“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 light-house, 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 toward which he had looked with such
pleasurable anticipations and loverlike 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 staterooms 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
bazaars 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 toward
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 Piræus 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 cafés, 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.
“It has been there for a long time now,” suggested Carlton, “and I 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 toward 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.”