Chapter VI: Prologue (4)

I suggest, however, that we choose a café in the Quarter--not one of the tiny eating-houses like Henriette’s where we lunched, but a full-fledged, prosperous café; frequented by the better-off artists and the upper-class Quarter grisettes. Ten minutes in the Underground lands us at the door of one of the best-known of these places. In the front room, with big windows open to the street, is the _café des consommateurs_; in the rear, the restaurant and card rooms, and a delightful galleried garden, where also one may dine. Alluring strains of Hoffmann’s _Barcarolle_ entice us thither with all speed; and soon our enthusiasm is divided between chilled slices of golden melon and the caressing sensuousness of the _maître d’orchestre’s_ violin.

In passing, one may note that good music in Paris is a rare quantity. Though many people come to study singing, there are few vocal concerts, and the _Touche_ and the _Rouge_ are the only orchestras of any importance. They give weekly concerts in small halls, hardly bigger than an ordinary-sized room, and the handful of attendants smoke their fat porcelain pipes and extract cherries out of glasses of _kirsch_, and happily imagine themselves music-lovers. But the great _artiste_ is an artist through sight rather than through sound; and even in opera, where the dramatic element is or should be subservient to the music, the superdramatic French are ill-at-ease and hampered. Some of the performances at the Opéra Comique are delightful, for here the lighter pieces of Massenet and Debussy are given, with the French lilt and dash peculiar to these masters. But, at the Opéra itself, the Wagnerian compositions are poorly conducted, the audience uninterested and uninteresting; and even the beautiful foyer--which, since the famous New Year’s Eve balls have been done away with, knows no longer its former splendours--cannot compensate for the thoroughly dull evening one endures there.

Far happier is one listening to the serenades and intermezzos of the cherubic Alsatian violinist at the Quarter café-restaurant. And, after dinner, he plays solos out in the café proper, for the same absorbed polyglot audience that has listened to him for years. Let us range ourselves in this corner against the wall, between the two American lady artists of masculine tailoring and Kansas voices, and the fierce-mustachioed Czek, mildly amused over a copy of the _Rire_. Every seat in the big double room is taken now, and we are a varied crew of French _bourgeois_, Russian, Norwegian, and German students, English and American tourists, Japanese attachés (or so one supposes from their conversation, in excellent French, with our neighbour Czek), and blond and black bearded artists who might be of any nation except the Oriental.

They all know each other, and are exchanging jokes and cigarettes over their _café crême_--which they drink, by the way, out of glass tumblers--and paying goodnaturedly for a _bock_ for Suzanne or Madeleine, whose _bocks_ some other person should be paying. The room has taken on the look of a big family party, some talking, some writing letters, others reading from the shiny black-covered comic papers; all smoking, and sipping absently now and then from their steaming glasses or little _verres de liqueur_. The music drifts in soothingly, between spurts of conversation, and one is conscious of utter contentment and well-being.

Suddenly a door is flung open. In whirls a small hurricane, confined within a royal purple coat and skirt; gives one lightning glance round the circle of surprised merry-makers, and with a triumphant cry pounces on Suzanne yonder, with the fury of a young virago. “So!” pants the vixen, shaking poor Suzanne. “So you thought to outwit me, you thought to oust me, did you? _Me_, whom he knew six months before ever he saw you--me whom he took to Havre, to Fontainebleau, to--to--traitress! Coward! _Scélérate!_ Take that--and that--and that!”

She slaps Suzanne soundly on both cheeks; Suzanne pulls her hat off--each makes a lunge at the other’s hair. “_Mesdames, mesdames_,” cries the _patron_, hurrying forward. “_Je vous en prie_--and monsieur,” reproachfully, “can you do nothing?”

Monsieur--the monsieur who kindly, and quite disinterestedly, paid Suzanne’s book--sits by, lazily tapping his fingers against the glass. “What would you?” he says, with a shrug. “Women--” another shrug--“one had as well let them finish it.”

But the _patron_ is by no means of this mind. He begins telling those ladies that his house is a serious house; that his clients are of the most serious, that he himself absolutely demands and insists upon seriousness; and that if these ladies cannot tranquillize themselves instantly----

But of a sudden he halts--pulled up short by the abrupt halt of the ladies themselves. In the thick of the fray Suzanne has flung contemptuous explanation; Gaby, the virago, has caught it. A truce is declared. Curt conversation takes place. Monsieur, still lazily tapping, consents to confirm the defendant’s statement as fact. Gaby, though still suspicious, consents to restore the hated rival’s hat; and in ten minutes the three are tranquilly discussing Cubism and a new round of _demi-brunes_. The audience, who have gazed on the entire comedy with keen but quite impartial interest, shrug their shoulders, light fresh cigarettes, and return to their papers and pens. Since the first start of surprise, there has not been a murmur among them; only complete concentration on the drama, which the next minute they as completely forget.

There are a dozen such scenes a day, in one’s wandering about Paris; that is, a dozen scenes as sudden, as intense, and as quickly over. The everyday life of the people is so vivid, of such swift and varied contrast, that the theatre itself, to satisfy them, must overreach into melodrama before it rouses. I believe that no other city in the world, unless it be the next most dramatic, New York, could support a theatre like the _Grand Guignol_ for example. I have seen there, in one evening, gruesomely realistic representations of a plague scene in India; the destruction of a submarine, with all the crew on board; and the operating-room of a hospital, where a woman is unnecessarily murdered to pay the surgeon’s wife’s hat bill.

The French imagination, turned loose on dramatic situations, is like a cannibal before a peck of missionaries; only instead of eating ’em alive, the Frenchman makes them live--and diabolically accurate. But not for the doubtful interest of studying French psychology through its horrors, shall we end our day by a visit to the _Guignol_. Nor yet to the _Français_ or the _Odéon_, as we are a bit tired to follow Molière or Racine tonight. What do you say to looking in at the cheerful rowdyism of the _Moulin Rouge_, and then on for a bite at one of the restaurants on “the Hill”? It would never do for you, as a self-respecting American, to leave Paris without properly “doing” Montmartre; and as for me, I want to prove to you my assertion that Montmartre exists for and off visiting strangers like ourselves.

Let us make short work of the _Moulin_ therefore--which is neither more nor less raw than the rest of the variétés prepared for foreign consumption--and go on up to the Place Pigalle; to the racket and ribaldry of the _Café Royal_. Other night-restaurants make some pretense of silver-gilding their vulgarity; the _Abbaye_ and the _Rat Mort_ have their diamond dust of luxury to throw into one’s eyes. But the _Royal_ is unadulterated Montmartre: the girls, most of them, shabby--their rouge put on without art; the harsh red coats of the tziganes seemingly made of paper, and their songs lacking even the thinnest veneer of French wit.

In the small low room upstairs fresh air is left behind by those who enter. Instead, the heavy-scented powder of the dancing girls, the sweet sickening perfume of great baskets of roses on sale, and the pervading odour of lobster, combine to assail us as we steer through the crowded room to a table. These last are arranged in the familiar hollow square round the wall, leaving a cleared space in the centre for dancers.

We order supper, and then look about us. It is still a different world from the many we have seen today: a world of “wire-pulled automatons,”, who laugh dead laughter, and sing dead tuneless songs, in their clock-work dance of pleasure. There is a sinister host of these puppet-people: girls of seventeen and eighteen, with the hard, settled features of forty; Englishmen, very red and embarrassed, blatantly over for a “larky weed-end”; next them a mere baby of fourteen, with sleek curls to her shoulders, and a slazy blue frock to her knees--chattering shrilly to the Polish Jew with the pasty white face, and the three pasty-white necks rolling over his collar. Yonder, a group of Brazilians, most of them very boys, who have captured the prettiest _danseuse_ and carried her off for champagne; beyond them, torpid-eyed Germans seeking shatzkinder, and American drummers by the dozen--their feet on the bar-rail, their hats on the back of their heads, grinning half sheepishly like nasty little boys on a forbidden holiday.

Well, does it amuse you--this “typical slice of French life,” as the guidebooks label it? And what of the dances--but, rather than look at them, let us talk to this girl who is passing. She seems different from the rest, in her dark “tailor-made” and plain white shirt; among the satin and tinsel of the other women, her costume and her white, almost transparent face cry attention to themselves by very modesty. Perhaps she will talk real talk; occasionally--when she finds she has nothing to gain as marionette--one of them will.

We ask her to have some champagne. Nonchalantly she accepts, and sits down. Is she new at the _Royal_? is the leading question. Oh no, she has been coming here for nearly a year. But this gentleman is new (quickly)? You reply, with a certain intonation, that you will always be “new,”--that you will not come again. She sends you a searching side-glance--and understands.

The preliminaries clearly disposed of, we get to the meat of things; baldly and with no apology, now that we have thrown down our hand. What is she doing here? Can’t she find a better place? Has she no family to help her?

She smiles, flicks the ash from her cigarette. But yes, she has a family: a blind mother, two little sisters, and a half-witted brother. She is sole bread-winner for the lot. As for this place--a shrug, laconic, unresentful, as she throws a glance round the murky room--it is not _chic_, true it is second-rate; but the commissions are good, and clothes here do not cost much, and-- “the simple fact,” says she, gazing quietly over our shoulder into the glass, is, “that to work any trade successfully, one must have the proper tools. I was young, or I should have thought of that before I began.”

You gasp, under your breath. This French girl, when she draws aside the curtain, draws it to reveal--with terrible sincerity--a thin white face. She tells no tale of an attempt to live “honestly,” of pitiful struggles as dressmaker, shop-girl, and the rest of the sentimental dodges. She bares her tragedy simply as only a French person can; and it is that she has not the proper tools!

You mumble something meant to be consoling, and shamefacedly slip a louis under her plate. She accepts it with no trumped-up emotion, but a frank “_merci!_” And evidently fearing to bore us, moves away with the nonchalance characteristic of her type.

When she is gone, we are suddenly aware of wanting to leave. For, among the grinning ghosts, reality has passed; touching with her grim wand the puppets, to show them as naked souls--each with its uncovered reason. So seen, they send a shudder through us: the baby-faced girl in her blue frock, now sleepily batting kohl from her eyes in desperate effort to remain amusing; the dancing-girls with their high nervous laughter; the set, determined smiles of the better-dressed _cocottes_: it is the artist playing in the meanest of all theatres, the artist born without the “proper tools,” or who lost hers, but playing stoically to the end.

And the tziganes are twanging deafening accompaniment on their guitars, and shouting “Patita” at the top of their execrable voices; and smoke and the thick smell of sauces and the scent of the women’s _sachet_ hangs in sickening haze through the place. Let us go--let us flee from it! For this is not Paris; it is the harlot’s house: and that is the loathsome property of the universe.

We rush from it out into the silent street--the air strikes sharp and fresh upon our faces. For it rains, a pearly mist, and the thousand lights make rainbows on the flat wet flags of paving. We hail a cab, but leave the top open to the grateful dampish cool; and glide away down the slippery hill into what looks like dawn.

But it is only other lights--mist-veiled, and gleaming more intimately now; like the gems of a woman who has gone to her boudoir, but not yet taken off her jewels. The woman calls, softly. Can you keep yourself from answering? You may have your loyalty to faithful London, the Comrade; you may burn your reverential candle before the mystic vestal, Rome; or shout yourself hoarse before the triumph of New York, the star: but can you resist the tugging, glowing, multiple allurement of everyman’s One Woman, Paris?

Can you go back over this night when her jewels flashed for you into the Seine, when the rich rumble of her voice called to you across the bridges, when the cool, sweet smell and the throb and cling of her were for you--_you_; and not thrill to her and yearn for her, as men in spite of their inconstancy have thrilled and yearned and come back to One out of all the rest, throughout the history of women?

I hope that you cannot. For, as you return again and again, the “make-up” of the woman fades; the great artist lays aside the cautious mask, steps down from the stage, and for you becomes that greatest of all: a simple human being.

III

THE CHILDREN’S PERFORMANCE

(Vienna)

I

THE PLAYHOUSE

To see Vienna properly, one should be eighteen, and a young person of good looks and discretion. Patsy was all this, and I, being Patsy’s uncle, was allowed my first peep at the jolliest of cities through her _lunettes de rose_. It was a bleak, grey morning in January--with the mercury at several degrees below zero--when we rattled through the quiet streets to our hotel.

“Ugh!” said Patsy, some three minutes after we had left the station, “what a horrid dreary place!”

I suggested deprecatingly that places had a fashion of so appearing at ten after seven in the morning.

“Yes, but look at those great, gloomy buildings and you know, Uncle Peter, you always say that what people build betrays what they are.”

“Dear me, Patsy, do I say that?” It is alarming to be confronted with one’s platitudes before breakfast!

“Yes (emphatically). Well, _I_ think that, if the Viennese are like their architecture, they must be appallingly dull!” And Patsy wraps her furs and an air of bitter disappointment round her, and subsides into silence.

I am secretly apprehensive. To carry off a young lady of capricious fancy and unquestionable loveliness, from the thick of the balls and parties of her first season, under oath that she shall enjoy even giddier gayety in the Austrian Carnival; and to behold her gravely displeased with the very bricks and stones of the place--you will admit the situation called for anxiety.

I did what I always do in such a case, and with such a young lady: fed her--as delectable and extensive a breakfast as I could command; and then sent for a young man. To be exact, I had taken this latter precaution two or three days before, being not unacquainted with Patsy’s psychology and predilections. The young man arrived--an officer (it is always best to get an officer when one can) of no mean proportions in his dashing blue uniform and smart helmet. I introduced him to Patsy as the son of my friend Count H----, former minister to the United States. Patsy smiled--as Patsy can, and gave him a dainty three fingers. Captain Max clicked his heels together, bowed from his magnificent waist, and kissed her hand with an impressive: “_Ich habe die Ehre, gnädige fräulein!_” And we went to watch Guard Change in the Burg.

It is fascinating enough in itself, this old courtyard with its many gates, and weather-beaten walls surrounding the residence of the Hapsburg princes; and when filled with the Emperor’s Guards, in their grey and scarlet, and the rousing music of the royal band--to say nothing of that fierce white-whiskered old presence in the window above, surrounded by his brilliant gentlemen--I assure you it can thrill the heart of even an uncle!

Nowhere as in this ancient stronghold, under the gaze of those stern, shaggy-browed old eyes, does the tragic history of Austria so haunt one. Admitting only the figures and episodes of the life of this present Emperor, one is assailed by the memory of Elizabeth--his Empress--and her shameful assassination at Geneva; the ghastly mystery of the death of Crown Prince Rudolf, the one son of the ill-starred royal pair; and the hardships and struggles of Maria Christina (the Emperor’s sister) in Spain, and the terrible murder of his brother Maximilian--sent forth in splendour to be Emperor of Mexico, but marked for death from the first. One sees the desolate mad figure of his widow shut within the wild beauty of Castle Mirmar, and wonders only how the Emperor himself can have escaped her fate. Bereft of his beautiful wife, the son he idolized, the brother he himself unknowingly sent to his destruction, Francis Joseph of Austria is at once the most solitary and indomitable personality among the rulers of the world today. Never, through all his misfortunes, has his iron pride given way to complaint or regret; and never has he confessed himself beaten.

At the age of eighty-four, he still sits erect in his saddle, and commands with characteristic imperious fire. The people sometimes laugh at his eccentricities, and are impatient of his old-fashioned ideas on certain things, but the tone in which they pronounce his title, “_Unser Kaiser_,” conveys their acceptance of his divine right as the pivot of their universe. In the recent war of the Balkan Allies, when the progressive Austrian party under Archduke Ferdinand clamoured against the conservative policy of the crown, the great mass of the people stood loyally by the Emperor--and so perhaps were saved the horrors and draining expense of a war of their own.

Austria is always in a ferment of one kind or another, composite as she is of half a dozen distinct and antagonistic strains of blood that have yet to be really amalgamated; but her Grand Old Man does his best to keep peace between his Slavs and Hungarians, Bohemians and Poles--and generally succeeds. He loves the pomp attached to his imperial prerogative, and is never so happy as when the centre of some elaborate ceremonial in one of his kingdoms. It tickles his vanity always to have extravagant precautions taken for his safety; and on the days when he drives to Schönbrunn (his favourite country residence) two plain clothes men and two uniformed guards are stationed at every block of the entire way from the Burg to the palace. Punctuality is another of his strong points; he departs or arrives on the dot of the hour appointed, and demands the same exactness of the officials and detectives along the road.

With all his dignity, he is an old person with a temper, and an obstinacy hard to subdue. During one of his recent illnesses he absolutely refused to be shaved; also, what was more important, to eat. The entire palace was in despair, when Mademoiselle Z---- arrived one afternoon on her daily visit. She is a homely lady (formerly a great actress) of almost as many years as the Emperor, and comes every day to play chess with him. When she heard of his stubborness on this particular occasion, she marched into the imperial presence with a bowl of soup and some biscuits, and called out: “Come, Franz Joseph, don’t be a fool! Sit up and eat.”

The Emperor gave her one furious look--and obeyed; afterwards meekly suffering himself to be shaved and put in proper order as an invalid. He and the doughty old _artiste_ have been close friends for forty years, and he is fond of remarking that there is one woman in the world who makes up in brains what she lacks in features. I should like to see the two shrewd old heads over their chess.

Instead, I must remember my responsibilities, and come back to Patsy and her _hauptmann_. He is bending towards her solicitously; suggesting a walk in the Garden, a cup of chocolate at Demel’s, the concert at the Volksgarten after lunch, perhaps in the evening some skating at his club? Patsy finds time to whisper to me that she thinks the Viennese not _too_ dull, after all. She hears they even have balls--masked balls, in fancy dress, on the ice. Doesn’t Uncle Peter think waltzing on ice sounds rather nice?

Uncle Peter, who has rheumatism, feebly agrees that it does _sound_ very nice; and falls into his proper background as chaperone, while the young people dart ahead down the narrow street to the Garden. Here, in the fashionable short promenade, an exhilarating sense of prosperity fills the air. There is the soft elegance of furs, the scent of violets, the occasional gleam of scarlet lining an officer’s picturesque white cloak; brilliant shops draw their knots of pretty women to the windows, well set-up men stroll by in long fur coats or drive their own superb horses to and fro: all is easy, gay and care-free, betokening an idle happiness.

“And there are no beggars,” sighs Patsy contentedly, “I _am_ glad of that!”

It is true--and rather extraordinary for a city of almost two million inhabitants; but, on the surface at least, there seem to be no actually poor people in Vienna. The more one knows the place the more one is impressed with the fact that, while the upper classes are extravagant and show-loving, the lower seem to have imbibed a spirit of cheerful thrift which keeps them from real poverty. They have enough to eat and to wear, and for an occasional bit of pleasure; what more, their good-humoured faces seem to ask, could they want?

Only the very wealthy Viennese can afford a house to himself. The great majority of people rent a story, or half a story, of the huge residence buildings that give the city its monotonously gloomy look. Row after row of these line the streets, all the same height and the same style; but in no way do they resemble the typical “apartments” of England, America or France. Each dwelling in itself is the size of a house of moderate dimensions, with its own inner stairways and separate floors. There are certain conveniences in the arrangement, but I cannot say I find it on the whole satisfactory. One has constantly the feeling of having strayed into a public building to eat and sleep; which causes one to do both under a depressing sense of apology.

The people unconsciously admit this lack of home attraction by their incessant attendance at cafés. While the Frenchman or the Spaniard spends an hour a day in his favourite café, chatting with friends, the Viennese spends an entire morning, afternoon or evening--or all three. Coffee or chocolate with whipped cream (the famous _Wiener Mélange_) is the usual drink with which he pays for his seat, and the illustrated papers that are his obsession. He, or Madame his friend, will remain in a comfortable corner of the window hour after hour, reading and smoking, smoking and reading; only looking up to sip chocolate, or to stare at some newcomer. The café, also the constant cigarette-smoking, is as much a habit with the women of Vienna as with the men. And one is not surprised to hear that there are over six hundred of these (literally) “coffee-houses” in the city, and that all of them are continually full.

Some of the larger establishments provide excellent music--and here we are fingering the edges of Viennese character and culture: next to (or along with) love of gayety go a love and understanding of music, that amounts almost to a passion. Besides the café concerts, there are military concerts, philharmonic concerts and symphony concerts; to say nothing of the host of notable recitals crowding one another for attention.

One is struck by the enormous and enthusiastic patronage given to these affairs, each and all. In Anglo-Saxon countries the ventures of a concert-manager are at best precarious, and, in spite of the high price of tickets, frequently result in a dead loss. An Anglo-Saxon audience is tepid, for both music and drama, being roused to fervour not by either art in itself, but only by a great name made actual upon the stage. In Germany music is a religion; in Vienna there is added a fire and dash which make it no less pure, while more seductive. From _operette_ to _concerto_, the Viennese run the gamut of musical expression, in every phase pre-eminent.

Nor have they an ounce of the artistic snobbishness made fashionable by peoples with whom music is an acquired taste rather than an instinct. They are as frank in enjoyment of “The Merry Widow” as of a Strauss recital with the master conducting; because they regard each as a high art unto itself. There is no aristocracy of music, and so there is no commercialism to degrade it. One may hear grand opera from an excellent seat for fifty cents; or the Philharmonic Orchestra, with Weingartner conducting, for the same price. The secret of the whole system is that to the Viennese good music is not a luxury, but food and drink and essential to life; and therefore to be had by everyone.

Concert audiences are attentive to a degree, and during the performance the slightest disturbing sound is sternly hissed. This is true even in the public parks where the people listen in crowds to the fine military bands that play every day. While at the Volksgarten (frequented by the middle classes and by nobility as well) Patsy was crushed on her first afternoon by the stertorous rebuke of a _wienerische_ dowager, because the child removed her gloves during the overture!

“Disagreeable old thing,” grumbled Patsy, when it was finished, “doesn’t she know I can’t hear with my gloves on?”

Captain Max, in a tumult of perturbation over the episode, solemnly suggested that he convey this unhappy fact to the good lady. But Patsy’s naughty mouth was twitching at the corners, and she said she had rather he ordered chocolate. She has a conscience somewhere, has Patsy; in spite of being a pretty woman.

We drank our delicious brew of _Mélange_ between Beethoven and Bach, and had another after the Schumann Symphony--being seated like everyone else at one of the little tables that fill the Volksgarten. This is under cover in winter, and three times a week indoor classical concerts are held, under the direction of the leading conductors. Ladies bring their crochet, young girls their gallants; and during the intermissions it is a lively scene, when tables are pushed together, waiters hurry to and fro with the creamy chocolate, or big frothing _seidels_ of Münchener, and conversation and good cheer hum all round.

Let the orchestra reappear, however, and there is silence--so prompt as to be almost comical. Sentences are left unfinished, chairs are hastily and noiselessly shoved back, and the buzzing crowd of two minutes ago is still as a pin; alert for the first note of music. The tickets for these symphonious feasts cost thirty cents, but the audience could not show more devoted attention (or get finer return) if they had paid five dollars.

Here, as everywhere in Vienna, one is impressed with the good looks and attractiveness of the people in general. In their careful grooming and prevailing air of prosperity, they bear a distinct resemblance to Americans; and one may go deeper under the surface and find a reason for this in the highly complex mixture of race in both nations. There is the same tall, rather aggressive build among the men; the same piquant features, bright hair and pretty colouring among the women of the two countries. And, to go further, there is the same supreme fondness for dress and outward show, that results in reckless extravagance.

With the Viennese, however, this trait is not subjective--i. e., to create a personal impression--but simply part and parcel of the central aim of their existence: to have a good time, and enjoy life to the fullest. They are by no means a people with a purpose, like Americans; they have neither the desire, nor the shrewdness, nor the ambition to make something remarkable of themselves. Rather do they frolic through life like thoughtless children; laughing, crying, falling down and picking themselves up--only to fall again; but always good-natured, kindly and gay, with a happy-go-lucky cheerfulness that is very appealing as well as contagious whilst one is among them.

There is none of the studied courtesy of the Parisian, nor yet his studied elegance; but a bright spontaneity both in outward effect and natural manner, which shows itself in many captivating little customs of everyday. Take for instance the pretty fashion of kissing a lady’s hand: in France this is confined to occasions of ceremony, and so creates at once an atmosphere of the formal; in Vienna it is the ordinary expression of joyous welcome, so that even the shop-keepers, on the entrance of a lady customer, exclaim: “_Kuss die Hand, gnädige Frau!_” While to a gentleman they declare: “I have the honour (to greet you) _meinherr_!”

Everyone is anxious to please, and quick to help the stranger in his struggles with language. As in Bavaria, the German spoken is softened of its original starchiness; so that _mädchen_ becomes _mädl_, _bischen bissell_, etc. Strict Hanoverians scorn such vandalism, but in the mouth of the gentler-tongued Southerners it is very pretty. The “low dialect” of the people, that is, the typical _wienerisch_, is an appalling jargon quite incomprehensible to the foreigner. But kindliness, the language spoken by one and all of the warm-hearted Viennese, is everywhere recognized and appreciated.

Patsy assures me that, even in their impertinences, the young blades of the town are never crass; but show, rather, a lively humour and child-like interest in the lady of their admiration. I well remember that first evening, after the _hauptmann_ had left us, when my niece told me seriously that she was convinced of the grave libel cast on Austrians as a whole and Austrian officers in particular.

“You know, Uncle Peter,” says she, swinging to my arm, as we enter our hotel, “they say they are horrid and dissipated, and will take the first opportunity to say shocking things to a girl. But _I_ think they are far too clever for that, besides too fine. I am sure they know what one is, the minute they look at one; and behave accordingly. Don’t you,” adds Patsy anxiously, “think so too, Uncle Peter?”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” I return dubiously, “but there’s their architecture, you know. You can’t get round that. What people build--”

A slim hand is clapped over my mouth. And, “you are to remember please,” says Patsy severely, “we are talking now not of architects but of officers.”

It was true. And, singularly, we have been talking of them a good deal ever since.

II

THE PLAYERS WHO NEVER GROW OLD

Not many days after our establishment in the Carnival City, Patsy had her first experience with the smart “masher” and his unique little game. I being by no means bred to chaperoning, and in all respects, besides, immorally modern, allowed the young lady to go round the corner to a sweet-shop unaccompanied. She came back with a high colour instead of caramels, and--no, there is no way of softening it--she was giggling.

Patsy never giggles unless something scandalous has happened. “What’s the matter?” I asked, instantly alarmed.

She tumbled into a chair, laughing helplessly. “The--the funniest thing,” she began, gasping.

“A man, I suppose?”

Patsy stopped laughing, and regarded me admiringly. “What an analyst you are, Uncle Peter! Yes, of course a man; but--”

“Did he follow you--did he speak to you?” I may be modern, but I had one eye on my hat and overcoat.

Patsy giggled again. “No--oh no, Uncle Peter. He didn’t follow me, he _went ahead_ of me; and, when I reached the corner, there he was standing, hat in hand, with the most injured air--as though our appointment was for half past two and I had kept him waiting quite an hour! His expression was perfectly heavenly--plaintive resignation just giving way to radiant delight--I can’t think how he managed it on such short notice. Probably by extensive practice before the glass.

“Anyhow, there was one moment of awful apprehension for him, just as I came up; and then--the most crestfallen disappointment you can imagine. He had arranged everything so considerately and subtly for me, and I, all unconscious of him, passed on! I didn’t dare look back, but out of the tail of my eye I could see his chagrin as I disappeared--into the side entrance of the hotel. All that art gone for nothing I suppose he thought; and to be begun over again at the next corner,” added Patsy, who is a young woman of rather terrible discernment, at times.

“But it is nice of them not to speak, isn’t it?” she said. “It shows how really clever they are. No Englishman or Frenchman of the same er--proclivities would have been as subtle.”

Nor as dangerous, thinks Uncle Peter to himself, with a promise to curb his modernity for the future. It is all very amusing, this manœuvre of the flirtatious Viennese male; and, since Patsy’s encounter, I have seen it so many times as to know it to be typical; but in its very refinement lies its evil. If the Austrian, even in his vices, were not so free from crudity--so transparently naïve, his attraction would be halved--if not lost entirely. But Patsy was right in her surmise that he can place a woman at a glance; and if he ventures to lead her a bit further than her looks suggest, and than he afterwards finds possible, he is quick to realize his mistake and if he can to make reparation.

As a student, like his German cousin, he lives in frank unmorality. There are thousands of students in Vienna--students at the universities, medical students, music students--each with his _schatzkind_, who often shares his studies as well as his garret. This thoroughly cosmopolitan set of young people plays a distinct part in the free and easy jollity of the city as a whole. You see them in the streets and cafés, in the topmost gallery at the Opera, and forming enthusiastic groups at all concerts; their shabby velveteens a nice contrast with their vivid, impressionable faces.

During Carnival they are natural leaders in the routs and festivities; this entire season is for them one rollicking fancy-dress ball. They may go hungry, but they can always arrange a new and clever costume; and one meets them coming home arm-in-arm through the dusk, carrying bulky parcels and humming the waltz from the latest operette. They smile at everybody, and everybody smiles back, and unconsciously starts humming too. Patsy says there is something about dusk, and big packages, and soft-falling snow that makes one hum. I feared from the first that this was a demoralizing atmosphere for Patsy.

It would have been different if we hadn’t known people. But we did know people--a delightful handful, eager to lavish their boundless hospitality on the _wunderschönes mädl_. And then there was Captain Max, whose marvellous uniforms and crisp black moustache soon became as familiar to our hotel as the bow of the head waiter. Two or three days after our arrival, Captain Max and his mother took Patsy to her first Viennese ball. I stayed at home to nurse my rheumatism, which the freezing temperature and constant snow had not improved. But I was waiting by our sitting-room fire to “hear all about it,” when Patsy returned at half past three--her arms full of roses, her auburn head less strictly coiffed than when she sallied forth.

“Oh, Uncle Peter!” She kissed me at her favourite angle somewhere behind the ear, and sank into a cushion with her chiffons like a flower into its petals.

“Well, well, did you amuse yourself? The Countess wasn’t difficult?”

“She was a duck! (I should no more think of apologizing for Patsy’s English than for her _retroussé_ nose. Both, as my French friend says, intrigue me infinitely.) She danced harder than anyone, and _lieber Himmel_,” says Patsy with a gusty sigh, “how they do dance! But I’ll begin at the beginning and tell you everything.

“Of course you know it was this club Captain Max belongs to, and that they dance every month in the ball-rooms of the different hotels. There are only thirty or forty members in the club, so it’s nice and small--not one of those herd affairs. Most of the people had arrived before us, and were sitting in the galleries round the ball-room; and before ever the dancing began, Uncle Peter, they all were eating and drinking things. The galleries are raised by just a few steps from the floor of the room itself, and there are lots of tables where continuous supper goes on--really, one is expected to eat _something_ between every two dances.

“Fancy, Uncle Peter, one is busily dissecting a quail when one’s partner appears; one finishes the waltz, and returns to take another bite, only to be interrupted again, and carried off. It is provoking! But the tables are convenient as an anchor to steer for and much more fun for the chaperones, I should think, than those dreary chairs against the wall, at home.

“I haven’t told you the appalling ordeal of actually arriving, however. Every girl with her escort, must walk the length of the ball-room _alone_, while the lucky ones who are already settled in the gallery pass judgment on one’s frock, coiffure and all the rest. Captain Max hadn’t warned me, and when I found myself under that battery of lorgnettes and monocles I was petrified. I knew that my train was a fright, and every pin in my hair about to fall; but somehow I got across that terrible expanse of slippery floor, and to our table.

“The Countess’s sister was there--the one who called on Sunday you know--and her son and daughter, such a pretty girl, Uncle Peter! Black hair and creamy skin--of course the whole family shows the Hungarian strain--and a delicious frock just to her ankles. It seems all the young girls here wear short dresses for dancing, and so they don’t have that draggled look we get with our trains. Everyone at the table, including the women, rose during introductions; and of course all the men kissed one’s hand. Then they brought dozens of other men. Captain Max says there are always three times as many as there are girls at these dances--and I met such a lot that for the rest of the evening I had no idea whom I knew and whom I didn’t.

“We began to dance directly, and oh, my dear, the Vienna waltz! I’ve seen it on the stage, and it looked easy--just standing in one spot and whirling round; but when one actually attempted it--! At first I was so dizzy, I could only hold up my train and keep my feet going. I know now all the sensations of a top when it’s spun at full speed, and never allowed to die down. But, after a while, I regained sufficient consciousness to catch the little step they take on the second step, and then it was easier. There’s a sort of swing to it, too, that’s rather fascinating; and Captain Max does do it well.”

Patsy, on her cushion, gazed into the fire--then at the roses in her lap. “Ahem!” I coughed, as an uncle will when the clock points to four of the dawn. “You were saying?”

“Oh!--yes. Well, the music of course was heavenly; one could have danced to it all night, as most of them do here. The Frau Gräfin said hardly anyone goes home before six in the morning, and some at eight! That is why the Viennese laugh at their own custom of paying the porter twenty _hellers_ for opening the door after half past ten; they all come home in the morning, after the house is unlocked again!

“But I couldn’t have kept it up any longer, Uncle Peter. In the first place you are never allowed to sit out a dance, not even part of one. The minute you drop into a chair out of sheer weariness, some one comes and clicks his heels together, bows profoundly, and off you have to go with him. Then they have a habit of breaking in, that is convenient at times, and annoying at others. All the men who have no partners stand in the middle of the room, and when you have had a round or two with one person, another very courteously but firmly stops you and claims his turn. In this way, each dance is divided between four or five men. It’s all very well when you don’t like your partner of the moment, but--”

Patsy again was looking at her yellow roses. “There are disadvantages?” I suggested.

“Yes. Oh, several kinds of disadvantages, Uncle Peter. Most of my dances were silent as the grave. I would say, ‘you speak English?’ My partner would reply, ‘alas, fräulein, a few words only. But you, surely you speak German?’ ‘Unfortunately, not at all.’ Then dead silence. But they are all kindness in trying to understand, and everyone wants to learn our way of waltzing--‘_so langsam_,’ they say wonderingly. When Captain Max and I tried it, so that I might get a little rest, all the others stopped dancing and watched the performance. Then every man I met wanted me to teach him--they are just like children over something new.

“Poor Uncle Peter, you’re yawning. Only let me tell you about the other dances, and then you can go to bed. There were two quadrilles, not the old-fashioned kind, but quite like cotillon figures--really charming. They showed the pretty costumes of the girls and the uniforms of the officers to much better advantage than the round dances do. Then there was a terrible thing called the _Polka Schnell_--faster even than the regular waltz, and that makes one giddy to watch. But the Countess and all the chaperones threw themselves into it as madly as the younger ones, and weren’t in the least out of breath at the end. I believe Viennese women never grow old. They seem to have as good a time at sixty as at sixteen, and to be as popular.

“After the second quadrille, we had ‘supper’--though we’d been eating, as I told you, all evening. But now we sat down formally to chicken and salad, cakes of all sorts and cheese and beer. It was a funny supper, wasn’t it, Uncle Peter? I suppose they’d sniff at our champagne and ices; they like a substantial meal. The dance immediately after supper is Ladies’ Choice, and it’s amusing to watch the frantic efforts of each man to engage the favour of his particular divinity. They lean against a pillar and stare into one’s eyes with the most despairing gaze, looking anxiously meanwhile to see if one holds their bouquet. I forgot to tell you the pretty custom they have of bringing one roses and violets all during the evening. The men have great baskets of flowers in their dressing-room, and hurry to and fro with posies for the ladies they admire. By the time you are ready to go home, you have quite an imposing collection.”

“All of one colour, it seems,” I observed innocently, as Patsy herself stifled a yawn, and rose regretfully from her cushioned nest.

“Oh,” said Patsy with immoderate indifference, “they’re all in my room--the violets and everything. These”--looking down at Captain Max’s roses--“I must have forgotten these!” she decides with a brilliant smile. “Goodnight, Uncle Peter--you’re rather a dear.”

That settled it; as any properly trained uncle would have known. When a healthy young woman begins to call her moth-eaten male relatives by endearing names, it is time to lock the stable door--or at least to realize one’s temerity in having opened it in the first place. But, as Patsy’s mother, from her severe infancy, has told me, I am most improperly trained; so I hastened to accept an invitation from Countess H----, bidding my niece and me to a skating party at her son’s rink next evening.

Every true Viennese has his private rink membership, as he has his other clubs, and is an expert skater. All afternoon and evening the various skating resorts are crowded with devotees of the graceful sport; which is held, by the way, out of doors--the large rinks being simply walled in from the street. Captain Max’s is of quite imposing proportions, a very different affair from the cramped, stuffy “ice-palace” of Paris or London. There is a building, to be sure, but this is merely for the _garde-robe_ and the inevitable refreshment rooms. The skating takes place on the vast field of ice outside.

At night this is brilliantly illuminated with parti-coloured lights, and the scene during Carnival--when the skaters are frequently in fancy-dress--is fascinating beyond description. As I first saw it, gipsies were gliding over the ice with pierrots, geisha girls with pierrettes; Arabs in the ghostly burnous swept past with Indians, painted and feathered, and a whole regiment of Rough Riders swooped down upon them, with blood-thirsty yells. A wonderful polar bear (under his skin a lieutenant of cavalry) lumbered about with his friend an elephant; and devils, ballet-girls (by day perfect gentlemen), _toreros_ and jockeys, frisked from one end of the rink to the other--while one of the two seductive Viennese bands was always playing.

Patsy at last saw dancing on the ice, and lost her heart once for all to this marvellous accomplishment. When Captain Max, in his subduing red-and-black Mephistopheles costume, begged her to try it, she clapped her hands like a child and flew with him to a quieter corner of the rink where he might teach her the difficult gyrations. Before the evening was over she was waltzing delightedly in the centre, with the best of them. I struggle not to dote, but I must set down here that I have seen few sights as alluring as that young witch, in her bright Cossack’s jacket and trim skirt, gliding and whirling in the slippery dance; with the maze of other brilliant costumes round her, the fairy lights overhead, and in the air the lilt and thrill of a Vienna waltz.

When we went into the pavilion later for something hot, I noticed with amazement how many of the pierrots had grey hair under their caps, and how many of the geisha girls and pierrettes were addressed as “mother.” “But certainly!” said our charming Frau Gräfin with spirit. “Because they have children, are they dead? Because they have gone through much trial in life, are they to mope in a corner and know none of life’s joy? Pardon me, honored _meinherr_, if I suggest that they are not as old as some of your American young people of twenty!”

I saw that we had fallen on a tender subject with the delightful lady; who, herself the mother of a boy of twenty-eight, is (as Patsy remarked) quite as lively as any girl of sixteen. And who, if I remember rightly, was rather harshly criticised thereupon at the time of her residence in Washington. She had certainly a just revenge in her own criticism of the blasé, weary American youth of today; and the contrast between him and the Viennese of middle age or even advanced years as other nations number them. Fresh, _vif_, alert with interest for everything, and time for everything as well, the Austrians may be children to the end of their days; but they are wise children, who stay young by design, not by incapacity.

As we have said before, they are so entirely unself-conscious that they never fear making fools of themselves; and, in consequence, do not do so. Young and mature, they throw themselves into everything, with a whole-hearted abandon that in itself stimulates a like enthusiasm in all about them. They are each other’s currents of energy that is never exhausted, but always procreative. And nothing is too much trouble. They will take infinite pains, and go to any amount of expense, to help towards the success of the smallest festivity, while their thought and generosity for others in either joy or trouble is a revelation to the more stolid Anglo-Saxon.

Among our Viennese friends was a charming bachelor, Herr von G----. He started to Paris one week-end, and had got as far as Munich when he heard from someone that Patsy had tonsilitis. He took the next train back to Vienna, and presented himself at our hotel the same evening. It distressed me very much when I heard why he had come, as the child was really not seriously ill; but Herr von G----said earnestly, “I do not return to bore you; I am merely on hand if you need me.” And for a wonder he was not in love with Patsy. The act was one of simple friendship for us both.

When Patsy had recovered, Herr von G----, instead of going on with his postponed journey, took us up to Semmering for two or three days of winter sports. Here, within an hour’s ride of their own city, the Viennese revel in the delights of lugeing, ski-ing, and sleighing--as well as skating, of course; giving themselves to the healthful exercise with characteristic zest and skill. The tiniest children manage their skis with lightning dexterity, and it is beautiful to watch their small swaying bodies skim across the snow like white birds on wing. This kind of flying combines the æsthetic with the practical, and leaves to its natural majesty the clearest of crisp blue skies overhead.

Tobogganing is scarcely less favoured by the Austrians, who sweep down their dizzy hills with a vim that knows no fear. Horses are waiting at the foot, to drag the toboggans up again; and all day long the laughing groups of men and women, young girls, officers and children, dart down the snowy steeps--ten and twenty strong on each sled--and are hauled back to begin anew. Observing the crowds of Viennese who daily go to and from Semmering, and knowing as one does many of them who would think a week without this excursion shorn of its greatest pleasure, one does not wonder at the happy healthy faces and splendid colour of this sport-loving people.

In the Spring and Fall they play tennis and ride in the Prater--a large park on the outskirts of Vienna; while in the summer everyone who can goes walking in the Tyrol or the German mountains. Women as well as men are expert walkers and mountain-climbers, and their horsemanship is the pride of the nation. It is interesting to note that the Viennese have never paid much attention to golf, and the reason: it is too tame for them. All their sports are swift, dashing, and full of a light individual grace. They are devoted to fencing--to anything that calls into play the quick and skilful move of the individual body; the heavy and brutal are unknown to them. Like children they boldly attack the feat that lures the eye; and, like children always, achieve therein a _succès fou_.

What is a rheumatic uncle among such people? All he can do is to open doors--which by no amount of gymnastics is he able to shut when he should.

III

THE FAIRY PLAY

Between officers’ cotillons and opera, _thés dansants_ and military concerts at the Stadt Park, Patsy sandwiched conscientious layers of sight-seeing. I am not of those who follow Baedeker (even in a shame-faced brown linen cover), but I dutifully accompanied her to the gallery and the royal stables, and to worship before Maria Theresa’s emeralds in the Treasury. At the Rathaus I balked--nothing except rice pudding is as depressing to me as a town-hall; when it came to the Natural History Museum I was tepid also. And from that time forth Patsy--with the irrepressible superiority that belongs to born sightseers and to people who take cold baths--announced that she would take the maid.

I thought this a philanthropic idea, and for several reasons worthy of encouragement. So Patsy and the red-cheeked _mädl_ embarked on a heavy sea of churches, the _mädl_ munching apples under rose-windows, while Patsy inspected the pulpit. A week had been spent in this innocent diversion, when the dire news came to us that the _mädl_ had been taken to a hospital with peritonitis. The sour-faced spinster who succeeded her Patsy would have none of. “I shall go alone to see the engravings,” she announced firmly.