they went out on to the deserted terrace. His arm clasped her more
closely and drew her to him. Involuntarily he waited till she should
make some effort to free herself from his hold; but she was quite
passive; she only raised a tear-bedewed face with a blissful gaze into
his eyes, and whispered: "I ought not to forgive you so easily...." and
then, with no more distrust or fear than a child clinging to its
mother, she let her head fall on his shoulder and sobbed for happiness.
A strange reverence came over him; the sound of some church bell came
up from the city. He kissed her with solemn tenderness on the forehead
and only said:
"My darling, my sacred treasure!" She was safe.
When the general came out of the card-room to look once more at the
dancers before he withdrew, the cotillon, with its fanciful figures and
lavish distribution of ribbons and flowers, was nearly over.
"What a cruel idea!" he heard in a lamentable voice from one of a row
of chaperons, "to give a ball in such heat as this!"
It was the baroness, who was searching all round the room with her
eye-glass and a very sour and puckered expression of face. Siegburg,
who, as the general knew, was to have danced the cotillon with Zinka,
was sitting out; when von Klinger asked him the reason he answered very
calmly, that "he believed Zinka had felt tired and had gone home," But
the way in which he said it roused the old man's suspicions that he put
forward this hypothesis to prevent any further search being made for
Zinka. He had seen her last in the corridor with Sempaly, and he
hurried off to find her. He sought in vain in all the nooks hidden by
the plants; in vain in the recesses behind the pillars--but the door to
the garden was open. This filled him with apprehension--he went out,
sure that he must be following them.
The air was oppressively sultry and damp; it crushed him with a sense
of hopeless anxiety. The scirocco had cast its baleful spell over Rome.
Northerners who have never been in Rome have no idea of the nature of
the scirocco; they suppose it to be a storm of hot wind. No.... it is
when the air is still and damp, when it distils but does not waft a
heavy perfume that the scirocco diffuses its poison: a subtle influence
compounded of the scent of flowers that it forces into life only to
destroy them--of the mists from the Tiber whose yellow flood--like mud
mixed with gold, which rolls over the corpses and treasure that lie
buried in its depths--of the exhalations from the graves, and the
perennial incense from all the churches of Rome. The scirocco cheats
the soul with delusive fancies and fills the heart with gloom and
oppression; it inspires the imagination with dreams of splendid
achievement and stretches the limbs on a couch in languor and
exhaustion. It penetrates even the cool seclusion of the cloister and
breathes on the pale cheek of the young nun who is struggling for
devout aspiration, reminding her of long forgotten dreams.
All that is melancholy, all that is cruel and wicked in Rome--much,
too, that is beautiful--is engendered by the scirocco. It is creative
of glorious conceptions and of hideous deeds. One feels inclined to
fancy that on the day when Caesar fell under the dagger of Brutus
Scirocco and Tramontane fought their last fight for the mastery of
Rome--and Scirocco won the day.
A dense grey cloud hung over the city and veiled the sinking moon. A
cascade that tumbled from basin to basin, down the terraced slope of
the Quirinal, plashed weirdly in the deep twilight of the earliest
dawn, which was just beginning shyly to vie with the dying moon. Light
and shade had ceased to exist; the whole scene presented the dim,
smudged effect of a rubbed charcoal drawing.
The general sent a peering glance through the laurel-hedged alleys that
led down the hill. Above the clipped evergreens, rose huge ilexes,
wreathed to the very top with ivy and climbing roses. Here and there
something white gleamed dimly in the grey--he rushed to meet it--it was
a statue or a white blossomed shrub. Roses and magnolias opened their
blossoms to the solitude, and the scent of orange-flowers filled the
heavy air, stronger than all the other perfumes of the morning. Now and
then, like a faint sigh, a shiver ran through the leaves--the fall of a
dying flower.
The old man held his breath to listen; he called: "Zinka--Sempaly!" No
answer.
Suddenly he heard low voices in a path known as the alley of the
Sarcophagus and thither he bent his steps. The sullen light fell
through a gap in the leafy wall on Sempaly and Zinka, seated on a
bench, hand in hand, and talking familiarly, forgetful of all the world
besides.
Zinka was the first to see him; she was not in the least disconcerted.
"Oh! Uncle Klinger!" she exclaimed. "Mamma is waiting for me, I dare
say!--but do not scold me, I entreat you--."
Thank God for those happy innocent eyes that looked so frankly into
his!--On purity like hers Scirocco could have no power! No--he could
not be angry with her.--But _he_!
"Sempaly!" cried the old man indignantly: "What possesses you?"
"I have at length made up my mind to be happy," said Sempaly with
feeling, and he raised Zinka's hand to his lips. "That is all."
"And I ought not to have forgiven him so easily--ought I?" murmured
Zinka, quailing at the general's stern frown, and her head drooped.
"Zinka has been missed, you know how spiteful people are!" exclaimed
von Klinger angrily, ignoring the sentimentality of the situation.
Sempaly interrupted him with vehement irritation.
"What I should like to do," he said half to himself, "is to go straight
back to the ball-room, and tell my most intimate friends at once of our
engagement!" But even as he spoke he reconsidered the matter; "but I
cannot," he went on, "unfortunately I cannot. I must even entreat you,
Zinka, to keep it a secret even from your own household."
"Come, at once, with me," said the general drily, "my carriage is
waiting in the Piazza. If I am not mistaken there is a little gate here
which leads on to it... Yes, here it is. I will tell your mother, so
that others shall hear it, that you felt ill and left before the
cotillon began and that Lady Julia took you home."
When Zinka was safely on her way to the palazetto in charge of the
general's trusty old coachman, the two men looked each other in the
face.
"Outrageous!" growled the general furiously. Sempaly turned upon him
quickly:
"Think what you will of me," he said, "but do not let the shadow of a
suspicion rest on Zinka. You know that if you hold up a cross to the
devil himself, his power is quelled."
Without answering a word the general hurried past Sempaly and straight
into the ball-room; but he found time to lock behind him the alcove
door leading into the garden. In the ball-room he was met by the
baroness who anxiously asked him:
"Where is Zinka? have you seen Zinka?"
"Zinka felt shaken and upset by her fall--she went away a long time
since, with Lady Julia who took her home."
He spoke very distinctly and in French, so that several persons who
were standing near might hear him. "She might have let me know,"
exclaimed the baroness peevishly.
"We looked for you, but could nowhere find you," said the general.
Never in his life before had he told a lie.
* * *
At some unearthly hour next morning he called on Lady Julia to confide
to her the mystery of the night's adventure, that she might not
contradict his story; as he had actually put Zinka into her carriage
there seemed to be no other danger. Though she disliked the falsehood
as much as he did, she was quite ready to confirm the fiction; at the
same time she could not help saying again and again:
"Poor little thing! I hope it may all come right!"
CHAPTER III.
"Dearest Zinka, my own sweet little love,
"My brother arrived in Rome last night; he is on his way to Australia
and I am thankful to say stays only a few days. So long as he is here I
must make every sacrifice and hardly see you at all, for he must know
nothing of our engagement. Now, shall I tell you the real sordid reason
why I cannot speak to him of my happiness?--during these last few
miserable weeks, simply and solely to kill the time, I have gambled and
have always been unlucky, and I have got deeply into debt. My brother
will pay, as he always has done, so long as the conditions remain
unchanged. But ... however, it is not a matter to write about. Believe
this much only: that his narrow views can never affect my feelings
towards you; though I may seem to yield, for I think it useless to
provoke his antagonism. As soon as he has sailed there will be nothing
in the way of our engagement and we will be married immediately. To an
accomplished fact he must surrender. If I possibly can, I will see you
this evening at the palazetto--just to have one kiss and a loving word.
Till then I can only implore you to keep this absolutely secret.
"Your perfectly devoted
"N.S."
This was the note that Zinka received the morning after the ball, as
she was breakfasting alone in her own room, rather later than usual,
but with a convalescent appetite. The color mounted to her cheeks, and
her eyes flashed indignantly. Coldness and neglect she had borne--but
the meanness and weakness--the moral cowardice--that this note
betrayed, degraded him in her eyes till she almost scorned him. She
felt as though a sudden glare had shown her the real Sempaly--as though
the man she loved was not he, but some one else. The man she had loved
was a lofty young god who had chosen to descend from his high estate to
break the heart of an insignificant girl who ought to have thought
herself happy only to have gazed upon him; but this was a boneless,
nerveless mortal, who could stoop to petty subterfuge for fear of
having to face the wrath of his brother.
She was furious; all the pride that had been crushed into silence by
her dejection was roused to arms. She went to her desk and wrote as
follows:
"I am prepared to marry you in defiance of your brother's will, but I
could never think of becoming your wife behind his back. I am ready to
defy him, but I do not choose to cheat him. It is of no use to come to
the house this evening unless you are quite clear on this point. I
could not think of marrying you unless I were perfectly sure that I was
more indispensable to your happiness than your brother's good will. You
must therefore consider yourself released from every tie, and regard
the words you spoke yesterday in a moment of excitement as effaced from
my memory. Ever yours,
"Zinka Sterzl."
Zinka enclosed this peremptory note in an envelope, addressed it, rang
for her maid and desired her to have it sent immediately to the Palazzo
di Venezia.
"And shall I say there is an answer?" asked the girl.
"No," said Zinka shortly.
No sooner had the maid gone on her errand than the hapless Zinka felt
utterly wretched and almost repented of having written so
indignantly... She might have said all that was in the note without
expressing herself so bitterly. She thought the words over, knit her
brows, shook her head--and at that moment her eye fell on another
letter which had been brought to her with Sempaly's, and which she had
forgotten to open. She saw that the writing was Truyn's. She hastily
read the note which was a short one.
"Dear Zinka:--My poor little girl has been much worse and the doctor
gives me very little hope. She constantly asks for you, both when she
is conscious and in her delirium. Come to her if you can. Your old
friend,
"Truyn."
"P. S. It is nothing catching--inflammation of the lungs."
Zinka started up--she forgot everything--her happiness, her grief,
Sempaly himself--remembering only Truyn's indefatigable kindness and
the sorrow that threatened him.
"Nothing catching...." she repeated to herself: "poor man! he thinks of
others even now--it is just like him. While I ... I?" She colored
deeply, for she recollected how that evening the child had sat
shivering by her side and she had not noticed it.
"I had my head turned by a kind word from him...." she thought vexed
with her own folly.
In a very few minutes she was hurrying across the Corso towards the
Piazza di Spagna. Her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her.
Zinka almost flew, heeding nothing and looking at no one, till, in the
Piazza di Spagna, she came upon a group of persons coming out of the
Hotel de Londres and felt a light hand on her arm. Looking round she
saw Nini.
"Good-morning. Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked the young
countess pleasantly.
"Good-morning," said Zinka hastily, "I am in a great hurry--I am going
to the Hotel de l'Europe; Gabrielle Truyn is very ill--she wants to see
me."
But at this moment Zinka perceived a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a
very handsome face and haughty expression, standing close to Nini. He
was gazing at her with perfectly well-bred admiration, and Nini
introduced him as Prince Sempaly. Then she saw that Nicklas Sempaly was
just behind, with Polyxena. His eyes met hers with a passionate flash,
but he only bowed with distant formality. Zinka had no time to think
about his manner, she was hardly conscious of his presence--all she
felt was that she was being detained.
"You must excuse me," she said, smiling an apology to Nini and shaking
hands warmly with her without stopping to think of the formalities of
caste. "Poor Count Truyn is expecting me." And she hurried on again.
"Who is that sweet-looking girl, Nini?" asked the prince, "for, of
course, you omitted to mention her name."
"Fraeulein Sterzl," replied Nini, "the sister of one of the secretaries
to the embassy."
"Sterzl," repeated the prince somewhat flatly.
"Zenaide Sterzl!" said Polyxena over her shoulder.
But the ironical accent emphasis she laid on the odd mixture of the
romantic and the commonplace was thrown away upon Prince Sempaly, who
was much too fine a gentleman to laugh at his inferiors; all he said
was:
"Sterzl? I seem to know the name. Sterzl--I served for a time under a
Colonel Sterzl of the Uhlans. He was a very superior man."
Zinka meanwhile was flying on to the Hotel de l'Europe. In the
sun-flooded court-yard stood two rose-trees, a white and a red--two
brown curly-headed little boys were fighting a duel with walking-sticks
in a shady corner--two English families were packing themselves into
roomy landaus for an excursion and sending the servants in and out to
fetch things that they had forgotten. The air was full of the scent of
roses, and sunshine, and laughter; but one of the Englishwomen hushed
her companion who had laughed rather loudly and pointing up to one of
the windows said: "Remember the sick child."
A cold chill fell on Zinka's heart--she ran up the familiar stairs. In
Truyn's drawing-room sat Gabrielle's English governess--anxious but
helpless.
"May I go in?" asked Zinka.
"No, wait a minute--the doctor is there." At this moment Truyn came out
of the child's room with Dr. E---- the German physician, and conducted
him down-stairs. Truyn had the fixed, calm, white face of a man who is
accustomed to bear his sorrows alone.
When he returned he went up to Zinka and took her hand: "She asks for
you constantly," he said, "but do you think you can prevent her seeing
that you are unhappy and alarmed?"
"Yes--indeed you may trust me," said Zinka bravely, wiping away her
tears; and she went into the child's room "as silent and bright as a
sunbeam."
CHAPTER IV.
Some one must have seen Zinka and Sempaly in the course of their
moonlight walk or else have found out something about it in spite of
the general's precautions; this was made evident by an article which
came out on the Friday after the ball in a French 'society paper'
published weekly in Rome. The title of the article was "a moonlight
cotillon;" it began with an exact description of Zinka, of whom it
spoke as Fraeulein Z---- a S--l, the sister of a secretary in the
Austrian Embassy; referred to the sensation produced by her appearance
as Lady Jane Grey, spoke of her as an elegant adventuress--"a
professional beauty"--and hinted at her various unsuccessful schemes
for winning a princely coronet; schemes which had culminated in a
moonlight walk, a few nights since, during a ball at the house of a
distinguished member of Roman society, and which had outdone in
audacity all that had ever been known to the _chronique scandaleuse_ of
Rome. "Will she earn her reward in the form of a coronet and will the
pages of 'High Life' ere long announce a fashionable marriage in which
this young lady will fill a part?--that is the question," so the
article ended.
"High Life,"--this was the name of the paper graced by this
effusion--was scouted, abused and condemned by everybody, covertly
maintained by several, and read by most--with disgust and indignation
it is true, but still read. On this fateful Friday every copy of "High
Life" was sold in no time, and before the sun had set Zinka's name was
in every mouth.
What said the world of Rome? Lady Julia cried, had some tea, and went
to bed; Mr. Ellis said "shocking!" assured his wife that he was
convinced of Zinka's innocence, and that it would certainly triumph
over calumny; after which he quietly went about his business and spent
two whole hours in practising a difficult passage on the concertina.
It was the Brauers--the Sterzls' old neighbors before mentioned--who
contributed chiefly to the diffusion of the article, supplementing it
with their own comments. They had some acquaintance among the "cream"
of Rome, though they had not been invited to the ball at the
Brancaleone palace. Frau Brauer assumed a tone of perfidious
compassion: it was a terrible affair for a young girl's reputation,
though, for her part, she could see nothing extraordinary in a
moonlight wandering with an intimate friend. Her husband, to whom the
Sterzl family had paid very little attention--the baroness out of
conceit, and Cecil and Zinka because he was in fact intolerably
affected, pompous and patronizing--said with a sneering smile that he
had never seen anything to admire in that little adventuress, with her
free and easy innocence--pushing herself into society she was not born
to. He had always thought it most unbecoming; and it must be a pleasant
thing indeed for the Duchess of Brancaleone to have such a scandalous
business take place in her house--she would be more careful for the
future whom she invited!
Madame de Gandry and Mrs. Ferguson thought the article very amusingly
written--not that they would ever have said a word about such a piece
of imprudence--for really no one was safe! To be sure any evil that
might be written against them would be a lie--a pure invention--which
in Zinka's case was quite unnecessary ... So they sent the paper round
to all their friends as a warning against rushing into acquaintance
with strangers: "One cannot be too careful." Zinka had seemed to them
suspicious from the first, for after all she was not "the real thing."
All these spiteful and cruel insinuations they even ventured to utter
in the presence of Princess Vulpini, in the general's atelier, the spot
where all that circle concentrated whenever anything had occurred to
excite or startle it, and they made the princess furious.
"I am an Austrian myself," she said, "and was brought up with ideas of
exclusiveness which are as much above suspicion as they are beyond your
comprehension. I am strictly conservative in all my views. But Zinka is
elect by nature--an exceptional creature before whom all such laws give
way. I should have regarded it as pure folly to sacrifice the pleasure
of her acquaintance for the sake of a social dogma."
"Exceptions always fare badly," murmured the general.
Countess Ilsenbergh, who was as strict on points of honor as she was on
matters of etiquette, was deeply aggrieved by the article; she
expressed herself briefly but strongly on the subject of the freedom of
the press, and confessed that, whether Zinka were innocent or guilty,
things looked very ugly for Sempaly.
The count rushed into eloquence giving an exhaustive discourse on the
whole social question.
"Princess Vulpini is quite right," he said. "Fraeulein Sterzl is a
bewitching creature, quite an exception--and if any departure from
traditional law is ever permissible it would be so in her case. But the
general too is right; exceptions must always fare badly in the world,
and we cannot endanger the very essence and being of social stability
in order to improve the position of any single individual. Above all,
we must never create a precedent." And he proceeded to enlarge on the
horrible consequences which must result from such a mixture of classes,
referred to the example of France, and proposed the introduction of the
Hindoo system of caste, in its strictest application, as a further
bulwark for the protection of society in Europe and the coercion of
ambitious spirits. His wife, at this juncture, objected that European
society had not yet reached such a summit of absolute exclusiveness as
he would assume, and that, consequently what was immediately needed was
not any such far-reaching scheme for its protection, but some plan for
dealing with the disagreeable circumstances in which its imperfection
had at this time placed them.
He replied that the matter lay in a nutshell; either the story in 'High
Life' was a lie, in which case Sempaly had nothing to do but to deny it
categorically, to prove an alibi at the hour mentioned and to horsewhip
the editor--or, the facts stated were true, and then--under the
circumstances--there was nothing for it--but ... "the lady's previous
character was quite above suspicion--there was nothing for it--but...."
and he shrugged his shoulders.
"But to make Fraeulein Sterzl Countess Sempaly!" cried Madame de Gandry.
"Well, I must say I do think it rather too much to give an adventurous
little chit a coronet as a reward for sheer impudence. But I beg your
pardon, general,--I had forgotten that you are a friend of the family."
"And I," exclaimed the general beside himself, and quite pale with
rage, "I, madame, was within an ace of forgetting that I was listening
to a lady!"
Princess Vulpini interposed: "You yourself said, madame, that you had
always avoided any acquaintance with Zinka; now I have known her
intimately, and seen her almost every day; I have observed her demeanor
with men--with young men--and heard her conversation with other girls,
and I can assure you that the word impudence is no more applicable to
her conduct than to that of my little girl of three.--And if she did,
in fact, go into the garden with my cousin the night of the ball, it is
a proof simply of romantic thoughtlessness, of such perfect,
unsuspicious innocence that it ought of itself avail to protect her
against slander. I spent last night with Zinka, by the bedside of my
little niece who is ill, and no girl with a stain on her conscience
could look so sweetly pure or smile with such childlike sincerity. I
would put my hand in the fire for her spotless innocence!"
The princess spoke with such dignity and warmth, and while she spoke
she fixed such a scathing eye on Madame de Gandry, that the
Frenchwoman, abashed in spite of herself, could only mutter some
incoherent answer and withdraw with Mrs. Ferguson in her wake.
The four Austrians were alone.
"The person who puzzles me in this business," said the princess, "is
Nicki Sempaly. As soon as this wretched paper came into my hands I sent
it to his rooms. There I heard that he had just gone out with the
Jatinskys. I went to the Hotel de l'Europe to talk it over with my
brother, but he had gone to lie down and I had not the heart to wake
him. Besides, he could have done no good, and I could not bear to
disturb his happiness over his child's amendment.--So I came to
unburden my heart to you, general."
"Sempaly cannot have seen it yet," suggested Ilsenbergh. The princess
shrugged her shoulders. Countess Ilsenbergh once more expressed her
opinion that "it was a very unpleasant affair and that she had foreseen
it all from the first," after which, finding that it would be difficult
to prevent her husband from delivering another lecture, she rose to go.
At this instant Prince Vulpini came into the studio with a beaming
countenance. "Ah! here you are! I saw the carriage at the door as I was
passing.--Have you heard the latest news?"
"Sempaly is engaged to Zinka?" cried his wife.
"No!" cried the prince; "the wind last night tore down the national
flag on the Quirinal. Hurrah for the Tramontana!"
* * *
A few minutes later the general was alone; after a moment's hesitation
he took up his hat and hurried off to the palazetto to see how matters
stood there. He was one of those who had been the latest to hear of the
slanderous article and at the same time to be the most deeply wounded
by it. But perhaps by this time Sempaly had engaged himself to Zinka,
he said to himself, and he hastened his pace.
It was the baroness's day at home. The silly woman was sitting dressed
and displayed--a grey glove on one hand, while with the other she
pretended to arrange a dish of bonbons.
"How kind of you!--" she exclaimed as the general entered the room. The
stereotyped formula came piping out of her thin lips without the
smallest variation to every fresh visitor, as chilling and as colorless
as snow.
He had hardly greeted the baroness when he looked round for Zinka--at
first without seeing her; it was not till a bright voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, uncle, come and give me a kiss," that he discovered her, in
the darkest corner of the room, leaning back in a deep arm-chair and
looking rather tired and sleepy but wonderfully pretty and unwontedly
happy.
"I am so tired, so tired!--you cannot think how tired I am," she said,
laying his hand coaxingly against her cheek, "and mamma is so cruel as
to insist on my staying in the drawing-room because it is her day at
home, and I was sound asleep when you came in, for thank heaven! we
have had no visitors yet. I sat with Gabrielle all last night and the
night before without closing my eyes; but then I was so glad to think
that the little pet would not take her medicine from anyone but me; and
last night, at length, in the middle of one of my stories, she fell
asleep on my shoulder. But then in order not to disturb her I sat quite
still for six hours. I felt as if I had been nailed to a cross--and
to-day I am so stiff I can hardly move." And she stretched her arms and
curled herself into her chair again with a pretty caressing action of
her shoulders. "You ought to have stayed in bed," said the general
paternally. "Oh dear no! why I slept on till quite late in the morning.
Besides, my being tired is of no real importance; the great point is
that Gabrielle is out of danger: Oh, if anything had happened to
her!..." and she shuddered; "I cannot bear to think of it. Count Truyn
is firmly convinced that I have contributed in some mysterious way to
the child's amendment, and when I came away this morning he kissed my
hands in gratitude as if I had been the holy _Bambino_ himself. I
laughed and cried both at once, and now I am so happy--my heart feels
as light as one of those air balls the children carry tied by a string,
that they may not fly off up to the clouds. But why do you look so
grave? are you not as glad as I am, uncle that...."
The baroness who had been looking at her watch here expressed her
surprise that not a living soul had come near them to-day.
"You are evidently not a living soul, uncle--nothing but my dear grumpy
old friend," said Zinka with her pathetic little laugh. There was
something peculiarly caressing and touching about her to-day; the old
man's eyes were moist and his heart bled for the sweet child.
Outside the door they heard a heavy swift step--the step of a man in
pressing but crushing trouble; the door was torn open and Sterzl,
breathless, green rather than pale, foaming with rage, stormed in--a
newspaper in his hand.
"What is the matter--what has happened?" cried Zinka dismayed. He came
straight up to her and stared at her with dreadful eyes.
"Were you really in the garden with Sempaly during the cotillon?" he
said hoarsely.
"Yes," she said trembling.
He gave a little start and shuddered--tottered--then he pulled himself
up and flung the newspaper at her feet--at hers--his butterfly, his
darling!
"Read that," he said.
Von Klinger tried to seize the paper, but Sterzl held him with a firm
hand. "Your leniency is out of place," he said dully; "_she_ may read
anything."
Zinka read; suddenly she sprang up with a cry of horror and the
paper fell out of her hand. Even now she did not understand the
matter,--exactly what she was accused of she did not know; only that it
was something unwomanly and disgraceful.
"Cecil!" she began, looking into his face, "Cecil...." and then she
covered her face, which from white had turned crimson, with her hands.
He meanwhile had felt the absolute innocence of the girl, and was
repenting of his rash and cruel wrath.
"Zini," he cried, "forgive me--I was mad with rage--mad." And he tried
to put his arm round her. But she held him off.
"Leave me, leave me," she said. "No, I cannot forgive you. Oh Cecil!
if all the newspapers in the world had said you had cheated, for
instance--do you think I should have believed them?"
He bent his head before her with a certain reverence: "But this is
different, Zini," he said very gently; "I do not say it as an excuse
for myself, but it is different. You do not see how different because
you are a child--an angel--poor, sweet, little butterfly," and he drew
her strongly to his breast and laid his lips on the golden head; she
however would not surrender and insisted on freeing herself.
"What on earth is going on?" the baroness asked again, for the
twentieth time. Getting, even now, no reply, she picked up the
newspaper that was lying on the floor, caught sight of the article,
read a few lines of it, and broke out into railing complaints of
Zinka--enumerating all the sins of which Zinka had been guilty from her
earliest years and particularly within her recent memory, and ending
with the words: "And you will ruin Cecil yet in his career."
"Be quiet, mother;" said Cecil sternly. "My career is not the present
question--we must think of our honor and of her happiness," and leaning
over the fragile and trembling form of his sister, he said imploringly:
"Tell me, Zini, exactly what happened."
She had freed herself from his clasp and was standing before him with
her arms folded across--rigid though tremulous--and her voice was cold
and monotonous as she obeyed him and gave with naive exactitude her
short and simple report, blushing as she spoke. When she had ended
Cecil drew a deep breath.
"And since that you have heard nothing of Sempaly?" he asked.
"The next morning he sent me a note."
"Zinka, do not be angry with me ... show me that note."
She left the room and soon returned with the letter which she handed to
Sterzl. He read it through with great gravity and marked attention then
knitting his brows he slowly folded it up and turned it over.
"And you answered him?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And what did you say?"
"Very little--that I was quite prepared to marry him without his
brother's consent, but behind his brother's back?--No!"
In the midst of his trouble a flash of pride lighted up Sterzl's weary
eyes. "Bravo, Zini!" he murmured, "and he took this answer in silence?"
Zinka paused to think:
"Yes...." she said; "but no.--He sent me a note to the Hotel de
l'Europe."
"And what does he say in that?"
"I have not read it yet; it came just at the moment when Gabrielle was
at the worst and then I forgot it--but here it is...." and she drew it
out of the pocket of her blue serge dress. Sterzl shook his head and
glanced with a puzzled air at his sister; then he opened the note. It
was as follows:
"My darling little treasure, my haughty indignant little sweetheart:
"Immediately on the receipt of your note I rushed to see you. The
porter told me that you were not at home but with your poor little
friend Gabrielle. Of course I cannot think of intruding on you there,
though I would this day give a few years of my life for a sight of
you--for one kiss. Sooner than lose you I am ready to throw up
everything. Command and I obey ... but no, I must be wise for us both;
I must wait till my affairs are somewhat in order. There is no help for
it--I can only ask your forgiveness. I kiss your hands and the hem of
your garment--I am utterly unworthy of you, but I love you beyond
words.
"Sempaly."
When Sterzl had read this highly characteristic letter he slowly paced
the room two or three times, and finally stood still in front of his
sister. Then, taking her hand and kissing it fondly, he said:
"Forgive me, Zini--I am really proud of you. You have behaved like an
angel ... but he--he is a contemptible sneak."
But this she could not stand. "I do not defend him," she exclaimed
vehemently, "but at any rate he loves me, and he understands me.--He,
at any rate, would never have suspected me ... and ... and...." But it
was in vain that she paused for a word--she could say nothing more in
his favor; but she called up all her pride, and holding her head very
high she left the room; as soon as she was outside they could hear her
sob convulsively.
The baroness rose to follow her, but Cecil stood in her way.
"Where are you going?" he asked sternly.
"To Zinka; I really must make her see what mischief she has done. It is
outrageous ... why, at thirteen I should have known better!" Sterzl
smiled bitterly:
"Very likely," he said, "but I must beg you to leave Zinka to herself;
she is miserable enough without that."
"And are we to submit to her heedlessness without even reproving her
for it?" said the baroness indignantly.
"Yes, mother," he said decidedly; "our business now is not to reprove
her, but to protect and comfort her."
At this juncture dinner was announced. Sterzl begged the general to
remain and dine with them, for he had, he said, several things to talk
over with him. He evidently wished above everything to avoid being
alone with his mother. Before sitting down he went to Zinka's room to
see whether she would not eat at least a little soup; but he came back
much distressed.
"She would hardly speak to me," he said; "she is quite beside herself."
And he himself sat in silence, eating nothing, drinking little,
crumbling his bread and playing with his napkin. Each time the door
opened he looked anxiously round.
The meal was short and uncomfortable; when they had returned to the
drawing-room and were drinking their coffee the servant brought Sterzl
a letter. Cecil took it hastily, looked at the address, and, not
recognizing the writing, at last opened it. It contained only a
half-sheet of note-paper, with a cleverly sketched caricature: Sterzl
himself as auctioneer, the hammer in one hand a doll in the other, and
before him the coroneted heads of Rome. Sterzl at once recognized the
likeness, though his lank figure was absurdly exaggerated, and his
whole appearance made as grotesque as possible. He only shrugged his
shoulders and said indifferently:
"Does any one really think that such a thing as this can hurt or vex me
now? Look, general--Sempaly, no doubt, is the ingenious artist of this
masterpiece."
The general took the paper, and would have torn it across to prevent
Sterzl from examining it any further; but before he could do so Cecil,
looking over his shoulder, had snatched it out of his hand.
"There is something written on it!" he said, deciphering the scribble
in one corner, in Sempaly's weak, illegible hand-writing: "Mademoiselle
Sterzl, going--going--gone--!... Ah! I understand!"
His face grew purple and he breathed with difficulty.
"To send you this is contemptible," cried the general; "Sempaly drew
this before he had ever seen Zinka.... I know it, I was present at the
time."
"What difference does that make?" said Sterzl; "if this is the view
people took of me and my proceedings! Well, and after all they were
right--I should have liked to see my sister brilliantly married--I
meant it well ... and I have made myself ridiculous and have been the
ruin of the poor child."
His rage and misery were beyond control; he walked up and down, then
suddenly stood still, looking out of the open window; then again he
paced the room.
"Sempaly is incomprehensible," he began, "quite incomprehensible! I had
no very high opinion of his character--particularly lately; but I could
not have supposed him capable of such baseness and cruelty. What do you
gather from his not coming here to-day?"
"He simply has not happened to see the paper," the general suggested.
"He is gone on some expedition with his brother and his cousins."
"Well, but even supposing that he has not read this article," said
Sterzl, "it still is very strange that, as matters stand between him
and Zinka, he should have let two days go by without making any attempt
to see her."
The general was silent.
"You know him better than I do," Cecil began again presently, "and, as
Zinka tells me, you were present during some part of this romantic
moonlight promenade. Do you think he seriously intends to marry her?"
"I know that he is madly in love with her, and even the Ilsenberghs,
who were discussing the matter at my house with the Princess Vulpini,
saw no alternative for him--irrespective of his attachment to her--but
to make her an offer."
"We shall see," murmured Sterzl. He looked at the clock: "half past
nine!" he exclaimed. "This is becoming quite mysterious. I will try
once more to see him at his rooms; his chasseur will perhaps know when
he is expected to return home. Would you mind remaining here?" he added
in a low voice; "keep my mother from going to Zinka; the poor child
cannot bear it;" and he hurried off.
In about half an hour he returned.
"Well?" asked the general.
"He set out at one o'clock for Frascati, with the prince, the
Jatinskys, and Siegburg," said Sterzl gloomily. "When I asked whether
he was to be back this evening the man said certainly, for he was to
set off to-morrow morning with his excellency the ambassador. He has
been afraid to declare his engagement for fear of a scene with his
brother--he is gone out of Rome for fear of a scene with me--'High
Life' was lying open on his writing-table."
They heard the light rustle of a dress. Sterzl looked round--behind him
stood Zinka with tumbled hair and anxious, eager, tear-dimmed eyes.
"Zinka!" he cried, stepping forward to catch her; for her gaze was
fixed, she staggered, put out her hands with a helpless gesture and
fell into his arms. He laid her head tenderly on his shoulder and
carried her away.
CHAPTER V.
Sempaly's nervous system was very sensitive and his ear remarkably
delicate; he had in consequence a horror--a perfect mania of
aversion--for any scene which might involve excitement and loud
talking. Besides this he had the peculiarity--common enough with the
spoilt children of fortune--of always ignoring as far as possible the
inevitable difficulties of life in the hope that some _deus ex machina_
would interfere to set matters straight for him.
His passion for Zinka was perfectly genuine, at once vehement and
tender; far from diminishing, it had, if possible, increased during
these last three days. Though that hour of sentimental and guileless
talk with Zinka under the midnight moon had for the time satisfied her,
it had only fevered him; and while his cowardly double-dealing had
lowered him in her esteem, her straightforward pride had raised her
infinitely in his. He was utterly miserable, but this did not prevent
him from allowing his good-natured senior to pay his enormous debts,
nor--in order to propitiate him--from paying specious attentions to his
cousins. It must, however, be said in extenuation, that this flirtation
was not so much deliberate as instinctive, for he was a man whose
untutored and unbounded impulse to make himself agreeable led him
irresistibly to do his utmost to produce a pleasant impression, even at
the sacrifice of his honor. If, only once, during these three days, he
had had an opportunity of speaking to Zinka all might perhaps have
turned out differently. He would probably have found it easy, with his
wonderful fascination of person, to recover the ground he had lost; and
her proud rectitude might possibly have influenced him to take a bolder
course of action. But, in the first instance, he could not intrude on
Zinka while she was sitting by her little friend Gabrielle, and the
idea of rushing into an explanation with Sterzl did not smile on his
fancy.
Thus he let the hours slip by, till, on the Friday morning, the
luckless copy of 'High Life' was brought into him addressed in a
feigned hand. This made him furious, and he was on the point of rushing
off to the palazetto when he remembered that he had promised to be
ready to join the party to Frascati at one o'clock. He had dipped his
pen and prepared the paper to send an excuse to the Hotel de Londres
when there was a knock, and Prince Sempaly, with his two cousins,
walked in, half an hour before the appointed time.
"What a surprise!... An unexpected honor!" he exclaimed somewhat
disconcerted.
"That is what we intended," said Polyxena laughing. "Hum! there is a
rather pronounced perfume of latakia in your room--but the whole effect
is pretty, very pretty," while Nini looked timidly about her with her
fawn-like eyes. A bachelor's quarters are, as is well known, one of the
most interesting mysteries that ever exercise the curious imagination
of a young lady.
"The girls insisted on seeing your den," the prince explained, "so I
had to bring them, whether or no, while Siegburg amuses their mamma."
"Why, you yourself proposed it, Oscar!" cried Nini.
Sempaly bowed. "From this time henceforth this room is consecrated
ground," he said gallantly--and "High Life" was lying on his desk all
the time and an iron fist seemed clenched upon his heart. If his
brother had but come alone ... but with these two girls ... it was
crucial.
Xena began to touch and examine all his odds and ends, to open his
books, and at last to hover round his writing-table where, with
graceful impertinence, she was about to take up the fatal sheet.
"Stop, stop!" cried Nicki, "that is not for your eyes, Xena."
"Look, but touch not," said the prince, with a good-natured laugh;
"young maidens like you are not permitted to inspect the secrets of a
bachelor's rooms too closely. You might seize a scorpion before we
could interfere. Besides, we must not keep your mother waiting any
longer, children; make haste and get ready, Nicki."
For a moment Sempaly tried to think of an excuse; then he reflected
that it really was not worth while to spoil the pleasure of Oscar's
last day--all might be set right afterwards. So he only asked for time
to write a note, and scribbled a few lines to Sterzl in which he
formally proposed for Zinka. This note he confided to a porter desiring
him to carry it at once to the secretary's office.
After this he was for a time very much pleased with himself; but, as
the afternoon wore on, the more uneasy he became, and it was to this
unrest that most of the tender glances were due that the prince cast
alternately on him and on Nini. He felt more and more as if he were
being driven into a trap; in the Villa Aldobrandini he found an issue
from some of his difficulties. Suddenly, as they were standing by the
great fountain, Nini and he found themselves _tete-a-tete_, a
circumstance arising from the consentaneous willingness of the rest of
the party to give them such an opportunity. He seized the propitious
moment to disburden his soul. He addressed her as his sister, confessed
his secret betrothal, and implored her kind interest for Zinka. Nini,
who felt as though she had been stabbed to the heart, was brave as
became her and for sheer dread of betraying her own feelings, she tried
to take a pleasure she was far from feeling in the success of his love
affair. He kissed her hand and kept near her for the rest of the day.
His brother, who perceived that the young couple had come to an
understanding, communicated his observations to Countess Jatinska with
extreme satisfaction. He was himself a man of strong and lofty feeling,
free from all duplicity, and he could not conceive that a young man
could have anything to say to a very handsome girl in private but to
make love to her.
The day was at an end. With that want of precaution of which only
foreigners in Rome can be guilty, they set out homewards much too late
and did not reach the hotel before ten. Here Nemesis overtook Sempaly.
At the end of supper, which the little party had served to them in the
countess' private sitting-room, and at which the confidential footing
on which Sempaly stood with regard to his cousin was thrown into
greater relief, the prince, with a frank smile of self-satisfaction at
his powers of divination, raised his glass and said: "To the health of
the happy couple."
Nini turned crimson; Nicki turned pale. He was in the trap now. Brought
to bay he could do nothing but turn upon the foe whom he could not
evade. He was possessed by a wild impulse to snatch the odious mask
from his own face.
"And who are the happy couple?" he asked.
"You need not be so mysterious about it, Nicki," cried his brother
warmly. "Of you and...." but a glance at Nini reduced him to silence.
"Of me and Fraeulein Zinka Sterzl," said Sempaly with vehement emphasis.
The blood flew to the prince's head; rage and horror fairly deprived
him of speech. Countess Jatinska laughed awkwardly, Polyxena pursed her
lips disdainfully while Nini gave her cousin her hand and said loyally:
"Your bride shall always find a friend in me."
But now the prince's wrath broke loose--he was furious; he swore that
this insane marriage should never take place, and could not conceive
how his brother--a man old enough to know better--could have allowed
such a piece of madcap folly to enter his head.
The ladies rose and withdrew; Sempaly, who till within a few minutes
had been so weak and vacillating, had suddenly become rigid in
obstinacy and he desired the waiter to bring him the fateful number of
'High Life'. The prince read it, but his first observation was: "Well!
and a pretty state the world would soon come to if every man who lets a
charming adventuress entrap him into an indiscretion were to pay for it
by marrying her!"
At this insulting epithet applied to Zinka, Sempaly fired up. He did
not attempt to screen himself, he defended Zinka as against himself,
with the most unsparing self-accusation. Egotistical, sensitive, and
morally effete as he was, he was still a gentleman, and he now set no
limits to his self-indictment; it seemed as though he thought that by
heaping invective on his own head he could expiate the baseness into
which he had been betrayed during the last few days. He told the whole
story: that he had loved Zinka from the first time of seeing her: that
he had been on the point of making her an offer when an accidental
interruption had suddenly snatched him from the heaven of hope and
bliss: that he had neglected and forsaken her: that his constant
intimacy with his handsome cousins had raised a barrier between him and
Zinka; then, how he had met her that night at the Brancaleones', and
how, as he helped her to rise after her tumble, his passion had taken
entire possession of him--all this he told, down to the moment when she
had laid her head on his shoulder. "And before such guileless trust
what man is there that would not bow in reverence!" he ended, "all
Rome can bear witness to her sweetness and goodness; ask whom you
will--Marie Vulpini, Truyn, even the Ilsenberghs--or Siegburg here."
The prince turned to Siegburg.
"I can make neither head nor tail of the matter," he said. "Is all he
says of this girl true, or mere raving?"
Siegburg's answer was simple, eager, and plain; it is, at all times, a
difficult thing for a young man to praise a girl without reflecting on
her in any way, but Siegburg's testimony in Zinka's favor was a little
masterpiece of genuine and respectful enthusiasm. Prince Sempaly's face
grew darker as he spoke.
"And the young lady in question is the girl we met the other day in the
Piazzi?" he said.
"Yes."
"The sister of the secretary of legation whom the ambassador introduced
to me yesterday, and the niece of my old colonel?"
"Yes."
"And from what you tell me not only an absolutely blameless creature,
but universally beloved?"
"Yes."
For a minute the prince was silent. Every fibre of his being had its
root in the traditions of the caste into which he had been born, and a
connection between Zinka Sterzl and a Sempaly was to him simply
monstrous. He had in the highest degree a respect for his past--"le
respect des ruines"--but they must be grand ruins, of a noble past, or
they did not touch him at all. With his head resting on his hand he sat
silent by the supper-table, which was not yet cleared and where the
lights sparkled in the half-empty champagne-glasses, and the flowers
placed for the ladies still lay by their plates. Suddenly he looked up,
and pointing to the newspaper, he asked:
"Had you seen that article when we came to fetch you from your rooms
this morning?"
"Yes."
The prince sat bolt upright.
"And you did not stay in Rome to defend the girl?" His black eyes
looked straight into his brother's blue ones. "You came with us? You
left this young lady to be, for the whole day, the victim of the
slander of all the evil tongues of Rome, for fear of an unpleasant
explanation--for fear of a few high words with me?--You have behaved in
a base and unmanly way throughout this affair, both to this young lady
and to the poor sweet creature in there...." and he pointed to the door
behind which the two young countesses disappeared with their mother.
"Of course I shall not let you starve; your allowance shall be paid to
you regularly as heretofore--but beyond that we have no further
connection; we have nothing in common, you and I. Go!"
* * *
The _deus ex machina_ had failed to appear. The dreaded scene with his
brother had been postponed for a few hours, but it had come at last and
Sempaly had gained nothing by his procrastination and duplicity. He had
provoked not merely his brother's anger but his scorn as well, while
his marriage with Zinka, when he had at last found himself compelled to
announce it to his brother, had altogether lost its startling and
interesting aspect as a chivalrous romance, and had come down to a mere
act of reparation to satisfy his conscience.
Sempaly rose rather earlier than usual next morning, his nerves still
conscious of the remembrance of this unsatisfactory scene and of the
sleepless night that had been the consequence. Vexed with himself; at
once surprised and touched by his brother's lofty indignation; ashamed
to think of the calumny to which his irresolution and his absence must
have exposed Zinka--he was in that state of sensitive irritability in
which a man holds all the world in some degree responsible for his own
shortcomings, and is ready to revenge himself on the first man he meets
for the misery he is enduring.
While he was waiting for his breakfast, walking up and down the
sitting-room--half drawing-room, half smoking-room--the general came
in. For the first time in his life Sempaly greeted the old man as an
intruder.
"Good-morning," he cried, "what procures me the honor of such an early
visit?"
"Well," said Von Klinger hotly, "it can scarcely surprise you that I,
as Zinka's god-father and oldest friend, should come to ask you what
you mean by your extraordinary conduct."
"That, it seems to me, is her brother's business," said Sempaly
roughly.
"It is on purpose to prevent a collision between you and Sterzl that I
have come so early," replied the general, who was cut out for an
officer of dragoons rather than for a diplomatist. "Sterzl is beside
himself with fury, and I know that your intentions with regard to Zinka
are perfectly honorable, and so...."
But at this moment the general's eye fell on a travelling-bag that the
luxurious young attache was wont to carry with him on short journeys,
and which lay packed on the divan. "You are going away?" asked the old
man surprised.
"I had intended to accompany my brother as far as Ostia to-day and
return early to-morrow; but that is at an end--the prince and I have
quarrelled--yes, I have quarrelled past all possibility of a
reconciliation with my noble and generous brother. Are you satisfied?"
and he stamped with rage.
"And is the want of judgment that has led to your parting any fault of
mine pray?" exclaimed the general angrily.
There was a hasty rap at the door; on Sempaly's answering: "come in,"
Sterzl walked in. He did not take Sempaly's offered hand but drew a
newspaper out of his pocket, held it out in front of Sempaly, and asked
abruptly:
"Have you read this article?"
"Yes," said Sempaly from between his teeth.
"Yesterday--before you went out?" Sterzl went on.
This word-for-word repetition of the prince's question touched all
Sempaly's most painful and shameful recollections of the scene to the
quick. His eyes flashed, but he said nothing.
Sterzl could contain himself no longer. All the bitter feelings of the
last six weeks seethed in his blood, and the luckless travelling-bag
caught his eye. This was too much...
What happened next?...
The general saw it all in a flash of time--unexpected, and inevitable.
Sterzl took one stride forward and struck Sempaly in the face with the
newspaper. At the same moment Sempaly's servant came in with the
breakfast tray.
A few minutes later Sterzl and the general went down the stairs of the
embassy in silence, not even looking at each other. When they were
outside the younger man stopped and drew a deep breath:
"Sempaly will send you his seconds in the course of the morning," he
said; "I must ask you to act for me."
The general nodded but did not speak.
"I will send word to Crespigny too, and then you can do whatever you
think proper."
Still the general said nothing, and his silence irritated Sterzl.
"I could bear it no longer," he muttered as if in delirium; "what ...
do you suppose ... too much...."
By this time they were in the Corso. Towards them came Siegburg, as
bright and gay as ever, his hat pushed back on his head.
"I am happy to be the first to congratulate you, Sterzl," he cried.
"On what pray?" said Sterzl fiercely.
"On your sister's engagement to Sempaly--what! then you really did know
nothing about it?"
Sterzl was bewildered: "What is it--what are you talking about?--I do
not understand," he stammered.
"What, have you not heard?" Siegburg began; "the bomb fell last
evening; Nicki declared his engagement. Oscar, to whom the whole
business was news ... come into this cafe and I will tell you exactly
all about it; it does not do to discuss such things in the street."
"I--I have not time," muttered Sterzl with a fixed vacant stare; and,
as he spoke, he shot past Siegburg; but his gait was unsteady and he
ran up against a passer-by.
"What on earth ails him?" said Siegburg looking after him. "I thought
he would be pleased and--well! the ways of man are past finding out.
This marriage will create a sensation in Vienna, eh, general? But I
approve--I entirely approve. We are on the threshold of a new era, as
Schiller--or some one has said, Bismarck very likely--and we shall live
to tell our children how we stood by and looked on. But what is the
matter with you both--you and Sterzl? To be sure--you were coming from
the Palazzo di Venezia--have Nicki and Sterzl quarrelled--a challenge!"
The general nodded. "But it can be amicably arranged now," said
Siegburg consolingly.
CHAPTER VI.
On his return home Sterzl found Sempaly's note of the day before. The
porter had taken it, as he was ordered, to the secretary's office, but
as Sterzl had not gone there all day it had lain unopened; till, this
morning, one of the messengers had thought it well to bring it to the
palazetto. Sterzl read it and hid his face in his hands.
Within a short time Sempaly's seconds were announced--Siegburg and a
military attache from the Russian embassy.
No, it could not be amicably arranged--under the circumstances there
was but one way of satisfying the point of honor. This point of
honor--what is it? A social dogma of the man of the world, and the
whole creed of the southern aristocrat.
Sterzl was to start that night by the eleven o'clock train for Vienna,
on matters of business, before setting out for Constantinople. The
affair must therefore be settled at once. Beyond fixing the hour Sterzl
left everything to his seconds. Swords, at seven that evening, among
the ruins opposite the tomb of the Metellas was finally agreed on.
Soon after six, Sterzl and his seconds set out. The carriage bore them
swiftly along, through the gloomy, stuffy streets which lead to the
Forum, along the foot of the Palatine, and past the Colosseum, through
the arch of Constantine into the Via Appia, on and on, between grey
moss-grown walls, over which they caught glimpses of ruins and tall
dark cypresses. Then the walls disappeared and bushy green hedge-rows,
covered with creepers, bordered the road, and presently the Campagna
lay before them, an endless, rolling, green carpet, with its attractive
melancholy, and the poisonous beauty of orchids and asphodels with
which each returning spring decks its waste monotony, like a wilderness
in a fevered dream.
Sterzl sat in silence on the back seat, facing his two friends. He did
not even pretend to be cheerful. A brave man may sometimes face death
with indifference, but hardly with a light heart. Death is a great king
to whom we must need do homage. His soul was heavy; but his two
companions, who knew not only his staunch nature but all the
circumstances of the duel, knew that it was not from anxiety as to his
own fate. He could not forget that this catastrophe was, at last, due
solely and entirely to his own violence and loss of self-command. He
never once reflected that this engagement--brought about by a series of
makeshifts and accidents--could hardly have resulted in a happy
marriage; he had forgotten Sempaly's sins and remembered one thing
only: that his sister might have had the moon she had longed for, and
that he alone had snatched it from her grasp.
A powerful fragrance filled the air, coming up from the orchids, from
the blossoming hedges, from the fresh greenery of the gardens, like the
very soul of the spring, bringing a thousand memories to his brooding
brain and aching heart. It reminded him of the great untended orchard
at home, and of one morning in the last May he had spent there before
going to school. The apple-trees were clothed with rosy blossom;
butterflies were flitting through the air, and the first forget-me-nots
peeped bluely among the trailing brambles on the brink of the brook
that danced across the garden, murmuring sleepily to the shadowy,
whispering alders. There was a fragrance of the soil, of the trees, of
the flowers--just as there was now--and Zinka, then a mere baby, had
come tripping to meet him and had said with her little confidential and
important air:
"I do believe that God must have set the gates of heaven open for once,
there is such a good smell." He could see her now, in her white
pinafore and long golden hair, clinging to her big brother with her
soft, weak little hands. And he had lifted her up and said: "Yes, God
left the door open and you slipped out my-little cherub." With what
large, wondering eyes she had looked into his face.
She had always been his particular pet; his father had given her into
his special charge and now ... "poor, sweet butterfly!" he said to
himself, half audibly.
"Do not be too strict in your fence," said a deep voice close to him.
It was Crespigny who thus startled him from his dream of the past:--"Do
not be too scientific. You have everything in your favor--practice,
skill, and strength; but Sempaly--I know his sword-play well--has one
dangerous peculiarity: you never know what he will be at." Sterzl
looked over his shoulder. The tomb of Cecilia Metella was standing
before them.
* * *
Opposite the tomb of Cecilia Metella is a deserted and half-ruined
early Gothic structure, a singular mixed character of heathen grandeur
and of mediaeval strength, lonely and roofless under the blue sky. A
weather-beaten cross, let into the crumbling stone-work above the
door-way, betokens it a sanctuary of the primitive Christian times; on
entering we see a still uninjured apse where the altar table once
stood. No ornament of any kind, not even a scrap of bas-relief, is to
be seen; nothing but frail ferns--light plumes of maiden hair that deck
the old walls with their emerald fronds. The floor is smooth and
covered with fine turf, from which, in spring-time, white and red
daisies smile up at the sky, and dead nettles grow from every chink and
along the foot of the walls.
The other party were already on the spot; Sempaly was talking
unconcernedly, but with no affectation of levity, to the Russian, and
bowed politely to the three men as they came in. His manner and conduct
were admirable; in spite of his irritable nervousness, there were
moments when he had--and in the highest degree--that unshaken
steadfastness which is part of the discipline of a man of the world, to
whom it is a matter of course that under certain circumstances he must
fight, just as under certain others he must take off his hat.
Siegburg changed color a good deal; the others were quite cool. They
made a careful survey lest some intruding listener should be within
hearing, but all was still as death. The vineyard behind the little
chapel was deserted.
The formalities were soon got through; Sempaly and Sterzl took off
their coats and waistcoats, and took the places assigned to them by
their seconds.
The signal was given.--The word of command was heard in the silence
and, immediately after, the first click of the swords as they engaged.
Any one who has lived through the prolonged anticipation of a known
peril or ordeal, knows that, when the decisive moment has arrived, the
tension of the nerves suddenly relaxes; anxiety seems lifted from the
soul, fear vanishes and all that remains is a sort of breathless
curiosity. This was the case with the general and Siegburg; they
watched the sword-play attentively, but almost calmly. Sempaly was the
first to attack, and was extraordinarily nimble. Sterzl stood strictly
on the defensive. He fenced in the German fashion, giving force to his
lunge with the whole weight of his body; and this, with his skill and
care, gave him a marked advantage over his lighter adversary. The sense
of superior strength seemed at first to hinder his freedom; in fact,
the contest, from a mere technical point of view, was remarkably
interesting. Sempaly displayed a marvellous and--as Crespigny had
said--quite irresponsible suppleness, which had no effect against
Sterzl's imperturbable coolness. It was evident that he hoped to weary
out his antagonist and then to end the duel by wounding him slightly.
He had pricked Sempaly just under the arm, but Sempaly would not be
satisfied; it was nothing he said, and after a short pause they began
again.
Sempaly was beginning to look pale and exhausted, his feints were
short, straight, and violent; Sterzl, on the contrary, looked fresher.
Like every accomplished swordsman, in the course of a long fight he had
warmed to his work and was fighting as he would have done with the
foils, without duly calculating the strength of his play; things looked
ill for Sempaly.
Suddenly, through the silence, a song was heard in the distance, in a
boy's thin piping soprano:
"Bright May--the sweetest month of Spring;
The trees and fields with flowers are strown--"
It sent a thrill through Sterzl's veins, reminding him of the evening
when Zinka had sung those words to Sempaly. The romantic element that
was so strong in him surged to his brain; he lost his head; fearing to
wound Sempaly mortally, he forgot to cover himself and for a second he
suddenly stood as awkward and exposed as though he had never had a
sword in his hand.
The seconds rushed forward--too late.
With the scarcely audible sound that the sharp steel makes as it
pierces the flesh, Sempaly's sword ran into his adversary's side.
Sterzl's flannel shirt was dyed with blood--his eyes glazed--he
staggered forward a step or two--then he fell senseless. The duel was
over.
* * *
A quarter of an hour later and the wound had been bound up as best it
might, and in the closed landau, which they had made as comfortable as
they could by arranging the cushions so as to form a couch--the general
supporting the groaning man's head on his arm, and opposite to him the
surgeon--they were driving homewards' slowly--slowly.
Dusk had fallen on the Campagna, from time to time the general looked
out anxiously to see how far they were still from Rome. The road was
emptier and more deserted every minute; a cart rattled past them full
of peasants, shouting and singing at the top of their voices; then they
met a few white-robed monks, wending their way with flaring torches to
some church; and then the road was perfectly empty. The cypresses stood
up tall and black against the dull-hued sky and the wide plain was one
stretch of grey.
At last the arch of Constantine bends over them for a minute and the
horses hoofs clatter on the stones--slowly--slowly.... The lamps of
Rome twinkle in the distance--they have reached the Corso, at this hour
almost empty of vehicles but crowded with idlers, and the cafes are
brilliantly lighted up. The slowly-moving landau excites attention, the
gapers crowd into knots, and stare and whisper. At last they reach the
palazetto, turn into the court-yard and get out. The porter comes out
of his den, his dog at his heels barking loudly.
"Hush, silence!" says the general--the servants come rushing down, the
women begin to sob and cry, and again the general says:
"Hush, hush!" as if it were worth while to keep Zinka in ignorance for
a minute more or less.
With some difficulty the heavy man is lifted out and carried
up-stairs--the heavy shuffling steps sound loud in the silence.
Suddenly they hear Zinka's voice loud in terror, then the baroness's
in harsh reproof--a door is flung open and Zinka rushes out to meet
them--a half-smothered cry of anguish breaks from her very heart--the
cry with which we wake from a hideous dream.
They carried him into his room, and while they carefully settled him in
bed the servant announced Dr. E----, the famous German physician of
whom mention has already been made. Sempaly, who had driven back at
full speed and had reached Rome more than an hour sooner than the
general with the wounded man, had sent him at once. Dr. E---- examined
the patient with the greatest care, adjusted the bandage with admirable
skill, wrote a prescription, and ordered the application of ice. He
gave a sympathetic hand to each of the ladies, who were standing
anxiously at the door as he left the room, and reassured them with an
encouraging smile; promising them, with that kindly hopefulness to
which he owed half his fashionable practice, that the wounded man would
pass a quiet night.
But when he was face to face with the general, who escorted him down
stairs, the smile vanished.
"The wound is dangerous?" asked the old man with a trembling heart. The
surgeon shook his head.
"Are you a relation?" he asked.
"No, but a very old friend."
"It is mortal," said Dr. E---- "I maybe mistaken--of course, I may be
wrong ... nature sometimes works miracles and the patient has a
splendid physique. What fine limbs! I have rarely seen so powerful a
man--but so far as human science can foresee ..." and he left the
death-warrant unspoken. "It is always a comfort to the survivors to
know that all that can be done has been done; I will come early
to-morrow morning to enquire. Send the prescription to the French
chemist's--it is the best. Good-night." And he got into the carriage
that was waiting for him.
The general gave the prescription to the porter, who, with the
readiness and simplicity that are so characteristic of the Italians,
rushed off at once without his hat. As if there were really any
hurry!...
The old soldier, composing himself by an effort, returned to the
bedroom. Zinka was standing very humbly at the foot of the bed, pale
and tearless, but trembling from head to foot. The baroness was pacing
the room and sobbing violently, wringing her hands and pushing her hair
back from her temples. Of course she flew at the general with questions
as to the surgeon's prognosis. His evasive answers were enough to fill
her with unreasonable hope and to revive the worldly instincts which
her terrors had for a moment cast into the background.
"Yes, yes, he will pass a quiet night," she whimpered; "he will get
well again--it would have been too bad with such a brilliant career
before him;--but this is an end to Constantinople ..."
Zinka, on the contrary, had turned still paler at the general's report
but she said nothing.
That there had been a duel she and her mother had of course understood.
What did she infer from that? What did she think--what did she feel?
She herself never rightly knew; in her soul all was dark--in her heart
all was cold. Her whole being was concentrated in horror.
After much and urgent persuasion the general succeeded in inducing the
baroness to leave the room and to lie down for a time, "to spare
herself for her son's sake."
She had hardly closed the door when the servant came quietly in and
said that Count Truyn had come. Zinka looked up.
"Shall I let him come in?" asked the general. Zinka nodded.
Siegburg had told him, and though it was now eleven Truyn had hurried
off to the palazetto. He came into the room without speaking and
straight up to Zinka. The simple feeling with which he took her hands
in both his, the deep and tender sorrow at being unable to help or to
reassure her that spoke in his eyes comforted and warmed her heart; the
frozen horror that had held her in its clasp seemed to thaw; tears
started to her eyes, a tremulous sob died on her lips; then,
controlling herself with great difficulty, she murmured intelligibly:
"There is no hope--no hope!"
His mother's loud lamentations had not roused the wounded man but the
first sound from Zinka recalled him to consciousness; he began to move
uneasily and opened his sunken eyes. The whites shone dimly, like
polished silver, as he fixed them on his sister's face; from thence
they wandered to a blood-stained handkerchief that had been forgotten,
and then to the general. Slowly and painfully he seemed to comprehend
the situation. He struggled for breath, with an impatient movement of
his hands and shoulders, and then shivered as with a spasm. He was
conscious now, and sighed deeply.
The first thing that occurred to him was his official duty:
"Have you sent word to the ambassador?" he asked the general almost
angrily.
"No, not yet."
"Then make haste, pray; they must telegraph to Vienna."
"Yes, yes," said Von Klinger soothingly, "I will see to it at once.
Would you be good enough to stay till I return?" he added to Truyn and
he hurried away.
For a few minutes not a word was spoken, then Sterzl began:
"Do you know how it all happened, Count?" Truyn bowed. "And you, Zini?"
asked Cecil, looking sadly at the girl's white face. "I know that you
are suffering--that is all I want to know," she replied.
"Oh! Zini...." Sterzl struggled for breath and held out his hand
to Zinka, then he went on in a hoarse and hardly audible voice: "Zini
... Butterfly ... it was all my doing ... I have spoilt your life ... I
did it...."
She tried to stop him: "You must not excite yourself," she said,
leaning over him tenderly; "forget all that till you are better--I know
that you have always loved me and that you would have fetched the stars
from heaven for me if you could have reached them."
He shuddered convulsively: "No, Zini, no ... you might have had the
stars," he said in a panting staccato; "the finest stars. Sempaly was
not to blame ... only I ... the prince had agreed ... but I ... I
forgot myself ... and I spoilt it all ... oh, a drink of water, Zini,
please!..."
She gave him the water and he drank it greedily; but when she gently
tried to stop his mouth with her hand he pushed it away, and went on
eagerly, though with a fast failing voice: "No ... I must tell you ...
it is a weight upon my soul. There, in my desk ... Count ... in the
little pocket on the left ... there is a letter for Zinka.--Give it
her...."
Truyn did his bidding. The letter was sealed and addressed to Zinka in
Cecil's fine firm hand. She opened it; it contained the note that
Sempaly had written before starting for Frascati and Sterzl had added a
few words of explanation in case it should not fall into Zinka's hands
till after his death.
She read it all while the dying man anxiously watched her face, but her
expression did not alter by a shade. Sempaly's words glided over her
heart without touching it; even when she had read both notes she did
not speak. Two red flames burnt in her pale cheeks.
"I got ... the note ... too late," said Sterzl sadly, "the general ...
can tell you how ... how it all happened ... I lost my head ... but he
... he is safe, so you must forgive me ... and do ... act ... as if I
had never existed ... then ... I shall rest ... in peace ... and be
happy in ... my grave ... if I know ... that you are ... happy."
Still she did not speak; her eyes were strangely overcast; but it was
not with grief for her lost happiness. Suddenly she tore the note
across and dropped the pieces on the floor.
"If he had written ten letters," she cried, "it would have made no
difference now; do not let that worry you, Cecil--it is all at an end.
Even if there were no gulf between us I could never be his wife! I have
ceased to love him.--How mean he is in my eyes--compared with you!"
And so the brother and sister were at one again; the discord was
resolved.
For more than four and twenty hours Cecil wrestled with death and Zinka
never left his side. The certainty of their mutual and complete
devotion was a melancholy consolation in the midst of this cruel
parting. The pain he suffered was agonizing; particularly during the
night and the early morning; but he bore it with superb fortitude and
it was only by the nervous clenching of his hands and the involuntary
distortion of his features that he betrayed his suffering. He hardly
for a moment slept; he refused the opiate sent by the surgeon; he
wished to "keep his head" as long as possible.
When Zinka--with a thousand tender circumlocutions--suggested to him
that he should receive the last sacraments of the Church he agreed. "If
it will be any comfort to you, Butterfly," he sighed; and he received
the priest with reverent composure.
In the afternoon he was easier--Zinka began to hope.
"You are better," she whispered imploringly, "you are better, are you
not?"
"I am in less pain," he said, and then she began making plans for the
future--he smiled sadly.
No man could die with a better grace, and yet it was hard to die.
The catastrophe had roused universal sympathy. The terrible news had
spread like wildfire through the city and a sort of panic fell on the
rank and fashion of Rome. No one, that day, who had ever spoken a
spiteful or a flippant word against Sterzl or his sister, failed to
feel a prick of remorse. Every one came or sent to the palazetto to
enquire for them. Now and again the baroness would come in
triumphantly, in her hand a particularly distinguished visiting-card
with its corner turned down, and rustle up to the bedside: "Ilsenbergh
came himself to the door to ask after you!"
Late in the day he fell into an uneasy sleep; Zinka and the general did
not quit the room. The window was open but the air that blew in through
the Venetian blinds was damp and sultry. The street was strewn with
straw; the roll of the carriages in the Corso came, dulled by distance,
up to the chamber of death. Then twilight fell and the rumbling echoes
were still. Presently, the slow irregular tramp of a crowd broke the
silence, with the accompaniment of a solemn but dismal chant Zinka
sprang up to close the window; but she was not quick enough. The
sleeper had opened his weary eyes and was listening--: "A funeral!" he
muttered.
After this he could not rest, and his sufferings began once more. He
tossed on his pillow, talked of his will, begging the general to make a
note of certain trifling alterations; and when Zinka entreated him not
to torment himself but to think of that by-and-bye, he shook his head,
and murmured in a voice that was hoarse and tremulous with pain: "No, I
am in a hurry ... time presses ... railway fever ... railway fever ..."
When Zinka, unable to control herself, was leaving the room to hide her
tears, he desired her to remain:
"Only stop by me ... do not leave me, Zini," he said. "Cry if it is a
relief to you ... but stay here ... poor little Butterfly!... yes, you
will miss me...."
Once only did he lose his self-command. It was late in the evening. He
had begged them to send to the embassy for an English newspaper which
would give some information as to a certain political matter in which
he was particularly interested; the ambassador himself brought it to
his bedside.
"How are you?... how are you now?" he asked with sincere emotion ...
"You were quite right, Sterzl. Ignatiev has done exactly as you said;
you have a wonderful power of divination ... I shall miss you
desperately when you go to Constantinople...." and his excellency
fairly broke down.
There was a painful pause. "I am going further than Constantinople...."
Sterzl murmured at length. "I should like to know who will get my
place...." His voice failed him and he groaned as he hid his face in
the pillow.
The end came at midnight. Dr. E---- had warned the general that it
would be terrible; but it was in vain that they tried to persuade Zinka
to leave the room. The whole night through she knelt by the dying man's
bed in her tumbled white dressing-gown--praying.
At about five in the morning his moaning ceased. Was all over? No, he
spoke again; a strange, far-away look, peculiar to the dying, came into
his eyes. "Do not cry, little one--it will all come right...." and then
he felt about with his hands as if he were seeking for something--for
some idea that had escaped him. He gazed at his sister. "Go to bed,
Zini--I am better ... sleepy ... Constanti...." He turned his head to
the wall and breathed deeply. He had started on his journey.
The general closed his eyes and drew Zinka away. Outside in the
corridor stood a crushed and miserable man--it was Sempaly. Pale,
wretched, and restless, he had stolen into the palazetto, and as he
stood aside his hands trembled, his eyes were haggard. She did not
shrink from him as she went by--she did not see him!
A glorious morning shone on the little garden-court. In a darkly-shady
corner a swarm of blue butterflies were fluttering over the grass like
atoms fallen from the sky. It was the corner in which the Amazon stood.
CHAPTER VII.
Thanks to Siegburg's always judicious indiscretion all Rome knew ere
long that Prince Sempaly had consented to Zinka's marriage with his
brother the evening before the duel, and at the same time it heard of
Sterzl's burst of anger and its fearful expiation. Princess Vulpini's
unwavering friendship, which during these few days she took every
opportunity of displaying, silenced evil tongues and saved Zinka's good
name. Now, indeed, there was a general and powerful revulsion of
feeling in Sterzl's favor. It suddenly became absurd, petty, in the
very worst taste, to doubt Zinka--Zinka and Cecil had always been
exceptional natures....
Sterzl had expressed a wish to be buried at home; the body was embalmed
and laid in a large empty room, where, once upon a time, the baroness
had wanted to give a ball. There were flowers against the wall, and on
the floor. The bier was covered with them; it was a complete Roman
_Infiorata_, The windows were darkened with hangings and the dim ruddy
light of dozens of wax-tapers filled the room. Countess Ilsenbergh and
the Jatinskys came to this lying in state; distinguished company, in
ceremonial black, crowded round the coffin. Never had the baroness had
so full a 'day' and her sentimental graces showed that, even under
these grim circumstances, she felt this as a satisfaction. She stood by
the bier in flowing robes loaded with crape, a black-bordered
handkerchief in her hand, and a tear on each cheek, and--received her
visitors. They pressed her hand and made sympathetic speeches and she
murmured feebly: "You are so good--it is so comforting."
Having spoken to the mother, they turned to look for the sister; every
one longed to express, or at least to show, their sincere sympathy for
her dreadful sorrow. But she was not in the crowd--not to be seen, till
a lady whispered: "There she is," and in a dark recess. Princess
Vulpini was discovered with a quivering, sobbing creature, as pale as
death and drowned in tears; but no one ventured to intrude on her grief
No one but Nini, who looked almost as miserable as Zinka herself, and
who went up to her, and put her arms round her, and kissed her.
Next day mass was performed in the chapel of San-Marco, adjoining the
embassy, and a quartette of voices sang the same pathetic allegretto
from the seventh symphony that had been played, hardly three months
since, for the 'Lady Jane Grey' tableau.
A week later the Sterzls quitted Rome. Up to the very last the baroness
was receiving visits of condolence, and to the very last she repeated
her monotonous formula of lament:
"And on the threshold of such a splendid career!"
Zinka was never in the drawing-room, and very few ventured to go to her
little boudoir. Wasted to a shadow, with sunken, cried-out eyes and
pinched features, it was heart-rending to see her; and after the first
violence of her grief was spent she seemed even more inconsolable. It
is so with deep natures. Our first sorrow over the dead is always mixed
with a certain rebellion against fate--it is a paroxysm in which we
forget everything--even the cause of our passionate tears. It is not
till we have dried our eyes and our heart has raged itself into
weariness--not till we have at last said to ourselves: "submit," that
we can measure the awful gap that death has torn in our life, or know
how empty and cold and silent the world has become.
Every day made Zinka feel more deeply what it was that she had lost.
She was always feeling for the strong arm which had so tenderly
supported her. The general and Princess Vulpini did everything in their
power to help her through this trying phase, but the person with whom
she felt most at her ease was Truyn; and very often, after seven in the
evening, when she was sure of meeting no one, she stole off to visit
Gabrielle; it was touching to see how the little girl understood the
trouble of her older friend, and how sweetly she would caress and pet
her.
On the morning of their departure Truyn and the general saw them off
from the station. After the ladies were in the carriage Truyn got in
too, to open or close the windows and blinds; when he had done this
Zinka put out her hand:
"God bless you, for all your kindness," she said, and as she spoke she
put up her face to give him a kiss.
For an instant he hesitated then he signed her forehead with a cross,
and bending down touched her hair with his lips.
"_Au revoir_," he murmured in a half-choked voice, he bowed to the
baroness and jumped out. As he watched the train leave the station his
face was crimson and his eyes sparkled strangely; and he stood
bareheaded to catch the last glimpse of a pale little face at the
window.
"If only I had the right to care for her and protect her," he muttered.
CHAPTER VIII.
And now to conclude.
Baroness Sterzl was one of those happily rare natures who have not one
redeeming point. In her Moravian estate, whither they now retired, she
was sick of her life, and treated Zinka with affectionate austerity.
Bored and embittered, she was always bewailing herself and made every
one miserable by her sour mien and doleful, appearance. When the year
of mourning was ended she began to crave for some excitement; she made
excursions to watering places, and to Vienna, where she gathered round
her the fragmentary remains of her old circle of acquaintance and tried
to astonish them by magnificent reminiscences of her sojourn in Rome.
At the same time she still wore deep furbelows of crape, and wrote her
invitations on black-edged paper; she talked incessantly of her broken
mother's-heart wearing, as it were, a sort of Niobe nimbus; while, in
fact, her display of mourning was nothing more than a last foothold for
her vanity. General von Klinger always declared that at the bottom of
her heart she was very proud of her son having been run through by a
Sempaly.
She died, about three years after the catastrophe, of bronchitis, which
only proved fatal because, though she already had a severe cold,
nothing could dissuade her from going on a keen April morning to see
the ceremony of washing the beggars feet at the Burg, with a friend
from the convent of the Sacred Heart.
Zinka felt the loss of her mother more deeply than could have been
expected. Year after year she spent summer and winter in her country
house, where Gabrielle Truyn, with her English governess, sometimes
passed a few weeks with her--her only visitors. Truyn very rarely went
to see her, and never stayed more than a few hours; and the sacrifice
it was to him to lend his little companion for those visits can only be
appreciated by those who have understood how completely his life was
bound up in hers.
With Princess Vulpini Zinka kept up an affectionate correspondence.
Very, very, slowly did her grief fade into the background; but--as is
always the case with a noble nature--it elevated and strengthened her.
She gave up her whole time to acts of kindness and benevolence; the
only pleasure in which, for years, she could find any real comfort was
alleviating the woes of others.
* * *
Not long after the death of the baroness, General von Klinger left
Europe to travel, and did not return till the following spring
twelvemonths. He disembarked at Havre and proceeded to Paris, where he
proposed spending a few days to see the Salon before going home. By the
obliging intervention of a friend he was admitted to the "_vernis
sage_"--varnishing day, or, more properly, the private view--the day
before the galleries were opened to the public. Among the little crowd
of fashionable ladies who had gained admittance by the good offices of
a drawing-master or an artist friend, he observed a remarkably pretty
young girl who, with her nose in the air, was skipping from one picture
to another with a light and vigorous step, and pronouncing judgment on
the works exhibited with the inexorable severity and innocent conceit
of a fanatical novice. This fair young critic was so thoroughly
aristocratic in her bearing, there was something so engaging in her
girlish arrogance, so like a spoilt child in her confidential chat with
her companion--an elderly man, and one of the best known artists of
Paris--that the old soldier-painter could not help watching her with
kindly interest. Presently she happened to see him; scrutinized him for
a moment, and came to meet him with gay familiarity.
"Why, General! are you back at last? How glad papa will be--and you
have not altered in the very least!..."
"I cannot say the same of you, Countess Gabrielle," he replied.
"Well, of course. We last met four years ago at Zini's I think, ..."
she chattered on. "Then I was a child, and now I am grown up; and I
will tell you something. General, I have exhibited a picture--quite a
small water color drawing," and she blushed, which made her look like
her father, "you will come and look at it will you not?"
"Of course," he declared; and then, glancing at her dress: "You are in
mourning?" he said hesitatingly.
"Yes," she replied, "in half mourning now--for poor mamma; it is nearly
a year since she died...." and a shade crossed her face--"ah, there is
papa!" she exclaimed, suddenly brightening, "we are always losing each
other--our tastes are different--papa is old fashioned you know--quite
behind the times ..."
Truyn greeted the general very heartily; Gabrielle stood looking from
one to the other; little roguish dimples played in her cheeks, and at
last she stood on tiptoe and whispered something to her father. At
first he seemed doubtful, and it was not without a shade of
embarrassment that he said:
"We are going on to the Hotel Bristol, where we are to breakfast with
my sister. It will, I am sure, give her the greatest pleasure if you
will join her party."
The general made some excuses--it was an intrusion, and so forth--but
he allowed himself to be persuaded and drove off with them through the
flowery and well-watered alleys of the Champs Elysees to the hotel in
the Place Vendome.
"Aunt Marie," said Gabrielle as she danced into the room, "guess who is
here with us!"
"Ah, General!" said the princess warmly, "you are the right man in the
right place."
But another figure caught his eye--a little way behind his hostess
stood Zinka. The sorrow she had experienced had stamped its lines
indelibly on her face; still, there was in her eyes a light of calm and
assured happiness that blended very sweetly with the traces of past
grief. The bright May-morning of her life had been brief and it was
past, but there was so tender a charm in her face and manner that even
Gabrielle, with the radiance of eighteen, could not vie with her.
Truyn went up to her and there was an awkward silence. Then Gabrielle
began to laugh heartily.
"And cannot you guess, General?" she exclaimed.
"It is not yet announced to the world," Truyn stammered out, "but you
have always taken such a kind interest ..." and he took Zinka's hand.
The old man's face beamed--he positively hugged Zinka and shook hands
vehemently with Truyn.
But Zinka burst into tears--: "Oh, uncle," she said, "if only Cecil
were here!"
* * *
And Sempaly?
After the catastrophe he vanished from the scene--went to the East, and
there again came to the surface. A Sempaly may do anything. He is now
considered one of our most brilliant diplomatists.
But he has gone through a singular change; from a dandified, frivolous
attache he became a hard-and-fast official. He looks if possible more
distinguished than ever and his features are more sharply cut. He is
irritable, arrogant and ruthless; never sparing man or woman the biting
sarcasms that dwell on the tip of his tongue, and yet, still--nay, more
than ever--he exercises an almost irresistible spell over all who come
in contact with him.
One day, when the general was waiting at some frontier station in
Hungary for a train to Vienna, he was struck by the full rich voice of
a traveller in a seal-skin coat, with a fur cap pulled down over his
brows, who was giving peremptory orders to his servant. The old man
looked round and his eyes met those of the stranger--it was Sempaly,
also on his way to Vienna, from the East. They spoke--exchanging a few
commonplace remarks, but without any cordiality. Presently Sempaly
began with the abruptness for which his name was a by-word:
"You have just come from Paris. You were present at the wedding? What
do you think of Truyn's marriage?"
"I am delighted at it," said the general.
"Well, everybody seems satisfied. Marie Vulpini is enchanted, and
Gabrielle pleaded for her papa--so I hear.--So everything is for the
best in this best of all possible worlds!" he added in his sharp, hasty
tones--"and Zinka--how is she looking? The papers said she was lovely."
"She is still very charming," said the general, with the facile
garrulity of old age, "and happiness always beautifies a woman--she had
but one regret: that Cecil had not lived to see it."
He was suddenly conscious of his stupendous want of tact; so, to put
the conversation on neutral ground, he eagerly began to compliment
Sempaly on the wonderful rapidity of his advancement, remarking that it
must afford him great satisfaction to have so fitting a sphere for the
exercise of his peculiar talents.
Sempaly looked at him keenly, and shrugging his shoulders, with a
singular smile, he said:
"It is a strange thing, General--when we are young we claim happiness
at the hands of Destiny, as if it were our right; as we grow older we
humbly sue, only for peace, as an alms.--We get what we demand more
easily than what we beg for--but it slips through our fingers."
THE END.
________________
| ADVERTISEMENTS |
|________________|
THE AMAZON.--An Art-Novel, by Carl Vosmaer, from the Dutch by E. J.
Irving, with frontispiece by Alma Tadema, R. A., and preface by Georg
Ebers. In one vol. Paper, 40 cts. Cloth, 75 cts.
* * * * *
"Among the poets who never overstep the limits of probability and yet
aspire to realize the ideal, in whose works we breathe a purer air, who
have power to enthral and exalt the reader's soul, to stimulate and
enrich his mind, we must number the Netherlander Vosmaer.
"The Novel 'Amazon,' which attracted great and just attention in the
author's fatherland, has been translated into our tongue at my special
request. In Vosmaer we find no appalling incident, no monstrous or
morbid psychology, neither is the worst side of human nature portrayed
in glaring colors. The reader is afforded ample opportunity of
delighting himself with delicate pictures of the inner life and
spiritual conflicts of healthy-minded men and women. In this book a
profound student of ancient as well as modern art conducts us from
Paestum to Naples, thence to Rome, making us participators in the
highest and greatest the Eternal City can offer to the soul of man.
"Vosmaer is a poet by the grace of God, as he has proved by poems both
grave and gay; by his translation of the Iliad into Dutch hexameters,
and by his lovely epos 'Nanno,' His numerous essays on aesthetics, and
more especially his famous 'Life of Rembrandt,' have secured him an
honorable place among the art-historians of our day. As Deputy Recorder
of the High Court of Justice he has, during the best years of his life
(he was born March 20, 1826), enjoyed extensive opportunities of
acquiring a thorough insight into the social life of the present,
and the labyrinths of the human soul. That 'The Amazon,' perhaps
the maturest work of this author, should--like Vosmaer's other
writings--be totally unknown outside Holland, is owing solely to the
circumstance that most of his works are written in his mother-tongue,
and are therefore accessible only to a very small circle of readers.
"It is a painful thing for a poet to have to write in a language
restricted to a small area; and it is the bounden duty of the lover of
literature to bring what is excellent in the literature of other lands
within the reach of his own countrymen. Among these excellent works
Vosmaer's 'Amazon' must unquestionably be reckoned. It introduces us to
those whom we cannot fail to consider an acquisition to our circle of
acquaintances. It permits us to be present at conversations which--and
not least when they provoke dissent--stimulate our minds to reflection.
No one who listens to them can depart without having gained something;
for Vosmaer's novel is rich in subtle observations and shrewd remarks,
in profound thoughts and beautifully-conceived situations." _Extract
from Georg Ebers' Preface to the German Edition_.
FRIDOLIN'S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE.--A Study of an Original, founded on
Reminiscences of a Friend, by Adolf Wilbrandt, from the German by Clara
Bell. One vol. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth, 90 cts.
* * * * *
"One of the most entertaining of the recent translations of German
fiction is 'Fridolin's Mystical Marriage,' by Adolf Wilbrandt. The
author calls it 'a study of an original, founded on reminiscences of a
friend,' and one may easily believe that the whimsical, fascinating,
brilliant heir must have been drawn more largely from life than fancy.
He is a professor of art, who remains single up to his fortieth year
because he is, he explains to a friend 'secretly married.' 'When you
consider all the men of your acquaintance,' he says, 'does it strike
you that every man is thoroughly manly and every woman thoroughly
womanly? Or, on the contrary, do you not find singular deviations and
exceptions to the normal type? If we place all the men on earth in a
series, sorting them by the shades of difference in their natural
dispositions, from the North Pole, so to speak, of stalwart manliness
to the South Pole of perfect womanhood, and if you then cast a piercing
glance into their souls, you would perceive ... beings with masculine
intellect and womanly feelings, or womanly gifts and masculine
character.' The idea is very cleverly worked out that in these divided
souls marriage is possible only between the two natures, and that
whenever one of the unfortunates given this mixed nature, cannot
contract an outward alliance. How the events of the story overthrow
this ingenious theory need not be told here, but the reader will find
entertainment in discovery for himself."--_Courier, Boston_.
"A quaint, dry and highly diverting humor pervades the book, and the
characters are sketched with great force and are admirably contrasted.
The unceasing animation of the narrative, the crispness of the
conversations, and the constant movement of the plot hold the interest
of the reader in pleasant attention throughout. It provides very bright
and unfatiguing reading for a dull summer day."--_Gazette, Boston_.
"The scenes which are colored by the art atmosphere of the studio of
Fridolin, a professor of art and the principal character, are full of
pure humor, through the action and situations that the theory brings
about. But no point anywhere for effective humor is neglected. It runs
through the story, or comedy, from beginning to end, appearing in every
available spot. And the characterization is evenly strong. It is an
uncommonly clever work in its line, and will be deliciously enjoyed by
the best readers." _Globe, Boston_.
CLYTIA.--A Romance of the Sixteenth Century, by George Taylor, from the
German by Mary J. Safford, in one vol. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth, 90 cts.
* * * * *
"If report may be trusted 'George Taylor,' though writing in German, is
an Englishman by race, and not merely by the assumption of a pseudonym.
The statement is countenanced by the general physiognomy of his novels,
which manifest the artistic qualities in which German fiction, when
extending beyond the limits of a short story, is usually deficient.
'Antinous' was a remarkable book; 'Clytia' displays the same talent,
and is, for obvious reasons, much better adapted for general
circulation. Notwithstanding its classical title, it is a romance of
the post-Lutheran Reformation in the second half of the sixteenth
century. The scene is laid in the Palatinate; the hero, Paul
Laurenzano, is, like John Inglesant, the pupil, but, unlike John
Inglesant, the proselyte and emissary, of the Jesuits, who send him to
do mischief in the disguise of a Protestant clergyman. He becomes
confessor to a sisterhood of reformed nuns, as yet imperfectly detached
from the old religion, and forms the purpose of reconverting them.
During the process, however, he falls in love with one of their number,
the beautiful Clytia, the original, Mr. Taylor will have it, of the
lovely bust in whose genuineness he will not let us believe. Clytia, as
is but reasonable, is a match for Loyola; the man in Laurenzano
overpowers the priest, and, after much agitation of various kinds, the
story concludes with his marriage. It is an excellent novel from every
point of view, and, like 'Antinous' gives evidence of superior culture
and thoughtfulness."--_The London Saturday Review_.
_William S, Gottsberger, Publisher, New York_.
TRAFALGAR.--A Tale, by B. Perez Galdos, from the Spanish by Clara Bell,
in one vol. Paper, 50 cents. Cloth, 90 cents.
* * * * *
"This is the third story by Galdos in this series, and it is not
inferior to those which have preceded it, although it differs from them
in many particulars, as it does from most European stories with which
we are acquainted, its interest rather depending upon the action with
which it deals than upon the actors therein. To subordinate men to
events is a new practice in art, and if Galdos had not succeeded we
should have said that success therein was impossible. He has succeeded
doubly, first as a historian, and then as a novelist, for while the
main interest of his story centres in the great sea-fight which it
depicts--the greatest in which the might of England has figured since
her destruction of the Grand Armada--there is no lack of interest in
the characters of his story, who are sharply individualized, and
painted in strong colors. Don Alonso and his wife Dona Francisca--a
simple-minded but heroic old sea-captain, and a sharp-minded, shrewish
lady, with a tongue of her own, fairly stand out on the canvas. Never
before have the danger and the doom of battle been handled with such
force as in this spirited and picturesque tale. It is thoroughly
characteristic of the writer and of his nationality."--_The Mail and
Express, New York_.
_William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York_.
A GRAVEYARD FLOWER.--By Wilhelmine von Hillern, from the German by
Clara Bell, in one vol., Paper, 40 cts. Cloth, 75 cts.
* * * * *
"The pathos of this story is of a type too delicate to be depressing.
The tale is almost a poem, so fine is its imagery, so far removed from
the commonplace. The character of Marie is merely suggested, and yet
she has a most distinct and penetrating individuality. It is a fine
piece of work to place, without parade or apparent intention, at the
feet of this ideal woman, three loves so widely different from each
other. There is clever conception in the impulse that makes Marie turn
from the selfish, tempestuous love of the Count, and the generous, holy
passion of Anselmo, to the narrower but nearer love of Walther, who had
perhaps fewer possibilities in his nature than either of the other two.
The quality of the story is something we can only describe by one
word--spirituelle. It has in it strong suggestions of genius coupled
with a rare poetic feeling, which comes perhaps more frequently from
Germany than from anywhere else. The death of Marie and the sculpture
of her image by Anselmo, is a passage of great power. The tragic end of
the book does not come with the gloom of an unforeseen calamity; it
leaves with it merely a feeling of tender sadness, for it is only the
fulfilment of our daily expectations. It is in fact the only end which
the tone of the story would render fitting or natural."--_Godeys Lady's
Book_.
_William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York_.
PRUSIAS.--A Romance of Ancient Rome under the Republic, by Ernst
Eckstein, from the German by Clara Bell. Authorized edition. In two
vols. Paper, $1.00. Cloth, $1.75.
* * * * *
"The date of 'Prusias' is the latter half of the first century B. C.
Rome is waging her tedious war with Mithridates. There are also risings
in Spain, and the home army is badly depleted. Prusias comes to Capua
as a learned Armenian, the tutor of a noble pupil in one of the
aristocratic households. Each member of this circle is distinct. Some
of the most splendid traits of human nature develop among these grand
statesmen and their dignified wives, mothers, and daughters. The ideal
Roman maiden is Psyche; but she has a trace of Greek blood and of the
native gentleness. Of a more interesting type is Fannia, who might,
minus her slaves and stola, pass for a modern and saucy New York
beauty. Her wit, spirit, selfishness, and impulsive magnanimity might
easily have been a nineteenth-century evolution. In the family to which
Prusias comes are two sons, one of military leanings, the other a
student. Into the ear of the latter Prusias whispers the real purpose
of his coming to Italy. He is an Armenian and in league with
Mithridates for the reduction of Roman rule. The unity which the Senate
has tried to extend to the freshly-conquered provinces of Italy is a
thing of slow growth. Prusias by his strategy and helped by
Mithridates's gold, hopes to organize slaves and disaffected
provincials into a force which will oblige weakened Rome to make terms,
one of which shall be complete emancipation and equality of every man
before the law. His harangues are in lofty strain, and, save that he
never takes the coarse, belligerent tone of our contemporaries, these
speeches might have been made by one of our own Abolitionists. The one
point that Prusias never forgets is personal dignity and a regal
consideration for his friends. But after all, this son of the gods is
befooled by a woman, a sinuous and transcendently ambitious Roman
belle, the second wife of the dull and trustful prefect of Capua; for
this tiny woman had all men in her net whom she found it useful to have
there.
"The daughter of the prefect--hard, homely-featured, and hating the
supple stepmother with an unspeakable hate, tearing her beauty at last
like a tigress and so causing her death--is a repulsive but very strong
figure. The two brothers who range themselves on opposite sides in the
servile war make another unforgettable picture; and the beautiful slave
Brenna, who follows her noble lover into camp, is a spark of light
against the lurid background. The servile movement is combined with the
bold plans of the Thracian Spartacus. He is a good figure and
perpetually surprises us with his keen foresight and disciplinary
power.
"The book is stirring, realistic in the even German way, and full of
the fibre and breath of its century." _Boston Ev'g Transcript_.
QUINTUS CLAUDIUS.--A Romance of Imperial Rome, by Ernst Eckstein, from
the German by Clara Bell, in two vols. Paper, $1.00. Cloth, $1.75.
* * * * *
"We owe to Eckstein the brilliant romance of 'Quintus Claudius,' which
Clara Bell has done well to translate for us, for it is worthy of place
beside the Emperor of Ebers and the Aspasia of Hamerling. It is a story
of Rome in the reign of Domitian, and the most noted characters of the
time figure in its pages, which are a series of picturesque
descriptions of Roman life and manners in the imperial city, and in
those luxurious retreats at Baiae and elsewhere to which the wealthy
Romans used to retreat from the heats of summer. It is full of stirring
scenes in the streets, in the palaces, in the temples, and in the
amphitheatre, and the actors therein represent every phase of Roman
character, from the treacherous and cowardly Domitian and the vile
Domitia down to the secret gatherings of the new sect and their exit
from life in the blood-soaked sands of the arena, where they were torn
in pieces by the beasts of the desert. The life and the manners of all
classes at this period were never painted with a bolder pencil than by
Eckstein in this masterly romance, which displays as much scholarship
as invention."--_Mail and Express, N. Y_.
"These neat volumes contain a story first published in German. It is
written in that style which Ebers has cultivated so successfully. The
place is Rome; the time, that of Domitian at the end of the first
century. The very careful study of historical data, is evident from the
notes at the foot of nearly every page. The author attempted the
difficult task of presenting in a single story the whole life of Rome,
the intrigues of that day which compassed the overthrow of Domitian,
and the deep fervor and terrible trials of the Christians in the last
of the general persecutions. The court, the army, the amphitheatre, the
catacombs, the evil and the good of Roman manhood and womanhood--all
are here. And the work is done with power and success. It is a book for
every Christian and for every student, a book of lasting value,
bringing more than one nation under obligation to its author."--_New
Jerusalem Magazine, Boston, Mass_.
"_A new Romance of Ancient Times!_ The success of Ernst Eckstein's new
novel, 'Quintus Claudius,' which recently appeared in Vienna, may
fairly be called phenomenal, critics and the public unite in praising
the work."--_Grazer Morgenpost_.
"'Quintus Claudius' is a finished work of art, capable of bearing any
analysis, a literary production teeming with instruction and interest,
full of plastic forms, and rich in the most dramatic changes of
mood."--_Pester Lloyd_.
_William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York_.