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 woman 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
bridemaids 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 in to 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 (régnante) 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 “Sœurs” he read:
“4. _Psse Aline._—Victoria-Beatrix-Louise-Helene, Alt. Gr.-Duc. Née à
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 depose 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 good-by. 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 embyro 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.”