XXVIII
Fessenden had found his telegrams awaiting him, and started at once for Berlin. While the ghosts in Ranata were chuckling their recognition to the painted superstitions of the stage, he was in the royal palace, in the comfortable English-looking study overlooking the Schlossplatz. On the north corner of the huge brown pile floated the purple banner which informs the people of Berlin that their “Travelling Kaiser” is visiting at home.
The Emperor was pleasurably at home this evening, for, although he was too much of a soldier to lounge, he wore a smoking-jacket and sat deep in one of his Englishchairs; the color of animation was in his pale face, and his eyes, always expressive and brilliant, sparkled with a more personal emotion.
It was night. His courtiers, his ministers, his generals, his supplicants, were on the other side of the door, and he could be wholly himself for an hour with the one man who neither feared nor flattered him, to whom he had given a large portion of his own warm affections, and who, in return, gave him the sincerest friendship he would ever know.
Fessenden’s chair was drawn close to the fire, and he was sipping a Scotch-and-soda. It was a night for a comfortable talk in a warm bright room, surrounded by books and a man’s more intimate belongings; for the wind howled about the corner of the palace and dashed the rain against the glass. Fessenden’s eyes were sparkling also, but with excitement, and he was more nervous than he usually permitted his manner to betray.
“Within a week,” the Emperor was saying, “the Archduchess will be summoned to Vienna on one pretence or another. The plan is to make her a prisoner in her own rooms until she promises to marry the Archduke Aloys Franz. I suggested him on account of his commanding qualities as a disciplinarian; you will recall that they married the Princess Marie Stefanie to him when her liaison with her tenor was discovered. He imprisoned her on one of his estates, never permitted her to leave it for a day, and when she lost a front tooth mortified her vanity by refusing her the services of a dentist—she was a beauty, poor little thing! As a husband for refractory princesses he is without a peer; and my indirect suggestion met with instant favor from the Emperor, who is distracted between the jealousies of the court and the new motive for disturbance in the caldron of Hungary.The full information—furnished by the maid of honor and other spies—of her love for you was the last straw; and much as the Emperor loves peace and quiet, when the moment comes to act he acts. The Archduchess, of course, will not marry Aloys Franz. We know her; elaboration of that statement is superfluous. But several weeks of solitary meditation will probably convince her that, as her ambitions are thwarted, she may as well marry you and be happy. Confinement will reduce her to an abnormal state, where love will seem the only object for living.”
He left his chair and moved restlessly about the room. “I don’t like it!” he announced in his harsh emphatic voice. “It is unheard of. It is a dangerous precedent. We shall have other dissatisfied and romantic princesses following her example. Take one stone out of the monarchical edifice and it is impossible to foresee the end. God knows, we are shaky enough now. I tell you frankly, Fessenden, that I should assist in no such revolution solely out of friendship for even you; but to get her out of Europe is the less of two evils. I have been called the trigger of Europe. She is the firebrand charged with dynamite. She was dangerous enough before. Now that she has fallen in love, the only thing to do is to marry her to the object as quickly as possible. Balked, and thrown in upon herself, she would set Europe in flames merely to distract her mind and gratify some other passion.” He swung round abruptly and laughed. “I must say, Fessenden, that while I am delighted to be able to help you get the woman you want, I don’t envy you. I shouldn’t say she was the sort of woman a man could settle down and have a comfortable time with.”
“I want nothing more nor less,” said Fessenden; and the Emperor laughed again, although his generous naturewas gratified at the opportunity to be of service to his friend.
“It will be rather more than less,” he said. “I have known her since childhood, and while I admire her more in certain respects than any woman living, I am not precisely blind to her faults. I will confess that I shook her once, a good many years ago, when I was visiting Rudolf, and that she bit and scratched me in return. However, the one man can always manage the woman of strong passions, so I wish you joy.”
“Thanks; and don’t let my domestic prospects worry you. Are you perfectly sure of your man, by the way?”
“Oh, perfectly. He has the ear of the Emperor and the Crown Prince, and, while by no means false to them, is so good a friend of mine that he would do more than that if I asked it of him. Moreover, he has the confidence of Königsegg.”
“Suppose they should suspect that you put him up to it? That would ruin everything. They are quite as afraid of you as they are of her.”
“No diplomat in Europe is more discreet—or finer in his methods. He has dropped the poison by degrees. His first references to the astonishing popularity of the Archduchess in Hungary were almost inadvertent, and at the same time accompanied with enthusiastic comments upon her talents. Her conquest of the Independents was the last straw. The Emperor has been convinced that they would proclaim her queen the moment he died. Was it your suggestion that they met her in a body at the train when she arrived from Transylvania?”
“I put Molnár and one or two others up to it, although they are quite convinced it was their own idea.”
“I am thankful you are my friend, for I shouldn’t wantyour finger in my political pie! Well, Ranata will never see Budapest after this week—if you are quick enough. If she should devil the poor old Emperor into his grave while he was trying to bring her to terms, I should not venture to answer for the consequences. What is your next move? I see no further. How shall you get her out of the Hofburg? Bribe the guards? It will be difficult. The Emperor will guard her well. She could hardly disguise herself and slip out. How shall you manage to communicate with her?”
“Do not exercise your imagination over possibilities of escape, for I have no idea of attempting any. I intend to marry her with the Emperor’s consent. Not very graciously given, perhaps, but still—”
“Oh, Fessenden!” The Emperor spoke impatiently. He had paused on the hearth-rug, and stood there with his left hand resting lightly on his hip, the familiar sword-hilt being absent, the right gesticulating slightly, with a constant movement of the wrist and an occasional pointing of the index finger. “That, my dear boy,” he added kindly, “is just the one thing that even you cannot accomplish. That you will get the Archduchess sooner or later I have no doubt. When a woman like that loves a man—” He shot his hand up expressively. “It may be that I shall have an inspiration of some sort and help you further, but I cannot act openly or I would invite her here. But I have every faith in your resource.”
“You will have more when I tell you my plan.”
The Emperor’s keen eyes met his, and they measured each other as they had a habit of doing.
“Well?” asked the Emperor of Germany.
Fessenden stood up and thrust his hands into pockets. His nervousness had gone, and his eyes were hard and brilliant. “What do you suppose the Emperorwould give to restore the ancient strength and prestige of Austria?” he asked, in the cool and even tones he employed in his Wall Street offices. “To obliterate the memory of 1866? To finish his long and unhappy reign gloriously?”
“What on earth are you driving at? I never heard you talk at random before.”
“You have never heard me talk at random. What would he give in return for such a certainty?”
“More than Ranata. But I hate riddles!” His eyes flashed. The blood burned his cheek. He knew Fessenden, and was sure that he was not listening to bombast. His curiosity and impatience nearly choked him. “Come! Come!” he said. “What idea have you in your head? After South America I am prepared for anything. If you were not such a good fellow I should hate you—but go on.”
“Perhaps what all the world most wants next to the fulfilment of its personal desires,” continued Fessenden imperturbably, “is the obliteration of its most actively malignant forces. The most malignant force in the world to-day is Russia; in a lesser degree, Turkey. These countries, by their unredeemable barbarism, compass the utter misery of more millions of helpless human beings than all the other causes in the rest of the world that conduce, in the natural order of things, to unhappiness. Moreover, Russia is the one menace which prevents Europe and England from enjoying a moment’s security. She creeps and creeps, and never retraces a step. In far-sightedness Russia is the greatest genius among nations, and she is absolutely unscrupulous; the tyro in diplomacy does not trust her, and yet she outwits again and again. There is a hideous possibility of her eventual triumph, and the day she weakens the power of England, puts her nose in the Persian Gulf,flows over Turkey, that day sounds the passing bell of modern civilization. Therefore, the power or powers that hamstring this anomaly in the twentieth century, forcing her to crouch with her feet in the sand like a malignant but helpless sphinx until invading progress has taught her wisdom—these powers would achieve an immortality in history which they could compass by means of no other modern conditions. Am I not right?”
The Emperor nodded. He was very pale. Not only had Fessenden pricked from its drugged sleep one of the passionate hopes of his early manhood, but he knew that the American was no idle dreamer, that he had already accomplished the impossible. He had a sensation of standing spellbound on the threshold of a miraculous future towards which the great forces within him had moved precisely since the birth of the worlds. But the impression was hardly realized; his faculties were concentrated upon the utterance of the man who no longer looked young, in whose aspect was no trace of the lover of the Archduchess of Austria, who, indeed, looked little more than an intellect, using a casual body as a convenient medium. Abbott asked his next question so abruptly that the Emperor stiffened into an attitude not unlike that of a midnight sentry alarmed by a sudden footfall.
“You know what I have been trying to do in my factory out West?”
“Well?”
“The experiments are perfected. The kites—and they are as beautiful as they are deadly—can be sent by electricity to an incalculable distance, and each one will rain down dynamite enough to kill a thousand men at a time if they are close enough together. The generators to charge storage batteries have, by other experiments, been so reduced in size and weight that they hardlycount among the effects of a travelling army. The enemy could be routed in ten minutes. Even balloons are not necessary, except for reconnoitring. You also know of the other invention, no less important. That is perfected. The steel forts are not only impregnable, but the secret has been discovered of moving electrically operated machines over any sort of ground. So far, moving forts, bicycles, automobiles have been useless except on good roads. These forts will travel without so much as a lowering of speed over the worst that nature has to offer; there is even an apparatus, on the principles of the flying-machine, which will carry them over swamps and rivers. Do you see my drift?”
The Emperor’s face would have looked like wax but for the severity of its lines. “Good God!” he muttered finally. “If this is true it will make you the master of the world.”
“It will make you the master of Europe.”
“What riddle now?” He spoke thickly, but involuntarily twitched his shoulders. He was quick to resent any attempt to manage him.
“The Spanish War has come and gone. I have no use for these new weapons of war. They must be used at once, for ideas are microbes. A few years hence—a year hence—and the discoveries may be universal. If I had never met Ranata I should have presented them to you and told you to go ahead, and in the name of humanity wipe Russia and Turkey, in the form they now exist, off the map. I want to see you at the helm while you are still young, and discouragements and disappointments have not crushed all the enthusiasm out of you. The world has waited and waited for you to do the great thing, not realizing your difficulties, and that it was your purpose to make Germany strong and prosperous before launching it into a great war; your crusade willbe looked upon as quite in keeping with your character. And you are the only man on this side of the water capable of handling a great empire. So, I repeat, I should have offered you this new power in any case. Now I ask you to use it as a bait for the Emperor of Austria. Owing to your alliance it would be a natural act; unless you could afford to wait for his death, which you cannot. Tell him that if he refuses you will swallow him too. But he can hardly hesitate to snatch at the one compensation for the failures of his reign and life. Such of the conquered territory as you may have to yield to him will flow to you naturally at his death, for his heir could not hold it, and you may be sure that, as the initiator of so magnificent and beneficent a conquest, and as the younger and more picturesque of the majesties, you will be the idol of Austria-Hungary, as well as the hero of the world. France can be as easily disposed of as Russia, and indeed every intelligent power will let you alone after your first battle. Of course you can have all the money you want should you meet with opposition in the Reichstag. That offer has always stood. As for the excuse for war, it will be simple enough to whip up a disturbance in the Balkans. A few discreet agents, a revolutionary committee, surreptitious presents of arms, and Bulgaria or Macedonia is in flames. A secret understanding with Ferdinand and he will do anything to get Russia off his back. Then when the pot is boiling, and the so-called Christians are sprinkling their gore on their own unspeakable filth, announce to Christendom that Christian rulers can stand no more, impose impossible conditions on Russia, and sail in. There will be enough of these weapons of destruction ready before the end of three months to conquer the whole of Europe, and no more time is necessary to manipulate the Balkans.”
He paused abruptly, and again the two men stared hard and long at each other. The pallor and the burning eyes of both testified to the passionate emotion they controlled. Fessenden had permitted eagerness to creep neither into his tones nor manner, but he felt as if he were standing in the dock awaiting a sentence of life or death. The Emperor felt as if he had been whirled back to the first years of his reign, when all things seemed possible to a young and indomitable ruler. And that reign had been one long and desperate struggle between his autocratic instincts and the deep and persistent desire for the extreme rights of man among a large division of his subjects. He had given them much, but they wanted more; and being advised by flatterers, and so far removed from contact with the masses, he looked upon the greater part of their demands with angry impatience. But no ruler had ever brought a more lofty enthusiasm to reform, and he had been thwarted by ignorance, and conservative stupidity, and personal hatred, until he sometimes felt that the day might not be far distant when he should shrug his shoulders and simmer down into the routine of other sovereigns. It was true he had accomplished many things and he had made a great city of Berlin and a wealthy state of Prussia; but when he thought of his old ambitions he felt sick with the futility of life. Fessenden’s abrupt proposition had given him a moment of unutterable happiness, then almost paralyzed his faculties. He wondered if he should awake and find himself alone, still compelled to profess friendship for the enemy of civilization.
Fessenden continued. “Ranata, of course, will formally renounce all rights to the throne. But the Emperor’s consent I will have, if only as a concession of Europe to the United States—a formal recognitionof her absolute equality among nations. I forgot to tell you that the details of these inventions have been so worked out that no one but my head electrician and myself knows them all, and the exact combinations. And he is not only a man of honor, but no crowned head in Europe could offer him a bribe comparable to what he will receive from me on the day of your first battle with Russia.”
The Emperor came out of his reverie. “Have you samples here?”
“They are in the custom-house. They have not been examined, and await your order to pass them through unopened. The electrician is also here. My father arrives to-morrow. We can have an object-lesson on Saturday.”
“Let us have it by all means,” said the Emperor of Germany.