The Princess Sophia

by E. F. Benson

And thus the moral lesson fled shrieking from the room.

It was not only at the cards that a sort of spell seemed to shower blessings on the girl; in that crisp and invigorating air she grew up to tall and stately development, and the breezes of the mountains and the perfume of flowers lent her their beauty. Other cosmetics she had none, and when her maid pressed on her curlers for the hair, and washes for the face, and dentrifices for her milk-white teeth, she threw the obnoxious aids behind the grate. The superlative mildness of her mother seemed to have cancelled with the ferocious temper of her father, and to have produced in their daughter a winning yet imperial graciousness that touched the heart of the people. It was her joy to scamper over the country on her Hungarian horse, or to divide the waters of the Adriatic with a plunge as of some quick-diving bird from the rocks, or in the harvesttime she would wield a scythe in the fields, and laugh to see how the other girls, daughters of the farmers, and inured to toil, would vainly strive to keep pace with her fallen swathes. Yet it was with a wonderful dignity that she received her father’s guests, and she was royal to her finger-tips.

But most of all she loved the hour when the lamps were lit, and the curtains drawn, and she and her father, or she and some visitor to the Court, sat down and played écarté or picquet. Sometimes a baccarat-table would be made up, and that was even more enchanting, for she loved the decision of pure chance, and bowed to it with the unwavering devotion of the thoroughbred and single-hearted gambler. They were no longer simple francs which were pushed across the table; bright gold pieces scurried to and fro in breathless alternation, and she loved to think of the miner who delved sweating in the earth, and the gold-dust carried in boxes oversea, to supply the sinews of her amusement.

The fame of her beauty and the charm of the girl, without which beauty is a mask and a cipher, had gone out widely into the world, and already, while she was not yet seventeen, royal blood and more than regal dulness were kneeling at her feet. It was the frankness of her refusal, her sheer astonishment at the unsuccessful, that kept others aloof. To marry seemed to her an inconceivable thing. She had not yet met her match either in the gallop or in rubicon bezique, a game which occupied her greatly for a year or two; and to pass a lifetime with a man who could not keep up with her in a scamper across country, or who would be a mere whipped puppy in her ruthless hands at the cards, was outside the bounds of possibility. Some of these unfortunate suitors were strangely, almost comically, below the mark. They fell off their horses in the afternoon, and were perpetually plunged in the swollen waters of the rubicon in the evening. To pretend even to wear the guise of sympathy for their inane misfortunes was a histrionic feat of which she was hopelessly incapable.

English travellers who have visited Rhodopé have always found themselves greatly at home there, for the character of the two nations is marvellously alike. To those of Rhodopé no less than to us has been given a sublime self-sufficiency, moved only to a smiling and wondering tolerance at the screams of France or the telegrams of incomprehensible Emperors. The insular position of England accounts for this trait in our case, and the walls of mountains round Rhodopé—as inviolable as the sea—in the other. Both nations are profoundly tenacious rather than assertive, both have a certain habit of stalking along to fulfil an immutable destiny, an attitude which is characteristic of the races of the North and shrewdly aggravating to those of the South. The inhabitants of Rhodopé are neither to be driven nor to be led: they go their own way with an almost sublime consciousness of the futility of every other way, or, when they choose, stand as still as trees planted by the waterside. It is unnecessary to remind the reader how closely their royal line is related to our own, and thus it has come about from community of blood no less than of nature that many of the Court appointments are held by English-speaking folk, English also is the language of diplomacy there, a unique phenomenon.

From her seventeenth to her twentieth year Sophia lived much in the society of the English, and her greatest friend at this time was Lady Blanche Amesbury, only daughter of the Marquis of Abbotsworthy, who held the post of English Minister at the Court of Prince Demetrius. The two were in many ways much alike: both loved to be in the saddle or the sea all day, and community of tastes brought about a real friendship. It was to Blanche that the Princess confided the deficiencies of the Grand Duke Nicholas, a youth of about twenty-three, who was then being put through his pre-matrimonial paces at Amandos. He was hopelessly in love with his cousin Sophia, and the latter was prepared to give him a fair trial. Indeed, the wooing of the Princess Sophia was not unlike the fairy stories in which princesses sit at the top of hills of glass calmly ready to wed whoever can ride a horse up to their side.

‘I do not require much,’ said this candid young lady to Blanche, as they sat waiting for Nicholas to go out riding with them. ‘The man who marries me must be passably good-looking. My cousin Nicholas is more than that—indeed, I suppose he might be called handsome—and he must do one or two things well. He must either ride very well, or talk very well, or play cards very well, or if he only plays roulette and games of that kind, he must lose very well. Voilà tout!’

Blanche considered a moment.

‘We shall see about his riding this afternoon,’ she said. ‘As far as his talking goes, I am afraid he will not do on that count. And this evening, no doubt, you will see how he plays. But there are other things—he is very rich; that is a good thing.’

‘How can you think me so mercenary!’ cried the Princess. ‘Besides, I have the luck of the devil—papa has told me so more than once—and so I shall win enough at cards to keep my head above water. Here he is! Really he looks quite distinguished!’