Erlach Court Part 20

"Good-day, Fraulein Bertha!"--"Fraulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, a very fine pianist,"--to the Princess; then to the Meinecks, "You are already acquainted with her." And while the Princess talks with much condescension to the pianist of her adoration for music, Stasy whispers to Stella, "Don't be so stiff towards Sonja: you might almost be supposed to be jealous of her."

"Ridiculous!" Stella says angrily through her set teeth, and blushing to the roots of her hair.

Stasy taps her on the cheek with her forefinger, with a pitying glance that takes in her entire person, from her delicate--almost too delicate--pale face to her shabby travelling-dress, the identical brown army-cloak which she had worn on the journey to Venice three years before, and rejoins,--

"Ridiculous indeed--most ridiculous--to dream of rivalling Sonja.

Wherever she appears, we ordinary women are nowhere."

"Verviers--Paris--Brussels!" the porter shouts into the room.

All rise, and pick up plaids and travelling-bags; the porters hurry in; a lanky footman and a sleepy-looking maid wait upon the Princess Oblonsky, who nods graciously as they all crowd out upon the railway-platform. The Meinecks enter a coupe where an American whose trousers are too short, and his wife whose hat is too large, have already taken their seats. The pianist looks in at the door, but as soon as she perceives Stella starts back with horror in her face.

"I seem to have made an enemy of that woman," Stella thinks, negligently. What does it matter to her? Poor Stella! Could she but look into the future!

The train starts; while the Baroness, neglectful of the simplest precautions with regard to her eyes, continues to peruse her masterpiece by the yellow light of the coupe lamp, the American goes to sleep, hat and all, upon her companion's shoulder, and Stella sits bolt upright in the cool draught of night air by the window, repeating to herself alternately, "I long for a resurrection!" and "Wherever Sonja appears, we ordinary women are nowhere!"

She, then, is the enchantress who has ruined the happiness of his life,--she the---- She is indeed beautiful; but how hollow,--how false!

Everything about her--soul, heart, and all--is painted, like her face.

Could he possibly be her dupe a second time? Suddenly the girl feels the blood rush to her cheeks.

"What affair is it of mine? What do I care?" she asks herself, angrily.

"He too is false, vain, and heartless; he too can act a part."

CHAPTER XIX.

PARIS.

Stella has scarcely closed her eyes, when the train reaches Paris, about six o'clock. The morning is cold and damp, the usual darkness of the time of day disagreeably enhanced by the white gloom of an autumn fog,--a gloom which the street-lamps are powerless to counteract, and in which they show like l.u.s.treless red specks.

Through this depressing white gloom, Stella and her mother are driven in a rattling little omnibus, with a couple of other travellers, through a Paris as silent as the grave, to the Hotel Bedford, Rue Pasquier. An Englishwoman at Nice once recommended it to the Baroness as that wonder of wonders, a first-cla.s.s hotel with second-cla.s.s prices, and it is under English patronage. English lords and ladies now and then occupy the first story, and consequently the garret-rooms are continually inhabited by impoverished but highly distinguished scions of English "county families." In the reading-room, between 'Burke's Peerage' and Lodge's 'Vicissitudes of Families' is placed an alb.u.m containing the photographs of two peeresses. The _clientele_ is as aristocratic as it is economical: each despises all the rest, and one and all dispute the weekly bills. Stella and her mother are by no means enchanted with this hotel, and they sally forth as soon as they are somewhat rested, in search of furnished lodgings.

But the funds are scanty: their expenses ought to be paid out of a hundred and fifty francs a month!

The first day pa.s.ses, and our Austrians have as yet found nothing suitable. The cheapest lodgings are confined and dark, and smell, as the ladies express it, of English people; that is, of a mixture of camphor, patchouli, and old nut-sh.e.l.ls. The bedrooms in these cheap lodgings consist of a sort of windowless closets, entirely dependent for ventilation upon a door into the drawing-room which can be left open at night.

Meanwhile, the living at the Bedford is dear. The Baroness arrives at the conclusion that private quarters at three hundred francs a month would be more economical, and finally decides to spend this sum upon her winter residence.

For three hundred francs very much better lodgings are to be had; the bedrooms have windows, but there are still all kinds of discomforts to be endured, the worst of which consists perhaps in the fact that none of the proprietors of these rooms, which are mostly intended for bachelors, is willing to undertake to provide food for the two ladies.

At last in the Rue de Leze an _appartement_ is found which answers their really moderate requirements; but just at the last moment the Baroness discovers that the concierge is a very suspicious-looking individual, and remembers that the previous year a horrible murder was committed in the Rue de Leze; wherefore negotiations are at once broken off.

A pretty _appartement_ in the Rue de l'Arcade pleases Stella particularly, perhaps because the drawing-room is furnished with buhl cabinets. The Baroness is just about to close with the concierge, who does the honours of the place,--there is merely a question of five francs to be settled,--when with a suspicious sniff she remarks, "'Tis strange how strongly the atmosphere of this room is impregnated with musk!"

Whereupon the concierge explains that the rooms have lately been occupied by Mexican gentlemen, who shared the reprehensible Southern habit of indulging too freely in perfumes; and when the Baroness glances doubtfully at a dressing-table which scarcely presents a masculine appearance, and which boasts a sky-blue pincushion stuck full of different kinds of pins, he hastens to add, without waiting to be questioned, that the Mexican gentlemen had chiefly occupied themselves in collecting and arranging b.u.t.terflies.

"Mexican men would seem to have long fair hair, mamma," Stella here interposes, having just pulled a golden hair at least a yard long out of the crochetted antimaca.s.sar of a low chair.

The face of the Baroness, who always suspects French immorality everywhere, turns to marble; tossing her head, she grasps Stella by the hand and hurries out with her, pa.s.sing the astounded concierge without so much as deigning to bid him good-bye.

She refuses to take a lodging in the Rue Pasquier, because it seems to her 'too reasonable;' she is convinced that some one must have died of cholera in a certain big bed with red curtains, else the rent never would have been so low.

At last, after a four days' pilgrimage, the ladies find what answers their requirements in a little hotel called 'At the Three Negroes,'

kept by a kindly, light-hearted Irishwoman.

At the Baroness's first words, "We are looking for lodgings for two quiet, respectable ladies," she instantly rejoins, "My house will suit you exactly; the quietest house in all Paris. I never receive any--hm!--a certain kind of ladies, and never more than one Deputy; two always quarrel." Whereupon the Irishwoman and the Austrian lady come to terms immediately, and the Meinecks move into the second story of 'The Three Negroes' that very day, the Irishwoman being quite ready also to provide them with food. The price for a salon and two bedrooms--with very large windows, 'tis true, as Stella observes is three hundred and twenty francs a month.

After the lodgings are thus fortunately secured the Baroness sets about finding a singing-teacher for Stella. Always decided and to the point, she goes directly to the man in authority at the Grand Opera to inquire for a 'first-cla.s.s Professor.' Oddly enough, it appears that this authority has no time to attend to matters so important. Dismissed with but slight encouragement, the Baroness tries her fortune at the office of one of the smaller operas; but since she presents herself here with her daughter without introduction of any kind, the official seated behind a dusty writing-table has no time to devote to her, all that he has being absorbed in a quarrel with two ladies who have just applied to him for the ninth time,--"yes," he exclaims, with a despairing flourish of his hands, "for the ninth time this month, for free tickets!"

Whilst the Baroness and Stella linger hesitatingly on the threshold, a slender, sallow young man with sharply-cut features, and with a picturesque Astrachan collar and a very long surtout, enters the place by an opposite door. He scans Stella's face and figure keenly, and, approaching her, asks what she desires. The Baroness informs him of their business, whereupon ensues an exchange of civilities and mutual introductions.

The gentleman in the fur collar is none other than the famous impresario Morinski, now on the lookout for a new Patti.

With a pleasant glance towards Stella, he asks who has been the young lady's teacher hitherto.

Of whom has she not taken lessons! The list of her teachers embraces Carelli at Naples, Lamperti at Milan, Garcia in London, and Tosti in Rome.

Here Morinski shakes his black curly head, says, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," and asks, "Why did you not stay longer with one teacher?"

The Baroness takes it upon herself to reply, and explains at considerable length how her historical schemes and researches have hitherto rendered a wandering life for herself and her daughter imperatively necessary.

Morinski, who seems to take more interest in Stella's fine eyes than in her mother's historical studies, interrupts the elder lady with some rudeness, and, turning to Stella, asks, "Do you intend to go upon the stage?"

"Yes," Stella meekly replies.

"Only upon condition of her capacity to become a star of the first magnitude should I consent to my daughter's going upon the stage," the Baroness declares, in her magnificent manner.

"It is a little difficult to prognosticate with certainty in such a case," Herr Morinski observes, with an odd smile. "Hm! hm! You may sometimes see a brilliant meteor flash across the skies, larger apparently than any of the stars; you fix your eyes upon it, but hardly have you begun to admire so exquisite a natural phenomenon when it has vanished. Another time you scarcely perceive a small red spark lying on the pavement, but before you are aware of it, it has set fire to half the town. Just so it is with our artistic _debuts_."

At the close of this tirade, which Herr Morinski has enunciated in very harsh French with a strong Jewish accent, he turns again to Stella and asks, "Will you sing me something? It would interest me very much to hear you."

Stella's heart beats fast. How many other singers have had to engage in an interminable correspondence and to entreat for infinite patronage before gaining admission to the famous Morinski and inducing him to listen to them, while he has asked her to sing, unsolicited, after scarcely ten minutes' conversation!

She gratefully accedes to his proposal.

"I should greatly prefer your making the trial on the stage itself, rather than in the foyer," says Morinski. "I could decide far better as to the strength of your voice. Have the kindness to follow me."

And, leading the way, he precedes them through an endless labyrinth of ill-lighted corridors to the stage, which, illuminated at this hour by only a couple of foot-lights, shows gray and colourless against the pitch-dark auditorium.

The boards of the stage are marked with various lines in chalk, cabalistic signs of mysterious significance to Stella; in front of the prompter's box stands a prima donna with her bonnet-strings untied and her fur cloak hanging loosely about her shoulders, singing in an undertone a duet with a tenor in a tall silk hat who is kneeling at her feet; at the piano, just below, sits the leader of the orchestra, a little Italian, with long, straight, white hair, and dark eyebrows that protrude for at least an inch over his fierce black eyes, pounding away at the accompaniment, evidently more to accentuate the rhythm than with any desire to accompany harmoniously the duet of the pair.

"The rehearsal will be over immediately," Morinski a.s.sures the two ladies.