Chapter X: Part II: I (5)

“I am as sure of it as one can be of anything in Eastern politics.”

“And this story I heard yesterday--that he is having his second son taught Hungarian--is that true?”

“I heard it in Berlin, but not from the Emperor.”

For a moment Ranata hated him. Then she registered a vow anew, and this time her chin seemed to absorb its firm pink flesh. She turned to Fessenden pettishly. “I hate politics!” she said. “I shall play my part here quietly, but there is no necessity to talk or even to think about it, except when I am obliged to discuss some point with Count von Königsegg. Of course, if you have advice to give me I shall be grateful, but at other times please forget and let me forget that I am an unhappy princess imagining I have the fate of an empire on my shoulders.”

“I am not in Hungary to talk politics.”

Ranata lifted her eyes to his; they were both soft and dazzling. “Why are you here?” she whispered audaciously.

The fires in Fessenden flew to his head and flashed from his eyes, but his voice if unsteady came to her ear distinctly. “If we are ever alone for a moment I will tell you why.”

Ranata received her first electric shock of passion. He had won again and with her own weapons. Tumultuous delight, amazement, anger, rushed through her brain. She clinched her hand in an attempt at self-control, and it slipped from her knee and touched his. She recovered herself at once.

“One would think you were a Hungarian!” she said scornfully, oblivious of the significance of her failure to comment upon the ancient ocean that rolled between them. “They need only a spark, and are accustomed to women who are always expectant of the language of love. From Alexandra I have gathered that the American man has been too well educated by his women to let himself go until he is sure he will not be laughed at, and that he is greatly assisted by the national frigidity of temperament.”

“What you learn of the national temperament will be from me, not from my sister.”

Ranata was now fully alive to her rôle. That her being was still in tumult, her brain alert with womanly curiosity, mattered nothing; she would follow her programme to the end. If that end were unimaginable for the woman, it was defined enough for the princess.

“I should like to know one man in my life,” she murmured. “And you are an American--the only one I ever could know, I suppose. I find the prospect rather delightful. But you must not insist upon flirting with me. It would be an unfair advantage--I am terribly unskilled.”

“I have not the slightest intention of flirting with you. I have had no time to learn the _a b c_ of flirtation. Nor do I waste my time.”

“How long shall you stay in Hungary?”

“I know less about that than you do.”

“But you do not take long vacations. Surely, your enormous interests in America--they must demand your attention before long.”

“My enormous interests can--take care of themselves.”

The blood ran up to Ranata’s hair. For a second she forgot her rôle. She tasted the sweets of woman’s power for the first time, and wondered at the barrenness of the regal. “Would you stay here if your great fortune were in danger--if--”

“I should stay here if the world went to smash.”

Ranata became aware that Alexandra’s lips were at her other ear. “Sarolta is going to sleep,” whispered the warning voice. “She will be horribly cross. Hadn’t we better go?”

The Archduchess rose. “Yes,” she said indifferently. “It is quite time. And we have promised to go on the floor for a moment. The President has left his seat. Doubtless he is coming to meet us.”

A few moments later she was receiving the compliments of the ministers, most of whom she had met while her father was in Budapest. She was Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Hungary once more, touched with the happy informality of her brother. The members of the press had been requested to leave the room. The Deputies were standing at their desks regarding her with deep attention, and she played to them quite as much as to the ministers. She stood just beneath the elevated seat of the President, and its sombre dignity made the proper background for her noble height and brilliant hair. She wore a large black hat and a gown of black velvet whose jacket opened over the white softness of chiffons. The color was still in her cheeks, her eyes sparkled, her short upper lip curved in a smile which was less gracious than youthful, and revealed teeth whose like from time immemorial have inspired man with longing and forgiveness.

Her eyes wandered several times to the benches of the Extreme Left. These men also stood at their posts. There was one who overtopped his fellows by a head. This head was shaped like a cannon-ball and surrounded by harsh black hair. His nose was short and thick, but the face was strongly built and the small black eyes dashed beneath a permanent frown.

She turned to the President. “Who is that man?” she asked.

“Molnár Lajos.” He gave the names in the Hungarian sequence. “He is one of the most influential and violent of the Obstructionists, and gives us far more trouble than the son of Kossuth.”

“Present him to me.”

The great Liberal magnate hesitated. He thought of his king and turned pale. His eye sought that of the Obersthofmeisterin. She raised her brows expressively and lifted one shoulder. The President, wondering, for he had known Sarolta through many imperious years, turned and walked over to the young Radical. For a moment it was apparent that the disciple of Kossuth hesitated, but he had the courtesy of his race, and he hardly could decline to meet even an archduchess whose smiling eyes were not twenty feet from his. Moreover, she was young and beautiful. He felt that an apologetic glance at his colleagues was unnecessary, and a moment later he was bowing stiffly before the daughter of the king he hated.

Ranata began in the royal manner. “I found your remarks very interesting. Do you speak often?”

“My painful duty compels me to, your Royal Highness.”

“Painful?” She looked at him with melting eyes. “Are you ill? Pardon me--you look very strong.”

“You misunderstand me.” (“I will not tag on your Royal Highness to every sentence,” he registered.) “It is Hungary that is ill.”

“Ah! Of course I know that you must refer to politics, Úr Molnár.” The name of a man or woman, unexpectedly introduced, can be made the vehicle of the subtlest flattery, of a half-timid hint of deepening interest, may even foreshadow a caress. Ranata’s rich voice uttered the commonplace name, with its long vowel, in a manner to mount to the head of any man. Wholly unused to the effort to please, she would have enjoyed this new exercise of power with all that was feminine in her nature, had the dynasty been rooted in the fires of the earth.

Molnár was young, he was barely thirty. He was ardent and susceptible, and for the moment he was not in love. And although he hated the House of Hapsburg as passionately as ever his great master had done, still was he monarchical born; the soul that could hate kings and love liberty was haunted by the ghosts of ancestors who had lived and died in reverence of the Lord’s anointed. The poison was entering his nostrils. If Ranata had looked like most princesses doubtless he would have held sternly to his ideals. But she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and her ineffable air of breeding, her sweet condescension, and the changing expression of her powerful eyes were pumping the blood to his head. He made a final grasp for his politics and his pride.

“It is your happiness, madame, that you can afford to know nothing about politics.”

“Ah! I wonder if I can? I have been much enlightened to-day. Enough so to understand your meaning. Should I not know more? Can any member of my family afford to misunderstand this most important part of our Empire? It is true that I am only a woman--but at least I have some influence with my father. Will you not advise me?”

“Your Royal Highness,” stammered Molnár. “Your Royal-- Yes, of course you should understand our politics--would to Heaven that you did!”

“Whom shall I ask? I am in a position to hear only one side. Ah!” Her face was radiant. “You will come to the palace and give us a little lecture. My ball is to-morrow night. We can arrange then for an hour when you are not too busy to talk to us.”

“I cannot go to your ball, your Royal Highness--none of the Left will go.”

“Not come to my ball? Why not?”

“We never enter the palace.”

“But my ball has nothing to do with politics. I am not your sovereign. I have my father’s permission to live here this winter because my American friend and I are so tired of Vienna, and I am so fascinated by your city. I wish to enjoy Budapest, Úr Molnár. Is my winter to be poisoned by party feeling?--of which I know too little. How illogical, and how ungallant! You will come and bring your colleagues to-morrow night? It is to be the great night of my life, and I am sure you will not spoil it.”

“I? Ah!” Once more he braced himself. “I am afraid there will not be enough women to go round, your Royal Highness,” he said meaningly.

“That was clever. But”--she spoke very softly--“wait. I cannot do everything at once. I have an Obersthofmeisterin. Remember that you are far more your own master than I am mistress of my acts.”

As she finally dismissed the bewildered Obstructionist, she caught Fessenden’s eye. It was twinkling with appreciation of a fellow-man’s enslavement. Ranata saw in the twinkle approval of her manœuvres in a great cause, and responded to the new chord of sympathy with all a woman’s facile manufacture of subtle understandings with unconscious man.

“I feel somewhat of a Jesuit,” she said to him as they left the building. “But it is success or failure, and I shall not fail.”

“Your tactics are those of the man who wins. And I suppose you reason that men will fall in love with you anyhow--that one more or less doesn’t matter.”

“That is an idea!” said Ranata.

XVI

After luncheon the two girls, by Alexandra’s manœuvring, were alone in Ranata’s sitting-room. It was a very beautiful room now, with its golden walls, its rich Oriental hangings and chairs. The windows were open, and the Hungarian sunshine flooded it. Ranata sat in one of the deep straight-back chairs so beloved of royalty, Alexandra in a rocking-chair which had been upholstered to match the rest of the furniture, yet was impertinent and incongruous. “There is only one thing that will reconcile me to parting with you when you marry,” the Archduchess had remarked when it arrived; “I can have a bonfire made of all those ridiculous chairs.” And Alexandra had replied, “I will convert you even to those before I die.”

To-day neither was sensible of pleasantries. Alexandra’s face was flushed, and the Archduchess, although her eyes were fixed absently on Pest, and her profile might have been cut in stone, was bracing herself for the coming conflict. Her subtle brain cleared and balanced its parts. She was determined to lose neither her friend nor her friend’s brother, and an ill-considered word might lose her both. She needed all her resources, for no one understood her so well as Alexandra.

“You know I never beat about the bush,” the disconcerting American began. “You would think me a fool if I pretended any longer to be blind to the fact that you are entangling my brother in order the better to turn the tables on the German Emperor. If he were any one else’s brother I should follow your course with pleasure--I was as delighted as amused at your easy subjugation of poor Molnár this morning; for I am, up to a certain point, heart and soul with you in this great matter--but Fessenden is my brother.”

“I wish he were not. Can you look at this matter dispassionately and impersonally, Alexandra? Do you believe that I can succeed as well without your brother?”

“Possibly not. But I see no reason why any American, much less the most useful young man in the United States, should be sacrificed to the Austrian dynasty. If it were a matter concerning your happiness, I might hesitate, for I love you as well as I do Fessenden; but when patriotism goes into the balance with family affection, pride also casts in a heavy weight.”

“But why do you speak so surely of sacrifice? Men are always falling in love with women, and always getting over it.”

“I have thought a good deal in the last few days. If Fessenden fell in love with you, he would have a hideous time getting over it--if he ever did.”

“If he fell in love with me? You do not think he has, then?”

“He is in the first stage now. I suppose a man can get over that. But quite aside from his feelings, I don’t wish to see him made a fool of.”

“I have no desire to make a fool of him.”

“I should like to know what you call it. Do not let us quibble. If you cannot love my brother send him away.”

“How would it help the matter if I did love your brother? I hope you do not wish me any such unhappy fate as that.”

“I wish only for your happiness. You know that from my point of view the impossible is always possible. And it is not altogether the American point of view. Heaven knows the Hapsburgs have adopted it more than once. I hear that another of your illustrious cousins is about to renounce his rights of possible succession, and his titles, in order to marry an actress--or is it a girl in a chocolate shop?”

“They are insignificant--they lose nothing but their titles and their position at court, for which presumably they care nothing. And you know my sorrow and disgust at all such poverty of self-respect and sense of duty. We need not go over that old ground again. You know that with me it would always be my house first. I should never consider myself for a moment.”

“Then send my brother away. He was an after-thought. You had made all your plans to succeed without him.”

“I am convinced that when William has made his Germany as strong and prosperous--when he has fulfilled that first ideal of his reign--and when my father is dead--he means to make war on Russia, and that your brother means to furnish the enormous sum necessary. And if William conquered Russia--” she waved her hands expressively.

“It is by no means certain that William will conquer Russia. It is a large order. The rest of Europe, to say nothing of England, would have something to say about it.”

“With the best part of Austria and all of Hungary at his back he could snap his fingers at the rest of Europe. Without the interference of Russia in 1849, Hungary would be a free state to-day, and she only waits for her chance of revenge. Who knows what agencies are at work to give reality to the Pan-Germanic movement the moment my father dies? Bohemia might sympathize with Russia, but what could she do, hemmed in as she is? Besides, the Slavs outside of Russia have little desire to put themselves under the heel of the heaviest tyranny in Europe. Most of them would prefer annexation with Germany, if only because the German Emperor has learned the secret of prosperity. If he tempted them with that inducement, you may be sure that only a Pole would hesitate and stand out for complete independence. All this enthusiasm here for William in Hungary is genuine enough, no doubt, but Budapest is as active and ambitious as Berlin, and a ruler who could and would make Hungary as rich and as successful, industrially and commercially, as she should be with her resources and her enterprise, would be quite as acceptable if he were less fascinating. And I will confess that I am superstitious about William. I never raise my eyes to the heavens at night that I do not fancy I see his star laughing at me. Indomitable ambition has united Europe before. There is no sufficient reason why it should not happen again. Before every great change of the world’s map wiseacres have shrugged their shoulders at the impossible, and the barriers have been solemnly pronounced impregnable. How easy it all seems when one looks back upon it. And with your brother--perhaps the United States--as his ally--great Heaven! If I were William I should sleep serenely enough, in spite of all the antagonistic forces in Germany itself. And he grows in tact. He has the brain to learn his lessons.”

“And it is your purpose to reduce Fessenden to such a state of idiocy that he would give you his pledge to let William take care of himself? Suppose he had already given his word to the Emperor of Germany? Have you not seen enough of him to know that he is a man who under no possible circumstances would break his word?”

“I have seen enough to know that he is a man who would give the one woman the world if she asked for it. It is not necessary to break promises. There can be misunderstandings, quarrels, which leave men mutually free of one another.”

Alexandra drew her breath in and her brows together. She had hardly expected such frankness, well as she knew the methods of diplomacy. But she answered readily: “A man does not sacrifice his honor and his friendship, and place the world at the feet of the adored object with no hope of reward. Do you mean to say that you purpose to dazzle my brother with the hope of ultimate success?”

“No; it will not be long before we understand each other too completely for that!”

“What _do_ you mean?”

A deep blush suffused Ranata’s face, and she stood up suddenly. “I believe I shall love your brother,” she said distinctly. “I believe it is my destiny as surely as it is that I was born to be useful to my house. I have never seen another man who has touched--has interested me at all. There has never been any hope in my heart that I should not love sooner or later--perhaps no wish. Would you take this from me--from him? Cannot you understand what a great love may mean to natures like mine and your brother’s--that the earthly consummation of love has nothing to do with its immortal part? Your brother did not receive your letter asking him to come here. We met by the merest accident--apparently!--and he interested me quite independently of my ambitions, my purpose. If ambition and purpose had never been born I should implore you as I do now to let him remain near me as long as possible. I shall not relax in my determination to win him from the Emperor of Germany, but there is so much in my soul to give! I shall give it to him--and I believe he will be satisfied.”

Alexandra, who had been repelled by the half revelation of purely human passion, thrilled at the vision of poetic and spiritual love high on the snowy peaks of Imagination. Ranata looked too exalted to kiss, but the American girl was delighted to find the infrequent tears in her own eyes. In a moment, however, her practical brain replied:

“I don’t believe Fessenden is very sentimental. You will have to educate him.”

“He needs less education than you think.”

“Of course you have already begun to idealize him. He is accustomed to get what he wants. He loves obstacles--and he always surmounts them.”

“I shall give him what he wants.”

Alexandra considered. She had little regard for the ultimate wants of men, had, indeed, given them slight consideration. But she knew that man was extremely prosaic on the subject of matrimony, and she was allured by the prospect of beholding her brother, purified of earthly gross, standing alone on a lofty peak, wrapped in the chastity of spiritual love. She shivered slightly, and Fessenden, somehow, seemed to slip out of the picture; but it pleased her nevertheless, and it was not unlike her own cool and romantic visions of Ranata’s future. Besides, it was not necessarily final. There was always the possibility that Fessenden, if induced to climb his peak, would stay on it only long enough to create a scheme for the further and final subjugation of Ranata. She answered after a moment’s thinking--

“You have put such an entirely different complexion on it! I should be a fiend to betray you. William and Fessenden both know how to take care of themselves. I’m frightfully interested, old girl, and I’ll never turn a hair again.”

When Ranata was alone she sat straight in her chair and stared hard at the floor. “How much of that did I mean?” she said finally and aloud. “How much! I wish to God I knew!”

XVII

Immediately after tea the Archduchess rose to leave the Hungarian house, saying that she had letters to write, neglected in the morning. She had included all in the slight explanation, but as she passed Fessenden she raised her eyes irresistibly. He was looking as haughty and distant as she was attempting to feel. Again their positions were subtly reversed.

“Would you like to see my new rooms?” she asked hurriedly. “I think them very charming. Perhaps you will come up with Alexandra--in an hour?”

When she had gone Fessenden turned to his sister. “Wouldn’t you like to walk about the garden?” he asked. “You do not take half as much exercise as you should.”

They did not walk far. As soon as they reached a rustic seat out of sight of the others, and Fessenden had made sure there were no lurking places for eavesdroppers, they sat down, and he began at once, as if pursuing aloud the current of his thoughts--

“The great uncle, Frederick William IV., of the Emperor of Germany was mad, and there has been no suggestion of insanity in the family since. That disproves not only the alternate generation theory, but that insanity is necessarily persistent.”

“What on earth are you driving at?”

“A good many things have kept me awake at night lately, and one of them is the uncomfortable number of lunatics in the royal and ducal families of Bavaria.” He added deliberately: “I mean that the late Empress, and her cousins, Ludvig II. and the present Otto, seem to hover ever behind the Archduchess Ranata, three black and stalking ghosts.”

“I thought you knew your Europe.”

“I have no time to waste in analyzing court gossip. But do you mean to say that these three were not mad?”

“Elizabeth was no more mad than I am, and the other two lost their minds through specific causes. If I don’t know anything else, I know the facts about every royalty in Europe; I have been brought up on them.”

“Well, explain,” said Fessenden impatiently. “And don’t let your loyalty and your imagination run away with you.”

“You must have learned that the commonplace world always revenges itself on an unusual character by believing it mad. Doubtless you have been called mad yourself. It is only recently that people have resigned themselves to the sanity of the German Emperor. Elizabeth hated the footlights as much as he loves them, and publicity has readjusted him to the common estimate. The ever-increasing seclusion of her life deepened the mystery and the gossip, and both confirmed those who were not in a position to learn the truth, in the belief that an empress who spurned a throne must necessarily have lost her wits. At the other extreme are psychic enthusiasts--over here in Europe--who already have begun The Legend of Elizabeth. A legend of some sort was inevitable, for she was royal, beautiful, unhappy, mysterious, and died a violent death. These enthusiasts knew as little of her personally as the world in general, but their imaginations are of finer fibre, and there was much in this lovely and romantic figure to appeal to them. No doubt, a hundred years from now Elizabeth will be one of the most irresistible figures of the past to the poet and the romancer, for the legend that the members of this cult have set on foot will grow and strengthen daily. Their belief is that she was one of those rare beings who are too exalted for human contact, and that the development of her natural superiority was one of the most remarkable in the psychic history of mortals. Profoundly imbued, according to them, with the doctrine that a man should develop his personality at the expense of every duty, every affection, of kin or subject, she withdrew herself more and more, not only from the world, but from her husband and children, that she might devote her thoughts only to what was beautiful, live the inner life alone, and develop her personality in a manner possible to most people only after they have cast off the flesh; that her sensitiveness in time became so great that contact with common mortals was unbearable. That is the legend, and, mark my words, before a century has passed she will be painted with a halo about her head. It will be only the glamour of royalty, but the world will never suspect that.

“This is the truth of the matter--like all truth, to be found midway between two extremes of belief: Elizabeth was a simple creature, bright, sweet, lovely, but, although highly accomplished, moderately gifted in the matter of intellect and strength of character. Nature never intended her to mount a throne. She should have married for love a man who would have been faithful to her, and lived a life without the ostentation and public duties she hated, a life that would have been filled with all the refined pleasures. Instead of that the poor child was suddenly shot from her simple country home, where hardly a whisper of the world and its ways had reached her, up to the most formal and exacting throne in Europe. Here she was not only tormented by her mother-in-law, but by the rapidly waning love of her husband, to whom at that time she was much attached. She was too young and too undisciplined to accept her fate with philosophy; nor did she ever develop the strength of intellect and character which enables a disappointed woman to conquer life. Life conquered her, poor thing; as a queen and a woman she was a failure. First, while she was very young, she ran away and sulked for several years. She returned, but only to absent herself more and more from a life which she detested increasingly. It is quite true that she loved the beautiful things of this world--art, music, literature--above all, nature. In many ways she was an exquisite creature, and in these congenial resources she found much compensation for the constant unhappiness and the terrible tragedies of her life. Every person of refined tastes cares less and less for the world as he grows older. When the most excruciating disappointments crown this natural tendency, and there is not ambition to dominate experience, then most men and women of Elizabeth’s age live much the same sort of life that she did; and the world knows too little about them to call them either mad or psychic phenomena. So much for Elizabeth--and let no one grudge her success in legend as a compensation for the failure of her life.

“As to Ludvig--”

“A moment,” interrupted Fessenden, “what of Rudolf?”

“Rudolf had suffered frightfully from headaches for several months before he died, brought on by the dissipations into which he plunged to drown the miseries of his life. He was one of the most rarely gifted of the Hapsburgs, from the first Rudolf down; he had no responsibilities to occupy his brilliant and restless mind; he had a great weakness for women, and they pursued him; his domestic life was wretched; he sought oblivion in every possible way, and the autopsy proved that he had unhinged his brain. He undoubtedly killed himself in a wild moment of intolerable _ennui_ and disgust. That Marie Vetsera was present adds little to the significance of his death. It might as well have been any other woman, and Rudolf was incapable of the pathos of a romantic suicide. As to his insanity, it was not congenital; and there was no sign of it before he gave himself up to his last dissipations.

“Ludvig was born with no other screw loose than an inordinate admiration of himself and the actor’s disposition to startle the world from the centre of the stage. All little kings--and some big ones--have a disproportionate idea of their own importance; and to realize the extreme point to which Ludvig, after his brain became clouded, carried this not unnatural delusion, you have only to visit his castle of Neu-Schwanstein and look at the throne room. It was not even built before Bavaria became a mere state of the German Empire, and yet it has the proportions and the splendor suitable for one of the three or four great monarchs of the earth. And this, not in his capital, but in one of his many castles! But Ludvig’s passion for beauty, his patronage of Wagner, and the splendid monuments he has raised in Bavaria to his own artistic genius, make him quite worthy of the inevitable legend. If you will look at his photographs, even those taken after he became gross and had suffered from many attacks of insanity, you will see that his eyes were always the eyes of the idealist. It was to this very idealism that he owed his insanity. Above all others was the monastic ideal of chastity, but he did not have the self-denial to live on monastic fare; and he was a king, and there was everything in his life to give his brain and imagination a preternatural activity. The consequence was periodical attacks of insanity, and the accentuation of his original peculiarities; towards the end, no doubt, he was vicious enough. The same thing might happen to any American, although, of course, centuries of interbreeding render the brain more susceptible to abnormal conditions. So much for Ludvig von Bayern, who in his youth was beautiful enough to demand from the very canvas absolution for all his vanities. As for poor Otto--recall all you know of the Duc de Reichstadt--I mean the young man of history, not of fiction.”

Fessenden rose and thrust his hands into his pockets, staring at the ground. In a moment he raised his head and made the motion of flinging a load from his shoulders.

“Is that all that has worried you?” asked Alexandra curiously.

“Yes,” he said, “that is all.”

XVIII

A few moments later a lackey informed them that her Royal Highness had finished her letters, and they went up to the private apartments of the Archduchess. She received them in the writing-room, the first of the suite, whose windows looked down upon Pest only. It had been panelled and hung with blue brocade, almost as bright as the cornflower, and the furniture and woodwork were white and silver. It was handsome and stately and stiff.

Fessenden wandered about for a time looking at the miniatures; the Archduchess, apparently in her most gracious mood, and somewhat amused withal, moving beside him and giving him little biographical notes. There was one of Maria Theresia before the flesh rolled out, and the face and poise of head were full of young pride and indomitable will; but this artist, like his fellows, had failed to demonstrate the beauty with which the historian accredits her. Several of the men and women had the terrible Hapsburg mouth, but their eyes were genial, and they looked like kindly simple folk. Most of the Bavarians had some degree of beauty, although the young women all wore that meekness of expression which would seem to be the pertainment of the inconspicuous females of reigning houses. The lovely face of Elizabeth, with its strange and disconcerting shadow of perpetual girlhood, looked from several of the bits of porcelain and ivory. There were two of Ranata herself, one in haughty profile, the other with eyes cast down, but, by cunning art, suggesting a swift uplifting of lash and a blaze beneath. The bosom also looked about to heave, the throat to swell. The artist evidently had caught her in some mood of self-repression and penetrated the mask she wore so well. Fessenden studied it for a moment in silence, then turned and looked at her sharply. Again the subtle delight of being understood stirred in Ranata, who had yet to learn that the truly masculine man never understands a woman, and has only a fleeting desire to do so when anxious or uncomfortable. She colored slightly and turned her head away. Its movement happened to be in the direction of the door leading into the sitting-room. Fessenden’s eyes followed here, and he gave an exclamation of rapture.

“Do I see a rocking-chair?” he exclaimed--“a rocking-chair?”

Ranata experienced the first pang of her new condition; but deep among the complexities of her womanhood was that indulgence for man which carries so many of her sex through the shoals of amazement, disappointment, and weariness, into the calm waters of philosophy. To this instinct, as much as to pride, might be attributed her ready words and hospitable smile.

“I suppose it is many weeks now since you have seen one--unless you have happened to notice Sarolta’s? This is Alexandra’s most cherished possession, but I am sure she will lend it to you for a few moments.”

“Yes, indeed,” quoth Alexandra. “I will write a note here, if I may.”

Fessenden started for the rocking-chair, but branched abruptly to the window. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “it is finer from here than from the garden--there are too many trees there. The Margarenthen-Insel looks as frivolous and unhistoried as any pleasure island in America, and that downward sweep of the mountain is very like the Adirondacks.”

“Are Americans disappointed when they find the incomparable in Europe?” demanded the Archduchess dryly. “I asked a lady of one of your Embassies once how she liked Vienna, and she said she liked it very much, but she did so miss her back-yard.”

Fessenden laughed heartily. “Doubtless her husband’s post was a Christmas present from an appreciative President. You know something of our politics, so I need not explain.”

It might be said of Ranata that she paraphrased a famous saying of Mark Twain’s and had adopted the version as her safeguard: “When in doubt talk politics.” She stood beside Fessenden and regarded him with contemplative admiration. “You have done so much,” she said, as if considering. “Why do not you give your country a new code of political morals?”

“The pigeon-holes of my country are stuffed with codes of regeneration. The United States must dree its weird, and suffer the penalty of springing full grown from the brain of the old civilization. Several things may happen, however, before she is many years older: a revolution, which will let out the bad blood and bring what best elements are left to the surface; a collapse of our worst institutions through sheer rottenness; or a sudden awakening of the public conscience. That may happen at any moment, for all our history has proved that you can try an American so far and no farther. The sensationalism of the press has accustomed them to almost anything, from daily lynchings to the unblushing politics of their Presidents; but there is always the last straw, and I await the falling of that straw with considerable hope. I no longer remonstrate; on the contrary, I give a helpful shove whenever I can do so unobserved--and I have my men in Congress and State legislatures. They may not be first-class men, but they are intelligent, and they obey my orders.”

“You are a bit of a Jesuit.”

“It is a valuable lesson I have learned in your Europe. Besides, I want the crisis to come in my best years. Even my father could not grapple with it now; and as this crisis was what I was born for and raised for, you will admit that it is my duty to use every faculty and whatever methods the peculiarities of my country demand.”

“We are not the only ones who think ourselves heaven-born,” murmured Ranata.

“True, but your inspiration and mine spring from sources as asunder as the poles. A fool ascends a throne, with no more than enough wit to sign his name, with not an impulse for progression, not an idea with which to keep his state abreast of the other great nations of the earth, with perhaps every folly that will scuttle her unless a revolution or Heaven intervenes; and yet there he is, half his length above other men, braver, infinitely more intelligent men, who accept him without protest and never forget to flatter. His masses endure him without question, unless he push them to extremity, and often then. Can you wonder that he believes the Almighty placed him on that throne for some inscrutable purpose, or that his people believe it, knowing that they would have selected almost any one else? With us a man blunders along through square holes and round holes until he finds the one that fits him, and then he settles down and attends to business. I had the superior advantage of being trained for a specific purpose by one of the most remarkable men living, and I have inherited enough of him to make the consummation possible. I ‘found myself’ earlier than most men do, and I have been finishing my education ever since. I know where I stand and what I can do. My final accomplishment, of course, depends entirely upon circumstances. My best effort now is to make myself ready to meet any contingency whatever, and to leap swiftly to its mastery.”

Ranata turned her head and regarded him intently. “If I did not know you so well through my intimacy with Alexandra,” she said, “I should find it difficult to believe that patriotism with you was a consuming passion. You have so much carelessness, boyishness, in your manner--and--you are so practical!”

“If I tore about like a raging bull I might accomplish notoriety, but I certainly should accomplish nothing else. And the secret of the failure of the ‘reformers’ of the United States is that they have the ideals and the political bosses have the sense.”

She asked irresistibly, “If it ever came to a choice between your country and a woman, what would be the result?”

“No such question will ever arise.”

“No?”

“Certainly not. Do you think so meanly of my resources as that?”

“But circumstances are sometimes stronger than men.”

“Some men.”

Ranata had let her arm drop to her side; her hand was not an inch from Fessenden’s. Both were acutely aware of the magnetic temptation of that nearness; for a second all their being seemed to have surged into their finger-tips. Fessenden’s curved rigidly inward. His brain was still in control, and he was accustomed to play a careful and far-seeing game. Her hand fluttered towards his; then she swung about abruptly.

“Why don’t you sit in your rocking-chair?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “I must turn you out directly; it is nearly time to dress.”

Fessenden marched to the chair, and rocked himself for twenty minutes with every appearance of content. Alexandra came in from the next room, and they talked of the ball of the following night and of other impersonal things. The peasants had come and were housed, and a remarkable band of gypsies had been found in Transylvania. Fessenden, who was dining in Pest, rose regretfully at seven.

He smiled down upon Ranata and shook her hand slightly. “Can I come up here again?” he asked. “I like it much better than any other part of the palace.”

“Perhaps,” said Ranata, smiling, but angry at the quick response within her to the warm and personal attitude of the lordly male. “You have had your own way too much. I think you need disciplining.”

Alexandra was retiring through the outer room. Fessenden raised the hand he held and pressed his lips to it twice quickly. “I am humblest of your slaves,” he said unsteadily.

“No you are not!” replied Ranata almost as unsteadily. “And I wish you would go. I have never been late for dinner in my life.”

When she was alone she turned her eyes to the rocking-chair; then, after a manifest effort in another direction, she moved slowly towards it, regarded it impatiently, tenderly, then sank slowly into its embrace and dropped her head against the cushion.

XIX

The palace at Buda to-day (restored by Maria Theresia) is chiefly remarkable for the imposing beauty of its exterior; within, the severe elegance of its walls and furniture conveys not a hint of the ornate luxury, the gorgeous magnificence of the palace of the fifteenth century, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi, the period in which Hungary commanded the admiration and homage of Europe.

Not content with the reputation of a soldier second only to that of his great father, Matthias, ascending the throne at the age of fifteen, and giving immediate evidence of intellectual and governing qualities of a rare precocity and order, quickly ripened into a scholar and the most liberal patron of the arts in the world of his day. This great and singular man, who on the battle-field endured the hardships of the meanest of his soldiers; who, disguised, entered the camp of his enemies again and again, or calmly took his observations amid a rain of bullets and spears, whose justice passed into a proverb, and who was a rigorous administrator of finance, had a love of luxury, matched by no contemporary, that would have sapped the energies of another man, and a delight in purely intellectual pursuits and discussions that rounded one of the most versatile and grandly equipped characters known to history. He established and personally disciplined a body of foot soldiers--the Black Troop--modelled upon and equal to the famous Janissaries of Turkey, conquered the Czechs, and captured Vienna, driving out Frederick, the German Emperor, forcing him to take refuge in a wagon drawn by oxen, and to beg from convent to monastery like any common mendicant. The court of this ardent soldier became the rallying-ground of scholars and artists, who not only lived on his bounty, but were raised to the highest positions in the royal household. He spent his hours of leisure in day-long arguments with the scientists and savants who had deserted all other courts for this most enlightened and fascinating of monarchs, or lying at ease on a couch covered with a golden tapestry embroidered with pearls, in one of the most splendid libraries that any mortal has ever possessed. This library, sacked with the rest of the palace by the Turks after the battle of Mohács, was contained in two immense rooms, whose walls were covered with carved shelves of precious woods and tapestries of velvet embroidered with gold. The books, collected by Matthias, and in many cases written for him, numbered ten thousand. They were inscribed on white vellum, illuminated by the most accomplished masters of the art, and bound in colored skins set with precious and semi-precious stones. On the cover of each volume was a miniature of Matthias and his coat-of-arms. The furnishings of the Palace of Buda, its objects of art, many made from gold or silver and of a great size, the tapestries, the pleasure-rooms, the hanging gardens of his several palaces, were marvels of beauty and costliness; and the embassies which he constantly sent to the various courts of Europe so surpassed the efforts of other monarchs in extravagance that his resources of wealth alone struck despair to the hearts of those who may have meditated an assault upon his kingdom. When about to take a second wife, Beatrice, daughter of the King of Naples, the splendors and luxuries of Buda were augmented two-fold; and on the day of the wedding the great hall of the palace, in addition to its silken hangings interwoven with gold and precious stones, its tapestry of sheer gold, its thousand vessels of silver, its golden service chased with the history of the world, silver casks of wine were suspended from the ceiling, and a huge silver fountain spouted the choicest and costliest of all wines, the Tokay of Hungary.

The manuscripts in their jewelled cases, the thousand objects of barbaric magnificence, were gone forever. There was no modern art that could simulate them, even could craftsmen be found with patience for the attempt; but Ranata had persuaded the Emperor to send to Buda some twenty of the superfluous Gobelins which the Hapsburgs have retained throughout their vicissitudes. Her argument had enlivened the mood of her father, and raised still higher his hope in his youngest born.

“The Hungarians,” Ranata had written, “no doubt resent the very obvious fact that there are so few treasures in the Palace of Buda, and, knowing that our tapestries are packed away in large numbers, and are as priceless as they are beautiful, must infer that we fear to trust them in this most precarious of our possessions. So it has seemed to me that it would be another stroke of diplomacy to send several of the best, with the understanding that they are to remain here. It is a small yet impressive sum to stake as an expression of our confidence in ourselves and our Hungarian subjects.”

The tapestries had been promptly despatched, and now hung in the four circle rooms opening into the Great Hall of Ceremonies, and in the blue drawing-room and adjacent dining-room. These rooms, as well as the long suite down the front of the palace, were recalled for the night of the ball from their arctic splendors by a lavish adornment of palms and flowers, and in several of the smaller rooms the lights were pink. Modern as it was, the Great Hall itself, with its panels, like lakes of liquid gold, its heavy incrustations of yellow bronze on the brilliant white of the wood, and its immense chandeliers, with their thousand points of light, was too perfect in its way to gain aught from the past, nor did Ranata add so much as a flower.

It had been decided that Prince Árpád Nadasdy, an aged magnate and close friend of the Emperor, should wear the royal robes of Matthias, as neither political nor sentimental significance could be attached to his impersonation. The old Prince was far closer upon senility than his king would ever be, and addicted to long nights of Csendes, at the Nemzesi Casino, the club of the magnates, where he had left all of a once large income not absorbed by the turf; but he had ordered his costume of a long-suffering tailor, and vowed, over the hand of his beloved princess, that he would give the final touch of reality to the scene. As Matthias had died in his prime, and was possessed of a classic beauty, Prince Nadasdy, who did not number vanity among his vices, had announced his intention to wear a flowing fair wig and a beard, although the fine outline of Matthias had been shaved on the battle-field. The piercing glance of that monarch no art could coax into the bleared orbs of the old magnate, but he still had a figure of majestic height and carriage, and in spite of dissipations he had preserved its slimness. He was to wait at the upper end of the Throne Room until Ranata, who was to impersonate Beatrice of Naples, dressed for the first time in the national costume of her lord, should have made, in her own character, the perfunctory round of greeting among her assembled guests. He would then stand at her side at the lower end of the hall while the peasants danced the Chardash, and afterwards walk with her through a _quadrille d’honneur_.

At nine o’clock on the night of the ball the great company was assembled in the Hall of Ceremonies awaiting the entrance of the court, but the aged Matthias had not made his appearance. In that splendid scene, however, he was not missed, and every eye turned constantly towards the door beyond the second circle-room which led to the private apartments of the Archduchess. Many had not yet seen her, or but in glimpses, and by this time curiosity had risen to fever pitch. The women as well as the men were in the eccentric splendor of their national dress, and although it varied little in cut, fancy and extravagance prevailed in the materials of the low bodice, the apron, and the voluminous skirts; and bodice, neck, and arms were almost obliterated by the big dull uncut jewels and heavy chains which, with the ancient costumes of velvet and satin, embroidered and brocaded with a lost art, neither time nor poverty has been able to drive from the chest of the Hungarian. The magnates wore, although lightly, their velvet cloaks, fur-lined, embroidered with jewels, and carried their plumed kalpags in one hand.

The men distinguished in art and letters, without jewels or hereditary costume, still made a fine showing in the silk-and-velvet dress of the retainers of the court of Matthias, but the greater number of the deputies, in their fierce Hungarian pride, had chosen to wear the military uniform of that period, which included a short braided jacket and a velvet cloak of some brilliant color.

The young girls, although in attire less imposing than that of their mothers and married sisters, were quite as picturesque, and their white gowns rested the eye in that blaze of color. Each house had contributed a young son who wore the purple velvet, the golden chain, and the golden network on their heads of the ambassadorial youths of King Matthias. These pages stood in a double file along the two circle rooms leading to the apartments of the Archduchess. In the high gallery that traverses the hall a military band played softly. Beneath, in the arcade, a double gypsy band awaited their turn and eagerly observed the historic scene. Behind them, erect against the wall, as dignified and impressive as the greatest of the nobles, were the peasants who were to dance the Chardash. Their presence was a surprise to all, and they had inspired almost as much conversation as the royal hostess herself.

That conversation was very animated, at times quite shrill, for the Hungarians, as lively by temperament as the American, were more excited to-night than they had been during the visit of William of Germany. The excitement during his entertainment had been, with slight exception, confined to the men, but there was not a woman in the palace to-night who did not feel a flutter at her heart and a shortening of her breath. Not only was Ranata is appearance and manner their ideal of what a princess should be, and the daughter of a queen and the sister of a prince they had worshipped, but they stood in expectation of the initial moment of a court life which promised to be more brilliant than anything in Europe, might indeed revive the gay splendors of the days when their fathers had been the greatest aristocracy in the world--when the Hapsburgs were robber barons and the Hohenzollerns unknown. That this should be given to them who had been starved of court life, that those who were too impoverished to leave their entailed homes and go to Vienna should now cherish the prospect of constant functions, and many private entertainments in the palace, filled every feminine heart with a sense of enchantment, and gratitude to this fairy princess who had dared to have an idea. They were prepared to love as much as they admired her, and jealousy had entered few souls, in spite of the extravagant admiration of the men. Many of the women, indeed, were beautiful enough to spare themselves envy, and those who were neither handsome, nor yet pretty, had sufficient cleverness and animation to keep their little courts together.