Meantime, throughout the length and breadth of Europe her reputation had gone abroad. Her great coup, now eleven years ago, which had steadied the tottering House of Ægina, had taken hold on the popular imagination, and the boldness and dash of the move had raised up in real hosts those unknown admirers which so many of those who act in public secretly and mistakenly suppose are theirs. That return from Corfu, triumphant over a riotous and wrecking sea, the cross-country sledge journey, the arrival in the nick of time, the hopeless and utter defeat of her husband and the acuter Malakopf, her rapturous welcome by the people, were all things to enkindle the blood in an age in which diplomatic papers are sufficient to set the world blazing. She was a picturesque figure, and an unpicturesque epoch has always this saving grace, that it delights in picturesque figures when they do appear. However much we may live environed by gray and green, a vivider tint is ever applauded. Again, she was admirably posed. To the eye of Europe she went stake in hand from the roulette-board to the rescue of her House, and having saved her House, went back to where the ball was still rolling and won. She had dash and brilliance and beauty, she was neither prude nor puritan. Indeed, she seemed one of those to whom success comes as if by birthright.
But with the instinct of a true gambler, she called her own success a run of luck. Sooner or later, unless her line staked on another colour, it would go against them, and her resolution to reform took the shape of reforming, or rather putting on the other colour, her son, Prince Leonard. She was determined, at the sacrifice of her natural desire, to see him but seldom; he should be a stranger to the tables of Rhodopé and the Riviera; he should play cricket and polo and hockey—whatever that was—instead of bezique and baccarat. She was herself so warm an admirer of the open air, that she felt she was not starving him. Had she not been a Princess, she would have chosen to be a man and a dweller in the mountains. Horses and dogs, a keen eye, and an obedient hand, were admirable things, and good enough for anybody.
For the next few years Leonard did not set foot in Rhodopé at all, and he saw his mother occasionally only, in her short and scarce visits to England. At Eton the high spirit which his mother had feared would be a source of possible danger to the head had shown itself reasonable, and in the course of one painful interview between the two, of which the cause was tobacco, and the end the birch, no books had been thrown. He did the minimum of work required with cheerfulness, if not zest, and, far more important, he was immensely popular with his fellows. He grew tall and strong on the banks of the Thames. At the age of sixteen he got into the eleven, and in the match against Harrow cracked the enamelled face of the clock at Lord’s off a half-volley just outside his leg-stump. He also indulged in various other amusements, which as yet had not come to light, but which appeared in damning concourse very shortly indeed before he left.
One morning in July he went into his room after twelve to change for cricket. On the table were two letters—one from his mother, who told him that she was on her way to England, and would arrive at the end of the month. She would stay a few days in London, and if Eton had broken up he had better come to her there. It was long since she had been in London, and they would see the sights together, from the Westminster Aquarium to the Tower of London, and from Madame Tussaud’s even to the Zoological Gardens and the Adelphi Theatre. There was no harm, she said, in a little gaiety, and she did not wish to cut Leonard off from all amusements. The other letter was from a groom of some training stables, and it interested him far more, for it gave the best possible account of Muley Moloch, a horse which Leonard was backing heavily for the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown. Accordingly at the end of the half Leonard went up to London to join his mother. She had taken a great suite of rooms at the Hôtel Métropole, with a private entrance, where she lived under her usual incognito of the Countess of Ægina.
Leonard arrived late in the evening, and found her with a few friends playing baccarat. His mother threw down her cards when he entered.
‘Dearest Leonard!’ she cried; ‘but I should scarcely have known you. How you have grown, and how you have improved! I am so delighted to see you again! Have you dined?’
Indeed, any mother might have been proud of him. He had grown up tall, well-looking, and with an extraordinary frankness and charm of manner. Though he was still but seventeen, he looked almost a man, and Princess Sophia felt how wise she had been to send him to school.
‘I have dined,’ he said, after being introduced to his mother’s guests. ‘And if you will let me, mother, I will join you in your game. Baccarat, is it not? A good game.’
‘Oh, Leonard, what business have you to know that!’ cried his mother. ‘I particularly asked that no baccarat should be allowed at Eton.’
Leonard laughed.