The Archduchess Maria Annunziata of Austria entered the church at the first stroke of the second summons, and crossed it completely with her rather rigid step. She was very tall and thin in her black dress, beneath a black hat which rested upon the thick white frame of her beautiful hair, while a very fine black veil scarcely threw a shadow on the face pale as ivory, on the black eyes, of a black as dense as coal, and the mouth pale as the pink of a withered rose. Maria Annunziata, Archduchess of Austria, quickly finds her place, because near the High Altar, more advanced than any other seat, are two arm-chairs of carved wood and two dark praying-stools, also of worked wood. The pious Austrian of the House of Hapsburg at once knelt down and began to pray. Her niece, a young girl of fifteen, the Archduchess Maria Vittoria, followed her into church step for step: already tall and slim, the young girl had the serene and proud face of the ladies of the Royal House. Maria Vittoria is very pale of countenance, and a large tress of very black hair descends upon her shoulders, which is tied with a bow of white ribbon. Her eyes are very black, without gleam, and proud; her eyelids are often lowered, and with her long eyelashes they throw a shadow on her neck; her fresh mouth has a prominent lower lip that augments the pride of the face. The handsome, faded aunt and the beautiful, quiet, and proud niece are very like each other.
Maria Vittoria is the only child by the first marriage of the Archduke Ludwig Salvator and the Archduchess Maria Immacolata, who had died tragically six years previously, from a fall from her horse, leaving the child of nine and a husband who did not weep for her, seeing that he had been separated from her and was already living with a friend of hers, the Countess Margaret von Wollemberg, who, for that matter, he had at once married morganatically, renouncing every eventual right to the Austrian throne, renouncing the Court, and even renouncing the right to see his daughter, Maria Vittoria.
Aunt and niece resemble each other. No one knows or remembers the old drama that saddened the youth of Maria Annunziata, and vowed her to celibacy and placed on her breast, on her black dress, the cross of an honorary abbess of a convent of Hungarian ladies. In spite of her deep religious piety, perhaps she still suffers; but on her face there is no trace of sorrow; there rests there composure and almost serenity. However, all know the atrocious doubt that fluctuates over the life of Maria Vittoria, to wit, that her mother did not die from an accident, but was killed, and all know of the father's desertion, that left her under the protection of her uncles and her aunt, like the most wretched among orphans of the people. But in Maria Vittoria's silence there is an immense pride, even when she kneels, as she bows her head beneath its rich black tresses.
Behind them the Catholic church is almost full, and by eleven o'clock it is fuller than it has ever been. For the past week among the Catholic ladies of Italy, France, and Austria a rumour has said that the Archduchess Maria Annunziata would attend High Mass at the Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad instead of hearing Mass by her chaplain at her Villa Silvana, as usual on Sundays, because she was interested in the church and wished people to come and make a large collection in aid of its necessities; that she had permitted her niece, the Archduchess Maria Vittoria, to make the collection, and that even she had condescended to beg Miss Mabel Clarke, the beautiful and rich American girl—the girl of twenty, thirty, fifty millions dowry, the girl at whom all pointed, whom all wished to know, to whom each one was anxious to be presented, and whom a hundred dowry-hunters sought in vain to conquer—to make the collection on that day with her niece—a Royal Princess, the niece and cousin of a King. Maria Vittoria of Austria and Mabel Clarke, the daughter of one of the many millionaires of Fifth Avenue, were to collect together! The church was fuller than ever it had been. At the offertory Lidia Smolenska, a Pole with a magnificent voice, was to sing, who never sang in public, and who had consented to do so in church through generosity of mind, although she was of a schismatic religion. Afterwards Comte André de Beauregard was to sing, a Frenchman of a great family, absolutely poor, with a treasure in his throat, who, however, dared not go on the stage, out of regard for his ancestors.
So the Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad, where every Sunday the ranks of the faithful are very thin at High Mass, when the two or three English Protestant churches are at the same time full to overflowing for Divine Service, when the Lutheran and Calvinist churches are crowded with Germans and Swiss psalmodising, when in the hotels, villas, and houses every Sunday at the same hour there remains the great Engadine crowd, to wit the great mass of Jews, this poor little Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad, which is always half empty—so few were the Catholics in the valley and so few the observing Catholics—on this Sunday is most full.
French women of the old style have descended from the Dorf and come from the Bad, drawn by the summons of the Archduchess of Austria: the septuagenarian Duchesse d'Armaillé, whose coquetry it is to affect old age, while her ancient fascination renews itself, as in a pleasant twilight of grace; the Duchesse di Langeais, who is a perfect prodigy of preservation as to beauty and figure at her uncertain age between forty and forty-five, laced in a dress that models her like a statue, and moreover is still flexible; la Comtesse de la Ferté Guyon, very pale, blond, bloodless, as if discreet shadows had spread over her person and attenuated her voice; but she was still shut up in her incurable melancholy as in a tower of ivory; the Marquise di Fleury, septuagenarian, implacably septuagenarian, beneath her yellow hair-dye, beneath the bistre of her expressionless eyes, beneath the rouge of her feeble cheeks and her stained lips, dressed outrageously in white, with a hat of flowers and no veil; and la grande bourgeoise, Madame Lesnay, whose talent, knowledge of life, and fortune had settled her sons and daughter in marriage with the noblest houses of France, and the other grande bourgeoise, Madame Soffre, who had given two millions to her daughter so that she could marry the most eminent young French politician, to make of this daughter a future President's wife of the Republic. Many French girls had come there through a deep sense of curiosity and sadness to assist at the triumph of the American girl, one of those many girls who nowadays take away the lovers and husbands from the daughters of French aristocratic society.
From Dorf and Bad the Italian women had come to church, those who most frequent every Sunday the two Catholic churches; also those have come who have heard the Mass at eight, as they wish to please the Archduchess: Lombard Marchionesses, tall, thin, with long necks, long and expressive faces, of a type a little equine, but with inborn lordly air, with toilettes rather severe, or absolutely eccentric; magnificent Roman Duchesses, with delicate faces like finely cut medals, large, proud eyes, flowing tresses, and of noble bearing; Princesses of the Two Sicilies, Naples and Palermo, some of rare and penetrating oriental beauty, with languishing and rather ardent eyes. All these Italian ladies are accompanied by their husbands, especially preceded or followed by sons and daughters, young men or maidens, or children, boys and girls, three, four, or five, some as beautiful as the sun, forming admirable groups of freshness, laughter, and grace. These Italian women among their children have a protecting, maternal air which if it does not wholly destroy their womanly fascination, at least attenuates or straitens and transforms it: while the French women also in church, even when praying or bowing their white foreheads on their hands, preserve all their womanly fascination. There is an enchanting smile on the mouths of the French women, young, middle-aged, and old, that mingles even with the light movement of the lips as they pray, as if they wish to conquer le bon Dieu—as they always succeed in doing!
All the great Austrian ladies are here at the command of the Archduchess: the vivacious Hungarian, the Countess of Durckheim, celebrated for the extravagance of her life, but ever admired and loved in spite of it all; the Prinzessin von Sudenhorst, the great ambassadress, who had done so much for Austria and her husband, and who afterwards destroyed his fortune by publishing his memoirs, full of scandalous revelations and a spirit of cruelty against everyone; the most beautiful woman in Vienna, Frau Lehman, who was very rich since she was the wife of the most powerful brewer; the most beautiful girl in Vienna, Fräulein Sophie Zeller. Both maid and matron were very fair and rosy, with smiling eyes and large mouths, but slightly awkward in features and in dress, pretentious under an air of simplicity, though still quite pleasing. Beneath the shadow of the Archduchess was her great conquest, the young Baroness de Sluka, kneeling and praying, who a year ago was only a distinguished Jewess, Aline Kahn, but who by means of the Archduchess had been converted with great éclat: she had supported her at her baptism, and had also given her the title of Baroness, while the neophyte had given a million to the Convent of the Annunciation, where she was baptised. On her knees, at the Archduchess's shoulder, the beautiful Baronin humbly bows her head and prays with exaggerated ardour, reading from a rich missal, covered with antique silver, with a book-marker of red ribbon and pious gold medals.
The American Catholic ladies are in a large group, almost all standing. The very Catholic are all more or less in short, tailor-made dresses with hats garnished with straight feathers. Nearly all are misses captained by Mabel Clarke's two dearest friends, who have come specially on horseback from Sils Maria to assist at the triumph of darling Mabel. The two horses of the West girls are in a corner of the church square, held by a groom who has tethered his horse to a paling.
The Mass begins.