Our Own Set Part 4

This lady, a narrow and perverse soul as ever lived, was the very essence of vanity and affectation. She imagined--Heaven alone knows on what grounds--that the general had formerly loved her hopelessly, and she always treated him accordingly with a consideration that was intolerably irritating. She had made great strides in the airs of refinement since she and the general had last met--at a time before she, or rather her children, had become rich through an advantageous sale of part of their land, and this of course added to the charms of her society. She was perpetually complaining in a tone of feeble elegance--the sleeping-carriages were intolerable, the seats were so badly stuffed, Rome was so dirty, the hotels were so bad, the conveyances so miserable; she brought in the names of all the aristocratic acquaintances they had made at Nice, at Meran, and at Biarritz, and asked--the next day being a saint's day--which church was fit to go to. The vehement old general answered hotly that "G.o.d was in them all." But Sempaly informed her with the politest gravity that Cardinal X---- read ma.s.s in the morning at St. Peter's and that the music was splendid. "I advise you to try St. Peter's."

"Indeed, is St. Peter's possible on a saint's day?" she asked. "The company is usually so mixed in those large churches."

The general fairly blushed for her follies on her children's account.

"Have you forgiven me, Zinka?" he said to change the conversation.

"As if I had time to trouble myself about your strait-laced proprieties!" exclaimed she, coloring slightly; she evidently did not like this allusion to her little indiscretion: "I have something much worse to think about."

"Why--what is the matter, sweetheart?" asked her brother, who took everything seriously.

"I have lost something," she said in a tone of deep melancholy which evidently covered some jest.

"Not a four-leaved shamrock or a medal blessed by the pope?" asked the general.

"Oh, no! something much more important."

"Your purse!" exclaimed the baroness hastily. But Zinka burst out laughing. "No, no, something much greater--you will never guess: Rome."

On which Sterzl, who could never make out what his fascinating little sister would be at, only said: "That is beyond me."

But Sempaly was sympathetic. "I see you are terribly disappointed," he said, and Zinka went on like a person accustomed to be listened to.

"Yes, ever since I could think at all I have dreamed of Rome and longed to see it. My Rome was a suburb of Heaven, but this Rome is a suburb of Paris. My Rome was glorious and this Rome is simply hideous."

"Do not be flippant, Zinka," said the general, who always upheld traditional wors.h.i.+p.

"Well, as a city Rome is really very ugly," interposed her brother, "it is more interesting as a museum of antiquities with life-size ill.u.s.trations. Still, you do not know it yet. You have seen nothing as yet...."

"But lodgings, you mean," retorted Zinka, casting down her eyes with sanctimonious sauciness.

"It is dreadful!" the baroness began, "we have been here five days and cannot find an apartment fit to live in. Wherever we go there is some drawback; the stairs are too dark, or the entrance is bad, or there is only one door to the salon, or the servants' rooms...."

"But my dear Zinka," interrupted the general, "if you really have seen nothing of Rome excepting the lodgings in the Corso, of course...."

"Oh! but I have seen something else," cried Zinka, "indeed, I know my way about Rome very well."

"In your dreams?"

"No, I went yesterday; mamma had a sick headache."

"Oh! those headaches!" sighed the baroness putting her salts to her nose, "I am a perfect martyr to them!"

To have sick headaches and be a strict Catholic were marks of good style in the baroness's estimation. Sempaly put on a sympathetic expression, but returned at once to the subject in hand.

"Yes, I know Rome very well," Zinka went on: "You have only to ask the driver of the street cab No. 1203, and he will tell you. I drove about with him for three hours yesterday. You see, to have been in Rome a whole week and to have seen nothing but furnished lodgings was really too bad, so I took advantage of the opportunity when mamma was in bed; I slipped out--you need not make that face, Uncle, I took the maid with me--we meant to walk everywhere with a map. Of course we lost our way, _cela va sans dire_, and as we were standing helpless, each holding the map by a corner, a driver signed to us--so, with his first finger. In we got and he asked us where we wished to go, but as I had no answer ready he said with the most paternal air: 'Ah! the signora wants to see Rome--good, I will show her Rome!' And he set off, round and round and in and out, all through the city. I was positively giddy with this waltz round all the sights of Rome. He showed me a perfect forest of fallen pillars, with images of G.o.ds and fragments of sculpture carefully heaped round them, like Christmas boxes for lovers of antiquities--'the _Campo Vaccino_,' he called it--I believe it was the Forum; then he pointed out the palace of Beatrice Cenci, the Jews'

quarter, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Temple of Vesta; and every time he showed me anything he added: 'Now am I not a capital guide? Many a driver would only take you from place to place, and what would you see?

Nothing ... a heap of stones ... but I tell you: that is the Colisseum, and this is the Portico of Octavia, and then the stones have some meaning.' And at last he set me down at the door of the hotel and said quite seriously: 'Now the signora has seen Rome.'"

They were now at dessert; the baroness looked anything rather than pleased.

"Allow me to request," she said, "that for the future in the first place you will not make friends with a common driver and in the second, that you will not drive about Rome in a _Botta_ (a one horse carriage); it is not at all the thing. You have no sense of fitness whatever."

Zinka, who was both sensitive and spoilt, colored.

"Let her be, mother, why should she not learn a little Italian and ride in a _Botta_? said Sterzl, who rubbed his mother the wrong way from morning till night. Sempaly took prompt advantage of the situation to whisper to Zinka:

"I cannot promise to be as good company as your _Botta_ driver, but if you will allow me, I will do my best to help you to find the Rome you have lost."

"Are you sure you know your way about?" asked the girl with frank incivility.

"I am the _laquais de place_ of the Emba.s.sy I a.s.sure you," replied Sempaly laughing; "my only serious occupation consists in showing strangers the sights of Rome."

After this the evening pa.s.sed gaily; the baroness made a few idiotic speeches but Sempaly forbore to be ironical; he was on his very best behavior, and the baroness was quite taken in by his elaborate reserve.

Not so Sterzl, who was himself too painfully alive to her aristocratic airs and pretensions. However, the society of his sister, whom he adored, had put him into the best of humors; he launched forth a few bitter epigrams against the priesthood, and was satirical about the society of Rome, but Zinka stopped him every time with some engaging nonsense, and in listening to her chatter he forgot his bitterness.

At last he asked her to sing a Moravian popular song; she seated herself at the hotel piano and began. There was something mystical in the low veiled tones of her voice like an echo of the past, as she sang the melancholy, dreamy strains of her native land. Sterzl, who always yawned all through an opera, listened to her singing, his head resting on his hand, in a sort of ecstasy. In Sempaly too, who in spite of his Hungarian name was by birth a Moravian, Zinka's simple melody roused the half-choked echoes of his youth, and when she ceased he thanked her with genuine feeling.

Zinka's was an April weather nature. After bringing the tears into the eyes of her hearers, nay into her own, with her song, she suddenly struck up an air by Lecocq that she had heard Judic sing at Nice. The words, as was perfectly evident to all the party, were Hebrew to the girl, but the baroness was beside herself.

"Zinka!" she exclaimed in extreme consternation, "you really are incredible--what must these gentlemen think of you!"

"Do not be in the least uneasy," said the general. But Zinka stopped short; her face was pale and quivering; Sterzl interposed:

"It is often a little difficult to follow my sister's vagaries," he said turning to Sempaly; then he tenderly stroked her golden head with his large, firm hand, saying: "Do not be unhappy, sweetheart; but you are a little too much of a goose for your age."

When presently Sempaly had quitted the hotel with the general his first words were: "Tell me, how is it that with such a fool of a mother that child has remained so angelically fresh--so _Botticelli_?"

CHAPTER V.

A mine somewhere in Poland or Bohemia came to grief about this time by some accidental visitation, and five hundred families were left dest.i.tute through the disaster. Of course the opportunity was immediately seized upon for charitable dissipations, for qualifying for Orders of Merit by liberal donations, and for attracting the eyes of Europe by the most extravagant display of philanthropy. After much deliberation Countess Ilsenbergh had arrived at the conviction that, as both the amba.s.sadors' families were hindered by mourning from giving any public entertainment, the duty of taking the lead devolved upon her. The rooms in her Palazzo were made on purpose for grand festivities, and after endless discussion it was decided that the entertainment should be dramatic. An Operetta, a _Proverbe_ by Musset, and a series of _Tableaux Vivants_ were finally put in rehearsal and a collection was to be made after the performance.

Madame de Gandry threw herself into the undertaking with the most commendable ardor. She was on intimate terms with the leading spirits at the Villa Medici--the French Academy of Arts at Rome--and she interested herself in the painting of the scenes, and in the artistic designing of the dresses in which she proved invaluable. Up to a certain point all went smoothly. The operetta--an unpublished effort of course--by a Russian amateur of rank who was very proud of not even knowing his notes, was soon cast. It needed only three performers and led up to the introduction of an elaborate masquerade and of certain suggestive French songs. Mrs. Ferguson, who never let slip an opportunity of powdering her hair and sticking on patches, was to sing the soprano part; Crespigny took that of a husband or a guardian in a nightcap or flowered dressing-gown, and a young French painter, M.

Barillat, who was at all times equally ready to sketch or to wear a becoming costume, was to fill that of the lover. The cast of the little French play was equally satisfactory; but when the arrangement of the tableaux came to be considered difficulties arose. In the first place all the ladies were eager to display their charms under the becoming light of a tableau vivant; and the number of volunteers was quite bewildering to the committee of management that met every day at the Ilsenberghs' house. Then squabbles and dissatisfaction arose; the ladies did not approve of the choice of subjects, they thought their dresses unbecoming, their positions disadvantageous; each one to whom a place at the side was a.s.signed was deeply aggrieved; an unappreciated beauty who prided herself on her profile from the left would not for worlds be seen from the right, etc., etc. And above all--an insuperable difficulty--almost all the available men of the set manifested the greatest objection to 'making themselves ridiculous' and positively rejected the most flattering blandishments of the ladies' committee.

Sempaly, who had been asked to appear as a Roman emperor, would not hear of putting on flesh-colored tights and a wreath of vine; and Truyn had shrugged his shoulders at the proposal that he should don a wig with long curls.

Siegburg--little Siegburg, as he was always called, though he was nearly six feet high--after defending himself with considerable humor, good-naturedly agreed to stand as _Pierrot_, in a Watteau scene in which the Vulpini children were to appear; and Sterzl, being personally requested by his amba.s.sador, submitted, though with an ill grace, to be the executioner in Delaroche's picture of Lady Jane Grey. This tableau was to be the crowning glory of the performance; Barillat had taken infinitely more pains with it than with any other; the part of Lady Jane was to be filled by a fair English girl, Lady Henrietta Stair; and then, within a few days of the performance, Lady Henrietta fell ill of the measles.

The committee were in despair when this news reached them, and all who were concerned in the performance were summoned to meet at the Palazzo that evening to talk the matter over. Hardly any one was absent; only Sterzl, who detested the whole charity scramble, as he called it, sent his excuses. Every lady present expected to find herself called upon to stand--or rather to kneel--as Lady Jane Grey; but Mrs. Ferguson was the first to give utterance to the thought, and to offer herself heroically as Lady Henrietta's subst.i.tute. To the astonishment of all the company Sempaly, whose interest in the work of benevolence had hitherto displayed itself only in satirical remarks, and suggestions as to the representation of Makart's 'entrance of Charles V.' or of Siemiradzky's 'living torches,' took an eager part in the discussion.

"Your self-sacrifice, Mrs. Ferguson," said he, "is more admirable every day."

"Dear me," replied the lady innocently, "where is the self-sacrifice in having an old gown cut up into a historical costume?"

"That, indeed, would be no sacrifice," said Sempaly coolly. "But it must be a sacrifice for a lady to appear in a part that suits her so remarkably ill."