THE PRINCESS ALINE
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
THE PRINCESS ALINE
I
H. R. H. the Princess Aline of Hohenwald came into the life of Morton
Carlton--or "Morney" Carlton, as men called him--of New York city, when
that young gentleman's affairs and affections were best suited to
receive her. Had she made her appearance three years sooner or three
years later, it is quite probable that she would have passed on out of
his life with no more recognition from him than would have been
expressed in a look of admiring curiosity.
But coming when she did, when his time and heart were both unoccupied,
she had an influence upon young Mr. Carlton which led him into doing
several wise and many foolish things, and which remained with him
always. Carlton had reached a point in his life, and very early in his
life, when he could afford to sit at ease and look back with modest
satisfaction to what he had forced himself to do, and forward with
pleasurable anticipations to whatsoever he might choose to do in the
future. The world had appreciated what he had done, and had put much
to his credit, and he was prepared to draw upon this grandly.
At the age of twenty he had found himself his own master, with
excellent family connections, but with no family, his only relative
being a bachelor uncle, who looked at life from the point of view of
the Union Club's windows, and who objected to his nephew's leaving
Harvard to take up the study of art in Paris. In that city (where at
Julian's he was nicknamed the junior Carlton, for the obvious reason
that he was the older of the two Carltons in the class, and because he
was well dressed) he had shown himself a harder worker than others who
were less careful of their appearance and of their manners. His work,
of which he did not talk, and his ambitions, of which he also did not
talk, bore fruit early, and at twenty-six he had become a
portrait-painter of international reputation. Then the French
government purchased one of his paintings at an absurdly small figure,
and placed it in the Luxembourg, from whence it would in time depart to
be buried in the hall of some provincial city; and American
millionaires, and English Lord Mayors, members of Parliament, and
members of the Institute, masters of hounds in pink coats, and
ambassadors in gold lace, and beautiful women of all nationalities and
conditions sat before his easel. And so when he returned to New York
he was welcomed with an enthusiasm which showed that his countrymen had
feared that the artistic atmosphere of the Old World had stolen him
from them forever. He was particularly silent, even at this date,
about his work, and listened to what others had to say of it with much
awe, not unmixed with some amusement, that it should be he who was
capable of producing anything worthy of such praise. We have been told
what the mother duck felt when her ugly duckling turned into a swan,
but we have never considered how much the ugly duckling must have
marvelled also.
"Carlton is probably the only living artist," a brother artist had said
of him, "who fails to appreciate how great his work is." And on this
being repeated to Carlton by a good-natured friend, he had replied
cheerfully, "Well, I'm sorry, but it is certainly better to be the only
one who doesn't appreciate it than to be the only one who does."
He had never understood why such a responsibility had been intrusted to
him. It was, as he expressed it, not at all in his line, and young
girls who sought to sit at the feet of the master found him making love
to them in the most charming manner in the world, as though he were not
entitled to all the rapturous admiration of their very young hearts,
but had to sue for it like any ordinary mortal. Carlton always felt as
though some day some one would surely come along and say: "Look here,
young man, this talent doesn't belong to you; it's mine. What do you
mean by pretending that such an idle good-natured youth as yourself is
entitled to such a gift of genius?" He felt that he was keeping it in
trust, as it were; that it had been changed at birth, and that the
proper guardian would eventually relieve him of his treasure.
Personally Carlton was of the opinion that he should have been born in
the active days of knights-errant--to have had nothing more serious to
do than to ride abroad with a blue ribbon fastened to the point of his
lance, and with the spirit to unhorse any one who objected to its
color, or to the claims of superiority of the noble lady who had tied
it there. There was not, in his opinion, at the present day any
sufficiently pronounced method of declaring admiration for the many
lovely women this world contained. A proposal of marriage he
considered to be a mean and clumsy substitute for the older way, and
was uncomplimentary to the many other women left unasked, and marriage
itself required much more constancy than he could give. He had a most
romantic and old-fashioned ideal of women as a class, and from the age
of fourteen had been a devotee of hundreds of them as individuals; and
though in that time his ideal had received several severe shocks, he
still believed that the "not impossible she" existed somewhere, and his
conscientious efforts to find out whether every women he met might not
be that one had led him not unnaturally into many difficulties.
"The trouble with me is," he said, "that I care too much to make
Platonic friendship possible, and don't care enough to marry any
particular woman--that is, of course, supposing that any particular one
would be so little particular as to be willing to marry me. How
embarrassing it would be, now," he argued, "if, when you were turning
away from the chancel after the ceremony, you should look at one of the
bridesmaids and see the woman whom you really should have married! How
distressing that would be! You couldn't very well stop and say: 'I am
very sorry, my dear, but it seems I have made a mistake. That young
woman on the right has a most interesting and beautiful face. I am
very much afraid that she is the one.' It would be too late then;
while now, in my free state, I can continue my search without any
sense of responsibility."
"Why"--he would exclaim--"I have walked miles to get a glimpse of a
beautiful woman in a suburban window, and time and time again when I
have seen a face in a passing brougham I have pursued it in a hansom,
and learned where the owner of the face lived, and spent weeks in
finding some one to present me, only to discover that she was
self-conscious or uninteresting or engaged. Still I had assured myself
that she was not the one. I am very conscientious, and I consider that
it is my duty to go so far with every woman I meet as to be able to
learn whether she is or is not the one, and the sad result is that I am
like a man who follows the hounds but is never in at the death."
"Well," some married woman would say, grimly, "I hope you will get your
deserts some day; and you WILL, too. Some day some girl will make you
suffer for this."
"Oh, that's all right," Carlton would answer, meekly. "Lots of women
have made me suffer, if that's what you think I need."
"Some day," the married woman would prophesy, "you will care for a
woman so much that you will have no eyes for any one else. That's the
way it is when one is married."
"Well, when that's the way it is with ME," Carlton would reply, "I
certainly hope to get married; but until it is, I think it is safer for
all concerned that I should not."
Then Carlton would go to the club and complain bitterly to one of his
friends.
"How unfair married women are!" he would say. "The idea of thinking a
man could have no eyes but for one woman! Suppose I had never heard a
note of music until I was twenty-five years of age, and was then given
my hearing. Do you suppose my pleasure in music would make me lose my
pleasure in everything else? Suppose I met and married a girl at
twenty-five. Is that going to make me forget all the women I knew
before I met her? I think not. As a matter of fact, I really deserve
a great deal of credit for remaining single, for I am naturally very
affectionate; but when I see what poor husbands my friends make, I
prefer to stay as I am until I am sure that I will make a better one.
It is only fair to the woman."
Carlton was sitting in the club alone. He had that sense of
superiority over his fellows and of irresponsibility to the world about
him that comes to a man when he knows that his trunks are being packed
and that his state-room is engaged. He was leaving New York long
before most of his friends could get away. He did not know just where
he was going, and preferred not to know. He wished to have a complete
holiday, and to see Europe as an idle tourist, and not as an artist
with an eye to his own improvement. He had plenty of time and money;
he was sure to run across friends in the big cities, and acquaintances
he could make or not, as he pleased, en route. He was not sorry to go.
His going would serve to put an end to what gossip there might be of
his engagement to numerous young women whose admiration for him as an
artist, he was beginning to fear, had taken on a more personal tinge.
"I wish," he said, gloomily, "I didn't like people so well. It seems
to cause them and me such a lot of trouble."
He sighed, and stretched out his hand for a copy of one of the English
illustrated papers. It had a fresher interest to him because the next
number of it that he would see would be in the city in which it was
printed. The paper in his hands was the St. James Budget, and it
contained much fashionable intelligence concerning the preparations for
a royal wedding which was soon to take place between members of two of
the reigning families of Europe. There was on one page a half-tone
reproduction of a photograph, which showed a group of young people
belonging to several of these reigning families, with their names and
titles printed above and below the picture. They were princesses,
archdukes, or grand-dukes, and they were dressed like young English men
and women, and with no sign about them of their possible military or
social rank.
One of the young princesses in the photograph was looking out of it and
smiling in a tolerant, amused way, as though she had thought of
something which she could not wait to enjoy until after the picture was
taken. She was not posing consciously, as were some of the others, but
was sitting in a natural attitude, with one arm over the back of her
chair, and with her hands clasped before her. Her face was full of a
fine intelligence and humor, and though one of the other princesses in
the group was far more beautiful, this particular one had a much more
high-bred air, and there was something of a challenge in her smile that
made any one who looked at the picture smile also. Carlton studied the
face for some time, and mentally approved of its beauty; the others
seemed in comparison wooden and unindividual, but this one looked like
a person he might have known, and whom he would certainly have liked.
He turned the page and surveyed the features of the Oxford crew with
lesser interest, and then turned the page again and gazed critically
and severely at the face of the princess with the high-bred smile. He
had hoped that he would find it less interesting at a second glance,
but it did not prove to be so.
"'The Princess Aline of Hohenwald,'" he read. "She's probably engaged
to one of those Johnnies beside her, and the Grand-Duke of Hohenwald
behind her must be her brother." He put the paper down and went into
luncheon, and diverted himself by mixing a salad dressing; but after a
few moments he stopped in the midst of this employment, and told the
waiter, with some unnecessary sharpness, to bring him the last copy of
the St. James Budget.
"Confound it!" he added, to himself.
He opened the paper with a touch of impatience and gazed long and
earnestly at the face of the Princess Aline, who continued to return
his look with the same smile of amused tolerance. Carlton noted every
detail of her tailor-made gown, of her high mannish collar, of her tie,
and even the rings on her hand. There was nothing about her of which
he could fairly disapprove. He wondered why it was that she could not
have been born an approachable New York girl instead of a princess of a
little German duchy, hedged in throughout her single life, and to be
traded off eventually in marriage with as much consideration as though
she were a princess of a real kingdom.
"She looks jolly too," he mused, in an injured tone; "and so very
clever; and of course she has a beautiful complexion. All those German
girls have. Your Royal Highness is more than pretty," he said, bowing
his head gravely. "You look as a princess should look. I am sure it
was one of your ancestors who discovered the dried pea under a dozen
mattresses." He closed the paper, and sat for a moment with a
perplexed smile of consideration. "Waiter," he exclaimed, suddenly,
"send a messenger-boy to Brentano's for a copy of the St. James Budget,
and bring me the Almanach de Gotha from the library. It is a little
fat red book on the table near the window." Then Carlton opened the
paper again and propped it up against a carafe, and continued his
critical survey of the Princess Aline. He seized the Almanach, when it
came, with some eagerness.
"Hohenwald (Maison de Grasse)," he read, and in small type below it:
"1. Ligne cadette (regnante) grand-ducale: Hohenwald et de Grasse.
"Guillaume-Albert-Frederick-Charles-Louis, Grand-Duc de Hohenwald et de
Grasse, etc., etc., etc."
"That's the brother, right enough," muttered Carlton.
And under the heading "Soeurs" he read:
"4. Psse Aline.--Victoria-Beatrix-Louise-Helene, Alt. Gr.-Duc. Nee a
Grasse, Juin, 1872."
"Twenty-two years old," exclaimed Carlton. "What a perfect age! I
could not have invented a better one." He looked from the book to the
face before him. "Now, my dear young lady," he said, "I know all about
YOU. You live at Grasse, and you are connected, to judge by your
names, with all the English royalties; and very pretty names they are,
too--Aline, Helene, Victoria, Beatrix. You must be much more English
than you are German; and I suppose you live in a little old castle, and
your brother has a standing army of twelve men, and some day you are to
marry a Russian Grand-Duke, or whoever your brother's Prime Minister--if
he has a Prime Minister--decides is best for the politics of your little
toy kingdom. Ah! to think," exclaimed Carlton, softly, "that such a
lovely and glorious creature as that should be sacrificed for so
insignificant a thing as the peace of Europe when she might make some
young man happy?"
He carried a copy of the paper to his room, and cut the picture of the
group out of the page and pasted it carefully on a stiff piece of
card-board. Then he placed it on his dressing-table, in front of a
photograph of a young woman in a large silver frame--which was a sign,
had the young woman but known it, that her reign for the time being was
over.
Nolan, the young Irishman who "did for" Carlton, knew better than to
move it when he found it there. He had learned to study his master
since he had joined him in London, and understood that one photograph
in the silver frame was entitled to more consideration than three
others on the writing-desk or half a dozen on the mantel-piece. Nolan
had seen them come and go; he had watched them rise and fall; he had
carried notes to them, and books and flowers; and had helped to dispose
them from the silver frame and move them on by degrees down the line,
until they went ingloriously into the big brass bowl on the side table.
Nolan approved highly of this last choice. He did not know which one
of the three in the group it might be; but they were all pretty, and
their social standing was certainly distinguished.
Guido, the Italian model who ruled over the studio, and Nolan were
busily packing when Carlton entered. He always said that Guido
represented him in his professional and Nolan in his social capacity.
Guido cleaned the brushes and purchased the artists' materials; Nolan
cleaned his riding-boots and bought his theatre and railroad tickets.
"Guido," said Carlton, "there are two sketches I made in Germany last
year, one of the Prime Minister, and one of Ludwig the actor; get them
out for me, will you, and pack them for shipping. Nolan," he went on,
"here is a telegram to send."
Nolan would not have read a letter, but he looked upon telegrams as
public documents, the reading of them as part of his perquisites. This
one was addressed to Oscar Von Holtz, First Secretary, German Embassy,
Washington, D.C., and the message read:
"Please telegraph me full title and address Princess Aline of
Hohenwald. Where would a letter reach her?
"MORTON CARLTON."
The next morning Nolan carried to the express office a box containing
two oil-paintings on small canvases. They were addressed to the man in
London who attended to the shipping and forwarding of Carlton's
pictures in that town.
There was a tremendous crowd on the New York. She sailed at the
obliging hour of eleven in the morning, and many people, in
consequence, whose affection would not have stood in the way of their
breakfast, made it a point to appear and to say goodbye. Carlton, for
his part, did not notice them; he knew by experience that the
attractive-looking people always leave a steamer when the whistle
blows, and that the next most attractive-looking, who remain on board,
are ill all the way over. A man that he knew seized him by the arm as
he was entering his cabin, and asked if he were crossing or just seeing
people off.
"Well, then, I want to introduce you to Miss Morris and her aunt, Mrs.
Downs; they are going over, and I should be glad if you would be nice
to them. But you know her, I guess?" he asked, over his shoulder, as
Carlton pushed his way after him down the deck.
"I know who she is," he said.
Miss Edith Morris was surrounded by a treble circle of admiring
friends, and seemed to be holding her own. They all stopped when
Carlton came up, and looked at him rather closely, and those whom he
knew seemed to mark the fact by a particularly hearty greeting. The
man who had brought him up acted as though he had successfully
accomplished a somewhat difficult and creditable feat. Carlton bowed
himself away, leaving Miss Morris to her friends, and saying that she
would probably have to see him later, whether she wished it or not. He
then went to meet the aunt, who received him kindly, for there were
very few people on the passenger list, and she was glad they were to
have his company. Before he left she introduced him to a young man
named Abbey, who was hovering around her most anxiously, and whose
interest, she seemed to think it necessary to explain, was due to the
fact that he was engaged to Miss Morris. Mr. Abbey left the steamer
when the whistle blew, and Carlton looked after him gratefully. He
always enjoyed meeting attractive girls who were engaged, as it left
him no choice in the matter, and excused him from finding out whether
or not that particular young woman was the one.
Mrs. Downs and her niece proved to be experienced sailors, and faced
the heavy sea that met the New York outside of Sandy Hook with
unconcern. Carlton joined them, and they stood together leaning with
their backs to the rail, and trying to fit the people who flitted past
them to the names on the passenger list.
"The young lady in the sailor suit," said Miss Morris, gazing at the
top of the smoke-stack, "is Miss Kitty Flood, of Grand Rapids. This is
her first voyage, and she thinks a steamer is something like a yacht,
and dresses for the part accordingly. She does not know that it is
merely a moving hotel."
"I am afraid," said Carlton, "to judge from her agitation, that hers is
going to be what the professionals call a 'dressing-room' part. Why is
it," he asked, "that the girls on a steamer who wear gold anchors and
the men in yachting-caps are always the first to disappear? That man
with the sombrero," he went on, "is James M. Pollock, United States
Consul to Mauritius; he is going out to his post. I know he is the
consul, because he comes from Fort Worth, Texas, and is therefore
admirably fitted to speak either French or the native language of the
island."
"Oh, we don't send consuls to Mauritius," laughed Miss Morris.
"Mauritius is one of those places from which you buy stamps, but no one
really lives or goes there."
"Where are you going, may I ask?" inquired Carlton.
Miss Morris said that they were making their way to Constantinople and
Athens, and then to Rome; that as they had not had the time to take the
southern route, they purposed to journey across the Continent direct
from Paris to the Turkish capital by the Orient Express.
"We shall be a few days in London, and in Paris only long enough for
some clothes," she replied.
"The trousseau," thought Carlton. "Weeks is what she should have said."
The three sat together at the captain's table, and as the sea continued
rough, saw little of either the captain or his other guests, and were
thrown much upon the society of each other. They had innumerable
friends and interests in common; and Mrs. Downs, who had been
everywhere, and for long seasons at a time, proved as alive as her
niece, and Carlton conceived a great liking for her. She seemed to be
just and kindly minded, and, owing to her age, to combine the wider
judgment of a man with the sympathetic interest of a woman. Sometimes
they sat together in a row and read, and gossiped over what they read,
or struggled up the deck as it rose and fell and buffeted with the
wind; and later they gathered in a corner of the saloon and ate late
suppers of Carlton's devising, or drank tea in the captain's cabin,
which he had thrown open to them. They had started knowing much about
one another, and this and the necessary proximity of the ship hastened
their acquaintance.
The sea grew calmer the third day out, and the sun came forth and
showed the decks as clean as bread-boards. Miss Morris and Carlton
seated themselves on the huge iron riding-bits in the bow, and with
their elbows on the rail looked down at the whirling blue water, and
rejoiced silently in the steady rush of the great vessel, and in the
uncertain warmth of the March sun. Carlton was sitting to leeward of
Miss Morris, with a pipe between his teeth. He was warm, and at peace
with the world. He had found his new acquaintance more than
entertaining. She was even friendly, and treated him as though he were
much her junior, as is the habit of young women lately married or who
are about to be married. Carlton did not resent it; on the contrary,
it made him more at his ease with her, and as she herself chose to
treat him as a youth, he permitted himself to be as foolish as he
pleased.
"I don't know why it is," he complained, peering over the rail, "but
whenever I look over the side to watch the waves a man in a greasy cap
always sticks his head out of a hole below me and scatters a barrelful
of ashes or potato peelings all over the ocean. It spoils the effect
for one. Next time he does it I am going to knock out the ashes of my
pipe on the back of his neck." Miss Morris did not consider this
worthy of comment, and there was a long lazy pause.
"You haven't told us where you go after London," she said; and then,
without waiting for him to reply, she asked, "Is it your professional
or your social side that you are treating to a trip this time?"
"Who told you that?" asked Carlton, smiling.
"Oh, I don't know. Some man. He said you were a Jekyll and Hyde.
Which is Jekyll? You see, I only know your professional side."
"You must try to find out for yourself by deduction," he said, "as you
picked out the other passengers. I am going to Grasse," he continued.
"It's the capital of Hohenwald. Do you know it?"
"Yes," she said; "we were there once for a few days. We went to see
the pictures. I suppose you know that the old Duke, the father of the
present one, ruined himself almost by buying pictures for the Grasse
gallery. We were there at a bad time, though, when the palace was
closed to visitors, and the gallery too. I suppose that is what is
taking you there?"
"No," Carlton said, shaking his head. "No, it is not the pictures. I
am going to Grasse," he said, gravely, "to see the young woman with
whom I am in love."
Miss Morris looked up in some surprise, and smiled consciously, with a
natural feminine interest in an affair of love, and one which was a
secret as well.
"Oh," she said, "I beg your pardon; we--I had not heard of it."
"No, it is not a thing one could announce exactly," said Carlton; "it
is rather in an embryo state as yet--in fact, I have not met the young
lady so far, but I mean to meet her. That's why I am going abroad."
Miss Morris looked at him sharply to see if he were smiling, but he
was, on the contrary, gazing sentimentally at the horizon-line, and
puffing meditatively on his pipe. He was apparently in earnest, and
waiting for her to make some comment.
"How very interesting!" was all she could think to say.
"Yes, when you know the details, it is,----VERY interesting," he
answered. "She is the Princess Aline of Hohenwald," he explained,
bowing his head as though he were making the two young ladies known to
one another. "She has several other names, six in all, and her age is
twenty-two. That is all I know about her. I saw her picture in an
illustrated paper just before I sailed, and I made up my mind I would
meet her, and here I am. If she is not in Grasse, I intend to follow
her to wherever she may be." He waved his pipe at the ocean before him,
and recited, with mock seriousness:
"'Across the hills and far away,
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day,
The happy Princess followed him.'
"Only in this case, you see," said Carlton, "I am following the happy
Princess."
"No; but seriously, though," said Miss Morris, "what is it you mean?
Are you going to paint her portrait?"
"I never thought of that," exclaimed Carlton. "I don't know but what
your idea is a good one. Miss Morris, that's a great idea." He shook
his head approvingly. "I did not do wrong to confide in you," he said.
"It was perhaps taking a liberty; but as you have not considered it as
such, I am glad I spoke."
"But you don't really mean to tell me," exclaimed the girl, facing
about, and nodding her head at him, "that you are going abroad after a
woman whom you have never seen, and because you like a picture of her
in a paper?"
"I do," said Carlton. "Because I like her picture, and because she is
a Princess."
"Well, upon my word," said Miss Morris, gazing at him with evident
admiration, "that's what my younger brother would call a distinctly
sporting proposition. Only I don't see," she added, "what her being a
Princess has to do with it."
"You don't?" laughed Carlton, easily. "That's the best part of
it--that's the plot. The beauty of being in love with a Princess, Miss
Morris," he said, "lies in the fact that you can't marry her; that you
can love her deeply and forever, and nobody will ever come to you and
ask your intentions, or hint that after such a display of affection you
ought to do something. Now, with a girl who is not a Princess, even if
she understands the situation herself, and wouldn't marry you to save
her life, still there is always some one--a father, or a mother, or one
of your friends--who makes it his business to interfere, and talks
about it, and bothers you both. But with a Princess, you see, that is
all eliminated. You can't marry a Princess, because they won't let
you. A Princess has got to marry a real royal chap, and so you are
perfectly ineligible and free to sigh for her, and make pretty speeches
to her, and see her as often as you can, and revel in your devotion and
unrequited affection."
Miss Morris regarded him doubtfully. She did not wish to prove herself
too credulous. "And you honestly want me, Mr. Carlton, to believe that
you are going abroad just for this?"
"You see," Carlton answered her, "if you only knew me better you would
have no doubt on the subject at all. It isn't the thing some men would
do, I admit, but it is exactly what any one who knows me would expect
of me. I should describe it, having had acquaintance with the young
man for some time, as being eminently characteristic. And besides,
think what a good story it makes! Every other man who goes abroad this
summer will try to tell about his travels when he gets back to New
York, and, as usual, no one will listen to him. But they will HAVE to
listen to me. 'You've been across since I saw you last. What did you
do?' they'll ask, politely. And then, instead of simply telling them
that I have been in Paris or London, I can say, 'Oh, I've been chasing
around the globe after the Princess Aline of Hohenwald.' That sounds
interesting, doesn't it? When you come to think of it," Carlton
continued, meditatively, "it is not so very remarkable. Men go all the
way to Cuba and Mexico, and even to India, after orchids, after a nasty
flower that grows in an absurd way on the top of a tree. Why shouldn't
a young man go as far as Germany after a beautiful Princess, who walks
on the ground, and who can talk and think and feel? She is much more
worth while than an orchid."
Miss Morris laughed indulgently. "Well, I didn't know such devotion
existed at this end of the century," she said; "it's quite nice and
encouraging. I hope you will succeed, I am sure. I only wish we were
going to be near enough to see how you get on. I have never been a
confidante when there was a real Princess concerned," she said; "it
makes it so much more amusing. May one ask what your plans are?"
Carlton doubted if he had any plans as yet. "I have to reach the
ground first," he said, "and after that I must reconnoitre. I may
possibly adopt your idea, and ask to paint her portrait, only I dislike
confusing my social and professional sides. As a matter of fact,
though," he said, after a pause, laughing guiltily, "I have done a
little of that already. I prepared her, as it were, for my coming. I
sent her studies of two pictures I made last winter in Berlin. One of
the Prime Minister, and one of Ludwig, the tragedian at the Court
Theatre. I sent them to her through my London agent, so that she would
think they had come from some one of her English friends, and I told
the dealer not to let any one know who had forwarded them. My idea was
that it might help me, perhaps, if she knew something about me before I
appeared in person. It was a sort of letter of introduction written by
myself."
"Well, really," expostulated Miss Morris, "you certainly woo in a royal
way. Are you in the habit of giving away your pictures to any one
whose photograph you happen to like? That seems to me to be giving new
lamps for old to a degree. I must see if I haven't some of my sister's
photographs in my trunk. She is considered very beautiful."
"Well, you wait until you see this particular portrait, and--you will
understand it better," said Carlton.
The steamer reached Southampton early in the afternoon, and Carlton
secured a special compartment on the express to London for Mrs. Downs
and her niece and himself, with one adjoining for their maid and Nolan.
It was a beautiful day, and Carlton sat with his eyes fixed upon the
passing fields and villages, exclaiming with pleasure from time to time
at the white roads and the feathery trees and hedges, and the red roofs
of the inns and square towers of the village churches.
"Hedges are better than barbed-wire fences, aren't they?" he said.
"You see that girl picking wild flowers from one of them? She looks
just as though she were posing for a picture for an illustrated paper.
She couldn't pick flowers from a barbed-wire fence, could she? And
there would probably be a tramp along the road somewhere to frighten
her; and see--the chap in knickerbockers farther down the road leaning
on the stile. I am sure he is waiting for her; and here comes a
coach," he ran on. "Don't the red wheels look well against the hedges?
It's a pretty little country, England, isn't it?--like a private park
or a model village. I am glad to get back to it--I am glad to see the
three-and-six signs with the little slanting dash between the shillings
and pennies. Yes, even the steam-rollers and the man with the red flag
in front are welcome."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Downs, "it's because one has been so long on the
ocean that the ride to London seems so interesting. It always pays me
for the entire trip. Yes," she said, with a sigh, "in spite of the
patent-medicine signs they have taken to putting up all along the road.
It seems a pity they should adopt our bad habits instead of our good
ones."
"They are a bit slow at adopting anything," commented Carlton. "Did
you know, Mrs. Downs, that electric lights are still as scarce in
London as they are in Timbuctoo? Why, I saw an electric-light plant
put up in a Western town in three days once; there were over a hundred
burners in one saloon, and the engineer who put them up told me in
confidence that--"
What the chief engineer told him in confidence was never disclosed, for
at that moment Miss Morris interrupted him with a sudden sharp
exclamation.
"Oh, Mr. Carlton," she exclaimed, breathlessly, "listen to this!" She
had been reading one of the dozen papers which Carlton had purchased at
the station, and was now shaking one of them at him, with her eyes
fixed on the open page.
"My dear Edith," remonstrated her aunt, "Mr. Carlton was telling us--"
"Yes, I know," exclaimed Miss Morris, laughing, "but this interests him
much more than electric lights. Who do you think is in London?" she
cried, raising her eyes to his, and pausing for proper dramatic effect.
"The Princess Aline of Hohenwald!"
"No?" shouted Carlton.
"Yes," Miss Morris answered, mocking his tone. "Listen. 'The Queen's
Drawing-room'--em--e--m--'on her right was the Princess of
Wales'--em--m. Oh, I can't find it--no--yes, here it is. 'Next to her
stood the Princess Aline of Hohenwald. She wore a dress of white silk,
with train of silver brocade trimmed with fur. Ornaments--emeralds and
diamonds; orders--Victoria and Albert, jubilee Commemoration Medal,
Coburg and Gotha, and Hohenwald and Grasse.'"
"By Jove!" cried Carlton, excitedly. "I say, is that really there?
Let me see it, please, for myself."
Miss Morris handed him the paper, with her finger on the paragraph, and
picking up another, began a search down its columns.
"You are right," exclaimed Carlton, solemnly; "it's she, sure enough.
And here I've been within two hours of her and didn't know it?"
Miss Morris gave another triumphant cry, as though she had discovered a
vein of gold.
"Yes, and here she is again," she said, "in the Gentlewoman: 'The
Queen's dress was of black, as usual, but relieved by a few violet
ribbons in the bonnet; and Princess Beatrice, who sat by her mother's
side, showed but little trace of the anxiety caused by Princess Ena's
accident. Princess Aline, on the front seat, in a light brown jacket
and a becoming bonnet, gave the necessary touch to a picture which
Londoners would be glad to look upon more often.'"
Carlton sat staring forward, with his hands on his knees, and with his
eyes open wide from excitement. He presented so unusual an appearance
of bewilderment and delight that Mrs. Downs looked at him and at her
niece for some explanation. "The young lady seems to interest you,"
said she, tentatively.
"She is the most charming creature in the world, Mrs. Downs," cried
Carlton, "and I was going all the way to Grasse to see her, and now it
turns out that she is here in England, within a few miles of us." He
turned and waved his hands at the passing landscape. "Every minute
brings us nearer together."
"And you didn't feel it in the air!" mocked Miss Morris, laughing.
"You are a pretty poor sort of a man to let a girl tell you where to
find the woman you love."
Carlton did not answer, but stared at her very seriously and frowned
intently. "Now I have got to begin all over again and readjust
things," he said. "We might have guessed she would be in London, on
account of this royal wedding. It is a great pity it isn't later in
the season, when there would be more things going on and more chances
of meeting her. Now they will all be interested in themselves, and,
being extremely exclusive, no one who isn't a cousin to the bridegroom
or an Emperor would have any chance at all. Still, I can see her! I
can look at her, and that's something."
"It is better than a photograph, anyway," said Miss Morris.
"They will be either at Buckingham Palace or at Windsor, or they will
stop at Brown's," said Carlton. "All royalties go to Brown's. I don't
know why, unless it is because it is so expensive; or maybe it is
expensive because royalties go there; but, in any event, if they are
not at the palace, that is where they will be, and that is where I
shall have to go too."
When the train drew up at Victoria Station, Carlton directed Nolan to
take his things to Brown's Hotel, but not to unload them until he had
arrived. Then he drove with the ladies to Cox's, and saw them settled
there. He promised to return at once to dine, and to tell them what he
had discovered in his absence. "You've got to help me in this, Miss
Morris," he said, nervously. "I am beginning to feel that I am not
worthy of her."
"Oh yes, you are!" she said, laughing; "but don't forget that 'it's not
the lover who comes to woo, but the lover's WAY of wooing,' and that
'faint heart'--and the rest of it."
"Yes, I know," said Carlton, doubtfully; "but it's a bit sudden, isn't
it?"
"Oh, I am ashamed of you! You are frightened."
"No, not frightened, exactly," said the painter. "I think it's just
natural emotion."
As Carlton turned into Albemarle Street he noticed a red carpet
stretching from the doorway of Brown's Hotel out across the sidewalk to
a carriage, and a bareheaded man bustling about apparently assisting
several gentlemen to get into it. This and another carriage and
Nolan's four-wheeler blocked the way; but without waiting for them to
move up, Carlton leaned out of his hansom and called the bareheaded man
to its side.
"Is the Duke of Hohenwald stopping at your hotel?" he asked. The
bareheaded man answered that he was.
"All right, Nolan," cried Carlton. "They can take in the trunks."
Hearing this, the bareheaded man hastened to help Carlton to alight.
"That was the Duke who just drove off, sir; and those," he said,
pointing to three muffled figures who were stepping into a second
carriage, "are his sisters, the Princesses."
Carlton stopped midway, with one foot on the step and the other in the
air.
"The deuce they are!" he exclaimed; "and which is--" he began, eagerly,
and then remembering himself, dropped back on the cushions of the
hansom.
He broke into the little dining-room at Cox's in so excited a state
that two dignified old gentlemen who were eating there sat open-mouthed
in astonished disapproval. Mrs. Downs and Miss Morris had just come
down stairs.
"I have seen her!" Carlton cried, ecstatically; "only half an hour in
the town, and I've seen her already!"
"No, really?" exclaimed Miss Morris. "And how did she look? Is she as
beautiful as you expected?"
"Well, I can't tell yet," Carlton answered.
"There were three of them, and they were all muffled up, and which one
of the three she was I don't know. She wasn't labelled, as in the
picture, but she was there, and I saw her. The woman I love was one of
that three, and I have engaged rooms at the hotel, and this very night
the same roof shelters us both."
II
"The course of true love certainly runs smoothly with you," said Miss
Morris, as they seated themselves at the table. "What is your next
move? What do you mean to do now?"
"The rest is very simple," said Carlton. "To-morrow morning I will go
to the Row; I will be sure to find some one there who knows all about
them--where they are going, and who they are seeing, and what
engagements they may have. Then it will only be a matter of looking up
some friend in the Household or in one of the embassies who can present
me."
"Oh," said Miss Morris, in the tone of keenest disappointment, "but
that is such a commonplace ending! You started out so romantically.
Couldn't you manage to meet her in a less conventional way?"
"I am afraid not," said Carlton. "You see, I want to meet her very
much, and to meet her very soon, and the quickest way of meeting her,
whether it's romantic or not, isn't a bit too quick for me. There will
be romance enough after I am presented, if I have my way."
But Carlton was not to have his way; for he had overlooked the fact
that it requires as many to make an introduction as a bargain, and he
had left the Duke of Hohenwald out of his considerations. He met many
people he knew in the Row the next morning; they asked him to lunch,
and brought their horses up to the rail, and he patted the horses'
heads, and led the conversation around to the royal wedding, and
through it to the Hohenwalds. He learned that they had attended a
reception at the German Embassy on the previous night, and it was one
of the secretaries of that embassy who informed him of their intended
departure that morning on the eleven o'clock train to Paris.
"To Paris!" cried Carlton, in consternation. "What! all of them?"
"Yes, all of them, of course. Why?" asked the young German. But
Carlton was already dodging across the tan-bark to Piccadilly and
waving his stick at a hansom.
Nolan met him at the door of Brown's Hotel with an anxious countenance.
"Their Royal Highnesses have gone, sir," he said. "But I've packed
your trunks and sent them to the station. Shall I follow them, sir?"
"Yes," said Carlton. "Follow the trunks and follow the Hohenwalds. I
will come over on the Club train at four. Meet me at the station, and
tell me to what hotel they have gone. Wait; if I miss you, you can
find me at the Hotel Continental; but if they go straight on through
Paris, you go with them, and telegraph me here and to the Continental.
Telegraph at every station, so I can keep track of you. Have you
enough money?"
"I have, sir--enough for a long trip, sir."
"Well, you'll need it," said Carlton, grimly. "This is going to be a
long trip. It is twenty minutes to eleven now; you will have to hurry.
Have you paid my bill here?"
"I have, sir," said Nolan.
"Then get off, and don't lose sight of those people again."
Carlton attended to several matters of business, and then lunched with
Mrs. Downs and her niece. He had grown to like them very much, and was
sorry to lose sight of them, but consoled himself by thinking he would
see them a few days at least in Paris. He judged that he would be
there for some time, as he did not think the Princess Aline and her
sisters would pass through that city without stopping to visit the
shops on the Rue de la Paix.
"All women are not princesses," he argued, "but all princesses are
women."
"We will be in Paris on Wednesday," Mrs. Downs told him. "The Orient
Express leaves there twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and we
have taken an apartment for next Thursday, and will go right on to
Constantinople."
"But I thought you said you had to buy a lot of clothes there?" Carlton
expostulated.
Mrs. Downs said that they would do that on their way home.
Nolan met Carlton at the station, and told him that he had followed the
Hohenwalds to the Hotel Meurice. "There is the Duke, sir, and the
three Princesses," Nolan said, "and there are two German gentlemen
acting as equerries, and an English captain, a sort of A.D.C. to the
Duke, and two elderly ladies, and eight servants. They travel very
simple, sir, and their people are in undress livery. Brown and red,
sir."
Carlton pretended not to listen to this. He had begun to doubt but
that Nolan's zeal would lead him into some indiscretion, and would end
disastrously to himself. He spent the evening alone in front of the
Cafe de la Paix, pleasantly occupied in watching the life and movement
of that great meeting of the highways. It did not seem possible that
he had ever been away. It was as though he had picked up a book and
opened it at the page and place at which he had left off reading it a
moment before. There was the same type, the same plot, and the same
characters, who were doing the same characteristic things. Even the
waiter who tipped out his coffee knew him; and he knew, or felt as
though he knew, half of those who passed, or who shared with him the
half of the sidewalk. The women at the next table considered the slim,
good-looking young American with friendly curiosity, and the men with
them discussed him in French, until a well-known Parisian recognized
Carlton in passing, and hailed him joyously in the same language, at
which the women laughed and the men looked sheepishly conscious.
On the following morning Carlton took up his post in the open court of
the Meurice, with his coffee and the Figaro to excuse his loitering
there. He had not been occupied with these over-long before Nolan
approached him, in some excitement, with the information that their
Royal Highnesses--as he delighted to call them--were at that moment
"coming down the lift."
Carlton could hear their voices, and wished to step around the corner
and see them; it was for this chance he had been waiting; but he could
not afford to act in so undignified a manner before Nolan, so he merely
crossed his legs nervously, and told the servant to go back to the
rooms.
"Confound him!" he said; "I wish he would let me conduct my own affairs
in my own way. If I don't stop him, he'll carry the Princess Aline off
by force and send me word where he has hidden her."
The Hohenwalds had evidently departed for a day's outing, as up to five
o'clock they had not returned; and Carlton, after loitering all the
afternoon, gave up waiting for them, and went out to dine at Laurent's,
in the Champs Elysees. He had finished his dinner, and was leaning
luxuriously forward, with his elbows on the table, and knocking the
cigar ashes into his coffee-cup. He was pleasantly content. The trees
hung heavy with leaves over his head, a fountain played and overflowed
at his elbow, and the lamps of the fiacres passing and repassing on the
Avenue of the Champs Elysees shone like giant fire-flies through the
foliage. The touch of the gravel beneath his feet emphasized the free,
out-of-door charm of the place, and the faces of the others around him
looked more than usually cheerful in the light of the candles
flickering under the clouded shades. His mind had gone back to his
earlier student days in Paris, when life always looked as it did now in
the brief half-hour of satisfaction which followed a cold bath or a
good dinner, and he had forgotten himself and his surroundings. It was
the voices of the people at the table behind him that brought him back
to the present moment. A man was talking; he spoke in English, with an
accent.
"I should like to go again through the Luxembourg," he said; "but you
need not be bound by what I do."
"I think it would be pleasanter if we all keep together," said a girl's
voice, quietly. She also spoke in English, and with the same accent.
The people whose voices had interrupted him were sitting and standing
around a long table, which the waiters had made large enough for their
party by placing three of the smaller ones side by side; they had
finished their dinner, and the women, who sat with their backs towards
Carlton, were pulling on their gloves.
"Which is it to be, then?" said the gentleman, smiling. "The pictures
or the dressmakers?"
The girl who had first spoken turned to the one next to her.
"Which would you rather do, Aline?" she asked.
Carlton moved so suddenly that the men behind him looked at him
curiously; but he turned, nevertheless, in his chair and faced them,
and in order to excuse his doing so beckoned to one of the waiters. He
was within two feet of the girl who had been called "Aline." She
raised her head to speak, and saw Carlton staring open-eyed at her.
She glanced at him for an instant, as if to assure herself that she did
not know him, and then, turning to her brother, smiled in the same
tolerant, amused way in which she had so often smiled upon Carlton from
the picture.
"I am afraid I had rather go to the Bon March," she said.
One of the waiters stepped in between them, and Carlton asked him for
his bill; but when it came he left it lying on the plate, and sat
staring out into the night between the candles, puffing sharply on his
cigar, and recalling to his memory his first sight of the Princess
Aline of Hohenwald.
That night, as he turned into bed, he gave a comfortable sigh of
content. "I am glad she chose the dressmakers instead of the
pictures," he said.