XXV
“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 arebourgeoise.”
“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, onthe 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 removedthe 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 manto 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 wereopening 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.”