“Have you noticed,” asked Alexandra of Zrinyi, as the Archduchess
descended the staircase, “that our princess has, until to-night, for
the past week worn only black or white?”
“Why should I notice a trifling detail like that?” asked Zrinyi
sulkily. “If she look beautiful, what matters her dress?”
“You don’t deserve to be asked intelligent questions.”
Ranata was trailing down the rough old staircase, between smoking lamps
almost as old, in a green velvet gown of many hues, any one of which
would have enhanced the brilliancy of her skin and hair. The neck of
the gown was cut squarely, and a high stiff collar of white lace rose
behind her head. Her skin was bare of jewels, her hair piled high and
without ornament. In her cheeks was a deep flush, her eyes sparkled
restlessly, her face had escaped from its habitual repose. Her whole
figure expressed vigor, energy, impatience ill-confined.
“If it were not the Princess, one would almost say she looked
reckless,” murmured Piroska to Fessenden, who was staring at the
vision--the only one of the company, perhaps, who found nothing foreign
in Ranata’s appearance. Piroska compelled him to transfer his gaze.
“That is the way I have always imagined a girl might look who had made
up her mind to elope,” she continued.
Fessenden started slightly, and quick as he was with his words, the
Countess noticed it. “The Princess has the cruelty of your sex,” he
replied. “She doubtless occupies a very considerable part of her time
thinking out new gowns with which to distract us.”
“Why don’t you look more hopeless?” whispered Piroska.
“Must you have men who wear their hearts upon their sleeves?”
“No; but no man can wear a mask forever, unless he is secretly happier
than he would have us believe.”
“I am always happy; it is a mere matter of temperament.” He paused
deliberately and looked at her. “Moreover,” he added, “I have
no intention of failing.” And then he joined the group about the
Archduchess. They had parted but two hours before, and although he had
never been so convinced of her love for him, there had been nothing
then of the almost reckless promise which her eyes seemed to flash
to his as the movement was made towards the lower end of the room.
What did it mean? Had an hour of solitary thought in the dark, before
her maids came to dress her, beaten her passion so high that it had
overwhelmed her traditions at last, and urged her to take advantage
of this opportunity for flight? He turned giddy at the thought and
suddenly realized that deeply enamoured as he was with the idea of
manipulating princes, his want of the woman extinguished this ambition
among others, and that he found incomplete happiness something more
than torment.
The hall was of immense proportions, and the dining-room being far
off, beyond many chill corridors, the table was spread at the end
farthest from the doors that opened directly upon a platform in front
of the castle. The cannon were still in the embrasures. In the light
of the many, yet insufficient, lamps the room with its battle-flags
and weapons, its skins and dim hangings embroidered with the old arts
of Hungary, so recently revived, was feudal enough to please the most
exacting American.
“Count,” murmured Alexandra, “if you could only provide an earthquake
shock among other phenomena I believe I should no longer resist.”
“You need an earthquake,” he replied. “But, of course, I am gratified,
and hopeful, at the conquest of the castle.”
“I shouldn’t care to live here all the year round, however.”
“Heaven forbid! even with the most adored of women. Give me the
capitals of the world in winter.”
“It is a great comfort to feel that our tastes are so much alike!” And
she thought, “The Hungarians may be two-thirds fire and impulse, but no
American could take his cues more quickly.”
Zrinyi, who was not in a sentimental mood, continued: “I have a
surprise for this night, if not an earthquake. I find that the
peasantry all through these mountains have been much excited since
they heard the Princess was coming here--that is to say, the sister
of Rudolf. Most of the young men were beaters at one time or another
for him, and those who were not, and the old and the women, invariably
managed to see him when he came to Görgény. His delightful manners,
combined with the halo of monarchy, made them worship him in a manner
which few modern princes have known--Ludvig II. perhaps furnishes the
only parallel. Nor will they believe him dead. They know that our
princess resembles him in many respects, and doubtless they have some
sort of hope that she can give them definite news of him, that perhaps
she has come to announce his return from the dim unknown. So I have
sent men about inviting them to come here to-night. She has another
opportunity to draw to herself the love that has been wasted since
Rudolf’s death. I am grateful that she is looking her best to-night,
for although she is always beautiful, she has appeared less brilliant
of late.”
“She wears color to-night,” said Alexandra dryly; “that is the whole
secret.”
“I am not a fool, mademoiselle; I understand quite well, and sincerely
wish she could be happy. But unhappiness is the fate of princes. They
are born in sacrifice, and they die in it, having known little else.
But our princess has so much to give--it is a great pity I don’t waste
my sympathies on them as a rule. And your brother--it is his first
disappointment? It will go hard with him, but any man worth the name
can get over anything.”
“That is comforting! If Ranata and Fessenden suddenly made up their
minds to run off, should you help them?”
“Run off? Great Heaven! How could you conceive such a thing even in
jest? The Hapsburgs have done a good deal for love--but that!”
“An American? That is the point? It would be a good beginning.”
“I have always wondered,” murmured Zrinyi, “why you did not put three
heads on your eagle while you were about it.”
“The two-headed one was sufficiently absurd to deter us. You have not
answered my question. Should you help them?”
“I suppose I should. My sympathies would be with them as lovers, being
in such a deplorable condition myself. But I should not approve, for
I believe in the principle of monarchy, and that would deal it a
heavy blow. But a liaison--there is no objection to that if it were
circumspectly managed. That shocks your American prudery; but in the
case of princes it is a desirable outlet for the feelings they have in
common with the rest of human-kind, especially when a still more vital
principle is at stake. Our princess can preserve this monarchy if any
one can, and I for one would welcome her as the solution; for William,
with all his great qualities, is perhaps a trifle too high and mighty
for Hungary, and his second son is still an unknown quantity. It would
be criminal in her to desert us, but a liaison would do no one any
harm.”
“I don’t take monarchies as seriously as you do, and I have brought up
Ranata too well--she will have no liaisons. Besides, my brother plays
for high stakes. It is the best or nothing with him.”
“Men have been known to take what they could get; and there are
elements in our princess which are beyond even your training. To-night
she looks like a beautiful ripe fruit hanging heavily from the tree.
The Hapsburgs have bad blood in them; not a drachm of the Puritanism of
the Hohenzollerns. The Princess has it in her to be a great sovereign,
but--_bien_; the world is her oyster; why should she not open it?”
“If I marry you it will be to reform your morals. Not that they are
worse than those of any other European.”
“American morals are _bourgeoise_.”
“So is its hypocrisy! But we like things that way. I may even make an
American of you yet.”
“I have no objection to being an American if I can live in Europe. And
all the Americans I have met seem to make no difficulty about that. I
suppose your excellent father would not wish me to go into business
with him?”
“I am sure he would not!”
“Sarolta,” murmured Prince Illehazy, “I have been uneasy for some time.
Has not the moment come to speak?”
“I have spoken--this afternoon--and her philosophical calm staggered
me.”
“I see no evidence of philosophical calm.”
“It is a transformation I do not understand--although I understand it
as a manifestation better than the philosophy. I shall ask Mr. Abbott
to go as soon as we reach Budapest, and doubtless he would be obliged
to return to America very soon in any case; although I had a letter
yesterday from his step-mother, and she seemed to take his long
absence without protest. I do not care to do anything further without
something more specific as an excuse than the young man’s devotion,
and an expression of reckless defiance worn for one evening. Besides,
we have Piroska to do the spying. The King will not remain too long
unwarned. But Ranata’s love-affair hardly worries me as much as this
perhaps too sudden popularity. I fear it may be overdone, and will
alarm Franz, possibly the King. Ranata has not a thought of usurpation.
I am convinced of that. But--”
“Exactly. I saw Königsegg when I was in Vienna last week, and he tried
in his delicate way to pump me. He learned nothing, but I did. The
wind is blowing the wrong way. If the Princess, in a moment of haughty
forgetfulness, drops her policy of conciliation towards Königsegg, or
he becomes suddenly fearful of American influence--for Mr. Abbott may
go, but he will return, or I know nothing of men--or the minister fears
to anger the heir--then our beautiful princess will go back to her cage
in the Hofburg.”
“In that case I should not care to be the Emperor,” remarked the
Princess Sarolta.
Ranata suddenly lifted her hand. “I hear such a peculiar noise,” she
said. “Is a storm rising?”
The rest became aware of a deep low murmur, not unlike the rolling in
of tides. Zrinyi left the table hastily and looked from one of the
narrow windows at the upper end of the hall.
“I will send for your cloaks,” he said, “and then I shall ask you to
step out on the platform for a moment.”
A few minutes later he threw open the great doors of the hall, and
the party stared silently at the scene before them. The full moon
swung close to the ice-fields, the white harsh peaks high above. In
the court-yard, on the small plain beyond, on every snowy hill and
rock, were crowded hundreds of men clad in the skins of the sheep, the
wolf, the goat, and the bear. On their heads were high fur hats, which
exposed but a fringe of long hair on their shoulders and concealed
their brows, giving them an aspect of singular wildness. But they were
very quiet, almost breathless, until Zrinyi stepped forward and shouted
something in Roumanian. Then each man lifted a flute to his lips, and a
sweet and savage melody stole forth gently, to rise and swell until all
the vast and desolate scene seemed to bend and listen. The notes might
have been born of the peaks that looked as if torn asunder by harsh
unlovely hands, then softened to beauty and gentleness by the silver
glitter of the snow. And the strains, piercing yet remote, had in them
too the eternal loneliness of the mountains, the only thing in Nature
akin to the eternal loneliness of the great. The hills took up the echo
and rolled it on, and among far and hidden peaks a laugh seemed flying
from itself.
When they had finished, Zrinyi turned to Ranata. “They have come here
to see your Royal Highness,” he said; “and not so much because you
are our princess as the sister of our lost crown prince. Have I your
permission to ask them to enter?”
Ranata, who was pale, turned paler. “Yes,” she said. “Ask them in.”
The guests returned to the lower end of the hall, whence the table had
been removed, and threw off their cloaks. The women made a brilliant
group in their elaborate dinner dress, their flowers and jewels and
superfluous fans.
The Wallachians and Roumanians--there are few of Hungarian blood so
far south in Transylvania--came silently but eagerly in. Each man as
he entered removed the tower of fur on his head, revealing a dark
mane of matted hair. The countenances thus exposed were mild and often
handsome, but the dark eyes burned and flashed with an excitement of
which they gave no other evidence.
Ranata remained with the group until the incoming throng had almost
filled the hall. The doors were still open, and behind the mass of
heads on the platform she could see the snowy slopes of the range,
whose silences seemed to have fallen upon the castle; no one spoke,
and the sandals of the mountaineers pressed the floor silently. Zrinyi
murmured a suggestion, and Ranata ascended a few steps of the staircase
which finished the hall. All the voluptuous beauty had left her face;
it was so white that her eyes burned black. Her aspect would have been
angry had it been less stern. She could not speak Roumanian, but Zrinyi
had hastily taught her a few words.
“I am the sister of your crown prince,” she said. “And I am honored and
happy that you have come to see me.”
They gazed at her for a few moments in a heavier silence. To them she
had lost nothing of a beauty they had never seen, and in the wavering
lights, possibly because at the moment her mind was face to face with
her brother, her likeness to Rudolf was so strong as to send the blood
to their heads. It rose slowly, for they were cold with long waiting
and taken by surprise with a beauty they had not expected, but when
they realized that the sister of their prince and the chiefest object
of his affections stood before them, they suddenly sent forth a mighty
cry, hard, wild, abrupt. It was almost a note of agony, such as the
mountains might have given when the fires of the earth boiled them
apart. The cry shot out again, but this time it swelled into volume,
ended in a roar, and then split into intelligible sound. “_Élyen!_”
“_Setreasca!_” “_Setreasca!_” shook the old flags like the wind of
battle; then, on a higher note, “Rudolf!” “Rudolf!” “Rudolf!” They came
forward like a great wave, excited, voluble, demanding to be told what
they had done to anger their prince that he came no more, what his
wicked enemies had done with him, why his father, the great King and
Emperor, was hiding him. It was idle to attempt to answer, and Ranata
stood looking down upon them, at times forgetting the strange scene,
her thoughts in the crypt of the Capuchin Church with her brother.
Suddenly she heard herself addressed in Hungarian, and glanced aside
to see a gypsy standing on the step below her. He was regarding her
with admiring eyes, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them, and his
mien although friendly would not have inspired confidence in an idiot.
However, Ranata came forth from her thoughts and smiled on him.
“Did you know him?” she asked.
He addressed her in the most extravagant forms of homage, but when he
answered her question it was with directness enough.
“I was with his party on every visit,” he asserted triumphantly, as if
exhibiting a valued stock-in-trade; “I and my band. He was always eager
to hear the Chardash. And out on Lake Zenoga, sometimes at Görgény,
we sat at his board, or in the circle by the fire. Oh, those were the
days, your Highness--first a prince, then a gypsy, then a prince, then
a gypsy, all mixed up, all drunk, everybody happy. I know that Rudolf
is dead, for I have travelled far, but I wish he were not.”
The man’s speech broke through the severity of her mood and she
laughed. “I have no doubt they were gay times,” she said, “and I regret
that I am not a man to come and take his place among you. But I will
do the best I can; and believe that I shall love you as much as he did.”
The man shook his head. “We would never dare to love like that again.”
He paused, then added meaningly, “The love of the chosen Hapsburgs is
fatal--to themselves and to those who win it.”
Ranata looked over the man’s head as if he had disappeared into the
still shouting multitude; but he had the assurance of his race, which
acknowledges neither country nor king, and he repeated:
“It is always fatal, your Royal Highness.”
Then Ranata looked down at him once more. After all, the creature
was not worth crushing, and he was diverting. Moreover, he had known
and doubtless been spoiled by her brother. Rudolf had told her many
anecdotes of the gypsies who always attached themselves to his
Transylvanian household.
“You will not return to us!” continued the gypsy. “When Rudolf left us
the last time I said he would not return. Nor did I predict it because
he said to us not ‘_Aufwiedersehen_,’ but ‘_Good-bye_.’”
“Is that true?”
“It is true, but that was not the reason. When he came that last time I
said he would not return.”
“And how do you know I shall not return?”
“Because love is fatal to the chosen Hapsburgs, your Royal Highness.”
“Then they can avoid love,” said the Archduchess impersonally.
“Not when they are made for it. Nature has protected many by a mask
as ugly as the plague. When she gives them beauty be sure it is to
scourge the proudest house on earth, and to chastise it for centuries
of cruelty and oppression.”
“Maria Theresia was beautiful.”
“She was fat. She also had more children than a man ever can remember.
Besides, she was not really beautiful.”
“And you are not very logical. Other houses of Europe have records for
injustice as great as ours may possibly have.”
“Nature has taken other methods to punish them. Be sure that none shall
escape.”
“I suppose you wish to tell my fortune. I have not superstition enough
for that, but in the name of my brother I will send you a purse to the
servants’ quarters to-night.”
She withdrew into the polite silence with which royalty lays down the
burden of audience, but the gypsy held his ground. He thanked her
extravagantly, and added: “I am more honest than most gypsies, your
Royal Highness--I do not pretend to see too far into the future. But
when a man’s heart is black with remorse and bitterness and hatred of
life and the reckless indulgence of passions, I can see the end; and
when a woman--”
“Go!” said Ranata; and this time the man mingled his featureless
sheepskin with the others. She beckoned to Zrinyi and spoke with him a
moment. Then he stood beside her and lifted his hand. Every man seemed
to shut his voice between his teeth.
“Her Royal Highness wishes me to tell you,” said the Count, on a note
which carried to those beyond the door, “that Rudolf is dead. That he
has gone where you may meet him again if you are faithful and loyal
subjects to the throne. She will tell you herself.”
And Ranata said in Roumanian, and with the cold accent of finality, “He
is dead.”
Zrinyi let the words sink into the silence, then he raised his voice
again and shouted that barrels of wine were opening in the kitchen,
and the great wave turned upon itself and rolled out, but still in
silence and with many a backward glance.
Ranata ascended the stairs. When she returned she wore a short skirt
and a long fur cloak with a hood.
“I am going for a walk,” she said to the astonished company. “Mr.
Abbott, will you come with me?” Then to the Princess Sarolta, who had
risen, she added, “No power can prevent me. But do not be alarmed; I
shall return.”
“Do you give me your royal word for that?” asked the alarmed
Obersthofmeisterin, “otherwise, old and lame as I am, I shall follow
you.”
“I give you my word. You may sleep in peace.”