第2章 I(2)

"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 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.