The walls of her bedroom and breakfast-room were panelled with the Gobelins of which the Hapsburgs have the monopoly in abundance and splendor. Her ancient narrow bed, surmounted by the insignia of her house clutching at a mass of yellow brocade and lace, was high on a dais. Alexandra declared that it looked like a catafalque, and was haunted with the ennuis and miseries of a hundred princesses long since forgotten. When Ranata, sleepless and in want of sympathy, demanded companionship, she was forced to transfer her imperial person into the enamelled and inlaid but wide and modern bed of her American friend, who did what she could to banish ghosts. Alexandra had diplomatically refurnished her apartments by degrees, until now they were those of a young American who, while extravagant and luxurious, was studious of music and books and a devotee of light and air. Ranata never felt at home in them, but they exercised over her a certain fascination, for they breathed the freedom of their owner’s personality.
“I am told,” continued the Archduchess, still with an inflection of bitterness, “that there are people who envy royalty!”
“That is your safeguard—the glamour. It is that blinding halo more than any other cause that has made this country rise serenely after six crushing defeats in one century. The Lord’s anointed—genial yet remote—afflicted beyond all men, yet carefully preserved to his state and people—alive yet dead—kind and just yet—”
She paused abruptly, for although Ranata was at times extravagantly informal and confidential with the one friend to whom her rank meant nothing, Alexandra, with all her audacity, never ventured beyond a certain point. There were moments when Ranata’s ancestors rose in her soul and peremptorily ordered up the drawbridge which the lonely princess loved to fling recklessly at the feet of her American friend; to taste the sweets of girlish intercourse, unrestrained by the fear of imperilling her royal dignity or untainted by the suspicion of self-interest. There was no honor that the House of Hapsburg could bestow upon the American, and Ranata knew that court life was too old a story to offer any further attractions to Alexandra. If the Archduchess had not been fully aware that the Austrian Court was the dullest in Europe, Alexandra would have enlightened her: her lively friend could rehearse every word that would be uttered at a function, the tidbits of scandal that would be murmured at royal dinners after the terrible interval of no conversation whatever. But for Ranata she cherished a deep and almost romantic affection, and believed her existence to be the most tragic in the world. Had it been possible—and it was a possibility of which she never despaired—she would have carried her off to New York; but for the present she spent six months of every year in Austria, and sowed seeds of which the Emperor and his court knew nothing; for outside the privacy of these rooms she was more European than American. Although she was now accepted as a matter of course, for several years the haughtiest and most exclusive people on earth had tolerated her with ill-concealed resentment, by no means unexaggerated by jealousy; and Alexandra, feeling that the pride of her country was involved, to say nothing of her own comfort, had succeeded in obliterating all trace of the alien. Only an American can imagine the force of the reaction. And this morning, returning after a long absence to find her friend more than ever in need of the diversion she knew so well how to provide, she was forced to pause suddenly and bite her lip. But Ranata’s ancestors were slumbering, and the atmosphere of freedom came subtly to her nostrils.
“If possible, my father is more of a machine than ever,” she remarked dryly. “I sometimes think that his very remarks to me at dinner—I see less and less of him anywhere else—are dictated by his ministers. I don’t blame him, poor man, for being afraid to love anybody again. If he wants to be a machine, I should be the last to deny him, and I really believe that he now feels nothing, and is a mere automaton from four in the morning until he goes to sleep peacefully at nine in the evening. I wish I were a machine myself. It must be the only refuge this side the grave. But the stupid physical fact is that my nerve-cells are still stronger than my fibrous tissue, and I must wait thirty years or so for Nature to do her work.”
“Your afflictions have been shocking, poor dear—”
“I am not thinking of my afflictions. No one experienced in sorrow will ever whine. It is the future I am thinking of—to say nothing of the present. I am twenty-eight. Except when you are here I am utterly without companionship, unless, to be sure, when I am in the country on a horse. Here in Vienna, as you know, I rarely leave the Hofburg—leave these rooms only for the riding-school or some other part of the palace; for my father—or his ministers—seems to dislike more and more the attention I attract whenever I show myself abroad—”
She paused abruptly and gave a curious sidelong glance at her friend.
“You have been thinking of matrimony!” exclaimed Alexandra.
“Yes—twice during the past year. I have been almost tempted to consider it—almost, but not quite. The change would be too temporary. If there is one thing that must surpass the eternal boredom of unmarried royal women, it is putting up with a wired automaton and bearing his sickly children. And liberty! Now, at least, I can lock these doors, and even my father would not force them, and my ladies are only too glad to be relieved of my society. But perhaps I have spoken too strongly. In solitude I have found much happiness. I can dream and dream, and forget that not the least of my dreams can ever come true.”