Patsy again was looking at her yellow roses. “There are disadvantages?” I suggested.
“Yes. Oh, several kinds of disadvantages, Uncle Peter. Most of my dances were silent as the grave. I would say, ‘you speak English?’ My partner would reply, ‘alas, fräulein, a few words only. But you, surely you speak German?’ ‘Unfortunately, not at all.’ Then dead silence. But they are all kindness in trying to understand, and everyone wants to learn our way of waltzing—‘so langsam,’ they say wonderingly. When Captain Max and I tried it, so that I might get a little rest, all the others stopped dancing and watched the performance. Then every man I met wanted me to teach him—they are just like children over something new.
“Poor Uncle Peter, you’re yawning. Only let me tell you about the other dances, and then you can go to bed. There were two quadrilles, not the old-fashioned kind, but quite like cotillon figures—really charming. They showed the pretty costumes of the girls and the uniforms of the officers to much better advantage than the round dances do. Then there was a terrible thing called the Polka Schnell—faster even than the regular waltz, and that makes one giddy to watch. But the Countess and all the chaperones threw themselves into it as madly as the younger ones, and weren’t in the least out of breath at the end. I believe Viennese women never grow old. They seem to have as good a time at sixty as at sixteen, and to be as popular.
“After the second quadrille, we had ‘supper’—though we’d been eating, as I told you, all evening. But now we sat down formally to chicken and salad, cakes of all sorts and cheese and beer. It was a funny supper, wasn’t it, Uncle Peter? I suppose they’d sniff at our champagne and ices; they like a substantial meal. The dance immediately after supper is Ladies’ Choice, and it’s amusing to watch the frantic efforts of each man to engage the favour of his particular divinity. They lean against a pillar and stare into one’s eyes with the most despairing gaze, looking anxiously meanwhile to see if one holds their bouquet. I forgot to tell you the pretty custom they have of bringing one roses and violets all during the evening. The men have great baskets of flowers in their dressing-room, and hurry to and fro with posies for the ladies they admire. By the time you are ready to go home, you have quite an imposing collection.”
“All of one colour, it seems,” I observed innocently, as Patsy herself stifled a yawn, and rose regretfully from her cushioned nest.
“Oh,” said Patsy with immoderate indifference, “they’re all in my room—the violets and everything. These”—looking down at Captain Max’s roses—“I must have forgotten these!” she decides with a brilliant smile. “Goodnight, Uncle Peter—you’re rather a dear.”
That settled it; as any properly trained uncle would have known. When a healthy young woman begins to call her moth-eaten male relatives by endearing names, it is time to lock the stable door—or at least to realize one’s temerity in having opened it in the first place. But, as Patsy’s mother, from her severe infancy, has told me, I am most improperly trained; so I hastened to accept an invitation from Countess H——, bidding my niece and me to a skating party at her son’s rink next evening.
Every true Viennese has his private rink membership, as he has his other clubs, and is an expert skater. All afternoon and evening the various skating resorts are crowded with devotees of the graceful sport; which is held, by the way, out of doors—the large rinks being simply walled in from the street. Captain Max’s is of quite imposing proportions, a very different affair from the cramped, stuffy “ice-palace” of Paris or London. There is a building, to be sure, but this is merely for the garde-robe and the inevitable refreshment rooms. The skating takes place on the vast field of ice outside.
At night this is brilliantly illuminated with parti-coloured lights, and the scene during Carnival—when the skaters are frequently in fancy-dress—is fascinating beyond description. As I first saw it, gipsies were gliding over the ice with pierrots, geisha girls with pierrettes; Arabs in the ghostly burnous swept past with Indians, painted and feathered, and a whole regiment of Rough Riders swooped down upon them, with blood-thirsty yells. A wonderful polar bear (under his skin a lieutenant of cavalry) lumbered about with his friend an elephant; and devils, ballet-girls (by day perfect gentlemen), toreros and jockeys, frisked from one end of the rink to the other—while one of the two seductive Viennese bands was always playing.
Patsy at last saw dancing on the ice, and lost her heart once for all to this marvellous accomplishment. When Captain Max, in his subduing red-and-black Mephistopheles costume, begged her to try it, she clapped her hands like a child and flew with him to a quieter corner of the rink where he might teach her the difficult gyrations. Before the evening was over she was waltzing delightedly in the centre, with the best of them. I struggle not to dote, but I must set down here that I have seen few sights as alluring as that young witch, in her bright Cossack’s jacket and trim skirt, gliding and whirling in the slippery dance; with the maze of other brilliant costumes round her, the fairy lights overhead, and in the air the lilt and thrill of a Vienna waltz.