Manasseh Part 12

"I am in love with you already," continued the Marchioness Caldariva.

"For the past week we have been meeting every day. We kneel side by side in the same church, for I go to church regularly; but you have not noticed me, because you never raise your eyes from your prayer-book to look at your neighbours' bonnets and gowns. As for me, now, I watch you all the time I am praying. Daily prayers are a necessity with me. In the morning I pray for the sins I have committed the day before, and in the evening for those to be committed on the morrow. Another bond of sympathy between us is the similar lot to which we are both condemned,--a life unblessed by domestic happiness,--and we cherish therefore a common hatred of the world. You, however, show yours by leading a solitary life of mourning, I mine by amusing myself the best way I can. If I were strong enough to follow your example, I should do so, but I can't live without distraction. You are strong; I am weak. I admire in you your power to humble your enemies before you. You were told, weren't you, that I wrote that anonymous letter?"

Blanka looked at the speaker with wide eyes of inquiry and wonder. She began at length to place confidence in her words.

"And you were told the truth, too," continued the other. "Oh, those two men are intriguers of the deepest dye. I was accused of upsetting their plan. I was told how mercilessly you had repulsed one of them. Really, that was a master stroke on your part. The fourteenth paragraph! He himself confessed the secret to me,--how he forged a note, some years ago, in the name of a good friend of his, who now holds the incriminating doc.u.ment in his possession. With it he can at any time crush his false friend and deliver him over to a long imprisonment. The trembling culprit wished to free himself at any cost from this sword of Damocles suspended over his head, and he proposed to me two ways to effect the desired end. One was for me to seduce the young artist and then, as the price of my smiles, cajole him into surrendering the fatal note."

The beautiful Cyrene threw at her listener a look full of the proud consciousness of her own dangerous charms. Blanka drew back in nameless fear under her gaze.

"The other way," proceeded the marchioness, "was to have him a.s.sa.s.sinated if he refused to give up the forged paper."

Blanka pressed her hands to her bosom to keep from crying out.

"Between these two plans I was asked to choose, and I rejected them both,--the first because I knew the young man adored you, the second because I knew you reciprocated his feeling."

The princess rose hastily and walked across the room, seeking to hide her tell-tale blushes.

"Come," said the marchioness, lightly, "sit down again and let us laugh over the whole affair together. You see, I would have nothing to do with either tragedy. I prefer comedy. Both of our arch-schemers have now taken flight from Rome; they were seized with terror at a street riot the other day, and they won't come back again, you may be sure, unless it be in the rear of a besieging army. So now we have the Cagliari palace quite to ourselves, and can sit and chat together all we please.

But I must say good night; I've gossiped enough for one while, and I'm sleepy, too."

Once more the fire was extinguished and the phoenix made to yield a pa.s.sage, after which Blanka found herself alone again. She shuddered at the thought of having lived for months with an open door leading to her bedroom. She debated with herself whether to stick her key in that door and leave it there permanently, while she herself sought another sleeping-room, or to yield to the charm of her unbidden guest and acquiesce in her plan of exchanging confidential visits. The strangeness and mystery of it all, and still more the hope that her neighbour might let fall an occasional word concerning Mana.s.seh, at length prevailed over her fears and scruples, and determined her to receive the other's advances.

On the following evening she gave her servants permission to go to the theatre,--the play representing the defeat of the Austrian army by the Italians,--while she herself, after having her samovar and other tea-things brought to her room, took up her mandolin and struck a few chords on its strings. The reclining Sappho answered her, and a few minutes later there came a knock on the back of the fireplace.

"Come in!"

The phoenix rose, and the fair Cyrene appeared, this time in full toilet, as for a fashionable call, her hair dressed in the English mode, a lace shawl falling over her pink silk gown, from beneath which one got an occasional glimpse of the richly embroidered underskirt and a pair of little feet encased in high-heeled shoes.

"You were going out?" asked the princess.

"I was coming to see you."

"Did you know I was waiting for you?"

"I told you yesterday I should come, and I knew you were expecting me from your sending your servants away to the theatre."

"And you knew that too?"

"Yes, because they took mine along with them. So here we are all alone by ourselves."

The consciousness of being the only living creatures in a whole house has a delicious charm, fraught with mystery and awe, for two young women. Blanka took her guest's hat and shawl, and then proceeded to start a fire on the hearth. The fair Cyrene meanwhile caught up her mandolin and began to sing one of Alfred de Musset's songs, full of the warmth and glow of the sunny South. Presently the hostess invited her guest to take tea with her, and asked her at the same time her baptismal name.

The marchioness laughed. "Haven't you heard it often enough? They call me 'Cyrene.'"

"But that isn't your real name," objected Blanka. "You were not christened 'Cyrene.'"

"I use it for my name, however, and no one but my father confessor calls me by my real name, so that now I never hear it without thinking that I must fall on my knees and repeat a dozen paternosters in penance.

Besides, my name doesn't suit me at all. It is Rozina, and I am as pale as moonshine. You might far better be called Rozina, for you have such beautiful rosy cheeks, and I should have been named Blanka. I'll tell you, suppose we exchange names: you call me Blanka, and I'll call you Rozina."

The suggestion seemed so funny to Blanka that she burst out laughing, and a woman who laughs is already more than half won over.

"Now, then," continued the other, "we can chat away to our heart's content. There's no one to listen to us or play the spy--a good thing for you to know, Rozina, because all your servants are hired spies. Your doorkeeper and his wife keep a regular journal of who comes in and who goes out, what visiting-cards are left, whom you receive, where you drive,--which they learn from your coachman,--whom you visit, and even with whom you exchange a pa.s.sing word. Your maid reads all your letters and searches all your pockets. Even your gardener keeps an account of all the flowers you order; for flowers, you know, have a language of their own. Be sure you don't buy a parrot, else it will turn spy on you, too."

"Who can it be that is so suspicious of me?" asked the princess, in surprise.

"Have you forgotten the strict terms of your uncle's legacy, and are you unaware how slight an indiscretion on your part might furnish your relatives with a pretext for contesting your right to a share of the property? Do you forget, too, how trifling an error might result in the cutting off of your allowance from Prince Cagliari?"

"Well, let them watch me, if they wish," returned Blanka, composedly. "I have no secrets to hide from anybody."

"A rash a.s.sertion for a woman to make," commented the other, as she poured herself a gla.s.s of water. "How warm this water is!" she exclaimed, after taking a sip.

Blanka sprang up and offered to bring some ice from the dining-room.

"Aren't you afraid to go for it alone?"

"Certainly not; the lamps are all lighted."

While the hostess was out of the room, her guest turned over Blanka's portfolio of drawings, and among them found her outline sketch of the Colosseum.

"You sketch beautifully," commented the marchioness, upon the other's return.

"It is my only diversion," replied the princess.

"This view of the Colosseum reminds me of one I saw at the Rossis'."

"The artist may have chosen the same point of view," returned Blanka with admirable composure.

"I called on him at his studio lately," proceeded the marchioness. "I had heard one of his pictures very highly praised. It represents a young woman sitting on the gallery railing in the Colosseum, with the sunlight streaming on her through a red umbrella. The warm glow of the sunbeams is in striking contrast with the deep melancholy on the girl's face. I offered the artist two hundred scudi for the piece, but he said it was not for sale at any price."

Blanka felt as powerless in the hands of this woman as a rabbit in the clutches of a lion. The beautiful Cyrene closed the portfolio and exclaimed:

"Rozina, these men are terrible creatures! They make us women their slaves. But the woman's first and dominant thought must ever be to find some escape from her bondage."

With that she jumped up and ran out of the room, as if taken suddenly ill. Her hostess followed to see what was the matter, and found her sitting in a corner of the adjoining apartment.

"You are weeping?"

"Not at all; never merrier in my life!"

Nevertheless, two tears were shining in the fair Cyrene's eyes.

Next she ran to the piano and began to rattle off "La Gitana," which Cerito had just made so popular throughout Europe.

"Have you the score?" asked the marchioness, turning to Blanka.

"No, but I can play it from memory."

"Then play it to me, please."

Blanka complied, and the other began to dance "La Gitana" to her playing. The spirit and feeling, the coquettish grace and seductive charm, which the dancer put into the movements of her lithe form, challenge description. If only a man could have seen her then! From sheer amazement Blanka found herself unable to control her fingers, which struck more than one false note.