“Ah! Well, I wish the Emperor could have consented more gracefully. I hated seeing him driven to the wall like that.”
“So did I. But it was success or failure. The odds were even. He is the ruler of a great empire, skilled in power and diplomacy. If I had hesitated to use the only available means of success, I should not be worth my salt. For that matter, he merely followed a law of Nature.”
“Well, you have won, and I wish you joy. No doubt you will see her before many days have passed.”
As they were leaving the room, Fessenden laid his hand on the other’s arm. “Always remember,” he said, “that I am no trafficker in human beings. I throw this great power into your hands because I believe you will govern so wisely that your people will be fitted for the great European republic before you die.”
“Ach was!” said the Emperor of Germany.
XXXV
The bora which 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 inevitable months. 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 selected by 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 the bora seemed 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 of Reports 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 the English language, it must be confessed that she did not find her profoundest distraction in the Reports. 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.