said: 'Carlton, I wish you would present me to your young American
friend. I admire her very much,' I would probably say: 'Do you?
Well, you will have to wait until she expresses some desire to meet
you.' No; etiquette is all right in itself, only some people don't
know its laws, and that is the one instance to my mind where ignorance
of the law is no excuse."
Carlton left Miss Morris talking with the Secretary of the American
Legation, and went to look for Mrs. Downs. When he returned he found
that the young Secretary had apparently asked and obtained permission
to present the Duke's equerries and some of his diplomatic confreres,
who were standing now about her in an attentive semicircle, and
pointing out the different palaces and points of interest. Carlton was
somewhat disturbed at the sight, and reproached himself with not having
presented any one to her before. He was sure now that she must have
had a dull time of it; but he wished, nevertheless, that if she was to
meet other men, the Secretary had allowed him to act as master of
ceremonies.
"I suppose you know," that gentleman was saying as Carlton came up,
"that when you pass by Abydos, on the way to Athens, you will see where
Leander swam the Hellespont to meet Hero. That little white
light-house is called Leander in honor of him. It makes rather an
interesting contrast--does it not?--to think of that chap swimming
along in the dark, and then to find that his monument to-day is a
lighthouse, with revolving lamps and electric appliances, and with
ocean tramps and bridges and men-of-war around it. We have improved in
our mechanism since then," he said, with an air, "but I am afraid the
men of to-day don't do that sort of thing for the women of to-day."
"Then it is the men who have deteriorated," said one of the equerries,
bowing to Miss Morris; "it is certainly not the women."
The two Americans looked at Miss Morris to see how she received this,
but she smiled good-naturedly.
"I know a man who did more than that for a woman," said Carlton,
innocently. "He crossed an ocean and several countries to meet her,
and he hasn't met her yet."
Miss Morris looked at him and laughed, in the safety that no one
understood him but herself.
"But he ran no danger," she answered.
"He didn't, didn't he?" said Carlton, looking at her closely and
laughing. "I think he was in very great danger all the time."
"Shocking!" said Miss Morris, reprovingly; "and in her very presence,
too." She knitted her brows and frowned at him. "I really believe if
you were in prison you would make pretty speeches to the jailer's
daughter."
"Yes," said Carlton, boldly, "or even to a woman who was a prisoner
herself."
"I don't know what you mean," she said, turning away from him to the
others. "How far was it that Leander swam?" she asked.
The English captain pointed out two spots on either bank, and said that
the shores of Abydos were a little over that distance apart.
"As far as that?" said Miss Morris. "How much he must have cared for
her!" She turned to Carlton for an answer.
"I beg your pardon," he said. He was measuring the distance between
the two points with his eyes.
"I said how much he must have cared for her! You wouldn't swim that
far for a girl."
"For a girl!" laughed Carlton, quickly. "I was just thinking I would
do it for fifty dollars."
The English captain gave a hasty glance at the distance he had pointed
out, and then turned to Carlton. "I'll take you," he said, seriously.
"I'll bet you twenty pounds you can't do it." There was an easy laugh
at Carlton's expense, but he only shook his head and smiled.
"Leave him alone, captain," said the American Secretary. "It seems to
me I remember a story of Mr. Carlton's swimming out from Navesink to
meet an ocean liner. It was about three miles, and the ocean was
rather rough, and when they slowed up he asked them if it was raining
in London when they left. They thought he was mad."
"Is that true, Carlton?" asked the Englishman.
"Something like it," said the American, "except that I didn't ask them
if it was raining in London. I asked them for a drink, and it was they
who were mad. They thought I was drowning, and slowed up to lower a
boat, and when they found out I was just swimming around they were
naturally angry.
"Well, I'm glad you didn't bet with me," said the captain, with a
relieved laugh.
That evening, as the Englishman was leaving the smoking-room, and after
he had bidden Carlton good-night, he turned back and said: "I didn't
like to ask you before those men this morning, but there was something
about your swimming adventure I wanted to know: Did you get that drink?"
"I did," said Carlton--"in a bottle. They nearly broke my shoulder."
As Carlton came into the breakfast-room on the morning of the day he
was to meet the Princess Aline at dinner, Miss Morris was there alone,
and he sat down at the same table, opposite to her. She looked at him
critically, and smiled with evident amusement.
"'To-day,'" she quoted, solemnly, "'the birthday of my life has come.'"
Carlton poured out his coffee, with a shake of his head, and frowned.
"Oh, you can laugh," he said, "but I didn't sleep at all last night. I
lay awake making speeches to her. I know they are going to put me
between the wrong sisters," he complained, "or next to one of those old
ladies-in-waiting, or whatever they are."
"How are you going to begin?" said Miss Morris. "Will you tell her you
have followed her from London--or from New York, rather--that you are
young Lochinvar, who came out of the West, and--"
"I don't know," said Carlton, meditatively, "just how I shall begin;
but I know the curtain is going to rise promptly at eight
o'clock--about the time the soup comes on, I think. I don't see how
she can help but be impressed a little bit. It isn't every day a man
hurries around the globe on account of a girl's photograph; and she IS
beautiful, isn't she?"
Miss Morris nodded her head encouragingly.
"Do you know, sometimes," said Carlton, glancing over his shoulders to
see if the waiters were out of hearing, "I fancy she has noticed me.
Once or twice I have turned my head in her direction without meaning
to, and found her looking--well, looking my way, at least. Don't you
think that is a good sign?" he asked, eagerly.
"It depends on what you call a 'good sign,'" said Miss Morris,
judicially. "It is a sign you're good to look at, if that's what you
want. But you probably know that already, and it's nothing to your
credit. It certainly isn't a sign that a person cares for you because
she prefers to look at your profile rather than at what the dragomans
are trying to show her."
Carlton drew himself up stiffly. "If you knew your ALICE better," he
said, with severity, "you would understand that it is not polite to
make personal remarks. I ask you, as my confidante, if you think she
has noticed me, and you make fun of my looks! That's not the part of a
confidante."
"Noticed you!" laughed Miss Morris, scornfully. "How could she help
it? You are always in the way. You are at the door whenever they go
out or come in, and when we are visiting mosques and palaces you are
invariably looking at her instead of the tombs and things, with a
wistful far-away look, as though you saw a vision. The first time you
did it, after you had turned away I saw her feel to see if her hair was
all right. You quite embarrassed her."
"I didn't--I don't!" stammered Carlton, indignantly. "I wouldn't be so
rude. Oh, I see I'll have to get another confidante; you are most
unsympathetic and unkind." But Miss Morris showed her sympathy later in
the day, when Carlton needed it sorely; for the dinner towards which he
had looked with such pleasurable anticipations and lover-like
misgivings did not take place. The Sultan, so the equerry informed
him, had, with Oriental unexpectedness, invited the Duke to dine that
night at the Palace, and the Duke, much to his expressed regret, had
been forced to accept what was in the nature of a command. He sent
word by his equerry, however, that the dinner to Mr. Carlton was only a
pleasure deferred, and that at Athens, where he understood Carlton was
also going, he hoped to have the pleasure of entertaining him and
making him known to his sisters.
"He is a selfish young egoist," said Carlton to Mrs. Downs. "As if I
cared whether he was at the dinner or not! Why couldn't he have fixed
it so I might have dined with his sisters alone? We would never have
missed him. I'll never meet her now. I know it; I feel it. Fate is
against me. Now I will have to follow them on to Athens, and something
will turn up there to keep me away from her. You'll see; you'll see.
I wonder where they go from Athens?"
The Hohenwalds departed the next morning, and as their party had
engaged all the state-rooms in the little Italian steamer, Carlton was
forced to wait over for the next. He was very gloomy over his
disappointment, and Miss Morris did her best to amuse him. She and her
aunt were never idle now, and spent the last few days of their stay in
Constantinople in the bazars or in excursions up and down the river.
"These are my last days of freedom," Miss Morris said to him once, "and
I mean to make the most of them. After this there will be no more
travelling for me. And I love it so!" she added, wistfully.
Carlton made no comment, but he felt a certain contemptuous pity for
the young man in America who had required such a sacrifice. "She is
too nice a girl to let him know she is making a sacrifice," he thought,
"or giving up anything for him, but SHE won't forget it." And Carlton
again commended himself for not having asked any woman to make any
sacrifices for him.
They left Constantinople for Athens one moonlight night, three days
after the Hohenwalds had taken their departure, and as the evening and
the air were warm, they remained upon the upper deck until the boat had
entered the Dardanelles. There were few passengers, and Mrs. Downs
went below early, leaving Miss Morris and Carlton hanging over the
rail, and looking down upon a band of Hungarian gypsies, who were
playing the weird music of their country on the deck beneath them. The
low receding hills lay close on either hand, and ran back so sharply
from the narrow waterway that they seemed to shut in the boat from the
world beyond. The moonlight showed a little mud fort or a thatched
cottage on the bank fantastically, as through a mist, and from time to
time as they sped forward they saw the camp-fire of a sentry, and his
shadow as he passed between it and them, or stopped to cover it with
wood. The night was so still that they could hear the waves in the
steamer's wake washing up over the stones on either shore, and the
muffled beat of the engines echoed back from either side of the valley
through which they passed. There was a great lantern hanging midway
from the mast, and shining down upon the lower deck. It showed a group
of Greeks, Turks, and Armenians, in strange costumes, sleeping, huddled
together in picturesque confusion over the bare boards, or wide-awake
and voluble, smoking and chatting together in happy company. The music
of the tizanes rose in notes of passionate ecstasy and sharp,
unexpected bursts of melody. It ceased and began again, as though the
musicians were feeling their way, and then burst out once more into
shrill defiance. It stirred Carlton with a strange turbulent unrest.
From the banks the night wind brought soft odors of fresh earth and of
heavy foliage.
"The music of different countries," Carlton said at last, "means many
different things. But it seems to me that the music of Hungary is the
music of love."
Miss Morris crossed her arms comfortably on the rail, and he heard her
laugh softly. "Oh no, it is not," she said, undisturbed. "It is a
passionate, gusty, heady sort of love, if you like, but it's no more
like the real thing than burgundy is like clear, cold, good water.
It's not the real thing at all."
"I beg your pardon," said Carlton, meekly. "Of course I don't know
anything about it." He had been waked out of the spell which the night
and the tizanes had placed upon him as completely as though some one had
shaken him sharply by the shoulder. "I bow," he said, "to your superior
knowledge. I know nothing about it."
"No; you are quite right. I don't believe you do know anything about
it," said the girl, "or you wouldn't have made such a comparison."
"Do you know, Miss Morris," said Carlton, seriously, "that I believe
I'm not able to care for a woman as other men do--at least as some men
do; it's just lacking in me, and always will be lacking. It's like an
ear for music; if you haven't got it, if it isn't born in you, you'll
never have it. It's not a thing you can cultivate, and I feel that
it's not only a misfortune, but a fault. Now I honestly believe that I
care more for the Princess Aline, whom I have never met, than many
other men could care for her if they knew her well; but what they feel
would last, and I have doubts from past experience that what I feel
would. I don't doubt it while it exists, but it never does exist long,
and so I am afraid it is going to be with me to the end of the
chapter." He paused for a moment, but the girl did not answer. "I am
speaking in earnest now," he added, with a rueful laugh.
"I see you are," she replied, briefly. She seemed to be considering
his condition as he had described it to her, and he did not interrupt
her. From below them came the notes of the waltz the gypsies played.
It was full of the undercurrent of sadness that a waltz should have,
and filled out what Carlton said as the music from the orchestra in a
theatre heightens the effect without interrupting the words of the
actor on the stage.
"It is strange," said Miss Morris. "I should have thought you were a
man who would care very much and in just the right way. But I don't
believe really--I'm sorry, but I don't believe you do know what love
means at all."
"Oh, it isn't as bad as that," said Carlton. "I think I know what it
is, and what it means to other people, but I can't feel it myself. The
best idea I ever got of it--the thing that made it clear to me--was a
line in a play. It seemed to express it better than any of the
love-poems I ever read. It was in Shenandoah."
Miss Morris laughed.
"I beg your pardon," said Carlton.
"I beg yours," she said. "It was only the incongruity that struck me.
It seemed so odd to be quoting Shenandoah here in the Dardanelles, with
these queer people below us and ancient Troy on one hand--it took me by
surprise, that's all. Please go on. What was it impressed you?"
"Well, the hero in the play," said Carlton, "is an officer in the
Northern army, and he is lying wounded in a house near the Shenandoah
Valley. The girl he loves lives in this house, and is nursing him; but
she doesn't love him, because she sympathizes with the South. At
least she says she doesn't love him. Both armies are forming in the
valley below to begin the battle, and he sees his own regiment
hurrying past to join them, So he gets up and staggers out on the
stage, which is set to show the yard in front of the farm-house, and he
calls for his horse to follow his men. Then the girl runs out and begs
him not to go; and he asks why, what does it matter to her whether he
goes or not? And she says, 'But I cannot let you go; you may be
killed.' And he says again, 'What is that to you?' And she says: 'It
is everything to me. I love you.' And he makes a grab at her with his
wounded arm, and at that instant both armies open fire in the valley
below, and the whole earth and sky seem to open and shut, and the house
rocks. The girl rushes at him and crowds up against his breast, and
cries: 'What is that? Oh, what is that?' and he holds her tight to
him and laughs, and says: 'THAT? That's only a battle--you love me.'"
Miss Morris looked steadfastly over the side of the boat at the waters
rushing by beneath, smiling to herself. Then she turned her face
towards Carlton, and nodded her head at him. "I think," she said,
dryly, "that you have a fair idea of what it means; a rough
working-plan at least--enough to begin on."
"I said that I knew what it meant to others. I am complaining that I
cannot feel it myself."
"That will come in time, no doubt," she said, encouragingly, with the
air of a connoisseur; "and let me tell you," she added, "that it will
be all the better for the woman that you have doubted yourself so long."
"You think so?" said Carlton, eagerly.
Miss Morris laughed at his earnestness, and left him to go below to ask
her aunt to join them, but Mrs. Downs preferred to read in the saloon,
and Miss Morris returned alone. She had taken off her Eton jacket and
pulled on a heavy blue football sweater, and over this a reefer. The
jersey clung to her and showed the lines of her figure, and emphasized
the freedom and grace with which she made every movement. She looked,
as she walked at his side with her hands in the pockets of her coat and
with a flat sailor hat on her head, like a tall, handsome boy; but when
they stopped and stood where the light fell full on her hair and the
exquisite coloring of her skin, Carlton thought her face had never
seemed so delicate or fair as it did then, rising from the collar of
the rough jersey, and contrasted with the hat and coat of a man's
attire. They paced the deck for an hour later, until every one else
had left it, and at midnight were still loath to give up the beautiful
night and the charm of their strange surroundings. There were long
silent places in their talk, during which Carlton tramped beside her
with his head half turned, looking at her and noting with an artist's
eye the free light step, the erect carriage, and the unconscious beauty
of her face. The captain of the steamer joined them after midnight,
and falling into step, pointed out to Miss Morris where great cities
had stood, where others lay buried, and where beyond the hills were the
almost inaccessible monasteries of the Greek Church. The moonlight
turned the banks into shadowy substances, in which the ghosts of former
days seemed to make a part; and spurred by the young girl's interest,
the Italian, to entertain her, called up all the legends of mythology
and the stories of Roman explorers and Turkish conquerors.
"I turn in now," he said, after Miss Morris had left them. "A most
charming young lady. Is it not so?" he added, waving his cigarette in
a gesture which expressed the ineffectiveness of the adjective.
"Yes, very," said Carlton. "Good-night, sir."
He turned, and leaned with both elbows on the rail, and looked out at
the misty banks, puffing at his cigar. Then he dropped it hissing into
the water, and, stifling a yawn, looked up and down the length of the
deserted deck. It seemed particularly bare and empty.
"What a pity she's engaged!" Carlton said. "She loses so much by it."
They steamed slowly into the harbor of the Piraeus at an early hour the
next morning, with a flotilla of small boats filled with shrieking
porters and hotel-runners at the sides. These men tossed their
painters to the crew, and crawled up them like a boarding crew of
pirates, running wildly about the deck, and laying violent hands on any
piece of baggage they saw unclaimed. The passengers' trunks had been
thrown out in a heap on the deck, and Nolan and Carlton were clambering
over them, looking for their own effects, while Miss Morris stood
below, as far out of the confusion as she could place herself, and
pointed out the different pieces that belonged to her. As she stood
there one of the hotel-runners, a burly, greasy Levantine in pursuit of
a possible victim, shouldered her intentionally and roughly out of the
way. He shoved her so sharply that she lost her balance and fell back
against the rail. Carlton saw what had happened, and made a flying
leap from the top of the pile of trunks, landing beside her, and in
time to seize the escaping offender by the collar. He jerked him back
off his feet.
"How dare you--" he began.
But he did not finish. He felt the tips of Miss Morris's fingers laid
upon his shoulder, and her voice saying, in an annoyed tone: "Don't;
please don't." And, to his surprise, his fingers lost their grip on
the man's shirt, his arms dropped at his side, and his blood began to
flow calmly again through his veins. Carlton was aware that he had a
very quick temper. He was always engaging in street rows, as he called
them, with men who he thought had imposed on him or on some one else,
and though he was always ashamed of himself later, his temper had never
been satisfied without a blow or an apology. Women had also touched
him before, and possibly with a greater familiarity; but these had
stirred him, not quieted him; and men who had laid detaining hands on
him had had them beaten down for their pains. But this girl had merely
touched him gently, and he had been made helpless. It was most
perplexing; and while the custom-house officials were passing his
luggage, he found himself rubbing his arm curiously, as though it were
numb, and looking down at it with an amused smile. He did not comment
on the incident, although he smiled at the recollection of his prompt
obedience several times during the day. But as he was stepping into
the cab to drive to Athens, he saw the offending ruffian pass, dripping
with water, and muttering bitter curses. When he saw Carlton he
disappeared instantly in the crowd. Carlton stepped over to where
Nolan sat beside the driver on the box. "Nolan," he said, in a low
voice, "isn't that the fellow who--"
"Yes, sir," said Nolan, touching his hat gravely. "He was pulling a
valise one way, and the gentleman that owned it, sir, was pulling it
the other, and the gentleman let go sudden, and the Italian went over
backwards off the pier."
Carlton smiled grimly with secret satisfaction.
"Nolan," he said, "you're not telling the truth. You did it yourself."
Nolan touched his cap and coughed consciously. There had been no
detaining fingers on Nolan's arm.
III
"You are coming now, Miss Morris," exclaimed Carlton from the front of
the carriage in which they were moving along the sunny road to Athens,
"into a land where one restores his lost illusions. Anybody who wishes
to get back his belief in beautiful things should come here to do it,
just as he would go to a German sanitarium to build up his nerves or
his appetite. You have only to drink in the atmosphere and you are
cured. I know no better antidote than Athens for a siege of cable-cars
and muddy asphalt pavements and a course of Robert Elsmeres and the
Heavenly Twins. Wait until you see the statues of the young athletes
in the Museum," he cried, enthusiastically, "and get a glimpse of the
blue sky back of Mount Hymettus, and the moonlight some evening on the
Acropolis, and you'll be convinced that nothing counts for much in this
world but health and straight limbs, and tall marble pillars, and eyes
trained to see only what is beautiful. Give people a love for beauty
and a respect for health, Miss Morris, and the result is going to be,
what they once had here, the best art and the greatest writers and
satirists and poets. The same audience that applauded Euripides and
Sophocles in the open theatre used to cross the road the same day to
applaud the athletes who ran naked in the Olympian games, and gave them
as great honor. I came here once on a walking tour with a chap who
wasn't making as much of himself as he should have done, and he went
away a changed man, and became a personage in the world, and you would
never guess what it was that did it. He saw a statue of one of the
Greek gods in the Museum which showed certain muscles that he couldn't
find in his own body, and he told me he was going to train down until
they did show; and he stopped drinking and loafing to do it, and took
to exercising and working; and by the time the muscles showed out clear
and strong he was so keen over life that he wanted to make the most of
it, and, as I said, he has done it. That's what a respect for his own
body did for him."
The carriage stopped at the hotel on one side of the public square of
Athens, with the palace and its gardens blocking one end, and yellow
houses with red roofs, and gay awnings over the cafes, surrounding it.
It was a bright sunny day, and the city was clean and cool and pretty.
"Breakfast?" exclaimed Miss Morris, in answer to Carlton's inquiry;
"yes, I suppose so, but I won't feel safe until I have my feet on that
rock." She was standing on the steps of the hotel, looking up with
expectant, eager eyes at the great Acropolis above the city.