CHAPTER V.
Sempaly's nervous system was very sensitive and his ear remarkably delicate; he had in consequence a horror--a perfect mania of aversion--for any scene which might involve excitement and loud talking. Besides this he had the peculiarity--common enough with the spoilt children of fortune--of always ignoring as far as possible the inevitable difficulties of life in the hope that some deus ex machina would interfere to set matters straight for him.
His passion for Zinka was perfectly genuine, at once vehement and tender; far from diminishing, it had, if possible, increased during these last three days. Though that hour of sentimental and guileless talk with Zinka under the midnight moon had for the time satisfied her, it had only fevered him; and while his cowardly double-dealing had lowered him in her esteem, her straightforward pride had raised her infinitely in his. He was utterly miserable, but this did not prevent him from allowing his good-natured senior to pay his enormous debts, nor--in order to propitiate him--from paying specious attentions to his cousins. It must, however, be said in extenuation, that this flirtation was not so much deliberate as instinctive, for he was a man whose untutored and unbounded impulse to make himself agreeable led him irresistibly to do his utmost to produce a pleasant impression, even at the sacrifice of his honor. If, only once, during these three days, he had had an opportunity of speaking to Zinka all might perhaps have turned out differently. He would probably have found it easy, with his wonderful fascination of person, to recover the ground he had lost; and her proud rectitude might possibly have influenced him to take a bolder course of action. But, in the first instance, he could not intrude on Zinka while she was sitting by her little friend Gabrielle, and the idea of rushing into an explanation with Sterzl did not smile on his fancy.
Thus he let the hours slip by, till, on the Friday morning, the luckless copy of 'High Life' was brought into him addressed in a feigned hand. This made him furious, and he was on the point of rushing off to the palazetto when he remembered that he had promised to be ready to join the party to Frascati at one o'clock. He had dipped his pen and prepared the paper to send an excuse to the Hotel de Londres when there was a knock, and Prince Sempaly, with his two cousins, walked in, half an hour before the appointed time.
"What a surprise!... An unexpected honor!" he exclaimed somewhat disconcerted.
"That is what we intended," said Polyxena laughing. "Hum! there is a rather pronounced perfume of latakia in your room--but the whole effect is pretty, very pretty," while Nini looked timidly about her with her fawn-like eyes. A bachelor's quarters are, as is well known, one of the most interesting mysteries that ever exercise the curious imagination of a young lady.
"The girls insisted on seeing your den," the prince explained, "so I had to bring them, whether or no, while Siegburg amuses their mamma."
"Why, you yourself proposed it, Oscar!" cried Nini.
Sempaly bowed. "From this time henceforth this room is consecrated ground," he said gallantly--and "High Life" was lying on his desk all the time and an iron fist seemed clenched upon his heart. If his brother had but come alone ... but with these two girls ... it was crucial.
Xena began to touch and examine all his odds and ends, to open his books, and at last to hover round his writing-table where, with graceful impertinence, she was about to take up the fatal sheet.
"Stop, stop!" cried Nicki, "that is not for your eyes, Xena."
"Look, but touch not," said the prince, with a good-natured laugh; "young maidens like you are not permitted to inspect the secrets of a bachelor's rooms too closely. You might seize a scorpion before we could interfere. Besides, we must not keep your mother waiting any longer, children; make haste and get ready, Nicki."
For a moment Sempaly tried to think of an excuse; then he reflected that it really was not worth while to spoil the pleasure of Oscar's last day--all might be set right afterwards. So he only asked for time to write a note, and scribbled a few lines to Sterzl in which he formally proposed for Zinka. This note he confided to a porter desiring him to carry it at once to the secretary's office.
After this he was for a time very much pleased with himself; but, as the afternoon wore on, the more uneasy he became, and it was to this unrest that most of the tender glances were due that the prince cast alternately on him and on Nini. He felt more and more as if he were being driven into a trap; in the Villa Aldobrandini he found an issue from some of his difficulties. Suddenly, as they were standing by the great fountain, Nini and he found themselves tête-à-tête, a circumstance arising from the consentaneous willingness of the rest of the party to give them such an opportunity. He seized the propitious moment to disburden his soul. He addressed her as his sister, confessed his secret betrothal, and implored her kind interest for Zinka. Nini, who felt as though she had been stabbed to the heart, was brave as became her and for sheer dread of betraying her own feelings, she tried to take a pleasure she was far from feeling in the success of his love affair. He kissed her hand and kept near her for the rest of the day. His brother, who perceived that the young couple had come to an understanding, communicated his observations to Countess Jatinska with extreme satisfaction. He was himself a man of strong and lofty feeling, free from all duplicity, and he could not conceive that a young man could have anything to say to a very handsome girl in private but to make love to her.
The day was at an end. With that want of precaution of which only foreigners in Rome can be guilty, they set out homewards much too late and did not reach the hotel before ten. Here Nemesis overtook Sempaly. At the end of supper, which the little party had served to them in the countess' private sitting-room, and at which the confidential footing on which Sempaly stood with regard to his cousin was thrown into greater relief, the prince, with a frank smile of self-satisfaction at his powers of divination, raised his glass and said: "To the health of the happy couple."
Nini turned crimson; Nicki turned pale. He was in the trap now. Brought to bay he could do nothing but turn upon the foe whom he could not evade. He was possessed by a wild impulse to snatch the odious mask from his own face.
"And who are the happy couple?" he asked.
"You need not be so mysterious about it, Nicki," cried his brother warmly. "Of you and...." but a glance at Nini reduced him to silence.
"Of me and Fräulein Zinka Sterzl," said Sempaly with vehement emphasis.
The blood flew to the prince's head; rage and horror fairly deprived him of speech. Countess Jatinska laughed awkwardly, Polyxena pursed her lips disdainfully while Nini gave her cousin her hand and said loyally:
"Your bride shall always find a friend in me."
But now the prince's wrath broke loose--he was furious; he swore that this insane marriage should never take place, and could not conceive how his brother--a man old enough to know better--could have allowed such a piece of madcap folly to enter his head.
The ladies rose and withdrew; Sempaly, who till within a few minutes had been so weak and vacillating, had suddenly become rigid in obstinacy and he desired the waiter to bring him the fateful number of 'High Life'. The prince read it, but his first observation was: "Well! and a pretty state the world would soon come to if every man who lets a charming adventuress entrap him into an indiscretion were to pay for it by marrying her!"
At this insulting epithet applied to Zinka, Sempaly fired up. He did not attempt to screen himself, he defended Zinka as against himself, with the most unsparing self-accusation. Egotistical, sensitive, and morally effete as he was, he was still a gentleman, and he now set no limits to his self-indictment; it seemed as though he thought that by heaping invective on his own head he could expiate the baseness into which he had been betrayed during the last few days. He told the whole story: that he had loved Zinka from the first time of seeing her: that he had been on the point of making her an offer when an accidental interruption had suddenly snatched him from the heaven of hope and bliss: that he had neglected and forsaken her: that his constant intimacy with his handsome cousins had raised a barrier between him and Zinka; then, how he had met her that night at the Brancaleones', and how, as he helped her to rise after her tumble, his passion had taken entire possession of him--all this he told, down to the moment when she had laid her head on his shoulder. "And before such guileless trust what man is there that would not bow in reverence!" he ended, "all Rome can bear witness to her sweetness and goodness; ask whom you will--Marie Vulpini, Truyn, even the Ilsenberghs--or Siegburg here."
The prince turned to Siegburg.
"I can make neither head nor tail of the matter," he said. "Is all he says of this girl true, or mere raving?"
Siegburg's answer was simple, eager, and plain; it is, at all times, a difficult thing for a young man to praise a girl without reflecting on her in any way, but Siegburg's testimony in Zinka's favor was a little masterpiece of genuine and respectful enthusiasm. Prince Sempaly's face grew darker as he spoke.
"And the young lady in question is the girl we met the other day in the Piazzi?" he said.
"Yes."
"The sister of the secretary of legation whom the ambassador introduced to me yesterday, and the niece of my old colonel?"
"Yes."
"And from what you tell me not only an absolutely blameless creature, but universally beloved?"
"Yes."
For a minute the prince was silent. Every fibre of his being had its root in the traditions of the caste into which he had been born, and a connection between Zinka Sterzl and a Sempaly was to him simply monstrous. He had in the highest degree a respect for his past--"le respect des ruines"--but they must be grand ruins, of a noble past, or they did not touch him at all. With his head resting on his hand he sat silent by the supper-table, which was not yet cleared and where the lights sparkled in the half-empty champagne-glasses, and the flowers placed for the ladies still lay by their plates. Suddenly he looked up, and pointing to the newspaper, he asked:
"Had you seen that article when we came to fetch you from your rooms this morning?"
"Yes."
The prince sat bolt upright.
"And you did not stay in Rome to defend the girl?" His black eyes looked straight into his brother's blue ones. "You came with us? You left this young lady to be, for the whole day, the victim of the slander of all the evil tongues of Rome, for fear of an unpleasant explanation--for fear of a few high words with me?--You have behaved in a base and unmanly way throughout this affair, both to this young lady and to the poor sweet creature in there...." and he pointed to the door behind which the two young countesses disappeared with their mother. "Of course I shall not let you starve; your allowance shall be paid to you regularly as heretofore--but beyond that we have no further connection; we have nothing in common, you and I. Go!"
The deus ex machina had failed to appear. The dreaded scene with his brother had been postponed for a few hours, but it had come at last and Sempaly had gained nothing by his procrastination and duplicity. He had provoked not merely his brother's anger but his scorn as well, while his marriage with Zinka, when he had at last found himself compelled to announce it to his brother, had altogether lost its startling and interesting aspect as a chivalrous romance, and had come down to a mere act of reparation to satisfy his conscience.
Sempaly rose rather earlier than usual next morning, his nerves still conscious of the remembrance of this unsatisfactory scene and of the sleepless night that had been the consequence. Vexed with himself; at once surprised and touched by his brother's lofty indignation; ashamed to think of the calumny to which his irresolution and his absence must have exposed Zinka--he was in that state of sensitive irritability in which a man holds all the world in some degree responsible for his own shortcomings, and is ready to revenge himself on the first man he meets for the misery he is enduring.
While he was waiting for his breakfast, walking up and down the sitting-room--half drawing-room, half smoking-room--the general came in. For the first time in his life Sempaly greeted the old man as an intruder.
"Good-morning," he cried, "what procures me the honor of such an early visit?"
"Well," said Von Klinger hotly, "it can scarcely surprise you that I, as Zinka's god-father and oldest friend, should come to ask you what you mean by your extraordinary conduct."
"That, it seems to me, is her brother's business," said Sempaly roughly.
"It is on purpose to prevent a collision between you and Sterzl that I have come so early," replied the general, who was cut out for an officer of dragoons rather than for a diplomatist. "Sterzl is beside himself with fury, and I know that your intentions with regard to Zinka are perfectly honorable, and so...."
But at this moment the general's eye fell on a travelling-bag that the luxurious young attaché was wont to carry with him on short journeys, and which lay packed on the divan. "You are going away?" asked the old man surprised.
"I had intended to accompany my brother as far as Ostia to-day and return early to-morrow; but that is at an end--the prince and I have quarrelled--yes, I have quarrelled past all possibility of a reconciliation with my noble and generous brother. Are you satisfied?" and he stamped with rage.
"And is the want of judgment that has led to your parting any fault of mine pray?" exclaimed the general angrily.
There was a hasty rap at the door; on Sempaly's answering: "come in," Sterzl walked in. He did not take Sempaly's offered hand but drew a newspaper out of his pocket, held it out in front of Sempaly, and asked abruptly:
"Have you read this article?"
"Yes," said Sempaly from between his teeth.
"Yesterday--before you went out?" Sterzl went on.
This word-for-word repetition of the prince's question touched all Sempaly's most painful and shameful recollections of the scene to the quick. His eyes flashed, but he said nothing.
Sterzl could contain himself no longer. All the bitter feelings of the last six weeks seethed in his blood, and the luckless travelling-bag caught his eye. This was too much...
What happened next?...
The general saw it all in a flash of time--unexpected, and inevitable.
Sterzl took one stride forward and struck Sempaly in the face with the newspaper. At the same moment Sempaly's servant came in with the breakfast tray.
A few minutes later Sterzl and the general went down the stairs of the embassy in silence, not even looking at each other. When they were outside the younger man stopped and drew a deep breath:
"Sempaly will send you his seconds in the course of the morning," he said; "I must ask you to act for me."
The general nodded but did not speak.
"I will send word to Crespigny too, and then you can do whatever you think proper."
Still the general said nothing, and his silence irritated Sterzl.
"I could bear it no longer," he muttered as if in delirium; "what ... do you suppose ... too much...."
By this time they were in the Corso. Towards them came Siegburg, as bright and gay as ever, his hat pushed back on his head.
"I am happy to be the first to congratulate you, Sterzl," he cried.
"On what pray?" said Sterzl fiercely.
"On your sister's engagement to Sempaly--what! then you really did know nothing about it?"
Sterzl was bewildered: "What is it--what are you talking about?--I do not understand," he stammered.
"What, have you not heard?" Siegburg began; "the bomb fell last evening; Nicki declared his engagement. Oscar, to whom the whole business was news ... come into this café and I will tell you exactly all about it; it does not do to discuss such things in the street."
"I--I have not time," muttered Sterzl with a fixed vacant stare; and, as he spoke, he shot past Siegburg; but his gait was unsteady and he ran up against a passer-by.
"What on earth ails him?" said Siegburg looking after him. "I thought he would be pleased and--well! the ways of man are past finding out. This marriage will create a sensation in Vienna, eh, general? But I approve--I entirely approve. We are on the threshold of a new era, as Schiller--or some one has said, Bismarck very likely--and we shall live to tell our children how we stood by and looked on. But what is the matter with you both--you and Sterzl? To be sure--you were coming from the Palazzo di Venezia--have Nicki and Sterzl quarrelled--a challenge!" The general nodded. "But it can be amicably arranged now," said Siegburg consolingly.