VIII
“We parted with mutual distrust, a mutual increase of respect, even of tolerance, and a common determination to make use of each other,” said the Archduchess to Alexandra, as she finished the account of her interview with the minister. They were alone in her salon. “I reserved my Americanism for a future occasion, and played the old European game of the cat and the mouse. He is not in the least sure which is the cat and which the mouse. Neither am I, for that matter; but I have the advantage of knowing him better than he knows me. However, here I am for the present.”
Alexandra drew a long and almost voluptuous sigh of content. “No more awful evenings in the Hofburg!—whist with his Majesty, or, worse still, with M. L.; a little music; tittle-tattle about the same threadbare old royalties, the last novel—French and wicked—the play, the last baby—there are always several; yawns, decorumad nauseam; mad desire to lie down on the floor and kick up your heels. Oh, just and beneficent Heaven that sent William to Hungary with a wasp at his heel!”
“Let us forget William—and Austria. Where are the cigarettes?”
The girls smoked in silence for a time, the Archduchessstaring hard before her, after her habit, as if she were poring over the cryptogram of the future. When the short Russian cigarette had burned to its mouth-piece she returned to the present.
“I suppose it will be wise to pay my new friend the compliment of asking his advice about my Hungarian household—about the Obersthofmeisterin, at all events. I will write him an autograph letter to-night. What tact I shall develop with a few weeks’ practice! I wonder who the new duenna will be? But no one even he approved of could be worse than Maria Leopoldina, and, after twelve years in the arena with her, I flatter myself I am more than a match for the most masterful he could select.”
The Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, a member of a younger branch of the House of Hapsburg, who had succeeded the scrupulous but too obsequious English governess, had been selected, after much anxious thought on the part of the Emperor, consultation with his ministers, and with his old friend the Princess Sarolta of Windischgrätz, as especially fit for her delicate post. The Empress’s prolonged absences from court, as well as the inevitable suspicions engendered by her increasing repugnance for contact with common mortals, made it doubly imperative to give the headstrong young Archduchess a duenna who would, by precept and example, educate her conspicuous charge in the great responsibilities of her position and curb any bent to eccentricity. Maria Leopoldina, a conscientious woman of masterful temperament but considerable tact, had done her work well, and took to herself the credit of much that had been evolved by the thoughtful mind of Ranata herself. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that her early lectures, delivered to an impatient but imaginative young princess, had sown seeds which might have floated longer with amore pliable guardian. For several years she insisted upon the observation of the very letter of her great authority; no friend could Ranata make without her approval, no acquaintance talk with for five minutes alone. The Archduchess had never appeared in the streets of Vienna without her, but in the country, particularly on Ranata’s personal estate on the wildest part of the Danube in Upper Austria, where they were as secluded as soldiers in a border fortress, she wisely allowed her charge a good deal of liberty; and as the years went on she relaxed by imperceptible degrees the rigor of her sovereignty; she left the girl more and more to herself, merely asserting her authority at discreet intervals, that the rebellious nature confided to her should not experience the temptations of freedom.
She knew that if she had failed to win her august kinswoman’s heart she had her respect and gratitude; for not only had she early suggested to Ranata the benefit she could confer upon her house by playing the rôle of the lofty and immaculate princess, devoid of common weakness, inaccessible to common temptations, but she had inculcated the great art of self-command, and in the depths of this profoundly accepted lesson Ranata had discovered the strength to endure her life, accept her colorless future, and dominate her nature by her intellect.
Between Maria Leopoldina and Alexandra there was no love lost, but there was a golden and bejewelled truce. Alexandra, even at sixteen—at which age both girls attended court functions, although tutors and governesses were in attendance for two years longer, under the general supervision of the Obersthofmeisterin—was too wise in the ways of royalty openly to defy this valuable woman, who rejoiced in the absolute approval of the Emperor and his ministers; and the Obersthofmeisterin, who often longed to shake her and pack her off toAmerica, dared not, in this one particular, brave the wrath of her princess. During the first two years of her reign, however, they were more than once perilously close to open war, and a fatal rupture might have been precipitated by the more impulsive Alexandra had not Mrs. Abbott arrived in Vienna for her step-daughter’s eighteenth birthday, and during a moment of extreme tension. Grasping the situation and its dangers, Mrs. Abbott admonished Alexandra severely, and made her present the duenna with a magnificent set of diamond stars—given out of the fulness of her heart on this the most sentimental of birthdays. The present was peculiarly welcome to Maria Leopoldina, who, herself the youngest of her family, having married in her uncalculating youth a junior member of an impoverished house, was sadly deficient in that jewelled panoply which diverts the eye from the shabby gowns of so many of Austria’s noble dames. Moreover, this concrete illustration of the vast wealth of the American girl inspired respect, if not awe, and these sentiments were nourished at decent intervals by other offerings of increasing magnificence. As time went on, Alexandra, too, imbibed the great lesson of self-restraint, and developed a high impersonal way of looking out upon life; she ceased to irritate the Hapsburg, and admitted her own debt as well as that of her friend. Nevertheless, she had no love for Maria Leopoldina, and was alive to all her foibles. To Ranata’s remark she replied, assuming a severe and elderly demeanor, elevating her head until the roundness left her throat, from which her voice issued with a scraping sound:
“Will your Imperial Highness kindly remember to-night that the Princess Cockolorum is only entitled to one minute of your august notice, as it is necessary to remind her that her manner in public with Lieutenantvon Poodle is unbecoming in a member of the Austrian court, which has dignity if not morals? And will your Imperial Highness exert yourself to remember that the wife of the American ambassador, although no doubt charming, is still an American? It is not necessary to inquire after her entire family. And—my dear child, your hair looks like a rat’s nest! I shall dismiss that coiffeur to-morrow!”
Ranata laughed. “She should be glad of a holiday, poor soul. I had rather be a poor prisoner of a princess than a slave of a duenna like an Obersthofmeisterin—I have an idea! Why not Sarolta? She is Hungarian. She is in every way suitable. She would bepersona gratahere, is loved and trusted by my father, and while standing to the world as an impregnable outpost, would really give me a free hand, and with all her cynical soul enjoy the experiment. I shall write to her at once to manage it—as only she can. That would be the last thing necessary to make me feel as if I had been born again. Now, Alexis, let us give our attention to these rooms. I think I shall have cloth of gold in these panels, and curtains of these Turkish embroideries. My writing-room must be blue. Shall I have my bedroom in cloth of silver and white?—and my dressing-room in these old-rose brocades? And all the furniture must be new—nothing ancestral here! There is an intoxicating freedom in the air of Hungary—ah! I really do feel as if I had been born again.”