The Princess Aline.
by Richard Harding Davis.
I
H. R. H. the Princess Aline of Hohenwald came into the life of Morton Carlton--or "Morney" Carlton, as men called him--of New York city, when that young gentleman"s affairs and affections were best suited to receive her. Had she made her appearance three years sooner or three years later, it is quite probable that she would have pa.s.sed on out of his life with no more recognition from him than would have been expressed in a look of admiring curiosity.
But coming when she did, when his time and heart were both unoccupied, she had an influence upon young Mr. Carlton which led him into doing several wise and many foolish things, and which remained with him always. Carlton had reached a point in his life, and very early in his life, when he could afford to sit at ease and look back with modest satisfaction to what he had forced himself to do, and forward with pleasurable antic.i.p.ations to whatsoever he might choose to do in the future. The world had appreciated what he had done, and had put much to his credit, and he was prepared to draw upon this grandly.
At the age of twenty he had found himself his own master, with excellent 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 cla.s.s, 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 Inst.i.tute, masters of hounds in pink coats, and amba.s.sadors 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 ent.i.tled 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 ent.i.tled 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 n.o.ble lady who had tied it there. There was not, in his opinion, at the present day any sufficiently p.r.o.nounced method of declaring admiration for the many lovely women this world contained. A proposal of marriage he considered to be a mean and clumsy subst.i.tute 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 cla.s.s, 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 women 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 embarra.s.sing 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 bridesmaids 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sured 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 t.i.tles 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 att.i.tude, 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 into 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 Gra.s.se)," he read, and in small type below it:
"1. Ligne cadette (regnante) grand-ducale: Hohenwald et de Gra.s.se.
"Guillaume-Albert-Frederick-Charles-Louis, Grand-Duc de Hohenwald et de Gra.s.se, etc., etc., etc."
"That"s the brother, right enough," muttered Carlton.
And under the heading "Soeurs" he read:
"4. Psse Aline.--Victoria-Beatrix-Louise-Helene, Alt. Gr.-Duc. Nee a Gra.s.se, 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 Gra.s.se, 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 ent.i.tled 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 dispose them from the silver frame and move them on by degrees down the line, until they went ingloriously into the big bra.s.s 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 doc.u.ments, the reading of them as part of his perquisites. This one was addressed to Oscar Von Holtz, First Secretary, German Emba.s.sy, Washington, D.C., and the message read:
"Please telegraph me full t.i.tle 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 goodbye. 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 pa.s.senger 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.