Our first experience in the general dining-room was a revelation of many things. The room was air-tight. Not a window or door was permitted to be opened the smallest crack. The men smoked all through dinner, and quite a number of women smoked from one to a dozen cigarettes held in all manner of curious cigarette-holders, some of which were only a handle with a ring for the cigarette, something like our opera-gla.s.s handles, while others were the more familiar mouthpieces. But all were jewelled and handsome, and the women who used them were all elderly. Two women smoked strong black cigars, but as the smokers were very smart and went in court society, Bee"s eyes only grew round and big, and she ventured no word of criticism.
But all this smoke and lack of ventilation made the air very thick and hot and unbreathable for us, so that we complained to the proprietor, who sympathised with us so deeply that he nearly wept, but he a.s.sured us that Austrians were even worse than the French in their fear of a draught, and he declared that while he would very willingly open all the windows, and as far as he was concerned, he himself revelled in fresh air,--nevertheless, if he should follow our advice, his hotel would be emptied the next day of all but our one American party.
In vain we reminded him that it was August. Not a window nor a door was opened in that dining-room while we were there.
But we got along very well, for we are not too strenuous in our demands,--especially when we realise that we cannot get them acceded to,--so in lieu of air we breathed smoke, and in watching the people we soon forgot all about it. Air is not essential after all when royalty is present.
If not royalty, at least the next thing to it. The gorgeous and glorious officers of his Majesty"s suite, handsome, distinguished, young, and ever near the throne! Bee"s eyes were glued to their table. We were afraid the poor dear would never pull through. She scarcely ate any dinner.
"Bee," I whispered, pulling her dress under the table, "you really must not pay them such marked attention. Remember your husband and baby--far away, to be sure, but still _there_!"
"What difference does it make, I should like to know," was Bee"s callous reply. "They can"t speak English."
Now of all the irrelevant retorts!
Bee had so evidently capitulated to the whole lot that I stole a few furtive glances myself, and while I was rewarded by some brief interest from their table, and I felt sure that they were talking about us, it seemed to me that the interest of _The One_, the tallest, handsomest, and the one most suited for a pedestal in Central Park, was overlooking both Bee"s and my undeniable attractions, and was concentrating all his fiery, hawk-like glances upon Mrs. Jimmie, whose total unconsciousness of her great beauty is one of her supreme charms. She wore a black lace gown that night with sleeves which came not quite to her elbow; no bracelets to mar those perfect arms, but her hands fairly loaded with rings. She never looks at any other man except Jimmie, and Jimmie thinks that the earth exists simply for her. Poor Jimmie never can express his emotion in proper words, but I have seen his eyes fill with tears of love and pride as he whispered to me, "Isn"t she ripping to-night?"
She certainly was "ripping" that first night at Ischl--far more ripping than any t.i.tled dame there, upon whose mature ugliness all her calm attention was bestowed, while I was on the verge of collapse when I saw that Bee"s love was like to go unrequited, while Mrs. Jimmie"s rings and beauty--I name her attractions in their proper order as far as I was able to gather from the enamoured officer"s glances--s.n.a.t.c.hed the prize.
The situation as it bade fair to develop was far, far too sacred to permit of ribald speech, so with the greatest difficulty I held my tongue. For my only natural confidant, Jimmie, was plainly disqualified in this case.
The next morning Jimmie wanted us to drive, but I, hoping to give matters an onward fillip, spoke so warmly in favour of a morning stroll in the promenade "to see people" that he gave in, and Bee"s attentions to me while garbing ourselves were so marked that I almost hoped I had been wrong the night before.
But alas for our ignorance of officers" duties! Not one of those in his Majesty"s suite was visible, although all the old ladies were out in force, and some very pretty Austrian girls appeared, smartly gowned, and most of them carrying slender little gold or silver mounted sticks.
Those sticks caught Bee"s eye at once, and she bought one before the hour was over, much to Jimmie"s disgust.
But his expostulations produced no effect. It seemed queer to me--her sister--that he should waste his breath. But Jimmie was obliged to relieve his mind by saying that it looked too p.r.o.nounced.
"It"s all right for an Austrian," said Jimmie, wagging his head. "But everybody knows you are an American, and it doesn"t look right."
"Doesn"t it go with my costume, Jimmie?" demanded Bee. "Look me over!
Doesn"t it match?"
Alas for Jimmie! It _did_ match. Bee"s carrying it simply looked saucy, not loud. I couldn"t have carried it--I should have tripped over it, and fallen down. Mrs. Jimmie would have dropped or broken it. Bee and that stick simply fitted each other--there in Ischl! Nowhere else.
At luncheon, just as we were going out, the four officers came in. We pa.s.sed them in the doorway. Bee looked desperate. They lined up to allow us to pa.s.s, and for a moment I thought Bee was going to s.n.a.t.c.h one, and make her escape. But she compromised, on seeing them seat themselves at the table we had just left, by sending Jimmie back to look for her handkerchief.
"If that doesn"t fetch an acquaintance," Bee"s look seemed to say, "with Jimmie burrowing around on the floor among their boots and spurs, I shall have but a poor opinion of Austrian ingenuity."
Jimmie was gone half an hour. When he came back, his face was too innocent. He seated himself quietly, and after saying, "It wasn"t there, Bee," he went on smoking placidly.
Now, any one who knows anything about anything, cannot fail to admit that my sister ought either to be at the head of Tammany Hall or the army. She gave one look at Jimmie"s suspiciously bland countenance, then gathered up her gloves, her veil and stick, and went slowly up-stairs, apparently in a brown study.
Jimmie is clever, but he is no match for a clever woman. No man _is_, for that matter.
The moment she was out of sight, he began to chuckle.
"Great Scott," he whispered, bringing our three heads together by a gesture. "If Bee knew that all those officers we just pa.s.sed went right in, and sat down at the very table we left, so that when she sent me for her handkerchief I had to run bang into them, I wonder if she would have gone up-stairs so calmly!"
"Why didn"t you tell her?" I cried.
"I was going to--after I had got her curiosity up a little. They were very polite, and nothing would do but I must sit down, and have a gla.s.s of beer with them. I didn"t want that, so I took a cigar, and they all nearly fell over themselves to offer me one--from the most beautiful cigar cases you ever saw. That tall chap with the eyes had one of gold, with the Tzar"s face done in enamel, surmounted by the imperial crown in diamonds, and an inscription on the inside showing that the Tzar gave it to him. I took one out of that case for Bee"s sake. I"ll save her the stub!"
"Did they ask any questions about us?" I said, guilelessly.
"Yes, heaps. And when I told them how devoted my wife was to the Empress Elizabeth they offered to make up a party to show us two of the shrines she built near here, and invited us to dine afterward. So I made it for this afternoon at three. Don"t tell Bee. Let"s surprise her. Her eyes will pop clear out of her head when she sees them."
Within ten minutes I had told Bee everything I knew, and had even enlarged upon it a little, and Bee, in a holy delight, was preparing to robe herself in costly array. She solemnly promised me to be surprised when she saw them.
Only two of them could leave--The One, whose name shall be Count Andreae von Engel, and the other, Baron Oscar von Furzmann. They had a four-seated carriage for us, while they accompanied us on horseback.
That drive was one of the most romantic episodes which ever came into my prosaic life. To be sure I was not in the romance at all,--neither one of those bottle-green knights had an eye for _me_--but I was there, and I saw and heard and enjoyed it more than anybody.
Bee, with the craft of a fox, offered to sit riding backward with Jimmie, knowing that she must thus perforce be face to face with the hors.e.m.e.n. But in this she was outwitted by a mere man, but a man skilled in intrigue and court diplomacy. Although the road was narrow and dangerous, twisting over mountains and beside rushing streams, The One, in order to feast his eyes on Mrs. Jimmie, permitted his horse to curvet and caracole as if he were in tourney. Jimmie, while the count was doing it, managed to whisper to me: "Tom Sawyer showing off," but _I_ knew that it was for a second purpose which counted for even more than the first.
I must admit that this Austrian diplomat was very skilful, and managed it in a way to throw the unsuspicious wholly off his guard, for, in order not to make his manoeuvres too marked, he often rode ahead of the carriage, when, by turning in his saddle, he could look back and fling his ardent glances in our direction. They not only overshot me, but glanced as harmlessly off Mrs. Jimmie"s arrow-proof armour of complete unconsciousness as if they had hurtled aimlessly over her handsome head.
I was in ecstasies, for Bee"s wholesome admiration of her stunning officer and his undeniably unusual horsemanship prevented her from being rendered in any way uncomfortable by his action, for truth to tell, Bee _was_ a target for the roving glances of Baron von Furzmann, but he was so hopelessly the wrong man that she not only was unaware of it then but vehemently disclaimed it when I enlightened her later. Alas and alack!
The wrong man is always the wrong man, and never can take the place of the right man, no matter what his country or speech.
It was supremely interesting to talk with men who had known the beautiful Empress well; to whom her living beauty was as familiar as her pictured loveliness was to us. We plied them with countless questions as to her wonderful horsemanship, her daily appearance, her dress, her conversation, and her learning. Their enthusiastic praise of her was genuine and spontaneous.
I was dying to ask minute questions about the Crown Prince"s affair, but just enough sense was left in my make-up to know that I must not. They might whisper their gossip to each other who knew all of the truth anyway, but to strangers their loyalty would compel them to suppress not only what they themselves knew but what we knew to be the truth. Both of these officers had known Prince Rudie well; had hunted with him; travelled with him; served with him; had often been at his hunting-lodge Mayerling, where he died, but, when they came to refer to this part of their narrative, they were so visibly embarra.s.sed that we changed the subject to the Princess Stephanie. Here, although they were studiously careful to put nothing into actual words, their manner plainly indicated their contempt and dislike of the heavy Belgian Princess, who was so poor a helpmeet for the graceful and picturesque figure of the Crown Prince of Austria.
"Did you know the lady in her Majesty"s suite who wrote "The Martyrdom of an Empress?"" I demanded, boldly.
Von Engel"s face flushed darkly.
"I do not know. I am not certain," he stammered.
"Never mind. Don"t commit yourself. She was exiled, wasn"t she, for arranging meetings between Prince Rudolph and his _belle amie?_ She was a dear thing, whoever she was, for she gave him what was probably the only real happiness he ever knew. And when people love each other well enough to die together, it means more than most men and women can boast."
Jimmie trod on my foot just here, so I stopped, but, to his and my surprise, Mrs. Jimmie not only agreed with me, but added:
"What a misfortune it is that princes and kings and queens must marry for state reasons, so that love can play no part."
I don"t know whether Von Engel had not then put two and two together, so that he knew that Mrs. Jimmie had her own husband in mind when she made that speech about love or not. I think not, for I happened to be looking at him, and for a moment I thought he was going to spring from his horse right into her lap.
To me the two loveliest women rulers of the world, the ones whose histories I most grieve over, and with whose temperaments I am most in sympathy, are the Empress Eugenie of the French and the Empress Elizabeth of Austria. The Empress Elizabeth was of such a high-strung, nervous, proud temperament that had there not been madness in her unfortunate family, all her apparently unbalanced acts could be accounted for by her imperious and imperial nature, and the stigma of a mind even partially unbalanced need never have been hers. Many a wife in the common walks of life has been driven to more insane acts in the eyes of an unfeeling and critical world than ever the unhappy Empress Elizabeth committed, and for the same causes. An inhumanly tyrannical mother-in-law, the most vicious of her vicious kind, whose chief delight was to torture the high-strung nature she was too small to comprehend; a husband, encouraged in his not-to-be-borne gallantries by his own mother, this same monstrous mother-in-law of the Empress; her children"s love aborted by this same fiend in woman form--is it any marvel that the proud Empress broke away from her splendid torture and found a sad comfort in travel and study? The wonder of it is that she chose so mild a remedy. She might have murdered her husband"s mother, and those who knew would have declared her justified. If she had done so she could scarcely have suffered in her mind more than she did.
When I expressed some of these opinions I discovered that both officers looked at me with undisguised sympathy. They themselves dared not put into words such incendiary thoughts, but they welcomed their expression from another. This was not the first time I had worded the inner thoughts of a company who dared not speak out themselves, but, as catspaws are invariably burned, I cannot lay to my soul the flattering unction that I have escaped their common lot. Bee says I am generally burned to a cinder.
We had just visited the last of the shrines, which were interesting only because erected by the Empress, when we were overtaken by a terrific mountain storm which broke over our heads without warning. The rain came down in torrents, but not even the officers got wet, for they instantly produced from some mysterious region rubber capes which completely enveloped their beautiful uniforms.
I was not sure, but, in the general confusion of closing the carriage top, I thought I saw Count Andreae whisper to Mrs. Jimmie. I am positive I heard Von Furzmann whisper to Bee. So, not to be outdone, I leaned over and whispered to Jimmie. I do so hate to be left out of a thing.
We had a gay little supper at the Kaiserin Elisabeth, but I could not see that Count Andreae "got any forrarder," as Jimmie would say, for he literally could not concentrate his attention on Mrs. Jimmie on account of Bee"s attentions to him. Poor Von Furzmann had to content himself with Jimmie and me.
The next day being the Emperor"s birthday, the whole town was gloriously illuminated, and the splendid old Franz Josef--splendid in spite of his past irregularities--appeared before his adoring people, with Bee the most adoring of all his subjects.