XIII
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 deliberatelyto 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 thefesta. 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 policynever 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. “Andwhatis 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, smokingthe 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 shoutingSetreasca! Setreasca!The guests surrounding Rudolf responded withÉlyensalmost 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 inher 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 abundantdreaming 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.”