Oriental pickles,--'the most exquisite compound of sweet and
sour.' At Nice they called her the death's-head with forget-me-not
eyes. To-night she looks like a skeleton at a masquerade. Just look at
her! If she only would not show all her thirty-two teeth at once!"
"Where is she?" asks Stella, slightly turning her head. So great has
been her dread of perceiving somewhere her menacing destiny, Monsieur
de Hauterive, that hitherto she has not looked about at all.
"There, between Rohritz and that flower-table, there----"
By 'Rohritz' Stella has been wont for weeks to understand the husband
of Therese; she has not yet heard of Edgar's arrival in Paris. She
raises her eyes, and starts violently. He is here in the same room with
her, and has not even taken the trouble to bid her good-evening. Good
heavens! what of that? How many minutes will pass before Monsieur de
Hauterive comes to ask her to redeem Therese Rohritz's pledged word?
and then---- The blood mounts to her cheeks.
"_Sapristi!_" Zino thinks to himself, "can it be possible that my
brother-in-law has been keener of vision than my very clever sister?"
"Do you not think, Baron Rohritz," Stasy meanwhile remarks to the
victim still fettered to her side, "that Prince Capito pays too marked
attention to our little friend Stella?"
"That is his affair," Edgar replies, coldly.
"And what does your sister-in-law say to Stella's conduct with Capito?"
"My sister-in-law evidently has no fault whatever to find with the
young lady, for this very day she praised her in the warmest terms."
"Yes, yes," Stasy murmurs; "Therese, they say, has taken Stella under
her wing."
"She is very fond of her."
"Yes, yes; all Paris is aware that Therese,"--to speak all the more
familiarly of her distinguished acquaintances the less intimate she is
with them is one of Stasy's disagreeable characteristics,--"that
Therese has set herself the task of marrying Stella well. If this be so
she ought to advise the girl to conduct herself somewhat more
prudently, or the little goose will soon have compromised herself so
absolutely that it will be impossible to find a respectable match for
her. Do you know that for Stella's sake Zino has joined della
Seggiola's class?"
"Would you make Stella Meineck responsible for Prince Capito's
eccentricities?"
"Granted that it was not in consequence of her direct permission, I do
not say it was. But she makes appointments with him in the Louvre;
and"--Stasy's eyes sparkle with fiendish triumph--"she visits him at
his lodgings. A very worthy and truthful friend of mine has rooms
opposite the Prince's in the Rue d'Anjou, and she lately saw Stella,
closely veiled, pass beneath the archway of his----"
"Absurd!" Rohritz exclaims, indignantly; and, without allowing her to
finish, he leaves her very unceremoniously to go to Stella. But before
he can make his way among the various trains, and the thicket of
furniture of a Parisian drawing-room, to the yellow divan, some one
else has taken the place beside Stella just vacated by Zino,--a
handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty, well dressed, correct in
his appearance, but not distinguished, although it would be impossible
to describe what is lacking. There is something brand-new, stiff,
shiny, about him. Between him and a dandy of the purest water, like
Capito, for instance, there is the same difference that is to be found
between a piece of genuine old Meissner porcelain and some of modern
manufacture.
"Who is the man with the red face and peaked moustache beneath the
camellia there?" Edgar asks his old acquaintance Prince Suwarin, whom
he has just met.
"That is a certain Cabouat de Hauterive, a millionaire, who is very
fond of pretty things," replies Suwarin. "A little while ago he bought
a superb Rousseau for his gallery, and now, they say, he intends to buy
a pretty wife for his house. But he is absolutely lacking in the very
_A_, _B_, _C_ of aesthetic knowledge. The picture-dealer, Arthur
Stevens, selected his Rousseau for him. I should like to know who found
a wife for him. Whoever it was had good taste, I must say. The stupid
fellow brags to all his acquaintances of the beauty of his new
acquisition. She's a countrywoman of yours, if I'm not mistaken,--the
young girl there beside him. She is simply divine!"
In fact, she is exquisitely lovely. How can Stasy presume to slander
her so brutally? Truly it would be difficult to imagine anything
more modest, more innocent, than the slender creature beside that
broad-shouldered parvenu! Her elbows pressed close to her sides, her
hands in her lap, with drooping head she sits there deadly pale, and
evidently trembling with dread, as if awaiting sentence of death.
"It is a crime to force a young girl thus," Rohritz mutters between his
set teeth. "I would not for the world have Therese's work to answer
for. Fool that I am!--fool!"
Every drop of blood in his veins boils; for a moment it seems as
if the sight of that pale, sad, child-like face must rob him of all
self-control, as if thus at the last moment he must snatch her from the
glittering, terrible fate to which she has devoted herself and bear her
off in his arms, far, far away, to a peaceful green country where in
the dreamy evening twilight stands a white castle in the shade of a
mighty linden, where the odour of the linden-blossoms mingles on the
evening breeze with the fragrance of the large, pale roses which look
up from the dark verdure to the blue evening skies, where the music of
gently-rustling leaves blends sadly with the sobbing ripple of the
Save!
None but a maniac, however, would in our civilized century yield to
such an impulse. Edgar is by no means a maniac: he is even too well
bred to show the slightest outward sign of his agitation. Calmly, his
eye-glass in his eye, he stands beside Suwarin and answers intelligibly
and connectedly his questions as to the new Viennese ballet.
Stella Meineck has less self-control. While Monsieur in the most
insinuating minor tones is preluding the momentous question, she is
vainly trying to convince herself of all that should force her to
receive his suit with joyful gratitude from the hand of fate as a
gift of God. She recalls the petty poverty of the life that lies behind
her, the endless, monotonous misery of the future in galoches and
water-proof that lies before her, the hotel-bill that is not paid, the
golden brooch she has been obliged to sell to buy two pair of new
gloves,--everything, in short, that is hopeless and comfortless in her
life. Oh, she will be sensible, will accept his offer. There,--now he
has put the great question, so distinctly, so clearly, that no pretence
of misunderstanding that might delay the necessity for her reply is
possible. She catches her breath; her heart beats as if it would break;
black misty clouds float before her eyes; there is a sound in her ears
as of the rushing of a far-distant stream. She raises her head, and is
about to speak, when her eyes meet Edgar's; and if instant death were
to be the consequence of her refusal, her consent is no longer
possible.
"You are very--very kind," she stammers, imploringly, "Monsieur de
Hauterive, but I cannot--I cannot--forgive me, but--I cannot."
A moment more, and she is sitting alone beneath the camellia-bush.