CHAPTER VII
DANCING IN THE AUSTRIAN TYROL
Jimmie is such a curious mixture that it is really very much worth while to study his emotions. I think perhaps that even I, who find it so hard to discover either man, woman, child, or dog whom I would designate as "typically American," am forced to admit that Jimmie's mental make-up is perfect as a certain type of the American business man, travelling extensively in Europe. The real bread of life to Jimmie is the New York Stock Exchange; but being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he brought his fine steel-wire will to bear upon his recreation with as much nervous force as he ever expended in a deal in Third Avenue or Union Pacific.
Hence he travels nervously yet deliberately, and views Europe from the point of view of the American stock market, scoffing at my enthusiasm, ironical of Bee's most cherished preferences, patient with his wife's serious love of society, and chivalrously tolerant, as only the American man can be, of the prejudices of his travelling family.
I notice that he is taking on a certain amount of true culture. He is broadening. Jimmie is beginning to let his emotions out; however, very gradually, with a firm, nervous hand on the throttle-valve, with the sensitive American's fear of ridicule as his steam-gauge.
I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands—a sure sign of feeling in Jimmie.
There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand stained when I withdrew it. Around the lake arose little hills of the same beauty and verdure as our Berkshires, with the exception that these hills possessed a certain purplish, bluish haze with a gray mist over them, which gave to their colouring the same softness that a woman imparts to her complexion when she wears white chiffon under a black lace veil.
I cannot understand what makes the Achensee so blue and the Königsee so green. Chemically analysed, the waters are almost identical, and the verdure surrounding them is very similar, and yet the Königsee is as green as the Achensee is blue.
A little steamer took us around the edge of the lake, where at the first landing-place Madame Carreño left us. We could only see the roof of her cottage in the grove of trees.
There is a new hotel somewhere along the lake; but we left that, with its modern equipments and electric lights, and went where we had been directed—to the Hotel Rhiner. Fräulein Therese met us at the landing. Alas! she was no longer the beauty of her love story of thirty years before. She was ample. Her short hair curled like a boy's, as without a hat she stood under a green umbrella, to welcome her guests. She had large feet, large hips, a large waist, and large lungs; but as she took our hands in the friendliest of greetings, and beamed on us from her full-moon face, we felt how delightful it was to get home once more.
The Hotel Rhiner is severely plain,—almost unfurnished,—and its appointments are primitive in the extreme. There was no carpet upon the floor of our rooms. Two little single beds stood side by side. A single candle was supposed to furnish light, and the wash-bowl was about the size of your hand. Yet everything was exquisitely clean, and from the windows of our corner room stretched away the blue Achensee and the mountains of the Tyrol, making a view which made you forget that the sheets were damp, and that the chairs were uncushioned.
Physically, I am sure that I was never more uncomfortable than I was at the Hotel Rhiner. The bed squeaked; the mattress, I think, was filled with corn-shucks, the hard part of which had an ungentle way of assailing you when you least expected it. Yet, if now were given to me the choice of going back to the Élysée Palace in Paris, or the Hotel Rhiner on the Achensee, it would not take me two seconds to start for the corn-shucks.
A rosy-cheeked, amply proportioned maid, named Rosa, dressed in the picturesque costume of the Tyrolese peasants, installed us in our rooms and advised us to row upon the lake and see the sunset before supper.
Tourists from the other hotels were being landed at our pier from tiny boats, to have their supper at the Hotel Rhiner, for the cooking is famous. Jimmie came and pounded on our door, executing a small war-dance in the corridor when we appeared,
"We've struck our gait," he said, ecstatically, to me. "Virtue is its own reward. This pays us for Baden-Baden and Paris. What do you think? The Rhiner family themselves do the cooking. There are the old mother, Fräulein Therese, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren who run this house. I have ordered the corner table on the veranda for supper—and such a table! And afterward there is going to be a dance in the kitchen. Fräulein Therese has promised to play for us on her zither, and there is going to be singing. Now, come along and let's do the sunset stunt."
Bee and Mrs. Jimmie followed us with gentle apprehension, for they are always a little suspicious of anything that Jimmie and I particularly like. Under a long, sloping roof we found several dozen little row-boats, with the "shipmaster," a peasant whose costume might have come out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He launched us, however, and the boat shot out into the lake, with Jimmie and me at the oars, and then we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen before. The air was wonderfully calm and still. The only ripple on the lake was that which was left by our boat as we rowed out to where there was a break in the hills. On the east and west, there the tallest hills fall away from the Achensee and make an undulating line on the horizon. As we reached this break, we stopped rowing, transfixed by the glory of the scene.
The sun was just setting, a great molten mass of flame, splashing down in the crimson clouds, which showed in the aperture between the hills. Little thin wraiths of mist or haze curled up from this molten mass into the rosy sky above, as if the gods on Olympus were mulling claret for a marriage feast. The purple hills curved down on each side in the exact shape of an amethyst punch-bowl, and the radiance of colouring fairly blinded us. On the other hand, the full moon was rising above the eastern hills in a haze of silver, but with a calmness and serene majesty which formed a direct antithesis to the sinking sun she faced.
Lower and lower sank the king, going down out of sight finally in a blaze of splendour which left the western sky aflame with light. In the east higher and higher rose the queen, rising from her silver mists into the clear pale blue of the sky, and sending her white lances gliding across the blue waters of the Achensee, till their tips touched our oars.
We watched it, hushed, breathless, awed. I looked at Jimmie.
"What is it like?" murmured Bee.
And to my surprise, Jimmie answered her from out of the spell this magic scene had caused, saying:
"It is like a glimpse of the splendours of the New Jerusalem."
We had supper that night in the open air of the veranda, where Jimmie had engaged the table. Hedwig, a waitress, whispered into my ear confidentially that we would find the fish delicious, as they were some of those the priests had not needed.
The Tyrol, especially in the vicinity of the Achensee, is absolutely priest-ridden, every one, from the peasants to the gentry, contributing, and the best in the land going into their larders and their coffers.
We were indebted to the overfeeding of these fat priests for a delicacy which was then unknown to me—broiled goose liver with onions. It is a German dish, but a rarity not to be had in even all first-class hotels in Germany and Austria. When you have it, it is announced to the guests personally, with something the same air as if the proprietor should say:
"Madame, the Emperor and his suite will dine at this hotel to-night, at eight."
Goose liver may not sound tempting to some, but as I saw it that night, cooked by the old mother of Fräulein Therese, a luscious white meat delicately browned and smothered in onions as we smother a steak, and so delicate that it melted in the mouth like an aspic jelly, it was one of the most delicious dishes I ever essayed.
As we were eating our dessert, a gemischtes compote so rich that it nearly sent us to our eternal rest, Fräulein Therese came and asked us to have our coffee in the kitchen. A long, low-ceiled room, three steps below the level of the ground, with seats against the wall, and a raised platform on each side, with little tables for coffee, adjoined the hotel. This room at one time perhaps had been a real kitchen, where cooking was done. Now it was turned into a place of recreation. Around the walls were seated a variegated, almost motley, array of men and women, from the dear old fat mother of Fräulein Therese and the three boys, the daughters-in-law, the granddaughters, to a picturesque old man, whose coal-black beard fell almost to his waist, our friend the "shipmaster," and the band of four musicians, all dressed in the Tyrolese costume, with the exception of the women of the Rhiner family.
Some thirty years ago the father Rhiner, now dead and gone, the mother, whose voice is still a wonder, Fräulein Therese, and the three boys journeyed to London to sing before the Queen at her jubilee. This made them famous, and was the beginning of the Fräulein's love story, which was told me in London by Lady J., a relative of the duke who so nearly wrecked the Fräulein's life.
By telling the Fräulein that I knew Lady J., I induced her to repeat the story to me.
"It was in St. Petersburg that I saw him for the second time. He was then the Marquis of B., in the suite of the Prince of Wales, when he went to pay a visit to the Tzar's court. The marquis loved me, as I thought sincerely. I was very young, and I believed him. After he went back to London, he arranged for me to sing in grand opera; they tell me that it was a lie; that I could not have sung in opera; that he only wanted to get me away from my family. They tell me that it was a wise thing, directed by God, that I should drop the letter in which he gave me directions how to meet him, that my sister-in-law should find it, and that my brother should overtake me at the train, and prevent my going. I do not know. I only know that I have always loved him. Even after he became the Duke of M., and married one of your countrywomen, I still loved him. Now he is dead, and I love him still. See, I wear this black ribbon always in his memory. Yet they tell me that he lied to me, and that it was for the best. Well, we are all in God's hands." And she sighed deeply.
She drew her zither toward her, and began to play as I never heard that simple little instrument played before. Then one by one they began to sing. It was amazing how little of the freshness of their voices has been lost during all this time. I never heard such singing. A bass voice which would have graced the Tzar's choir, came booming from the old man with the black beard, as they yodeled and sang and sang and yodeled again, until their little audience went quite wild with delight.
Bee and Mrs. Jimmie were beginning to forgive us. Jimmie dashed over to Fräulein Therese, at Bee's request, to ask who the old man was.
"It's the cowherd," he announced, with his evil-minded simplicity, and seemed to obtain a huge interior enjoyment from the way Bee pushed her chair back out of range, and looked disgusted.
Presently came Rosa, the chambermaid, and Hedwig, the waitress, and a dozen young men from the neighbouring hamlet, and began to dance the "schuplattle." I have seen this wonderful dance performed on the stage and in other Tyrolese villages, but never have I seen it danced with the abandonment of those young peasants in that little kitchen on the Achensee. They were all beautiful dancers. The young "shipmaster" seized our pretty Rosa around the waist, and they began to waltz. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, they fell apart, with a yell from the boy which curdled the blood in our veins. Rosa continued waltzing alone, with her hands on her hips, while her partner did a series of cart-wheels around the room, bringing up just in front of her, and waltzing with her again without either of them losing a step. Then he lifted her hands by the finger tips high above her head, and they writhed their bodies in and out under this arch, he occasionally stooping to snatch a kiss, and all the time their feet waltzing in perfect time to the music. Suddenly, with another yell, he leaped into the air, and, with Rosa waltzing demurely in front of him, began the fantastic part of the schuplattle, which consists, as Jimmie says, "of making tambourines all over yourself, spanking yourself on the arms, thighs, legs, and soles of your feet, and the crown of your head, and winding up by boxing your partner's ears or kissing her, just as you feel inclined."
I never saw anything like it. I never heard anything like it. It was so exhilarating it aroused even the cowherd's enthusiasm, so that he came and did a turn with Fräulein Therese.
Then more of the peasants joined in the schuplattle, and in a moment the kitchen was a mass of flying feet, waving arms, leaping, shouting men and laughing girls, the dance growing wilder and wilder, until, with a final yell that split the ears of the groundlings, the music stopped, and the dancers sank breathless into their seats. The excitement was contagious. One after another got up and danced singly, each attempting to outdo the other.
The other guests, who had seen this before, by this time had finished their coffee and left. Our little party remained. The Fräulein Therese came over to our table, saying that the "shipmaster" would like very much to dance with me. I don't blush often, but I actually felt my whole face blaze at the proposition. I protested that I couldn't, and wouldn't; that I should die of fright if he yelled in my ear, and that he would split my sleeves out if he tried "London bridge" with me. She urged, and Jimmie urged, and Bee and Mrs. Jimmie joined. So finally I did, the Fräulein having warned him that I would simply consent to waltz, with nothing else. They never reverse, the music was fast and furious, and the room was as hot as a desert at midday. After I had gone around that room twice with the "shipmaster," he whirled me to my seat, and for fully five minutes the room, the musicians, and the tables continued the waltz that I had left off. It makes me dizzy to think of it even now.
When I got my sight back, I looked apprehensively at Bee, to see if I had gone beyond the limit which her own perfectly ladylike manner always sets for me; but to my surprise her foot was tapping the floor, and there was a gleam in her eyes which told the mischievous Jimmie that the music was getting into Bee's blood. Jimmie wrenched my little finger under the table and whispered:
"For two cents, Bee would do the skirt dance!"
"Ask her," I whispered back.
He jogged her elbow and said:
"Give 'um the skirt dance, Bee. You could knock 'um all silly with the way you dance."
Bee needed no urging. It was quite evident she had made up her mind to do it before we asked. She arose with a look of determination in her eyes, which would have carried her through a murder. When Bee makes up her mind to do a thing, she'll put it through, good or bad, determined and remorseless, from giving a dinner to the poor to robbing a grave, and nobody can stop her, or laugh her out of it any more than you can persuade her to do it, if she doesn't want to. Nobody is responsible for Bee's acts but herself. Therefore, I recall that scene with a peculiar and exquisite joy which the truly good never feel.
Bee's travelling-skirt was tailor-made, tight at the belt, and of ample fulness around the bottom. She had on a shirt-waist, a linen collar, the Charvet tie, a black hat with a few gay coloured flowers on it, and a lace petticoat from the Rue de la Paix. At the first strains of the skirt dance from the delighted band Bee seized her skirts firmly and began the dance which is so familiar to us, but which those Tyrolese peasants had never seen before. Jimmie says he would rather see Bee do the skirt dance than any professional he ever saw on any stage. He says that her kicks are such poems that he forgives her everything when he thinks of them, but when she danced that night, Jimmie was so tickled by the excitement and polite interest she created in her primitive audience, that he stretched himself out on the bench in such shrieks of laughter that even Bee grinned at him, while I simply passed away. She sat down, flushed, breathless, but triumphant.
Instantly she was surrounded by every young fellow in the room, imploring her to dance with him, and at once Bee became the belle of the ball. And, if you will believe it, when Mrs. Jimmie and I went outside to get a breath of air, Bee, the ladylike; Bee, the conservative; haughty, intolerant Bee, was dancing with the cowherd!