The Princess Sophia

by E. F. Benson

During these summer months the Prince and Malakopf met often, but they found long faces for each other. Their faces would have been longer still had they known how completely their little plans had miscarried, and that already the Princess was very tolerably acquainted with what was going on. The betrayal had happened in this wise.

It was on the occasion of the Queen of England’s birthday, and Malakopf, with the other Ministers, dined officially at the British Legation. The dinner was for men only, but after dinner Lord Abbotsworthy gave a reception. He was a widower, and the duty of receiving his guests fell on his daughter, Lady Blanche. The spacious marble-flagged terrace in front of the house was covered in with a Syrian tent, and the guests for the most part, after shaking hands with Lady Blanche, passed through the rooms and into the illuminated coolness of the covered terrace.

Now Malakopf, who for several weeks before this festivity had been somewhat fretted by the harshness and uncertainty of the events which followed on the opening of the Princess’s club, and by the continued despondency of his colleague, had promised himself an evening free from restraint, and in two senses to give his tongue a treat. He proposed—for he of that odious class of voluptuary which fixes its debauches beforehand—to dine as his nature, or rather the unexceptionable chef of the Minister, prompted him, and to drink as copiously as the excellence of the vintage with which he was served suggested. Now, Lord Abbotsworthy, who was himself a great judge of grape-juice, had made out with some care the menu of the wines, and his choice was masterly. The consequence was that Malakopf, who had passed a really memorable hour in the dining-room, eating much and drinking the best and plenty of it, came upstairs in an unusually relaxed frame of mind. It would be entirely out of the question to have called him drunk, or anything like it, but the sunshine which lay upon the slopes of the champagne country in the comet year had stirred his imagination and unloosed his tongue. Naturally he was a silent man, but to-night he was prone to be talkative; a woman’s wit did the rest.

Lady Blanche had been much interested in and somewhat distressed at the opening of the Princess’s club. She was a young lady gifted with a great deal of intelligent curiosity; that is to say, the things she was curious about were always worth knowing, and she particularly wished to know how this extraordinary innovation struck the leading men of the State. She had heard with a glow of the heart the tremendous reception accorded to her dear friend Princess Sophia; but she intensely desired to learn how those in command took this new evidence of the Princess’s popularity, whether, in fact—the same question had occurred to Malakopf—the greeting had been merely the tribute of a loyal people to a popular Princess, or whether it implied an innate predisposition to the new amusement provided for them.

It was with this in her mind that, when the duty of reception was over, she walked slowly through the room, with one ear only open to the voice of her varying interlocutor, the other wide to catch the strident accents of the Prime Minister. At last she saw him, though only distantly, wide-mouthed, yellow-toothed, separated from her by a crowd of tedious folk; but as she looked in his direction, it so happened that he looked in hers, and their eyes met. Malakopf’s eye was a shifty one at the best; but to-night’s potations seemed to have given him a greater directness of gaze, and it was with no surprise that, in answer to her little smile of greeting, she saw him a moment afterwards move from his place and make his way through the crush towards her.

‘Ah, Lady Blanche,’ he said, ‘but unless I push and squeeze I shall have no chance of getting a word with you. How is it that when we go to a friend’s house we see the whole world, but not our friend?’

‘And I, too, was despairing of getting a word with you,’ replied Blanche. ‘It is a delicious night: let us go on to the balcony; the rooms are so hot.’

Malakopf bowed and offered her his arm.

‘You are too kind to an old man like me,’ he said; ‘but I am very greedy.’

This was quite true; and they sat down in a corner of the balcony, and Blanche went straight to the point.