‘That is not the reason.’
‘What is it, then?’ she asked.
‘Because the mischief which your absence during a sitting of the House will entail will be sensibly lessened—I do not wish to overrate my position—if I remain here, and have the air of attending very sedulously to the affairs of the State. There are certain businesses of the kind which you have allowed me to transact for you before—the less important Bills, in fact; with your permission, I will attend to them again. We want a fresh strain of blood in the trooper’s horses, for instance; at any rate, I can go carefully into the expenses and business incidental to that. I know a little about horse-breeding; I may even be useful on that question. The Bill will come before the House in the second week in August. I can, at least, serve on a committee. Later, when the House rises, I will join you. How does my plan strike you?’
Sophia was touched.
‘It is good of you to suggest that, Petros,’ she said. ‘It would be absurd for me to refuse your offer. You will not be very dull here? No? And it won’t look odd, will it, if I go and you stop here? I have a horror of doing things that look odd.’
‘Not so odd, at any rate, as if we both went away,’ said Petros.
‘And much less odd than if I stopped here all August,’ remarked Sophia in self-defence. ‘It would be an imbecility.’
Sophia got up from the table, and went indoors to the nursery to see the adorable Leonard, the four-months-old baby. Petros’s arrangement seemed to her to be in every way admirable. Apart from the convenience of getting away when she wanted, it gave her the opportunity of getting away alone. She was fond of her husband, but constantly irritated by him. She had no idea of letting herself be schooled by him into dependence, to be taught the duty of royalty by him, and she never forgot that she was Princess of Rhodopé, and he her husband. More than once had he attempted to point out to her his idea of what a wife’s attitude should be to her husband, and what a monarch’s attitude towards the people, and her retort had been not far to seek. She was autocrat of Rhodopé, and she was not going to be taught by anybody.
Petros, she found, was not only master of the subtleties of bezique, he knew also the most refined secrets of irritating conversation. With all his varied gifts, he had the misfortune to be a pedant, a schoolmaster in private life, and, what is worse, to be quite unconscious of his pedantry. Sophia resented with every fibre in her nature his attempts to instruct her, to develop her mind, and, indeed, the chief result of his schooling had been to develop her impatience of him. Living with him was like living in a stuffy room with only high-backed chairs. He was for ever wanting her to sit up straight, and listen to improving conversation, whereas she wanted to lounge imperially by an open window. Something of the blood of generations of irresponsible rulers ran in her veins; the unbridled license of Eastern tyrants had mingled with the refinement of the student line of Florence to compound a subtle temperament. He had once alluded to some wise act of the Czar, wishing her to draw a lesson from it, but in a moment her nose was in the air.
‘The Romanoffs were feeding pigs when we were kings,’ she had said.