Rulers of kings: A novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Her own entertainments were given in no perfunctory fashion. She had one state dinner a week, and small dinners and luncheons for the better study of the Hungarian character. There was no theatre in the palace, but she had a stage erected in the Hall of Ceremonies, and Possart came from Munich to give the soliloquy of Manfred among the snow-fields of the Alps, in what is perhaps the most perfect German spoken in a great empire where perfect German is seldom heard. Fremstadt came with him to sing from “Carmen”; and Frau Schratt and other artists of Vienna were engaged for the later winter. The local poets were permitted to declaim, and their emotional fires and abandon won the English and American guests, long divorced from patience with drawing-room inflictions.

But the Hungarians shone most brilliantly in music, and there were frequent concerts in the palace, given entirely by members of the aristocracy, which inspired no comparison with professionals. When the Archduchess found time she went to the theatre or opera, and sat in the gala box, wearing her best conceived gowns, and having taken care that her intention should be announced in the morning newspapers.

And so Budapest had its gay winter at last—a winter that exceeded even longings and dreams, and made the heart of the tradesman sing, and filled the hotels with curious and ambitious visitors. But perhaps the true rapture dwelt in the pen of the correspondent, so long driven in the mere service of politics for the casual glance of a world at no pains to understand that it might yet be the destiny of Hungary to precipitate the great convulsion of Europe. These grateful gentlemen quickly made Ranata the most famous woman on the public stage. Her pictures were sold in every capital, the illustrated weekly newspapers presented her to a delighted public in all her available aspects, and girl reporters came to Budapest and wrote imaginary interviews with her maids.

No one knew better than Ranata that this glitter and tinsel was but the prelude to true fame, and that without the opportunity to prove her wisdom as a ruler she would take no place in history outside the covers of some “Book of Beauty”; nevertheless she found the notoriety and incense sweet after her long monotonies, and her pride was deeply gratified with the unequivocal success of her first programme. She would have been more satisfied if she could have had proof of the jealous uneasiness of William of Germany; and more secure if the state of mind of the Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary could have been revealed to her. But if Fessenden corresponded with his friend he made no confidences; and neither her father nor Count von Königsegg mentioned her cousin in their letters, although they appeared to commend her course.

But to Ranata’s surprise and occasional alarm, she frequently discovered that her imagination dwelt less on her future in history than on the great schemes of Fessenden Abbott, and that her thoughts were far more occupied with their unique and interesting details than with the future complexities of Europe, which long since had acquired the habit of repeating themselves. Gone were the hours when she had striven to untangle the web of her empire’s future, to fit herself for every imaginable contingency. When her womanhood took its temporary rest, her brain was far more apt to dwell upon some point that was puzzling Fessenden. She reminded herself that this may have been the result of their daily conversations, his abrupt confidential asides; and believed she might assure herself that when the spell was removed her interest in subjects so foreign to all in her previous twenty-eight years would vanish with the sweetness of life.

But they were not foreign to everything, she suddenly reminded herself. There was Alexandra! Would this sense of intimacy with the brother have descended upon her so quickly, even with the assistance of love, had it not been preceded by that other long intimacy? How deep had the influence of this American sunk? What changes had it perhaps wrought in her character during those eighteen years of almost constant mental friction, beginning when her mind was plastic, and always making her chief interests in life? Nothing is more difficult than to concentrate the mind in self-analysis, self-examination; the children of the experience resent the scientific probing of the mind and hide in the shadowy deeps. Ranata was forced to recur to the subject abruptly, to glimpse her mental layers by flashlight. It was difficult even then to make sure what tracings had been done by an alien hand, much less to imagine just what she would have been had that hand been withheld; but finally she learned enough to cause her moments of deep uneasiness, grave doubts if she were so inviolate a Hapsburg as she had believed; and when she realized there had been intervals when her emancipated and now rebellious imagination had transported her to the American continent, where she moved with the assurance and the vivid sense of freedom of the American girl, she shrank in terror, as if already she had taken a traitorous and irrevocable step. She had always been convinced that she should find all things in the American section of America quite detestable, from their very unlikeness to all things sanctified by the traditions of Europe; but now she emerged from visions of herself penetrated with happiness in a romantic wilderness of mountain and forest, or in cities which epitomized that wonderful modern life which seemed to relegate the old to boards and calf-skin. There were times when she actually felt the rush and fever of the life in her veins. It was then that she turned her mind to Hungary. She had been deeply gratified to learn that on the greater portion of the Left, William had made no impression, except to deepen their hatred and distrust of Germany. That this enthusiastic and ofttimes desperate party was being secretly drawn to her standard, Ranata was not long discovering. For a time, at least, they would accept a queen where they would reject a king, and their susceptible natures inclined them naturally towards a young and beautiful ruler whom they could love, and, no doubt, manage; while she added to their picturesque strength in the eyes of the world. Ranata was aware that the new thought was travelling silently; and while trembling lest it reach Vienna, she dared not notice it sufficiently to demand prudence. The part must be thrust upon her, not only to save her in the eyes of Europe, but the lightest hint of ambition from her would have alarmed the Independents and turned their admiration to contempt.

There were times during this strange interlude in her life when she was possessed by a sensation of supreme joy, or by deep and tranquil happiness—moments when she paced the terrace alone on brilliant mornings in a tumult of wonder, when Budapest, beautiful enough, was glorified, and the links binding her to the mundane were dissolved. In such moments she neither analyzed nor speculated, she but intensely lived; but when they had passed, she wondered if such ideally pagan moments were prophetic of greater happiness, or if they were peculiar to that antechamber of the unknown which is the prelude in love. The possibility depressed her, and at other times she suffered sharply. If Fessenden carelessly laid his arm about Alexandra’s shoulders or took her hand, satisfied in the masculine fashion with what happened to be convenient at the moment, Ranata would turn cold with jealousy and disgust with life. As she was too proud to protest—or explain—she punished the bewildered offender with a freezing demeanor, and both were miserable for several days. The reconciliation, however, enshrined the misery in a halo of gratitude. Her jealousy was purely impersonal, and induced no alteration in her attitude towards Alexandra. It was not the object but the apparent wandering of his affections that concerned her, and the physical manifestation. She took for granted that he loved his sister—would have thought him deficient in human nature if he had not. But that sort of relation was passive; the active he had entered upon embraced her alone. Like other women in love, she was constantly making discoveries about herself; and when, one day, alone with her thoughts, she found herself overwhelmed and dissolved in a transport of maternal tenderness for the man to whom ultimately she could be nothing, she realized for the first time how far love had carried her. This was towards the end of the interlude; and soon after, even the uneasiness of this discovery was forgotten in the haunting dismay which preceded the end.

Meanwhile Zrinyi was manifestly impatient that the visit should be made to his castle in the Transylvanian Alps before the full rigors of winter should compel an indefinite postponement. So far, the winter was mild, and the snow on the lower Alps not so heavy that oxen could not draw the sledges up the steep mountain roads. Ranata, welcoming a few days’ release from the world, and greater freedom, set the date; and it was arranged that the party should consist only of her ladies, Alexandra, Fessenden Abbott, and Prince Illehazy. They were to linger long enough in Klausenbourg, Kronstadt, and the intervening villages, to give the inhabitants a glimpse of their princess, and an opportunity to offer the ovation which once had been their joy to give to Rudolf.

XXIII

When one is standing in a window looking down into a gorge a thousand feet below, the cynical reflections of a mummy in bed smoking a cigar vex the impulse of romance, quick in the brain. Ranata was in the window. The window was Zrinyi’s; so was the perpendicular mountain of which the old border fortress might have been an abrupt continuation, so indeed were the harsh wild peaks, bare but for the glittering snow, which rose high above this lofty height. The mummy was Sarolta, who was in bed with a cold. The invasion of her sacred person by impertinent microbes always put her in a bad humor, and to-day it urged her to improve one of her rare solitudes with her royal charge. Moreover, she was profoundly puzzled. If Ranata was not in love with this American, why then did she show him a preference never before won, for a moment, by another admirer? But if she were in love, why then this serenity? She had expected that Ranata’s inevitable love episode would be fraught with tragedy from the very first, and that pallid cheeks and heavy eyes would be the visible signs, haughtily as the Princess might comport herself. Had the heroine been any one but Ranata she might have drawn a characteristic deduction from this serenity; but although she was not the European to swear to the virtue of any woman, she knew that Ranata, if not bigotedly virtuous, was bigotedly loyal to her house, and had long since made her vow that by no act of hers should another of its stones be loosened; rather was she exalted by the hope that it might be her destiny to save it from destruction. And Sarolta, who had settled back comfortably into her early doctrine that life was made to live, could have gone to the stake herself for the aristocratical or the monarchical ideal. Therefore, she believed that Ranata would immolate her passion on this altar the moment it burned too fiercely; and so, after all, was prepared to take her oath upon the virtue of one woman. Nevertheless, she was curious. Of the compact, of course, she knew nothing; and had she, still would she have puzzled, knowing the power and the will of woman to torment herself; but she had come to the conclusion that it was possible Ranata, never having seen Fessenden alone—this the good lady also believed—did not wholly realize her condition, would not until he left her; so determined to do what she could in the way of preliminary disenchantment.