CHAPTER VI.
Sempaly's intimacy with the Sterzls grew daily; he did the honors of Rome to Zinka, and dined with them as a fourth two or three times a week. After the tableaux at the Ilsenberghs' Zinka was asked everywhere; all the men were at her feet, and all the ladies wanted to learn her songs. The men she treated with the utmost indifference and to the ladies she was always obliging, particularly to those whom no one else would take the pains to be civil to, all of which greatly added to her popularity. Truyn's little girl--a spoilt, shy thing, who quarrelled with her maid three times a week regularly and insisted on learning everything from Latin to water-color drawing, though she would submit to no teacher but her father, perfectly worshipped Zinka and to her was as docile as a lamb. Princess Vulpini was delighted at her influence on her little niece and declared that Zinka was a real treasure; and Lady Julia Ellis, who had made the young girl's acquaintance two years since at Meran, was proud to take her out. Whenever the baroness could not go the English lady was always ready to chaperon Zinka, and when Lady Julia was 'at home' Zinka had to help her to receive her guests and to make tea.
Countess Schalingen, a Canoness devoted to painting, full of sentimentality and romance, whose ideas had not yet got beyond Winterhalter, called Zinka 'quite delicious,' took her on excursions, dragged her to all the curiosity-dealers, and finally painted her portrait on a handscreen for Princess Vulpini--her head and shoulders in gauzy drapery coming out of a lily. Before the end of a fortnight a rich American had enquired about her rank and extraction, and the handsome Crespigny had learnt all about her fortune. Norina paid his court to her when his tyrant's back was turned and Mrs. Ferguson did her the honor of being madly jealous.
But all this did not turn her head, it did not seem even to astonish her; she had always been spoilt and wherever she had gone she had found friends and admirers. When people were kind to her she was delighted, but she would have been much more astonished if they had not been kind. Sempaly had called her "a Botticelli," but the word was only applicable to her mind; in appearance she had none of the ascetic grace of the pre-Raphaelites. She was more like the crayon figures of Latour, or that typical beauty of the eighteenth century, la Lamballe. She had not the bloom of pink and white, but was pale, even in her youthful freshness with soft shadows under her eyes; and her hair, which was thick and waved naturally had reddish lights in the brown. A tender down softened its outline on her temples without shading her forehead, and gave her face a look of peculiar innocence. She was slight but not angular, her arms were long and thin, her hands small and sometimes red. Her moods varied between dreamy thoughtfulness and saucy high spirits, her gait was usually free and light but occasionally a little awkward, "like an angel with its wings clipped," Sempaly said. She had a low veiled voice in speaking that reminded one of the vibrating tones of an Amati violin. She was as wild as a boy, as graceful as a water nixie, and as innocent as a child--with the crude innocence of a girl who has been brought up chiefly by men--and all her ideas had the stamp of dreamy seclusion and fervid sentiment.
She had had French and English governesses and had even been to school in a convent for a year; still, the ruling influence in her life had been that of her guardian. General Sterzl--an eccentric being with an intense horror of sentimental school-friendships and of the conventional propriety that comes of too early familiarity with the world. It was to him that Zinka owed the one good word which Countess Ilsenbergh spoke in her favor:
"One thing must be admitted; she is not affected, she is as natural as one of our own girls."
"Poor Coralie!" the baroness would frequently exclaim, "what a pity that she is not here; what a treat it would be for her!"
"Yes," Sterzl would answer in his dry way, "she was in too great a hurry." And the baroness would cast her eyes up to heaven.
Coralie was her eldest and favorite daughter. Disappointed in her love of some hard-hearted gentleman she had renounced the vanities of the world some three years since, but--like her mother's worthy daughter--even in the depth of her disappointment and despair she had taken care to choose a convent where the recluses were divided into ladies and sisters, where the children who came to school there played hide and seek under a French name, and where being a boarder was called being en pension.
"Poor Coralie!" the baroness would sigh; and then seating herself at her writing-table she would scribble endless letters about the delights of a residence at Rome to all her friends in Austria, and especially to her sister, the Baroness Wolnitzka.
Baroness Sterzl was a typical specimen of a class of nobility peculiar to Austria, and called there, Heaven knows why, "the onion nobility" (zwiebelnoblesse). It is a circle that may be described as a branch concern of the best society; a half-blood relation; a mixture of the elements that have been sifted out of the upper aristocracy and of the parvenus from below, who find that they can be reciprocally useful; a circle in which almost every man is a baron, and every woman, without exception, is a baroness. Its members are for the most part poor, but refined beyond expression. The mothers scold their children in bad French and talk to their friends in fashionable slang; they give parties, at which there is nothing to eat--but the family plate is displayed, and where the company always consists of the same old bachelors who dye their hair and know the Almanack de Gotha by heart. Everyone is well informed about the doings of the world--how many shifts Minnie N. had in her trousseau, why the engagement between Fritz O. and Lori P. was broken off, and much more to the same effect. Of late years the 'onion-nobility,' with various other offshoots of the higher culture, has been swamped by the advance of the liberals, that is to say, by the progress of the financial classes.
Only a year since the baroness herself had stood on the stairs of the opera-house to watch the occupants of the grand tier--at that time appropriated to the cream of the aristocracy--to take note of aristocratic dresses, and to hear aristocratic nothings from aristocratic lips. Now, in Rome, she was living in the whirl of society. Her satisfaction knew no bounds, and she made daily progress in exclusiveness; the Countess Ilsenbergh, as compared to her, was a mere bungler. But she was never so amusing to watch as when she met some fellow-countrymen of untitled rank. It happened that this winter there was in Rome a certain Herr Brauer, an old simpleton with a very handsome wife who laid herself open for the admiration of all the young men of any pretensions. Being furnished with a few letters of introduction he and his fascinating partner disported themselves very contentedly in the outer circle--the suburbs, so to speak--of good society without having a suspicion how far they were from the centre. Baroness Sterzl could never cease wondering "how those people could be tolerated."
She was always well dressed, she gave capital little dinners, she had the neatest coupé and the most comfortable landau, and her coachman had the cleanest shaved imperial face and the smartest livery in Rome. Her manners were somewhat changeable, since she was constantly endeavoring to appropriate the airs and graces of the most fashionable women she met. She was extremely unpopular and consequently bored to death wherever she went; she was never quite easy as to her footing in society and lived in the discomfort of a person who is always trying to walk on tiptoe.
Her sole unqualified pleasure during this period--which, however, she always spoke of as the happiest of her life--was the writing of the above-mentioned letters home, and especially as has been said, to her sister the Baroness Wolnitzka in Bohemia.
She craved a public to witness her success and, like all mean natures, she knew no greater joy than that of exciting envy; she would often read these epistles to Zinka, for she was very proud of her wordy style. Zinka was somewhat disturbed by these flowery compositions which always ended with these words: "What a pity it is that you should not be here. It would give us the greatest pleasure to have you with us."
"Take care, mamma," said the girl, "they will take you at your word and descend upon us."
"What are you dreaming of?" said the baroness folding her letter with the utmost philosophy; "they have no money."