I did, damned if the door he’d used didn’t open, and a massive bosom emerged, followed by the soulful countess in a night-rail fashioned apparently from a scrap of mosquito-net. She gave a start at the sight of me: murmured 'Entschuldigung!', collared a decanter from the side-board, and with a sleepy smile and 'Bis spater', vanished whence she had come.
Kralta was repairing the damage before her mirror when I rolled in, much perturbed.
'That Prince and the women—they’re out there, large as life! Who is he, for God’s sake?'
'My husband,' says she. 'You were presented to him.'
Well, all I’d caught in the confusing moment of arrival had been 'von und zum umble rumble', as so often happens. I considered, hard.
'Ah! I see. Your husband, eh? And the women?'
'His mistresses,' says she, carefully rouging her lip. 'It is convenient that we share the apartment. It is quite large enough, you see.' She began to brush her hair, while I struggled for an appropriate rejoinder, and could think of only one.
'Mistresses, eh? Well, well.' She continued to brush calmly, so I added another trenchant observation. 'He has three of them.'
'Yes. The fair one, Fraulein Boelcke, I had not met before this evening. She talks too freely, don’t you think?'
But my conversational bolt was shot. For once I was at a loss—as who would not be, on discovering that while he was bulling a chap’s wife all over the shop and probably making a hell of an uproar, the chap himself was virtually next door brushing his teeth or pomading his eyebrows—and even now might be conducting an orgy just across the way with three trollops while the wife of his bosom was smiling tenderly on her bemused lover, kissing him fondly, leading him back to bed, and settling into his arms for conversation and drowsy fondling which must lead inevitably to another outbreak of feverish passion? And it did, even noisier and more protracted than before, for this time she occupied the driving seat, if you know what I mean, and rode herself into a sobbing frenzy they could have heard in Berlin.
I’m an easy-going fellow, as you know, but it struck me as I lay there, urging her on with ecstatic roars and the occasional slap on the rump, and afterwards cradling her to sleep on my breast, that this was a pretty informal household, and would take getting used to. I’m all for cuckolding husbands, and don’t give a dam if (hey know it, unless they’re the hellfire horse-whipping sort who’ll resent it; indeed, there’s nothing like a good gloat in the grinding teeth of some poor muff to whom you’ve awarded antlers. But when the muff is not only complaisant but approving, and meets you with every politeness at luncheon next day, and his wife is on cordial terms (as cordial, that is, as Kralta could ever be) with the fair trio he’s been using as though he were the Sultan of Swat, well, it’s novel, and I wasn’t sure that I cared for it above half.
It took me a few weeks to settle my thoughts on the subject, and reflection was made no easier by the distractions Vienna afforded. I’ve never wallowed in such sumptuous indulgence in my life; even being a crowned head in Strackenz didn’t compare to it. The place was dedicated to sheer pleasure in those days, and I guess I became intoxicated in a way that had nothing to do with drink, although there was enough and to spare of that. Perhaps I was still fagged from my ordeal; at all events I was content to be borne along on that gay, dazzling tide, idling and stuffing and boozing and viewing the capital’s wonders by day, consorting with Kralta’s vast social circle (which included the Prince and his skirts as often as not) of an evening, and letting her have her haughty head by night.
She was a demanding mistress, and if she’d hadn’t been such a prime mount, and besotted with me to boot, I might have brought her to heel—or tried to. That she was an imperious piece I knew, but now I saw it wasn’t just her nature, which was the root of her pride, but the life she led which fostered that almighty growth. Vienna seemed to be at her feet; she was deferred to on all sides, and placed on a social level not far short of imperial, toad-eaten by the flower of society, and ruling it with a tilted chin and cold eye. The style in which she lived argued fabulous wealth, and she spent it like a whaler in port, on the slightest whim; small wonder she liked to call the tune in bed.
Speaking of imperial, I had a taste of that when she took me, with the Prince and his hareem in tow, to a gala ball at Schonbrunn, where the Emperor and Empress condescended to mingle with Vienna’s finest. That was a damned odd turn, eerie almost, for a moment came when, with Kralta standing by like a magnificent ring-mistress, I found myself face to face with Franz-Josef and the superb Sissi. He drew himself up to his imposing height, whiskers at the high port, and stared me straight in the eye for a long moment; he said not a word, but held out his hand, and ’twasn’t the usual touch-and-away of royalty, but a good strong clasp followed by a hearty shake before he passed on, Sissi following with a smiling turn of her lovely head. That’s his vote of thanks for services rendered, thinks I, and the most he can do or I can expect—but I was wrong. There was something more, though whether ’twas his idea or Sissi’s I can’t say. When the dancing began, and I was restoring myself with a glass of Tokay after whirling Kralta’s substantial poundage round the floor, a lordly swell with a ribboned order presented himself and informed me that Her Imperial Majesty would be graciously pleased to accept if I were to beg the honour of leading her out for the next dance.
It was unprecedented, I’m told, to a foreign stranger, and a commoner at that. You may be sure I complied, with a beating heart, I confess. And so I waltzed beneath the chandeliers of Old Vienna, under the eyes of the highest and noblest of the Austrian Empire, with Strauss himself flogging the orchestra, and my partner was that magical raven-haired beauty who had all Europe at her feet, and I didn’t tread on ’em once. Afterwards I led her back to Franz-Josef, and received his courteous nod and her brilliant smile.
Well, I’ve rattled the Empress of China and Her Majesty of Madagascar, to say nothing of an Apache Princess and (to the best of my belief) an Indian Rani, and that’s my business, to be written about but not spoken of. But I can tell my great-grandchildren face to face that I’ve danced with the Queen of Hearts. And she, of course, has danced with me.
We spent Christmas at a castle of Kralta’s—or her husband’s, I never found out which—high in the snowy Tyrolean mountains, and toasted in the New Year in a luxurious hunting lodge in a little valley whose inhabitants spoke a strange sort of German laced with Scotch expressions—the legacy, I’m told, of medieval mercenaries who never went home, doubtless for fear of arrest. Both places were full of titled guests invited (or commanded, rather) by Kralta, and we drove in sleighs and skated and tobogganed and revelled by evening and pleasured by night, and it was Vienna in the Arctic, with the Prince always on hand, bland and affable as ever with his popsies around him (one of ’em a new bird, an Italian, who’d replaced the garrulous blonde, no doubt on Kralta’s orders) and it was all such enormous fun that I was heartily sick of it.
Don’t misunderstand me—it wasn’t a surfeit of debauchery and the high life, although there does come a time when you find yourself longing for a pint and a pie and a decent night’s sleep. And it was only partly that I was beginning to miss English voices and English rain and all those things that make the old country so different, thank God, from the Continent. No, I was beginning to realise what had irked me from the first—being just another player iii their game, having it taken for granted that I’d be a compliant member of Kralta’s curious menage, as though I were the latest recruit, if you know what I mean. I’ve always been a free lance, so to speak, going my own way on my own terms, and the notion that Viennese society was raising its weary eyebrows and saying: 'Ah, yes, this Englishman is new to her entourage; how long will he last, one wonders?', and that Kralta probably thought of me as her husband did of his trollops … no, it didn’t suit.
The final straw came on a night in the hunting lodge when I’d become so infernally bored that I’d gone to the village for a prose with the peasants at the tavern, and came home in the small hours. Some of the guests were still about in the principal rooms, drinking and flirting and casting (I thought) odd looks in my direction. I went up, and was making for the chamber I shared with Kralta when a soft voice called and I turned to see the Prince’s maitresse-en-titre, she of the heroic bosom, standing in an open doorway in a silk night-rail that was never designed for sleeping.
'The Prince is with her highness tonight,' says she, with an arch look. Is he, by God! thinks I, and for a moment was seized with an impulse to stride in and drag him off her by the nape of h i s cuckolded neck—or her off him, more like, the arrogant bitch. Countess Grosbrusts was watching to see what I made of it, so I looked her over thoughtful-like, and she smiled, and I grinned at her, and she shrugged, and I laughed, and she laughed in turn which set ’em shaking, and as she turned into her room, casting a backward glance, I sauntered after, thinking what a capital change for my last night in Austria.
It was the custom at the lodge for the whole troop to gather for a late breakfast in the main salon, so I
