The Princess Aline Part 4

"And did you notice that they all faced only one way?"

Carlton laughed, and nodded again. "Towards Germany," he said.

By the next day they had left the tall poplars and white roads behind them, and were crossing the land of low shiny black helmets and bra.s.s spikes. They had come into a country of low mountains and black forests, with old fortified castles topping the hills, and with red-roofed villages scattered around the base.

"How very military it all is!" Mrs. Downs said. "Even the men at the lonely little stations in the forests wear uniforms; and do you notice how each of them rolls up his red flag and holds it like a sword, and salutes the train as it pa.s.ses?"

They spent the hour during which the train shifted from one station in Vienna to the other driving about in an open carriage, and stopped for a few moments in front of a cafe to drink beer and to feel solid earth under them again, returning to the train with a feeling which was almost that of getting back to their own rooms. Then they came to great steppes covered with long thick gra.s.s, and flooded in places with little lakes of broken ice; great horned cattle stood knee-deep in this gra.s.s, and at the villages and way-stations were people wearing sheepskin jackets and waistcoats covered with silver b.u.t.tons. In one place there was a wedding procession waiting for the train to pa.s.s, with the friends of the bride and groom in their best clothes, the women with silver breastplates, and boots to their knees. It seemed hardly possible that only two days before they had seen another wedding party in the Champs Elysees, where the men wore evening dress, and the women were bareheaded and with long trains. In forty-eight hours they had pa.s.sed through republics, princ.i.p.alities, empires, and kingdoms, and from spring to winter. It was like walking rapidly over a painted panorama of Europe.

On the second evening Carlton went off into the smoking-car alone. The Duke of Hohenwald and two of his friends had finished a late supper, and were seated in the apartment adjoining it. The Duke was a young man with a heavy beard and eyegla.s.ses. He was looking over an ill.u.s.trated catalogue of the Salon, and as Carlton dropped on the sofa opposite the Duke raised his head and looked at him curiously, and then turned over several pages of the catalogue and studied one of them, and then back at Carlton, as though he were comparing him with something on the page before him. Carlton was looking out at the night, but he could follow what was going forward, as it was reflected in the gla.s.s of the car window. He saw the Duke hand the catalogue to one of the equerries, who raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in a.s.sent.

Carlton wondered what this might mean, until he remembered that there was a portrait of himself by a French artist in the Salon, and concluded it had been reproduced in the catalogue. He could think of nothing else which would explain the interest the two men showed in him. On the morning following he sent Nolan out to purchase a catalogue at the first station at which they stopped, and found that his guess was a correct one. A portrait of himself had been reproduced in black and white, with his name below it.

"Well, they know who I am now," he said to Miss Morris, "even if they don't know me. That honor is still in store for them."

"I wish they did not lock themselves up so tightly," said Miss Morris.

"I want to see her very much. Cannot we walk up and down the platform at the next station? She may be at the window."

"Of course," said Carlton. "You could have seen her at Buda-Pesth if you had spoken of it. She was walking up and down then. The next time the train stops we will prowl up and down and feast our eyes upon her."

But Miss Morris had her wish gratified without that exertion. The Hohenwalds were served in the dining-car after the other pa.s.sengers had finished, and were in consequence only to be seen when they pa.s.sed by the doors of the other compartments. But this same morning, after luncheon, the three Princesses, instead of returning to their own car, seated themselves in the compartment adjoining the dining-car, while the men of their party lit their cigars and sat in a circle around them.

"I was wondering how long they could stand three men smoking in one of the boxes they call cars," said Mrs. Downs. She was seated between Miss Morris and Carlton, directly opposite the Hohenwalds, and so near them that she had to speak in a whisper. To avoid doing this Miss Morris asked Carlton for a pencil, and scribbled with it in the novel she held on her lap. Then she pa.s.sed them both back to him, and said, aloud: "Have you read this? It has such a pretty dedication." The dedication read, "Which is Aline?" And Carlton, taking the pencil in his turn, made a rapid sketch of her on the fly-leaf, and wrote beneath it: "This is she. Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to see her?"

Miss Morris took the book again, and glanced at the sketch, and then at the three Princesses, and nodded her head. "It is very beautiful," she said, gravely, looking out at the pa.s.sing landscape.

"Well, not beautiful exactly," answered Carlton, surveying the hills critically, "but certainly very attractive. It is worth travelling a long way to see, and I should think one would grow very fond of it."

Miss Morris tore the fly-leaf out of the book, and slipped it between the pages. "May I keep it?" she said. Carlton nodded. "And will you sign it?" she asked, smiling. Carlton shrugged his shoulders, and laughed. "If you wish it," he answered.

The Princess wore a gray cheviot travelling dress, as did her sisters, and a gray Alpine hat. She was leaning back, talking to the English captain who accompanied them, and laughing. Carlton thought he had never seen a woman who appealed so strongly to every taste of which he was possessed. She seemed so sure of herself, so alert, and yet so gracious, so easily entertained, and yet, when she turned her eyes towards the strange, dismal landscape, so seriously intent upon its sad beauty. The English captain dropped his head, and with the pretence of pulling at his mustache, covered his mouth as he spoke to her. When he had finished he gazed consciously at the roof of the car, and she kept her eyes fixed steadily at the object towards which they had turned when he had ceased speaking, and then, after a decent pause, turned her eyes, as Carlton knew she would, towards him.

"He was telling her who I am," he thought, "and about the picture in the catalogue."

In a few moments she turned to her sister and spoke to her, pointing out at something in the scenery, and the same pantomime was repeated, and again with the third sister.

"Did you see those girls talking about you, Mr. Carlton?" Miss Morris asked, after they had left the car.

Carlton said it looked as though they were.

"Of course they were," said Miss Morris.

"That Englishman told the Princess Aline something about you, and then she told her sister, and she told the eldest one. It would be nice if they inherit their father's interest in painting, wouldn't it?"

"I would rather have it degenerate into an interest in painters myself," said Carlton.

Miss Morris discovered, after she had returned to her own car, that she had left the novel where she had been sitting, and Carlton sent Nolan back for it. It had slipped to the floor, and the fly-leaf upon which Carlton had sketched the Princess Aline was lying face down beside it.

Nolan picked up the leaf, and saw the picture, and read the inscription below: "This is she. Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to see her?"

He handed the book to Miss Morris, and was backing out of the compartment, when she stopped him.

"There was a loose page in this, Nolan," she said. "It's gone; did you see it?"

"A loose page, miss?" said Nolan, with some concern. "Oh, yes, miss; I was going to tell you; there was a sc.r.a.p of paper blew away when I was pa.s.sing between the carriages. Was it something you wanted, miss?"

"Something I wanted!" exclaimed Miss Morris, in dismay.

Carlton laughed easily. "It is just as well I didn't sign it, after all," he said. "I don't want to proclaim my devotion to any Hungarian gypsy who happens to read English."

"You must draw me another, as a souvenir," Miss Morris said.

Nolan continued on through the length of the car until he had reached the one occupied by the Hohenwalds, where he waited on the platform until the English maidservant saw him and came to the door of the carriage.

"What hotel are your people going to stop at in Constantinople?" Nolan asked.

"The Grande-Bretagne, I think," she answered.

"That's right," said Nolan, approvingly. "That's the one we are going to. I thought I would come and tell you about it. And, by-the-way,"

he said, "here's a picture somebody's made of your Princess Aline. She dropped it, and I picked it up. You had better give it back to her.

Well," he added, politely, "I'm glad you are coming to our hotel in Constantinople; it's pleasant having some one to talk to who can speak your own tongue."

The girl returned to the car, and left Nolan alone upon the platform.

He exhaled a long breath of suppressed excitement, and then gazed around nervously upon the empty landscape.

"I fancy that's going to hurry things up a bit," he murmured, with an anxious smile; "he'd never get along at all if it wasn't for me."

For reasons possibly best understood by the German amba.s.sador, the state of the Hohenwalds at Constantinople differed greatly from that which had obtained at the French capital. They no longer came and went as they wished, or wandered through the show-places of the city like ordinary tourists. There was, on the contrary, not only a change in their manner towards others, but there was an insistence on their part of a difference in the att.i.tude of others towards themselves. This showed itself in the reserving of the half of the hotel for their use, and in the haughty bearing of the equerries, who appeared unexpectedly in magnificent uniforms. The visitors' book was covered with the autographs of all of the important people in the Turkish capital, and the Sultan's carriages stood constantly before the door of the hotel, awaiting their pleasure, until they became as familiar a sight as the street dogs, or as cabs in a hansom-cab rank.

And in following out the programme which had been laid down for her, the Princess Aline became even less accessible to Carlton than before, and he grew desperate and despondent.

"If the worst comes," he said to Miss Morris, "I shall tell Nolan to give an alarm of fire some night, and then I will run in and rescue her before they find out there is no fire. Or he might frighten the horses some day, and give me a chance to stop them. We might even wait until we reach Greece, and have her carried off by brigands, who would only give her up to me."

"There are no more brigands in Greece," said Miss Morris; "and besides, why do you suppose they would only give her up to you?"

"Because they would be imitation brigands," said Carlton, "and would be paid to give her up to no one else."

"Oh, you plan very well," scoffed Miss Morris, "but you don't DO anything."

Carlton was saved the necessity of doing anything that same morning, when the English captain in attendance on the Duke sent his card to Carlton's room. He came, he explained, to present the Prince's compliments, and would it be convenient for Mr. Carlton to meet the Duke that afternoon? Mr. Carlton suppressed an unseemly desire to shout, and said, after a moment's consideration, that it would. He then took the English captain down stairs to the smoking-room, and rewarded him for his agreeable message.

The Duke received Carlton in the afternoon, and greeted him most cordially, and with as much ease of manner as it is possible for a man to possess who has never enjoyed the benefits of meeting other men on an equal footing. He expressed his pleasure in knowing an artist with whose work he was so familiar, and congratulated himself on the happy accident which had brought them both to the same hotel.

"I have more than a natural interest in meeting you," said the Prince, "and for a reason which you may or may not know. I thought possibly you could help me somewhat. I have within the past few days come into the possession of two of your paintings; they are studies, rather, but to me they are even more desirable than the finished work; and I am not correct in saying that they have come to me exactly, but to my sister, the Princess Aline."

Carlton could not withhold a certain start of surprise. He had not expected that his gift would so soon have arrived, but his face showed only polite attention.

"The studies were delivered to us in London," continued the Duke.

"They are of Ludwig the tragedian, and of the German Prime Minister, two most valuable works, and especially interesting to us. They came without any note or message which would inform us who had sent them, and when my people made inquiries, the dealer refused to tell them from whom they had come. He had been ordered to forward them to Gra.s.se, but, on learning of our presence in London, sent them direct to our hotel there. Of course it is embarra.s.sing to have so valuable a present from an anonymous friend, especially so for my sister, to whom they were addressed, and I thought that, besides the pleasure of meeting one of whose genius I am so warm an admirer, I might also learn something which would enable me to discover who our friend may be." He paused, but as Carlton said nothing, continued: "As it is now, I do not feel that I can accept the pictures; and yet I know no one to whom they can be returned, unless I send them to the dealer."