Our Own Set Part 18

"Who is that sweet-looking girl, Nini?" asked the prince, "for, of course, you omitted to mention her name."

"Fraulein Sterzl," replied Nini, "the sister of one of the secretaries to the emba.s.sy."

"Sterzl," repeated the prince somewhat flatly.

"Zenade Sterzl!" said Polyxena over her shoulder.

But the ironical accent emphasis she laid on the odd mixture of the romantic and the commonplace was thrown away upon Prince Sempaly, who was much too fine a gentleman to laugh at his inferiors; all he said was:

"Sterzl? I seem to know the name. Sterzl--I served for a time under a Colonel Sterzl of the Uhlans. He was a very superior man."

Zinka meanwhile was flying on to the Hotel de l'Europe. In the sun-flooded court-yard stood two rose-trees, a white and a red--two brown curly-headed little boys were fighting a duel with walking-sticks in a shady corner--two English families were packing themselves into roomy landaus for an excursion and sending the servants in and out to fetch things that they had forgotten. The air was full of the scent of roses, and sunshine, and laughter; but one of the Englishwomen hushed her companion who had laughed rather loudly and pointing up to one of the windows said: "Remember the sick child."

A cold chill fell on Zinka's heart--she ran up the familiar stairs. In Truyn's drawing-room sat Gabrielle's English governess--anxious but helpless.

"May I go in?" asked Zinka.

"No, wait a minute--the doctor is there." At this moment Truyn came out of the child's room with Dr. E---- the German physician, and conducted him down-stairs. Truyn had the fixed, calm, white face of a man who is accustomed to bear his sorrows alone.

When he returned he went up to Zinka and took her hand: "She asks for you constantly," he said, "but do you think you can prevent her seeing that you are unhappy and alarmed?"

"Yes--indeed you may trust me," said Zinka bravely, wiping away her tears; and she went into the child's room "as silent and bright as a sunbeam."

CHAPTER IV.

Some one must have seen Zinka and Sempaly in the course of their moonlight walk or else have found out something about it in spite of the general's precautions; this was made evident by an article which came out on the Friday after the ball in a French 'society paper'

published weekly in Rome. The t.i.tle of the article was "a moonlight cotillon;" it began with an exact description of Zinka, of whom it spoke as Fraulein Z---- a S--l, the sister of a secretary in the Austrian Emba.s.sy; referred to the sensation produced by her appearance as Lady Jane Grey, spoke of her as an elegant adventuress--"a professional beauty"--and hinted at her various unsuccessful schemes for winning a princely coronet; schemes which had culminated in a moonlight walk, a few nights since, during a ball at the house of a distinguished member of Roman society, and which had outdone in audacity all that had ever been known to the _chronique scandaleuse_ of Rome. "Will she earn her reward in the form of a coronet and will the pages of 'High Life' ere long announce a fashionable marriage in which this young lady will fill a part?--that is the question," so the article ended.

"High Life,"--this was the name of the paper graced by this effusion--was scouted, abused and condemned by everybody, covertly maintained by several, and read by most--with disgust and indignation it is true, but still read. On this fateful Friday every copy of "High Life" was sold in no time, and before the sun had set Zinka's name was in every mouth.

What said the world of Rome? Lady Julia cried, had some tea, and went to bed; Mr. Ellis said "shocking!" a.s.sured his wife that he was convinced of Zinka's innocence, and that it would certainly triumph over calumny; after which he quietly went about his business and spent two whole hours in practising a difficult pa.s.sage on the concertina.

It was the Brauers--the Sterzls' old neighbors before mentioned--who contributed chiefly to the diffusion of the article, supplementing it with their own comments. They had some acquaintance among the "cream"

of Rome, though they had not been invited to the ball at the Brancaleone palace. Frau Brauer a.s.sumed a tone of perfidious compa.s.sion: it was a terrible affair for a young girl's reputation, though, for her part, she could see nothing extraordinary in a moonlight wandering with an intimate friend. Her husband, to whom the Sterzl family had paid very little attention--the baroness out of conceit, and Cecil and Zinka because he was in fact intolerably affected, pompous and patronizing--said with a sneering smile that he had never seen anything to admire in that little adventuress, with her free and easy innocence--pushing herself into society she was not born to. He had always thought it most unbecoming; and it must be a pleasant thing indeed for the d.u.c.h.ess of Brancaleone to have such a scandalous business take place in her house--she would be more careful for the future whom she invited!

Madame de Gandry and Mrs. Ferguson thought the article very amusingly written--not that they would ever have said a word about such a piece of imprudence--for really no one was safe! To be sure any evil that might be written against them would be a lie--a pure invention--which in Zinka's case was quite unnecessary ... So they sent the paper round to all their friends as a warning against rushing into acquaintance with strangers: "One cannot be too careful." Zinka had seemed to them suspicious from the first, for after all she was not "the real thing."

All these spiteful and cruel insinuations they even ventured to utter in the presence of Princess Vulpini, in the general's atelier, the spot where all that circle concentrated whenever anything had occurred to excite or startle it, and they made the princess furious.

"I am an Austrian myself," she said, "and was brought up with ideas of exclusiveness which are as much above suspicion as they are beyond your comprehension. I am strictly conservative in all my views. But Zinka is elect by nature--an exceptional creature before whom all such laws give way. I should have regarded it as pure folly to sacrifice the pleasure of her acquaintance for the sake of a social dogma."

"Exceptions always fare badly," murmured the general.

Countess Ilsenbergh, who was as strict on points of honor as she was on matters of etiquette, was deeply aggrieved by the article; she expressed herself briefly but strongly on the subject of the freedom of the press, and confessed that, whether Zinka were innocent or guilty, things looked very ugly for Sempaly.

The count rushed into eloquence giving an exhaustive discourse on the whole social question.

"Princess Vulpini is quite right," he said. "Fraulein Sterzl is a bewitching creature, quite an exception--and if any departure from traditional law is ever permissible it would be so in her case. But the general too is right; exceptions must always fare badly in the world, and we cannot endanger the very essence and being of social stability in order to improve the position of any single individual. Above all, we must never create a precedent." And he proceeded to enlarge on the horrible consequences which must result from such a mixture of cla.s.ses, referred to the example of France, and proposed the introduction of the Hindoo system of caste, in its strictest application, as a further bulwark for the protection of society in Europe and the coercion of ambitious spirits. His wife, at this juncture, objected that European society had not yet reached such a summit of absolute exclusiveness as he would a.s.sume, and that, consequently what was immediately needed was not any such far-reaching scheme for its protection, but some plan for dealing with the disagreeable circ.u.mstances in which its imperfection had at this time placed them.

He replied that the matter lay in a nutsh.e.l.l; either the story in 'High Life' was a lie, in which case Sempaly had nothing to do but to deny it categorically, to prove an alibi at the hour mentioned and to horsewhip the editor--or, the facts stated were true, and then--under the circ.u.mstances--there was nothing for it--but ... "the lady's previous character was quite above suspicion--there was nothing for it--but...."

and he shrugged his shoulders.

"But to make Fraulein Sterzl Countess Sempaly!" cried Madame de Gandry.

"Well, I must say I do think it rather too much to give an adventurous little chit a coronet as a reward for sheer impudence. But I beg your pardon, general,--I had forgotten that you are a friend of the family."

"And I," exclaimed the general beside himself, and quite pale with rage, "I, madame, was within an ace of forgetting that I was listening to a lady!"

Princess Vulpini interposed: "You yourself said, madame, that you had always avoided any acquaintance with Zinka; now I have known her intimately, and seen her almost every day; I have observed her demeanor with men--with young men--and heard her conversation with other girls, and I can a.s.sure you that the word impudence is no more applicable to her conduct than to that of my little girl of three.--And if she did, in fact, go into the garden with my cousin the night of the ball, it is a proof simply of romantic thoughtlessness, of such perfect, unsuspicious innocence that it ought of itself avail to protect her against slander. I spent last night with Zinka, by the bedside of my little niece who is ill, and no girl with a stain on her conscience could look so sweetly pure or smile with such childlike sincerity. I would put my hand in the fire for her spotless innocence!"

The princess spoke with such dignity and warmth, and while she spoke she fixed such a scathing eye on Madame de Gandry, that the Frenchwoman, abashed in spite of herself, could only mutter some incoherent answer and withdraw with Mrs. Ferguson in her wake.

The four Austrians were alone.

"The person who puzzles me in this business," said the princess, "is Nicki Sempaly. As soon as this wretched paper came into my hands I sent it to his rooms. There I heard that he had just gone out with the Jatinskys. I went to the Hotel de l'Europe to talk it over with my brother, but he had gone to lie down and I had not the heart to wake him. Besides, he could have done no good, and I could not bear to disturb his happiness over his child's amendment.--So I came to unburden my heart to you, general."

"Sempaly cannot have seen it yet," suggested Ilsenbergh. The princess shrugged her shoulders. Countess Ilsenbergh once more expressed her opinion that "it was a very unpleasant affair and that she had foreseen it all from the first," after which, finding that it would be difficult to prevent her husband from delivering another lecture, she rose to go.

At this instant Prince Vulpini came into the studio with a beaming countenance. "Ah! here you are! I saw the carriage at the door as I was pa.s.sing.--Have you heard the latest news?"

"Sempaly is engaged to Zinka?" cried his wife.

"No!" cried the prince; "the wind last night tore down the national flag on the Quirinal. Hurrah for the Tramontana!"

A few minutes later the general was alone; after a moment's hesitation he took up his hat and hurried off to the palazetto to see how matters stood there. He was one of those who had been the latest to hear of the slanderous article and at the same time to be the most deeply wounded by it. But perhaps by this time Sempaly had engaged himself to Zinka, he said to himself, and he hastened his pace.

It was the baroness's day at home. The silly woman was sitting dressed and displayed--a grey glove on one hand, while with the other she pretended to arrange a dish of bonbons.

"How kind of you!--" she exclaimed as the general entered the room. The stereotyped formula came piping out of her thin lips without the smallest variation to every fresh visitor, as chilling and as colorless as snow.

He had hardly greeted the baroness when he looked round for Zinka--at first without seeing her; it was not till a bright voice exclaimed:

"Here I am, uncle, come and give me a kiss," that he discovered her, in the darkest corner of the room, leaning back in a deep arm-chair and looking rather tired and sleepy but wonderfully pretty and unwontedly happy.

"I am so tired, so tired!--you cannot think how tired I am," she said, laying his hand coaxingly against her cheek, "and mamma is so cruel as to insist on my staying in the drawing-room because it is her day at home, and I was sound asleep when you came in, for thank heaven! we have had no visitors yet. I sat with Gabrielle all last night and the night before without closing my eyes; but then I was so glad to think that the little pet would not take her medicine from anyone but me; and last night, at length, in the middle of one of my stories, she fell asleep on my shoulder. But then in order not to disturb her I sat quite still for six hours. I felt as if I had been nailed to a cross--and to-day I am so stiff I can hardly move." And she stretched her arms and curled herself into her chair again with a pretty caressing action of her shoulders. "You ought to have stayed in bed," said the general paternally. "Oh dear no! why I slept on till quite late in the morning.

Besides, my being tired is of no real importance; the great point is that Gabrielle is out of danger: Oh, if anything had happened to her!..." and she shuddered; "I cannot bear to think of it. Count Truyn is firmly convinced that I have contributed in some mysterious way to the child's amendment, and when I came away this morning he kissed my hands in grat.i.tude as if I had been the holy _Bambino_ himself. I laughed and cried both at once, and now I am so happy--my heart feels as light as one of those air b.a.l.l.s the children carry tied by a string, that they may not fly off up to the clouds. But why do you look so grave? are you not as glad as I am, uncle that...."

The baroness who had been looking at her watch here expressed her surprise that not a living soul had come near them to-day.

"You are evidently not a living soul, uncle--nothing but my dear grumpy old friend," said Zinka with her pathetic little laugh. There was something peculiarly caressing and touching about her to-day; the old man's eyes were moist and his heart bled for the sweet child.

Outside the door they heard a heavy swift step--the step of a man in pressing but crushing trouble; the door was torn open and Sterzl, breathless, green rather than pale, foaming with rage, stormed in--a newspaper in his hand.

"What is the matter--what has happened?" cried Zinka dismayed. He came straight up to her and stared at her with dreadful eyes.