Sofia

“ Alone in her hired hansom the Princess Sofia sat with the window raised, drinking deep of the soft damp air, finding it as heady as strange wine. Under cover of the veil her eyes were brilliant with awareness of her audacity, her lips were parted with the promise of a smile.
She loved it all, she adored this mood of London: its nights of rain were sheer enchantment, arabesque, nights of secrecy and stealth, mystery, and romance under the rose. On nights such as this lovers prospered, adventures were to the venturesome, brave rewards to the bold. ”

“ Into a space perhaps four feet in width from wall to wall and seven deep from the front door to the foot of a cramped flight of crazy wooden stairs, some ten people were crowded, Sofia and the maid Chou Nu in a knot of excited men.
In the saffron glow of an ill-trimmed paraffin lamp smoking in a wall bracket, desperate faces, yellow and brown and white, consulted one another with rolling eyeballs and strange tongues clamorous. Sofia heard the broken rustling of heavy respirations; she saw uncouth gesticulations carve the shadows ”

“ That laugh levelled the last barrier of doubt and fear and nerved Sofia finally to test the forlorn hope she had been nursing ever since Victor had let her see a little way into his mind as to her fate.
Until he could reload, only the tradition of the sexes lent him theoretical superiority; whereas he was in fact a man well on the thither side of middle-age, his virility sapped by long indulgence of unbridled appetites; while Sofia was a woman in the fullest flush of her first mature powers. ”

“ This startling announcement Sofia received without comment and with a composure quite as surprising. The life which had made her what she was, a young woman singularly unillusioned, well-poised, and well-informed, had brought out in her nature a strong vein of scepticism. ”

“ Much more mistress of herself by now, it never occurred to Sofia that there could be any reason why she should hesitate about returning or feel embarrassed before Victor. True, he had surprised them, Sofia was not at all sure he hadn’t actually seen her in Karslake’s arms. But what of that? Love like hers was nothing to be ashamed of; and that Victor could reasonably object to her giving her heart to one of his secretaries was something far from her thought just then. ”

“ The glory of Holy Russia was what Sofia Petrovna lived for. Russia and England were now united, and she dreamed dreams and saw visions. Russia's path was clear. Her dominion over all Europe and all Asia merely a matter of time. Sofia was enchanted. "Ah, my dear! What is your Empire? Your ambitions are nothing to ours. Nothing, nothing. Till now you have stood in our path. Now we shall march together. Russia is God's agent. You will give us your practicalness. We shall give you our beautiful religion. ”

“ Sofia understood. At eighteen—thanks to the comprehensive visual education in the business of life which she could hardly have failed to assimilate from a coign of vantage overlooking every table of a Soho restaurant—there were precious few things she didn’t understand. But her insight into Papa Dupont’s mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. ”

“ The hansom stopped, discharged the fairest fare it had ever carried, and rattled off, leaving Sofia just a trifle daunted and dubious, the animation of her anticipations something dashed by the uncompromising respectability, the self-conscious worthiness of Halfmoon Street. ”

“ They swarm at the new Army Club and at the restaurant of the Red Crab.”
The new Sofia, too, has produced a citizen class which already disdains the peasant simplicity which was the hall-mark of the Bulgarian nation in the time of Stambuloff. They affect fine manners and wit, they try to smile where the old-time Bulgar was a gloomy churl. These parvenu niceties are ostentatious, and sit but ill upon people to whom they are far from natural; they are accompanied by much chatter about art, for Sofia has already produced its clan of “intellectuals.” ”

“ Directly, however, that Victor half turned away, saying “I have found a friend for you, my dear,” Sofia, following his glance, discovered a woman whose every detail of dress and deportment was unmistakably of the fashionable world and whose face carried souvenirs of loveliness as unmistakable.
Smiling and offering her hands, she approached, while Victor’s voice of heavy modulations uttered formally:
“Sybil, permit me to present my daughter. Sofia, Mrs. Waring has graciously offered to sponsor your introduction to Society, to guide and instruct you and be in every way your mentor.” ”

“ She had been quick to see the man behind the misleading little moustache. And already she was beginning to count that amusement tame which Karslake did not share.
Mrs. Waring was undeniably a dear. Sofia could hardly be grateful enough to the happy chance which had cast that lady for the rôle of her chaperone; lacking her guidance the girl must have been innocently guilty of many a gaucherie in ways new and strange to untried, faltering feet. And it was to her alone that Sofia owed the slow but constant widening of her social horizon. ”

“ Sofia stared blankly. Her wits were working even more slowly and heavily than before. And the glare in her eyes from the luminous sphere of crystal was irritating. Almost without thinking, she lifted her glass again; when she put it down it was empty.
“The jewels of Lady Randolph West,” Victor went on to explain without her prompting, “are considered the most wonderful in England; always excepting, of course, the Crown jewels.” ”

“ The Princess Sofia at once took note of Lanyard, with wonder, some misgivings, and a hint of admiration. For he was not only a personable person in those days, with a suggestion of devil-may-care in his air that measurably lifted the curse of his superficial foppishness, but he was putting a spoke in Prince Victor’s wheel. And whosoever did that, by chance, out of sheer voluptuousness, or with malice prepense, won immediate title to Sofia’s favourable regard. If she couldn’t thwart Victor herself, she would be much obliged to anybody who could and did ”

“ Sofia (sofee ́a) , the capital since 1878 of Bulgaria, stands in a broad valley of the Balkans, on the railway from Constantinople to Belgrade and Vienna. It lies two hundred and six miles northwest of Belgrade, while Constantinople lies three hundred miles southeast. The valley at Sofia is an upland plateau, seventeen hundred feet above sea level, and near the heart of the peninsula, between the Vitosha Mountains and the main Balkan chain. At the end of almost every vista in the city are the distant hill masses, and fringing mountains. ”

“ In 1382 Sofia was captured by the Turks; in 1443 it was for a brief time occupied by the Hungarians under John Hunyady. Under Turkish rule the city was for nearly four centuries the residence of the beylerbey or governor-general of the whole Balkan Peninsula except Bosnia and the Morea. During this period the population increased and became mainly Turkish; in 1553 the town possessed eleven large and one hundred small mosques. In the latter half of the 15th century Sofia, owing to its situation at the junction of several trade routes, became an important centre of Ragusan commerce. ”

“ It will be only a few days more before I can claim you for my own, and laugh at his pretensions.
A curious love-letter; yet it was Sofia’s first. If it made her thoughtful, it made her illogically happy as well. If it put the issue to her squarely, of loyalty to Prince Victor or loyalty to Karslake, she was unaware that she had any choice of courses. When Shaik Tsin thumped the panels of her door, she crushed the note into the bosom of her négligée before answering.
When one is of an age to love, it is never the parent who gets the benefit of a doubt. ”

“ A peasant population has come to town in heavy clothes and heavy faces. Despite the war and all the trouble it has meant, there is a feeling that all able-bodied men and women are provided for. Here is none of the elegance and indolence of Athens, or of the ingenuity and cleverness of Constantinople, but a steadiness and drabness of a peasant clumsiness mark the new Sofia. ”

“ Sofia’s eyes sought that coldly burning stone. Her head was so heavy, she hesitated, oppressed by misgivings without shape that she could name, phases of formless timidity having rise in some source which she was too tired to search out.
But she lingered and continued to stare at the crystal.
“Why not?” Victor’s accents were gently persuasive. “At worst, you can only fail. And if you do not fail, it will make me happy to think that you have been given a little insight into my dreams for you.” ”

“ Among the splendid estates of I Colli, the Villa Sofia is one of the finest, and the genius of its creator, a wealthy Briton named Whitaker, shows what may be accomplished by perfect taste when man and Nature work together harmoniously to draw the most and best from the breast of the warm and generous earth. ”

“ Autumnal sunlight kindled to burning beauty the golden-bronze tresses coiled upon the pillows where Sofia lay unstirring, like a princess enchanted—as indeed she was. Surely nothing less potent than magic had wrought this metamorphosis in the fabric of her life! And whether the magic were white or black—what matter? Its work was good.
No more the Café des Exiles, no more the deadly tedium of daily service at the desk of the caisse, no more the shrewish tongue of Mama Thérèse, the odious oglings of Papa Dupont, the ceaseless cark of discontent.... ”

“ It is not only this; but you make sport of our sacredest and deepest sentiments, you reopen our wounds, and you purely and simply abuse us. You ought to have thought of all this before you set out for Sofia. Today there is an abyss dividing Serbs and Bulgars. It is an open precipice which will serve for you as a grave. You wish to fill it? To succeed you must employ other means than words.
Sir: You are a foreigner to us; there is not an honest man in all Bulgaria who can consider you a welcome guest. Nobody knows you. For every Bulgar there is only one word and one gesture for you. ”

“ For example: Up to the moment of her flight from the Café des Exiles there had been, as Sofia saw it, nothing extraordinary or inexplicable in the chapter of happenings which had made her acquainted, as abruptly as tardily, with certain facts concerning her parentage.
You might, if you felt like it, call it a strange coincidence that she should have read the advertisement of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher just before their letter was delivered and Mama Thérèse by her intemperate conduct warmed Sofia’s simmering suspicions to the boiling point. ”

“ Sometimes they stood out for an Order as well as money as the price of their dishonour, but as a rule money was sufficient to buy them to betray their country. It is surprising that men who had risen straight from the soil should have shown themselves so venial, but they had the example of their king before them, and this explains much. The atmosphere at Sofia was one of intrigue and crime. ”

“ Since 1880 the city has been almost entirely renovated in the “European” style; the narrow tortuous lanes and mean houses of the Turkish epoch have almost disappeared, and a new town with straight parallel streets has been constructed in the eastern suburb. The oldest building in Sofia is the little round chapel of St George in the Jewish quarter—originally, it is said, a Roman temple; then a church, then a mosque, and now a church once more. ”

“ You are not cross with me?”
“Why should I be?”
“Because of what happened this afternoon—when I scolded Karslake for making love to you.”
“Oh,” said Sofia with a good show of indifference—she was so tired—“that!”
“Believe me, little Sofia”—Victor put out a hand to hers, and held her eyes with a compelling gaze—“boy-and-girl romance is all very well, but there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. ”

“ Sofia was a peasant city without much fashion or style then, and this aspect has intensified itself. The peasant is the born enemy of the town, and whilst he may be perfect in the country he is a boorish and non-comprehending fellow when he comes to the capital to rule. ”

“ The formulation of this question marked the turning point in Sofia’s descent toward the nadir of shame and anguish; from the moment its significance was clearly apprehended (but it took her long to reach this stage) the complexion of her thoughts took on another colour, and the smart of chagrin was soothed even as the irritation excited by critical examination of Victor’s conduct grew more acute.
Why should the self-styled author of her being have thought it necessary, or even wise or kind, to commission a paid employee to win his daughter’s confidence? ”

“ Sofia is just now in the transition stage. Great new public buildings and fine boulevards are springing up everywhere. There is a beautiful new theatre, a new post office, a new Agricultural Bank, and hosts of minor structures, all spacious and well built, which, in themselves, show Bulgaria to be a country of rapid advancement. ”

“ Most of these persons were women with sounding names and the solid backing of much money conspicuously in evidence—matrons of the younger and more giddy generation which was just then so busily engaged in providing material for the most hectic chapters of London’s post-war social history. But Sofia was scarcely qualified to be critical or to guess that they were climbers equally with herself, and that if their footing had been of older establishment the name of Vassilyevski would have rung sinister echoes in their memories, deafening them to the rich allure inherent in the title of princess. ”