Our Own Set. Ossip Schubin
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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 worship.
"Well, as a city Rome is really very ugly," interposed her brother, "it is more interesting as a museum of antiquities with life-size illustrations. 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 gods 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 Embassy I assure you," replied Sempaly laughing; "my only serious occupation consists in showing strangers the sights of Rome."
After this the evening passed 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?"
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