Читать книгу Our Own Set - Ossip Schubin - Страница 8

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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 was in the very act of whistling the national anthem for the sixteenth time to the recalcitrant bird, when he heard a knock at the door; he rose to open it and Sempaly came in. He had called to inform the general that he had discovered a very fine though much damaged piece of tapestry in a convent, and had bought it for a mere song; he had in fact purchased it for the general because he knew that it was just such a specimen as he had long wished for. "But if you do not care to take it I shall be very glad to keep it," he added. No one had the art of doing an obliging thing with a better grace than he; it was one of his little accomplishments.

When they had settled their business Sempaly broke into loud lamentations that he was obliged to dine that day at the British embassy, and then to dance at the French ambassador's, and raved about the ideal life led by his friend--he only wished he could lead such a life--in which there were no evening parties, routs, balls or dinners. Next he wandered round the room looking at all the studies that hid their faces against the wall. "Charming!" "Superb!" he kept exclaiming in French, with his Austrian accent, from a sheer impulse to say something pleasant--he always tried to make himself pleasant. "Why do not you work that thing up?" he said at length, pointing to a sketch on canvas of a group of bashibazouks.

"It might sell," replied the artist whose great difficulty always lay in the 'working up,' "but you know I am independent in my aims, I set my face against making concessions to the vulgar; I must work on my own principles and not to pander to the public."

Sempaly smiled at this profession of faith.

"As it is a mere whim with you ever to sell at all," he answered, "my advice is that you should never attempt it, but leave all your works to the nation, so that we may have a Musée Wierz at Vienna."

The general assured him that he was quite in earnest in his desire to sell his pictures, but Sempaly smiled knowingly.

"There was once upon a time," he began, "a cobbler who was a man of genius, but he prided himself on his sense of beauty and his artistic convictions, and he heeded not the requirements of his customers--he would make nothing but Greek sandals. He died a beggar, but happy in the consciousness of never having made a concession to the vulgar."

The general was on the point of making an indignant reply to this malicious anecdote, when the loud rap was again heard which seems to be traditional at a studio door; it is supposed to be necessary to arouse the artist from his absorption in his work. The general went to admit his visitor.

There was a small ante-room between the studio and the stairs. The door was no sooner opened than in flitted a slender creature, fair and blooming, tall, slim, and bewitchingly pretty, in a dark dress and a sealskin jacket.

"What, you Zinka!" cried the old general delightedly. "This is a surprise! How long have you been in Rome?"

"Only since this morning," answered a gay voice.

"And are you alone?" asked the artist in astonishment, as Zinka shut the door and went forward into the atelier.

"Yes, quite alone," she said calmly. "I left the maid at home; she and mamma are fast asleep, resting after their journey. I came alone in a carriage--it was very nice of me do not you think?--Why, what a face to make! … And why have you not given me a kiss. Uncle Klinger?" She stood before him bright and confident, her head a little thrown back, her hands in a tiny muff, gazing at him with surprise in her frank grey eyes.

"My dear Zinka. … " the general began--for, like all conscientious old gentlemen with romantic memories, he was desperately punctilious as to the proprieties when any lady in whom he took an interest was implicated, "I am charmed, delighted to see you. … But in a strange place, where you know no one, and in a strange house where. … "

"Oh, now I understand," cried the girl. "It is not proper! … I shall live to be a hundred before I know exactly what is proper; it is very odd, but Uncle Sterzl used always to say that it was of no use to worry about it; that if people were ladies and gentlemen everything was proper, and if they were not why it was all the same. But he did not know what he was talking about, it would seem!" and she turned sharply on her heel and made for the door.

"But, my dear Zinka," cried the general holding her back, "tell me at least where you are living before you whisk off like a whirlwind. Do not be so utterly unreasonable."

"I am perfectly reasonable," she retorted. She was both embarrassed and angry; her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes full of tears. "It never would have occurred to me certainly that there was anything improper in calling on an old gentleman," and she emphasized the words quite viciously, "in his studio. Oh, the vanity of men! Who can foresee its limits!--But I am perfectly reasonable, I acknowledge my mistake--simpleton that I am! … And I have been looking forward all day to taking you by surprise. I meant to ask you to dine with us at the Hotel de l'Europe and to come with me first to the Pincio to see the sunset. And these are the thanks I get! … Do not trouble yourself to get your hat, it is waste of trouble; I do not want you now. Good-bye." And she flew off, her head in the air, without looking back once at the general who dutifully escorted her to the carriage.

The old man came back much crest-fallen. A voice greeted him cheerfully:

"Quite in disgrace, general!"

It was Sempaly, who had witnessed the whole scene from a recess, and whom the general had entirely forgotten.

"So it seems," said he shortly, beginning to scrape his palette.

"But tell me who is this despotic little princess?"

"Who? My god-daughter, Zinka Sterzl."

Thunderbolts are out of date, no one believes in them now-a-days; nevertheless it is a fact, which Sempaly himself never contradicted, that he fell in love with Zinka at first sight. And when a few days after Zinka's irruption into the general's studio the old gentleman accepted an invitation to dine with the Baroness Sterzl at the Hotel de l'Europe, on entering the room he found, eagerly employed in looking over a quantity of photographs with the young lady--Count Sempaly.

The two gentlemen were the only guests, and yet--or perhaps in consequence--the little party was as gay and pleasant as was possible with so affected and formal a hostess as the "Baroness."

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 "God was in them all." But Sempaly informed her with the politest gravity that Cardinal X---- read mass 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 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?"