Our Own Set Part 24

"If only I had the right to care for her and protect her," he muttered.

CHAPTER VIII.

And now to conclude.

Baroness Sterzl was one of those happily rare natures who have not one redeeming point. In her Moravian estate, whither they now retired, she was sick of her life, and treated Zinka with affectionate austerity.

Bored and embittered, she was always bewailing herself and made every one miserable by her sour mien and doleful, appearance. When the year of mourning was ended she began to crave for some excitement; she made excursions to watering places, and to Vienna, where she gathered round her the fragmentary remains of her old circle of acquaintance and tried to astonish them by magnificent reminiscences of her sojourn in Rome.

At the same time she still wore deep furbelows of c.r.a.pe, and wrote her invitations on black-edged paper; she talked incessantly of her broken mother's-heart wearing, as it were, a sort of Niobe nimbus; while, in fact, her display of mourning was nothing more than a last foothold for her vanity. General von Klinger always declared that at the bottom of her heart she was very proud of her son having been run through by a Sempaly.

She died, about three years after the catastrophe, of bronchitis, which only proved fatal because, though she already had a severe cold, nothing could dissuade her from going on a keen April morning to see the ceremony of washing the beggars feet at the Burg, with a friend from the convent of the Sacred Heart.

Zinka felt the loss of her mother more deeply than could have been expected. Year after year she spent summer and winter in her country house, where Gabrielle Truyn, with her English governess, sometimes pa.s.sed a few weeks with her--her only visitors. Truyn very rarely went to see her, and never stayed more than a few hours; and the sacrifice it was to him to lend his little companion for those visits can only be appreciated by those who have understood how completely his life was bound up in hers.

With Princess Vulpini Zinka kept up an affectionate correspondence.

Very, very, slowly did her grief fade into the background; but--as is always the case with a n.o.ble nature--it elevated and strengthened her.

She gave up her whole time to acts of kindness and benevolence; the only pleasure in which, for years, she could find any real comfort was alleviating the woes of others.

Not long after the death of the baroness, General von Klinger left Europe to travel, and did not return till the following spring twelvemonths. He disembarked at Havre and proceeded to Paris, where he proposed spending a few days to see the Salon before going home. By the obliging intervention of a friend he was admitted to the "_vernis sage_"--varnishing day, or, more properly, the private view--the day before the galleries were opened to the public. Among the little crowd of fashionable ladies who had gained admittance by the good offices of a drawing-master or an artist friend, he observed a remarkably pretty young girl who, with her nose in the air, was skipping from one picture to another with a light and vigorous step, and p.r.o.nouncing judgment on the works exhibited with the inexorable severity and innocent conceit of a fanatical novice. This fair young critic was so thoroughly aristocratic in her bearing, there was something so engaging in her girlish arrogance, so like a spoilt child in her confidential chat with her companion--an elderly man, and one of the best known artists of Paris--that the old soldier-painter could not help watching her with kindly interest. Presently she happened to see him; scrutinized him for a moment, and came to meet him with gay familiarity.

"Why, General! are you back at last? How glad papa will be--and you have not altered in the very least!..."

"I cannot say the same of you, Countess Gabrielle," he replied.

"Well, of course. We last met four years ago at Zini's I think, ..."

she chattered on. "Then I was a child, and now I am grown up; and I will tell you something. General, I have exhibited a picture--quite a small water color drawing," and she blushed, which made her look like her father, "you will come and look at it will you not?"

"Of course," he declared; and then, glancing at her dress: "You are in mourning?" he said hesitatingly.

"Yes," she replied, "in half mourning now--for poor mamma; it is nearly a year since she died...." and a shade crossed her face--"ah, there is papa!" she exclaimed, suddenly brightening, "we are always losing each other--our tastes are different--papa is old fashioned you know--quite behind the times ..."

Truyn greeted the general very heartily; Gabrielle stood looking from one to the other; little roguish dimples played in her cheeks, and at last she stood on tiptoe and whispered something to her father. At first he seemed doubtful, and it was not without a shade of embarra.s.sment that he said:

"We are going on to the Hotel Bristol, where we are to breakfast with my sister. It will, I am sure, give her the greatest pleasure if you will join her party."

The general made some excuses--it was an intrusion, and so forth--but he allowed himself to be persuaded and drove off with them through the flowery and well-watered alleys of the Champs Elysees to the hotel in the Place Vendome.

"Aunt Marie," said Gabrielle as she danced into the room, "guess who is here with us!"

"Ah, General!" said the princess warmly, "you are the right man in the right place."

But another figure caught his eye--a little way behind his hostess stood Zinka. The sorrow she had experienced had stamped its lines indelibly on her face; still, there was in her eyes a light of calm and a.s.sured happiness that blended very sweetly with the traces of past grief. The bright May-morning of her life had been brief and it was past, but there was so tender a charm in her face and manner that even Gabrielle, with the radiance of eighteen, could not vie with her.

Truyn went up to her and there was an awkward silence. Then Gabrielle began to laugh heartily.

"And cannot you guess, General?" she exclaimed.

"It is not yet announced to the world," Truyn stammered out, "but you have always taken such a kind interest ..." and he took Zinka's hand.

The old man's face beamed--he positively hugged Zinka and shook hands vehemently with Truyn.

But Zinka burst into tears--: "Oh, uncle," she said, "if only Cecil were here!"

And Sempaly?

After the catastrophe he vanished from the scene--went to the East, and there again came to the surface. A Sempaly may do anything. He is now considered one of our most brilliant diplomatists.

But he has gone through a singular change; from a dandified, frivolous attache he became a hard-and-fast official. He looks if possible more distinguished than ever and his features are more sharply cut. He is irritable, arrogant and ruthless; never sparing man or woman the biting sarcasms that dwell on the tip of his tongue, and yet, still--nay, more than ever--he exercises an almost irresistible spell over all who come in contact with him.

One day, when the general was waiting at some frontier station in Hungary for a train to Vienna, he was struck by the full rich voice of a traveller in a seal-skin coat, with a fur cap pulled down over his brows, who was giving peremptory orders to his servant. The old man looked round and his eyes met those of the stranger--it was Sempaly, also on his way to Vienna, from the East. They spoke--exchanging a few commonplace remarks, but without any cordiality. Presently Sempaly began with the abruptness for which his name was a by-word:

"You have just come from Paris. You were present at the wedding? What do you think of Truyn's marriage?"

"I am delighted at it," said the general.

"Well, everybody seems satisfied. Marie Vulpini is enchanted, and Gabrielle pleaded for her papa--so I hear.--So everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds!" he added in his sharp, hasty tones--"and Zinka--how is she looking? The papers said she was lovely."

"She is still very charming," said the general, with the facile garrulity of old age, "and happiness always beautifies a woman--she had but one regret: that Cecil had not lived to see it."

He was suddenly conscious of his stupendous want of tact; so, to put the conversation on neutral ground, he eagerly began to compliment Sempaly on the wonderful rapidity of his advancement, remarking that it must afford him great satisfaction to have so fitting a sphere for the exercise of his peculiar talents.

Sempaly looked at him keenly, and shrugging his shoulders, with a singular smile, he said:

"It is a strange thing, General--when we are young we claim happiness at the hands of Destiny, as if it were our right; as we grow older we humbly sue, only for peace, as an alms.--We get what we demand more easily than what we beg for--but it slips through our fingers."

THE END.

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THE AMAZON.--An Art-Novel, by Carl Vosmaer, from the Dutch by E. J.

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