Our Own Set Part 12

"Well--perhaps, just a little," replied Sterzl, with a smile, "but I must admit that the temptation was a strong one."

"And really and truly I am very sorry for you," Siegburg went on, with that ingenuous want of tact that never lost him a friend. "There is nothing in the world so odious as to have a posse of disagreeable relations who suddenly appear and cling on to your coat-tails. I know it by experience. Last spring, at Vienna, half a dozen old aunts of my mother's came down upon us from Bukowina like a snow-storm...." Sempaly meanwhile had b.u.t.toned himself into his fur-lined coat and said nothing.

CHAPTER III.

The three days have gone by in which Truyn had desired his cousin to make up his mind--three days since the sudden descent of Baroness Wolnitzka scared away the sweet vision that till then had dwelt in Sempaly's soul and checked the declaration actually on his lips--but he has not yet requested to be removed from Rome. Truyn's eye has been upon him all through these three days, has constantly met his own with grave questioning, as though to say: "Have you decided?"

No, he had not decided. To a man like Sempaly there is nothing in the world so difficult as a decision; fate decides for him--he for himself!

Never.

His encounter with the preposterous baroness might silence the avowal he was on the verge of uttering, but it was not so powerful as to banish Zinka's image once and for all from his mind. The silly old woman's chatter he had by this time forgotten; the _Stornelli_ that Zinka had been singing still rang in his ears. For two days he had had the resolution to avoid the Palazetto, but he had seen Zinka for a moment, by accident, yesterday on the Corso. She was in the carriage with Marie Vulpini--she had on a grey velvet dress and a broad-brimmed mousquetaire hat that threw a shadow on her forehead and her golden-brown hair; she held a large bouquet of flowers and was chatting merrily with the little Vulpinis and Gabrielle Truyn; what pretty merry ways she had with children! His blood fired in his veins as their eyes met, and she blushed as she returned his bow. It was the first time she had blushed at seeing him. All that night he dreamed the wildest dreams,--and now he was taking a solitary early walk in the spring sunshine, on the Pincio, lost in thought, but snapping the twigs as he pa.s.sed along to vent his irritation. More and more he felt that marriage with Zinka was a _sine qua non_ of his existence. He had never in his life denied himself a pleasure, and now....

The brilliant March sun flooded the Piazza di Spagna, the waters of the Baracaccia sparkled and danced, reflecting the radiant blue sky, against which the towers of the Trinita dei Monti stood out sharp and clear. All over the shallow steps of the church models were lounging in the regulation peasant costumes, and blind beggars incessantly muttering their prayers. In front of the Hotel de l'Europe the cab-drivers were sweetly slumbering under the huge patched umbrellas stuck up behind their coach-boxes for protection against the sun or rain. Flower-sellers were squatted on every door-step, and here and there sat a brown-eyed, snub-nosed white Pomeranian dog. The Piazza was swarming with tourists, and Beatrice di Cenci gazed with the saddest eyes in the world out of a photographer's shop at the motley crowd and bustle.

Siegburg, in happy unconsciousness of coming evil, had just come out of Law's, the money changer's, and was inhaling with peculiar satisfaction the delicious pervading scent of hyacinths, when his eye was accidentally attracted by the fine figure of a young English woman who pa.s.sed him in a closely fitting jersey. He was still watching her when a harsh voice close to him exclaimed:

"Good morning, Count,--what luck!"

He turned round and recognized, under a vast shady hat, the broad, dark face of the Baroness Wolnitzka. Though the day was splendidly fine she had on that most undressed of garments, originally meant as a protection against rain but subsequently adopted to conceal every conceivable defect of costume, and long since known to the mocking youth of Paris as a "_cache-misere_,' or--to render it freely--a s.l.u.t-cover; and, though the pavement was perfectly dry, under this waterproof she held up the gown it hid, so high that her wide feet, in their untidy boots with elastic sides, were plainly displayed.

"Ah, baroness!" he said lifting his hat, "I really did not ..."

"No, you did not recognize me," she said calmly, "that was why I spoke to you. What luck! But you are in the emba.s.sy too?"

"Certainly."

"That is the very thing--I have a request to make then. My daughter is most anxious to have an audience of His Holiness. Slawa, you must know, is a fervent Catholic, though, between you and me, it is a mere matter of fashion. Now I, for my part, take a philosophical view of religious matters. At the same time I should be very much interested in seeing the Pope...."

"But the Pope is unfortunately more inaccessible than ever," said Siegburg, "besides, as I do not belong to the Papal Emba.s.sy I cannot, I regret to say, give you the smallest a.s.sistance."

"That is what my nephew says--it is disastrous, positively disastrous,"

At this moment Slawa joined them, emerging from Piale's library, in an eccentric _directoire_ costume, with a peaked hat and feather, and a pair of gloves, no longer clean, drawn far up over her elbows.

"Ah, good morning," said she, offering the count her finger tips while Matuschowsky, who was in attendance, sulkily bowed.

By this time Siegburg, hemmed in on all sides, began to think the situation unpleasant.

"It is so delightful to meet with a fellow-countryman in a foreign land...." Slawa began.

"Quite delightful," replied Siegburg, thinking to himself: "How am I to get out of this?" when suddenly the absurdity of the thing came upon him afresh, for he heard the baroness once more: "Good morning, Count, what luck!" and at the same moment she bore down on no less a man than Sempaly, who had just come down the sunlit steps, and was crossing the Piazza lost in sullen meditation. "I beg your pardon," he muttered somewhat startled, "I really did not recognize you," and he gazed helplessly into the distance as though he looked for a rescue. But the baroness went on:

"I am so delighted to have met you--I have a particular request to make: could you not procure me admission to the Farnesina? The Duke di Ripalda is said to be all powerful...."

"I am sorry to say it is quite im----"

But at this instant a party of foreigners caught Sempaly's eye--two young ladies with a maid. The two girls, tall and straight as pine-trees, both remarkably handsome and dressed in neatly-fitting English linen dresses, were eagerly bargaining with an Italian who had embroidered cambric tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs for sale, and they seemed to think it a delightful adventure to buy something in the street.

"Two charming girls! surely I know them," cried Madame Wolnitzka. "Are they not the Jatinskys?"

One of the young ladies, looking up, called out: "Nicki, Nicki!" half across the Piazza, with the frank audacity of people who have grown up in the belief that the world was created expressly for their use.

"Excuse me," said Sempaly with a bow to the baroness, "my cousins ..."

and without more ado he made his escape.

"How long have you been here? Where are you staying?"

"We arrived this morning--Hotel de Londres--mamma wrote to you at once to the emba.s.sy ... Ah, here is another Austrian!" for Siegburg had contrived to join them. "Rome is but a suburb of Vienna after all! But tell me, who on earth were that old fortune-teller and her extraordinary daughter to whom you were both devoting yourselves so attentively?"

The Wolnitzky trio had in the meantime moved away. The baroness very gracious, Slawa very haughty, as became the living representative of the Apollo Belvedere--past the two handsome girls and down the Via Condotti. Suddenly Baroness Wolnitzka stopped:

"I quite forgot to ask Count Sempaly to get me an invitation to the international artists' festival!" she exclaimed, striking her forehead, and she promptly turned about, evidently intending to repair the omission; only Matuschowsky's decided interference preserved Sempaly from her return to the charge.

The scene is now the Pincio--between five and six in the afternoon, the hour when the band plays every day on the great terrace, while the crowd collects to watch the sun set behind St. Peter's. The reflection of the glow gilds the gravel, glints from the lace on the uniforms and the bra.s.s instruments, and throws golden sparks on the water in the wide basin behind the bandstand. The black shadows rapidly lengthen on the gra.s.s, and the palmettos, yuccas, and evergreen oaks stand out in rich, deep tones against the sky that fades from crimson to salmon and grey. A special set of visitors haunt the shady side of the Pincio; not the fashionable world: governesses and nurses with their charges, and priests--priests of every degree: the ill.u.s.trious Monsignori with their finely chiselled features, their upright bearing and their elegant hands; monks, with their bearded faces comfortably framed in their cowls, and whole regiments of priestlings from the Seminaries in their uniforms of every hue; lank, lean figures, with sallow, unformed features.

Separated from these only by a leafy screen the beauty and fashion of Rome drive up and down--the residents in handsome private carriages, the foreigners in hired vehicles of varying degrees of respectability, or even in the humble, one-horse, hackney cab. The crowd grows denser every minute as the stream of Roman rank and wealth swells along the Via Borghese, across the Piazza del Popolo, and up the hill. On the top of the Pincio the carriages come to a stand-still; gentlemen on foot gather round them, bowing and smiling, the ladies talk across from one victoria to another--all sorts of trivial small-talk, unintelligible to the uninitiated. Up from the gardens which line the road from the Via Margutta, comes a fragrance of budding and growing spring; down below lies Rome, and lording it grandly over the labyrinthine ma.s.s of houses and ruins, solemn and severe, its crown touched by the last rays of the vanished sun, stands St Peter's.

Countess Ilsenbergh's carriage was drawn up side by side with that of Princess Vulpini; the newly-arrived party of the Jatinskys was divided between them; the countess mother reclining indolently with a gracious smile on her lips by the side of Countess Ilsenbergh, while the princess had undertaken to chaperon the young ladies. On the front seat, by his cousin Eugenie--Nini they called her--sat Sempaly.

Siegburg was leaning over the carriage door, talking all sorts of nonsense, and relating all the gossip of Rome that was fit for maiden ears to the two new-comers; they, infinitely amused, laughed till their simple merriment infected even Sempaly, who had taken the seat coveted of all the golden youth of Rome--the seat next his beautiful cousin--in a very gloomy and taciturn humor.

Presently there was an evident sensation among the public; every one was looking in the same direction.

"What is happening?" asked Polyxena, the elder of the two Jatinska girls.

"It must be the Dorias' new drag, or the King," said Princess Vulpini, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her short-sighted eyes. "No," said Siegburg, looking back, "neither. It is Baroness Wolnitzka!"

And in fact, Madame Sterzl's pretty landau, which she had placed at the disposal of her sister for the afternoon, was coming up the road, in it the Wolnitzkas, mother and daughter, both in their finest array. Slawa was leaning back, elegantly languid, while her mother stood up in the carriage and surveyed the world of Rome through an opera-gla.s.s. From time to time, either to rest, or because she suddenly lost her balance, she sat down; and then she filled up her time by examining every detail of the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and lining of the landau. It was this singular demeanor, combined with her very conspicuous person, that attracted so much attention to the Sterzls' vehicle--an attention which both mother and daughter, of course ascribed to Slawa's extraordinary resemblance to the Belvedere Apollo.

"Baroness Wolnitzka! the wonderful old woman we saw with you yesterday in the Piazza di Spagna?" cried Polyxena.

"Yes."

"Only think, Nicki," she went on to Sempaly, "mamma knows her?"

"Who is it that I know?" asked her mother from the other carriage.

"Baroness Wolnitzka, mamma; do you see her--out there?"

"Heaven preserve me!" exclaimed the countess fervently. "I do not feel secure of my life when I am near her. She fell upon me to-day in the Villa Wolkonsky."

"How on earth do you happen to know the old woman, aunt?" asked Sempaly irritably.