Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 19

"I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?"

And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes.

"Oh, pray, Princess!"

Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused dismayed.

It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of any speedy cessation.

"This is intolerable!" exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be forgotten. "Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like female pilgrims."

"Pray permit me to call a droschky for you." With these words the young Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by way of explanation, "Von Sydow."

The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names, and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of speech, "You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take the trouble."

And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to drive, is more difficult still.

When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage, lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair of the prettiest little feet imaginable.

"What address shall I give to the coachman?" he asked, after helping the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle.

"Hotel Washington."

He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since he had been in Italy.

That very evening he moved to the Hotel Washington from the Hotel de la Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room a.s.signed him was far from comfortable; but he did not mind that.

And that very evening, before the _table-d'hote_ dinner, he found his fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm.

She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished, had degenerated sadly, princ.i.p.ally through the dissipated habits of the Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress, half maid.

This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister through a newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came from Vienna, where she belonged to those aesthetic circles, the members of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten years she had cherished a hopeless pa.s.sion for Sonnenthal: her chief enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels which exalted "the sacred voice of nature."

Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris successively.

The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all w.i.l.l.y was the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard.

Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with him during his term of compulsory service.

With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often embarra.s.sed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at the German emba.s.sy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not; it depended upon her circ.u.mstances. In fact, she did not care much about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together.

Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge the Viennese interposed with some temper: "Pray, Baron Sydow, discount all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that she should go."

"I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing and what is tiresome," the Princess said, with a laugh, "and we went everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Cafe des Amba.s.sadeurs. Eh?" And she pinched her companion's ear.

"But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon,"

Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. "The Cafe des Amba.s.sadeurs,--why, that is a _cafe chantant_. There is not a word of truth in all her nonsense."

"Not true? oh, but it is," the Princess retorted, quite at her ease.

"Of course it was a _cafe chantant_, and the singer sang '_Estelle, ou est ta flanelle?_'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her.

I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no _cafe chantant_ in Florence to which you could take us?"

"But, Princess----!" exclaimed Feistmantel.

"Why, a gentleman took us to the Cafe des Amba.s.sadeurs, a man whose acquaintance we made in the hotel," Dorothea ran on. "He was an American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses.

He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him, but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him."

"Both contingencies seem highly probable," Sydow observed, laughing. It was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington Hotel on the first evening of his stay there.

After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea quietly turned to him and said, "Herr von Sydow, will you not take a walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!"

The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king.

It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the heart. He could do no less than toss them some money.

Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a sneering "Baucis and Philemon!" after them. This shocked Sydow for an instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, "Ah, she is but a child!" He was already incapable of finding any harm in her.

The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after some circ.u.mlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared, however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her hotel bill for a month.

Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany.

The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies.

Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he knocked at their door.

"Who is it?" Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired.

"Sydow."

"Oh, pray come in," called the high voice of the Princess. He entered.

It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her bed, reading "Autour du Mariage," by Gyp.

The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair, that he might sit down.

"Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored to death," said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. "Can you give me a cigarette? mine are all gone."

Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when Dorothea remarked, composedly, "Don't listen to her; she is putting on airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!" She stretched herself slightly. "I should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we have no money."

Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital.

He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to relieve them--from--their temporary embarra.s.sment?

He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No!

The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, "You are an angel! I could really embrace you!" which of course she did not do, but which she could have done without thinking much of it.

That same evening the Princess's bill was paid.

Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the Arno.

The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him.