by Guy McCrone
With a quick gesture Stephanie put a hand on each of her shoulders, turned her to the light and regarded her for a time with admiration.
“You are a dear and beautiful child!” she said, speaking in her own language, and, taking Phœbe into her arms, kissed her first on one cheek and then the other.
Phœbe blushed scarlet and took her leave. Austrians were perhaps sentimental, she told herself, as she made her way down the worn stone staircase. But she would go back soon. For Stephanie Hirsch was kind.
Chapter Fourteen
THE Hayburns were present at Pepi Klem’s reunion with her parents. Behind a set smile of politeness the Scotch couple considered the episode over-acted.
Pepi threw herself first into her mother’s, then into her father’s arms. She begged their forgiveness, implored them not to scorn her, and told them her love had brought her back. But she had not, it seemed, retracted one whit from the stand she was taking over becoming a singer and leading an independent life of her own.
Her simple, kindly parents, loving, in the Austrian fashion, this dramatic situation, were delighted. Her father offered, now he was convinced, as he put it, that music really called her, to pay out a portion of what had been intended as her dowry, for the proper training of her voice. The mention of the word dowry caused Pepi to demand in stricken tones: How was poor, poor Willi Pommer? Willi Pommer, it seemed, felt rather a dull dog these days, on account, no doubt, of herself; but apart from that he was very much as usual. This last was the only part of this scene of reunion that did not quite come up to the emotional level of the rest, the Hayburns felt, forgetting that Pepi had merely broken an agreement, and not Willi Pommer’s heart.
But it was not for these two young people from an Island where the show of feeling is counted a weakness, to judge this reunion in a land where quick emotion is part of the currency of daily expression. That the Klems exaggerated their joy did not mean that their feelings were hollow.
Pepi, then, was to continue with her cousin Lisa Fischer until such time as the young Herr and Frau Hayburn should be gone. Pepi, greatly daring, had told her parents where she was living at present, guessing rightly that even Fräulein Fischer would be caught up in the present wave of emotion—other aspects of her existence forgotten—and clothed with a halo as a handmaid of song. Thereafter she, Pepi, would return to her father’s roof, hire a piano, and add arpeggios and distinction to her home in the Quellengasse.
It was on account of the arpeggios that Frau Klem looked to the Hayburns’ going with so little concern. For would not Pepi presently be a famous prima donna and fully compensate them?
If Phœbe and Henry could not, perhaps, read the future with the Klems’ eyes, they were, none the less, pleased that the matter should be so pleasantly settled.
II
The month of April was, indeed, to be among the most pleasant Phœbe had known. When it was some days old she wrote to Bel telling her that she intended to stay with her husband in Vienna; that here there was more than the necessary skill—in this she quoted Stephanie Hirsch pompously—and that they were now looking for a little house near the woods in which to spend the summer. When she had posted the letter she felt misgivings. It was not easy for her seriously to flaunt Bel.
But now, with her husband and the Hirsch ladies supporting her own strong inclinations, Phœbe decided that her decision must be right.
She was seeing much of Stephanie Hirsch now. Henry had taken Maximilian’s lecture to heart; and, busy though he was, he made time to visit the “old tabbies” in the Paulanergasse, present them with a bouquet of Italian roses with a formality that sat so ill upon him that they were touched, and thank them for all the kind interest they were taking in his wife.
And so, with the best of goodwill fully restored, Stephanie Hirsch put herself and her carriage at Phœbe’s disposal and spent many radiant April days with her, exploring Vienna’s lovely surroundings. These were days unique in Phœbe’s life. In her memory they were to take on the quality of a dream, long since dreamt. Even as she lived them, she was assailed at times with a sense of their unreality.
The soft air of an unusually mild spring. The shining Russian horses. The much-polished, old-fashioned carriage. The grey-haired, elderly woman in the carriage beside her, whose mid-European elegance owed little to the fashion of her time; whose dignity did not rob her friendliness of warmth. The triumphant consciousness of her own young body, and the magic that her love for Henry was working within it.
More than once their carriage took them up into the woods out of sight of any dwelling, following, perhaps, an alley road by some rushing stream. They drove through regions of pinetrees where squirrels scurried out of sight, disappearing into the gloom of the brown, needle-covered forest floor; through bright regions of sprouting beech, oak or birch, where there were April violets, pale fresh grass and patches of white sunshine. Then suddenly they might come upon an opening and find all Vienna lying over yonder in the crystal distance; its gardens, its palaces, its church spires all to be distinguished in the clear spring light. Days of rapture, of expectation, of young fulfilment, of sharp awareness of the romance and beauty that fed her avid senses.
By mid-April they had found a little house. It had not been altogether easy for Phœbe to persuade Stephanie that she and her husband were seeking anything so simple. Like most other Continentals of her day, the younger Fräulein Hirsch took for granted that the Hayburns, like all the other “English”, were made of money.
It was a house, its upper storey of timber, situated in the forest near Ober Döbling, a miniature Tyrolean chalet, gay with fresh paint, with an upper balcony from which you could touch the pine-trees, a little rose-garden, a motherly landlady, who was, at once, intimately interested in Phœbe, and a benign St. Bernard dog, that bore with sleepy dignity the malicious slander painted on a board nailed to the garden gate, that here there was a fierce creature on the watch ready to tear all tramps and vagrants to pieces.
On the following Sunday Henry went alone to see this house. He grumbled, as a formal show of his authority, at the price demanded for the season, decided, however, that it was healthy and at a distance that could easily be covered twice a day on his “Kangaroo”, and so it was taken.
Phœbe seemed to herself to be moving through this Viennese April on a strange rising wave of happiness. Her heart kept bursting into an ever-brighter blooming, like the lilac and the laburnum in the parks around her. She ran to the Paulanergasse to tell Stephanie that Henry had taken the house, and that they were moving out on the first of May.
Stephanie Hirsch bent to kiss Phœbe, and as she did so, there were tears in her eyes. At no time in her own life had it been given to her to know ecstasy. The sight of it in Phœbe aroused in her a strange, unnamed compassion.
“But, my dearest,” she said, “the first of May you cannot go. You are coming in the carriage with me.” And as Phœbe looked blank, she added: “On the first of May is the May Corso in the Prater. It is very important that you see these things, if you will live in Vienna.” And she went on to explain to Phœbe the nature of this May Day ceremony. Nothing would make her sister Helene and herself happier, than that Phœbe and Herr Hayburn should drive in the Prater with them.
They accepted the invitation, and Phœbe’s month of April moved on joyfully to this fitting end.
III
The first of May dawned serene and misty, promising a full continuation of the fine weather. Henry, accustomed to early rising, awoke at his usual time. It was almost with a sense of annoyance that, as full consciousness returned, he came to remember what day it was. He was an industrious young man, with work to do, and a day of holiday seemed to him at this cool hour of the morning, nothing but a needless and frivolous interruption.
He turned to look at his wife. She lay beside him, still breathing deeply and steadily. Her face was rosy with sleep. The black plaits of her hair were straggling on the pillow beside her. That he might not wake her, he slid gentl
y from his side of the bed, crossed to the open window and stood in his nightshirt looking about him.
The Quellengasse beneath was almost empty. No workmen, it seemed, would be working on the unfinished buildings today; but further down he could see a woman on her knees scrubbing an entrance. Nearer by, a peasant woman was delivering milk from a cart drawn by a great, yellow ox. A small baker’s boy, in a white coat, passed beneath, bearing so large a tray on his head that, for a time, it seemed to Henry, as he looked down, as though this tray of Kaisersemmel, salt sticks and Gipfel moved along the pavement of its own accord. In a kitchen near at hand someone was roasting coffee. Its sharp aroma mixed itself with the smell of last night’s Gulasch and the May-time scents of lime and plane-trees.
He gave a sudden start as he became aware that his wife was standing in her nightdress beside him.
“Oh, hullo. I thought you were asleep.”
“So I was. But you’ve been standing here for hours, Henry. What are you looking at?”
“Nothing much. The weather.”
“It’s going to be glorious today!” She looked about her eagerly.
“Happy?”
She turned to him and nodded, her eyes dancing like a child’s. Suddenly her face flushed, and as though to cover some other feeling, she laid a hand on her husband’s arm.
“You silly boy,” she said quickly, “you’ve let yourself get as cold as a puddock. Go back to bed and warm yourself.”
As they sat up in bed, Phœbe talked with animation of the day that lay before them. He had never seen her so uplifted. He watched her, wondering. She lay propped against her pillow looking at a beam of morning sunshine as it crept across Frau Klem’s coarse window-curtains.
“If our baby’s a boy,” she said presently, “he’s going to be called Robert Hayburn after your father. Just that. Robert Hayburn. None of your Ruanthorpe-Moorhouses or Dermott-Moorhouses or any of that nonsense.”
Henry laughed. It was impossible to follow the train of her thinking.
“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” Phœbe said, turning to look at him. “And, by the way, this morning I must go out and find some flowers for the Hirschs. I meant to order them yesterday.” And, as he had protested at her extravagance, she added: “We really must, Henry; they’ve been so kind.”
While Phœbe was buying flowers, Frau Klem brought Henry a letter. It was in the handwriting of Bel Moorhouse. To his surprise, it was addressed to himself. He tore it open with curiosity. As he read it his face darkened. So Bel was writing to him now? To tell him it was his duty to send Phœbe home! But his wife wasn’t going! What business had Bel to interfere? He folded the letter angrily and thrust it into his pocket. He would not mention this to Phœbe today.
IV
Stephanie Hirsch felt inclined to laugh at Henry as, along with his wife, he presented himself in the Paulanergasse at three o’clock. He wore his best clothes as though they belonged to someone else, and his dutiful, self-conscious bearing suggested anything but lightness of heart. But his wife, with her arms full of roses, her glowing cheeks, and her summer dress, seemed to bring with her everything that was young into the old-fashioned room of the Paulanergasse.
The Hayburns were given sweet wine and the inevitable chocolate cakes with cinnamon, while the Hirsch ladies put the finishing touches to their stiff finery. At last, with an amount of fuss that was a severe trial to the young man of the party, they were seated behind cockaded flunkeys in the family landau.
Stephanie had looked forward to this year’s Corso with keen anticipation. It is always pleasant to show off what one has known and loved to the young and the eager. And to this Viennese woman there was nothing so precious as Vienna and its pageantry. She sat beside Herr Hayburn facing Phœbe, who was in the place of honour on her sister Helene’s right hand.
The carriage made its way out of the Wieden and down that part of the Ring that leads to the Aspern Bridge. Already it was noticeable that all the smarter traffic was making in the same direction. As they passed the Stadtpark, with its shrubs hanging heavy with blossom, they noticed it was unusually empty. The fineness of the weather was drawing everybody to the Prater to see the world go by.
Presently they had crossed the Danube Canal and found themselves in the Praterstrasse, the wide and handsome street that leads to the entrance of the Prater itself. Here carriages were coming in from all sides, and the traffic was heavy as it moved down towards the famous pleasure-grounds.
Workpeople on holiday crowded the side-walks; some of them standing, hoping to see a celebrity pass; more of them walking towards the Prater, where they would see the parade in full swing. There were many families, the plump fathers and mothers carrying baskets of food to be eaten later. Even if times were bad, and there was no money for the roundabout or even a cheap restaurant in the People’s Prater, you could always take the children’s bread and sausage to the Prater meadows, and have all the fun of watching and criticising the rich and the aristocratic, as they displayed their finery to each other in the Haupt Allee—or main drive. The weather of the first of May was kind this year. Little children trotted, chattering and excited, after their parents.
Now the Hirschs’ landau was at the Prater Stern, where seven streets meet and the great park begins. Here the press of carriages was so thick that they could move round the circle only slowly, almost completing it before they reached the entrance to the Haupt Allee. Now they had passed under the railway bridge and were in the great carriage-drive itself, with its double rows of giant chestnut-trees, planted three and a half centuries before, in the days when the Prater was an island of the Danube, and the private hunting-grounds of Austria’s rulers.
As they found their place in the glittering stream of carriages, Phœbe looked at her companions. The elder Fräulein Hirsch had taken on a quite special dignity, now that she found herself in this parade of Vienna’s society. She sat like royalty, alert and stiff, ready to return the formal salutations of acquaintances as they passed her coming back down the Haupt Allee in the opposite direction. Henry was sitting, glum and unhappy-seeming, as many Scots do when they are excited. Stephanie made weak attempts to appear dignified like her sister, but she was flushed and happy, and intent on pointing out everything.
Phœbe had seen the parade of carriages in the Prater many times already, but never thus, at its height. And it would have taken someone who was much less avid of life, much less eager, to remain cold before this astonishing spectacle.
Now, leaving the entrance, they were passing the Kaisergarten, where the Court, ever conscious of the spectacle it must provide for the people, had come to be seen and to take a ceremonial luncheon. Now their coachman had cracked his whip, the horses had dropped into a trot, and the landau was holding its place in this river of vehicles that flowed between towering, leafy banks of fresh green chestnut-trees with the candles on them bursting into bloom—banks that seemed to stretch into infinity in front of them.
Thousands of Fiakers. Poor and prosperous. Cabriolets. Phætons. A four-in-hand driven by some sensation-mongering grandee. A closed carriage with a regal old man looking through its windows. A shabby Komfortable with its single tired horse, lumbering along, bearing a numerous and vulgarly joyful City family. An open landau with a French governess and three young children in white, holding coloured balloons. One or two featherweights, with officers driving high-stepping English hackneys tearing back towards town from the May Day races in the Freudenau at a showy speed that was very dangerous in this traffic. A famous actor with his wife in a discreet, blue coupé. Aristocrats, financiers, men-about-town, demi-mondaines, gourmets, foreign ambassadors, artists, actresses—a swaying, garish flood of elegant humanity.
There were high spirits and laughing salutes. There were women dressed in the best of taste, and women whose every garment was an exaggeration. There were feathers and parasols; elegant, light-coloured top-hats and carefully trimmed whiskers. There were faces thick with paint, and faces lined with
sorrow. There were carefree, reckless faces, and faces stiff with ambition.
It was astonishing how Stephanie seemed to know everyone, although she came out so little. Her eyes went everywhere, seeing everyone, seeming to miss no one. There, on the riding-track beneath the trees, was the Count Egon Taxis. And with him was the Archduke Franz Salvator. There, in her carriage with a friend, was the prima donna Pauline Lucca. And there, coming down in the other direction, was the Princess Metternich, sitting in a coupé with an elderly woman, who looked like a professional companion. And look! Over there, being greeted by Sonnenthal, the actor, was Fräulein Charlotte Wolter of the Imperial Theatre. And the fair young lady who was with her was Fräulein Kathi Schratt! And there again, on horseback in the riding-track, were the Barons Albert and Nathaniel Rothschild.
Stephanie mentioned the names of many famous figures as they passed them by. Counts and princes. Fashionable singers and artists. Nobles and aristocrats from the Crown lands and the Empire. But she did not mention the great hinterland of struggling peoples inside the ring of Habsburg influence, whose labours went to build up this unique three miles of glittering pageantry. Peasants from the Hungarian Puszta. Sub-Carpathian gypsies. Jewish artificers from Galicia. Swabian tobacco-planters from the Bacska. Horse-dealers from Moravia. Bohemian weavers. Mohammedan trinket merchants from Servia. Podolian shepherds. And many more. All contributing to the display in this, their Emperor’s capital city. A city that was, in the main, only hazily conscious of their remote existence.
But it was not the names of celebrities, of which she knew nothing, this brilliant froth, floating on a sea of some fifty million souls, that made the shining afternoon for Phœbe. It was the perfume of the trees, the low-hanging blossoms, the glimpses of green meadows and sunlit ponds, the carriages with their freights of elegance and colour, the flunkeys in traditional family uniforms, even the moving forest of whips, the smell of harness and of foaming, high-mettled horses.