their anxiety to have Carlton lunch with them, and to hear him tell of
the progress of his love-affair. There was not much to tell; the
Hohenwalds had come and gone from the hotel as freely as any other
tourists in Paris, but the very lack of ceremony about their movements
was in itself a difficulty. The manner of acquaintance he could make
in the court of the Hotel Meurice with one of the men over a cup of
coffee or a glass of bock would be as readily discontinued as begun,
and for his purpose it would have been much better if the Hohenwalds
had been living in state with a visitors' book and a chamberlain.
On Wednesday evening Carlton took the ladies to the opera, where the
Hohenwalds occupied a box immediately opposite them. Carlton pretended
to be surprised at this fact, but Mrs. Downs doubted his sincerity.
"I saw Nolan talking to their courier to-day," she said, "and I fancy
he asked a few leading questions."
"Well, he didn't learn much if he did," he said. "The fellow only
talks German."
"Ah, then he has been asking questions!" said Miss Morris.
"Well, he does it on his own responsibility," said Carlton, "for I told
him to have nothing to do with servants. He has too much zeal, has
Nolan; I'm afraid of him."
"If you were only half as interested as he is," said Miss Morris, "you
would have known her long ago."
"Long ago?" exclaimed Carlton. "I only saw her four days since."
"She is certainly very beautiful," said Miss Morris, looking across the
auditorium.
"But she isn't there," said Carlton.
"That's the eldest sister; the two other sisters went out on the coach
this morning to Versailles, and were too tired to come tonight. At
least, so Nolan says. He seems to have established a friendship for
their English maid, but whether it's on my account or his own I don't
know. I doubt his unselfishness."
"How disappointing of her!" said Miss Morris. "And after you had
selected a box just across the way, too. It is such a pity to waste it
on us." Carlton smiled, and looked up at her impudently, as though he
meant to say something; but remembering that she was engaged to be
married, changed his mind, and lowered his eyes to his programme.
"Why didn't you say it?" asked Miss Morris, calmly, turning her glass
to the stage. "Wasn't it pretty?"
"No," said Carlton--"not pretty enough."
The ladies left the hotel the next day to take the Orient Express,
which left Paris at six o'clock. They had bidden Carlton goodbye at
four the same afternoon, and as he had come to their rooms for that
purpose, they were in consequence a little surprised to see him at the
station, running wildly along the platform, followed by Nolan and a
porter. He came into their compartment after the train had started,
and shook his head sadly at them from the door.
"Well, what do you think of this?" he said. "You can't get rid of me,
you see. I'm going with you."
"Going with us?" asked Mrs. Downs. "How far?"
Carlton laughed, and, coming inside, dropped onto the cushions with a
sigh. "I don't know," he said, dejectedly. "All the way, I'm afraid.
That is, I mean, I'm very glad I am to have your society for a few days
more; but really I didn't bargain for this."
"You don't mean to tell me that THEY are on this train?" said Miss
Morris.
"They are," said Carlton. "They have a car to themselves at the rear.
They only made up their minds to go this morning, and they nearly
succeeded in giving me the slip again; but it seems that their English
maid stopped Nolan in the hall to bid him good-bye, and so he found out
their plans. They are going direct to Constantinople, and then to
Athens. They had meant to stay in Paris two weeks longer, it seems,
but they changed their minds last night. It was a very close shave for
me. I only got back to the hotel in time to hear from the concierge
that Nolan had flown with all of my things, and left word for me to
follow. Just fancy! Suppose I had missed the train, and had had to
chase him clear across the continent of Europe with not even a razor--"
"I am glad," said Miss Morris, "that Nolan has not taken a fancy to ME.
I doubt if I could resist such impetuosity."
The Orient Express, in which Carlton and the mistress of his heart and
fancy were speeding towards the horizon's utmost purple rim, was made
up of six cars, one dining-car with a smoking-apartment attached, and
five sleeping-cars, including the one reserved for the Duke of
Hohenwald and his suite. These cars were lightly built, and rocked in
consequence, and the dust raised by the rapid movement of the train
swept through cracks and open windows, and sprinkled the passengers
with a fine and irritating coating of soot and earth. There was one
servant to the entire twenty-two passengers. He spoke eight languages,
and never slept; but as his services were in demand by several people
in as many different cars at the same moment he satisfied no one, and
the complaint-box in the smoking-car was stuffed full to the slot in
consequence before they had crossed the borders of France.
Carlton and Miss Morris went out upon one of the platforms and sat down
upon a tool-box. "It's isn't as comfortable here as in an
observation-car at home," said Carlton, "but it's just as noisy."
He pointed out to her from time to time the peasants gathering twigs,
and the blue-bloused gendarmes guarding the woods and the fences
skirting them. "Nothing is allowed to go to waste in this country," he
said. "It looks as though they went over it once a month with a
lawn-mower and a pruning-knife. I believe they number the trees as we
number the houses."
"And did you notice the great fortifications covered with grass?" she
said. "We have passed such a lot of them."
Carlton nodded.
"And did you notice that they all faced only one way?"
Carlton laughed, and nodded again. "Towards Germany," he said.
By the next day they had left the tall poplars and white roads behind
them, and were crossing the land of low shiny black helmets and brass
spikes. They had come into a country of low mountains and black
forests, with old fortified castles topping the hills, and with
red-roofed villages scattered around the base.
"How very military it all is!" Mrs. Downs said. "Even the men at the
lonely little stations in the forests wear uniforms; and do you notice
how each of them rolls up his red flag and holds it like a sword, and
salutes the train as it passes?"
They spent the hour during which the train shifted from one station in
Vienna to the other driving about in an open carriage, and stopped for
a few moments in front of a cafe to drink beer and to feel solid earth
under them again, returning to the train with a feeling which was
almost that of getting back to their own rooms. Then they came to
great steppes covered with long thick grass, and flooded in places with
little lakes of broken ice; great horned cattle stood knee-deep in this
grass, and at the villages and way-stations were people wearing
sheepskin jackets and waistcoats covered with silver buttons. In one
place there was a wedding procession waiting for the train to pass,
with the friends of the bride and groom in their best clothes, the
women with silver breastplates, and boots to their knees. It seemed
hardly possible that only two days before they had seen another wedding
party in the Champs Elysees, where the men wore evening dress, and the
women were bareheaded and with long trains. In forty-eight hours they
had passed through republics, principalities, empires, and kingdoms,
and from spring to winter. It was like walking rapidly over a painted
panorama of Europe.
On the second evening Carlton went off into the smoking-car alone. The
Duke of Hohenwald and two of his friends had finished a late supper,
and were seated in the apartment adjoining it. The Duke was a young
man with a heavy beard and eyeglasses. He was looking over an
illustrated catalogue of the Salon, and as Carlton dropped on the sofa
opposite the Duke raised his head and looked at him curiously, and then
turned over several pages of the catalogue and studied one of them, and
then back at Carlton, as though he were comparing him with something on
the page before him. Carlton was looking out at the night, but he
could follow what was going forward, as it was reflected in the glass
of the car window. He saw the Duke hand the catalogue to one of the
equerries, who raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in assent.
Carlton wondered what this might mean, until he remembered that there
was a portrait of himself by a French artist in the Salon, and
concluded it had been reproduced in the catalogue. He could think of
nothing else which would explain the interest the two men showed in
him. On the morning following he sent Nolan out to purchase a
catalogue at the first station at which they stopped, and found that
his guess was a correct one. A portrait of himself had been reproduced
in black and white, with his name below it.
"Well, they know who I am now," he said to Miss Morris, "even if they
don't know me. That honor is still in store for them."
"I wish they did not lock themselves up so tightly," said Miss Morris.
"I want to see her very much. Cannot we walk up and down the platform
at the next station? She may be at the window."
"Of course," said Carlton. "You could have seen her at Buda-Pesth if
you had spoken of it. She was walking up and down then. The next time
the train stops we will prowl up and down and feast our eyes upon her."
But Miss Morris had her wish gratified without that exertion. The
Hohenwalds were served in the dining-car after the other passengers had
finished, and were in consequence only to be seen when they passed by
the doors of the other compartments. But this same morning, after
luncheon, the three Princesses, instead of returning to their own car,
seated themselves in the compartment adjoining the dining-car, while
the men of their party lit their cigars and sat in a circle around them.
"I was wondering how long they could stand three men smoking in one of
the boxes they call cars," said Mrs. Downs. She was seated between
Miss Morris and Carlton, directly opposite the Hohenwalds, and so near
them that she had to speak in a whisper. To avoid doing this Miss
Morris asked Carlton for a pencil, and scribbled with it in the novel
she held on her lap. Then she passed them both back to him, and said,
aloud: "Have you read this? It has such a pretty dedication." The
dedication read, "Which is Aline?" And Carlton, taking the pencil in
his turn, made a rapid sketch of her on the fly-leaf, and wrote beneath
it: "This is she. Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to
see her?"
Miss Morris took the book again, and glanced at the sketch, and then at
the three Princesses, and nodded her head. "It is very beautiful," she
said, gravely, looking out at the passing landscape.
"Well, not beautiful exactly," answered Carlton, surveying the hills
critically, "but certainly very attractive. It is worth travelling a
long way to see, and I should think one would grow very fond of it."
Miss Morris tore the fly-leaf out of the book, and slipped it between
the pages. "May I keep it?" she said. Carlton nodded. "And
will you sign it?" she asked, smiling. Carlton shrugged his shoulders,
and laughed. "If you wish it," he answered.
The Princess wore a gray cheviot travelling dress, as did her sisters,
and a gray Alpine hat. She was leaning back, talking to the English
captain who accompanied them, and laughing. Carlton thought he had
never seen a woman who appealed so strongly to every taste of which he
was possessed. She seemed so sure of herself, so alert, and yet so
gracious, so easily entertained, and yet, when she turned her eyes
towards the strange, dismal landscape, so seriously intent upon its sad
beauty. The English captain dropped his head, and with the pretence of
pulling at his mustache, covered his mouth as he spoke to her. When he
had finished he gazed consciously at the roof of the car, and she kept
her eyes fixed steadily at the object towards which they had turned
when he had ceased speaking, and then, after a decent pause, turned her
eyes, as Carlton knew she would, towards him.
"He was telling her who I am," he thought, "and about the picture in
the catalogue."
In a few moments she turned to her sister and spoke to her, pointing
out at something in the scenery, and the same pantomime was repeated,
and again with the third sister.
"Did you see those girls talking about you, Mr. Carlton?" Miss Morris
asked, after they had left the car.
Carlton said it looked as though they were.
"Of course they were," said Miss Morris.
"That Englishman told the Princess Aline something about you, and then
she told her sister, and she told the eldest one. It would be nice if
they inherit their father's interest in painting, wouldn't it?"
"I would rather have it degenerate into an interest in painters
myself," said Carlton.
Miss Morris discovered, after she had returned to her own car, that she
had left the novel where she had been sitting, and Carlton sent Nolan
back for it. It had slipped to the floor, and the fly-leaf upon which
Carlton had sketched the Princess Aline was lying face down beside it.
Nolan picked up the leaf, and saw the picture, and read the inscription
below: "This is she. Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to
see her?"
He handed the book to Miss Morris, and was backing out of the
compartment, when she stopped him.
"There was a loose page in this, Nolan," she said. "It's gone; did you
see it?"
"A loose page, miss?" said Nolan, with some concern. "Oh, yes, miss; I
was going to tell you; there was a scrap of paper blew away when I was
passing between the carriages. Was it something you wanted, miss?"
"Something I wanted!" exclaimed Miss Morris, in dismay.
Carlton laughed easily. "It is just as well I didn't sign it, after
all," he said. "I don't want to proclaim my devotion to any Hungarian
gypsy who happens to read English."
"You must draw me another, as a souvenir," Miss Morris said.
Nolan continued on through the length of the car until he had reached
the one occupied by the Hohenwalds, where he waited on the platform
until the English maidservant saw him and came to the door of the
carriage.
"What hotel are your people going to stop at in Constantinople?" Nolan
asked.
"The Grande-Bretagne, I think," she answered.
"That's right," said Nolan, approvingly. "That's the one we are going
to. I thought I would come and tell you about it. And, by-the-way,"
he said, "here's a picture somebody's made of your Princess Aline. She
dropped it, and I picked it up. You had better give it back to her.
Well," he added, politely, "I'm glad you are coming to our hotel in
Constantinople; it's pleasant having some one to talk to who can speak
your own tongue."
The girl returned to the car, and left Nolan alone upon the platform.
He exhaled a long breath of suppressed excitement, and then gazed
around nervously upon the empty landscape.
"I fancy that's going to hurry things up a bit," he murmured, with an
anxious smile; "he'd never get along at all if it wasn't for me."
For reasons possibly best understood by the German ambassador, the
state of the Hohenwalds at Constantinople differed greatly from that
which had obtained at the French capital. They no longer came and went
as they wished, or wandered through the show-places of the city like
ordinary tourists. There was, on the contrary, not only a change in
their manner towards others, but there was an insistence on their part
of a difference in the attitude of others towards themselves. This
showed itself in the reserving of the half of the hotel for their use,
and in the haughty bearing of the equerries, who appeared unexpectedly
in magnificent uniforms. The visitors' book was covered with the
autographs of all of the important people in the Turkish capital, and
the Sultan's carriages stood constantly before the door of the hotel,
awaiting their pleasure, until they became as familiar a sight as the
street dogs, or as cabs in a hansom-cab rank.
And in following out the programme which had been laid down for her,
the Princess Aline became even less accessible to Carlton than before,
and he grew desperate and despondent.
"If the worst comes," he said to Miss Morris, "I shall tell Nolan to
give an alarm of fire some night, and then I will run in and rescue her
before they find out there is no fire. Or he might frighten the horses
some day, and give me a chance to stop them. We might even wait until
we reach Greece, and have her carried off by brigands, who would only
give her up to me."
"There are no more brigands in Greece," said Miss Morris; "and besides,
why do you suppose they would only give her up to you?"
"Because they would be imitation brigands," said Carlton, "and would be
paid to give her up to no one else."
"Oh, you plan very well," scoffed Miss Morris, "but you don't DO
anything."
Carlton was saved the necessity of doing anything that same morning,
when the English captain in attendance on the Duke sent his card to
Carlton's room. He came, he explained, to present the Prince's
compliments, and would it be convenient for Mr. Carlton to meet the
Duke that afternoon? Mr. Carlton suppressed an unseemly desire to
shout, and said, after a moment's consideration, that it would. He
then took the English captain down stairs to the smoking-room, and
rewarded him for his agreeable message.
The Duke received Carlton in the afternoon, and greeted him most
cordially, and with as much ease of manner as it is possible for a man
to possess who has never enjoyed the benefits of meeting other men on
an equal footing. He expressed his pleasure in knowing an artist with
whose work he was so familiar, and congratulated himself on the happy
accident which had brought them both to the same hotel.
"I have more than a natural interest in meeting you," said the Prince,
"and for a reason which you may or may not know. I thought possibly
you could help me somewhat. I have within the past few days come into
the possession of two of your paintings; they are studies, rather, but
to me they are even more desirable than the finished work; and I am not
correct in saying that they have come to me exactly, but to my sister,
the Princess Aline."
Carlton could not withhold a certain start of surprise. He had not
expected that his gift would so soon have arrived, but his face showed
only polite attention.
"The studies were delivered to us in London," continued the Duke.
"They are of Ludwig the tragedian, and of the German Prime Minister,
two most valuable works, and especially interesting to us. They came
without any note or message which would inform us who had sent them,
and when my people made inquiries, the dealer refused to tell them from
whom they had come. He had been ordered to forward them to Grasse,
but, on learning of our presence in London, sent them direct to our
hotel there. Of course it is embarrassing to have so valuable a
present from an anonymous friend, especially so for my sister, to whom
they were addressed, and I thought that, besides the pleasure of
meeting one of whose genius I am so warm an admirer, I might also learn
something which would enable me to discover who our friend may be." He
paused, but as Carlton said nothing, continued: "As it is now, I do
not feel that I can accept the pictures; and yet I know no one to whom
they can be returned, unless I send them to the dealer."
"It sounds very mysterious," said Carlton smiling; "and I am afraid I
cannot help you. What work I did in Germany was sold in Berlin before
I left, and in a year may have changed hands several times. The
studies of which you speak are unimportant, and merely studies, and
could pass from hand to hand without much record having been kept of
them; but personally I am not able to give you any information which
would assist you in tracing them."
"Yes," said the Duke. "Well, then, I shall keep them until I can learn
more; and if we can learn nothing, I shall return them to the dealer."
Carlton met Miss Morris that afternoon in a state of great excitement.
"It's come!" he cried--"it's come! I am to meet her this week. I have
met her brother, and he has asked me to dine with them on Thursday
night; that's the day before they leave for Athens; and he particularly
mentioned that his sisters would be at the dinner, and that it would be
a pleasure to present me. It seems that the eldest paints, and all of
them love art for art's sake, as their father taught them to do; and,
for all we know, he may make me court painter, and I shall spend the
rest of my life at Grasse painting portraits of the Princess Aline, at
the age of twenty-two, and at all future ages. And if he does give me
a commission to paint her, I can tell you now in confidence that that
picture will require more sittings than any other picture ever painted
by man. Her hair will have turned white by the time it is finished,
and the gown she started to pose in will have become forty years behind
the fashion!"
On the morning following, Carlton and Mrs. Downs and her niece, with
all the tourists in Constantinople, were placed in open carriages by
their dragomans, and driven in a long procession to the Seraglio to see
the Sultan's treasures. Those of them who had waited two weeks for
this chance looked aggrieved at the more fortunate who had come at the
eleventh hour on the last night's steamer, and seemed to think these
latter had attained the privilege without sufficient effort. The
ministers of the different legations--as is the harmless custom of such
gentlemen--had impressed every one for whom they had obtained
permission to see the treasures with the great importance of the
service rendered, and had succeeded in making every one feel either
especially honored or especially uncomfortable at having given them so
much trouble. This sense of obligation, and the fact that the
dragomans had assured the tourists that they were for the time being
the guests of the Sultan, awed and depressed most of the visitors to
such an extent that their manner in the long procession of carriages
suggested a funeral cortege, with the Hohenwalds in front, escorted by
Beys and Pashas, as chief mourners. The procession halted at the
palace, and the guests of the Sultan were received by numerous effendis
in single-button frock-coats and freshly ironed fezzes, who served them
with glasses of water, and a huge bowl of some sweet stuff, of which
every one was supposed to take a spoonful. There was at first a
general fear among the Cook's tourists that there would not be enough
of this to go round, which was succeeded by a greater anxiety lest they
should be served twice. Some of the tourists put the sweet stuff in
their mouths direct and licked the spoon, and others dropped it off the
spoon into the glass of water, and stirred it about and sipped at it,
and no one knew who had done the right thing, not even those who
happened to have done it. Carlton and Miss Morris went out on to the
terrace while this ceremony was going forward, and looked out over the
great panorama of waters, with the Sea of Marmora on one side, the
Golden Horn on the other, and the Bosporus at their feet. The sun was
shining mildly, and the waters were stirred by great and little
vessels; before them on the opposite bank rose the dark green cypresses
which marked the grim cemetery of England's dead, and behind them were
the great turtle-backed mosques and pencil-like minarets of the two
cities, and close at hand the mosaic walls and beautiful gardens of
Constantine.
"Your friends the Hohenwalds don't seem to know you this morning," she
said.
"Oh yes; he spoke to me as we left the hotel," Carlton answered. "But
they are on parade at present. There are a lot of their countrymen
among the tourists."
"I feel rather sorry for them," Miss Morris said, looking at the group
with an amused smile. "Etiquette cuts them off from so much innocent
amusement. Now, you are a gentleman, and the Duke presumably is, and
why should you not go over and say, 'Your Highness, I wish you would
present me to your sister, whom I am to meet at dinner to-morrow night.
I admire her very much,' and then you could point out the historical
features to her, and show her where they have finished off a blue and
green tiled wall with a rusty tin roof, and make pretty speeches to
her. It wouldn't hurt her, and it would do you a lot of good. The
simplest way is always the best way, it seems to me."