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.