It was on the following morning that the Archduchess remarked to Miss
Abbott--they were walking on the third terrace and paused under the
shade of a heavy tree--“I have decided that the bodice of my costume
shall be of blue velvet instead of black--and the train.”
Alexandra being too dumfounded to reply, Ranata continued, “I have
concluded that superstitions are unworthy of any one who claims to
live by the light of his reason. Therefore I have made up my mind
deliberately to violate all that may still linger like weeds in my
mind.”
“Blue is very becoming to you.”
“I think more so than any other color except perhaps green. I have also
ordered several green gowns. I shall not interfere with your pinks and
yellows.”
“That is kind, my dear, for you certainly would extinguish me. I see
your new rôle is to lack nothing in thoroughness. Have you made up your
mind how the Chardash is to be danced?”
“As it should be danced. Why not? All the manifestations are on the
part of the men; the women do little but keep time.”
The moment was favorable, the ice of Ranata’s three days’ reserve being
broken, but Alexandra hesitated to introduce the subject of Fessenden.
When Ranata chose to be unfathomable there was an aloofness about her
which suggested that her soul was surrounded by the watchful ghosts of
all her ancestors. She had never looked more aloof than to-day, despite
the apparent frivolity of her conversation. She was standing very
straight, apparently absorbed in contemplation of the roofs of Pest,
glittering in fragments through the leaves of Buda. In the deep shade
of the tree her face looked like marble, her hair like metal. There
had been no coolness between the girls since the day of the _festa_.
They had been much together and talked on any other subject; but it had
been evident to Alexandra that a part of the Archduchess’s mind had
been bent introspectively, and she had retired to her bedroom earlier
and left it later than was her habit. How Fessenden had impressed her,
what tortuous train of thought she had been following, Alexandra felt
it would be folly to guess, for she knew there were depths and ways in
that mind no friend would ever enter. But it was her policy never to
manifest surprise, except at some lighter erraticism, and she did not
lift an eyebrow when Ranata turned to her and said sweetly:
“Do you think your brother would dine with us to-night? We were to have
been forty, but Sarolta tells me that Count Ábris Teleky is ill.”
“I am sure Fessenden would be delighted.”
“Will you write, or shall Sarolta send him a formal invitation?”
“I will write. Perhaps I had better go at once.”
“I will wait for you here.”
“How did she know he is in Pest?” wondered Miss Abbott, as she ran up
the steps in the terrace wall. “And _what_ is she up to?”
When she returned, Ranata was sitting on the rustic bench staring at
the ground. Alexandra sat down beside her.
“What do you think of Count Zrinyi’s invitation to visit his castle in
the Transylvanian Alps?” she asked.
“I should like to go. Retyezat was the scene of Rudolf’s first visit
to Transylvania--he was the guest of Count Samuel Teleky who took
him to Boldogfalva, the castle of Baron Kendeffy--it is not far from
Zrinyi’s castle--and they went into camp on Lake Zenoga. That was one
of the most delightful experiences of Rudolf’s life! He hunted the
bear all over those frozen peaks, high above any vegetation except
the Alpine roses. He used to thrill me with his descriptions of those
terrible rugged mountains, the breathless wait for the bear, sometimes
terrified, as often stolidly unsuspecting, and then the wild dance
of the Wallach and Roumanian beaters round the camp-fire at night to
the music of their flutes. Rudolf and all the others of the party sat
huddled under a rock, muffled in furs, smoking the long Hungarian
pipe; but the wild men of the mountains were warm enough, for they
danced like fiends, and the effect of the wild gyrations almost in
the very midst of the leaping flames, the great teeth of the rocks
cutting the sky on every side, the gathering storm shrieking into the
sweet wild music of the flutes, the infernal cries of the excited
creatures--I remember Rudolf swept all the things off my most precious
table in his animation the first time he told me the story! Those were
his happiest days--his hunting expeditions to Transylvania for bear
and other game, and he loved to talk to me about them, for no one else
cared to listen--at home, at least. Even when I was a child he often
came and spent an hour with me, partly out of pity for my loneliness,
partly because I was so much like himself in many ways, and in despair
that I could not join in all his sports. He promised me the last time
he returned from Transylvania that the next year I should go with him
to Görgény--the crown property where he always went after that first
visit. The occasion upon which he won his oak as a Transylvanian
bear-hunter was almost as exciting in another way. When he had killed
his first bear the beaters tied its legs together, and raising it on
crossed poles carried it through the forest to the stretchers, followed
by all the Roumanians in their strange costumes shouting _Setreasca!
Setreasca!_ The guests surrounding Rudolf responded with _Élyens_
almost as wild, and Count Teleky dipped an oak twig in the bear’s blood
and presented it to Rudolf, who stuck it in his cap. When he returned
to the castle in the evening, all the delighted and shouting people
knew by that sign that their prince had taken his position among the
great bear-hunters of Transylvania.”
Ranata had been speaking rapidly and excitedly. As she finished she
sprang to her feet. The blood was in her cheeks, and her eyes were
flashing with a curious angry animation.
“Do you think any man could ever come between me and the memory of my
brother?” she demanded passionately--“between my duty to his memory,
to his unfinished work? Do you think that I could ever admire, love,
respect any man one-half so well? What of his weaknesses? He had the
greatest of natures. He knew that he had the fate of Europe in his
hands, and he would have made the soberest of rulers. Do you think that
any woman was ever so fortified as I against the common weakness of
woman? Rudolf!--Austria!--” She turned abruptly and walked down the dim
path under the wall.
Alexandra caught her breath. She felt curiously uncomfortable, as a
sensitive American girl, unskilled in feeling, always does at the
sudden revelation of passion in another woman. Calmly to analyze the
passions of the world, and stare ironically at the complications of
life through a lorgnette, was all in the mental progress of a girl
brought up with the peculiar advantages of Alexandra and possessing her
uncommon acuteness; but direct contact vaguely offended the cool purity
of her lighter nature.
She also experienced a sensation of terror which vibrated oddly among
her calm and calculating particles. Should she write and tell Fessenden
to go at once? Or--might it not be merely Ranata’s imagination that
had taken fire? Impossible that she could love a man with whom she
had not exchanged ten words; who to his sister’s critical eye had
looked like anything but a god with his shirt hanging over his skirts,
and sweating like any crimson peasant in the room--she had sent
Zrinyi out immediately to wash his face. No, she decided, after a few
moments of hard maidenly thinking, it was merely the romantic streak
in that abundant dreaming nature that had claimed dominion for the
moment--aggravated no doubt by much retrospection and idealizing since;
the occasion and Fessenden, to Alexandra’s mind, stood in need of at
least three days’ perspective and created glamour. But should she send
away Fessenden and leave Ranata at peace with her dead and her duties?
She hardly had realized what she expected to result upon the meeting of
these two. A vague and picturesque drama, mixed with much history, with
a final prophetic vision of the two in New York, had whirled through
her head. Passion, suffering, tragedy--she had given them no thought,
well as she knew Ranata’s capacity for all. Her friend had been the
heroine of many romances woven by her energetic brain; but the romances
had been creations of an exalted and poetic nature, like unto what she
assumed the gods and goddesses had compassed.
And Fessenden? How would he fall in love? He usually teased her and
joked with her; but his serious side and his achievement had no more
fervent admirer. He had never told her an anecdote in which a woman
figured sentimentally; to what degree women had the power to move him
she found herself unable to imagine. He certainly was adventurous--born
to make and to change history; therefore had she coupled him with
Ranata in some great drama of the future; but in looks and deportment
he was as little romantic as any other American. She calculated rapidly
that he had upset most of her theories about him at least once a year
since she had known him, and recalled that she had frequently wondered
how well she ever should know him. She half rose. Should she send him
away? She sank back with a laugh. That was beyond the power of anything
short of law or violence. She recalled the angry and determined letter
she had received the day before.
“He will come!” she thought. “They will meet and talk. Well--it is all
on the knees of the gods.”
Ranata returned and sat beside her. “We were talking about visiting
your count,” she said. “I am sure you want to go, and it will give
me the opportunity to make the progress I intended through some of
the villages. But it will have to be a little later. I must start the
ball here first--make as deep an impression as possible before leaving
Budapest even for a week. Why do you not ask your brother to take tea
with you to-day? I shall be engaged this afternoon, but you will enjoy
having him to yourself. Forgive me that I did not think of it before,
but my mind has been so full of other things--the best plan of campaign
with the members of the Left, for one. And tell him of all our plans
and schemes. I should be glad of the advice of one so accustomed to the
management of men.”