XXII

When a woman is groping about among the mysteries of her great passion

she has little to give the world, and, all the forces of her being

consuming her inwardly, her magnetism is diminished. With the average

woman this matters little--she merely bores her friends; but in the

case of a princess, with but a season perhaps at her disposal within

whose limits to preserve the map of Europe, or alter it to her liking,

the untimely advent of love might blight her in the very plethora of

her opportunities. Ranata realized this danger after a few days of

complete indifference to anything but her own thoughts and the presence

of Fessenden Abbott, discovered that she had fallen back into the niche

of the unapproachable princess, from which only he could draw her.

The moment she appreciated her condition she roused, when in public,

the energies of her mind, wrenching it from her inner life. A career

she was determined to have; and although she could not recall the

enthusiasm of those first weeks in Hungary, her purpose was revitalized

by the long shadows of bitterness and despair which the future cast

back to her. True to her compact, she endeavored to eject that future

from her imagination, and in greater part succeeded, for she had more

wisdom than most women, and appreciated the priceless value of the

immediate happiness. She was content, and in brief intervals intensely

happy; her imagination was liberated and her power to feel superlative.

The knowledge that both imagination and capacity for living must prove

her scourge hereafter but made her cultivate both the more ardently

while briefly mistress of her fate. And the concentrated ardor of which

Fessenden was capable in the rare moments they found alone, contrasted

with his average mood when he seemed to belong so wholly to himself,

fascinated her far more than any constant evidence of her consuming

influence over him would have done. Her own powerful individuality

recognized the separateness of his, and was content to touch it in

fugitive moments only. The archaic poem of eternal oneness made no

appeal to her. Passionate love and loyal friendship she had to offer in

the fullest equipment granted to mortals, but the development of her

own individuality in its incorruptible silences must go on forever,

submerged only by the primal tides; and so her instincts and her

endowment saved her from the pursuit of that will-o’-the-wisp which

most women follow until it hides in the grave. She saw that Fessenden

recognized in her this disunion of temperament and personality, for

although his were the masculine limitations which deprived him of the

comprehensions women think they want, the needs of his own soul were

too great for blindness to another that had come so close.

Therefore, Ranata, although she loved her hours of solitude the more,

and even grudged her brain its sleep, reopened her windows to the world

before it was too late. She entertained frequently, and many of the

magnates gave superb entertainments in her honor. Fessenden, Zrinyi,

and several other young enthusiasts, arranged an illuminated fête on

the Danube, and for a few moments she believed herself to be a fairy

princess on a fairy planet. Every house, great and small, on the hills

of Buda, burned its colored lights, and the bridges, the islands, the

boats, looked as if on fire with the souls of stars and flowers. The

fireworks among the ruins of the castle on the height completed a scene

of illusion possible in only three or four cities of the world.

Her own entertainments were given in no perfunctory fashion. She had

one state dinner a week, and small dinners and luncheons for the better

study of the Hungarian character. There was no theatre in the palace,

but she had a stage erected in the Hall of Ceremonies, and Possart came

from Munich to give the soliloquy of Manfred among the snow-fields of

the Alps, in what is perhaps the most perfect German spoken in a great

empire where perfect German is seldom heard. Fremstadt came with him

to sing from “Carmen”; and Frau Schratt and other artists of Vienna

were engaged for the later winter. The local poets were permitted

to declaim, and their emotional fires and abandon won the English

and American guests, long divorced from patience with drawing-room

inflictions.

But the Hungarians shone most brilliantly in music, and there were

frequent concerts in the palace, given entirely by members of the

aristocracy, which inspired no comparison with professionals. When the

Archduchess found time she went to the theatre or opera, and sat in the

gala box, wearing her best conceived gowns, and having taken care that

her intention should be announced in the morning newspapers.

And so Budapest had its gay winter at last--a winter that exceeded

even longings and dreams, and made the heart of the tradesman sing,

and filled the hotels with curious and ambitious visitors. But perhaps

the true rapture dwelt in the pen of the correspondent, so long driven

in the mere service of politics for the casual glance of a world at

no pains to understand that it might yet be the destiny of Hungary to

precipitate the great convulsion of Europe. These grateful gentlemen

quickly made Ranata the most famous woman on the public stage. Her

pictures were sold in every capital, the illustrated weekly newspapers

presented her to a delighted public in all her available aspects, and

girl reporters came to Budapest and wrote imaginary interviews with her

maids.

No one knew better than Ranata that this glitter and tinsel was but

the prelude to true fame, and that without the opportunity to prove

her wisdom as a ruler she would take no place in history outside the

covers of some “Book of Beauty”; nevertheless she found the notoriety

and incense sweet after her long monotonies, and her pride was deeply

gratified with the unequivocal success of her first programme. She

would have been more satisfied if she could have had proof of the

jealous uneasiness of William of Germany; and more secure if the state

of mind of the Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary could have been

revealed to her. But if Fessenden corresponded with his friend he

made no confidences; and neither her father nor Count von Königsegg

mentioned her cousin in their letters, although they appeared to

commend her course.

But to Ranata’s surprise and occasional alarm, she frequently

discovered that her imagination dwelt less on her future in history

than on the great schemes of Fessenden Abbott, and that her thoughts

were far more occupied with their unique and interesting details than

with the future complexities of Europe, which long since had acquired

the habit of repeating themselves. Gone were the hours when she had

striven to untangle the web of her empire’s future, to fit herself for

every imaginable contingency. When her womanhood took its temporary

rest, her brain was far more apt to dwell upon some point that was

puzzling Fessenden. She reminded herself that this may have been the

result of their daily conversations, his abrupt confidential asides;

and believed she might assure herself that when the spell was removed

her interest in subjects so foreign to all in her previous twenty-eight

years would vanish with the sweetness of life.

But they were not foreign to everything, she suddenly reminded herself.

There was Alexandra! Would this sense of intimacy with the brother

have descended upon her so quickly, even with the assistance of love,

had it not been preceded by that other long intimacy? How deep had the

influence of this American sunk? What changes had it perhaps wrought

in her character during those eighteen years of almost constant mental

friction, beginning when her mind was plastic, and always making her

chief interests in life? Nothing is more difficult than to concentrate

the mind in self-analysis, self-examination; the children of the

experience resent the scientific probing of the mind and hide in the

shadowy deeps. Ranata was forced to recur to the subject abruptly, to

glimpse her mental layers by flashlight. It was difficult even then to

make sure what tracings had been done by an alien hand, much less to

imagine just what she would have been had that hand been withheld; but

finally she learned enough to cause her moments of deep uneasiness,

grave doubts if she were so inviolate a Hapsburg as she had believed;

and when she realized there had been intervals when her emancipated

and now rebellious imagination had transported her to the American

continent, where she moved with the assurance and the vivid sense of

freedom of the American girl, she shrank in terror, as if already she

had taken a traitorous and irrevocable step. She had always been

convinced that she should find all things in the American section of

America quite detestable, from their very unlikeness to all things

sanctified by the traditions of Europe; but now she emerged from

visions of herself penetrated with happiness in a romantic wilderness

of mountain and forest, or in cities which epitomized that wonderful

modern life which seemed to relegate the old to boards and calf-skin.

There were times when she actually felt the rush and fever of the life

in her veins. It was then that she turned her mind to Hungary. She

had been deeply gratified to learn that on the greater portion of the

Left, William had made no impression, except to deepen their hatred

and distrust of Germany. That this enthusiastic and ofttimes desperate

party was being secretly drawn to her standard, Ranata was not long

discovering. For a time, at least, they would accept a queen where

they would reject a king, and their susceptible natures inclined them

naturally towards a young and beautiful ruler whom they could love,

and, no doubt, manage; while she added to their picturesque strength

in the eyes of the world. Ranata was aware that the new thought was

travelling silently; and while trembling lest it reach Vienna, she

dared not notice it sufficiently to demand prudence. The part must be

thrust upon her, not only to save her in the eyes of Europe, but the

lightest hint of ambition from her would have alarmed the Independents

and turned their admiration to contempt.

There were times during this strange interlude in her life when she

was possessed by a sensation of supreme joy, or by deep and tranquil

happiness--moments when she paced the terrace alone on brilliant

mornings in a tumult of wonder, when Budapest, beautiful enough, was

glorified, and the links binding her to the mundane were dissolved. In

such moments she neither analyzed nor speculated, she but intensely

lived; but when they had passed, she wondered if such ideally pagan

moments were prophetic of greater happiness, or if they were peculiar

to that antechamber of the unknown which is the prelude in love. The

possibility depressed her, and at other times she suffered sharply. If

Fessenden carelessly laid his arm about Alexandra’s shoulders or took

her hand, satisfied in the masculine fashion with what happened to be

convenient at the moment, Ranata would turn cold with jealousy and

disgust with life. As she was too proud to protest--or explain--she

punished the bewildered offender with a freezing demeanor, and both

were miserable for several days. The reconciliation, however, enshrined

the misery in a halo of gratitude. Her jealousy was purely impersonal,

and induced no alteration in her attitude towards Alexandra. It was not

the object but the apparent wandering of his affections that concerned

her, and the physical manifestation. She took for granted that he loved

his sister--would have thought him deficient in human nature if he had

not. But that sort of relation was passive; the active he had entered

upon embraced her alone. Like other women in love, she was constantly

making discoveries about herself; and when, one day, alone with her

thoughts, she found herself overwhelmed and dissolved in a transport

of maternal tenderness for the man to whom ultimately she could be

nothing, she realized for the first time how far love had carried her.

This was towards the end of the interlude; and soon after, even the

uneasiness of this discovery was forgotten in the haunting dismay which

preceded the end.

Meanwhile Zrinyi was manifestly impatient that the visit should be

made to his castle in the Transylvanian Alps before the full rigors of

winter should compel an indefinite postponement. So far, the winter

was mild, and the snow on the lower Alps not so heavy that oxen could

not draw the sledges up the steep mountain roads. Ranata, welcoming a

few days’ release from the world, and greater freedom, set the date;

and it was arranged that the party should consist only of her ladies,

Alexandra, Fessenden Abbott, and Prince Illehazy. They were to linger

long enough in Klausenbourg, Kronstadt, and the intervening villages,

to give the inhabitants a glimpse of their princess, and an opportunity

to offer the ovation which once had been their joy to give to Rudolf.