arm, and dropped back among the men grouped about the doorway. His
disappointment was very keen. Indeed, he had not known how much this
meeting with the Princess had meant to him until he experienced this
disappointment, which was succeeded by a wish to find Miss Morris, and
have her sympathize and laugh with him. He became conscious, as he
searched with growing impatience the faces of those passing and
repassing before him, of how much the habit of going to Miss Morris for
sympathy in his unlucky love-affair had grown of late upon him. He
wondered what he would have done in his travels without her, and
whether he should have had the interest to carry on his pursuit had she
not been there to urge him on, and to mock at him when he grew
fainthearted.
But when he finally did discover her he stood quite still, and for an
instant doubted if it were she. The girl he saw seemed to be a more
beautiful sister of the Miss Morris he knew--a taller, fairer, and more
radiant personage; and he feared that it was not she, until he
remembered that this was the first time he had ever seen her with her
hair dressed high upon her head, and in the more distinguished
accessories of a décolleté gown and train. Miss Morris had her hand on
the arm of one of the equerries, who was battling good-naturedly with
the crowd, and trying to draw her away from two persistent youths in
diplomatic uniform who were laughing and pressing forward in close
pursuit on the other side. Carlton approached her with a certain
feeling of diffidence, which was most unusual to him, and asked if she
were dancing.
"Mr. Carlton shall decide for me," Miss Morris said, dropping the
equerry's arm and standing beside the American. "I have promised all
of these gentlemen," she explained, "to dance with them, and now they
won't agree as to which is to dance first. They've wasted half this
waltz already in discussing it, and they make it much more difficult by
saying that no matter how I decide, they will fight duels with the one
I choose, which is most unpleasant for me."
"Most unpleasant for the gentleman you choose, too," suggested Carlton.
"So," continued Miss Morris, "I have decided to leave it to you."
"Well, if I am to arbitrate between the powers," said Carlton, with a
glance at the three uniforms, "my decision is that as they insist on
fighting duels in any event, you had better dance with me until they
have settled it between them, and then the survivor can have the next
dance."
"That's a very good idea," said Miss Morris; and taking Carlton's arm,
she bowed to the three men and drew away.
"Mr. Carlton," said the equerry, with a bow, "has added another
argument in favor of maintaining standing armies, and of not submitting
questions to arbitration."
"Let's get out of this," said Carlton. "You don't want to dance, do
you? Let us go where it's cool."
He led her down the stairs, and out on to the terrace. They did not
speak again until they had left it, and were walking under the trees in
the Queen's garden. He had noticed as they made their way through the
crowd how the men and women turned to look at her and made way for her,
and how utterly unconscious she was of their doing so, with that
unconsciousness which comes from familiarity with such discrimination,
and Carlton himself held his head a little higher with the pride and
pleasure the thought gave him that he was in such friendly sympathy
with so beautiful a creature. He stopped before a low stone bench that
stood on the edge of the path, surrounded by a screen of tropical
trees, and guarded by a marble statue. They were in deep shadow
themselves, but the moonlight fell on the path at their feet, and
through the trees on the other side of the path they could see the open
terrace of the palace, with the dancers moving in and out of the
lighted windows. The splash of a fountain came from some short
distance behind them, and from time to time they heard the strains of a
regimental band alternating with the softer strains of a waltz played
by a group of Hungarian musicians. For a moment neither of them spoke,
but sat watching the white dresses of the women and the uniforms of the
men moving in and out among the trees, lighted by the lanterns hanging
from the branches, and the white mist of the moon.
"Do you know," said Carlton, "I'm rather afraid of you to-night!" He
paused, and watched her for a little time as she sat upright, with her
hands folded on her lap.
"You are so very resplendent and queenly and altogether different," he
added. The girl moved her bare shoulders slightly and leaned back
against the bench.
"The Princess did not come," she said.
"No," Carlton answered, with a sudden twinge of conscience at having
forgotten that fact. "That's one of the reasons I took you away from
those men," he explained. "I wanted you to sympathize with me."
Miss Morris did not answer him at once. She did not seem to be in a
sympathetic mood. Her manner suggested rather that she was tired and
troubled.
"I need sympathy myself to-night," she said. "We received a letter
after dinner that brought bad news for us. We must go home at once."
"Bad news!" exclaimed Carlton, with much concern. "From home?"
"Yes, from home," she replied; "but there is nothing wrong there; it is
only bad news for us. My sister has decided to be married in June
instead of July, and that cuts us out of a month on the Continent.
That's all. We shall have to leave immediately--tomorrow. It seems
that Mr. Abbey is able to go away sooner than he had hoped, and they
are to be married on the first."
"Mr. Abbey!" exclaimed Carlton, catching at the name. "But your sister
isn't going to marry him, is she?"
Miss Morris turned her head in some surprise. "Yes--why not?" she said.
"But I say!" cried Carlton, "I thought your aunt told me that YOU were
going to marry Abbey; she told me so that day on the steamer when he
came to see you off."
"I marry him--my aunt told you--impossible!" said Miss Morris, smiling.
"She probably said that 'her niece' was going to marry him; she meant
my sister. They had been engaged some time."
"Then who are YOU going to marry?" stammered Carlton.
"I am not going to marry any one," said Miss Morris.
Carlton stared at her blankly in amazement. "Well, that's most
absurd!" he exclaimed.
He recognized instantly that the expression was hardly adequate, but he
could not readjust his mind so suddenly to the new idea, and he
remained looking at her with many confused memories rushing through his
brain. A dozen questions were on his tongue. He remembered afterwards
how he had noticed a servant trimming the candle in one of the
orange-colored lanterns, and that he had watched him as he disappeared
among the palms.
The silence lasted for so long a time that it had taken on a
significance in itself which Carlton recognized. He pulled himself up
with a short laugh. "Well," he remonstrated, mirthlessly, "I don't
think you've treated ME very well."
"How, not treated you very well?" Miss Morris asked, settling herself
more easily. She had been sitting during the pause which followed
Carlton's discovery with a certain rigidity, as if she was on a strain
of attention. But her tone was now as friendly as always, and held its
customary suggestion of amusement. Carlton took his tone from it,
although his mind was still busily occupied with incidents and words of
hers that she had spoken in their past intercourse.
"Not fair in letting me think you were engaged," he said. "I've wasted
so much time: I'm not half civil enough to engaged girls," he
explained.
"You've been quite civil enough to us," said Miss Morris, "as a
courier, philosopher, and friend. I'm very sorry we have to part
company."
"Part company!" exclaimed Carlton, in sudden alarm. "But, I say, we
mustn't do that."
"But we must, you see," said Miss Morris. "We must go back for the
wedding, and you will have to follow the Princess Aline."
"Yes, of course," Carlton heard his own voice say. "I had forgotten
the Princess Aline." But he was not thinking of what he was saying,
nor of the Princess Aline. He was thinking of the many hours Miss
Morris and he had been together, of the way she had looked at certain
times, and of how he had caught himself watching her at others; how he
had pictured the absent Mr. Abbey travelling with her later over the
same route, and without a chaperon, sitting close at her side or
holding her hand, and telling her just how pretty she was whenever he
wished to do so, and without any fear of the consequences. He
remembered how ready she had been to understand what he was going to
say before he had finished saying it, and how she had always made him
show the best of himself, and had caused him to leave unsaid many
things that became common and unworthy when considered in the light of
her judgment. He recalled how impatient he had been when she was late
at dinner, and how cross he was throughout one whole day when she had
kept her room. He felt with a sudden shock of delightful fear that he
had grown to depend upon her, that she was the best companion he had
ever known; and he remembered moments when they had been alone together
at the table, or in some old palace, or during a long walk, when they
had seemed to have the whole world entirely to themselves, and how he
had consoled himself at such times with the thought that no matter how
long she might be Abbey's wife, there had been these moments in her
life which were his, with which Abbey had had nothing to do.
Carlton turned and looked at her with strange wide-open eyes, as though
he saw her for the first time. He felt so sure of himself and of his
love for her that the happiness of it made him tremble, and the thought
that if he spoke she might answer him in the old, friendly, mocking
tone of good-fellowship filled him with alarm. At that moment it
seemed to Carlton that the most natural thing in the world for them to
do would be to go back again together over the road they had come,
seeing everything in the new light of his love for her, and so travel
on and on for ever over the world, learning to love each other more and
more each succeeding day, and leaving the rest of the universe to move
along without them.
He leaned forward with his arm along the back of the bench, and bent
his face towards hers. Her hand lay at her side, and his own closed
over it, but the shock that the touch of her fingers gave him stopped
and confused the words upon his tongue. He looked strangely at her,
and could not find the speech he needed.
Miss Morris gave his hand a firm, friendly little pressure and drew her
own away, as if he had taken hers only in an exuberance of good feeling.
"You have been very nice to us," she said, with an effort to make her
tone sound kindly and approving. "And we--"
"You mustn't go; I can't let you go," said Carlton, hoarsely. There
was no mistaking his tone or his earnestness now. "IF you go," he went
on, breathlessly, "I must go with you."
The girl moved restlessly; she leaned forward, and drew in her breath
with a slight, nervous tremor. Then she turned and faced him, almost
as though she were afraid of him or of herself, and they sat so for an
instant in silence. The air seemed to have grown close and heavy, and
Carlton saw her dimly. In the silence he heard the splash of the
fountain behind them, and the rustling of the leaves in the night wind,
and the low, sighing murmur of a waltz.
He raised his head to listen, and she saw in the moonlight that he was
smiling. It was as though he wished to delay any answer she might make
to his last words.
"That is the waltz," he said, still speaking in a whisper, "that the
gypsies played that night--" He stopped, and Miss Morris answered him
by bending her head slowly in assent. It seemed to be an effort for
her to even make that slight gesture.
"YOU don't remember it," said Carlton. "It meant nothing to you. I
mean that night on the steamer when I told you what love meant to other
people. What a fool I was!" he said, with an uncertain laugh.
"Yes, I remember it," she said--"last Thursday night, on the steamer."
"Thursday night!" exclaimed Carlton, indignantly. "Wednesday night,
Tuesday night, how should I know what night of the week it was? It was
the night of my life to me. That night I knew that I loved you as I
had never hoped to care for any one in this world. When I told you
that I did not know what love meant I felt all the time that I was
lying. I knew that I loved you, and that I could never love any one
else, and that I had never loved any one before; and if I had thought
then you could care for me, your engagement or your promises would
never have stopped my telling you so. You said that night that I would
learn to love all the better, and more truly, for having doubted myself
so long, and, oh, Edith," he cried, taking both her hands and holding
them close in his own, "I cannot let you go now! I love you so! Don't
laugh at me; don't mock at me. All the rest of my life depends on you."
And then Miss Morris laughed softly, just as he had begged her not to
do, but her laughter was so full of happiness, and came so gently and
sweetly, and spoke so truly of content, that though he let go of her
hands with one of his, it was only that he might draw her to him, until
her face touched his, and she felt the strength of his arm as he held
her against his breast.
The Hohenwalds occupied the suite of rooms on the first floor of the
hotel, with the privilege of using the broad balcony that reached out
from it over the front entrance. And at the time when Mrs. Downs and
Edith Morris and Carlton drove up to the hotel from the ball, the
Princess Aline was leaning over the balcony and watching the lights go
out in the upper part of the house, and the moonlight as it fell on the
trees and statues in the public park below. Her foot was still in
bandages, and she was wrapped in a long cloak to keep her from the
cold. Inside of the open windows that led out on to the balcony her
sisters were taking off their ornaments, and discussing the incidents
of the night just over.
The Princess Aline, unnoticed by those below, saw Carlton help Mrs.
Downs to alight from the carriage, and then give his hand to another
muffled figure that followed her; and while Mrs. Downs was ascending
the steps, and before the second muffled figure had left the shadow of
the carriage and stepped into the moonlight, the Princess Aline saw
Carlton draw her suddenly back and kiss her lightly on the cheek, and
heard a protesting gasp, and saw Miss Morris pull her cloak over her
head and run up the steps. Then she saw Carlton shake hands with them,
and stand for a moment after they had disappeared, gazing up at the
moon and fumbling in the pockets of his coat. He drew out a cigar-case
and leisurely selected a cigar, and with much apparent content lighted
it, and then, with his head, thrown back and his chest expanded, as
though he were challenging the world, he strolled across the street and
disappeared among the shadows of the deserted park.
The Princess walked back to one of the open windows, and stood there
leaning against the side. "That young Mr. Carlton, the artist," she
said to her sisters, "is engaged to that beautiful American girl we met
the other day."
"Really!" said the elder sister. "I thought it was probable. Who told
you?"
"I saw him kiss her good-night," said the Princess, stepping into the
window, "as they got out of their carriage just now."
The Princess Aline stood for a moment looking thoughtfully at the
floor, and then walked across the room to a little writing-desk. She
unlocked a drawer in this and took from it two slips of paper, which
she folded in her hand. Then she returned slowly across the room, and
stepped out again on to the balcony.
One of the pieces of paper held the picture Carlton had drawn of her,
and under which he had written: "This is she. Do you wonder I
travelled four thousand miles to see her?" And the other was the
picture of Carlton himself, which she had cut out of the catalogue of
the Salon.
From the edge of the balcony where the Princess stood she could see the
glimmer of Carlton's white linen and the red glow of his cigar as he
strode proudly up and down the path of the public park, like a sentry
keeping watch. She folded the pieces of paper together and tore them
slowly into tiny fragments, and let them fall through her fingers into
the street below. Then she returned again to the room, and stood
looking at her sisters.
"Do you know," she said, "I think I am a little tired of travelling so
much. I want to go back to Grasse." She put her hand to her, forehead
and held it there for a moment. "I think I am a little homesick," said
the Princess Aline.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Princess Aline, by Richard Harding Davis