Thanks to Countess H——, Patsy and I were permitted to pay homage; and even the severe old Emperor himself unbent to smile at the witch in her shimmering frock when she made her révérence. There was a look about Patsy that night that a stone image must have melted to—a radiance at once so soft and so bright, no man could have resisted, or woman failed to understand. I can see her now, the colour deepening in her cheek as she made her curtsey to Archduke Salvator. Captain Max was just behind her, the Countess and I at one side.
The Archduke—who did have blue eyes and black hair—was about to return Patsy’s salutation with his bow of ceremony when suddenly he looked into her face. His own for a moment was a study. Then, gazing over her shoulder at Captain Max in his glowering magnificence, he inquired gravely: “And this, then, is the uncle?”
The rose swept Patsy’s cheek to her slender neck. For an instant she hesitated; then, looking straight at me instead of at the Archduke, she said sturdily: “This is the uncle’s nephew-to-be, and your Highness is the first one to learn of it.”
Of course the Countess turned faint, and all but forgot court etiquette in a frenzied hunt for her salts; and the Archduke kissed Patsy’s hand and shook Max’s, and amid a host of incoherent congratulations, discovered that he and Max belonged to the same regiment; and somehow we bowed ourselves out of the Presence and into the gallery again.
The Countess embraced Patsy, within shelter of a blue—pasteboard—grotto, and would have carried her off for a good cry, but Patsy turned to me. “Uncle Peter,” she swung to my arm with that destructive wheedlesomeness of hers, “Uncle Peter, you are pleased?”
Max, too, approached me with an anxiety that would have flattered a Pharaoh. “Patsy,” said I, admirably concealing my overwhelming surprise, “I have only one thing to say: you shall be the one to tell your mother!”
Of course she wasn’t. I knew from the first that she wouldn’t be; and I meekly endured the consequences. But all that is sequel. For the rest of the Redoute I sat with the Countess in the jaws of a papier mâché crocodile, and ate macaroons and discussed family pedigree; and Patsy and my nephew-elect fed off glances and waltzed till five in the morning. It was the most hectic evening of my two score years and ten.
When at last we left the bottom of the sea, gaiety was at its crest. The Court had departed long since, but nymphs and nereids whirled more madly than ever, Lorelies spun their lures with deeper cunning than before—now they were unmasked; and mere men were being drawn forever further and further into the giddy, gorgeous opalescence of the maze. In retrospect they seemed caught and clung to by the twining ropes of coral; mermaids and men alike enmeshed within the shining seaweed and pale, rosy shells—compassed, held about by the blue-green walls of their translucent prison. The pearly lights gleamed softer, the music of the sirens floated sweeter and more seductive on each wave, the water sprites and cloudy gulls circled and swam in wilder, lovelier haze.
And then—the wand of realism swept over them. They were a laughing, twirling crowd of Viennese, abandoned to the intoxication of their deity: the dance. Reckless, pleasure-mad, never flagging in pursuit of the evanescent joie de vivre, they became all at once a band of extravagant, lovable children who had stayed up too late and ought to have been put to bed.
But I was always a doting uncle. I left them to their revel, and departed. I shall go back some day, for I have now in Vienna the gay, the gemütlich, a niece named Patsy—and it all came from choosing a train that arrived before breakfast!