Our Own Set Part 9

"I am delighted that you should for once have taken the trouble to climb up to me. I must show you my Francia--the dealer who sold it to me declares it is a Francia. But you look worried. What has brought you here?"

"I only wanted to know--to ask you whether you will drive out to Frascati with us to-day?"

"To Frascati!--This afternoon? What an idea!" exclaimed Sempaly; "and in any case I cannot join you for I am going to the Palatine at three o'clock with the Sterzls."

"Yes?" said Truyn looking uncommonly grave.

"May I offer you a cup of coffee?" asked Sempaly coolly.

"No thank you," replied Truyn shortly. He was evidently uneasy, and began examining the odds and ends at the table to give himself countenance; by accident he took up the book that Sempaly had been reading when he came in. It was Charles Lamb's Essays, and on the first page was written in a large, firm hand: "In friendly remembrance of a terrible quarrel, Zinka Sterzl."

"The child lost a bet with me not long since," Sempaly explained.

"Another bet is still unsettled and is to be decided to-day at the Palatine." Truyn shut the book sharply and threw it down; then, setting his elbows on the table at which they were sitting, and fixing his eyes keenly on Sempaly's face he said:

"Do you intend to marry Zinka Sterzl?"

Sempaly started, "What do you mean?" he exclaimed; "what are you dreaming of?" But as Truyn said no more, simply gazing fixedly at him, he took up an att.i.tude of defiance. He looked Truyn straight in the face with an angry glare and retorted:

"And suppose I do?"

"Then I can only hope you will have enough resolution to carry out your intentions," said Truyn, "for to stop half-way in such a case is a crime."

He drew a deep breath and looked at the ground. But Sempaly's face, instead of clearing, grew darker; he was prepared for vehement opposition and his cousin's calm consent, not to say encouragement, put him in the position of a man who, after straining every muscle to lift a heavy weight suddenly discovers that it is a piece of painted pasteboard. It completely threw him off his balance.

"Well, I must say!" he began in a tone of extreme annoyance, "you speak of it as if it were a no more serious question than the dancing of a cotillon. In plain terms the thing is impossible. What are we to live on? I have long since run through all my fortune, if I took what my brother would regard as so monstrous a step he would cut off all supplies, and Zinka is not of age. I might to be sure take to selling dripping to maintain my wife, which would have the additional advantage that my mother-in-law would cut me in consequence. Or perhaps you would advise me to let Dame Clotilde Sterzl keep us till Zinka comes into her money?"

"Well," says Truyn calmly, "if you can take such a reasonable view of the impossibility of your marriage with Zinka Sterzl, your behavior to her is perfectly inexplicable."

Truyn was still sitting by the little table on which the pretty coffee service was set out, while Sempaly, his hands in his pockets, was walking up and down the room, kicking and shoving the furniture with all the irritation of a man who knows himself to be in the wrong.

"Upon my soul I cannot make out what you would be at!" he suddenly exclaimed, standing still and facing his cousin. "Sterzl has never found any fault with my behavior and it is much more his affair than yours."

Truyn changed color a little, but did not lose his presence of mind.

"Sterzl, with all his dryness of manner, is an idealist," he said, "who would fetch the stars from heaven for his sister if he could. He has never for an instant doubted that your intentions with regard to her were quite serious."

"That is impossible!" cried Sempaly.

"But it is so," Truyn a.s.serted. "He is too blind to think his sister beneath any one's notice."

"And he is right!" exclaimed Sempaly, "perfectly right--but the pressure of circ.u.mstances--of position--the duties I have inherited...."

He had seated himself on the deep inner ledge of one of the windows, with his elbows on his knees and his chin between his hands, and was staring thoughtfully at the floor.

"Allow me to ask you," he said, "what induced you to mix yourself up in the affair?"

"It has weighed on my mind for a long time," said Truyn, "but what especially moved me to speak of it to-day is the circ.u.mstance that last evening, before you came into the '_Falcone_,' Mesdames De Gandry and Ferguson allowed themselves to speak in a way which convinced me that your constant intimacy with Zinka is beginning to do her no good."

"Oh! of course, if you listen to the gossip of every washerwoman,"

Sempaly interrupted angrily. And he muttered a long speech in which the words: 'Sacred responsibility--due regard for the duties imposed by Providence,' were freely thrown in. Truyn's handsome face flushed with contempt and at length he broke into his cousin's harangue, to which for a few minutes he had listened in silence:

"No swagger nor bl.u.s.ter.... The matter is quiet simple: Do you love Zinka?" The attache frowned:

"Yes," he said fiercely.

"Then it is only that you have not the courage to face the annoyances that a marriage with her would involve you in?"

Sempaly was dumb,

"Then, my dear fellow, there is no choice; you must break off the intimacy, as gently but as immediately as possible."

"That I neither can nor will attempt," cried Sempaly, stamping his foot.

"If within three days you have not taken the necessary steps to secure your removal from Rome, I shall feel myself compelled to give Sterzl a hint--or your brother--whichever you prefer." Truyn spoke quite firmly.

"And now good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Sempaly without moving, and Truyn went to the door; there he paused and said hesitatingly: "Do not take it amiss, Nicki--I could do no less. Remember that though the right is a bitter morsel, it has a good after-taste."

"Poor child, poor sweet little girl!" Truyn murmured to himself as he descended the grey stone stairs of the Palazzo de Venezia. "Is this a time to be talking of inherited responsibilities and the duties of position--now! Good heavens!" He lighted a cigar and then flung it angrily away. "Good heavens! to have met a girl like Zinka--to have won her love--and to be free!..."

He hurried out into the street, leaving the gate-porter astonished that the count, who was usually so courteous, should have taken no notice of his respectful bow; such a thing had never happened before.

He was a strange man, this grey-haired young Count Truyn; he had grown up as one of a very happy family and when still quite young he had been hurried, much against his will, into a marriage with the handsome Gabrielle Zinsenburg. He had never been able to reconcile himself to the empty wordliness of his life in her society; she was a heartless, superficial woman, some few years older than himself, who had staked everything on her hope of achieving a marriage with him. Within a few years they had separated, quite amiably, by mutual consent; he had given her his name and she gave him his child. His life was spoilt. He had a n.o.ble and a loving heart but he might not bestow it on any woman; he must carry it about in his breast where it grew heavy to bear. His love for his little girl, devoted as he was to her, was not enough to live by, and a bitter sense of craving lurked in his spirit. For many years he had lived a great deal abroad; his mind had expanded and he had shed several of his purely Austrian prejudices. At home he was still regarded as a staunch conservative because he always pa.s.sively voted on that side; but he was only indifferent, absolutely indifferent, to all political strife, and smiled alike at the recklessness of the 'left' and the excitability of the 'right,' while in his inmost soul he regarded the perfecting of government as mere labor lost; for he was no optimist, and thought that to heal the woes of humanity nothing would avail but its thorough regeneration, and that men have no mind for such regeneration; all they ask is to be allowed to cry out when they are hurt, and s.h.i.+ft their sins on to each other's shoulders.

It afforded him no satisfaction to cry out. His weary soul found no rest but in unbounded benevolence, and Sempaly's nature--experimental, groping his way through life--had seemed to him to-day more odious than ever.

"How can a man be at once so tender and such a coward?" he asked himself, "He is the most completely selfish being I ever met with--a thorough epicurean in sentiment, and has only just heart enough for his own pleasure and enjoyment."

The bet outstanding between Zinka and Sempaly was not decided that afternoon. Sempaly did not go to the Palatine, but excused himself at the last moment in a little note to Zinka. Truyn's words, though he would not have admitted it to himself, had made a very deep impression, and though he fought against it he could no longer avoid looking the situation in the face. To get himself transferred to some other capital, to give up all his pleasant idle habits here--the idea was intolerable! He felt exactly like a man who has been suddenly roused from a slumber bright with pleasant dreams. He did not want to wake, or to rub his eyes clear of the vision.

Was everything at an end then? Truyn had, to be sure, suggested an alternative: if he could but call up sufficient energy it rested only with himself to turn the sweet dream into a still sweeter and lovelier reality, and his whole being thrilled with ecstasy as this delightful possibility flattered his fancy. He was long past the age at which a man commits some matrimonial folly believing that he can reclaim the morals of some disrespectable second-rate actress, or that his highest happiness is to devote his life to his sister's governess who is a dozen years older than himself; when he contemplated the possibility of his marrying Zinka Sterzl after all, it was with the certainty that his feeling for her was not a mere transient madness, but that it had its roots in the depths of his nature. Every form and kind of enjoyment had been at his command and he had hated them all. Things in which other men of his age and position could find excitement and interest roused his fastidious nature to disgust. Life had long since become to him a vain and empty show, when he had met Zinka.... Then all the sweetest spirits of spring had descended fluttering into his vacant heart; a magical touch had made it a garden of flowers and filled it with fair, mad dreams of love. All the "sweet sorrow" of life was revealed to him in a new form ... And now was he to tread the blossoms into dust? "Give up seeing her--get myself sent away--never! I cannot and I will not do it," he muttered to himself indignantly as he thought it all over.

"What business is it of Truyn's? What right has he to issue his orders to me?"

But when he had resolved simply to go on with Zinka as he had begun, to sun himself as heretofore in her smile, her gentleness, and her beauty, he was still uncomfortable. He felt that it would not be the same. Till now his heart had simply been content, now it could speak and ask for more; to try to satisfy it with this shadow of delight was like attempting to slake a raging thirst with the dew off a rosebud. He loved her now--suddenly and madly. Interesting women had hitherto utterly failed to interest him; they were like brooklets filled by the rain: the muddiness of the water prevented their shallowness being immediately perceptible; the storms of life had spoilt their clearness and purity; Zinka, on the contrary, was like a mountain lake whose waters are so transparent that near the sh.o.r.e every pebble is visible; and though, in the middle, the bottom is no longer seen, it is because they are deep and not because they are turbid, till their crystalline opacity reflects the sky overhead. And in the depths of that lake, he thought, lay a treasure which one alone, guided and blest by G.o.d, might hope to find. How he longed to sound it.

She was made for him; never for an instant had he been dull in her society; she satisfied both his head and his heart; all the bewitching inconsistency and contradictions of her nature captivated him; he had said of her that "she was like a little handbook to the study of women," she was made up of such a variety of characteristics. In the midst of her childlike moods she had such unexpected depth of thought, such flashes of wisdom; her wildest vagaries were so original and often ended so suddenly in wistful reverie; her little selfish caprices were the converse of such devoted self-sacrifice; her grace was so spontaneous, her voice so soft and appealing ... Well, but should he?... No, it must not be. Truyn had said it--he must quit Rome--the sooner the better.

He took his hat and went out to call on the amba.s.sador and discuss the matter with him. His excellency was not at home and Sempaly betook himself to the club, where he lost several games at ecarte--he was greatly annoyed. Then he went home and sat looking constantly at the clock as though he were expecting some one; his irritation increased every minute.

CHAPTER II.

"Bright May--the sweetest month of Spring; The trees and fields with flowers are strown-- Dear Heart, to thee Life's May I bring; Take it and keep it for thine own-- Nay--draw the knife!--I will not start, Pierce if thou wilt, my willing breast.