Erlach Court Part 27

Stella, laughing, claps applause, and Signor Trevisiani gazes at him as if he longed to learn his art. But della Seggiola asks,--

"Where did you learn to sing, mon Prince?"

"Everywhere."

"From whom?"

"From no one."

"That's right!" exclaims Seggiola, forgetting all humbug in genuine artistic enthusiasm. "For, between ourselves be it said, singing is never taught."

And when the Prince laughs, and hopes on the contrary to profit much from the art of the maestro, the latter replies, with the inborn courtesy of his nation,--

"If you will kindly help me to reveal to my cla.s.s here the beauty of song, you shall always be welcome, mon Prince. I can teach you nothing."

The lesson is over. Zino helps Stella and his cousin to put on their wraps, takes leave of della Seggiola with his brilliant smile and cordial pressure of the hand, of the rest with a very brief nod, and leaves the room with his two special ladies.

"A charming man, that Principe Capito," says della Seggiola, rubbing his hands delightedly. "And he can sing like Mario in his best days. I used to give his sister lessons."

"I have met him before in Vienna," Fraulein Fuhrwesen mutters. "He is an Italian, to be sure, but his arrogance he learned in Austria."

CHAPTER XXV.

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE?

The lesson at an end, the members of della Seggiola's cla.s.s have no more acquaintance with one another than have people who have travelled together by railway after they have left the train. The soprano with her slovenly duenna in a long French cachemire shawl, the Italian with his two sisters, one on each arm, all fly apart like bits of lead from an exploding sh.e.l.l.

A saucy smile about his mouth, Capito walks beside the two girls; he softly hums to himself '_La ci darem la mano!_'

"You sang well, Zino," Natalie remarks, after a while. "Della Seggiola was absolutely enthusiastic."

"What good did it do me?" says Zino, shrugging his shoulders. "It gave him a reason for politely turning me away."

"He was afraid you might agitate Miss Frazer: she suffers already from her heart," Stella says, with her usual audacity in alluding to uncomfortable topics.

"On the whole, della Seggiola was right," Natalie declares: "it would not have been becoming for you to join the cla.s.s."

"'Tis odd how often the pleasantest things in this world are unbecoming," Zino murmurs.

"Do you really think it would have been so very pleasant to hear us practising away at the same things twice a week?" Stella asks, gaily.

"Without giving him time to reply, Natalie begins to cross-examine him upon his impressions of della Seggiola's method of instruction.

"What do you think of him as a teacher?" she asks.

"He sings delightfully," Zino replies, somewhat vaguely.

"Yes, but he is too lax as a teacher; he is not strict enough,--does not suit to their capacity the tasks he imposes upon his pupils."

"Do you think so?" says Zino. "On the contrary, I thought he exacted far too much of his scholars' capacity."

"How so?" Natalie asks, rather offended.

"He required you to be coquettish, and that fellow--what was his name?--Trappenti--to be seductive. Rather too difficult a task for both of you, I should think," says the Prince.

Natalie frowns:

"I thought della Seggiola's remarks to-day highly unbecoming."

"Of course, when you were singing a love-song, to require you to imagine yourself in the place of the singer,--_c'est de la derniere inconvenance_. Moreover, it was exacting more than you were capable of performing,--that is, so far as I know." And, with a quick turn of the conversation which would be quite inexcusable in any one else, he looks her in the face, and asks with a light laugh, as if the question concerned something infinitely comical, "Do tell us,--it will interest Baroness Stella too, I am sure,--you are twenty-five years old----"

"Twenty-six," Natalie corrects him.

"Twenty-six, then. Were you ever in love?"

To the Prince's no small surprise, Natalie turns away her head at this question, and, blushing to the very roots of her hair, mutters angrily between her set teeth, "You are intolerable to-day!"

"Ah, indeed!" says Prince Zino, with a merry twinkle of his eyes. "It must be with one of the lithographic portraits hanging in the corridor in your home at Jekaterinovskoe,--Orlow, or Potemkin. By the way, 'tis a great pity you blush so seldom, Natalie: it becomes you charmingly."

At the next street-corner Stella's and Natalie's ways separate, to the great vexation of the Prince, seeing that he too must of course take his leave of the beautiful Austrian. But, if he can no longer enjoy the pleasure of talking with Stella, he resolves to please himself by still keeping her in sight. Instead of remaining with his cousin and quietly going his own way, he decides to walk along the same street with Stella, on the other side of the way.

Natalie, who understands his little man[oe]uvre perfectly, looks after him before turning her corner, and shakes her head. "I wonder how many times he has been in love before?" she thinks. "Poor little star! she is very pretty. I trust she may be more sensible than I."

Meanwhile, Zino and Stella walk leisurely along on opposite sides of the Rue des Pet.i.ts-Champs.

"How well she walks! what a fine carriage she has!" he murmurs, never losing sight of her. "Her movements have such an easy grace, and now and then a dreamy, gliding rhythm about them; 'tis music for the eyes. And then such colour,--the fair face with its black eyes and red lips, the gold of the hair setting off the exquisite glow of the complexion,--she is enchanting!"

Zino is one of those men whose sensuality is refined and idealized by the admixture of a purely artistic and aesthetic appreciation of the beautiful. The worship of the beautiful is, as he is fond of declaring, his own special, private religion; the paroxysms of enthusiasm which this worship was apt to cause in him in former years have long since grown rarer and rarer. But to-day he is distinctly conscious of the slow approach of an attack.

"Bah! it will pa.s.s away," he says to himself, "as all such attacks do; it can lead to nothing. But all the same she is bewitching!"

Thus both go their ways,--he with his eyes, quite intoxicated with beauty, riveted upon her face and figure,--she, as he is rather annoyed to perceive, so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be utterly oblivious of his vicinity. Between them, around them, swarms Parisian life, with its bustle and noise; on the pavements pa.s.s neat grisettes by twos and threes, their smooth hair uncovered, either coming from or going to breakfast, men with dirty grayish-white blouses, servant-girls in white caps, Englishwomen with long teeth, and Parisians of all kinds, recklessly pressing on towards some aim known to themselves only; in the middle of the street there is a hurly-burly of every kind of vehicle, from little hand-carts, laden with fish, flowers, oranges, or vegetables, and pushed by women with bent backs, to omnibuses as big as small houses, their tops reaching above the shop-windows, and dragged with difficulty by the strongest horses. Here and there some one is running after one or other of these conveyances, a breathless day-governess, helped up by both hands to the back platform by the conductor, or a notary with a leather wallet under his arm, who climbs to the top with the agility of a monkey.

These tops are crowded. Beside respectable business-men with clean-shaved cheeks and thick sausage-like moustaches are seated all sorts of Bohemians, half-students, half-artists, pale and thin, with melancholy eyes in faces weary with cheap pleasures, a strange and genuinely Parisian species of human being, always eager for any variety, be it a ball at Bulliers or the overthrow of a government, a restless, excitable, shallow, sparkling crowd, which might be called the oxygen of Paris in contrast with its hydrogen. And beside the huge city omnibus there toil, slowly, heavily-laden carts to which are harnessed long trains of huge white Norman steeds, with blue sheepskins upon their backs and bells around their necks, bells which have a rustic simple sound amid all the demoniac clatter of Paris, like the clear voices of children heard in some Baccha.n.a.lian revel. Tall, st.u.r.dy Normans in white, flapping broad-brimmed hats walk beside them, shaking their heads as they look down upon the wealthy degradation and the sordid misery of the filigree population of Paris.

The January sun shines above it all. There in the fresh cold air is an odour of oranges, fish, and flowers. Stella stops beside a flower-cart to buy a bunch of violets. Zino pauses to watch her. Amid the noise of the street he cannot understand what she says, but through the roar of the mid-day crowd, the loud pulsation of the great city stronger at this hour than at any other, he distinguishes brief detached notes of her gentle bird-like voice. How cordial the smile she has just bestowed upon the flower-girl!

"If she smiled at me like that I should give her the entire cart-full of flowers. I wonder if I might send her a bouquet to the 'Negroes?'"

Stella, with a charming shake of the head, has just taken out her purse, when a lumbering omnibus interposes between her and Zino's admiring gaze. The omnibus is followed by a cart, then by another, and another. At last the view is once more uninterrupted; but where is Stella? There she stands, pale, agitated, her eyes cast down, beside a tall, thin, consumptive-looking woman in shabby black, leading by the hand a little girl,--a woman with golden hair, and features in which, pinched and worn though they be by many a bitter experience, a striking likeness may be traced to Stella's beautiful profile.

"Where did she pick up that acquaintance?" the Prince asks himself; but before he can decide where and when he has seen that woman before, Stella and the stranger have vanished in a little confectioner's shop.