Chapter VIII: Part II: I (3)

Ranata had too much tact to rise impulsively, for she towered above the minister by not a few inches, but she held out her hand and shook his warmly, and her face was radiant. “I am so glad! I am so glad!” she cried softly. “And you do not hate me! I have been so desperately bored and hopeless that it has given me a certain pleasure to make enemies--if only for the sake of sensation; and as you were the most powerful man in the Empire, it amused me to defy you. In your magnanimity you have forgiven me! If you knew how grateful I am, how I thank you!”

His Excellency trembled, but he kept his head; how, he never knew. “Your Imperial Highness,” he said, “I, too, am a patriot. I am acting in this instance, as in all others, in the service of the Empire. If, in addition, I am to be permitted to act in the service of a woman--of such a woman--madam, will you permit me to retire?”

VIII

“We parted with mutual distrust, a mutual increase of respect, even of tolerance, and a common determination to make use of each other,” said the Archduchess to Alexandra, as she finished the account of her interview with the minister. They were alone in her salon. “I reserved my Americanism for a future occasion, and played the old European game of the cat and the mouse. He is not in the least sure which is the cat and which the mouse. Neither am I, for that matter; but I have the advantage of knowing him better than he knows me. However, here I am for the present.”

Alexandra drew a long and almost voluptuous sigh of content. “No more awful evenings in the Hofburg!--whist with his Majesty, or, worse still, with M. L.; a little music; tittle-tattle about the same threadbare old royalties, the last novel--French and wicked--the play, the last baby--there are always several; yawns, decorum _ad nauseam_; mad desire to lie down on the floor and kick up your heels. Oh, just and beneficent Heaven that sent William to Hungary with a wasp at his heel!”

“Let us forget William--and Austria. Where are the cigarettes?”

The girls smoked in silence for a time, the Archduchess staring hard before her, after her habit, as if she were poring over the cryptogram of the future. When the short Russian cigarette had burned to its mouth-piece she returned to the present.

“I suppose it will be wise to pay my new friend the compliment of asking his advice about my Hungarian household--about the Obersthofmeisterin, at all events. I will write him an autograph letter to-night. What tact I shall develop with a few weeks’ practice! I wonder who the new duenna will be? But no one even he approved of could be worse than Maria Leopoldina, and, after twelve years in the arena with her, I flatter myself I am more than a match for the most masterful he could select.”

The Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, a member of a younger branch of the House of Hapsburg, who had succeeded the scrupulous but too obsequious English governess, had been selected, after much anxious thought on the part of the Emperor, consultation with his ministers, and with his old friend the Princess Sarolta of Windischgrätz, as especially fit for her delicate post. The Empress’s prolonged absences from court, as well as the inevitable suspicions engendered by her increasing repugnance for contact with common mortals, made it doubly imperative to give the headstrong young Archduchess a duenna who would, by precept and example, educate her conspicuous charge in the great responsibilities of her position and curb any bent to eccentricity. Maria Leopoldina, a conscientious woman of masterful temperament but considerable tact, had done her work well, and took to herself the credit of much that had been evolved by the thoughtful mind of Ranata herself. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that her early lectures, delivered to an impatient but imaginative young princess, had sown seeds which might have floated longer with a more pliable guardian. For several years she insisted upon the observation of the very letter of her great authority; no friend could Ranata make without her approval, no acquaintance talk with for five minutes alone. The Archduchess had never appeared in the streets of Vienna without her, but in the country, particularly on Ranata’s personal estate on the wildest part of the Danube in Upper Austria, where they were as secluded as soldiers in a border fortress, she wisely allowed her charge a good deal of liberty; and as the years went on she relaxed by imperceptible degrees the rigor of her sovereignty; she left the girl more and more to herself, merely asserting her authority at discreet intervals, that the rebellious nature confided to her should not experience the temptations of freedom.

She knew that if she had failed to win her august kinswoman’s heart she had her respect and gratitude; for not only had she early suggested to Ranata the benefit she could confer upon her house by playing the rôle of the lofty and immaculate princess, devoid of common weakness, inaccessible to common temptations, but she had inculcated the great art of self-command, and in the depths of this profoundly accepted lesson Ranata had discovered the strength to endure her life, accept her colorless future, and dominate her nature by her intellect.

Between Maria Leopoldina and Alexandra there was no love lost, but there was a golden and bejewelled truce. Alexandra, even at sixteen--at which age both girls attended court functions, although tutors and governesses were in attendance for two years longer, under the general supervision of the Obersthofmeisterin--was too wise in the ways of royalty openly to defy this valuable woman, who rejoiced in the absolute approval of the Emperor and his ministers; and the Obersthofmeisterin, who often longed to shake her and pack her off to America, dared not, in this one particular, brave the wrath of her princess. During the first two years of her reign, however, they were more than once perilously close to open war, and a fatal rupture might have been precipitated by the more impulsive Alexandra had not Mrs. Abbott arrived in Vienna for her step-daughter’s eighteenth birthday, and during a moment of extreme tension. Grasping the situation and its dangers, Mrs. Abbott admonished Alexandra severely, and made her present the duenna with a magnificent set of diamond stars--given out of the fulness of her heart on this the most sentimental of birthdays. The present was peculiarly welcome to Maria Leopoldina, who, herself the youngest of her family, having married in her uncalculating youth a junior member of an impoverished house, was sadly deficient in that jewelled panoply which diverts the eye from the shabby gowns of so many of Austria’s noble dames. Moreover, this concrete illustration of the vast wealth of the American girl inspired respect, if not awe, and these sentiments were nourished at decent intervals by other offerings of increasing magnificence. As time went on, Alexandra, too, imbibed the great lesson of self-restraint, and developed a high impersonal way of looking out upon life; she ceased to irritate the Hapsburg, and admitted her own debt as well as that of her friend. Nevertheless, she had no love for Maria Leopoldina, and was alive to all her foibles. To Ranata’s remark she replied, assuming a severe and elderly demeanor, elevating her head until the roundness left her throat, from which her voice issued with a scraping sound:

“Will your Imperial Highness kindly remember to-night that the Princess Cockolorum is only entitled to one minute of your august notice, as it is necessary to remind her that her manner in public with Lieutenant von Poodle is unbecoming in a member of the Austrian court, which has dignity if not morals? And will your Imperial Highness exert yourself to remember that the wife of the American ambassador, although no doubt charming, is still an American? It is not necessary to inquire after her entire family. And--my dear child, your hair looks like a rat’s nest! I shall dismiss that coiffeur to-morrow!”

Ranata laughed. “She should be glad of a holiday, poor soul. I had rather be a poor prisoner of a princess than a slave of a duenna like an Obersthofmeisterin--I have an idea! Why not Sarolta? She is Hungarian. She is in every way suitable. She would be _persona grata_ here, is loved and trusted by my father, and while standing to the world as an impregnable outpost, would really give me a free hand, and with all her cynical soul enjoy the experiment. I shall write to her at once to manage it--as only she can. That would be the last thing necessary to make me feel as if I had been born again. Now, Alexis, let us give our attention to these rooms. I think I shall have cloth of gold in these panels, and curtains of these Turkish embroideries. My writing-room must be blue. Shall I have my bedroom in cloth of silver and white?--and my dressing-room in these old-rose brocades? And all the furniture must be new--nothing ancestral here! There is an intoxicating freedom in the air of Hungary--ah! I really do feel as if I had been born again.”

IX

The Princess Sarolta was obscuring the moon with the smoke-clouds of her big black cigar. It was nine o’clock--dinner in the Királyi Palota was now served at half-past seven--and the court could smoke behind the pillars and the vines of the long stone terrace beneath the west windows of the private apartments of the King without consideration of possible field-glasses on the heights above. The Princess, who normally resembled a mummy, looked more like a witch in her encircling fumes, and her eyes glittered and blinked behind the red disk of her cigar. They were black eyes, and their fires in youth, and indeed long after Nature had given her more than one admonishing nip and claw, had recklessly leaped to so many other combustible hearts that even now the court gossips disentangled the pulsing tales of her past from others more commonplace. But with wrinkles and man’s manifest preference for her conversation had come not only reform but the evolution of a severe and uncompromising code of morals. She astonished Vienna for a number of years by the vehemence of her criticisms and her treatment of certain noble dames whose fires were still unquenched, or who found in intrigue that taste of liberty which knocks alluringly upon even the doors of Austria. With the mellowness of approaching age the enthusiasm of the Princess had tempered somewhat, and it was observed that she grinned behind her big cigar when an after-dinner scandal exhaled a faint perfume of novelty; but by this time her fame as a she-dragon was securely established. Her tactics, combined with a fortune inherited coincidently with her reform, from a relative who had married a wealthy and, as it proved, childless Jewess of Budapest, gave her a unique and impregnable position which made her the most natural guardian in Austria for a young princess who had left her father’s roof to hold court in his most conspicuous possession. The Emperor, who was a little afraid of Sarolta, but who asked her advice on all momentous domestic questions, bundled her off to Budapest with a deep sigh of relief. Her reputation as a dragoness relieved him of much of the anxiety with which he had entered upon this radical experiment, and he had not chanced to take note of her mellowing. But Ranata had, and, believing herself exempt from the weakness to which the Princess still showed her teeth, knew that she would have the real authority, while the Obersthofmeisterin sat scowling in the foreground, her wrinkles impassive above the chuckling within. As for Count von Königsegg, Sarolta had begun his education while unwrinkled, and not only had done him many good turns since, but had taught him to believe that there was one greater diplomatist in Austria than the Princess Sarolta Windischgrätz, and that was himself. Therefore when, after a hasty and pleading note from Ranata, and a long and humorous petition from Alexandra, she gave the minister to understand that it was his wish she assume charge of his interests in Hungary, it was but a matter of hours before her women were packing her boxes. She had come to Buda in full possession of his confidence.

The situation amused her intensely, but while she was too wise ever to betray a confidence or to share her amusement of a man with his enemy, yet she did not scruple to use any secret she might possess when engaged in the manipulation of human destinies. She cared as little for Königsegg as for the Emperor, sentimental memories being no longer insistent. But Nature had denied her children, and she had a considerable hoard of affection in her erratic but wholly human depths. Now that Rudolf was dead, she cared more for Ranata and Alexandra than for any one in the world, and was determined, to use the phrase of her American protégée, that they should have the “time of their lives.”

To-night she grinned amiably at them from the depths of a rocking-chair, long since presented to her by Alexandra, which accompanied her wherever she went. The party was a small one: the Obersthofmeisterin and her charges, two young Hungarian ladies-in-waiting of her selection, the Countess Vilma Festetics and the Countess Piroska Zápolya, and two invited guests, Prince Béla Illehazy, a magnate, who, in simple evening dress, looked a middle-aged and somewhat humorous man of the world, and Count Zrinyi, whose national fire and still youthful ardors--he was thirty-five in years--had given him over to love of an American on the night of a great and memorable dinner. It had been decided that the Grand Chamberlain and other court officials were only to serve at great functions, and that those who were in waiting upon the Emperor during his annual sojourn were to give their services to the Archduchess when she demanded them.

Zrinyi was leaning against one of the pillars, his black eyes flaming down upon Alexandra, who smiled upon him indulgently; she thought him a nice boy who might be useful in the cotillion and in general advice of a lighter nature. They were all discussing the momentous question of the first entertainment to be given by the new court.

The dictum of the Princess Sarolta, that it must be a great ball, to which men and women should come in the ancient dress of Hungary, had been received with approval by all but Prince Illehazy, who scowled at his girth.

“I thought I should burst the other night,” he admitted. “And I must say that my native costume always makes me feel more or less a fool. I suppose I have lived too much elsewhere.”

“You are no patriot,” said his old friend, whose eye, as it followed his, twinkled with some malice. “I insist that you give up Vienna and Paris this winter and remain here as my private cabinet.”

“You may need help,” he murmured, and he looked at Ranata.

“And we? Are we to wear Hungarian costumes, too?” asked Alexandra.

“By all means,” answered Ranata for the Princess. “I have already designed mine; the skirts and apron will be of white lace, and the bodice of black velvet.”

“That will be your second stroke of diplomacy,” murmured Alexandra. “But it seems to me that I should be a screaming absurdity in an ancient Hungarian costume.”

“Not if--not if--” muttered Zrinyi.

“Why not make it a fancy-dress ball, everybody to be a personage of the court of Matthias Corvinus, during whose reign Hungary reached the height of its splendor and power and prosperity?” asked the Countess Piroska Zápolya. She looked full at the Archduchess with innocent blue eyes which were too widely opened for frankness. She was excessively pretty, and her mouth pouted like a spoiled child’s. She was a descendant of that Stephen Zápolya, vayvode of Transylvania, who, in 1526, after the terrible battle of Mohács, when Hungary was threatened with annihilation by the Turks, and her king lost his life, was elected to rule over the distracted country by the faction which believed in a native dynasty and peaceful relations with the enemy. Another powerful faction elected Ferdinand of Austria, and in spite of the occupations of the Turks, which gave the Hapsburg as little authority as his rival, his dynasty kept its grasp upon the shadow until it became substance; while the son of the trooper who had been raised to a position of such power and magnificence by Matthias that his ambition knew no bounds, was unable to extend his rule beyond Transylvania, and his dynasty ended in his son. His descendants, powerful magnates as they were, had two enduring grievances: their inferior descent as compared with that of the magnates whose line ran back unbroken to Árpád and haunted the mists beyond, and the ancient victory of the Hapsburgs. The first grievance was little discussed, but no Zápolya permitted himself or others to forget that his right to the throne was as great as the Austrian’s. Impoverished, and knowing little of the world beyond Budapest, the present generation was even fiercer in pride than the majority of their order, and bitterer in their hatred of the Hapsburgs. They were wise enough, however, to know that Hungary had not the strength for a native dynasty, even could one be established without devastating civil wars, and the father and brother of the clever little maid of honor had been the first to fling open the gates and drive out the wild waters of unrest towards William of Germany. Count von Königsegg had advised the selection of Piroska, for he believed she would be hostile and a willing spy, and Sarolta had acquiesced because she believed that herself and Ranata would be more than a match for any disaffected young woman. Outwardly the Countess was irreproachable. Her manners were high-bred and charming; five centuries of intermarriage with the best blood of Roumania and Hungary had obliterated all characteristics of John Zápolya except his ambition. She was lively and cultivated, and there was nothing in her manner to betray her hostility. She was the only enemy in camp. The other maid of honor, Countess Vilma Festetics, although proud and reserved, had loved the dead Elizabeth and had transferred her large measure of passionate loyalty, since unclaimed, to the princess who, in her great beauty and greater isolation, seemed to her the most romantic figure on earth. Without humor or more logic than the larger division of her sex, she was capable of martyrdom for her ideals, however narrow. But she was bright and shrewd, and never having trusted Piroska Zápolya, suspected that she might be too high in the favor of Ranata’s enemies. In appearance the young Countess was of a type more often seen in Hungary than described; she had neither the sparkling blond nor the voluptuous brunette beauty which, with their womanly figures and happy animation, have made the women of that romantic country so famous. She was small and slender, and her coloring was drab; under the hauteur of her delicately cut pale face were the tense lines of tragedy. Her breeding helped her to control a high and intolerant temper. Of the most ancient blood in Hungary, poor, high-spirited, and proud, she had seen nothing of the world, but her high accomplishments and qualities, and the affection which she had inspired in the Queen while a child, had induced Sarolta to select her for what the cynical elder believed to be a temporary post. She was also glad to give the girl a few months of light-hearted luxury, and would have included many like her had it been possible.

“She is the sort that in a less enlightened day would have used the poisoned bowl and then killed herself at the foot of the altar,” she had said to Ranata; “but she will be loyal to you, and when she has nothing on her mind she can be very lively and young.”

“We have many costumes of the time in our chests, Highness,” the Zápolya was saying. “I am sure that Miss Abbott would look charming in one of rose-colored velvet--to which she would be more than welcome; and if you conclude to ask the Deputies, some tailor here could use the others as models. We have also two or three of the purple velvet costumes with the long gold chains, and the head braidwork of gold and pearls, worn by two of the three hundred youths sent by Matthias in the embassy to Charles VIII., King of France. If you were escorted into the throne room by a great number of pages in this costume, Highness, the effect would be one of perfect loveliness.”

The Archduchess understood her perfectly, but she felt her own strength, and was amused at the flash in the American’s eyes.

Moreover, her mind grasped the peculiar advantages which a fancy-dress ball would afford herself. She said sweetly:

“The national costume during the reign of Matthias differed little from that of any other reign, I suppose?”

“It merely reached its height of extravagance. The national characteristics have always remained the same.”

“Then, if you will allow me, I will look at your costumes, and, no doubt, find one that I shall be delighted to copy.”

In spite of her hostility the little Countess was flattered. She assured her princess, with something like spontaneous enthusiasm, that she should order the costumes brought to the palace on the morrow.

“I have a painting of Matthias in his robes of state,” said Prince Illehazy. “I wonder will any one have the courage to impersonate him? He was a mighty figure, that son of John Hunyadi, and I have not the slightest doubt that the blood of kings was in his veins. There is no man in Hungary, alas! fit to wear his mantle, not even at a fancy-dress ball.”

“He was a plebeian,” said the Countess Piroska, lifting her little nose. “And even could it be proved that John Hunyadi was the son of King Sigismund, all his fame, even the medicinal water named after him, could not obliterate the bar sinister.”

“The little cat!” said Prince Illehazy under his breath. He replied, “When a man makes a success of his life the bar sinister lends him the added distinction of picturesqueness, and not only did the Knight of the Black Raven have the blood of real kings in his veins, but Sigismund united on his head the crowns of Imperial Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia. Sigismund had his faults, but he was the head of the Holy Roman Empire, and neither he, nor his great son, and greater grandson, need descendants to keep the family name alive.”

“I suppose the ball must open with the Chardash,” said Ranata hastily, and forbearing to glance at the crushed Zápolya. “And I do not know how to dance it!”

Zrinyi found his opportunity. “May I be permitted a suggestion, Highness?” he asked. “The Chardash has been ruined by society--is a miserable degenerate thing. They sway and glide and languish. Have you ever seen the peasants dance it? They have preserved it in all its original simplicity, energy, and variety. If you could see them--and then dance it here in the palace as it should be danced--it is never vulgar, never boisterous, merely virile, full of the abandon of a happy and healthy people--”

“But how can I see it? I learn any dance quickly, but I must see it.”

“To-morrow is a _festa_,” said Zrinyi eagerly. “The peasants will be dancing all day. If you would go far enough you would see them in their native costumes--impossible near Budapest; but if you would deign to go five hours on the train--to a village on one of my estates--”

“Deign!” whispered Alexandra.

The Archduchess turned to her Obersthofmeisterin with a very pretty show of deference. “I should like it,” she said. “And I believe it is the right thing to do. I could go very simply dressed; they have not yet seen me; I should be under no restraint--what do you think, _ma princesse_?”

“I shall have to go too,” grumbled Sarolta. “And there must be no publicity about it. We must not get the reputation here in Budapest for eccentricities; neither must we ever explain ourselves--how early can we leave here in the morning?”

“At five?” said Zrinyi.

“And we can return late--the palace can be lighted up at seven as usual. I like the idea of seeing the Chardash properly danced once more--so be it, then. Mind you are at the station before us, Géra, and that you exert all your talents in carrying out the programme. We shall dine with you, of course.”

“Hurrah!” said Alexandra.

“_Élyen!_” murmured Zrinyi.

Ranata for a moment said nothing. Then with a sudden impulse for which she could give no reason then or later, she turned to Alexandra and said, “Where is your brother? Have you heard from him?”

“Not a word since I asked him to come here. He had probably started on his wanderings before my letter reached Berlin. He may be on the Russian steppes or over in Pest. The one is as likely as the other.”

X

Fessenden drew his leg over his horse’s neck and looked idly about him. The sun was directly overhead; he had forgotten his compass, and, apparently, he was lost in the very middle of the great plain of Hungary. But he had been lost many times before, and in far worse places than this green and smiling expanse; so flat and lying in an atmosphere of such clarity he could well believe the gentle Magyar boast that with the naked eye a man could be distinguished from a beast at a distance of fifteen miles. There appeared to be nothing whatever on the horizon; but an occasional small farm dotted the prairie, and here and there he saw a goose girl with her little flock, a shepherd in his native costume: a long white coat of spun wool, with panels of black embroidered at the edges; a garment as immaculate as if just from the loom, and swung carelessly about the shoulders, the sleeves evidently designed for ornament alone. The little goose girls might have stood for a study in lonely childhood; as Fessenden turned his head one was the solitary figure in the vast expanse behind him; but when he passed her she had nodded brightly and seemed quite content with her lot. It was not his first visit to Hungary; he had voyaged on the Danube and the Theiss in his canoe, and had climbed Retyezat to the lake of Zenoga, making his way thence into Roumania. He knew something of the language and much of the hospitality of the amiable peasant people, and could recall no other country in whose wilderness he would rather be lost. Moreover, the great plains of Hungary reminded him of the wild reaches of his own country. They were green and smiling, indescribably friendly and gentle of aspect, in spite of the barbarous hordes, the fierce battles that had ravaged them, the blood that had soaked their soil; and the American deserts, without history of consequence, scowled eternally at the sun that devoured them, and gave no hospitality to man. But both represented Nature in one of her abrupt desires to emulate the plains of Space; both gave man a sense of personal freedom, of disseverance from the complications of life. And the great Alfold had long since suggested to the practical mind of Fessenden what could be done with the Western deserts; in the last five years he had reclaimed the largest of them by means of a complicated system of irrigation, and encouragement of immigration from the Eastern States. One of his dreams was to make the United States fertile and productive from end to end, if only to relieve the congestion in the great centres and give the plain people of his country the happiness they constantly, with reason or without, demanded as their birthright. But he had sighed humorously more than once as he reflected that to compass all his plans would require at least two more lifetimes than Nature had placed at the disposal of any man.

But he had accomplished a great deal, and he was only thirty-one. Thirty years more, and did his energies survive devastating tropical fevers, the rarely relaxing strain of organizing and guarding industries, investments, transit systems, the ever-trembling aggregations of capital called Trusts, sound a money basis as his own were built upon, all the manifold ramifications of a fortune, which, through the increased resources of the country during the past ten years, through his own and his father’s genius, and by the mere force of momentum, was now close upon a billion dollars; still far in the lead of all the other colossal fortunes which in the past decade had raised the United States to a position no less menacing to herself than to the rest of the world; did not only his health, his life, survive the strain, but his ambition, his hope, his faith in the worth while, then might he expect something like immortal fame.

Most men would have said that he had fame and power enough to satisfy any man of his years. His accomplishment in South America alone had made his name a byword on two hemispheres. In company with his college friend, Jeremiah Keene, who promptly renounced the Northwest, he had gone to South America, intent upon fencing it off from European invasion and saving his country from what he believed must otherwise be an inevitable and humiliating war. Privately, he thought the Monroe Doctrine an obsolete absurdity, and heartily wished it never had been conceived. Like all of his countrymen who thought, he would infinitely have preferred the civilizing forces of Europe in South America to the tumultuous opera-bouffe republics of vicious hybrids, where no American could invest his money with a reasonable certainty of seeing the tail of it a year hence; but the Monroe Doctrine was as sacred to the American people as the Lord’s Prayer, therefore the only thing to do was to make it theirs in fact as well as in fancy, and such an accomplishment must be the work of one man, of a citizen of the United States, who possessed that hitherto unheard-of combination of boundless wealth and burning patriotism. The government would never give a serious thought to the matter until the fleets of Europe were in the Caribbean Sea.

The three years in South America Fessenden looked back upon as the most picturesque and satisfying of his life. He had twice nearly died of fever, and he had been stabbed and shot, but life had been adventurous, exciting, never worth a moment’s purchase; above all, one long test of his gifts and resources, with victory in the end. Where immediate bribery had availed not with the suspicious villain in temporary power, he had tracked the biding rival to his lair, furnished him with the necessary outfit and promises, while Keene and other agents persuaded the ever-disaffected people that another revolution was due. With the impromptu gunboats and inexhaustible ammunition sent down by Mr. Abbott, the revolution was an invariable success, and the enthroned dictator, with all the vices of his kind, was still shrewd enough to comprehend that did he wish his reign to be permanent he must be true to his benefactor and give him a free hand.

As a state passed into Fessenden’s control he built a railroad close to the coast, and as he employed native labor as much as possible, and there was a rapid influx of American merchants, he was reverenced as the White God who had brought security and prosperity to a tormented country.

With the more advanced states it was a mere question of capital, particularly as the enterprise was a private one, and sure to bring an increase of civilization and wealth. The last tie had been laid seven years ago, and South America girdled by a complete system of railways, with at least one train on each section running daily. To-day the trains had increased ten per cent., many thousands of discontented North Americans had emigrated, there were American school-houses, churches, villages, and towns in every state, and a new and enormously profitable investment had been found for American capital. Four hundred thousand negroes had emigrated, and, reverting easily to a state of amiable and naked barbarism--sinking to the bottom as naturally as the black mud of the Mississippi--worked in the fields for the white man and forgot the Constitution of the United States. Fessenden’s praises had been sung until he might have become conceited and obnoxious had it not been for the hostile press, which called him a robber baron, an unscrupulous blood-letter, and a future Czar; and so preserved the balance.

Then had come the long years at home, varied only by the yearly tramp in Europe and an occasional visit to South America, where Keene was his general representative, and his boyhood chum, Jeff Hunter, his scout and secret agent. Two-thirds of the control of affairs had gradually passed into his hands, but he had found time to carry out his father’s more personal programme as well as his own: the great army of working-men in his employ believed in him blindly, and withstood the pressure of trades-unions. He had, indeed, raised the standard of wages throughout the United States, and had made so many bitter enemies that much of his best talent was consumed in circumventing the attempts of other great capitalists to ruin him. With the decent laboring man he was more popular than any President of the United States could hope to be; and this class was not only grateful for his actual benefits, and appreciated his sincerity, but believed that he had been as especially created to pilot the United States through her difficulties as the great men of the early days of the republic. His methods and his genius were different, but so were the times. With the professional politician of the laboring class, with that breed who made their bread and beer by agitating, he was deservedly unpopular, but he now had most of them in his pocket, and they gave him little trouble. He hoped to bring about a condition of living in the United States which would avert a death struggle between capital and labor; if this task were beyond him, then would he at least be in a position in some measure to control it.

When the war broke out with Spain it was a matter of deep mortification and disappointment to him that the great electrical and mechanical ideal he had conceived in his youth was so far from completion. It had, indeed, given him more trouble than all his other enterprises together. Three accomplished electricians had met with violent deaths in the building on the prairie, and he had their discontented families on his hands. Two reporters had been maimed for life while attempting to solve a mystery which annoyed the public, accustomed to the easy elucidations of the press, and others had “lost their jobs” for failure as signal, if less painful. All these men were among Fessenden’s bitterest and most enterprising foes.

Again and again, when his keenest attention was demanded in New York, he had received an excited telegram bidding him hasten to the spot and witness the final combination which was to affect the great result; and as invariably he had added to the sum of his disappointments. Five years ago the buildings, in the course of a wind-storm, had burned to the ground, and not only the difficult and expensive machinery had gone with them, but the personal effects of several hundred men. More than once Fessenden’s faith had been shaken, and even with the vast resources at his disposal he had hesitated before the increasing costliness of his coy ideal; but he dreaded the possibly demoralizing effect of his first failure; the position in which he could place the United States lured him on; and his father believed in the idea and encouraged him to persist. When the war threatened, Fessenden went out to his Western settlement and worked in the laboratory and machine-shops himself. At the last possible moment he hastened home and raised one of the most satisfactory regiments that went to Cuba. By this time he was a rigid disciplinarian, and his original genius for detail was fully developed. He also found his opportunity to distinguish himself, and returned to New York better pleased with life than since he had left South America.

And the old Fessenden? There was much of him left, for strong individualities with the eternal boy in them change less than psychologists would have us believe, however much they may develop. He was less enthusiastic about some of his old ideals; his patience was at the same time greater and less; he was even more practical than Nature had made him, matter-of-fact and intolerant of shams, and somewhat hardened and cynical by his constant manipulation of fabulous wealth and the buying of men. Although money would never be his god, his life and times had taught him to respect, almost to reverence it as the mightiest force in the world of his day. He had in his brief span watched the crumbling of ancient aristocracies, the progressive ascendency of the middle classes all over Europe, their reconstruction of power in their various states, their contributions to solidity and permanence, their slow absorption of the helpless classes above, and their increasing contempt for royal figure-heads; in his own country he had witnessed an outburst of wealth that in volume and results had never occurred before in the history of the world. He saw the financial centre of gravity swinging steadily from London to New York, the enormous aggregations of capital, combined with the unlimited production of the United States, controlling the markets of the world. Money had raised the United States from a negligible quantity, often mentioned with disrespect, into a menace which was winning for her the precarious tributes of hatred and abuse, more especially since she had let it be seen that she estimated affectionate overtures at their just value.

Therefore was her most characteristic product filled with a quiet and gentle arrogance, sadly, if contemptuously, confident of the illimitable powers of wealth, and owning to a sincere respect for but one man in Europe. With that man, in spite of a deep and mutual friendship, he played many a game of chess, and once in a while he was beaten.

He no longer regarded the severe and ofttimes thunderous visage of William of Germany with envy; for time and work, fever and bitter anxieties had robbed his own face of all its freshness and most of its youth. His long body had lost its lankness, and was closely knit, properly covered, and very erect and imposing; but his face was thin, sallow, lined, and his finely cut features had acquired the sharpness peculiar to the American of intellect who gives his life to practical affairs--the sort that has the mere million-making kink is always as fat of face as of wit. But his smile was still quick and delightful, and his eyes, if sharper, were as bright and dark, sometimes as happy and eager as ever. He had acquired the trick of throwing back his head, lowering his upper lid, and darting a look over a cheek-bone, which was merely impish, or peculiarly disconcerting, according to his mood. As regards the rest of his personal appearance on this October morning in Hungary, he wore a sweater, the oldest pair of trousers in his wardrobe, and a straw hat with the brim turned down--by which it will be seen there was a good deal of the old Fessenden left.

Indeed there was a great deal; and as he rode straight towards the gala village on Count Zrinyi’s estate, he was in a very susceptible not to say sentimental frame of mind--which was usually the case when he was alone in Europe. The fountain of romance in the depths of him still bubbled. He had worked it deeply in the way of adventure and the realizing of patriotic ideals, superficially when he met an attractive woman. But life had pressed him too hard for love; moreover, he was easily disillusioned, and this particular ideal increased in stature and seemed ever more impossible of attainment. He stood on a lonely height himself, and he wanted a woman who stood on one as lonely.

XI

Fessenden stood for a few moments at the window before entering, although he had danced the Chardash many times and was arrayed as one of the elect. The deserted street of the village, and the muffled strains of a gypsy band, had informed him as he approached that it was a day of dancing and feasting, and he had despatched a casual boy to summon the tallest young man of the village. From the genial peasant he had borrowed a native costume, and without the aid of gold--for he carried a love potion in his indifferent command of the Magyar tongue. Another New-Yorker might have been daunted by the white divided skirt, which looked like anything but trousers, and the white blouse hanging free above it, but not Fessenden. He would indeed have preferred the Sunday best which the man had offered him to his own undoing, but had generously refused it. The men all looked very fine in their gay cloth or leathern jackets, embroidered, inlaid, their bright sashes, loose shirts and flapping trousers, embroidered with worsted or silk; but the women, after decorating their lords and brothers, would appear to have had no time left to enhance their own charms, for they wore common cotton frocks and had made no attempt at adornment beyond a ribbon or a string of glass beads.

The room in which they danced evidently belonged to the rich man of the village. It was of fair size for a peasant’s house, and its prints of saints and Mary were draped with embroidered towels. The older folk sat against the wall, and some sixty young people danced in what at first sight looked to be a solid mass. The Chardash was near its finish, and the couples were executing the vigorous and intricate figures, even separating for a second and flying together again, without the collision of an elbow or the twitch of a facial muscle.

Suddenly Fessenden swore in three languages and clutched the arm of his host.

“Who is that girl?” he demanded.

“I do not know her name. The Count came two hours ago with two--Austrian peasants,” he said, “but we doubt--who wished to learn the Chardash. We know nothing further, except that they speak Hungarian well and are virgins, for they wear their braids hanging; but we are curious, for that one you admire is very pretty and lively, and the other is as beautiful and queenlike as a Roumanian peasant--observe her, my friend.”

The music had ceased and the crowd was melting towards the open. The girl worthy to be compared to a Roumanian stood almost in the middle of the room talking with pleasing humility to a young man who, even in his peasant’s costume, was plainly the lord of the village. She wore a common blue cotton gown a size too small for her, and a kerchief pinned so tightly about her head that only half an inch of hair brushed flatly backward was visible. But the figure was magnificent; the hands were small, pointed, white; the skin of face and throat had never been exposed to a peasant sun, and the visible hair was red. The girl suddenly raised her eyes, and Fessenden screwed up his own and left the window.

So he had seen the Archduchess!--was about to meet her at last! The fountain burst its bonds and flew to his head. His deep, almost passionate love of adventure shook him slightly from head to foot. The color came into his face, and his nostrils quivered. If he could only corner his sister and warn her before she betrayed him by a feminine scream. She was standing just within the door arranging the ribbon at the end of her long plait of hair, which, like many another, had been disordered by the energy of the dance; and the hanging tresses brought forward for reconstruction by herself and several other maidens may possibly have fetched a sigh from lips too soon surrendered. Fessenden entered and placed his back between her face and Ranata.

“Now don’t even raise your eyes,” he said rapidly. “I want to be unknown here. I want you to introduce me to her and not tell her who I am.”

Fessenden had underestimated his sister’s accomplishments. “I won’t do anything of the sort,” she replied, smoothing her kerchief with steady fingers. “It is just one thing I should never dare to do. The responsibility shall be entirely your own.”

“Very well. I can manage it if you do not betray me. What on earth does this mean, anyhow? Are you and she here alone? I don’t see the ghost of a chaperon.”

“Our first idea was merely to look on, but we had no sooner arrived at Count Zrinyi’s castle this morning than Sarolta was attacked by the gout--or pretended she was; she is an angel--and ordered us to our rooms. We made Zrinyi borrow clothes from two of his servants--and here we are. I’ve never had so much fun in my life--neither has Ranata.” She looked him over. “You are not a bad imitation,” she admitted. “So many of them are fair, and luckily they all wear their hats. Pull your brim a little lower; your eyes are hopelessly American. Of course you’ll fall in love with her--I’ve seen it coming for years; but don’t propose on the spot and spoil all our fun.”

“What do you take me for?” and Fessenden left her to an admiring peasant and sought his host.

“That girl is very pretty,” he said discontentedly, “but I can’t dance with a girl so much shorter than myself; I am always swinging her off her feet. Will you introduce me to the other Austrian--or Roumanian, did you say?”

“What is your name, my friend?”

“Árpád Hunyadi will do as well as any other.”

The peasant embraced him on both cheeks. “A great name,” he said solemnly. “All I have is yours.”

A moment later Fessenden was standing before the Archduchess, while Zrinyi’s willing eyes were diverted by Alexandra.

“You will dance this with me?” he asked in Magyar, his eyes bashfully lowered.

“You are not a Hungarian!” she exclaimed.

“Alas, that your first word should be so cruel! It is true that I speak the German tongue better--I have been much away--but my children shall speak only Hungarian.”

“It is to be hoped so.”

“You will dance with me?”

“I do not know. I am tired.”

“One is never too tired for the Chardash. It would raise a Hungarian from the grave.” This was uttered with simple fervor. He felt her powerful gaze and dared not raise his eyes. But the majestic beauty of her figure was in the direct line of his vision, and involuntarily he lifted his hands to tuck in his shirt, but bethought himself in time.

“I don’t know,” repeated the Archduchess coldly, “I am tired, and I do not happen to be a Hungarian.”

“A Roumanian? We have all said it; you are so beautiful.”

“No.”

The leader of the gypsy band struck his cymbal. His brothers drew the first long wail from their fiddles. The crowd thronged in.

Fessenden raised his hands and placed them firmly about the slender waist of the Archduchess. “Put your hands on my shoulders,” he said. “I shall not let you go.”

She drew herself up rigidly for a moment, then obeyed him.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“So much the better,” replied Fessenden.

* * * * *

“This is a great moment in the history of Hungary!” said Zrinyi solemnly.

“It is!” said Alexandra.

“A daughter of the Emperor of Austria and a Hungarian peasant! What a symbol! It is full of portent!”

“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.