Rulers of kings: A novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“If you only knew how much!”

“Ah, you dream of a universal democracy, I suppose. I fear I dream only of the independence of Hungary—with William as enlightened overlord—and the humiliation of Austria.”

“I can’t talk politics and dance the Chardash.”

Fessenden summoned to his eyes a far and impassive stare. Ranata pointed her lashes to her cheeks. They were the tallest couple in the room, and those who sat had much to say in comment. There was little to criticise, for their natural grace and beauty of form diverted the eye from their few mistakes; and in truth those whose blood is quick must learn the Chardash easily. For a time the music is a wail of almost hopeless longing, and the feet and body move hesitatingly, monotonously, the man and woman at arm’s-length; gradually it grows sweeter, more inspiring, and the feet move faster—life seems to awaken. The music swells and the man takes the girl’s left hand and raises it high; then, as it becomes triumphant and peremptory, he swings her faster and faster, executes wild and rapid figures, stamps his feet, snaps his fingers in the air, increases his speed to that of the whirlwind, flings his partner from him and catches her again, to whirl and whirl and whirl in a circle scarcely larger than his feet; and all without a moment of forgetfulness, a rude embrace, a change of expression. “It is the story of elementary passion before man was created to express it,” Ranata had said to Alexandra before they had ventured to take part; and certainly the Hungarian peasant, intelligent and gay, but polite and dignified to his marrow, is worthy of a place beside the impersonal artists of any civilization.

Nevertheless, the Chardash is so intoxicating that no one can dance it perfunctorily, no matter how self-conscious at starting; and there was nothing here to distract the attention of the most fastidious: the air was pure, for the windows were open, and the Hungarian peasant is clean. No matter what the pressure of the speed, not a foot was trodden, not a temper shaken. Fessenden had danced half the native dances of the world, sometimes in hours of greater abandon than this, and Ranata had a natural love of the dance and indulged it whenever possible. As she had recognized and intuitively obeyed her friend’s brother, she realized in a flash that for sixteen years he had occupied a silent but permanent place in a shadowy realm that was hers alone. He had been Alexandra’s favorite theme from childhood, and Ranata’s interest had never flagged. His sister was as truthful as most women, but in her extreme youth she had possessed a violent imagination, and her unknown brother, dwelling in the wilderness, had inspired it to deeds which had caused the little Archduchess to sit open-mouthed for hours as she drank in his blood-curdling and heroic adventures with Indian tribes, robber bands, pirates, and wild beasts of every variety whose pictures were to be found in Alexandra’s natural history. He had seemed to her the most splendid and picturesque of living creatures, and although the reduction of Alexandra’s allowance for a year to the wages of a footman by her perturbed father had cured her of the habit of exaggeration, she still could tell a pretty tale, and there had been much to recount during Fessenden’s sojourn in South America and after his return. To a princess living the most conventional and restricted of earthly lives he represented all that the world, beyond palace walls, held of romance, of freedom, of the grand free play of personality. As she grew older she forbade her fancy to lead him into the backwaters of sentiment, that being a part of the necessary discipline of self; but there had been times when the effort had exhausted her. Two thoughts had flashed through her mind as she realized that she stood face to face with him at last: the one came from depths she did not pause to analyze—“If I had suddenly heard that he was dead, instead of meeting him like this, I should have been appalled by a sense of personal loss.” The other thought flew straight from superstition and made her for the moment the sister of the peasant-women about her—“This colored frock! I might have known it would bring me bad luck!”

In a moment she had angrily dismissed both suggestions, but she endeavored to nurse a general resentment. She had been taken abominable advantage of. He had known who she was and dared to treat her like any ordinary girl masquerading. That royalty, or aristocracy for that matter, moves on unselfconscious heights is one of the fictions of fiction. The aristocracies of Europe may not, in the manner of the American, carry their ancestors like a bunch of chips on their shoulder, but like royalty, they are “simple and unaffected” only so long as they are not expected to be humble and are not approached by the wrong sort of people. The intense dramatic moments of William of Germany might alone convince the unthinking of royalty’s sense of its own value.

Ranata was not dramatic, or at all events had wanted opportunity; but had she inherited the simplicity of her mother, which assuredly she had not, she would have found it a difficult task to forget that she was the daughter of an emperor. But she had experienced no such inclination. She might sigh for liberty, and in erratic moments wish she had been born an American, but to her composition had gone the haughtiest particles of Europe. She was not only the last born of an ancient line of kings who had exercised despotic rule over vast possessions, but who had built about themselves a triple golden wall of ceremony. No court had ever been so uncomplaisant, no royal favor so difficult to gain; to-day no house in Europe was so tenacious of its ancient formalities. Every act of Ranata’s life to which the least importance could be attached had been the combined result of her active consciousness that she was the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, and of instinctive ancestral tribute.

Therefore did the Archduchess Ranata Theresia feel that her sacred self had been trifled with, and was filled with wrath against her friend and her friend’s brother. But it is both difficult and anomalous to nurse the severer passions while moving one’s body and feet to the cry of the Chardash for the fulfilment of human happiness. A mist rose to and diffused itself through the historic tiers of Ranata’s brain, and created an illusion. The music of the Chardash, older than the House of Hapsburg, as old, perhaps, as that mysterious gypsy people who brought it to Hungary, was the song of the wind among peaks about a wild and lovely valley high in the Eastern Alps. She was primeval woman dancing with primeval man. A silver hammer rang on the distant rocks, the wind drew its bow on the young branches of the trees; all the new world moved in measure about her, groping towards its birthright. The vague melancholy promise of Nature grew ever more distinct in its utterance, swelled in fuller volume from the heights and passes. The man felt it and swung her with swifter assurance, clasped her surrendered waist more firmly; then in the wild and breathless whirl, where the male, inspired by the reckless adhortation of the music, expresses the insolent triumph of his manhood, and the woman alone hears the persistent note of sadness, the warning of the unfulfilment of mortal desire, the heroine of this tale was the creature of another will. In that dizzying circle she followed his every motion, the peremptory guiding of his hand, with neither thought nor desire of resistance; and when he flung her scornfully from him she leaped back to his embrace as automatically as the meanest peasant in the room. At the end she was conscious of nothing but that the mountain-tops were flying about her in a furious attempt to meet and crash together; the shouting of the men, the abrupt loud stamping of their feet, as the musicians played like madmen, came to her confused senses as the forces of the earth bursting their bonds; and when the illusion abruptly finished and she found herself on the veranda she leaned heavily against the wall and sought for nothing but her breath.

Fessenden mopped his streaming face. “By Jove!” he remarked, “that was warm work! But it’s a great dance—and you—you—were simply magnificent! When I get my breath I’ll tell you how grateful I am.”

Ranata lifted her head and assumed an expression of frigid severity, which shone oddly from a face that was wet and red from hair to throat.