Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3)

by Ouida

The Princess was too honourable a woman to depart from the text of the congratulation, but she contrived to throw a little more warmth into the spirit of it; and she did not show her letter to the mistress of Hohenszalras. She set the screen near her favourite chair in the blue-room.

'If only there were any one to appreciate it!' she said, with a sigh. 'Like everything else in this house, it might as well be packed up in a chest for aught people see of it. This place is not a museum; the world goes to a museum: it is a crypt!'

'Would it be improved by a crowd of sightseers at ten kreutzers a head?'

'No: but it would be very much brightened by a house-party at Easter, and now and then at midsummer and autumn. In your mother's time the October parties for the bear-hunts, the wolf-hunts, the boar-hunts, were magnificent. No, I do not think the chase contrary to God's will; man has power over the beasts of the field and the forest. The archdukes never missed an autumn here; they found the sport finer than in Styria.'

Her niece kissed her hand and went out to where her four black horses were fretting and champing before the great doors, and the winter sun was lighting up the gilded scrollwork, and the purple velvet, and the brown sables of her sleigh, that had been built in Russia and been a gift to her from Egon Vàsàrhely. She felt a little impatience of the Princess Ottilie, well as she loved her; the complacent narrowness of mind, the unconscious cruelty, the innocent egotism, the conventional religion which clipped and fitted the ways of Deity to suit its own habits and wishes: these fretted her, chafed her, oppressed her with a sense of their utter vanity. The Princess would not herself have harmed a sparrow or a mouse, yet it seemed to her that Providence had created all the animal world only to furnish pastime for princes and their jägers. She saw no contradiction in this view of the matter. The small conventional mind of her had been cast in that mould and would never expand: it was perfectly pure and truthful, but it was contracted and filled with formula.

Wanda von Szalras, who loved her tenderly, could not help a certain impatience of this, the sole, companionship she had. A deep affection may exist side by side with a mental disparity that creates an unwilling but irresistible sense of tedium and discordance. A clear and broad intelligence is infinitely patient of inferiority; but its very patience has its reaction in its own fatigue and silent irritation.

This lassitude came on her most in the long evenings whilst the Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone. She was not haunted by it when she was in the open air, or in the library, occupied with the reports or the requirements on her estates. But the evenings were lonely and tedious; they had not seemed so when the little boat had come away from the monastery, and the prayer and praise of Handel and Haydn, and the new-born glory of the Nibelungen tone-poems had filled the quiet twilight hours. It was in no way probable that the musician and she would ever meet again. She understood that his own delicacy and pride must perforce keep him out of Austria, and she, however much the Princess desired it, could never invite him there alone, and would not probably gather such a house-party at Hohenszalras as might again warrant her doing so.

Nothing was more unlikely, she supposed, than that she would ever hear again the touch that had awakened the dumb chords of the old painted spinet.

But circumstance, that master of the ceremonies, as Madame Brancka termed it, who directs the menuet de la cour of life, and who often diverts himself by letting it degenerate into a dance of death, willed it otherwise. There was a dear friend of hers who was a dethroned and exiled queen. Their friendship was strong, tender, and born in childish days. On the part of Wanda, it had been deepened by the august adversity which impresses and attaches all noble natures. Herself born of a great race, and with the instincts of a ruling class hereditary in her, there was something sacred and awful in the fall of majesty. Her friend, stripped of all appanages of her rank, and deserted by nearly all who 'had so late sworn her allegiance, became more than ever dear; she became holy to her, and she would sooner have denied the request of a reigning sovereign than of one powerless to command or to rebuke. 'When this friend, who had been so hardly smitten by fate, sent her word that she was ill and would fain see her, she, therefore, never even hesitated as to obedience before the summons. It troubled and annoyed her; it came to her ill-timed and unexpected; and it was above all disagreeable to her, because it would take her to Paris. But it never occurred to her to send an excuse to this friend, who had no longer any power to say, 'I will,' but could only say, like common humanity, 'I hope.'

Within two hours of her reception of the summons she was on her way to Windisch-Matrey. The Princess did not accompany her; she intended to make as rapid a journey as possible without pausing on the way, and her great-aunt was too old and too delicate in health for such exertion.