“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, decorum _ad 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 Archduchess staring 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 a more 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 to
America, 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 Lieutenant
von 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 be _persona grata_
here, 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.”