Rulers of kings: A novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Certainly the gown of white velvet embroidered with pearls and silver which she wore to-day in honor of her enemy enhanced her statuesque appearance, and gave her sharp black brows, the scarlet of her lips, and the brilliant masses of her hair an insolent effect of being able to supply all the color that a dazzled beholder could endure. The almost fierce incongruousness of her coloring might have defeated her attempt to convince the world that a mere princess dwelt within that virile shell, had it not been for the cold regularity of an Egyptian profile carried loftily above a form of antique height and mould, and a skin so white that despairing man had vowed there was sacrilege in the thought of its being put to mortal use. Her gray eyes were alert and so expressive that she had formed the habit of holding them half closed, and her black lashes were very thick. She had inherited her hands and feet from her Spanish ancestors; while not out of proportion to her great height, they were so finely fashioned that they looked too small for serious work. Her trick of eyebrow and shoulder, when animated, may have indicated the persistence of the French blood brought in by Francis of Lorraine. Nature, unspiteful for once to royal women, had given her the infrequent best of her ancestors, and even modified the not unpleasing nose that Elizabeth of Brunswick had presented to the Hapsburgs. Ranata had immense strength, had been ill but once in her life, hardly ever had experienced the sensation of utter fatigue. Her horsemanship was as remarkable as her mother’s had been; and when she appeared in the Prater beside the equally accomplished Emperor, it was a sight that no man ever forgot. She broke in her own horses; when in the country, frequently groomed and saddled them. After Alexandra, they were her only intimates, and she had known her keenest happiness when riding eight hours of the day through the forests of Upper Austria.

Alexandra never accompanied the Archduchess on her longer walks and rides. She was an accomplished horse-woman and a resigned pedestrian, but she had the frail physique of her race, and had been born of a hard-working fashionable mother with none of that profound sense of parental responsibility so ingrained in the European from queen to peasant. She was handsome rather than beautiful; her eyes were too analytical, her mouth betrayed too pronounced a scorn of the shams of life, her whole expression was too keen and humorous to compare victoriously either with the lofty exalted style of the Archduchess Ranata Theresia or the impassive harmonies of fashionable standards. But her eyes and hair were the brown that took lights from the sun, her features were delicate, high-bred, full of character and energy. Her figure was light, round, active; when compared with any but Ranata’s it was sufficiently tall. In her way she was as complex as her friend of the tremendous and conflicting elements drawn from every civilization in Europe, but her salient and unquestioned characteristics were loyalty and sincerity. She dressed exquisitely, and the thousands she spent yearly in Vienna had long since established her popularity.

IV

Alexandra pressed her hand on the table in a flutter of nerves, to which she was little accustomed. But they had vibrated painfully more than once during the dinner, although, with all her experience of courts, she had rarely been present at so magnificent a scene. The immense Throne Room, or Great Hall of Ceremonies, of perfectly simulated yellow marble, relieved only by white wood heavily incrusted with yellow bronze, seemed to quiver in its flood of amber light. The three chandeliers were huge inverted stacks of golden leaves, with no false note of crystal. The few women present were superbly dressed, and covered from crown to waist with the jewels of centuries, but they made an indifferent showing beside the barbarous magnificence of the Hungarian magnates. Every other man at the table, except the cardinals, was in uniform: the King, the Archdukes, and the Emperor’s suite, in the Prussian; the few members of his household whom Franz Joseph had ventured to bring to the jealous capital of his most uncertain possession, and the Grand Stewards of the Archdukes, wore an Austrian uniform; and the Ambassadors were in fullest dress. But it was evident that the fiery independent spirit of the great nobles of Hungary recognized no uniform except that of a glorious extravagance. Their fancy ran riot in color, in textile, in form. But whether in thick brocade, delicate or gorgeous of hue, in cloth of gold or silver, in white satin fitting like a cuirass and studded with jewels, or in silk so heavily embroidered with gold that it creaked like an armor; whether the long velvet cloak, trimmed and lined with priceless fur, its embroideries representing years of labor, its buttons and chains of big uncut jewels, was worn, or used carelessly as a background, there was nothing in Europe, not even in Russia, to compare with them. The headpieces of fur, the plume fastened with a jewelled rosette, were under their chairs, their high boots and silken small-clothes were likewise eclipsed for the hour, but there was more than enough of them to make the great golden room look like a page of old Hungarian history. So their ancestors had sat at Árpád’s table a thousand years ago. The hair of these men might be shorter, but it is doubtful if they varied in another external detail. Their faces were mobile, excitable, sometimes very clever. A few looked like men of the great world, although in that costume it was difficult to look like anything but the feudal lord ready on an instant’s notice to blow the trumpet in his villages and lead his bondsmen to battle.

As their fiery glances wandered from the Archduchess Ranata Theresia to the German Emperor, from the beautiful woman who reminded them of their lost Rudolf to the dashing young monarch they so passionately admired, a man after their own indomitable Hungarian hearts, they seemed to create an atmosphere of uneasiness, of premonition. Alexandra could imagine their swift transition from extravagant courtesy towards their aged King into the wildest excitement of which the modern man is capable; and endeavored to hope that William would behave himself. The young magnate on her right, Count Zrinyi, was evidently a very excitable person. He had from various causes approached the verge of explosion several times. Never having met anything like this cool American girl, he had fallen madly in love with her; the blood flew to and from his face, his jewelled armor creaked, and twice he dashed the tears from his eyes. Alexandra would have imagined herself in one of the Nights of Arabia had it not been for the intervals of rational conversation, when, seeing himself mirrored in the clear eyes beside him, and fancying, as many a wiser man has done, that it was a kindred soul he saw, he had talked of the grievances of the Hungarians and their determination to have their own way in their own country. At present they were engaged in the extermination of the hated German language and the universal substitution of the Magyar. It mattered nothing that less than half the population of their country spoke Hungarian, that the spirit of Roumania still hovered over the land beyond the Theiss, that there were whole villages where the language was never heard, and that Croatia and Slavonia hated them; the intense national pride and spirit which had endured for a thousand years, weathering every conquest, every humiliation, as ardent under the two centuries of Turkish rule as during the climax of their glory under Matthias Corvinus, had gathered fuller strength since the Revolution of ’48; and the determination was growing daily to give emphasis in every possible way to the individuality of this most individual of European states. Let those pitch their tents in Hungary who would, but they must learn and use the Hungarian language or feel themselves the aliens they were—Austrian officers not excepted.

Alexandra yielded to an impulse, not so much of coquetry as of curiosity; she expressed approval of his patriotism in the beautiful Magyar tongue. She had avoided German instinctively, and they had talked in English—like most of his class he was accomplished in many languages. For the moment she regretted her experiment. He trembled violently and turned white. It was then that he shed his first tear.

“You are not cruel!” he murmured. “You have enraptured me! How kind—how wonderful. It is said to be the most difficult of tongues. Did you learn a few words, perhaps, before coming to Hungary, knowing our greatest weakness—”

“Dear me, no. I studied Hungarian, as one of many languages, with the Archduchess. She studied it as a matter of course.”

“That is a very practical explanation,” he said sulkily. “If I had had time to think I should have known. Queen Elizabeth,” he looked as if he would have raised his plumed and jewelled kalpag had it not been under his chair, “bewitched Hungary upon her first visit by speaking perfectly the Magyar language. She took a great fancy to a young Hungarian girl and invited her to become a maid of honor, but when she discovered that she had been educated in Paris and had almost forgotten her native language she sent her home to learn it, and would not receive her into her household again until she was proficient. We have never forgotten that. And Rudolf! it was his language—we refused to believe that he knew how to speak German.”

“Do you regret Rudolf?” asked Alexandra, in the tone she might have used to demand his opinion of the soft music in the gallery. Again she had touched powder with her wicked torch.