think you can risk its being there for a half-hour longer."
"Well," she said, reluctantly, "but I don't wish to lose this chance.
There might be an earthquake, for instance."
"We are likely to see THEM this morning," said Carlton, as he left the
hotel with the ladies and drove towards the Acropolis. "Nolan has been
interviewing the English maid, and she tells him they spend the greater
part of their time up there on the rock. They are living very simply
here, as they did in Paris; that is, for the present. On Wednesday the
King gives a dinner and a reception in their honor."
"When does your dinner come off?" asked Miss Morris.
"Never," said Carlton, grimly.
"One of the reasons why I like to come back to Athens so much," said
Mrs. Downs, "is because there are so few other tourists here to spoil
the local color for you, and there are almost as few guides as
tourists, so that you can wander around undisturbed and discover things
for yourself. They don't label every fallen column, and place fences
around the temples. They seem to put you on your good behavior. Then
I always like to go to a place where you are as much of a curiosity to
the people as they are to you. It seems to excuse your staring about
you."
"A curiosity!" exclaimed Carlton; "I should say so! The last time I
was here I tried to wear a pair of knickerbockers around the city, and
the people stared so that I had to go back to the hotel and change
them. I shouldn't have minded it so much in any other country, but I
thought men who wore Jaeger underclothing and women's petticoats for a
national costume might have excused so slight an eccentricity as
knickerbockers. THEY had no right to throw the first stone."
The rock upon which the temples of the Acropolis are built is more of a
hill than a rock. It is much steeper upon one side than the other,
with a sheer fall a hundred yards broad; on the opposite side there are
the rooms of the Hospital of Aesculapius and the theatres of Dionysus
and Herodes Atticus. The top of the rock holds the Parthenon and the
other smaller temples, or what yet remains of them, and its surface is
littered with broken marble and stones and pieces of rock. The top is
so closely built over that the few tourists who visit it can imagine
themselves its sole occupants for a half-hour at a time. When Carlton
and his friends arrived, the place appeared quite deserted. They left
the carriage at the base of the rock, and climbed up to the entrance on
foot.
"Now, before I go on to the Parthenon," said Miss Morris, "I want to
walk around the sides, and see what is there. I shall begin with that
theatre to the left, and I warn you that I mean to take my time about
it. So you people who have been here before can run along by
yourselves, but I mean to enjoy it leisurely. I am safe by myself
here, am I not?" she asked.
"As safe as though you were in the Metropolitan Museum," said Carlton,
as he and Mrs. Downs followed Miss Morris along the side of the hill
towards the ruined theatre of Herodes, and stood at its top, looking
down into the basin below. From their feet ran a great semicircle of
marble seats, descending tier below tier to a marble pavement, and
facing a great ruined wall of pillars and arches which in the past had
formed the background for the actors. From the height on which they
stood above the city they could see the green country stretching out
for miles on every side and swimming in the warm sunlight, the dark
groves of myrtle on the hills, the silver ribbon of the inland water,
and the dark blue AEgean Sea. The bleating of sheep and the tinkling
of the bells came up to them from the pastures below, and they imagined
they could hear the shepherds piping to their flocks from one little
hill-top to another.
"The country is not much changed," said Carlton. "And when you stand
where we are now, you can imagine that you see the procession winding
its way over the road to the Eleusinian Mysteries, with the gilded
chariots, and the children carrying garlands, and the priestesses
leading the bulls for the sacrifice."
"What can we imagine is going on here?" said Miss Morris, pointing with
her parasol to the theatre below.
"Oh, this is much later," said Carlton. "This was built by the Romans.
They used to act and to hold their public meetings here. This
corresponds to the top row of our gallery, and you can imagine that you
are looking down on the bent backs of hundreds of bald-headed men in
white robes, listening to the speakers strutting about below there."
"I wonder how much they could hear from this height?" said Mrs. Downs.
"Well, they had that big wall for a sounding-board, and the air is so
soft here that their voices should have carried easily, and I believe
they wore masks with mouth-pieces, that conveyed the sound like a
fireman's trumpet. If you like, I will run down there and call up to
you, and you can hear how it sounded. I will speak in my natural voice
first, and if that doesn't reach you, wave your parasol, and I will try
it a little louder."
"Oh, do!" said Miss Morris. "It will be very good of you. I should
like to hear a real speech in the theatre of Herodes," she said, as she
seated herself on the edge of the marble crater.
"I'll have to speak in English," said Carlton, as he disappeared; "my
Greek isn't good enough to carry that far."
Mrs. Downs seated herself beside her niece, and Carlton began
scrambling down the side of the amphitheatre. The marble benches were
broken in parts, and where they were perfect were covered with a fine
layer of moss as smooth and soft as green velvet, so that Carlton, when
he was not laboriously feeling for his next foothold with the toe of
his boot, was engaged in picking spring flowers from the beds of moss
and sticking them, for safe-keeping, in his button-hole. He was
several minutes in making the descent, and so busily occupied in doing
it that he did not look up until he had reached the level of the
ground, and jumped lightly from the first row of seats to the stage,
covered with moss, which lay like a heavy rug over the marble pavement.
When he did look up he saw a tableau that made his heart, which was
beating quickly from the exertion of the descent, stand still with
consternation. The Hohenwalds had, in his short absence, descended
from the entrance of the Acropolis, and had stopped on their way to the
road below to look into the cool green and white basin of the theatre.
At the moment Carlton looked up the Duke was standing in front of Mrs.
Downs and Miss Morris, and all of the men had their hats off. Then, in
pantomime, and silhouetted against the blue sky behind them, Carlton
saw the Princesses advance beside their brother, and Mrs. Downs and her
niece courtesied three times, and then the whole party faced about in a
line and looked down at him. The meaning of the tableau was only too
plain.
"Good heavens!" gasped Carlton. "Everybody's getting introduced to
everybody else, and I've missed the whole thing! If they think I'm
going to stay down here and amuse them, and miss all the fun myself,
they are greatly mistaken." He made a mad rush for the front first row
of seats; but there was a cry of remonstrance from above, and, looking
up, he saw all of the men waving him back.
"Speech!" cried the young English Captain, applauding loudly, as though
welcoming an actor on his first entrance. "Hats off!" he cried. "Down
in front! Speech!"
"Confound that ass!" said Carlton, dropping back to the marble pavement
again, and gazing impotently up at the row of figures outlined against
the sky. "I must look like a bear in the bear-pit at the Zoo," he
growled. "They'll be throwing buns to me next." He could see the two
elder sisters talking to Mrs. Downs, who was evidently explaining his
purpose in going down to the stage of the theatre, and he could see the
Princess Aline bending forward, with both hands on her parasol, and
smiling. The captain made a trumpet of his hands, and asked why he
didn't begin.
"Hello! how are you?" Carlton called back, waving his hat at him in
some embarrassment. "I wonder if I look as much like a fool as I
feel?" he muttered.
"What did you say? We can't hear you," answered the captain.
"Louder! louder!" called the equerries. Carlton swore at them under
his breath, and turned and gazed round the hole in which he was penned
in order to make them believe that he had given up the idea of making a
speech, or had ever intended doing so. He tried to think of something
clever to shout back at them, and rejected "Ye men of Athens" as being
too flippant, and "Friends, Countrymen, Romans," as requiring too much
effort. When he looked up again the Hohenwalds were moving on their
way, and as he started once more to scale the side of the theatre the
Duke waved his hand at him in farewell, and gave another hand to his
sisters, who disappeared with him behind the edge of the upper row of
seats. Carlton turned at once and dropped into one of the marble
chairs and bowed his head. When he did reach the top Miss Morris held
out a sympathetic hand to him and shook her head sadly, but he could
see that she was pressing her lips tightly together to keep from
smiling.
"Oh, it's all very funny for you," he said, refusing her hand. "I
don't believe you are in love with anybody. You don't know what it
means."
They revisited the rock on the next day and on the day after, and then
left Athens for an inland excursion to stay overnight. Miss Morris
returned from it with the sense of having done her duty once, and by so
doing having earned the right to act as she pleased in the future.
What she best pleased to do was to wander about over the broad top of
the Acropolis, with no serious intent of studying its historical
values, but rather, as she explained it, for the simple satisfaction of
feeling that she was there. She liked to stand on the edge of the low
wall along its top and look out over the picture of sea and plain and
mountains that lay below her. The sun shone brightly, and the wind
swept by them as though they were on the bridge of an ocean steamer,
and there was the added invigorating sense of pleasure that comes to us
when we stand on a great height. Carlton was sitting at her feet,
shielded from the wind by a fallen column, and gazing up at her with
critical approval.
"You look like a sort of a 'Winged Victory' up there," he said, "with
the wind blowing your skirts about and your hair coming down."
"I don't remember that the 'Winged Victory' has any hair to blow
about," suggested Miss Morris.
"I'd like to paint you," continued Carlton, "just as you are standing
now, only I would put you in a Greek dress; and you could stand a Greek
dress better than almost any one I know. I would paint you with your
head up and one hand shielding your eyes, and the other pressed against
your breast. It would be stunning." He spoke enthusiastically, but in
quite an impersonal tone, as though he were discussing the posing of a
model.
Miss Morris jumped down from the low wall on which she had been
standing, and said, simply, "Of course I should like to have you paint
me very much."
Mrs. Downs looked up with interest to see if Mr. Carlton was serious.
"When?" said Carlton, vaguely. "Oh, I don't know. Of course this is
entirely too nice to last, and you will be going home soon, and then
when I do get back to the States you will--you will have other things
to do."
"Yes," repeated Miss Morris, "I shall have something else to do besides
gazing out at the AEgean Sea." She raised her head and looked across
the rock for a moment with some interest. Her eyes, which had grown
wistful, lighted again with amusement. "Here are your friends," she
said, smiling.
"No!" exclaimed Carlton, scrambling to his feet.
"Yes," said Miss Morris. "The Duke has seen us, and is coming over
here."
When Carlton had gained his feet and turned to look, his friends had
separated in different directions, and were strolling about alone or in
pairs among the great columns of the Parthenon. But the Duke came
directly towards them, and seated himself on a low block of marble in
front of the two ladies. After a word or two about the beauties of the
place, he asked if they would go to the reception which the King gave
to him on the day following. They answered that they should like to
come very much, and the Prince expressed his satisfaction, and said
that he would see that the chamberlain sent them invitations. "And
you, Mr. Carlton, you will come also, I hope. I wish you to be
presented to my sisters. They are only amateurs in art, but they are
great admirers of your work, and they have rebuked me for not having
already presented you. We were all disappointed," he continued,
courteously, "at not having you to dine with us that night in
Constantinople, but now I trust I shall see something of you here. You
must tell us what we are to admire."
"That is very easy," said Carlton. "Everything."
"You are quite right," said the Prince, bowing to the ladies as he
moved away. "It is all very beautiful."
"Well, now you certainly will meet her," said Miss Morris.
"Oh no, I won't," said Carlton, with resignation. "I have had two
chances and lost them, and I'll miss this one too."
"Well, there is a chance you shouldn't miss," said Miss Morris,
pointing and nodding her head. "There she is now, and all alone.
She's sketching, isn't she, or taking notes? What is she doing?"
Carlton looked eagerly in the direction Miss Morris had signified, and
saw the Princess Aline sitting at some distance from them, with a book
on her lap. She glanced up from this now and again to look at
something ahead of her, and was apparently deeply absorbed in her
occupation.
"There is your opportunity," said Mrs. Downs; "and we are going back to
the hotel. Shall we see you at luncheon?"
"Yes," said Carlton, "unless I get a position as drawing-master; in
that case I shall be here teaching the three amateurs in art. Do you
think I can do it?" he asked Miss Morris.
"Decidedly," she answered. "I have found you a most educational young
person."
They went away together, and Carlton moved cautiously towards the spot
where the Princess was sitting. He made a long and roundabout detour
as he did so, in order to keep himself behind her. He did not mean to
come so near that she would see him, but he took a certain satisfaction
in looking at her when she was alone, though her loneliness was only a
matter of the moment, and though he knew that her people were within a
hundred yards of her. He was in consequence somewhat annoyed and
surprised to see another young man dodging in and out among the pillars
of the Parthenon immediately ahead of him, and to find that this young
man also had his attention centred on the young girl, who sat
unconsciously sketching in the foreground.
"Now what the devil can he want?" muttered Carlton, his imagination
taking alarm at once. "If it would only prove to be some one who meant
harm to her," he thought--"a brigand, or a beggar, who might be
obligingly insolent, or even a tipsy man, what a chance it would afford
for heroic action!"
With this hope he moved forward quickly but silently, hoping that the
stranger might prove even to be an anarchist with a grudge against
royalty. And as he advanced he had the satisfaction of seeing the
Princess glance over her shoulder, and, observing the man, rise and
walk quickly away towards the edge of the rock. There she seated
herself with her face towards the city, and with her back firmly set
against her pursuer.
"He is annoying her!" exclaimed Carlton, delightedly, as he hurried
forward. "It looks as though my chance had come at last." But as he
approached the stranger he saw, to his great disappointment, that he
had nothing more serious to deal with than one of the international
army of amateur photographers, who had been stalking the Princess as a
hunter follows an elk, or as he would have stalked a race-horse or a
prominent politician, or a Lord Mayor's show, everything being fish
that came within the focus of his camera. A helpless statue and an
equally helpless young girl were both good subjects and at his mercy.
He was bending over, with an anxious expression of countenance, and
focussing his camera on the back of the Princess Aline, when Carlton
approached from the rear. As the young man put his finger on the
button of the camera, Carlton jogged his arm with his elbow, and pushed
the enthusiastic tourist to one side.
"Say," exclaimed that individual, "look where you're going, will you?
You spoiled that plate."
"I'll spoil your camera if you annoy that young lady any longer," said
Carlton, in a low voice.
The photographer was rapidly rewinding his roll, and the fire of
pursuit was still in his eye.
"She's a Princess," he explained, in an excited whisper.
"Well," said Carlton, "even a Princess is entitled to some
consideration. Besides," he said, in a more amicable tone, "you
haven't a permit to photograph on the Acropolis. You know you
haven't." Carlton was quite sure of this, because there were no such
permits.
The amateur looked up in some dismay. "I didn't know you had to have
them," he said. "Where can I get one?"
"The King may give you one," said Carlton. "He lives at the palace.
If they catch you up here without a license, they will confiscate your
camera and lock you up. You had better vanish before they see you."
"Thank you. I will," said the tourist, anxiously.
"Now," thought Carlton, smiling pleasantly, "when he goes to the palace
with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a
dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest
in photography will have sustained a severe shock."
As Carlton turned from watching the rapid flight of the photographer,
he observed that the Princess had remarked it also, as she had no doubt
been a witness of what had passed, even if she had not overheard all
that had been said. She rose from her enforced position of refuge with
a look of relief, and came directly towards Carlton along the rough
path that led through the debris on the top of the Acropolis. Carlton
had thought, as he watched her sitting on the wall, with her chin
resting on her hand, that she would make a beautiful companion picture
to the one he had wished to paint of Miss Morris--the one girl standing
upright, looking fearlessly out to sea, on the top of the low wall,
with the wind blowing her skirts about her, and her hair tumbled in the
breeze, and the other seated, bending intently forward, as though
watching for the return of a long-delayed vessel; a beautifully sad
face, fine and delicate and noble, the face of a girl on the figure of
a woman. And when she rose he made no effort to move away, or, indeed,
to pretend not to have seen her, but stood looking at her as though he
had the right to do so, and as though she must know he had that right.
As she came towards him the Princess Aline did not stop, nor even
shorten her steps; but as she passed opposite to him she bowed her
thanks with a sweet impersonal smile and a dropping of the eyes, and
continued steadily on her way.
Carlton stood for some short time looking after her, with his hat still
at his side. She seemed farther from him at that moment than she had
ever been before, although she had for the first time recognized him.
But he knew that it was only as a human being that she had recognized
him. He put on his hat, and sat down on a rock with his elbows on his
knees, and filled his pipe.
"If that had been any other girl," he thought, "I would have gone up to
her and said, 'Was that man annoying you?' and she would have said,
'Yes; thank you,' or something; and I would have walked along with her
until we had come up to her friends, and she would have told them I had
been of some slight service to her, and they would have introduced us,
and all would have gone well. But because she is a Princess she cannot
be approached in that way. At least she does not think so, and I have
to act as she has been told I should act, and not as I think I should.
After all, she is only a very beautiful girl, and she must be very
tired of her cousins and grandmothers, and of not being allowed to see
any one else. These royalties make a very picturesque show for the
rest of us, but indeed it seems rather hard on them. A hundred years
from now there will be no more kings and queens, and the writers of
that day will envy us, just as the writers of this day envy the men who
wrote of chivalry and tournaments, and they will have to choose their
heroes from bank presidents, and their heroines from lady lawyers and
girl politicians and type-writers. What a stupid world it will be
then!"
The next day brought the reception to the Hohenwalds; and Carlton,
entering the reading-room of the hotel on the same afternoon, found
Miss Morris and her aunt there together taking tea. They both looked
at him with expressions of such genuine commiseration that he stopped
just as he was going to seat himself and eyed them defiantly.
"Don't tell me," he exclaimed, "that this has fallen through too!"
Miss Morris nodded her head silently.
Carlton dropped into the chair beside them, and folded his arms with a
frown of grim resignation. "What is it?" he asked. "Have they
postponed the reception?"
"No," Miss Morris said; "but the Princess Aline will not be there."
"Of course not," said Carlton, calmly, "of course not. May I ask why?
I knew that she wouldn't be there, but I may possibly be allowed to
express some curiosity."
"She turned her ankle on one of the loose stones on the Acropolis this
afternoon," said Miss Morris, "and sprained it so badly that they had
to carry her--"
"Who carried her?" Carlton demanded, fiercely.
"Some of her servants."
"Of course, of course!" cried Carlton. "That's the way it always will
be. I was there the whole afternoon, and I didn't see her. I wasn't
there to help her. It's Fate, that's what it is--Fate! There's no use
in my trying to fight against Fate. Still," he added, anxiously, with
a sudden access of hope, "she may be well by this evening."
"I hardly think she will," said Miss Morris, "but we will trust so."
The King's palace and gardens stretch along one end of the public park,
and are but just across the street from the hotel where the Hohenwalds
and the Americans were staying. As the hotel was the first building on
the left of the square, Carlton could see from his windows the
illuminations, and the guards of honor, and the carriages arriving and
departing, and the citizens of Athens crowding the parks and peering
through the iron rails into the King's garden. It was a warm night,
and lighted grandly by a full moon that showed the Acropolis in
silhouette against the sky, and gave a strangely theatrical look to the
yellow house fronts and red roofs of the town. Every window in the
broad front of the palace was illuminated, and through the open doors
came the sound of music, and one without could see rows of tall
servants in the King's blue and white livery, and the men of his guard
in their white petticoats and black and white jackets and red caps.
Carlton pulled a light coat over his evening dress, and, with an
agitation he could hardly explain, walked across the street and entered
the palace. The line of royalties had broken by the time he reached
the ballroom, and the not over-severe etiquette of the Greek court left
him free, after a bow to those who still waited to receive it, to move
about as he pleased. His most earnest desire was to learn whether or
not the Princess Aline was present, and with that end he clutched the
English adjutant as that gentleman was hurrying past him, and asked
eagerly if the Princess had recovered from her accident.
"No," said the officer; "she's able to walk about, but not to stand,
and sit out a dinner, and dance, and all this sort of thing. Too bad,
wasn't it?"