The Princess Aline Part 5

"It sounds very mysterious," said Carlton smiling; "and I am afraid I cannot help you. What work I did in Germany was sold in Berlin before I left, and in a year may have changed hands several times. The studies of which you speak are unimportant, and merely studies, and could pa.s.s from hand to hand without much record having been kept of them; but personally I am not able to give you any information which would a.s.sist you in tracing them."

"Yes," said the Duke. "Well, then, I shall keep them until I can learn more; and if we can learn nothing, I shall return them to the dealer."

Carlton met Miss Morris that afternoon in a state of great excitement.

"It's come!" he cried--"it's come! I am to meet her this week. I have met her brother, and he has asked me to dine with them on Thursday night; that's the day before they leave for Athens; and he particularly mentioned that his sisters would be at the dinner, and that it would be a pleasure to present me. It seems that the eldest paints, and all of them love art for art's sake, as their father taught them to do; and, for all we know, he may make me court painter, and I shall spend the rest of my life at Gra.s.se painting portraits of the Princess Aline, at the age of twenty-two, and at all future ages. And if he does give me a commission to paint her, I can tell you now in confidence that that picture will require more sittings than any other picture ever painted by man. Her hair will have turned white by the time it is finished, and the gown she started to pose in will have become forty years behind the fas.h.i.+on!"

On the morning following, Carlton and Mrs. Downs and her niece, with all the tourists in Constantinople, were placed in open carriages by their dragomans, and driven in a long procession to the Seraglio to see the Sultan's treasures. Those of them who had waited two weeks for this chance looked aggrieved at the more fortunate who had come at the eleventh hour on the last night's steamer, and seemed to think these latter had attained the privilege without sufficient effort. The ministers of the different legations--as is the harmless custom of such gentlemen--had impressed every one for whom they had obtained permission to see the treasures with the great importance of the service rendered, and had succeeded in making every one feel either especially honored or especially uncomfortable at having given them so much trouble. This sense of obligation, and the fact that the dragomans had a.s.sured the tourists that they were for the time being the guests of the Sultan, awed and depressed most of the visitors to such an extent that their manner in the long procession of carriages suggested a funeral cortege, with the Hohenwalds in front, escorted by Beys and Pashas, as chief mourners. The procession halted at the palace, and the guests of the Sultan were received by numerous effendis in single-b.u.t.ton frock-coats and freshly ironed fezzes, who served them with gla.s.ses of water, and a huge bowl of some sweet stuff, of which every one was supposed to take a spoonful. There was at first a general fear among the Cook's tourists that there would not be enough of this to go round, which was succeeded by a greater anxiety lest they should be served twice. Some of the tourists put the sweet stuff in their mouths direct and licked the spoon, and others dropped it off the spoon into the gla.s.s of water, and stirred it about and sipped at it, and no one knew who had done the right thing, not even those who happened to have done it. Carlton and Miss Morris went out on to the terrace while this ceremony was going forward, and looked out over the great panorama of waters, with the Sea of Marmora on one side, the Golden Horn on the other, and the Bosporus at their feet. The sun was s.h.i.+ning mildly, and the waters were stirred by great and little vessels; before them on the opposite bank rose the dark green cypresses which marked the grim cemetery of England's dead, and behind them were the great turtle-backed mosques and pencil-like minarets of the two cities, and close at hand the mosaic walls and beautiful gardens of Constantine.

"Your friends the Hohenwalds don't seem to know you this morning," she said.

"Oh yes; he spoke to me as we left the hotel," Carlton answered. "But they are on parade at present. There are a lot of their countrymen among the tourists."

"I feel rather sorry for them," Miss Morris said, looking at the group with an amused smile. "Etiquette cuts them off from so much innocent amus.e.m.e.nt. Now, you are a gentleman, and the Duke presumably is, and why should you not go over and say, 'Your Highness, I wish you would present me to your sister, whom I am to meet at dinner to-morrow night.

I admire her very much,' and then you could point out the historical features to her, and show her where they have finished off a blue and green tiled wall with a rusty tin roof, and make pretty speeches to her. It wouldn't hurt her, and it would do you a lot of good. The simplest way is always the best way, it seems to me."

"Oh yes, of course," said Carlton. "Suppose he came over here and 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 pa.s.s by Abydos, on the way to Athens, you will see where Leander swam the h.e.l.lespont 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 sh.o.r.es 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"'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 embarra.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 pa.s.sed 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 was.h.i.+ng up over the stones on either sh.o.r.e, and the m.u.f.fled beat of the engines echoed back from either side of the valley through which they pa.s.sed. There was a great lantern hanging midway from the mast, and s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sionate 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.