Patsy stopped laughing, and regarded me admiringly. “What an analyst you are, Uncle Peter! Yes, of course a man; but—”
“Did he follow you—did he speak to you?” I may be modern, but I had one eye on my hat and overcoat.
Patsy giggled again. “No—oh no, Uncle Peter. He didn’t follow me, he went ahead of me; and, when I reached the corner, there he was standing, hat in hand, with the most injured air—as though our appointment was for half past two and I had kept him waiting quite an hour! His expression was perfectly heavenly—plaintive resignation just giving way to radiant delight—I can’t think how he managed it on such short notice. Probably by extensive practice before the glass.
“Anyhow, there was one moment of awful apprehension for him, just as I came up; and then—the most crestfallen disappointment you can imagine. He had arranged everything so considerately and subtly for me, and I, all unconscious of him, passed on! I didn’t dare look back, but out of the tail of my eye I could see his chagrin as I disappeared—into the side entrance of the hotel. All that art gone for nothing I suppose he thought; and to be begun over again at the next corner,” added Patsy, who is a young woman of rather terrible discernment, at times.
“But it is nice of them not to speak, isn’t it?” she said. “It shows how really clever they are. No Englishman or Frenchman of the same er—proclivities would have been as subtle.”
Nor as dangerous, thinks Uncle Peter to himself, with a promise to curb his modernity for the future. It is all very amusing, this manœuvre of the flirtatious Viennese male; and, since Patsy’s encounter, I have seen it so many times as to know it to be typical; but in its very refinement lies its evil. If the Austrian, even in his vices, were not so free from crudity—so transparently naïve, his attraction would be halved—if not lost entirely. But Patsy was right in her surmise that he can place a woman at a glance; and if he ventures to lead her a bit further than her looks suggest, and than he afterwards finds possible, he is quick to realize his mistake and if he can to make reparation.
As a student, like his German cousin, he lives in frank unmorality. There are thousands of students in Vienna—students at the universities, medical students, music students—each with his schatzkind, who often shares his studies as well as his garret. This thoroughly cosmopolitan set of young people plays a distinct part in the free and easy jollity of the city as a whole. You see them in the streets and cafés, in the topmost gallery at the Opera, and forming enthusiastic groups at all concerts; their shabby velveteens a nice contrast with their vivid, impressionable faces.
During Carnival they are natural leaders in the routs and festivities; this entire season is for them one rollicking fancy-dress ball. They may go hungry, but they can always arrange a new and clever costume; and one meets them coming home arm-in-arm through the dusk, carrying bulky parcels and humming the waltz from the latest operette. They smile at everybody, and everybody smiles back, and unconsciously starts humming too. Patsy says there is something about dusk, and big packages, and soft-falling snow that makes one hum. I feared from the first that this was a demoralizing atmosphere for Patsy.
It would have been different if we hadn’t known people. But we did know people—a delightful handful, eager to lavish their boundless hospitality on the wunderschönes mädl. And then there was Captain Max, whose marvellous uniforms and crisp black moustache soon became as familiar to our hotel as the bow of the head waiter. Two or three days after our arrival, Captain Max and his mother took Patsy to her first Viennese ball. I stayed at home to nurse my rheumatism, which the freezing temperature and constant snow had not improved. But I was waiting by our sitting-room fire to “hear all about it,” when Patsy returned at half past three—her arms full of roses, her auburn head less strictly coiffed than when she sallied forth.
“Oh, Uncle Peter!” She kissed me at her favourite angle somewhere behind the ear, and sank into a cushion with her chiffons like a flower into its petals.