XXXV
Theborawhich had raged for days, making it not only unsafe but impossible to venture out of doors, had flown round the isthmus to torment Fiume. The blue Adriatic sparkled in a great silence, and, so brilliant was the atmosphere, Ranata could fancy she saw Italy far away on the edge of the level waters. Even the little breakers at the foot of the castle growled like cubs instead of bellowing in fury at the high confident roar in the pine tops on the hill. The white castle, with its Norman tower and gateway and innumerable turrets, fresh, strong, symmetrical, solitary on the long curving line of white coast, whose little peninsula juts abruptly from the wooded mountain into the sea, was the fairest prison that had ever held a princess captive. The bluest sea in the world was at its feet, the yellow sun flamed in a sky almost as blue, and on the mountain behind were the everlasting greens of cypress and pine. There is no more dazzling combination of color in the world, and on moonlight nights it is but the exchange of gold for silver.
Ranata, standing on the stone terrace in front of the library and overhanging the sea, her back to the war-ship on the right of the castle, her eyes roaming from the incomparable expanse of the Adriatic to Trieste and the mountains beyond, felt that with knowledge, in addition to the faith that sustained her, she could serenely endure her exile throughout what she believed to be the inevitablemonths. She had now been two weeks at Miramar, and kings might have died and dynasties fallen, the very continents might be at war, for all the news that had come to her from the world. Not a letter, not a newspaper, passed the sentries at the gates; the grounds swarmed with guards; one paced the terrace where she stood; others were on duty at the head of the staircase at night. She met Maria Leopoldina at the second breakfast and at dinner, and was accompanied by that vigorous duenna on her long walks in fine weather, but subjects of common interest had long since been exhausted and they bore each other silent company, the older woman too thankful that her charge was amiable to repine at her own fate.
Complete faith had restored Ranata’s peace of mind, delivered her even from variability of mood, and on the whole she had been glad of these many days alone. She no longer yearned with romantic melancholy for life companioned but by a spiritualized memory, but examined herself and her possibilities conscientiously, and dwelt much, if soberly, in the upper air. If she idealized Fessenden and the matrimonial state, that did her no harm. Still, the time seemed long, and she had not the least idea by what method the American lover purposed to induce a Hapsburg to give him his daughter in marriage. She knew that he would succeed, but she also knew that the petrifactions in his way might yield very slowly even to his energy and habit of success.
She sighed and entered the castle. Her morning walk had been a long one, and she returned to the library for rest and the unfailing distraction it afforded her. It was a lofty room, not too large, the light woods of floor and ceiling almost reflecting the sunshine which poured through the windows. Each one of the six thousand books in many languages looked as if personally selectedby the poor gentleman and scholar who had graced so delightfully the one sphere for which Nature had designed him, and in whose alien rôle naught had become him but his death. The room had been bright even while theboraseemed to blow the very sun about the sky, and the books in their haphazard bindings looked so gay and fresh that it was difficult to believe their owner had left them forty years before. Only the photographs of friends, which covered the walls of the adjoining study, were faded, their garments old-fashioned. Eugénie, in her crinoline, looked like a by-gone fashion-plate; even her autograph was dim; for the pictures had been hastily thrust into ordinary little wooden or gilt frames, and unprotected by glass. The beauty of Elizabeth had retired to the inmost folds of her hideous Victorian costume, and of her two oldest babies, taken with her, little was noticeable but the bulging brow and solemn eyes of Rudolf. But the crimson of hangings and chairs was still fresh and vivid, the heavy woodwork of the low ceiling, its design repeated in the floor, was highly polished, the pen on the table might have been dropped yesterday; all the clocks had been ticking these forty years. Every room in the castle looked as if designed and furnished by the happy young couple, but these two rooms were still most personal, still were pervaded by the refinement, the love of comfort and of home, of Maximilian and Carlotta. Ranata, when forced to remain in-doors, spent most of her time in them. In the library she had discovered five volumes ofReports on Explorations and Surveys, fruits of the thirty-third Congress of the United States, and had read them diligently. She had succeeded in investing the dry and spotted pages with a sentimental interest, all things being possible to a woman in love; but although most of the books she read at this time were written in theEnglish language, it must be confessed that she did not find her profoundest distraction in theReports. To-day, however, she was taking down the fourth volume, albeit with some humor, when Maria Leopoldina entered the library hurriedly, consternation and amazement distorting a countenance habitually masked with the mincing placidity of the courtier.
“The ship is weighing anchor!” she exclaimed. “And all but the usual guard have received orders—by telegraph from Vienna—to return to Trieste. And that is not all! I was asked a moment ago to look through the spy-glass—a steam-yacht is approaching from the Italian coast—they say it is Mr. Abbott’s. Can Franz have gone mad? Good God! can he be dead?”
Ranata dashed past her, and up the stair to the tower-room, where she had spent so many hours scanning the horizon through the glass. A moment later, in its burgee, she had read the personality of the rapidly approaching yacht. It was theAlexandra; and the war-ship was steaming in the opposite direction.
When she turned to the agitated Obersthofmeisterin, close upon her heels, she was trembling so violently she hardly could stand, her cheeks were blazing, and she thrust her hands into her heavy hair, and pulled it down as if its weight were intolerable.
“It means,” she stammered—“it means—cannot you see?—he has won—already—I am to marry him!” And then Maria Leopoldina felt as if her nerves had been assaulted by a swarm of hornets. Ranata collapsed upon a chair, and flew into hysterics. She had suffered in silence during that first awful week in the Hofburg, pride carrying her successfully through even that ordeal; and she had been calm enough during the past fortnight of solitude and uncertainty; but in the face of this sudden and violent prospect of victory and immediatehappiness, her suppressed energies leaped their walls, and she cried and laughed and talked incoherent phrases until the duenna could stand no more and took refuge in a dead faint.
Ranata promptly recovered her reason, and applied the necessary restoratives without summoning help. When she had led her vibrating relative to a sofa, and fetched a bottle of salts, she arranged her own hair and face, and returned to the tower to watch the approach of the yacht. It steamed swiftly over the calm sea, but to Ranata’s excited nerves hours passed before she could read the ensign and burgee without the aid of the glass. She was now schooled to any surprise, but experienced a sharp thrill nevertheless when the proud craft, instead of passing the castle and making for Trieste, deliberately swung about and dropped anchor upon the exact spot where the war-ship had kept its vigilant watch. A moment later it ran up two flags, side by side—the Austrian and the American.
Ranata sank again upon a chair and held her breath, expecting to see a boat lowered and Fessenden descend. But the long moments passed—an hour passed; the incident appeared to be closed for the present. Officers sauntered up and down the deck, sailors bustled about, but no one appeared to manifest any interest in the castle. Finally she was forced to conclude that, whatever Fessenden had accomplished in Vienna, his yacht had come without him.
To remain inactive any longer was beyond her electrified nerves. She regarded Maria Leopoldina’s authority as at an end, and it was evident that the shaken Obersthofmeisterin was of the same opinion, for she had dragged herself to her room, and was seen no more that day. Ranata sent an invitation to the captain and the officers of the yacht to lunch at the castle. Theylowered the flags and returned with the messenger; and although there was an animated party in the little dining-room up-stairs, all her subtle questioning was able to extract were the bare facts that on the previous evening they had received orders from their master in Vienna to proceed in the morning to Miramar, run up the two flags as they anchored off the castle, and not to lower them until they had received some answering signal from her. They were naïvely curious, and, face to face with the Archduchess beloved of their chief, frankly suspicious of the sequel. It was evident, however, that her information was more meagre than theirs, and they were so glad to get back to the tonic sweetness of the Adriatic after their fortnight at Venice, most malodorous of cities, and so enchanted with this beautiful princess and her castle, that they were content without knowledge, Yankees though they were.
After luncheon Ranata took them for a walk through the gardens and woods of the park, keeping them until they bored her, for she dreaded solitude and looked forward to the night with terror. But before the night came her nerves were to be lifted from the rack.