Our Own Set: A Novel

by Ossip Schubin

Truyn had gone out riding with her two or three times across the Campagna, and she had enjoyed it; but one day they met Sempaly, galloping with his two handsome cousins over the anemone-strewn sward. From that day she made excuses for avoiding the Campagna--as though she thus avoided the chance, almost the certainty, of meeting him and them. Why then did she remain in Rome at all? Sterzl would not hear of her quitting it, because he thought that the world of Rome would regard it as a flight after defeat. His mother too, on different grounds, set her face against any such abridgment of their stay in Rome. Had she not taken the palazetto till the fifteenth of May?

And did Zinka, in fact, wish to go? She often spoke of longing to be at home again, but whenever their departure was seriously discussed it gave her a shock. She dreaded meeting him--and longed for it all the same. And in the evening when a few old friends dropped in to call--Truyn every evening and Siegburg very frequently--Truyn noticed that every time there was a ring she sat with her eyes fixed in eager expectation on the door. She still cherished a sort of hope--a broken, moribund hope that was in fact no more than unrest--the vitality of suffering.

PART III.

EASTER.

CHAPTER I.

Passion-week in Rome, and in all the glory and glow of an Italian spring. The glinting radiance brightens even the mystical gloom of St. Peter's, sparkles for an instant on the holy-water in the basins, wanders from the heads of the gigantic cherubs and the colossal statues down to the inlaid pavement, with the cold sheen of sunlight on polished marble. The hours glide on--the long solemn hours of Holy-Thursday in Rome; the last gleam of daylight has faded away, the vast cathedral is filled with almost palpable twilight and its magnificence seems shrouded in a transparent veil of crape. The stone walls look dim and distant, the fane seems built of shadows, and sacred mystery falls as it were from heaven, deeper and more solemn as the minutes slip by, to sanctify the spot.

In the papal chapel Zinka is kneeling with Truyn and Gabrielle, her eyes fixed on her hands which are convulsively clasped, and praying with the passion of a youthful nature whose yearning has found no foothold on earth and seeks a home in heaven. On both sides sit the prelates and dignitaries of the church in their carved stalls, inquisitive and prayerless foreigners crowd at their feet. The tragedy of the passion is being recited in a monotonous, inconclusive chant that dies away in the dim corners of the chapel.

The last of the twelve tapers on the altar is extinguished.... "Miserere mei" the choristers cry with terrible emphasis; and then, awful but most sweet, beginning as a mere breath and rising to a mighty wail of grief, comes a voice like the utterance of the anguish of the God of Love over the misery from which He can never release mankind. And before the majesty of that divine and selfless sorrow human sorrow bows in silence.

Zinka bends her head.--It is ended, the last sound has died away in a sob, the crowd rises to follow the procession which, with a cardinal at the head, wends its way through the church.

Truyn and the two girls quit the chapel; behind them the steps of the priests and choristers, drowned in their own echoes, sound like the rustling of angelic wings; the brooding, melancholy peacefulness has lulled Zinka's heart to rest; for the first time for many weeks she has forgotten....