Our Own Set. Ossip Schubin
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if he had got her here for that express purpose. Norina, take care of yourself--forewarned you know. … "
"Mademoiselle Sterzl will hardly aspire to a prince's crown!" exclaimed Madame de Gandry, up in arms to defend her property.
"Sterzl will not let his sister go for less," asserted Sempaly.
"Do not talk such nonsense," said Truyn, to check Sempaly's audacity.
But Sempaly was leaning over a table and scribbling on the back of an old letter; presently he handed the half sheet to the Countess Ilsenbergh; Madame de Gandry peeped over her shoulder.
"Capital!" she exclaimed, "delicious!" Sempaly had sketched Sterzl as an auctioneer, the hammer in one hand and a fashionably-dressed doll in the other, with all the Princes in Rome crowded round. In one corner he had written: "This lot--Fräulein Sterzl--once, twice, thrice. … "
The sketch was handed round; the likeness of Sterzl was unmistakable. Soon after the Countess Ilsenbergh went away, and as the company were not in the best of humors the two friends also withdrew shortly after midnight followed by those gentlemen who had come in their train.
"Fritzi is really a victim to an idée fixe," the princess began when this indiscreet group had departed; "she wants me to entrench myself in dignified reserve against this poor little thing. What harm can the child do me?"
"I cannot imagine," said Siegburg; "indeed, if she is pretty and has some money, it strikes me I will marry her myself--that will set matters straight" Siegburg was fond of talking of the money that his wife must bring him, and liked to air the selfishness of which he was innocent, as very rich folks sometimes make a parade of poverty.
"And it was really very stupid of Fritzi to ventilate this idiotic nonsense before those two women," added the princess, who was apt to express herself strongly; but nothing that she said ever sounded badly, on the contrary, she lent a grace to whatever she said. "Does she think she can make me turn exclusive!"
"I hope you observed how that pinchbeck countess was prepared to tread in her footsteps," said Seigburg.
Truyn meanwhile was hunting eagerly about the chimney-shelf and the tables, assisted by the master of the house.
"What are you looking for, Erich?" asked his sister.
"For that sketch of Sempaly's. I should not like to leave the thing about. Excuse me, Nicki, the caricature was capital, I have nothing to say against it, if it had only been among ourselves; but you really ought not to have shown it to strangers. You are so heedless, you do not think of what you are doing."
"And what have I done now?" asked Sempaly without any trace of annoyance.
"You have simply stamped this young girl as an adventuress on the look-out for a husband."
"Pooh! as if so trifling a jest could be taken in earnest!" said Sempaly. They searched everywhere for the caricature but in vain.
"I am convinced that wretched woman put it in her pocket!" cried the princess indignantly. That wretched woman was of course Madame de Gandry.
It was true that Princess Vulpini was very fond of Sterzl, and he returned her regard with almost rapturous devotion. In spite of an unpolished and absent manner he had a vein of poetic chivalry and a pure reverence for true and lofty womanhood. He could not think it worth his while to offer to any woman that flattery--often impertinent enough in reality--that gratifies some of the sex, and he had never learnt the A B C of modern gallantry; but in his intercourse with those whom he spoke of as "true women" there was a touch of chivalrous protection and reserved deference. His behavior to them was so full of an old-fashioned courtesy that he was certain to win their favor; he treated them partly like children that must be cared for, and partly like sacred beings before whom we must bow the knee.
Immediately on his arrival in Rome the princess found great pleasure in their acquaintance, she confided to him all her little indignation at this or that grievance in Rome, and allowed him to take a variety of small cares off her shoulders, being, as all women of her soft nature are, very fastidious and utterly unpractical.
There had been few sweeter girls in the Vienna world than the Countess Marie Truyn in her day, and there was not now in all Rome a more lovable woman than the Princess Vulpini. When in the afternoons she drove out in her open carriage, with her four or five children that looked as though they had been stolen straight out of one of Kate Greenaway's picture books, along the Corso to the Villa Borghese, her fashionable acquaintance, who had brought out their most recent or most fashionable bosom-friend instead of their children, would exclaim: "Here comes true happiness!" And the men bowed to her with particular respect, eager to win the friendly and gracious smile that warmed all hearts like a ray of spring sunshine. She had never been a regular beauty and had early lost her youthful freshness and the slim figure that had been almost proverbial. Nevertheless her charm was undiminished; her chief ornament, a wonderful abundance of bright brown hair, was as fine as ever and she wore it still, as when a girl of sixteen, simply combed back and gathered into a knot low down at the back. In spite of her faded complexion there was a childlike sweetness in her small round face, with its kind little eyes, its delicate turned-up nose, and soft lips that had no beauty till they smiled. All her movements were simple and graceful and her whole appearance conveyed the impression of exquisite refinement and the loftiest womanliness. Her dress was apt to be a little out of fashion, the latest chic never suited her. She was a great reader, even of very solid books, especially affecting natural science; but she retained nevertheless the literal faith of her infancy, and this innocent orthodoxy was part and parcel of the simple fervency of her character. Sempaly, who was sincerely attached to her, always spoke of her devout piety as one of her most engaging qualities; he declared that a woman to be truly sympathetic must be religious; that a man may allow himself to profess free thought, but that a sceptical woman was as odious as a woman with a hump. To this observation, which Sempaly once threw out in the presence of Sterzl, Cecil took great exception, though he himself was as devoid of religious beliefs as Sempaly himself; he thought it impertinent.
"Men do not jest about the women whose names are sacred to them," he said with the pedantic chivalry, which always provoked his colleague's opposition. However, Sempaly only retorted with a sneering smile and a shrug.
CHAPTER IV.
A few days after the evening when Sempaly had given such brilliant proof of his talent as a caricaturist, General von Klinger was sitting in his studio on a divan covered with a picturesque Persian rug and endeavoring--having for the moment nothing better to do--to teach his parrot to sing the Austrian anthem--a loyal task which the bird, perched on the top of its cage, persistently refused to learn. It was a gorgeous studio, with a coved ceiling painted in fresco and a rococo plaster cornice, the walls hung with old tapestry, eastern stuffs and other "properties." It was so large that men looked like dwarfs in it, and the general's works of art like illustrations cut out of a picture book. The scirocco brooded in the atmosphere and the general was out of sorts; he could not get on with his painting, and though it was now a quarter to five not a visitor had he seen. Usually by this hour he had a number--nay sometimes too many. The general often grumbled--to himself of course--at the interruption; but he always enjoyed the little dissipation; it made him melancholy to be left to himself.
He was thinking just now how difficult it was to get on as a painter; his coloring was capital--so all his artist friends assured him; but that his drawing left much to be desired he himself confessed. His two strong points were a harmonious effect of grey tone and horses seen from behind. All his pictures returned to him from the exhibitions unsold, excepting one which was purchased by the emperor in consideration of the general's former merits as a soldier rather than of his talents as an artist. The painters who came to smoke his cigarettes accounted for this by saying that his artistic aims were too independent, that he made no concessions to public taste and so could not hope for popularity.
He