Sophie and the Sibyl (14 page)

‘Meyrick! How are the fairies?’

‘Capital!’

They shook hands.

Hans Meyrick looked startlingly young and scrubbed. Max noticed, disconcerted, that he appeared to know everyone who came through the doors. The painter stood in a little swirl of dead leaves, surrounded by happy smiles of greeting.

‘I’ve been very fortunate,’ confessed the artist, leaning against the very marble table upon which Sophie had banged down her gambling gains. ‘Mrs. Lewes has agreed to sit for me, but only for a series of portraits in chalks and silverpoint. Her husband does not consider her strong enough to endure the lengthy studio sittings necessary for a portrait in oils. Nevertheless, it’s an important commission and I shall do my best. However, the Count von Hahn is not at all satisfied with the photographs recently taken of his daughter. All of which, he says, fail to capture the dynamic energy of her glance. And so I am to paint her portrait, in her blue riding habit, with whip, boots and spurs visible, in a style that radiates her vivacity –’

But at that moment the lady herself interrupted him. She pounded towards them, holding her skirts high above her dancing shoes. Sophie had discarded Fräulein Garstein in the dressing room and now stood her ground on the flagstones, fabulous in pale green, the controversial necklace at her throat, her hair dressed in a massive cascade of curls, a starched green waistband with large ribbons magnificent in her wake. She thrust her face up to Max, indignant with bottled rage and disappointment.

‘She is here, here in Homburg! The author of
Middlemarch
! You knew and you didn’t tell me. My spoken English and French are quite good enough for me to be introduced. I’ve read every word she’s ever written, and you haven’t. You must have been visiting her and you could have taken me with you. Mama’s silly prohibitions count for nothing when we’re not at home.’

‘Good evening, Countess,’ said Meyrick diplomatically, snatching up her hand and kissing her white-gloved fingers. The young lady nodded, but concentrated on her quarrel with Max.

‘Your mother may not be here, Sophie,’ he replied, with no intention of humouring this fresh outburst of folly, ‘but your father is. And he would not approve of you calling upon Mrs. Lewes if your mother did not wish it.’

‘Oh, you take their part against me!’ Sophie chewed her thumb through her glove. ‘Why should I care what is proper or not? And in any case, if any one of my actions was improper of course I should know, for I should feel no pleasure in doing it. Hans is going to take her likeness, you are able to call upon her every day and I am not even allowed to shake her hand, or to tell her what joy she brings to our house. Nothing could be more morally uplifting and improving than her books. They are proof of her nobility, and the greatness of her soul.’

Max decided instantly that they proved nothing of the sort, but did not choose to take the argument in that direction. He did not think that the Sibyl needed defending on moral grounds, but he saw, quite clearly, that despite her avid consumption of the novels, Sophie and her beloved author occupied different worlds. He could not even imagine them sitting opposite one another. And he did not like to hear Mrs. Lewes discussed in a public place, as if she were common property. The moment of absolution in the forest haunted his unconscious mind. This writer moved in a sphere beyond the petty judgements of ordinary men and women. No words could contain the Sibyl. He had fallen under her spell.

The great world surged past them, and some, who had witnessed the gambling belle in action at the tables, paused to enjoy the argument. The hotel manager, in charge of the ball, and clearly overtaken by the magnitude of events, had already settled the musicians, ready for the first set, and they were tuning up as the guests poured in. Max, Meyrick, and the explosive little Countess, still standing in the foyer, were objects of amusement and remark.

An evil pause settled over all three. Meyrick gazed longingly in the direction of the ballroom. Sophie fingered her necklace, scanning the crowd. She’s watching out for him, thought Max, the man who redeemed her jewels. She is wearing the necklace as a signal. He squinted at her dance card, which dangled from her wrist, and saw to his alarm that several names were already entered in a cheerful scrawl. The orchestra, now perfectly audible above the turbulence in the hallway, contained both a trombone and a tuba. A bandstand thump could be heard from the far end of the ballroom.

‘I hope you’re not already engaged for every dance.’ Max tried to sound conciliatory.

‘Not quite.’ She glared at him for a moment, then suddenly relented and smiled broadly. She held out her hand. The full-length gloves covered her elbow, but above that her upper arms, soft, unmarked, vanished into the green lace of her sleeves, only to emerge again, her white shoulders rising to her naked throat, the jewels warm against her skin. Max had never seen so much of her uncovered. He caught his breath.

‘I’m sorry I shouted at you. It’s very rude. I’m just so frustrated. Mrs. Lewes seems so near to me and yet withheld – like a god, whose presence is everywhere, but never seen.’

She looked at the dance card. ‘Good heavens, Hans. I’m engaged to dance with you!’

Meyrick held out his arm to her and grinned apologetically at Max. ‘The Countess is doing me the honour of the first quadrille.’

Sophie called over her shoulder, ‘Come and ask me in the refreshment interval. You used to be brilliant at the waltz. My dancing master, who was also yours, said you had real grace.’

And away they went, the obsequious Meyrick bowing to right and left.

Max realised that he could not enter the ballroom and avoid dancing. Too many young ladies wanted partners, and so, rather than risk incivility, he stepped outside into the dusk and the flare of the gas. All the hotels in the Louisenstraße gleamed in the dark, yet all the carriages and walkers headed fiercely through the windy damp towards the Grand Continental. The Architect’s Ball sucked everything towards it, a tornado with the dancing at the core. He stepped down one of the side streets into the dark, under the eaves of a large house with carved doors, and vanished.

Max’s temperament, actually so far distant from that of the Countess von Hahn and her impetuous rapidity as to suggest an incompatible gulf, demanded time, not only to think, but also to feel. Max stood smoking in the dark, safely out of range of the hotel steps and the faint drizzle. He had imagined married life as a coronet of smiles, sexual convenience, and excellent domestic organisation. Children would appear from time to time, washed and diffident, respectfully addressing him as ‘Papa’. They would then be swept away to the nursery, awaiting a suitable moment to be reintroduced. Calm reigned throughout an orderly house, a port of still waters, and at the core, gardening, supervising, decorating and managing the kitchens, but above all smiling, stood the little Countess, her wonderful golden hair secured beneath a modest cap. This conventional fantasy, no sooner conjured up, was just as rapidly dismissed. A quite different Sophie von Hahn stood before him in his mind, her brows drawn together and her head thrown back. This apparition showed no signs of settled calm. Nor did obedience to her father and mother appear to figure very strongly in her moral landscape. In a mere two days Sophie von Hahn had undergone a startling metamorphosis. Max had never envisaged marrying a woman already so firmly wedded to her own opinions, still less one that proved more fortunate than he was at roulette.

Wolfgang ordered him to consider his childhood companion as a suitable future wife, and he never questioned his brother’s judgement. But Sophie was, and was not, still a child. She sharpened all his senses, she possessed everything he desired: beauty, intelligence and wealth. But now, equally clearly, she presented an appalling vista of extraordinary domestic disruptions, and unpleasant rows. She danced across his imagination, luxurious in green, swirling, turning, clasped in the arms of men he didn’t know and had never met. How long had he stood, skulking in the drizzling dark, well away from the glare of gas jets and carriage lamps? How many cigarettes had he smoked? Max began to feel defeated and stupid. He had abandoned the field to a far lesser man in Hans Meyrick, who, even now, might be turning her head with tales of the Fairy Queen. He stamped on his cigarette, shook himself alert, and marched briskly back to the Grand Continental, to gain possession, if he could, of the Countess Sophie von Hahn, and set about taming the beast.

The ballroom, stiflingly hot, overflowed with dancers, observers, flunkeys, gossips and English voices. He craned his neck and insinuated himself into a corner. His mirrored image immediately appeared at his right shoulder; arrestingly handsome, he decided, and pretended to straighten his white tie for the pleasure of a longer look. But even as he indulged this moment of harmless vanity he caught sight of her flying curls and Meyrick’s open hand, spread firmly across the green gauze of her waistband. The artist’s long hair, partially escaped from the controlling velvet ribbon, strayed across her face. Oh, you should see me dance the polka! The painter swung the Countess into the air with bravado and panache.

‘Sir,’ brayed the hotel manager, who had hunted Max down, even into his temporary, mirrored cave, ‘may I introduce you to a young English lady who would be an ideal partner for the next set?’

‘I should be delighted.’

Max confronted a plump, simpering Englishwoman, at least five years older than he was, draped in swathes of orange taffeta. His alarm deepened when the lady, a confirmed admirer of the ubiquitous Mrs. Lewes, also proved to be a fan of Mr. Darwin. Had Herr Duncker read
The Descent of Man
? A remarkable volume. And was it already translated into German? I gather that Mr. Darwin is very particular about his translators, but that he is in constant correspondence with numerous members of the
Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte
and many have been quite converted to
Darwinismus
. Wolfgang, with an eye to the main chance, had in fact published numerous works on popular science, both for and against
Darwinismus
, ever since he had grasped the tiller of the firm. The ongoing controversy sold well, and most people purchased both sides of the argument. But Max hadn’t ever bothered to read any of the tracts and pamphlets, and thus remained blissfully ignorant of the details concerning evolution and natural selection which swept the educated world. The relationship between apes and men appeared to him self-evident, but just as one does not always acknowledge distant relatives, Max did not feel called upon to investigate further. Classical antiquity, sufficiently remote to bear exhumation, without discovering flesh on the corpses, seemed unsettling enough. The bluestockinged mound of taffeta danced him briskly round the crowded mass of seething couples, with never a word concerning the weather, the Kaiser’s arrival at the summer Schloss or the heat of the room. He handed the lady her fan, as he secured her a seat after a strenuous half-hour of heaving bosoms and increasing perspiration.

The Countess von Hahn, devouring an ice in a goblet, materialised at his elbow in the refreshment room.

‘Did you survive Miss Gibbons? I saw you getting the scientific treatment. She has tested the Homburg waters with her travelling chemistry laboratory, and our doctor says she is spot on in her mineral analysis.’

Max took Sophie’s hand and shuddered. He desperately needed a sofa. The damsel leaped to the rescue.

‘Let’s run upstairs and eat ice cream in Father’s suite.’

Decamping from the ballroom proved neither polite, nor simple. They ran into endless rows of curious acquaintances, including the Count, who had cornered the Kaiser’s Architect and pinned him down on the question of improvements to the Orangerie. Sophie and Max bounded up the stairs hand in hand, affectionate and open as any young couple happily engaged, secure in the family’s approval. Sophie held up her green gauze in her left hand, careful not to tread on her lace flounce. Her little white dancing shoes rattled on the tiles, then muffled into damp thumps as she scurried down the corridor.

Ice cream in different flavours triumphed in the refreshments room and remained all the rage, whatever the season.

‘A jug of iced water, two tall glasses,
et deux petites corbeilles de glaces, s’il vous plaît
. Please send them up immediately. Thank you.’

The waiter raised his eyebrows slightly at the young Countess, alone with her father’s publisher in the Count’s private suite, but withdrew at once to tell everyone downstairs. The staff took the pulse of the hotel. They knew whose doors opened softly in the night, which boards creaked and when the last lamps had been blown out. The Countess von Hahn turned out to be a favourite, not just with the kitchens, but also with the chambermaids. Her manners, frank, democratic and decisive, went down well everywhere. Knows what she wants, that girl, never wastes your time with whims and caprices. Eats up too, never seen such a good appetite. And she drank a spoonful of wine at supper. Yet she’s got such a neat little waist. It’s all that riding, and she sits her horse well. Do you know what I heard? She’s already spent all that money she won in the Spielsaal. And on what? You’ll never guess. She’s up there now with the younger son. Unchaperoned, I’ve seen Fräulein Garstein wandering around like a lost cow. Aren’t they engaged to be married? Well, if they aren’t, they ought to be. She danced more than once with the artist, Hans Meyrick. He’s just as handsome as the publisher, but not so rich. Is he really so rich? I thought it was his brother’s money. Well, he’ll never want for anything again if he marries the Countess. And whatever they need, she can win at the tables.