Fessenden was walking restlessly about the hall of the castle, awaiting
the finish of Ranata’s visit of duty at the bedside of her duenna.
There was a prospect, for the first time in several days, of an hour
with her alone. Zrinyi, Prince Illehazy, Vilma, and Alexandra had gone
for a walk, and Piroska had not been seen that day.
They had arrived two days before, after three, in a special train with
many pauses and no solitudes, and until now had been a gay and united
party. Alexandra had announced herself satisfied with the castle;
but as her tone had been frivolous, Zrinyi had forborne to press his
suit. The roughness of the old days of border warfare was curiously
blended with the modern comforts of a nobleman’s hunting-lodge. The
staircase, towards which Fessenden directed eyes of impatient longing,
looked as if no woman had ever descended it, although many women had
huddled there when the Turkish guns were battering. The logs in the
old fireplace, and the big ornamental stones which have superseded
andirons in the greater part of Europe, tempered the ancient cold; the
rough walls and floors were covered with the skins of wild beasts and
other trophies of the chase; and the chairs at least were comfortable.
The hall was a museum of old battle-flags, captured from the Turks,
Austrians, rival clans in the days of the Oligarchs, and of weapons as
old and varied. The castle was very large, and had been surrounded on
three sides by a double moat; but to former implements of war it had
been impregnable, and the unsquandered wealth of the family had kept
every part of it from decay except the entrance wall. Fessenden thought
it an admirable setting for a honeymoon; failing that, for a few days’
final courtship.
But his patience, never a gift of Nature, but a creation of his will,
was close upon its finish, and the day he left Budapest he had set his
train in motion. Only his habit of playing a close and far-seeing game
had saved him from some precipitate act which might have wrecked his
hopes; for the blood was often in his head. Whether or not Mr. Abbott
had had such a crisis as this in mind when he trained his son in the
qualities that conquer, in no other way had they served Fessenden so
well. He was pitting his wit and his wealth against the mightiest
prejudice which existed in the world of his day; and his victory over
Ranata must spring solely from the former, for without it her love
would avail him nothing. Had he been able to conquer her prejudices
by any of the arts of love or passion he would have urged a flight
from this castle--which was far from communication with the telegraph,
and where the sympathetic Zrinyi would have kept guardians and spies
imprisoned--to Trieste, where his yacht awaited him. But he knew that
Ranata, although capable of a revolution which would raze the first
wall between them, must accomplish that revolution in solitude and
despair, under the pressure of circumstances which he had already
shaped. The demolishment of the second wall might cost him something
almost as dear as the woman, but Fessenden was prepared to sacrifice
more than that.
Fortunate for the great affairs of the house of Abbott, that the
senior was particularly well at this time! The heir, for all his
self-control, was in a state of mind which, had he been compelled to
return--and nothing short of his father’s death or a financial panic
would have drawn him across the seas--would have lost him the faith of
Wall Street.
Since his violent attack of calf-love and the strange illuminations
which had succeeded it, he had looked upon woman with a critical eye,
and treasured his inmost feelings with a jealous care. Never again, he
had determined long since, would he go through that futile agony at the
instance of anything less than death; when he found the one woman whom
he could love more than his life or his ambitions--or as well--then
would he pour all he had husbanded at her feet; but he would have her
unless the Almighty himself intervened. Busy as was his life, he had
been sharply aware of its incompleteness; there had been many hours
of longing for the deep companionship of love, for the perfection of
his own soul and manhood. The vague ideal of his dreams he had not
recognized in Ranata’s physical part when they met in the cottage, his
sense of adventure being keener than any vital longing, and the fury
of the dance excluding mental knowledge of his partner. But he had
discovered her not long after; and the great measure that he had to
offer of homage and love and passion had since burned steadily; with
a less strong brain the flame would have been less steady, and the
rare moments of solitude with her, and their temptations, might have
overwhelmed him: he had never imagined a woman who could so crowd into
a moment the concentrated essence of all the melting tenderness and the
passionate energy that made up the surrender of woman. It is true that
more than once the temptation had assailed him to use her weakness as
the shortest way out of the difficulties that beset him; but not only
had he so far never taken advantage of any one but a scoundrel, and did
he still hold women in an old-fashioned reverence, but he forecast the
weeks--perhaps months--asunder, when in desperation she might marry any
prince her father selected. And in his cooler moments he tingled at
the thought of a victory which would be as great for his young country
as for himself, of being the chosen instrument to initiate a new order
of things as inevitable as the progress of the world. Romantic as he
was, the campaign he had planned--where the only weapons should be
his own wit and the millions which the world, with its curious love
of self-delusion, affects to despise, typifying as they do modern
life itself--appealed to him more powerfully than a flight across a
picturesque country of many costumes to his yacht, or a rescue from
the palace of Buda. But at present he was not rehearsing his plan of
campaign; the coming moment commanded his imagination, and the blood
was beginning to pound in his ears when he heard the light rustle of
her garments. He sprang up the stairs and met her on the first landing.
“Not here!” she said nervously. “Sarolta is in bed, and Piroska has a
toothache; but who knows?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that the Countess Piroska is a spy?” he
asked as they crossed the hall to the room Zrinyi called his study,
although it had not a book in it.
“Possibly,” said Ranata indifferently. “We are accustomed to spies.
That is usually one of the duties of the Obersthofmeisterin. But as
Sarolta is too wealthy to be bought, and is of a proved fondness for
me, I suppose Count von Königsegg thought it wise to have one in my
household he could count on. I doubt if she has made any report of
consequence so far, for she has bided her time, hoping that the worst
would happen; but she will, for she wants to marry you. But it will
matter little now! Our time is almost up!”
She spoke in a tone of profound dejection. The serenity she had
maintained in Sarolta’s presence had dropped from her like a mask.
In a moment she withdrew from his embrace and leaned against the
window-frame and stared down into the ravine where so many Turks had
mouldered to dust.
“It is time for the comedy to end,” she said sharply. “Sarolta knows,
and before long will interfere. Königsegg is sure to interrogate
Piroska before long, if he has not done so already, and there must be
many comments in Budapest and Vienna on your long stay here and your
constant presence in the palace. Moreover, it is impossible you should
remain away from America much longer. The two months you set yourself
have nearly passed. Let us talk plainly. My capacity for self-deception
is at an end--indeed, for days past it has slipped from me again and
again--and I am worried about many other things--”
“What things?” asked Fessenden gently. He gathered his faculties and
stood looking at her, from the other side of the narrow window, with
his piercing and concentrated glance; but he took her hand and held it
tenderly. “At least, if we are soon to part, let there be as little to
regret as possible. You owe me your confidence--nor is there any one
else to whom you would give it.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That is true enough! To no other have I ever been
as--been frank at all. No one else has ever known me, nor ever can.
It has given me the most intellectual and voluptuous delight fully to
reveal myself for once in my life--I suppose I do not yet realize how
much. After all, why should I complain? I have had what most women
never find. And I have that sense of the indestructible bond. I shall
have it as long as I live. How many that flutter over this earth, do
you suppose, have that sense of an everlasting indissoluble embrace?
You feel it now. Will you? Will it content you--that sense of spiritual
completeness--can you be faithful to that?”
“I should be very grateful for it if I could not find anything better,
and I am as capable of complete fidelity as you are. But tell me what
other things have worried you.”
“It is this--” Her rising excitement flashed the blood into her face,
and she pushed her unsteady hand into her hair, lifting it, as if
its weight oppressed her. “In these weeks that have slipped along
so easily, so naturally, in which we have found so much happiness,
I have--I had grown as accustomed to it all as any engaged girl.
My imagination seemed to sleep, or only to give me to you in the
future. Nothing in me protested, warned, except a mechanical effort
of intellect. It all seemed the most natural thing in the world. I
thought when I entered into that compact that I should lead a dual
mental life; or rather that I should be wholly yours when with you,
and wholly myself when alone, fully alive to the end. But I have been
wholly yours when alone, and as wholly oblivious of the future. And
that is not all. It needed only you and what you brought me to fill
me with a joyous abandon of liberty such as a man might feel who saw
and could walk alone for the first time. I had felt something of this
before you came, for the sudden change from prison to a comparative
freedom almost turned my head; but since you--who breathe liberty, who
typify it, who seem to exhale the very essence of your wonderful young
country--you who fear no one! who fear no one!--Am I still myself? Am
I, Fessenden? That is the thought that has tortured me these last few
days--am I unfaithful in some subtle way to my house, to myself, to
the future, to Europe, to all that slaves born in the purple should be
most steadfast to? Rudolf may have been weak, but he killed himself in
a moment when he was mad with his loathing of life and the methods by
which he had sought to forget it; but he was incapable of deserting
his post deliberately, and if his mind could have been occupied by
the duties of a ruler he would have had no time for despair. But I--I
feel as if this secret revolution in me had made me capable of greater
than weakness--that is common enough in my class! It has bred in me
an indifference--there, I have said it!--to all that I have held most
sacred. I feel as if I had slipped into another world. My rigid love
of duty, even my old superstitions, they have--they had gone. But I
have dragged them back. Last night as I lay awake it seemed to me
that I clawed them out of their graves and shook and warmed them into
life. I have escaped a deadly peril. I know that when you have gone I
shall gradually become myself again--if not quite the same, if without
enthusiasm, at least I shall fit into the old routine--”
“And you believe that?” asked Fessenden. “You will no more fall back
into your old state of mediæval ignorance and superstition than I shall
be wholly myself until I possess you. You have been remade. You have
come to life, and only in me. You will return neither to separateness
nor to ignorance. The imagination is quiescent while companioned--but
wait!”
“Do you know, there have been moments when, if you had asked me, I
believe I should have fled with you to your yacht? I don’t know myself!
I almost long to have you gone that I may suffer to the utmost capacity
of my nature, and then adapt myself to the future.”
He had taken out his watch. “By carriage and a good many changes of
train we could reach Fiume some time to-morrow; a telegram on the way
will bring my yacht there. Will you go?”
“Oh! No, I will not go! It is bad enough that I am tempted. Oh, I want
to go, I want to go, more than I have ever wanted anything on this
earth! Another man would make it inevitable, but you will not; and in a
few days I shall be battling with regrets, and hating myself the more.”
“Yes,” he said, and with little enthusiasm. “I could compel you, and
you would love me the more for it; but I should not love myself. It
would not be playing a fair game. I have a Puritanic conscience as
an inheritance; also I have the instinct of the American to protect
women--girls, perhaps, I should say; to look upon them as his chief
responsibility. That is pounded into us early. And I have lived so much
within myself that it would demoralize me to fall too far below my own
standard--God knows, I fall below it often enough. Moreover, if I gave
way to my passions you might--were our escape interrupted--suffer so
terribly that it chills my blood whenever I think of it. I believe that
is the one thing--the knowledge that you were in your father’s power,
unable to escape--that would send me off my head. And it is necessary
that I keep my head until I am able in all ways to protect you.”