Fessenden sat over his coffee on the terrace of his hotel in Pest, and
stared up at Buda with little appreciation of its evening beauty. The
sunset glow still lingered, pushing forward the dark masses of the
Schwabenberg, where brilliant points of light were appearing among the
dim outlines of the villas. On the long ridge above the Danube, and the
abrupt irregular heights beyond, lights were darting forth rapidly, and
one wing of the palace was illuminated. The irregular groups and single
dots of fire gave the fissures and cliffs, the ruins of the citadel
on its isolated height far to the left, and the beautiful outline of
the palace a dark and savage grandeur. On the rough side of the cliff,
far below the citadel, was a mass of lights like a meteor fallen upon
a void, so dark were the woods and rocks about the little kiosk where
men and women drank their iced coffee to the music of the gypsies.
Along the ridge on the right of the palace were the melting outlines of
public buildings, of ancient churches, the arches of the chapel above
the dust of Shêkl Gül Baba, which alone commemorates the century and a
half of Turkish occupation, and the modern structures which cover the
baths the Romans built two thousand years ago. Down on the riverbank,
in the shadow of the precipitous gardens of the palace, the cafés were
brilliantly alight, and the music of cymbal and fiddle floated over to
Pest and mingled with the strains of the gypsy band in the hotel behind
Fessenden.
On the long line of terrace before the hotels of Pest, hundreds sat
at little tables smoking and drinking their coffee. On the wide
promenade in front many more sauntered, the women gayly and fashionably
dressed, many of them beautiful, animated--bewitching, no doubt, to
the fine-looking men who accompanied them. Fessenden had a fervent
admiration for the women of Hungary, and he had sat at this same table
during former visits and observed them with pleasure. But to-night his
eyes rarely wandered from the balcony at the southeast extremity of
the palace, where several figures were discernible, and the regular
rising, lingering, disappearing of what might have been the travail of
a miniature volcano. The volcano, doubtless, was the Princess Sarolta
of Windischgrätz, for the figures had moved from time to time, and
there appeared to be no man among them. Once the tallest of the group
had entered the room at the corner and stood for a moment against the
light. Fessenden, his heart beating faster, had fancied he recognized
the Archduchess, and had half risen in angry determination to cross the
river and storm the hill, but had thrown himself back in his chair and
ordered another glass of iced coffee.
Nevertheless, his anger did not cool nor his determination weaken. It
was now three days since he and Ranata had surrendered themselves to
the wild exhilaration of the Chardash, and he had not even received
permission to call on his sister in the palace. Alexandra had written
him that the Archduchess was doubtless very angry, as she had ignored
the day in the village as completely as if her memory had failed her,
and every one was in doubt as to the manner in which they were to dance
the Chardash at the ball. “But the ball will take place,” Miss Abbott
had added, “and if you will possess your soul in patience and remain
here, I shall make a very especial point of your coming. She can hardly
refuse. Indeed, she would know that if she did it would be the end of
our friendship. I refuse to look ahead in this matter. I have always
known that something would happen when you met. It is all on the knees
of the gods. The twentieth century is not the eighteenth nor yet the
nineteenth. For my part, I want to see history make itself, and the
past, I hold, is merely designed by the inexorable law of progress as a
background for the present. There will be an American queen in Europe
yet. I am glad I am young--and I love you both.”
She had asked Zrinyi and Prince Illehazy to call upon him, and he had
pressed a tailor into hasty service and dined with them at the Park
Club on successive evenings. He knew that he must meet the Archduchess
before long, for both these nobles had designed entertainments in her
honor, nor was it likely that she would refuse his sister’s request.
But he was not possessing his soul in patience. He was used to personal
activity in the levelling of obstacles; moreover, the resentment of the
Archduchess seemed to him the most erratic manifestation of feminine
perversity to which man had ever been subjected. If she choose to dress
herself as a peasant and dance with peasants, what right had she to
vent her anger upon him for dancing with her as respectfully as the
most courteous among them? He had chosen to ignore her state, and no
course could have been more consistent. He would not apologize, for he
had done nothing culpable; he was as entitled to incognito as herself.
To vent her wrath on him for a situation of her own making was a
caprice so far unworthy of her character, as he understood it, that he
was inclined to believe there was a misapprehension of which he knew
nothing. By which it will be seen that there were many things Fessenden
knew better than woman.
Whether he was in love with the Archduchess of Austria or not he
was at no pains to discover. But his instinct for adventure was now
on edge--the youth in him was rampant; New York was non-existent;
his weeks of rest in Europe, passed almost entirely in solitude
and sunshine, had made his pulses full and quick; he was ready for
anything, and his will had never set itself more squarely. Here were
all the high elements of romance at last; moreover, when he awakened
in the night and heard the distant wail or rush of the Chardash, he
trembled and experienced a sensation of being stabbed by something that
was both sharp and sweet.
The attitude of the Archduchess, the insurmountable barrier she had
raised, but whetted his determination to know her. With all his
contempt for monarchy, he was still too wise in its ways to make the
mistake of republican approach. He was unconventional, but he was also
a man of the world; while he would not hesitate to insist upon talking
with any sovereign as man to man, with no more formality than he would
yield to the President of the United States, he knew that to walk up to
a palace door and demand admittance, even to his sister’s apartments,
would be merely to make an ass of himself. Moreover, he had long since
learned that one of the secrets of man’s victory over life is never to
court certain failure.
The afternoon before, he had crossed over to Buda and walked all
round the palace. The great gates on the Danube looked impervious to
battering-rams. On the farther side of the court-yard the central
portion of the palace, which was of a symmetrical height in front,
was built straight down to the street behind in no less than eighteen
tiers of rooms. There were guards everywhere, and it looked as
impregnable as a fortress. The gardens surrounded the front and south
of the palace. At the north end were more guards, and just without
the great court-yard, easy of access at its northern extremity, its
southern gates closed upon the private gardens, was the guard-house.
Connecting the vast front of the palace with the mass at the rear of
the court-yard were galleries and many rooms. The private apartments of
the royal family did not look upon the court, but were in the extension
beyond it, above that sacred portion of the grounds to which the public
was never admitted. No princess had ever been more securely intrenched.
The wild idea of disguising himself as a working-man, and obtaining
entrance to the portion of the palace as yet unfinished within, had
invaded Fessenden’s brain and been dismissed. In that huge labyrinth a
man would be lost and found many times before he was escorted to the
guard-house.
Fessenden, who liked a good story, had read the romances of the day
which dealt with the imaginary modern princess of the imaginary modern
kingdom, thrilling scenes of rescue, hair-breadth escapes, revolutions.
They had been in his mind as he whimsically examined the palace, but
they were no guide for him, even had he been of a less practical turn
of mind. Were there a revolution in Budapest, none would be safer than
the Archduchess. There would be no hair-breadth rescue from that
palace, unless, indeed, of himself. There was no moat, no drawbridge.
The walls were ever visible to more than guards. He would meet her at
balls, at dinners; a word alone with her in the garden or a corner of
a balcony would seem to be all that he might anticipate. Nevertheless,
the situation was romantic enough to keep him in Budapest; nor, he
suspected, was Ranata a woman who needed romantic accessories; she
would doubtless have interested him similarly in his father’s house
in New York. She was evidently a creature of many sides, an infinite
number of ingredients mixed into a not altogether harmonious whole.
As Fessenden caught himself sentimentally wondering if she were the
isolated being of whom he had dreamed, and who like himself lacked
completeness, he remembered that he had promised Zrinyi a game of
Csendes--the Hungarian poker--at ten o’clock; but as he strolled up to
the Nemzesi Casino he vowed anew that he would know the daughter of the
Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary if he had to run the gamut of
all the conventions.