Vienna to go north to the September manoeuvres, in
which our friends were to take part. We in turn
combated this by begging them to meet us in Italy in
three months. You should have seen their anguished
faces when Jimmie and I mentioned three months!
A week’s separation was more than they could
think of without tying crape on their arms. To
our amazement they assured us that a leave was out
of the question. Von Engel declared that he had
not had a leave of absence for ten years and he doubted
if he could obtain one on any excuse short of a death
in the family.
At last, however, one fine day, with farewell notes
and loaded with flowers, and with the prettiest of
parting speeches, we tore ourselves away and were
off for Vienna.
As Bee leaned back in the railway carriage with one
glove missing, I looked to see her very low in her
mind, but to my surprise she was smiling slowly.
“You don’t seem to mind leaving them very
much,” I observed, curiously.
“I haven’t left them for long,”
she replied, drawing her face into complacent lines.
“They are both coming to Vienna on leave.”
“On leave?” I cried.
VIENNA
If Americans continue to flock to Europe in such numbers,
the whole country will in time be as Americanised
as the hotels are becoming. Vienna, with her
beautiful Hotel Bristol, is such an advance in modern
comfort from the best of her accommodations for travellers
of a few years ago that she affords an excellent example,
although for every steam-heater, modern lift, and
American comfort you gain, you lose a quaintness and
picturesqueness, the like of which makes Europe so
worth while. The whole of civilised Europe is
now engaged in a flurried debate as to the propriety
of remodelling its travelled portions for the benefit
of ease-loving American millionaires.
It was not the season when we arrived in Vienna, but
we had letters to the old Countess von Schimpfurmann,
who had been lady-in-waiting to the Empress Elizabeth
when she first came to the court of Austria, a mere
slip of a girl, with that marvellous hair of hers whose
length was the wonder of Europe, dressed high for
the first time, but oftenest flowing silkily to the
hem of her skirt. The countess was something of
an invalid, and happened to be in town when we arrived.
Her husband, the old count, had been a very distinguished
man in his day, standing high in the Emperor’s
favour, and died full of years and honour, and more
appreciated, so rumour had it, by his wife in his death
than in his life.
We also had letters from a lady whose friendship Mrs.
Jimmie made at Ischl, to her daughter-in-law, Baroness
von Schumann, the baron being attached to an Austrian
commission then in Italy; to several officers who
were friends of our officers in Ischl, and, last but
not least, to a little Hungarian, to whom I had a
letter from America, who was so kind, so attentive,
so fatherly to us, that he went by the name of “Little
Papa”—a soubriquet which seemed to
give him no end of pleasure.
