Prince Fortunatus
by William Black · English · Gutenberg #16217 · 984,571 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Prince Fortunatus
Author: William Black
Release date: July 6, 2005 [eBook #16217]
Most recently updated: December 11, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16217
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE FORTUNATUS ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Pilar Somoza and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: "_She dragged off the engagement ring, and dashed it on
the floor in front of his feet._" _See p._ 335.]
PRINCE FORTUNATUS
A Novel
BY
WILLIAM BLACK
AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE" "MACLEOD OF DARE"
"IN FAR LOCHABER" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1905
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A REHEARSAL 5
II. THE GREAT GOD PAN 21
III. NINA 37
IV. COUNTRY AND TOWN 55
V. WARS AND RUMORS 78
VI. A DEPARTURE 90
VII. IN STRATHAIVRON 106
VIII. THE TWELFTH 123
IX. VENATOR IMMEMOR 142
X. AIVRON AND GEINIG 159
XI. THE PHANTOM STAG 174
XII. A GLOBE OF GOLD-FISH 192
XIII. A NEW EXPERIENCE 207
XIV. A MAGNANIMOUS RIVAL 225
XV. "LET THE STRUCKEN DEER GO WEEP" 243
XVI. AN AWAKENING 259
XVII. A CRISIS 276
XVIII. AN INVOCATION 294
XIX. ENTRAPPED 310
XX. IN DIRER STRAITS 326
XXI. IN A DEN OF LIONS, AND THEREAFTER 342
XXII. PRIUS DEMENTAT 359
XXIII. A MEMORABLE DAY 376
XXIV. FRIENDS IN NEED 393
XXV. CHANGES 410
XXVI. TOWARDS THE DAWN 425
XXVII. A REUNION 430
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"SHE DRAGGED OFF THE ENGAGEMENT-RING, AND DASHED
IT ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF HIS FEET" _Frontispiece._
"'YOU SAY AT YOUR FEET THAT I WEPT IN DESPAIR'" _Facing p._ 18
"WHEN THEY HAD FINISHED SUPPER, LIONEL MOORE
LIT A CIGARETTE, AND HIS FRIEND A BRIAR-ROOT PIPE" " 34
"THEY PASSED IN THROUGH THE GATE, AND FOUND THE
DOOR LEFT OPEN FOR THEM" " 64
"AND YET HERE WAS THIS GIRL WATCHING COOLLY
AND CRITICALLY THE MOTION OF THE LINE" " 116
"CAUTIOUSLY OLD ROBERT CREPT DOWN. WHEN HE
WAS CLOSE TO THE WATER, HE BARED HIS RIGHT
ARM AND GRASPED THE GAFF BY THE HANDLE" " 170
"ROBERT GOT THE SMALL PARCELS AND THE DRINKING-CUPS
OUT OF THE BAG, AND ARRANGED THEM ON THE WARM TURF" " 198
"AND NINA, HANGING SOME WAY BACK, COULD SEE
THEM BEING PRESENTED TO MISS BURGOYNE" " 252
"'WHY, YOU SEEM TO KNOW EVERYBODY, MR. MOORE!'
SHE SAID TO HIM, WITH A SMILE" " 264
"HE THREW HIS ARMS ON THE TABLE BEFORE HIM,
AND HID HIS FACE" " 310
"AND AGAIN SHE FILLED UP HIS GLASS, WHICH HE HAD
NOT EMPTIED" " 322
"THERE WAS A SLIGHT TOUCH OF COLOR VISIBLE ON
THE GRACIOUS FOREHEAD WHEN SHE OFFERED HIM HER HAND" " 346
"HE UTTERED A LOUD SHRIEK, AND STRUGGLED
WILDLY TO RAISE HIMSELF" " 394
"SHE THREW HERSELF ON HER KNEES BY THE BEDSIDE
AND SEIZED HIS HAND" " 400
"MAURICE WALKED BACK UNTIL HE FOUND A GATE,
ENTERED, AND WENT FORWARD AND OVERTOOK HER" " 420
"I HAVE AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT LETTER TO SEND OFF" " 430
PRINCE FORTUNATUS.
CHAPTER I.
A REHEARSAL.
When the curtain fell on the last act of "The Squire's Daughter," the
comedy-opera that had taken all musical London by storm, a tall and
elegant young English matron and her still taller brother rose from
their places in the private box they had been occupying, and made ready
to depart; and he had just assisted her to put on her long-skirted coat
of rose-red plush when an attendant made his appearance.
"Mr. Moore's compliments, your ladyship, and will you please to step
this way?"
The box was close to the stage. Lady Adela Cunyngham and her brother,
Lord Rockminster, followed their guide through a narrow little door, and
almost at once found themselves in the wings, amid the usual motley
crowd of gas-men, scene-shifters, dressers, and the like. But the
company were still fronting the footlights; for there had been a general
recall, and the curtain had gone up again; and probably, during this
brief second of scrutiny, it may have seemed odd to these two strangers
to find themselves looking, not at rows of smiling faces on the stage,
but at the backs of the heads of the performers. However, the curtain
once more came down; the great wedding-party in the squire's hall grew
suddenly quite business-like and went their several ways as if they had
no longer any concern with one another; and then it was that the
squire's daughter herself--a piquant little person she was, in a
magnificent costume of richly flowered white satin, and with a
portentous head-gear of powdered hair and brilliants and strings of
pearls--was brought forward by a handsome young gentleman who wore a
tied wig, a laced coat and ruffles, satin knee-breeches, shining silken
stockings, and silver-buckled shoes.
"Lady Adela," said he, "let me introduce you to Miss Burgoyne. Miss
Burgoyne has been kind enough to say she will take you into her room for
a little while, until I get off my war-paint. I sha'n't keep you more
than a few minutes."
"It is very good of you," said the tall young matron in the crimson coat
to this gorgeous little white bride, whose lips were brilliant with
cherry-paste, and whose bright and frank eyes were surrounded by such a
mighty mass of make-up.
"Not at all," she answered, pleasantly enough, and therewith she led the
way down some steps into a long, white-tiled corridor, from which
branched the various dressing-rooms. "I'm afraid I can't give you any
tea now; but there's some lemonade, of my own making--it has become very
popular in the theatre--you would hardly believe the number of callers I
have of an evening."
By this time Lionel Moore, who was responsible for these strangers being
in the theatre, had gone quickly off to his own dressing-room to change
his attire, so that when the two ladies reached a certain half-open door
where the prima-donna's maid was waiting for her, Lord Rockminster
naturally hung back and would have remained without. Miss Burgoyne
instantly turned to him.
"Oh, but you may come in too!" she said, with great complaisance.
Somewhat timorously he followed these two into a prettily furnished
little sitting-room, where he was bidden to take a seat and regale
himself with lemonade, if he was so minded; and then Miss Burgoyne drew
aside the curtain of an inner apartment, and said to her other guest:
"_You_ may come in here, if you like. Mr. Moore said you wished to
know about stage make-up and that kind of thing--I will show you all the
dreadful secrets--Jane!" Thereupon these three disappeared behind the
curtain, and Lord Rockminster was left alone.
But Lord Rockminster liked being left alone. He was a great thinker, who
rarely revealed his thoughts, but who was quite happy in possessing
them. He could sit for an hour at a club-window, calmly gazing out into
the street, and be perfectly content. It is true that the pale
tobacco-tinge that overspread the young man's fair complexion seemed to
speak of an out-of-door life; but he had long ago emancipated himself
from the tyranny of field-sports. That thraldom had begun early with
him, as with most of his class. He had hardly been out of his Eton
jacket when gillies and water-bailiffs got hold of him, and made him
thrash salmon-pools with a seventeen-foot rod until his back was
breaking; and then keepers and foresters had taken possession of him,
and compelled him to crawl for miles up wet gullies and across
peat-hags, and then put a rifle in his hand, expecting him to hit a
bewildering object on the other side of a corrie when, as a matter of
fact, his heart was like to burst with excitement and fear. But the
young man had some strength of character. He rebelled; he refused to be
driven like a slave any longer; he struck for freedom and won it. There
was still much travelling to be encountered; but when he had got that
over, when he had seen everything and done everything, and there was
nothing more to do or to see, then he became master of himself and
conducted himself accordingly. Contemplation, accompanied by a
cigarette, was now his chief good. What his meditations were no one
knew, but they sufficed unto himself. He had attained Nirvana. He lived
in a region of perpetual thought.
But there was one active quality that Lord Rockminster certainly did
possess: he was a most devoted brother, as all the town knew. He was
never tired of going about with his three beautiful sisters, or with any
one of them; he would fetch and carry for them with the most amiable
assiduity; "Rock" they called him, as if he were a retriever. Then the
fact that they followed very different pursuits made all the greater
demand on his consideration. His youngest sister, Lady Rosamund Bourne,
painted indefatigably in both water and oils, and had more than once
exhibited in Suffolk Street; Lady Sybil devoted herself to music, and
was a well-known figure at charitable concerts; while the eldest sister,
Lady Adela, considered literature and the drama as more particularly
under her protection, nor had she ceased to interest herself in these
graceful arts when she married Sir Hugh Cunyngham, of the Braes, that
famous breeder of polled cattle. The natural consequence of all this was
that Lord Rockminster found himself called to a never-ending series of
concerts, theatres, private views, and the like, and always with one or
other of his beautiful, tall sisters as his companion; while on a
certain occasion (for it was whispered that Lady Adela Cunyngham was
engaged in the composition of a novel, and her brother was the soul of
good-nature) he had even gone the length of asking a publisher to dine
at his club. And here he was seated in an actress's room, alone, while
his sister was inspecting powder-puffs, washes, patches, and paste
jewelry; and not only that, but they were about to take an actor home to
supper with them. What he thought about it all he never said. He sat and
stroked his small yellow moustache; his eyes was absent; and on his
handsome, almost Greek, features there dwelt a perfect and continuous
calm.
Presently the door was opened, and the smart-looking young baritone who
had stolen away the hearts of half the women in London made his
appearance. He was a young fellow of about eight-and-twenty,
pleasant-featured, his complexion almost colorless, his eyes gray with
dark lashes, his eyebrows also dark. In figure he was slight and wiry
rather than muscular; but where he gave evidence of strength was in his
magnificent throat and in the set of his head and shoulders. It may be
added that he possessed, what few stage-singers appear to possess, a
remarkably well-formed leg--a firm-knit calf tapering to a small ankle
and a shapely foot; but, as he had now doffed his professional silken
stockings and silver-buckled shoes for ordinary evening wear, his merits
in this respect were mostly concealed.
No sooner had he begun to talk to Lord Rockminster than the sound of his
voice summoned forth from the inner apartment Lady Adela, who, with many
expressions of thanks, bade good-night to the prima-donna, and put
herself under charge of the young baritone.
"My sisters are at the Mellords' to-night," said she, as she accompanied
him along the corridor and up the steps and through the now almost
deserted wings. "They were dining there, and we left them as we came to
the theatre, and promised to pick them up on our way home. There will be
a bit of a crush, I suppose; you won't mind coming in for a few minutes,
will you, Mr. Moore?"
"I don't know Mrs. Mellord," said he, with becoming modesty.
"But everybody knows you--that is the great point," said this tall
young Englishwoman, who looked very gracious and charming, and who, when
she turned to talk to her companion, had a quick, responsive smile ever
ready in her clear, intelligent, gray-blue eyes. "Oh, yes, you must
come. It is one of the prettiest houses in London; and Mrs. Mellord is
one of the nicest women. We will get Sybil and Rose away as soon as we
can; and I shouldn't at all wonder if we found Georgie Lestrange and her
brother there too. Oh, almost certain, I should say. Then we could carry
them off to supper, and after that Pastora might try over her duet with
Damon. But as regards the Mellords, Mr. Moore," said she, with a
pleasant smile, as he handed her into her brougham, which had been
brought round to the stage-door, "I shall consider you to be under my
protection, and I will take care no one shall ask you to sing."
"But you know, Lady Adela, I am always delighted to sing for any friend
of yours," said he, promptly enough; and then, when he and Lord
Rockminster had entered the carriage, and the footman had shut the door
and got on the box, away they drove through the busy midnight world of
London.
It did not take them long to get from the New Theatre to the house of
the famous Academician; and here, late as it was, they found plenty of
people still arriving, a small crowd of onlookers scanning the various
groups as they crossed the pavement. On this hot night in May, it seemed
pleasantly cool to get into the great hall of white and black marble,
where the miniature lake, on which floated an alabaster swan, was all
banked round with flowers; and when Lady Adela had dispossessed herself
of her long plush coat, it was evident she had dressed for the reception
before going to the theatre, for now she appeared in a costume of
silver-gray satin with a very considerable train, while there were
diamond stars in her light brown hair, and at her bosom a bunch of deep
crimson roses. At the head of the stairs they encountered Mrs. Mellord,
who received the famous young baritone with the most marked kindness.
Indeed, he seemed to be known to a considerable number of the people who
were assembled in these spacious rooms of white and gold; while those
who were not personally acquainted with him easily recognized him, for
were not his photographs in every stationer's window in London? The
Ladies Sybil and Rosamund Bourne they found in the studio, talking to
the great Academician himself. These two young ladies were even taller,
as they likewise were fairer in complexion, than their married sister;
moreover, they were much more dignified in demeanor than she was, though
that may have merely arisen from maidenly reserve. But when Mr. Mellord
exhibited at the Royal Academy his much-talked-of picture of the three
sisters, most people seemed to think that though the two younger ladies
might have carried off the palm for their handsome, pale, regularly cut
features and their calm, observant eyes, there was something in the
bright, vivacious look of the eldest that outweighed these advantages;
while in society, and especially as a hostess in her own house, the
charm of Lady Adela's manner, and her quick, sympathetic, engaging ways
made her a universal favorite. And one was tempted, in amazement, to ask
how it came about that a woman so alert and intelligent, so conversant
with the world, so ready to note the ridiculous side of things, could
not understand what a poor and lamentable figure she made as an amateur
authoress? But had the Lady Sybil any less confidence in her musical
attainments, when she would undertake to play a duet with one of the
most distinguished of professional musicians, she on the violin, he at
the piano? And here, at this very moment, was Lady Rosamund talking to
by far and away the greatest painter in England, and there was a picture
before them on an easel, and she was saying to him, with perfect
coolness,
"Why, I see you use cadmium yellow, Mr. Mellord! I _never_ do."
Somehow an impression got abroad through these brilliant rooms that Mr.
Moore was going to sing; and at length Mrs. Mellord came to the young
man and frankly preferred her request.
"Oh, yes," said he, most good-naturedly.
"The serenade?" she ventured to hint.
"Oh, not the serenade!" said he, with a laugh. "Every butcher's boy in
the streets whistles it."
"All England is singing it--and a good thing, too," she made answer; and
then she said, with some emphasis: "I am sure no one rejoices more than
myself at the great popularity of 'The Squire's Daughter.' I am very
glad to see that a comedy-opera may be based on the best traditions of
English music; and I hope we shall have a great deal less of the
Offenbach tinkle-tankle."
"The serenade, if you like, then," said he, with, careless good-humor;
what did it matter to him?
"And whom shall I get to play an accompaniment for you?"
"Oh, you needn't trouble; I can do that for myself--"
"But you must make one young lady supremely happy," said she, with
insidious flattery.
He glanced round the studio.
"I see Miss Lestrange over there--she has played it for me
before--without the music, I mean."
"Then I'll go and fetch her," said the indefatigable hostess; and now
everybody seemed to know that Mr. Lionel Moore was about to sing "The
Starry Night."
Miss Georgie Lestrange was no sooner appealed to than she came through
the crowd, smiling and laughing. She was an exceedingly pretty lass,
with fresh-complexioned cheeks, a pert and attractive nose, a winsome
mouth, and merry blue eyes that were hardly made grave by the
_pince-nez_ that she habitually wore. She was very prettily dressed,
too--in blue-and-silver brocade, with a high Medici collar of silver
lace, puffed sleeves with twisted cords of silver, and silver fillets
binding the abundant masses of her ruddy-golden hair. She sat down at
the piano, and the first notes of the accompaniment deepened the silence
that now prevailed, not only in this big studio, but throughout the
communicating rooms.
Probably there was not a human being in the place who had not heard this
serenade sung a dozen times over, for it was the most popular air of the
most popular piece then being played in London; but there was some kind
of novelty in listening to the same notes that had thrilled through the
theatre (rather, that had sent their passionate appeal up to a certain
mysterious balcony, in the dim moonlight of the stage) now pulsating
through the hushed silence of these modern rooms. Lionel Moore was not a
baritone of altogether rare and exceptional gifts, otherwise he might
hardly have been content with even the popularity and the substantial
rewards of comic opera; but he had a very excellent voice for all that,
of high range, and with a resonant and finely sympathetic _timbre_
that seemed easily to find its way (according to all accounts) to the
feminine heart. And the music of this serenade was really admirable, of
subtle and delicate quality, and yet full of the simplest melody, and
perhaps none the less to be appreciated that it seemed to suggest a
careful study of the best English composers. The words were conventional
enough, of course; but then the whole story of "The Squire's Daughter"
was as artificial as the wigs and powder and patches of the performers;
and even now, when Harry Thornhill, bereft of all his gay silk and lace
and ruffles, and become plain Mr. Lionel Moore, in ordinary evening
dress, sang to Miss Georgie Lestrange's accompaniment, the crowd did not
think of the words--they were entranced by the music. "The starry
night"--this is how Harry Thornhill, in the opera, addresses Grace
Mainwaring, he standing in the moonlit garden and looking up to her
window--
"The starry night brings me no rest;
My ardent love now stands confessed;
Appear, my sweet, and shame the skies,
That have no splendor,
That have no splendor like thine eyes!"
The serenade was followed by a general murmur of approbation, rather
than by any loud applause; but the pretty Mrs. Mellord came up to the
singer and was most profuse of thanks. Prudently, however, he moved away
from the piano, being accompanied by Miss Georgie Lestrange, who seemed
rather pleased with the prominence this position gave her; and very soon
a surreptitious message reached them both that they were wanted below.
When they went down into the hall they found that Lady Adela had got her
party collected, including Miss Lestrange's brother Percy; thereupon the
four ladies got into the brougham and drove off, while the three
gentlemen proposed to follow on foot, and have a cigarette the while. It
was a pleasantly warm night, and they had no farther to go than Sir Hugh
Cunyngham's house, which is one of the large garden-surrounded mansions
on the summit of Campden Hill.
When at length they arrived there and had entered by the wooden gate,
the semicircular carriage-drive, lit by two solitary lamps, and the
front of the house itself, half-hidden among the black trees, seemed
somewhat sombre and repellent at this silent hour of the morning; but
they found a more cheerful radiance streaming out from the hall-door,
which had been left open for them; and when they went into the large
dining-room, where the ladies had already assembled, there was no lack
of either light or color there, for all the candles were ablaze, and
the long table was brilliant with silver and Venetian glass and flowers.
And, indeed, this proved to be a very merry and talkative supper-party;
for, as soon as supper was served, the servants were sent off to bed;
Lord Rockminster constituted himself butler, and Percy Lestrange handed
round the pheasants' eggs and asparagus and such things; so that there
was no alien ear in the room. Lionel Moore, being less familiar with the
house, was exempted from these duties; in truth, it was rather the
women-folk who waited upon him--and petted him as he was used to be
petted, wherever that fortunate young man happened to go.
However, it was not supper that was chiefly occupying the attention of
this band of eager chatterers (from whom the silent Lord Rockminster,
walking gravely round the table with a large jug of champagne-cup in his
hand, must honorably be distinguished), it was the contemplated
production of a little musical entertainment called "The Chaplet," by
Dr. Boyce, which they were about to attempt, out-of-doors, on some
afternoon still to be fixed, and before a select concourse of friends.
And the most vivacious of the talkers was the red-headed and merry-eyed
young maiden in blue silver and brocade, who seemed incapable of keeping
her rosebud of a mouth closed for more than a minute at a time.
"I do think it's awfully hard on me," she was protesting. "Look how I'm
handicapped! Everybody knows that Pastora was played by Kitty Olive; and
everybody will say, 'That Lestrange girl has cheek, hasn't she? thinks
she can play Kitty Olive's parts!' And you know Pastora is always
calling attention to her fascinating appearance."
"Georgie, you're fishing for compliments!" the young matron said,
severely.
"No, I'm not, Adela," said Miss Lestrange, who, indeed, looked as
charming as any Kitty Olive could ever have done. "Then there's another
thing: fancy my having to sing a duet with Mr. Moore! It's all very well
for you to sing a song off your own bat--"
"That _would_ be difficult, Georgie," Lady Adela observed.
"Oh, you know what I mean. But when you come to sing in conjunction with
an artist like Mr. Moore, what then? They will say it is mere
presumption, when my little squeak of a voice gets drowned altogether."
"If you give any weight to a professional opinion, Miss Lestrange," the
young baritone said, "I can assure you you sing your part in that
duet--or in anything else I've heard you sing--very well indeed. Very
well indeed."
"Ah, now Georgie's happy," said Lady Adela, with a laugh, as the
blushing damsel cast down her eyes. "Well, I propose that we all go into
the drawing-room, and we'll hear for ourselves how Pastora and Damon
sing together. You may make as much noise as ever you like; the children
are in Hampshire; Hugh is in Scotland; the servants are out of hearing;
and our neighbors are a long way off."
This suggestion, coming from the lady of the house, was of the nature of
a command, and so they leisurely trooped into the great drawing-room,
where the candles were still burning. But there was something else than
these artificial lights that attracted the sharp eyes of Miss Georgie
Lestrange the moment she entered this new apartment. There was a
curious, wan kind of color about the curtains and the French windows
that did not seem natural to the room. She walked quickly forward, drew
the lace hangings aside, and then, suddenly, she exclaimed,
"Why, it's almost daylight! Look here, Adela, why shouldn't we have a
rehearsal of the whole piece, from end to end--a real rehearsal, this
time, on the lawn? and Rose can tell us all how we are to stand, and Mr.
Moore will show us what we should do besides merely speaking the lines."
This bold proposal was greeted with general acclaim, and instantly there
was a bustle of preparation. Lady Sybil began to tune her violin by the
side of the open piano; Lady Rosamund, who was at once scene-painter and
stage-manager, as it were, got out some sheets of drawing-paper, on
which she had sketched the various groups; and Lady Adela brought forth
the MS. books of the play, which had been prepared under the careful
(and necessary) supervision of Lionel Moore.
"Rockminster will have to figure as the audience," his eldest sister
said, as she was looping up her long train of silver-gray satin
preparatory to going out.
"That is a part _I_ could play to perfection," put in Miss
Lestrange's brother.
"Oh, no," Lady Adela remonstrated. "You may be wanted for Palæmon. You
see, this is how it stands. The young shepherd was originally played at
Drury Lane by a boy--and in Dublin by an actress; it is a boy's part,
indeed. Well, you know, we thought Cis Yorke would snap at it; and she
was eager enough at first; but"--and here Lady Adela smiled demurely--"I
think her courage gave way. The boy's dress looked charming as Rose
sketched it for her--and the long cloak made it quite proper, you
know--and very picturesque, too--but--but I think she's frightened. We
can't count on her. So we may have to call on you for Palæmon, Mr.
Lestrange."
"And I have taken the liberty of cutting out the song, for it's rather
stupid," said Lionel Moore, "so you've only got a few lines to repeat."
"The fewer the better," replied Mr. Percy Lestrange, who was possibly
right in considering that, with his far-from-regular features and his
red hair and moustache, his appearance as a handsome young swain should
not have too much prominence given it.
Notwithstanding that it had been Miss Lestrange's audacious proposal
that they should go masquerading in the open air, she was a wise young
virgin, and she took care before going out to thrust a soft silk
handkerchief into the square opening of her dress; the Ladies Sybil and
Rosamund followed her example by drawing lace scarfs round their necks
and shoulders; it was the young matron who was reprehensibly careless,
and who, when the French windows were thrown open, went forth boldly,
and without any wrap at all, into the cool air of the dawn. But for a
second, as they stood on the little stone balcony above the steps
leading down to the garden, this group of revellers were struck silent.
The world looked so strange around them. In the mysterious gray light,
that had no sort of kindly warmth in it, the grass of the lawn and the
surrounding trees seemed coldly and intensely green; and cold and
intense, with no richness of hue at all, were the colors of the flowers
in the various plots and beds. Not a bird chirped as yet. Not a leaf
stirred. But in this ghostly twilight the solitary gas lamps were
beginning to show pale; and in the southern heavens the silver sickle of
the moon, stealing over to the west, seemed to be taking the night with
it, and leaving these faintly lilac skies to welcome the uprising of the
new day.
At first, indeed, there was something curiously uncanny--something
unearthly and phantasmal almost--in the spectacle of these figures, the
women in white, the men in black, moving through this wan light; and
their voices sounded strangely in the dead silence; but ere long a soft
saffron tinge began to show itself in the east; one or two scraps of
cloud in the violet skies caught a faint touch of the coming dawn; there
was a more generous tone on the masses of foliage, on the flower-beds,
and on the grass; and now the cheerful chirping of the birds had begun
among the leaves. And what more beautiful surroundings could have been
imagined for the production of any pastoral entertainment? The wide lawn
was bounded on one side by a dense thicket of elms and limes and
chestnuts, and on the other by a tall, dark hedge of holly; while here
and there was a weeping-willow, round the stem of which a circular seat
had been constructed, the pendulous branches enclosing a sort of rustic
bower. As this fantastic performance went forward, the skies overhead
slowly became more luminous; there was a sense of warmth and clear
daylight beginning to tell; the birds were singing and chattering and
calling everywhere; and the sweet, pure air of the morning, as it
stirred, and no more than stirred, the trembling leaves, brought with it
a scent of mignonette that seemed to speak of the coming of June.
Laura, in the person of Lady Adela Cunyngham, had reproached the
faithless Damon (who was no other than Mr. Lionel Moore)--
"Ungrateful Damon, is it come to this?
Are these the happy scenes of promis'd bliss?
Ne'er hope, vain Laura, future peace to prove;
Content ne'er harbors with neglected love."
--and Damon had replied (not mumbling his lines, as a privileged actor
sometimes does at rehearsal, but addressing them properly to the hapless
Laura)--
"Consider, fair, the ever-restless pow'r,
Shifts with the breeze, and changes with the hour:
Above restraint, he scorns a fixt abode,
And on his silken plumes flies forth the rambling god."
Then Lady Sybil took out her violin from its case and drew the bow
across the strings.
"We'll let you off the song, if you like, Mr. Moore," Lady Adela said
to the young baritone, but in a very half-hearted kind of way.
"Oh, no," said he, pleasantly, "perhaps this may be my only rehearsal."
"The audience," observed Lord Rockminster, who, at a little distance,
was lying back in a garden-chair, smoking a cigarette--"the audience
would distinctly prefer to have the song sung."
Lady Sybil again gave him the key-note from the violin; and, without
further accompaniment, he thus addressed his forsaken sweetheart:
"You say at your feet that I wept in despair,
And vow'd that no angel was ever so fair?
How could you believe all the nonsense I spoke?
What know we of angels? I meant it in joke,
I meant it in joke;
What know we of angels? I meant it in joke."
When, in his rich, vibrating notes, he had sung the two verses, all the
ladies rewarded him by clapping their hands, which was an exceedingly
wrong thing to do, considering that they formed no part of the audience.
Then _Damon_ says,
"To-day Demætus gives a rural treat,
And I once more my chosen friends must meet:
Farewell, sweet damsel, and remember this,
Dull repetition deadens all our bliss."
And Laura sadly answers,
"Where baleful cypress forms a gloomy shade,
And yelling spectres haunt the dreary glade,
Unknown to all, my lonesome steps I'll bend,
There weep my suff'rings, and my fate attend."
Here Laura ought to sing the song "Vain is every fond endeavor;" but
Lady Adela said to the violinist,
"No, never mind, Syb; no one wants to hear _me_ sing, until the
necessity of the case arises. Let's get on to the feast; I think that
will be very popular; for we must have lots of shepherds and
shepherdesses; and the people will be delighted to recognize their
friends. Where's your sketch, Rose? I would have groups round each of
the willows, and occasional figures coming backwards and forwards
through those rhododendrons."
"You must leave the principal performers plenty of stage," Lionel Moore
interposed, laughing. "You mustn't hem us in with supers, however
picturesque their dress may be."
And so they went on discussing their arrangements, while the refulgent
day was everywhere declaring itself, though as yet no sound of the
far-off world could reach this isolated garden. Nor was there any direct
sunshine falling into it; but a beautiful warmth of color now shone on
the young green of the elms and chestnuts and hawthorns, and on one or
two tall-branching, trembling poplars just coming into leaf; while the
tulip-beds--the stars, the crescents, the ovals, and squares--were each
a mass of brilliant vermilion, of rose, of pale lemon, of crimson and
orange, or clearest gold. This new-found dawn seemed wholly to belong to
the birds. Perhaps it was their universal chirping and carolling that
concealed the distant echo of the highways; for surely the heavily-laden
wains were now making in for Covent Garden? At all events there was
nothing here but this continuous bird-clamor and the voices of these
modern nymphs and swains as they went this way and that over the
velvet-smooth lawn.
And now the bewitching Pastora appears upon the scene (but would Mrs.
Clive have worn a gold _pince-nez_ at rehearsal?) and she has just
quarrelled with her lover Palæmon--
"Insulting boy! I'll tear him from my mind;
Ah! would my fortune could a husband find!
And just in time, young Damon comes this way,
A handsome youth he is, and rich, they say."
The butterfly-hearted Damon responds at once:
"Vouchsafe, sweet maid, to hear a wretched swain,
Who, lost in wonder, hugs the pleasing chain:
For you in sighs I hail the rising day,
To you at eve I sing the lovesick lay;
Then take my love, my homage as your due--
The Devil's in her, if all this won't do." [_Aside._
It must be confessed that the pretty and smiling and blushing Miss
Georgie Lestrange looked just a little self-conscious as she had to
listen to this extremely frank declaration; but she had the part of the
coquettish Pastora to play; and Pastora, as soon as she discovers that
Damon has no thought of marriage, naturally declines to have anything to
do with him. And here came in the duet which had first suggested this
escapade:
[Illustration:
"_You say at your feet that I wept in despair.
And voic'd that no angel was ever so fair;
How could you believe all the nonsense I spoke?
What know we of angels? I meant it in joke
I meant it in joke.
What know we of angels? I meant it in joke._"]
"DAMON. From flow'r to flow'r, his joy to change,
Flits yonder wanton bee;
From fair to fair thus will I range,
And I'll be ever free.
From fair to fair thus will I range,
And I'll be ever free.
"PASTORA. You little birds attentive view,
That hop from tree to tree;
I'll copy them, I'll copy you,
For I'll be ever free.
"DUETTO. Then let's divide to east and west
Since we shall ne'er agree;
And try who keeps their promise best
And who's the longest free.
Let's try who keeps their promise best
And who's the longest free."
And again the audience made bold to clap their hands; for Miss Georgie
Lestrange, despite her self-depreciation, sang very well indeed; and of
course Lionel Moore knew how to moderate his voice, so that the
combination was entirely pleasing. The further progress of the little
comedy needs not to be described here; it has only to be said that the
injured Laura is in the end restored to her repentant lover; and that a
final duet between her and Damon closes the piece with the most
praiseworthy sentiments:
"For their honor and faith be our virgins renown'd,
Nor false to his vows one young shepherd he found;
Be their moments all guided by virtue and truth,
To preserve in their age what they gain'd in their youth,
To preserve in their age what they gain'd in their youth."
Lord Rockminster rose from his chair, stretched his long legs, and threw
away his cigarette.
"Very well done," said he, slowly. "Congratulate all of you."
"This is the first time I ever saw Rockminster sit out a morning
performance," observed Percy Lestrange, with a playful grin.
"As for you young things," the mistress of the house said to her
girl-guests, as they were all trooping in by the French windows again,
"you must hurry home and get in-doors before the servants are up. I
don't want this frolic to be talked about all over the town."
"A frolic, indeed!" Miss Georgie protested, as her brother was putting
her cloak round her shoulders. "I don't call it a frolic at all. I call
it very serious business; and I'm looking forward to winning the deepest
gratitude of the English public--or at least as much of the English
public as you can cram into your garden, my dear."
Then, as soon as the light wraps and dust-coats had been distributed and
donned, the members of the gay little party said good-bye to Lady Adela
in the front hall, and went down the carriage sweep to the gate. Here
there was a division; for the Lestranges were going north by Holland
Lane to Notting Hill; while Lord Rockminster and his two sisters, making
for Palace Gardens Terrace, walked with Lionel Moore only as far as
Campden Hill Road; thereafter he pursued his journey to Piccadilly
alone.
And even now London was not fully awake, though the sun was touching the
topmost branches of the trees, and here and there a high window, struck
by the level rays, flashed back a gleam of gold. In this neighborhood
the thoroughfares were quite deserted; silence reigned over those
sleeping houses; the air was sweet and cool; now and again a stirring of
wind brought a scent of summer--blossom from within the
garden-enclosures. It is true that when he got down into Kensington Road
he found a long procession of wagons slowly making their way into the
great city; but this dull, drowsy noise was not ungrateful; in much
content and idly he walked away eastward, looking in from time to time
at the beautiful greensward of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. He was
in no hurry. He liked the stillness, the gracious coolness and quietude
of the morning, after the hot and feverish nights at the theatre. When
at length he reached his lodging in Piccadilly, let himself in with his
latch-key, and went up-stairs to his rooms, he did not go to bed at
once. He drew an easy-chair to the front window, threw himself into it,
lit a cigarette, and stared absently across to the branching elms and
grassy undulations of the Green Park. Perhaps he was thinking of the
pretty, fantastic little comedy that had just been performed up in that
garden at Campden Hill--like some dream-picture out of Boccaccio. And if
he chanced to recall the fact that the actor who originally played the
part of Damon, at Drury Lane, some hundred and forty years ago, married
in real life an earl's daughter, that was but a passing fancy. Of Lord
Fareborough's three daughters, it was neither Lady Sybil nor Lady
Rosamund, it was the married sister, Lady Adela Cunyngham, who had
constituted herself his particular friend.
CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT GOD PAN.
Late as he went to bed, sleep did not long detain him, for, in his own
happy-go-lucky, troubadour sort of life, he was one of the most occupied
of men even in this great, hurrying, bustling capital of the world. As
soon as he had donned his dressing-gown and come into the sitting-room,
he swallowed a cup of coffee that was waiting for him, and then, to make
sure that unholy hours and cigarettes had not hurt his voice, he dabbed
a note on the piano, and began to practise, in the open-throated Italian
fashion, those _vocalises_ which sound so strangely to the
uninstructed ear. He rang for breakfast. He glanced in a despairing way
at the pile of letters and parcels awaiting him, the former, no doubt,
mostly invitations, the latter, as he could guess, proofs of his latest
sittings to the photographers, albums and birth-day books sent for his
autograph, music beseeching commendation, even manuscript plays
accompanied by pathetic appeals from unknown authors. Then there was a
long row of potted scarlet geraniums and large white daisies which the
house-porter had ranged by the window; and when he opened the note that
had been forwarded with these he found that the wife of a famous
statesman had observed as she drove along Piccadilly that the flowers in
his balcony wanted renewal and begged his acceptance of this graceful
little tribute. He took up a pair of dumb-bells, and had some exercise
with them, to keep his arms and chest in good condition. He looked at
himself in the mirror: no, he did not seem to have smoked inordinately;
nevertheless, he made sundry solemn vows about those insidious
cigarettes. Then he began to open the envelopes. Here was an imposing
card, "To have the honor of meeting their royal highnesses the king and
queen of ----;" here was a more modest bit of pasteboard with
"_R.S.V.P._ to mess president" at the lower corner; here were
invitations to breakfasts, to luncheons, to afternoon squawks, to
Sunday dinners, to dances and crushes, in short, to every possible kind
of diversion and frivolity that the gay world of London could devise. He
went steadily on with his letters. More photographers wanted him to sit
to them. Would he accept the dedication of "The Squire's Daughter
Fantasia"? The composer of "The Starry Night Valses" would like a
lithographic portrait of Mr. Lionel Moore to appear on the cover. A
humble admirer of Mr. Lionel Moore's great impersonation of Harry
Thornhill begged to forward the enclosed acrostic, and might he be
allowed to print it in the _Mudborough Young Men's Mutual Improvement
Magazine_? Messrs. Smith & Smith would be extremely obliged if Mr.
Lionel Moore would honor them with his opinion of the accompanying pair
of their patent silver-mounted automatic self-adjusting braces.
"If I don't get a secretary," he muttered to himself, "I shall soon be
in a mad-house."
Nor did he pay much attention to his breakfast when it was put on the
table, for there were newspapers to be opened and glanced
through--country journals, most of them, with marked paragraphs
conveying the most unexpected, and even startling, intelligence
regarding himself, his occupations, and forthcoming engagements. Then
there were the book packets and the rolls of music to be examined; but
by this time he had lit an after-breakfast cigarette, and was proceeding
with something of indifference. Occasionally he strolled about the room,
or went to the window and looked down into the roaring highway of
Piccadilly, or across to the sunny foliage and pale-blue mists of the
Green Park. And then, in the midst of his vague meditations, the
following note was brought to him; it had been delivered by hand:
"MY DEAR MR. MOORE,--I do so _awfully_ want to see you,
about a matter of _urgent importance_. Do be good-natured
and come and lunch with us--any time before half-past two, if
possible. It will be _so_ kind of you. I hope the _morning
performance_ has done you no harm.
Yours, sincerely, ADELA CUNYNGHAM."
Well, luncheon was not much in his way, for he usually dined at five;
nevertheless, Lady Adela was an especial friend of his and had been very
kind to him, and here was some serious business. So he hurried through
what correspondence was absolutely necessary; he sent word to Green's
stables that he should not ride that morning; he walked round to a
certain gymnasium and had three quarters of an hour with the
fencing-master (this was an appointment which he invariably held
sacred); on his way back to his rooms he called in at Solomon's for a
buttonhole; and then, having got home and made certain alterations in
his toilet, he went out again, jumped into a hansom, and was driven up
to the top of Campden Hill, arriving there shortly after one o'clock.
He found Lady Adela and Miss Georgie Lestrange in the drawing-room, or
rather just outside, on the little balcony overlooking the garden, and
neither of them seemed any the worse for that masquerading in the early
dawn; indeed, Miss Georgie's naturally fresh and bright complexion
flushed a little more than usual when she saw who this new-comer was,
for perhaps she was thinking of the very frank manner in which Damon had
expressed his admiration for Pastora but a few short hours ago.
"I have been telling Georgie all about the dresses at the drawing-room,"
said the tall young matron, as she gave him her hand and regarded him
with a friendly look; "but that won't interest you, Mr. Moore. We shall
have to talk about the new beauties, rather, to interest _you_."
He was a little puzzled.
"I thought, Lady Adela, you said there was something--something of
importance--"
"That depends," said she, with a pleasant smile in her clear, gray-blue
eyes. "I think it of importance; but it remains to be seen whether the
world is of the same opinion. Well, I won't keep you in suspense."
She went to the piano, and brought back three volumes plainly bound in
green cloth.
"Behold!"
He took them from her, and glanced at the title-page: "Kathleen's
Sweethearts, a Novel, by Lady Arthur Castletown," was what he found
there.
"So it is out at last," said he, for he had more than once heard of this
great work while it was still in progress.
"Yes," said she, eagerly, "though it isn't issued to the public yet. The
fact is, Mr. Moore, I want you to help me. You know all about
professional people, and the newspapers, and so on--who better?--and, of
course, I'm very anxious about my first book--my first big book, that
is--and I don't want it to get just thrown aside without ever being
glanced at. Now, what am I to do? You may speak quite freely before
Georgie--she's just as anxious as I am, every bit, I believe--only what
to do we can't tell."
"All that I can think of," said the ruddy-haired young damsel, with a
laugh, "is to have little advertisements printed, and I will leave them
behind me wherever I go--in the stalls of a theatre, or at a concert, or
anywhere. You know, Adela, you can _not_ expect me to turn myself
into a sandwich-man, and go about the streets between boards."
"Georgie, you're frivolous," said Lady Adela, and she again turned to
Lionel Moore, who was still holding the three green volumes in his hands
in a helpless sort of fashion. "You know, Mr. Moore, there are such a
lot of books published nowadays--crowds!--shoals!--and, unless there is
a little attention drawn beforehand, what chance have you? I want a
friend in court--I want several friends in court--and that's the truth;
now, how am I to get them?"
This was plain speaking; but he was none the less bewildered.
"You see, Lady Adela, the theatre is so different from the world of
letters. I've met one or two newspaper men now and again, but they were
dramatic critics--I never heard that they reviewed books."
"But they were connected with newspapers?--then they must know the men
who do," said this alert and intelligent lady. "Oh, I don't ask for
anything unfair! I only ask for a chance. I don't want to be thrown into
a corner unread or sold to the second-hand bookseller uncut. Now, Mr.
Moore, think. You must know _lots_ of newspaper men if you would
only _think_: why, they're always coming about theatres. And they
would do anything for you, for you are such a popular favorite; and a
word from you would be of such value to a beginner like me. Now, Mr.
Moore, be good-natured, and consider. But first of all come away and
have some lunch, and then we'll talk it over."
When they had gone into the dining-room and sat down at table, he said,
"Well, if it comes to that, I certainly know one newspaper man; in
fact, I have known him all my life; he is my oldest friend. But then
he is merely the head of the Parliamentary reporting staff of the
_Morning Mirror_--he's in the gallery of the House of Commons, you
know, every night--and I'm afraid he couldn't do much about a book."
"Couldn't he do a little, Mr. Moore?" said Lady Adela, insidiously.
"Couldn't he get it hinted in the papers that 'Lady Arthur Castletown'
is only a _nom de plume_?"
"Then you don't object to your own name being mentioned?" asked this
simple young man.
"No, no, not at all," said she, frankly. "People are sure to get to
know. There are some sketches of character in the book that I think will
make a little stir--I mean people will be asking questions; and then you
know how a pseudonym whets curiosity--they will certainly find out--and
they will talk all the more then. That ought to do the book some good.
And then you understand, Mr. Moore," continued this remarkably naive
person, "if your friend happened to know any of the reviewers, and could
suggest how some little polite attention might be paid them, there would
be nothing wrong in that, would there? I am told that they are quite
gentlemen nowadays--they go everywhere--and--and indeed I should like to
make their acquaintance, since I've come into the writing fraternity
myself."
Lionel Moore was silent; he was considering how he should approach the
fastidious, whimsical, sardonic Maurice Mangan on this extremely
difficult subject.
"Let me see," he said, presently. "This is Wednesday; my friend Mangan
won't be at the House; I will send a message to his rooms, and ask him
to come down to the theatre: then we can have a consultation about it.
May I take this copy of the book with me, Lady Adela?"
"Certainly, certainly!" said she, with promptitude. "And if you know of
any one to whom I should send a copy, with the author's name in it--my
own name, I mean--it would be extremely kind of you to let me know. It's
so awfully hard for us poor outsiders to get a hearing. You professional
folk are in a very different position--the public just worship you--you
have it all your own way--you don't need to care what the critics
say--but look at _me_! I may knock and knock at the door of the
Temple of Fame until my knuckles are sore, and who will take any
notice--unless, perhaps, some friendly ear begins to listen? Do you
think Mr. Mangan--did you say Mangan?--do you think he would come and
dine with us some evening?"
The artless ingenuousness of her speech was almost embarrassing.
"He is a very busy man," he said, doubtfully, "very busy. He has his
gallery work to do, of course; and then I believe he is engaged on some
important philosophical treatise--he has been at it for years, indeed--"
"Oh, he writes books too?" Lady Adela cried. "Then certainly you must
bring him to dinner. Shall I write a note now, Mr. Moore--a Sunday
evening, of course, so that we may secure you as well--"
"I think I would wait a little, Lady Adela," he said, "until I see how
the land lies. He's a most curious fellow, Mangan: difficult to please
and capricious. I fancy he is rather disappointed with himself; he ought
to have done something great, for he knows everything--at least he knows
what is fine in everything, in painting, in poetry, in music; and yet,
with all his sympathy, he seems to be forever grumbling--and mostly at
himself. He is a difficult fellow to deal with--"
"I suppose he eats his dinner like anybody else," said Lady Adela,
somewhat sharply: she was not used to having her invitations scorned.
"Yes, but I think he would prefer to eat it in a village ale-house,"
Lionel said, with a smile, "where he could make 'the violet of a legend
blow, among the chops and steaks.' However, I will take him your book,
Lady Adela; and I have no doubt he will be able to give you some good
advice."
It was late that evening when, in obedience to the summons of a sixpenny
telegram, Maurice Mangan called at the stage-door of the New Theatre and
was passed in. Lionel Moore was on the stage, as any one could tell, for
the resonant baritone voice was ringing clear above the multitudinous
music of the orchestra; but Mangan, not wishing to be in the way, did
not linger in the wings--he made straight for his friend's room, which
he knew. And in the dusk of the long corridor he was fortunate enough to
behold a beautiful apparition, in the person of a young French officer
in the gayest of uniforms, who, apparently to maintain the character he
bore in the piece (it was that of a young prisoner of war liberated on
parole, who played sad havoc with the hearts of the village maidens by
reason of his fascinating ways and pretty broken English), had just
facetiously chucked two of the women dressers under the chin; and these
damsels were simpering at this mark of condescension, and evidently much
impressed by the swagger and braggadocio of the miniature warrior.
However, Mlle. Girond (the boy-officer in question) no sooner caught
sight of the new-comer than she instantly and demurely altered her
demeanor; and as she passed him in the corridor she favored him with a
grave and courteous little bow, for she had met him more than once in
Miss Burgoyne's sitting-room. Mangan returned the salutation most
respectfully; and then he went on and entered the apartment in which
Lionel Moore dressed.
It was empty; so this tall, thin man with the slightly stooping
shoulders threw himself into a wicker-work easy-chair, and let his
eyes--which were much keener than was properly compatible with the
half-affected expression of indolence that had become habitual to
him--roam over the heterogeneous collection of articles around. These
were abundantly familiar to him--the long dressing-table, with all its
appliances for making-up, the mirrors, the wigs on blocks, the
gay-colored garments, the fencing-foils and swords, the framed series of
portraits from "Vanity Fair," the innumerable photographs stuck
everywhere about. Indeed, it was something not immediately connected
with these paraphernalia of an actor's existence that seemed to be
occupying his mind, even as he idly regarded the various pastes and
colors, the powder-puffs and pencils, the pots of vaseline. His eyes
grew absent as he sat there. Was he thinking of the Linn Moore of years
and years ago who used to reveal to the companion of his boyhood all his
high aims and strenuous ambitions--how he was resolved to become a
Mendelssohn, a Mozart, a Beethoven? Whither had fled all those wistful
dreams and ardent aspirations? What was Linn Moore now?--why, a singer
in comic opera, his face beplastered almost out of recognition; a pet of
the frivolous-fashionable side of London society; the chief adornment of
photographers' windows.
"'Half a beast is the great god Pan,'" this tall, languid-looking man
murmured to himself, as he was vacuously staring at those paints and
brushes and cosmetics; and then he got up and began to walk
indeterminately about the room, his hands behind his back.
Presently the door was opened, and in came Lionel Moore, followed by his
dresser.
"Hallo, Maurice!--you're late," said Harry Thornhill, as he surrendered
himself to his factotum, who forthwith began to strip him of his
travelling costume of cocked hat, frogged coat, white leather breeches,
and shining black boots in order to make way for the more brilliant
attire of the last act.
"Now that I am here, what are your highness's commands?" Mangan asked.
"There's a book there--written by a friend of mine," Lionel said, as he
was helping his dresser to get off the glittering top-boots. "She wants
me to do what I can for her with the press. What do I know about that?
Still, she is a very particular friend--and you must advise me."
Mangan rose and went to the mantelpiece and took down Volume I.
"Lady Arthur Castletown--" said he.
"But that is not her real name," the other interposed. "Her real name is
Lady Adela Cunyngham--of course you know who she is."
"I have been permitted to hear the echo of her name from those rare
altitudes in which you dwell now," the other said, lazily. "So she is
one of your fashionable acquaintances; and she wants to secure the puff
preliminary, and a number of favorable reviews, I suppose; and then you
send for me. But what can I do for you except ask one or two of the
gallery men to mention the book in their London Correspondent's letter?"
"But that's the very thing, my dear fellow!" Lionel Moore cried, as he
was getting on his white silk stockings. "The very thing! She wants
attention drawn to the book. She doesn't want to be passed over. She
wants to have the name of the book and the name of the author brought
before the public--"
"Her real name?"
"Yes, certainly, if that is advisable."
"Oh, well, there's not much trouble about that. You can always minister
to a mind diseased by a morbid craving for notoriety if a paragraph in
a country newspaper will suffice. So this is part of what your
fashionable friends expect from you, Linn, in return for their
patronage?"
"It's nothing of the kind; she would do as much for me, if she knew how,
or if there were any occasion."
"Oh, well, it is no great thing," said Mangan, who was really a very
good-natured sort of person, despite his supercilious talk. "In fact,
you might do her ladyship a more substantial service than that."
"How?"
"I thought you knew Quirk--Octavius Quirk?"
"But you have always spoken so disparagingly of him!" the other
exclaimed.
"What has that to do with it?" Mangan asked; and then he continued, in
his indolent fashion: "Why, I thought you knew all about Quirk. Quirk
belongs to a band of literary weaklings, not any one of whom can do
anything worth speaking of; but they try their best to write up one
another; and sometimes they take it into their heads to help an
acquaintance--and then their cry is like that of a pack of beagles? you
would think the press of London, or a considerable section of it,
had but one voice. Why don't you take Lady Arthur's--Lady
Constance's--what's her name?--why don't you take her book to the noble
association of log-rollers? I presume the novel is trash; they'll
welcome it all the more. She is a woman--she is not to be feared; she
hasn't as yet committed the crime of being successful--she isn't to be
envied and anonymously attacked. That's the ticket for you, Linn. They
mayn't convince the public that Lady What's-her-name is a wonderful
person; but they will convince her that she is; and what more does she
want?"
"I don't understand you, Maurice!" the young baritone cried, almost
angrily. "Again and again you've spoken of Octavius Quirk as if he were
beneath contempt."
"What has that to do with it?" the other repeated, placidly. "As an
independent writer, Quirk is quite beneath contempt--quite. There is no
backbone in his writing at all, and he knows his own weakness; and he
thinks he can conceal it by the use of furious adjectives. He is always
in a frantic rush and flurry, that produces no impression on anybody. A
whirlwind of feathers, that's about it. He goes out into the highway
and brandishes a double-handed sword--in order to sweep off the head of
a buttercup. And I suppose he expects the public to believe that his
wild language, all about nothing, means strength; just as he hopes that
they will take his noisy horse-laugh for humor. That's Octavius Quirk as
a writer--a nobody, a nothing, a wisp of straw in convulsions; but as a
puffer--ah, there you have him!--as a puffer, magnificent, glorious, a
Greek hero, invincible, invulnerable. My good man, it's Octavius Quirk
you should go to! Get him to call on his pack of beagles to give tongue;
and then, my goodness, you'll hear a cry--for a while at least. Is there
anything at all in the book?"
"I don't know," said Harry Thornhill, who had changed quickly, and was
now regaling himself with a little of Miss Burgoyne's lemonade, with
which the prima-donna was so kind as to keep him supplied. "Well, now, I
shall be on the stage some time; what do you say to looking over Lady
Adela's novel?"
"All right."
There was a tapping at the door; it was the call-boy.
But Lionel Moore did not immediately answer the summons.
"Look here, Maurice; if you should find anything in the book--anything
you could say a word in favor of--I wish you'd come round to the Garden
Club with me, after the performance, and have a bit of supper. Octavius
Quirk is almost sure to be there."
"What, Quirk? I thought the Garden was given over to dukes and comic
actors?"
"There's a sprinkling of everybody in it," the young baritone said; "and
Quirk likes it because it is an all-night club--he never seems to go to
bed at all. Will you do that?"
"Oh, yes," Maurice Mangan said; and forthwith, as his friend left the
dressing-room, he plunged into Lady Adela's novel.
The last act of "The Squire's Daughter" is longer than its predecessors;
so that Mangan had plenty of time to acquire some general knowledge of
the character and contents of these three volumes. Indeed, he had more
than time for all the brief scrutiny he deemed necessary; when Lionel
Moore reappeared, to get finally quit of his theatrical trappings for
the night, his friend was standing at the fireplace, looking at a sketch
in brown chalk of Miss Burgoyne, which that amiable young lady had
herself presented to Harry Thornhill.
"Well, what's the verdict?"
Mangan turned round, rather bewildered; and then he recollected that he
had been glancing at the novel.
"Oh, _that_!" he said, regarding the three volumes with no very
favorable air, "Mighty poor stuff, I should say; just about as weak as
they make it. But harmless. Some of the conversation--between the
women--is natural; trivial, but natural. The plain truth is, my dear
Linn, it is a very foolish, stupid book, which should never have been
printed at all; but I suppose your fashionable friend could afford to
pay for having it printed."
"But, look here, Maurice," Lionel said, in considerable surprise, "I
don't see how it can be so very stupid, when Lady Adela herself is one
of the brightest, cleverest, shrewdest, most intelligent women you could
meet with anywhere--quite unusually so."
"That may be; but she is not the first clever woman who has made the
mistake of imagining that because she is socially popular she must
therefore be able to write a book."
"And what am I to say to Octavius Quirk?"
"What are you to say to the log-rollers? Don't say anything. Get Lady
Adela to ask one or two of them to dinner. You'll fetch Quirk that way
easily; they say Gargantua was a fool compared to him."
"I've seen him do pretty well at the Garden, especially about two in the
morning," was the young baritone's comment; and then, as he began to get
into his ordinary attire, he said, "To tell you the truth, Maurice, Lady
Adela rather hinted that she would be pleased to make the acquaintance
of any--of any literary man--"
"Who could do her book a good turn?"
"No, you needn't put it as rudely as that. She rather feels that, in
becoming an authoress, she has allied herself with literary people--and
would naturally like to make acquaintances; so, if it came to that, I
should consider myself empowered to ask Quirk whether he would accept an
invitation to dinner--I mean, at Cunyngham Lodge. It's no use asking
you, Maurice?" he added, with a little hesitation.
Maurice Mangan laughed.
"No, no, Linn, my boy; thank you all the same, I say," he continued, as
he took up his hat and stick, seeing that Lionel was about ready to go,
"do you ever hear from Miss Francie Wright, or have you forgotten her
among all your fine friends?"
"Oh, I hear from Francie sometimes," he answered, carelessly, "or about
her, anyway, whenever I get a letter from home. She's very well.
Boarding out pauper sick children is her new fad; and I believe she's
very busy and very happy over it. Come along, Maurice; we'll walk up to
the Garden, and get something of an appetite for supper."
When they arrived at the Garden Club (so named from its proximity to
Covent Garden) they went forthwith into the spacious apartment on the
ground floor which served at once as dining-room, newspaper-room, and
smoking-room. There was hardly anybody in it. Four young men in evening
dress were playing cards at a side-table; at another table a solitary
member was writing; but at the long supper-table--which was prettily lit
up with crimson-shaded lamps, and the appointments of which seemed very
trim and clean and neat--all the chairs were empty, and the only other
occupants of the place were the servants, who wore a simple livery of
white linen.
"What for supper, Maurice?" the younger of the two friends asked.
"Anything--with salad," Mangan answered; he was examining a series of
old engravings that hung around the walls.
"On a warm night like this what do you say to cold lamb, salad, and some
hock and iced soda-water?"
"All right."
Supper was speedily forthcoming, and, as they took their places, Mangan
said,
"You don't often go down to see the old people, Linn?"
"I'm so frightfully busy!"
"Has Miss Francie ever been up to the theatre--to see 'The Squire's
Daughter,' I mean?"--this question he seemed to put rather diffidently.
"No. I've asked her often enough; but she always laughs and puts it off.
She seems to be as busy down there as I am up here."
"What does she think of the great name and fame you have made for
yourself?"
"How should I know?"
Then there was silence for a second or two.
"I wish you'd run down to see them some Sunday, Linn; I'd go down with
you."
"Why not go down by yourself?--they'd be tremendously glad to see you."
"I should be more welcome if I took you with me. You know your cousin
likes you to pay a little attention to the old people. Come! Say Sunday
week."
"My dear fellow, Sunday is my busiest day. Sunday night is the only
night I have out of the seven. And I fancy that it is for that very
Sunday evening that Lord Rockminster has engaged the Lansdowne Gallery;
he gives a little dinner-party, and his sisters have a big concert
afterwards--we've all got to sing the chorus of the new marching-song
Lady Sybil has composed for the army."
"Who is Lady Sybil?"
"The sister of the authoress whose novel you were reading."
"My gracious! is there another genius in the family?"
"There's a third," said Lionel, with a bit of a smile. "What would you
say if Lady Rosamund Bourne were to paint a portrait of me as Harry
Thornhill for the Royal Academy?"
"I should say the betting was fifty to one against its getting in."
"Ah, you're unjust, Maurice; you don't know them. I dare say you judged
that novel by some high literary standard that it doesn't pretend to
reach. I am sure of this, that if it's half as clever as Lady Adela
Cunyngham herself, it will do very well."
"It will do very well for the kind of people who will read it," said the
other, indifferently.
This was a free-and-easy place; when they had finished supper, Lionel
Moore lit a cigarette, and his friend a briar-root pipe, without moving
from the table; and Mangan's prayer was still that his companion should
fix Sunday week for a visit to the little Surrey village where they had
been boys together, and where Lionel's father and mother (to say nothing
of a certain Miss Francie Wright, whose name cropped up more than once
in Mangan's talk) were still living. But during this entreaty Lionel's
attention happened to be attracted to the glass door communicating with
the hall; and instantly he said, in an undertone:
"Here's a stroke of luck, Maurice; Quirk has just come in. How am I to
sound him? What should I do?"
"Haven't I told you?" said Mangan, curtly. "Get your swell friends to
feed him."
Nevertheless, this short, fat man, who now strode into the room and
nodded briefly to these two acquaintances, speedily showed that on
occasion he knew how to feed himself. He called a waiter, and ordered an
underdone beefsteak with Spanish onions, toasted cheese to follow, and a
large bottle of stout to begin with; then he took the chair at the head
of the table, thus placing himself next to Lionel Moore.
"A very empty den to-night," observed this new-comer, whose heavy face,
watery blue eyes, lank hair plentifully streaked with gray, and
unwholesome complexion would not have produced a too-favorable
impression on any one unacquainted with his literary gifts and graces.
Lionel agreed; and then followed a desultory conversation about nothing
in particular, though Mr. Octavius Quirk was doing his best to say
clever things and show off his boisterous humor. Indeed, it was not
until that gentleman's very substantial supper was being brought in that
Lionel got an opportunity of artfully asking him whether he had heard
anything of Lady Adela Cunyngham's forthcoming novel. He was about to
proceed to explain that "Lady Arthur Castletown" was only a pseudonym,
when he was interrupted by Octavius Quirk bursting into a roar--a
somewhat affected roar--of scornful laughter.
"Well, of all the phenomena of the day, that is the most ludicrous," he
cried, "--the so-called aristocracy thinking that they can produce
anything in the shape of art or literature. The aristocracy--the most
exhausted of all our exhausted social strata--what can be expected from
_it_? Why, we haven't anywhere nowadays either art or literature or
drama that is worthy of the name--not anywhere--it is all a ghastly,
spurious make-believe--a mechanical manufactory of paintings and books
and plays without a spark of life in them--"
[Illustration: "_When they had finished supper, Lionel Moore lit a
cigarette, and his friend a brier-root pipe._"]
Lionel Moore resentfully thought to himself that if Mr. Quirk had been
able to do anything in any one of these directions he might have held
less despairing views; but, of course, he did not interrupt this feebly
tempestuous monologue.
"--We are all played out, that is the fact--the soil is exhausted--we
want a great national upheaval--a new condition of things--a social
revolution, in short. And we're going to get it" he continued, in a sort
of triumphant way; "there's no mistake about that; the social revolution
is in the air, it is under our feet, it is pressing in upon us from
every side; and yet at the very moment that the aristocracy have got
notice to quit their deer-forests and their salmon-rivers and
grouse-moors, they so far mistake the signs of the times that they think
they should be devoting themselves to art and going on the stage! Was
there ever such incomprehensible madness?"
"I hope they won't sweep away deer-forests and grouse-moors just all at
once," the young baritone said, modestly, "for I am asked to go to the
Highlands at the beginning of next August."
"Make haste, then, and see the last of these doomed institutions"
observed Mr. Quirk, with dark significance, as he looked up from his
steak and onions. "I tell you deer-forests are doomed; grouse-moors are
doomed; salmon-rivers are doomed. They are a survival of feudal rights
and privileges which the new democracy--the new ruling power--will make
short work of. The time has gone by for all these absurd restrictions
and reservations! There is no defence for them; there never was; they
were conceived in an iniquity of logic which modern common-sense will no
longer suffer. _Bona vacantia_ can't belong to anybody--therefore
they belong to the king; that's a pretty piece of reasoning, isn't it?
And if the crofter or the laborer says, '_Bona vacantia_ can't
belong to anybody--therefore they belong to me'--isn't the reasoning as
good? But it is not merely game-laws that must be abolished, it is game
itself."
"If you abolish the one, you'll soon get rid of the other," Maurice
Mangan said, with a kind of half-contemptuous indifference; he was
examining this person in a curious way, as he might have looked through
the wires of a cage in the Zoological Gardens.
"Both must be abolished," Mr. Octavius Quirk continued, with windy
vehemence. "The very distinction that takes any animal _feræ
naturæ_ and constitutes it game is a relic of class privilege and
must go--"
"Then Irish landlords will no longer be considered _feræ naturæ_?"
Mangan asked, incidentally.
"We must be free from these feudal tyrannies, these mediæval chains and
manacles that the Norman kings imposed on a conquered people. We must be
as free as the United States of America--"
"America!" Mangan said; and he was rude enough to laugh. "The State of
New York has more stringent game-laws than any European country that I
know of; and why not? They wanted to preserve certain wild animals, for
the general good; and they took the only possible way."
Quirk was disconcerted only for a moment; presently he had resumed, in
his reckless, _mouton-enragé_ fashion,
"That may be; but the Democracy of Great Britain has pronounced against
game; and game must go; there is no disputing the fact. Hunting in any
civilized community is a relic of barbarism; it is worse in this
country--it is an infringement of the natural rights of the tiller of
the soil. What is the use of talking about it?--the whole thing is
doomed; if you're going to Scotland this autumn, Mr. Moore, if you are
to be shown all those exclusive pastimes of the rich and privileged
classes, well, I'd advise you to keep your eyes open, and write as clear
an account of what you see as you can; and, by Jove, twenty years hence
your book will be read with amazement by the new generation!"
Here the pot of foaming stout claimed his attention; he buried his head
in it; and thereafter, sitting back in his chair, sighed forth his
satisfaction. The time was come for a large cigar.
And how, in the face of this fierce denunciation of the wealthy classes
and all their ways, could Lionel Moore put in a word for Lady Adela's
poor little literary infant? It would be shrivelled into nothing by a
blast of this simulated simoom. It would be trodden under foot by the
log-roller's elephantine jocosity. In a sort of despair he turned to
Maurice Mangan, and would have entered into conversation with him but
that Mangan now rose and said he must be going, nor could he be
prevailed on to stay. Lionel accompanied him into the hall.
"That Jabberwock makes me sick; he's such an ugly devil," Mangan said,
as he put on his hat; and surely that was strange language coming from
a grave philosopher who was about to publish a volume on the
"Fundamental Fallacies of M. Comte."
"But what am I to do, Maurice?" Lionel said, as his friend was leaving.
"It's no use asking for his intervention at present; he's simply running
amuck."
"If your friend--Lady What's-her-name--is as clever as you say, she'll
just twist that fellow round her finger," the other observed, briefly.
"Good-night, Linn."
And indeed it was not of Octavius Little, nor yet of Lady Adela's novel,
that Maurice Mangan was thinking as he carelessly walked away through
the dark London thoroughfares, towards his rooms in Victoria Street. He
was thinking of that quiet little Surrey village; and of two boys there
who had a great belief in each other--and in themselves, too, for the
matter of that; and of all the beautiful and wonderful dreams they
dreamed while as yet the far-reaching future was veiled from them. And
then he thought of Linn Moore's dressing-room at the theatre; and of the
paints and powder and vulgar tinsel that had to fit him out for
exhibition before the footlights; and of the feverish whirl of life and
the bedazzlement of popularity and fashionable petting; and somehow or
other the closing lines of Mrs. Browning's poem would come ever and anon
into his head as a sort of unceasing refrain:
"The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed that grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
CHAPTER III.
NINA.
One morning Lionel was just about to go out (he had already been round
to the gymnasium and got his fencing over) when the house-porter came up
and said that a young lady wished to see him.
"What does she want?" he said, impatiently--for something had gone wrong
with the clasp of his cigarette-case, and he could not get it right.
"What's her name? Who is she?"
"She gave me her name, sir; but I did not quite catch it," said the
factotum of the house.
"Oh, well, send her up," said he; no doubt this was some trembling
_débutante_, accompanied by an ancient duenna and a roll of music. And
then he went to the window, to try to get the impenitent clasp to shut.
But perhaps he would not have been so wholly engrossed with that
trifling difficulty had he known who this was who had come softly up the
stair and was now standing, irresolute, smiling, wondering, at the open
door. She was a remarkably pretty, even handsome young lady, whose pale,
clear, olive complexion and coal-black hair bespoke her Southern birth;
while there was an eager and yet timid look in her lustrous, soft black
eyes, and something about the mobile, half-parted mouth that seemed to
say she hardly knew whether to cry or laugh over this meeting with an
old friend. A very charming picture she presented there; for, besides
her attractive personal appearance, she was very neatly, not to say
coquettishly, dressed, her costume, which had a distinctly foreign air,
being all of black, save for the smart little French-looking hat of deep
crimson straw and velvet.
At last she said,
"Leo!"
He turned instantly, and had nearly dropped the cigarette-case in his
amazement. And for a second he seemed paralyzed of speech--he was wholly
bewildered--perhaps overcome by some swift sense of responsibility at
finding Antonia Rossi in London, and alone.
"Che, Nina mia," he cried; "tu stai cca a Londra!--chesta mo, chi su
credeva!--e senza manca scriverme nu viers' e lettere--Nina!--mi pare nu
suonno!--"
She interrupted him; she came forward, smiling--and the parting of the
pretty lips showed a sunny gleam of teeth; she held up her two hands,
palm outwards, as if she would shut away from herself that old, familiar
Neapolitanese.
"No, no, no, Leo," she said, rapidly, "I speak English now--I study,
study, study, morning, day, night; and always I say, 'When I see Leo, he
have much surprise that I speak English'--always I say, 'Some day I go
to England, and when I see Leo'--"
The happy, eager smile suddenly died away from her face. She looked at
him. A strange kind of trouble--of doubt and wonderment and pain--came
into those soft, dark, expressive eyes.
"You--you not wish to see me, Leo?" she said, rather breathlessly--and
as if she could hardly believe this thing. "I come to London--and you
not glad to see me--"
Quick tears of wounded pride sprang to the long black lashes; but, with
a dignified, even haughty inclination of the head, she turned from him
and put her hand on the handle of the door. At the same instant he
caught her arm.
"Why, Nina, you're just the spoiled child you always were! Ah, your
English doesn't go so far as that; you don't know what a spoiled child
is?--_è la cianciosella_, you Neapolitan girl! Why, of course I'm glad
to see you--I am delighted to see you--but you frightened me, Nina--your
coming like this, alone--"
"I frighten you, Leo?" she said, and a quick laugh shone brightly
through her tears. "Ah, I see--it is that I have no chaperon? But I had
no time--I wished to see you, Leo--I said, 'Leo will understand, and
afterwards I get a chaperon all correctly.' Oh, yes, yes, I know--but
where is the time?--yesterday I go through the streets--it is Leo, Leo
everywhere in the windows--I see you in this costume, in the other
costume--and your name so large, so very large, in the--in the--"
"The theatre-bills? Well, sit down, Nina, and tell me how you come to be
in London."
She had by this time quite forgiven or forgotten his first dismay on
finding her there; and now she took a chair with much quiet
complaisance, and sat down, and put her black silk sunshade across her
knees.
"It is simple," she said, and from time to time she regarded him in a
very frank and pleased and even affectionate way, as if the old
comradeship of the time when they were both studying in Naples was not
to be interfered with by the natural timidity of a young and extremely
pretty woman coming as a stranger into a strange town. "You remember
Carmela, Leo? Carmela and her--her spouse--they have great
good-fortune--they get a grand prize in the lottery--then he says,
'Carmeluccia, we will go to Paris--we will go to Paris, Carmeluccia--and
why not Nina also?' Very kind, was it not?--but Andrea is always kind, so
also Carmela, to me. Then I am in Paris. I say, 'It is not far to
London; I go to London; I go to London and see Leo.' Perhaps I get an
engagement--oh, no, no, no, you shall not laugh!" she broke in--though
it was she herself who was laughing, and not he at all. "I am
improved--oh, yes, a little--a little improved--you remember old
Pandiani he always say my voice not bad, but that _agilità_ was for me
very difficult."
He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left
Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious
assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and _fiorituri_
generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had
met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that
she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear
whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her
voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to
the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select
Ambroise Thomas's "Io son Titania." And he was still more astonished
when he found her singing this difficult piece of music with a
brilliancy, an ease, a _verve_ of execution that he had never dreamed of
her being able to reach.
"Brava! Brava! Bravissima!--Well, you _have_ improved, Nina!" he
exclaimed. "And it isn't only in freedom of production, it is in
quality, too, in _timbre_--my goodness, your voice has ever so much more
volume and power! Come, now, try some big, dramatic thing--"
She shook her head.
"No, no, Leo, I know what I do," she said. "I shall never have the grand
style--never--but you think I am improved? Yes. Well, now, I sing
something else."
He forgot all about her lack of a chaperon; they were fellow-students
again, as in the old days at Naples, when they worked hard (and also
played a little), when they comforted each other, and strove to bear
with equanimity the grumbling and querulousness of that
always-dissatisfied old Pandiani. Signorina Rossi now sang the Shadow
Song from "Dinorah;" then she sang the Jewel Song from "Faust;" she sang
"Caro nome" from "Rigoletto," or anything else that he could suggest;
and her runs and shakes and scale passages were delivered with a freedom
and precision that again and again called forth his applause.
"And you have never sung in public, Nina?" he asked.
"At one concert, yes, in Naples," the young lady made answer. "And at
two or three _matinées_" And then she turned to him, with a bright look.
"You know this, Leo?--I am offered--no--I was offered--an engagement to
sing in opera; oh, yes; it was the _impresario_ from Malta--he comes to
Naples--Pandiani makes us all sing to him--then will I go to Malta, to
the opera there? No!"
"Why not, Nina? Surely that was a good opening," he said.
She turned away from him again, and her fingers wandered lightly over
the keys of the piano.
"I always say to me, 'Some day I am in England; the English give much
money at concerts; perhaps that is better.'"
"So you've come over to England to get a series of concert-room
engagements; is that it, Nina?"
She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
"Perhaps. One must wait and see. It is not my ambition. No. The light
opera, that is--popular?--is it right?"
"Yes, yes."
"It is very popular in England," said the young Italian lady, with her
eyes coming back from the music-sheets to seek those of her friend."
Well, Leo, if I take a small part to begin, have I voice sufficient?
What do you think? No; be frank; say to yourself, 'I am Pandiani; here
is Antonia Rossi troubling me once more; it is useless; go away, Antonia
Rossi, and not trouble me!' Well, Maestro Pandiani, what you say?"
"So you want to go on the stage, Nina?" said he; and again the dread of
finding himself responsible for this solitary young stranger sent a
qualm to his heart. It was an embarrassing position altogether; but at
the same time the thought of shaking her off--of getting free from this
responsibility by telling a white lie or two and persuading her to go
back to Naples--that thought never even occurred to him. To shake off
his old comrade Nina? He certainly would have preferred, for many
reasons, that she should have taken to concert-room business; but if she
were relying on him for an introduction to the lyric stage, why, he was
bound to help her in every possible way. "You know you've got an
excellent voice," he continued. "And a very little stage training would
fit you for a small part in comedy-opera, if that is what you're
thinking of, as a beginning. But I don't know that you would like it,
Nina. You see, you would have to become under-study for the lady who has
the part at present; and they'd probably want you to sing in the chorus;
and you'd get a very small salary--at first, you know, until you were
qualified to take one of the more important parts--and then you might
get into a travelling company--"
"A small part?" said she, with much cheerfulness. "Oh, yes; why not? I
must learn."
"But I don't know that you would like it," he said, still ruefully. "You
see, Nina, you might have to dress in the same room with two or three of
the chorus-girls--"
"And then?" she said, with a little dramatic gesture, and an elevation
of her beautifully formed black eyebrows. "Leo, you never saw my
lodgings with the family Debernardi--you have only mount the stairs--"
"My goodness, Nina, I could guess what the inside of the rooms was like,
if they were anything like those interminable and horrid stairs!" he
exclaimed, with a laugh. "And you who were always so fond of pretty
things, and flowers, and always so particular when we went to a
restaurant--to live with the Debernardis!"
"Ah, Leo, you imagine not why?" she said, also laughing, and when she
laughed her milk-white teeth shone merrily. "Old Pietro Debernardi he
lives in England some years; he speaks English, perhaps not very well,
but he speaks; then he teach me as he knows; and when it is possible I
go on the _Risposta_ and sail over to Capri, and all the way, and all
the return, I listen, and listen, and listen to the English people; and
I remember, and I practise alone in my own room, and I say, 'Leo, he
must not ridicule me, when I go to England.'"
"Ridicule you!" said he, indignantly. "I wish I could speak Italian as
freely as you speak English, Nina!"
"Oh, you speak Italian very well," said she. "But why you speak still
the Neapolitan dialetto--dialect, is it right?--that you hear in the
shops and the streets? Ah, I remember you are so proud of it, and when I
try to teach you proper Italian, you laugh--you wish to speak like
Sabetta Debernardi, and Giacomo, and the others. That is the fault to
learn by ear, instead of the books correctly. And you have not forgotten
yet!"
"Well, Nina," he resumed, "I don't seem to have frightened you with the
possibility of your having to dress in the same room with two or three
chorus-girls whom you don't know; and in fact, if I happened to be
acquainted with the theatre, I dare say I could get the manager to make
sure you were to dress along with some nice girl, who would show you
how to make-up, and all that. But you would get a very small salary to
begin with, Nina; perhaps only thirty shillings a week--and an extra
pound a week when you had to take up your under-study duties--however,
that need not trouble you, because we are old comrades, Nina, and while
you are in England my purse is yours--"
She looked at him doubtfully.
"Ah, you don't understand," he said, gently. "It's only this, Nina: I
have plenty of money; if you are a good comrade and a good friend, you
will take from me what you want--always--at any moment--"
The pretty, pale-olive face flushed quickly, and for a brief second she
glanced at him with grateful eyes; but it was perhaps to cover her
embarrassment that she now rose from the piano, and pretended to be
tired of the music and of these professional schemes.
"It is enough of booziness," she said, lightly; "come, Leo, will you go
for a small walk?--have you time?"
"Oh, yes, I have time," said he, "but you must not say _booziness_,
Nina? it is _bizness_."
"_Beezness!_--_beezness!_" she said, smiling. "It is enough of
_beezness_. You go for a walk with me--yes? How beautiful the weather!"
she continued, in a suddenly altered tone, as she looked out at the
sunlit foliage of the Green Park; and then she murmured, almost to
herself, in those soft Italian vowel sounds:
"Ah, Leo mio, che sarei felice d'essere in campagna!"
It was a kind of sigh; perhaps that was the reason she had inadvertently
relapsed into her own tongue. And as they went down the stairs, and he
opened the door for her, the few words he addressed to her were also in
Italian.
"The country!" he said. "We will just step across the street, Nina, and
you will find yourself in what is quite as pretty as the country at this
time of year. You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you
could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the
trees."
But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the
Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was
telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of
their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them
spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant--the fresh
foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet
undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and
limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a
world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a
small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot
light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the
yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than
they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the
midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and
sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under
a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and
absent, and she said,
"Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house--it all appears a dream."
"What appears like a dream to you?" her companion asked.
"To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak," she
answered, in a low voice. "Often I think of it--often I think of
London--wondering what it is like--and I ask myself, 'Will Leo be the
same after his great renown? Are we friends as before?' and now I am
here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in
gardens--oh, very beautiful!--and Leo is talking just as in the old
way--perhaps it is a dream?" she continued, looking up with a smile.
"Perhaps I wake soon?"
"Oh, no, it isn't a dream, Nina," said he, "only it might pass for one,
for you haven't told me how you managed to get here. It is all a mystery
to me. Where are you staying, for example?"
"My lodging?" she said. "I have an apartment in the Restaurant
Gianuzzi."
"Where is that?"
"Rupert Street," she answered, with a valiant effort at the proper
pronunciation.
"My goodness! what are you doing, Nina?" he said, almost angrily.
"Living by yourself in a foreign restaurant, in the neighborhood of
Leicester Square! You'll have to come out of that at once!"
"You must not scold me, Leo," she said, in rather a hurt way. "How am I
to know?"
"I am not scolding you," he said (indeed, he knew better than to do
that; if once the notion had got into her little head that he was really
upbraiding her, she would have been up and off in a moment,
proud-lipped, indignant-eyed, with a fierce wrong rankling in her heart;
and weeks it might take him to pet her into gentleness again, even if
she did not forthwith set out for the South, resolved to return to this
harsh, cold England no more). "I am not scolding you, Nina," he said,
quite gently. "Of course you didn't know. And of course you were
attracted by the Italian name--you thought you would feel at home--"
"They are very nice people, yes, yes!" she said--and still she was
inclined to hold her head erect, and her mouth was a little proud and
offended.
"Very likely indeed," he said, with great consideration, "but, you see,
Nina, a single young lady can't stay at a restaurant by herself, without
knowing some one, some one to go about with her--"
"Why," she said, vehemently, almost scornfully, "you think I not know
that! An Italian girl--and not know that! Last night, hour after hour, I
sit and think, 'Oh, there is Leo singing now--if I may go to the
theatre!--to sit and hear him--and think of the old days--and perhaps to
write home to the _maestro_, and tell him of the grand fame of his
scholar.' But no. I cannot go out. There is no time yet to see about
chaperon. When it comes eleven hour, I say, 'The theatre is ceased;' and
I go to bed. Then this morning I know no person; I say, 'Very well, I go
and see Leo; he will understand;' it is how I meet him in the Chiaja, and
he says, 'Good-morning, Nina; shall we go for a little walk out to
Pozzuoli'--it is just the same."
"Yes, I understand well enough, Nina," said he, good-naturedly, "and I
wasn't scolding you when I said you must get some better place to stay
at while you are in London. Well, now, I am going to tell you something.
I don't know much about what actors and actresses are in Italy, but here
in England they are exceedingly generous to any of their number who have
fallen into misfortune; and a case of the kind happened a little while
ago. An actor, who used to be well known, died quite suddenly and left
his widow entirely unprovided for; whereupon there was a subscription
got up for her, and a morning performance, too, in which nearly all the
leading actors and actresses managed to do something or other; and the
result is that they have been able to take the lease of a house in
Sloane Street, and furnish the rooms for her, and she is to earn her
living by keeping lodgers. Now, if you really want to remain in London,
Nina, don't you think that might be a comfortable home for you? She is a
very nice, ladylike little woman; and she's a great friend of mine, too;
she would do everything she could for you. There's a chaperon for you
ready-made!--for I'm afraid she has only one lodger to look after as
yet, though she has all the necessary servants, and the establishment is
quite complete. What do you say to that, Nina?"
Her face had brightened up wonderfully at this proposal.
"Yes, yes, yes, Leo!" she said, instantly. "Tell me how I go, and I go
at once, to ask her if she can give me apartments."
He glanced at his watch.
"The fact is," said he, slowly, "I was to have lunched with a very small
party to-day--at a duchess's house--at a duchess's house, think of that,
Nina!"
She jumped to her feet at once, and frankly held out her hand.
"Forgive me, Leo!--I retard you--I did not know."
"Don't be in such a hurry, Nina," he said, as he also rose. "I'm going
to break the appointment, that's all about it; Signorina Antonia Rossi
doesn't arrive in England every day. I'll tell you what we have got to
do: we will get into a hansom and drive to a telegraph-office, and I'll
get rid of that engagement; then we'll go on to the Restaurant Gianuzzi,
and you and I will have a little luncheon by ourselves, just to prepare
us for the fatigues of the day; then you will get your things ready, and
I will take you down to Mrs. Grey's in Sloane Street, and introduce you
to that most estimable little lady; and then, if Mrs. Grey happens to be
disengaged for the evening, she might be induced to come with you to the
New Theatre, and she could take you safe home after the performance. How
will that do, Nina?"
"You always were kind to me, Leo," she said--though the gratitude
plainly shining in the gentle, dark eyes rendered the words quite
unnecessary.
And indeed she was delighted, with a sort of childish delight, to sit in
this swift hansom, bowling along the smooth thoroughfare; and she
chatted and chattered in her gay, rapid, disconnected fashion; and she
had nothing but contempt for the shabby Neapolitan fiacre and the
jolting streets that Leo of course remembered; and when at last she
found herself and her companion of old days seated at a small, clean,
bright window-table in the Restaurant Gianuzzi--they being the only
occupants of the long saloon--she fairly clapped her little hands
together in her gladness. And then how pretty she looked! She had
removed her bonnet; and the light from the window, falling on the
magnificent masses of her jet-black hair gave it almost a blue sheen in
places; while here and there--about the wax-like ear, for example, a
tiny ringlet had got astray, and its soft darkness against the olive
complexion seemed to heighten the clear, pure pallor of the oval cheek.
And now all doubts as to how Leo might receive her had fled from her
mind; they were on the old, familiar terms again; and she followed with
an eager and joyous interest all that he had to say to her. Then how
easily could she accentuate her sympathetic listening with this
expressive face! The mobile, somewhat large, beautifully formed mouth,
the piquant little nose with its sensitive nostrils, the eloquent dark
eyes could just say anything she pleased; though, to be sure, however
varying her mood might be, in accordance with what she heard and what
was demanded of her, her normal expression was one of an almost childish
and happy content. She poured her glass of Chianti into a tumbler, and
filled that up with water, and sipped it as a canary sips. She made
little pellets of bread with her dainty white fingers--but that was in
forgetfulness--that was in her eagerness of listening. And at last she
said,
"What is it, Leo?--you wish to frighten me with your trials?--no! for
now you laugh at all these--these mortifications. Then a man is
proud--he is sensitive--he is not patient as a woman--oh, you think you
frighten me?--no, no!"
The fact is, he began to see more and more clearly that she was resolved
upon trying her fortune on the lyric stage; and he thought it his duty
to let her know very distinctly what she would have to encounter. He did
not exactly try to dissuade her; but he gave her a general idea of what
she might expect, and that in not too roseate colors. His chief
difficulty, however, was this: he was possessed by a vague feeling that
there might be some awkwardness in having Antonia Rossi engaged at the
same theatre with himself; and yet, looking round all the light operas
then being performed, he had honestly to confess that the only part Nina
could aspire to take, with her present imperfect pronunciation of
English, was that of the young French officer played at the New Theatre
by Mlle. Girond. Nor did it lessen his embarrassment to find, as soon as
he mentioned this possibility, that to join the New Theatre was
precisely what Signorina Rossi desired.
"I don't think there would be much difficulty about it, Nina," he was
forced to admit--carefully concealing his reluctance the while.
"Lehmann, that is our manager, is talking about getting up a second
travelling company, for the opera is so popular everywhere; and there is
to be a series of rehearsals of under-studies beginning next Monday, and
you could see all the coaching going on. Then you could sit in front at
night, and watch Mlle. Girond's 'business:' how would you like that,
Nina?--whether what she does is clever or stupid, you would have to copy
it? the public would expect that--"
"Why not?" Nina said, with a pleasant smile. "Why not? I learn. She
knows more; why I not learn?"
"It's a shame to throw away a fine voice like yours on a small part in
comic opera," he said--still with vague dreams before him of a
concert-room career for her.
"But I must begin," said she, with much practical common-sense, "and
while I am in the small part, I learn to act, I learn the stage-affair,
I learn better English, to the end of having a place more important.
Why, Leo, you are too careful of me! At Naples I work hard, I am a slave
to old Pandiani--I suffer everything--can I not work hard here in
London? You think I am an infant? Certainly I am not--no, no--I am
old--old--"
"But light-hearted still, Nina," he said, for she was clearly bent on
laughing away his fears. Then he looked at her, with a little
hesitation. "There's another thing, Nina? about the costume."
"Yes?" she asked, innocently.
"I don't know--whether you would quite like--but I'll show you Mlle.
Girond's dress anyway--then you can judge for yourself," said he. He
called the waiter. He scribbled on a piece of paper, "Photograph of
Mlle. Girond as Capitaine Crépin in 'The Squire's Daughter.'" "Send
round to some stationer's shop, will you, and get me that?"
When the messenger returned with the photograph, Lionel, rather timidly,
put it before her; but, indeed, there was nothing in the costume of
Mlle. Girond to startle any one--the uniform of the boy-officer was so
obviously a compromise. Nina glanced at it thoughtfully.
"Well, Leo," she said, looking up, "you see no harm?"
"Harm?" said he, boldly taking up his cue, "of course not! It isn't like
any uniform that ever was known; I suppose it's Mlle. Girond's own
invention; but, at all events, there's nothing to prevent any modest
girl wearing it. Why, I know more than one fashionable lady who would
think nothing of appearing as Rosalind--and Rosalind's is a real boy's
dress, or ought to be--and then they haven't the excuse that an actor or
actress has, that it is a necessity of one's profession. However,
there's nothing to be said about that costume, anyway; I really had
forgotten that Mlle. Girond had got her pretty little blue coat made
with so long a skirt. Besides, Nina, with a voice like yours, you will
soon be beyond having to take parts like that."
Indeed, she was so evidently anxious to obtain an engagement in the same
theatre that he himself was engaged in that his vague reluctance
ultimately vanished; and he began considering when he could bring her
before Mr. Lehmann, the manager, and Mr. Carey, the musical conductor,
so that they should hear her sing. As to their verdict, as to what the
manager would do, he had no doubt whatever. She had a valuable voice,
and her ignorance of stage requirements would speedily disappear. At the
very time that Lehmann was trying to get new under-studies with a view
to the formation of a second travelling company, why, here was a perfect
treasure discovered for him. And Lionel made certain that, as soon as
Antonia Rossi had had time to study Mlle. Girond's "business," and
perhaps one or two chances of actually playing the part, she would be
drafted into one or other of the travelling companies, and sent away
through the provinces; so that any awkwardness arising from her being in
the same theatre with himself, and he her only friend in England, to
whom she would naturally appeal in any emergency, would thus be
obviated.
"Nina," said he, as they were driving in a hansom to Sloane Street (all
her belongings being on the top of the cab), "Lehmann, our manager, is
to be at the theatre this afternoon, about some scenery, I fancy, and
there's a chance of our catching him if we went down some little time
before the performance. Would you come along and sing one or two things?
you might have the arrangement made at once."
"Will you go with me, Leo?"
"Oh, yes," he said, "I mean Mrs. Grey will take you, you know; for I
will try to get places for her and you in front afterwards; but I will
go with you as well. You won't be afraid?"
She laughed.
"Afraid?--no, no--what I can do I can do--there is no Pandiani to scold
me if they not satisfied--that is my own _beezness_--is it right?--oh, I
say to you, Leo, if you hear Pandiani when I refuse to go to Malta--you
think you know the Neapolitan deealet--dialect?--no, it is not good for
you to know all the wicked words of Naples--and he is old and
evil-tempered--it is no matter. But in this theatre there is no Pandiani
and his curses--"
"No, no, not curses, Nina," he said. "I see old Debernardi has taught
you some strange English. Of course the _maestro_ did not use curses to
his favorite pupil--oh, yes, you were, Nina, a great favorite, though he
was always grumbling and growling. However, remember this, Nina, you
must sing your best this evening, and impress them; and I shouldn't
wonder if Lehmann gave you exceptional terms."
"More _beezness_?" she said, with a smile that showed a gleam of her
pretty teeth; the sound of the word had tickled her ear, somehow; more
than once, as the cab rolled away down Kensingtonwards, he could hear
her repeat to herself--"_beezness!_ _beezness!_"
This young Italian lady seemed to produce a most favorable impression on
the little, pale-faced widow, who appeared to be very grateful to Lionel
Moore for having thought of her. The ground-floor sitting-room and
bedroom, she explained, were occupied by her sole lodger; the young lady
could have the choice of any of the apartments above. The young lady, as
it turned out, was startled beyond measure at the price she was asked to
pay (which, in truth, was quite moderate, for the rooms were good
rooms, in a good situation, and neatly furnished), and it was only on
Lionel's insisting on it that she consented to take the apartments on
the second floor.
"I beg you not miscomprehend," Nina said, somewhat earnestly, to the
little landlady (for was she not a friend of Leo's?). "The price is,
perhaps, not too large--it is to me that it is large--"
"Oh, that's all right, Nina," Lionel broke in; "that's all settled. You
see, Mrs. Grey, Miss Rossi has come over here to get an engagement in
comedy opera, or perhaps to sing at concerts; and if a manager calls to
see her on business, why, of course, she must be in decent rooms. You
can't go and live in a slum. Mrs. Grey knows what managers are, Nina;
you must take up a good position and hold your own; and--and, in fact,
Nina, when you are in London you can't afford to go and climb those
frightful Neapolitan stairs and hide yourself in a garret. So it's
settled; and I'm going out directly to hire a piano for you."
"For how much expense, Leo?" she said, anxiously.
"Oh, we'll see about that by and by," said he.
He then explained to Mrs. Grey that Miss Nina was that very evening
going along to the New Theatre to be heard by the manager and the
conductor; that thereafter she wished to see the performance of "The
Squire's Daughter," in which she hoped ere long to take a part herself;
and that, if Mrs. Grey could find it convenient to accompany the young
lady, it would be a very great obligation to him, Mr. Moore. Mrs. Grey
replied to this that her solitary lodger had gone down to Richmond for
two or three days; she herself had no engagement of any kind for that
evening; and when, she asked, did any one ever hear of an old actress
refusing an invitation to go to the theatre?
"So that's all settled, too," said this young man, who seemed to be
carrying everything his own way.
Then he went out and hired a piano--necessarily a small upright--which
was to be taken down to Sloane Street that same evening; next he sought
out a telegraph-office, and sent a message to Mr. Lehmann and to Mr.
Carey; finally he called at a florist's, and bought a whole heap of
flowers for the better decoration of Signorina Rossi's new apartments.
In this last affair he was really outrageously extravagant, even for one
who was habitually careless about his expenditure; but he said to
himself,
"Well, I throw away lots of money in compliments to people who are quite
indifferent to me; and why shouldn't I allow myself a little latitude
when it is my old comrade Nina who has come over to England?"
When at length he got back to the house he found it would soon be time
for them to be thinking of getting down to the theatre; so he said,
"Now, look here, Mrs. Grey, when Miss Nina has done with her singing and
her talk with the manager, you must take her to some restaurant and get
some dinner for both of you, for you can't go on without anything until
eleven. You will just have time before the performance begins. I'm sorry
I can't take you; but, you see, as soon as I hear what the manager says,
I must be off to dress for my part. Then, at the end of the performance,
I can't ask you to wait for me; you will have to bring her home, either
in a cab or by the Underground, for Nina is very economical. I hope you
won't think I am treating you ill in leaving you to yourselves--"
"Why, Leo, you have given up the whole day to me!" Nina exclaimed.
"You gave up many an afternoon to me, Nina," he rejoined, "when I
sprained my ankle down at that confounded Castello Dell' Ovo."
The ordeal that the _débutante_ had now to undergo was, of course, made
remarkably easy for her through the intervention of this good friend of
hers. When they got down to the theatre they went at once on to the
stage, where Nina found herself in the midst of an old-fashioned English
village, with a gayly bedecked Maypole just behind her, while in front
of her was the great, gaunt, empty, musty-smelling building, filled with
a dim twilight, though, also, there were here and there one or two
orange-points of gas. Lionel sent a messenger to the manager's office,
and also told him to ask if Mr. Carey had come; then he opened Nina's
roll of music for her, and began to discuss with her which piece she
should choose. Fortunately Mr. Lehmann had not yet left--here he was--a
stout, clean-shaven, sharp-eyed sort of person, in a frock-coat and a
remarkably shiny hat; he glanced at the young lady in what she
considered a very rude and unwarrantable manner, but the fact was he was
merely, from a business point of view, trying to guess what her figure
was like. Lionel explained all the circumstances of the case to him,
and gave it as his own confident opinion that, as soon as they had heard
Mlle. Rossi sing, there would be little doubt of her being engaged. At
the same moment Mr. Carey appeared--a tall, blond, extremely handsome
person of the fashion-plate sort; and, at a word from the manager, two
or three scene-shifters went and wheeled on to the stage a small upright
piano.
Nina did not seem at all disconcerted by their business-like air and
want of little formal politenesses. Quite calmly she took out "Caro nome
" from her music and handed it to the conductor, who was at the piano.
He glanced at the sheet, appeared a little surprised, but struck the
opening chords for her. Then Nina sang; and though for a second or two
the sound of her own voice in this huge, empty building seemed
strange--seemed wrong almost and unnatural--she had speedily recovered
confidence, and was determined she would bring no discredit upon her
friend Leo. Very well indeed she sang, and Lionel was delighted; while,
of course, Mr. Carey was professionally interested in hearing for the
first time a voice so fresh and pure and so perfectly trained; but when
she had finished the manager merely said,
"Thank you, that will do; I needn't trouble you further." Then, after a
word or two, partly aside, with Mr. Carey, he turned to Lionel and
abruptly asked what salary she wanted--just as if Lionel had brought him
some automaton and made it work.
"I think you ought to give her a very good salary," the young man said,
in an undertone; "she has studied under Pandiani at Naples. And if I
were you I wouldn't ask her to sing in the chorus at all; I would rather
keep a voice like that fresh and unworked until she is fit to take a
part."
"Singing in the chorus won't hurt her," said he, briefly, "for a while,
at least, and she'll become familiar with the stage."
But here Lionel drew the manager still further aside; and then ensued a
conversation which neither Nina nor Mr. Carey could in the least
overhear. At the end of it Mr. Lehmann nodded acquiescence, and said,
"Very well, then;" and straightway he departed, for he was a busy man,
and had little time to waste on the smaller courtesies of
life--especially in the case of _débutantes_.
Lionel returned to the young lady whose fate had just been decided.
"That's all right, Nina," he said. "You are engaged as under-study to
Mlle. Girond, and you'll have three pounds a week as soon as you have
studied her business and are ready to take the part when you're wanted.
I will find you a full score, and you may get up some of the other
music, when you've nothing better to do. The rehearsals of the
under-studies begin on Monday--but I'll see you before then and let you
know all about it. You won't mind my running away?--I'm on in the first
scene. There is Mrs. Grey waiting for you--you must go and get something
to eat--and when you come back, call at the stage-door, and you'll find
an envelope waiting for you, with two places in it--the dress circle, if
it can be managed, for I want you to be some distance away from the
orchestra. Good-bye, Nina!"
She held his hand for a moment.
"Leo, I thank you," she said, regarding him with her dark eyes; and then
he smiled and waved another farewell to her as he disappeared; and she
was left to make her way with her patient chaperon out of this great,
hollow, portentous building, that was now resounding with mysterious
clankings and calls.
And it was from a couple of seats in the back of the dress-circle that
Mrs. Grey and her young charge heard the comedy-opera of "The Squire's
Daughter;" and Lionel knew they were there; and no doubt he sang his
best--for, if Nina had been showing off what she could do in the
morning, why should he not show off now, amid all these added glories of
picturesque costumes and surroundings? Nina was in an extraordinary
state of excitement, which she was unable altogether to conceal. Mrs.
Grey could hear the little, muttered exclamations in Italian; she could
see how intently that expressive face followed the progress of the
piece, reflecting its every movement, as it were; she caught a glimpse
of tears on the long, dark lashes when Lionel was singing, with
impassioned fervor, his love-lorn serenade; and then the next moment she
was astonished by the vehemence of the girl's delight when the vast
house thundered forth its applause--indeed, Nina herself was clapping
her hands furiously, to join in the universal roar of a recall--she was
laughing with joy--she appeared to have gone mad. Then, at the end of
the second act, she said, quickly,
"Mrs. Grey, can I send to him a note?--is there letter-paper?"
"Well, my dear, if we go into the refreshment-room and have a cup of
tea, perhaps one of the young ladies could give us a sheet of
writing-paper."
And thus it was that Lionel, when he was leaving the theatre that night,
found a neatly folded little note awaiting him. He was in a considerable
hurry; for he had to go home and dress and get off to a crush in
Grosvenor Square, where he hoped to find Lady Adela Cunyngham, her
sisters, and Miss Georgie Lestrange (there was some talk of an immediate
presentation of the little pastoral comedy), so that he had only time to
glance over Nina's nervously pencilled scrawl. Thus it ran:
"Leo, it is magnificent, it is splendid, you are a true artist;
to-morrow I write to Pandiani, he will be overjoyed as I am. But
Miss Burgoyne--_no, no, no_--she is not artist at all--she is
negligent of her part, of the others in the scene--she puts up her
fan and talks to you from behind it--why you allow that?--it is
insult to the public! She _believes_ not her part and makes all the
rest false. What a shame to you, Leo; but your splendid voice, your
fine timbre, carries everything! Bravo, my Leo! It is a great
trionf, brilliant, beautiful, and Nina is proud of her friend.
Good-night from
"NINA."
As Lionel was spinning along Piccadilly in his swift hansom, it occurred
to him that if Nina were going to join the "Squire's Daughter" company,
it might be just as well for her not to have any preconceived antipathy
against Miss Burgoyne. For Miss Burgoyne was an important person at the
New Theatre.
CHAPTER IV.
COUNTRY AND TOWN.
On this Sunday morning, when all the good people had gone to church,
there was no sign of life on these far-stretching Winstead Downs. The
yellow roads intersecting the undulations of black-and-golden gorse were
undisturbed by even a solitary tramp; so that Lionel Moore and his
friend Mangan, as they idly walked along, seemed to be the sole
possessors of the spacious landscape. It was a beautiful morning, warm
and clear and sunny; a southerly breeze stirred the adjacent elms into a
noise as of the sea, caused the chestnuts to wave their great branches
bearing thousands of milky minarets, and sent waves of shadows across
the silken gray-green of a field of rye. There was a windmill on a
distant height, its long arms motionless. A strip of Scotch firs stood
black and near at one portion of the horizon; but elsewhere the
successive lines of wood and hill faded away into the south, becoming of
a paler and paler hue until they disappeared in a silvery mist. The air
was sweet with the resinous scent of the furze. In short, it was a
perfect day in early June, on a wide, untenanted, high-lying Surrey
common.
And Maurice Mangan, in his aimless, desultory fashion, was inveighing
against the vanity of the life led by certain classes in the great
Babylon out of which he had just haled his rather unwilling friend; and
describing their mad and frantic efforts to wrest themselves free of the
demon _ennui_; and their ceaseless, eager clamor for hurry and
excitement, lest, in some unguarded moment of silence, their souls
should speak.
"It is quite a fallacy," he was saying, as he walked carelessly onwards,
his head thrown forward a little, his hands clasped behind his back, his
stick trailing after him, "it is altogether a fallacy to talk of the
'complaining millions of men' who 'darken in labor and pain.' It is the
hard-working millions of mankind who are the happiest; their constant
labor brings content; the riddle of the painful earth doesn't vex
them--they have no leisure; they don't fear the hour of sleep--they
welcome it. It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their
hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of
amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who
are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself,
Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to
lighten the unbearable weariness of their life. Well," he continued, in
his rambling way, "it isn't quite what I had looked forward to; I had
looked forward to something different for you. I can remember, when we
used to have our long Sunday walks in those days, what splendid
ambitions you had for yourself, and how you were all burning to
begin--the organist of Winstead Church was to produce his Hallelujah
Chorus, and the nations were to listen; and the other night, when I was
in your room at the theatre, when I saw you smearing your face and
decking yourself out for exhibition before a lot of fashionable idlers,
I could not help saying to myself, 'And this is what Linn Moore has come
to!'"
"Yes, that is what Linn Moore has come to," the other said, with entire
good-nature. "And what has Maurice Mangan come to? I can remember when
Maurice Mangan was to be a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great--I
don't know what. Winstead was far too small a place for him; he was to
go up and conquer London, and do great and wonderful things. And what is
he now?--a reporter of the gabble of the House of Commons."
"I suppose I am a failure," said this tall, thin, contemplative-looking
man, who spoke quite dispassionately of himself, just as he spoke with a
transparent honesty and simplicity of his friend. "But at least I have
kept myself to myself. I haven't sold myself over to the Moloch of
fashion--"
"Oh, your dislike of fashionable people is a mere bundle of prejudice!"
Lionel cried. "The truth is, Maurice, you don't know those fashionable
people you seem to despise so heartily. If you did, you would discover
that they had the ordinary human qualities of other people--only that
they are better educated and more courteous and pleasant in manner. Then
their benevolence--if you knew how much they give away in charity--"
"Benevolence!" Mangan broke in, impatiently. "What is benevolence? It is
generally nothing more or less than an expression of your own
satisfaction with yourself. You are stuffed with food and wine; your
purse is gorged; 'here's a handful of sovereigns for you, you poor devil
crouching at the corner!' What merit is in that? Do you call that a
virtue? But where charity really becomes a heroism, Linn, is when a
poor, suffering, neuralgic woman, without any impulse from abundance of
health or abundance of comfort, sets laboriously to work to do what she
can for her fellow-creatures. Then that is something to regard--that is
something to admire--"
Lionel burst out laughing.
"A very pretty description of Francie Wright!" he cried. "Francie a
poor, suffering, wretched woman--because she happened to have a touch of
neuralgia the last Sunday you were down here! There's very little of the
poor and suffering about Francie; she's as contented and merry a lass as
you'd find anywhere."
Mangan was silent for a second or two; and then he said, with a little
hesitation,
"Didn't you tell me Miss Wright had not been up yet to see 'The Squire's
Daughter?'"
"No, she has not," Lionel answered, lightly. "I don't know whether you
have been influencing her, Maurice, or whether you have picked up some
of her highly superior prejudices; anyhow, I rather fancy she doesn't
quite approve of the theatre--I mean, I don't think she approves of the
New Theatre, for she'd go to any other one fast enough, I suppose, if
you could only get her away from her sick children. But not the New
Theatre, apparently. Perhaps she doesn't care to see me making myself a
motley to the view."
"She has a great regard for you, Linn. I wouldn't call her opinions
prejudices," Mangan said--but with the curious diffidence he displayed
whenever he spoke of Lionel's cousin.
"Oh, Francie should have lived in the fifteenth century--she would have
been a follower of Savonarola," Lionel said, with a laugh. "She's far
too exalted for these present days."
"Well, Linn," said his friend, "I'm glad you know at least one person
who has some notion of duty and self-sacrifice, who has some fineness of
perception and some standard of conduct and aim to go by. Why, those
people you associate so much with now seem to have but one pursuit--the
pursuit of pleasure, the gratification of every selfish whim; they seem
to have no consciousness of the mystery surrounding life--of the fact
that they themselves are inexplicable phantoms whose very existence
might make them pause and wonder and question. No, it is the amassing of
wealth, and the expending of it, that is all sufficient. I used to
wonder why God should have chosen the Jews, of all the nations of the
earth, for the revelation that there was something nobler than the
acquisition of riches; but I suppose it was because no race ever needed
it so much. And what new revelation--what new message is coming to the
multitudes here in England who are living in a paradise of sensual
gratification, blinded, besotted, their world a sort of gorgeous
pig-stye--"
"Oh, that's all right," Lionel said, cheerfully. "Octavius Quirk has
settled all that. The cure for everything is to be a blowing of the
whole social fabric to bits. Then we're going to begin again all over;
and the New Jerusalem will be reached when each man has to dig for his
own potatoes."
"Quirk!" said Maurice Mangan, contemptuously; and then he took out his
watch. "We'd better be getting back, Linn. We'll just be in time to meet
your people coming out of church."
So they turned and walked leisurely across the gorse-covered downs until
they reached the broad and dusty highway leading towards Winstead
village. And then again they struck into a by-lane with tall hedges, the
banks underneath which were bright with stitchwort and speedwell and
white dead-nettle. Now and again, through a gap or a gate, they caught a
glimpse of the lush meadows golden with buttercups; in one of them there
was a small black pony standing in the shadow of a wide-spreading elm.
They passed some cottages with pretty gardens in front; they stopped for
a second to look at the old-fashioned columbine and monkshood, the
none-so-pretty, the yellow and crimson wall-flower, the peony roses.
Then always around them was this gracious silence, which seemed so
strange after the roar of London; and if the day promised to become
still hotter, at least they had this welcome breeze, that rustled the
quick-glancing poplars, and stirred the white-laden hawthorns, and kept
the long branches of the wych-elms and chestnuts swaying hither and
thither. They were not talking much now; one of them was thinking of a
pair of gray eyes.
At last they came to a turnstile, and, passing through that, found
themselves in one of those wide meadows; at the farther side of it the
red-tiled roof, the gray belfry, and slated spire of Winstead Church
just showed above the masses of green foliage. They crossed the meadow
and entered the churchyard. A perfect silence reigned over the place;
they could not hear what was going on within the small building; out
here there was no sound save the chirping of the birds and the
continuous murmur of the trees. They walked about, looking thoughtfully
at the gravestones--many of them bearing names familiar enough to them
in bygone years. And perhaps one or other of them may have been fancying
that when the great, busy world had done with him--and used him up and
thrown him aside--here at least there would be peace preserved for
him--an ample sufficiency of rest under this greensward, with perhaps a
few flowers put there by some kindly hand. The dead did not seem to need
much pity on this tranquil day.
Then into this universal silence came suddenly a low, booming sound that
caused Lionel Moore's heart to stand still: it was the church
organ--that awakened a multitude of associations and recollections, that
seemed to summon up the vanished years and the dreams of his youth, when
it was he himself who used to sit at the instrument and call forth those
massive chords and solemn tones. Something of his boyhood came back to
him; he seemed again to be looking forward to an unknown future;
wondering and eager, he painted visions; and always in them, to share
his greatness and his fame, there was some radiant creature,
smiling-eyed, who would be at his side in sorrow and in joy, through the
pain of striving and in the rapture of triumph. And now--now that the
years had developed themselves--what had become of these wistful hopes
and forecasts? Boyish nonsense, he would have said (except just at such
a moment as this, when the sudden sound of the organ seemed to call back
so much). He had encountered the realities of life since then; he had
chosen his profession; he had studied hard; he had achieved a measure of
fame. And the beautiful and wonderful being who was to share his
triumphs with him? Well, he had never actually beheld her. A glimmer
here and there, in a face or a form, had taken his fancy captive more
than once; but he remained heart-whole; he was too much occupied, he
laughingly assured Maurice Mangan again and again, to have the chance of
falling in love.
"Getting married?" he would say. "My dear fellow, I haven't time; I'm
far too busy to think of getting married."
So the radiant bride had never been found, even as the new Hallelujah
Chorus that was to thrill the hearts of millions had never been written;
and Linn Moore had to be content with the very pronounced success he had
attained in playing in comic opera, and with a popularity in the
fashionable world of London, especially among the women-folk therein,
that would have turned many a young fellow's head.
When they thought the service was about over they went round to the
porch and awaited the coming out of the congregation. And among the
first to make their appearance--issuing from the dusky little building
into this bewilderment of white light and green leaves--were old Dr.
Moore and his wife, and Miss Francie Wright, who passed for Lionel's
cousin, though the relationship was somewhat more remote than that.
Maurice Mangan received a very hearty welcome from these good people;
and then, as they set out for home, Lionel walked on with his father and
mother, while Lionel's friend naturally followed with the young lady.
She was not a distinctly beautiful person, perhaps, this slim-figured
young woman, with the somewhat pale face, the high-arched eyebrows, and
light-brown hair; but at least she had extremely pretty gray eyes, that
had a touch of shrewdness and humor in them, as well as plenty of
gentleness and womanliness; and she had a soft and attractive voice,
which goes for much.
"It is so kind of you, Mr. Mangan," said she, in that soft and winning
voice, "to bring Linn down. You know he won't come down by himself; and
who can wonder at it? It is so dull and monotonous for him here, after
the gay life he leads in London."
"Dull and monotonous!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have been preaching to him
all the morning that he should be delighted to come down into the
quietude of the country, as a sort of moral bath after the insensate
racket of that London whirl. But no one ever knows how well off he is,"
he continued, as they walked along between the fragrant hawthorn hedges;
"it's the lookers-on who know. Good gracious, what wouldn't I give to be
in Linn's place!"
"Do you mean in London, Mr. Mangan?" she asked, and for an instant the
pretty gray eyes looked up.
"Certainly not!" he said, with unnecessary warmth. "I mean here. If I
could run down of a Sunday to a beautiful, quiet, old-fashioned place
like this, and find myself in my own home, among my own people, I wonder
how many Sundays would find me in London? You can't imagine, you have no
idea, what it is to live quite alone in London, with no one to turn to
but club acquaintances; and I think Sunday is the worst day of all,
especially if it is fine weather, and all the people have gone to the
country or the seaside to spend the day with their friends."
"But, Mr. Mangan," said Miss Francie Wright, gently, "I am sure,
whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if
you would consider us your friends--unless you think the place too
dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it."
"It is very kind of you--very," said he. "And I know the old doctor and
Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to
them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an
idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday
afternoon."
"Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?" said she, quietly. "For Linn's sake
alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest
and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?"
"You mustn't put such visions before me," he said. "It's too good to be
true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and
forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning
and find myself in London!"
"You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead,"
said she, "if you would take Linn's room for the night."
"Ah, no," he said, "it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's
place in any way whatever. He has always had everything--everything
seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such
a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that nobody
could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has
been."
"In what way, Mr. Mangan?" his companion asked, rather wonderingly.
"In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying
for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right."
"Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk,"
observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fashionable friends," Mangan rejoined.
"Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great
gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't
seem the least bit spoiled, does he?"
"Really, I see so little of him," Miss Francie said, with a smile, "he
honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell."
"No, he is not spoiled--you may take my word for it," her companion
said, with decision. And then he added, "I suppose he gets too much of
that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil
effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy--as he said this
morning about marrying."
"What was that, Mr. Mangan?" she asked.
"He said he was too busy to think of getting married."
"Oh, indeed?" she said, with her eyes directed towards the ground.
"We--we have always been expecting to hear of his being engaged to some
young lady--seeing he is made so much of in London--" She could say no
more, for now they were arrived at the doctor's house, which was
separated from the highway by a little strip of front garden. They
passed in through the gate and found the door left open for them.
"Well, Miss Savonarola," said Lionel, as he hung up his hat in the hall
and turned to address her, "how have you been all this time?"
"I have been very well, Mr. Pagan," said she, smiling.
"And how are all those juvenile Londoners that you've planted about in
the cottages?"
"They're getting on nicely, every one of them," said she, with quite an
air of pride; and then she added, "When is your Munificence going to
give me another subscription?"
"Just now, Francie," was the instant reply. "How much do you want?"
"As much as ever you can afford," said she.
He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coin, and began to pick out
the sovereigns. But Miss Francie, with a little touch of her fingers,
put the money away.
"No, Linn, not from you. You've given me too much already. You give too
freely; I like to have a little difficulty in obtaining subscriptions;
it feels nicer somehow. But if my funds should run very low, then I'll
come to you, Linn."
"Whenever you like, Francie," said he, carelessly; he poured the money
into his pocket again and bade Maurice Mangan come up to his room, to
get the dust of travel removed from his hands and face before going in
to luncheon.
Then while Mangan was busy with his ablutions in this small upper
chamber, Lionel drew a chair to the open window and gazed absently
abroad on the wide stretch of country visible from the doctor's house.
It was a familiar view; yet it was one not easy to get tired of; and of
course on such a morning as this it lost none of its charm. Everywhere
in the warm breeze and the sunshine there was a universal rustling and
trembling and glancing of all beautiful things--of the translucent
foliage of the limes, the pendulous blossoms of lilacs and laburnums,
the swaying branches of the larch, and the masses of blue
forget-me-nots in the garden below. Then there were all the hushed
sounds of the country: the distant, quick footfall of a horse on some
dusty road; the warning cluck of a thrush to her young ones down there
among the bushes; the glad voices and laughter of some girls in an
adjacent garden--they, too, likely to be soon away from the maternal
nest; the crow of a cock pheasant from the margin of the wood; the
clear, ringing melody of an undiscoverable lark. Everywhere white light,
blue skies, and shadows of great clouds slow-sailing over the young
green corn and over the daisied meadows in which the cows lay
half-asleep. And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there
were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and
past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of
red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a
horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in
various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering mist of heat;
and he could only guess that there, too, under the glowing sky, some
other fair expanse of our beautiful English landscape lay basking in the
sunlight and sweet air of the early summer.
Of course Lionel was the hero of the hour when they were all assembled
in the dining-room--at a very sumptuously furnished board, by the way,
for the hale old doctor was fond of good living and a firm believer in
the virtues of port wine. Moreover, the young man had an attentive
audience; for the worthy old lady at the head of the table never took
her admiring eye's off this wonderful boy of hers; and Miss Francie
Wright meekly listened too; while as for Maurice Mangan, who was he in
his humble station to interrupt this marvellous tale of great doings and
festivities? Not that Lionel magnified his own share in these things;
nay, he modestly kept himself out altogether; it was merely to interest
these simple country folk that he described the grand banquets, the
illuminated gardens, the long marquees, and told them how the princess
looked, and who it was who had the honor of taking her in to supper. But
when he came, among other things, to speak of the rehearsal of the
little pastoral comedy, in the clear light of the dawn, by Lady Adela
Cunyngham and her friends, he had to admit that he himself was present
on that occasion; and at once the fond mother took him to task.
[Illustration: "_They passed in through the gate, and found the door
left open for them._"]
"It's wicked, Lionel," she said, severely; "it's downright wicked to
keep such hours. Look at the result of it all. You can't eat
anything--you're not taking a mouthful!"
"But, you know, mother, I'm not used to luncheon," he said, cheerfully
enough. "I have to dine at five every day--and I've no time to bother
with luncheon, even if I could eat it."
"Take a glass of port, my lad," the old doctor said. "That will put some
life into you."
"No, thanks," he said, indifferently, "I can't afford to play tricks. I
have to study my throat."
"Why, what better astringent can you have than tannic acid?" the old
gentleman called down the table. "I suppose you drink those washy
abominations that the young men of the day prefer to honest wine; what's
that I hear about lemonade? Lemonade!" he repeated, with disgust.
"It's home-brewed--it's wholesome enough; Miss Burgoyne makes some for
me when she is making it for herself," the young man said; and then he
turned to his mother: "Mother, I wish you would send her something from
the garden--"
"Who, Lionel?"
"Miss Burgoyne--at the theatre, you know. She's very good to me--lends
me her room if I have any swell friends who want to come behind--and
makes me this lemonade, which is better than anything else on a hot
night. Couldn't you send her something from the garden?--not
flowers--she gets too many flowers, and doesn't care for them; but if
you had some early strawberries or something of that kind, she would
take them as a greater compliment, coming from you, than if some idiot
of a young fool spent guineas on them at a florist's. And when are you
coming up to see 'The Squire's Daughter,' Francie? The idea that you
should never have been near the place, when I hear people confessing to
each other that they have been to see it eight and ten, or even a dozen
times!"
"But I am so busy, Lionel!" she said; and then perhaps an echo of
something that had been said in the morning may have recurred to her
mind; for she seemed a trifle confused, and kept her eyes downcast,
while Lionel went on to tell them of what certain friends of his were
going to do at Henley Regatta.
After luncheon they went out into the garden, and took seats in the
shade of the lilac-trees, in the sweet air. Old Mrs. Moore had for
form's sake brought a book with her; but she was not likely to read much
when the pride of her eyes had come down on a visit to her, and was now
talking to her, in his off-hand, light-hearted way. Maurice Mangan had
followed the doctor's example and pulled out his pipe--which he forgot
to light, however. He seemed dissatisfied. He kept looking back to the
house from time to time. Was there no one else coming out? There was the
French window of the drawing-room still open; was there no glimmer of a
gray dress anywhere--with its ornamentation of a bunch of scarlet
geraniums? At last he made bold to say to the doctor:
"Where has Miss Francie gone to? Isn't she coming out too?"
"Oh, she's away after those London brats of hers, I have no doubt," the
old gentleman said. "You won't see her till teatime, if even then."
Whereupon Mangan lit his pipe, and proceeded to smoke in silence,
listening at times and absently to Lionel's vivacious talking to his
mother.
In fact, before Miss Francie Wright returned that afternoon, Lionel
found that he had to take his departure, for there are no trains to
Winstead on Sunday, and he would have to walk some three miles to the
nearest station. When he declared he had to go, the old lady's protests
and entreaties were almost piteous.
"You come to see us so seldom, Lionel! And of course we thought you'd
dine with us, at the very least; and if you could stay the night as
well, you know there's a room for Mr. Mangan too. And we were looking
forward to such a pleasant evening."
"But I have a long-standing engagement, mother; a dinner engagement--I
could not get out of it."
"And you are dragging Mr. Mangan away up to town again, on a beautiful
afternoon like this, when we know he is so fond of the country and of a
garden--"
"Not at all," Lionel said. "I need not spoil Maurice's day, if I have to
spoil my own; he'll stay, of course; and I suppose Francie will be back
directly."
"I'm sure, Mr. Mangan," the old lady said, turning at once to her other
guest, "if Lionel must really go, we shall be delighted if you will
remain and dine with us--I hope you will--and you can have Lionel's room
if you will stay the night as well."
"Thank you, I couldn't do that," said he, very gratefully, "but if you
will have me, I shall be very glad to stay on, and go up by a late
train. In the meantime, I think I'll walk to the station with Linn."
"And come back with a good appetite for dinner," said the doctor,
calling after him. "We'll have something better than lemonade, I warrant
ye!"
They have slow trains on these Surrey lines on Sunday; by the time that
Lionel had got up to town and driven to his rooms and dressed, it was
very near the hour at which he was due at the Lansdowne Gallery, where
Lord Rockminster was giving a dinner-party, as a preliminary to the
concert and crush that were to follow. And no sooner had he alighted
from his hansom, and entered the marble vestibule of the gallery, than
whom should he descry ascending the stairs in front of him but Mr.
Octavius Quirk.
"Lady Adela hasn't let the grass grow under her feet," he said to
himself. "Captured her first critic already!"
Lady Adela was at the head of the stairs receiving her brother's guests;
and the greeting that she accorded to Mr. Octavius Quirk was of a most
special and gracious kind. She was very complaisant to Lionel also, and
bade him go and see if the place they had given him at dinner was to his
liking. He took this as a kind of permission to choose what he wanted
(within discreet limits); and as he just then happened to meet Miss
Georgie Lestrange, he proposed to that smiling and ruddy-haired damsel
that they should go and examine for themselves--and perhaps alter the
dispositions a little. So they passed away through those brilliantly lit
galleries (which served as a picture-exhibition on week-days), and at
the farther end of the largest room they found the oblong dinner-table,
which was brilliant with flowers and fruit, with crystal and silver. Of
course Lionel and his companion had to be content with very modest
places, for this was a highly distinguished company which Lord
Rockminster had invited; but at all events they made sure they were to
sit together, and that arrangement seemed to be satisfactory to them
both.
This was rather a magnificent little banquet; and Lionel, looking down
the long, richly colored table, may once or twice have thought of the
quiet, small dining-room at Winstead (perhaps with the curtains still
undrawn, and the evening light shining blue in the panes), and of the
solitary guest whom he had left to talk to those good people; but
indeed he was not permitted much time for reverie, for the young lady
with the _pince-nez_ was a most lively chatterer; she knew everything
that was going on in London, and seemed to take a particularly active
interest therein. Among other solemn items of information which she
communicated to her companion, she mentioned that the issue of Lady
Adela's novel had been postponed.
"Yes, it's quite ready, you know," she continued, in her blithe,
discursive, happy-go-lucky fashion; "all quite ready; but she doesn't
want it to go before the public until there has been a little talk about
it, don't you understand? She wants some of the society papers to
mention it; but she isn't quite sure how to get that done, and nobody
seems able to help her--it's really distressing. Do you see that hideous
creature down there at the corner?"
"Yes."
"He's a writer," observed this artless maiden, in mysterious tones.
"You don't say so!"
"Yes, he is--writes in all kinds of places. Why, now I think of it, Lady
Adela said he was a friend of yours! I'm sure she did. So you pretend
not to know him--is that on account of his complexion? Have you any more
such _beauties_ among your acquaintances, Mr. Moore? I thought he might
be taking me in to dinner; and that's why I was so glad you brought me
to look at the cards. Very rude, wasn't it? but you had permission,
hadn't you? And there's another one coming to-night."
"Another what?"
"A writing man. But this other one is an American. Of course Lady Adela
wants to have the curiosity of the American public excited just as well
as the English. Have you heard Lady Sybil's marching-song yet?"
"No."
"Well, I think it is charming--really charming. Rockminster was dining
with the officers of the Coldstream Guards the other evening, and he
promised to send a copy to the bandmaster as soon as it is published.
But Sybil wants more than that, of course; she wants to see whether the
commander-in-chief wouldn't recommend it, so that it could be taken up
by all the regiments. Wouldn't that be splendid?--to think that Sybil
should provide a marching-song for the whole British army!"
"Yes, indeed," said he, with great politeness. "And why shouldn't the
commander-in-chief recommend it? A marching-song is as important as a
new button. But I must get a look at the music, if we are all to join in
the chorus."
The dinner was not long-protracted, for there was to be a concert during
the evening; and, indeed, people began to arrive early--strolling
through the galleries, looking at the pictures, or talking together in
small groups. It was during this promiscuous assembling that Octavius
Quirk got hold of Lionel, and, with savage disgust, drew his attention
to a hostler-looking person who had just come into the room.
"Do you see that ill-conditioned brute; what's he doing here?"
Lionel glanced in the direction indicated.
"I don't know who he is."
"Don't you know Quincey Hooper? the correspondent of the _Philadelphia
Roll-Call_--a cur who toadies every Englishman he meets, and at the same
time sneers at everything English in his wretched Philadelphia rag."
Then Lionel instantly bethought him of Miss Lestrange's hint; was this
the correspondent who was to arouse the interest of the great American
Continent in Lady Adela's forthcoming novel, even as Octavius Quirk was
expected to write about it in England? But surely, with the wide
Atlantic lying between their respective spheres of operation, there was
no need for rivalry? Why did Mr. Quirk still glare in the direction of
the new-comer with ill-disguised, or rather with wholly undisguised,
disdain?
"Why," said he, in his tempestuously frothy fashion, "I've heard that
creature actually discussing with another American what sort of air a
man should assume in entering a drawing-room! Can you conceive of such a
thing? Where _did_ all that alarmed self-consciousness of the modern
American come from--that unceasing self-consciousness that makes the
American young man spend five sixths of his waking time in asking
himself if he is a gentleman? Not from the splendid assurance, the
belief in himself, the wholesome satisfaction of old John Bull. It's no
use for the modern American to say he is of English descent at all!"
continued this boisterous controversialist, who was still glaring at
the hapless mortal at the door, as if every windy sentence was being
hurled at his head. "Not a bit! there's nothing English about him, or
his ways, or his sympathies, or character. Fancy an Englishman
considering what demeanor he should assume before entering a
drawing-room! The modern American hasn't the least idea from whom he is
descended; what right has he to claim anything of our glorious English
heritage?--or to say there is English blood in him at all? Why, as far
back as the Declaration of Independence, the people of English birth or
parentage in the Eastern States were in a distinct minority! And as to
the American of the future--look at the thousands upon thousands of
Germans pouring into the country as compared with the English
immigration. That is the future American--a German; and it is to be
hoped he will have some back-bone in him, and not alarm himself about
his entering a drawing-room! America for the Americans?--it's America
for the Germans! I tell you this: in a generation or two the great
national poet of America will be--Goethe!"
Happily, at this moment, Lady Adela came up, and Lionel most gladly
turned aside, for she had evidently something to say to him privately.
"Mr. Moore, I want to introduce you to Mr. Hooper--to Mr. Quincey
Hooper--he doesn't seem to know anybody, and I want you to look after
him a little--"
"No, no, Lady Adela, you must really excuse me," said he, in an
undertone, but he was laughing all the same. "I can't, really. I beg
your pardon, but indeed you must excuse me. I've just had one dose of
literature--a furious lecture about--about I don't know what--oh, yes,
immigration into America. And do you know this--that in a generation or
two the great national poet of America will be Goethe?"
"What?" said she.
He repeated the statement; and added that there could be no doubt about
it, for he had it on Mr. Octavius Quirk's authority.
"Well, it's a good thing to be told," she said, sweetly, "for then you
know." And therewithal, as there was a sudden sound of music issuing
from the next gallery, she bade Lionel take her to see who had begun--it
was Lady Sybil, indeed, who was playing a solo on the violin to an
accompaniment of stringed instruments, while all the crowd stood still
and listened.
The evening passed pleasantly enough. There were one or two courageous
amateurs who now and again ventured on a song; but for the most part the
music was instrumental. A young lady, standing with her hands behind her
back, gave a recitation, and attempted to draw pathetic tears by
picturing the woes of a simple-minded chimney-sweep who accidentally
killed his tame sparrow, and who never quite held up his head
thereafter; he seemed to pine away somehow, until one morning they found
him dead, his face downward on the tiny grave in which he had buried his
little playfellow. Another young lady performed a series of brilliant
roulades on a silver bugle, which seemed to afford satisfaction. A
well-known entertainer sat down to the piano and proceeded to give a
description of a fashionable wedding; and all the people laughed merrily
at the clever and sparkling way in which he made a fool of--not
themselves, of course, but their friends and acquaintances. And then
Lionel Moore went to his hostess.
"Don't you want me to do anything?" he said.
"You're too kind," Lady Adela made answer, with grateful eyes. "It's
hardly fair. Still, if I had the courage--"
"Yes, you have the courage," he said, smiling.
"If I had the courage to ask you to sing Sybil's song for her?"
"Of course I will sing it," he said.
"Will you? Will you really? You know, I'm afraid those two girls will
never give enough force to it. And it is a man's song--if you wouldn't
mind, Mr. Moore."
"Where can I get the music? I'll just look it over."
Quite a little murmur of interest went through the place when it was
rumored that Lionel Moore was about to sing Lady Sybil's "Soldiers'
Marching Song," and when he stepped on to the platform at the upper end
of the gallery, people came swarming in from the other rooms. Lady Sybil
herself was to play the accompaniment--the grand piano being fully
opened so as to give free egress to the marshalled chords; and when she
sat down to the keyboard, it was apparent that the tall, pale, handsome
young lady was not a little tremulous and anxious. Indeed, it was a very
good thing for the composer that she had got Lionel Moore to sing the
song; for the quite trivial and commonplace character of the music was
in a large measure concealed by the fine and resonant quality of his
rich baritone notes. The chorus was not much of a success--Lady Sybil's
promised accomplices seemed to have found their courage fail them at the
critical moment; but as for the martial ditty itself, it appeared to
take the public ear very well; and when Lionel finally folded the music
together again, there was quite a little tempest of clapping of hands.
Here and there a half-hearted demand for a repetition was heard; but
this was understood to be merely a compliment to Lady Sybil; and indeed
Lionel strolled out of the room as soon as his duties were over.
Fortunately no one was so indiscreet as to ask him what he privately
thought of the "Soldiers' Marching Song," or of its chances of being
recommended to the British Army by his royal highness the
commander-in-chief.
When at length Lionel thought it was about time for him to slip away
quietly from these brilliant, busy, murmuring rooms, he went to bid his
hostess privately good-night.
"It was so awfully kind of you, Mr. Moore," she said, graciously, "to
give us the chance of making Mr. Quirk's acquaintance. He is so
interesting, you know, so unconventional, so original in his
opinions--quite a treat to listen to him, I assure you. I've sent him a
copy of my poor little book; some time or other I wish you could get to
know what he thinks of it?"
"Oh, yes, certainly. I will ask him," Lionel said; and again he bade her
good-night, and took his leave.
But as he was going by the entrance into a smaller gallery, which had
been turned into a sort of supper-room (there was a buffet at one end,
and everywhere a number of small tables at which groups of friends could
sit down, the gentlemen of the party bringing over what was wanted) he
happened to glance in, and there, occupying a small table all by
himself, was Mr. Octavius Quirk, Lionel at once made his way to him. He
found him with a capacious plate of lobster-salad before him, and by the
side of that was a large bottle of champagne.
"Going to sit down?" Quirk asked--but with no great cordiality; it was
for one person, not for two, that he had secured that bottle.
"No; I dined here," said Lionel, with innocent sarcasm.
"My dear fellow," observed the other, earnestly, "a good dinner is the
very best preparation in the world for a good supper."
"I hear Lady Adela has sent you her book; have you looked at it?" Lionel
asked.
"Yes, I have," said the other, with his mouth full of lobster-salad.
"Capital! I call it capital! Plenty of _verve_ and go--knowledge of
society--nobody can do that kind of thing like the people who are
actually living in it. Her characters are the people one really meets,
you know--they are in the world--they belong to life. Oh, yes, a capital
novel! Light, airy, amusing, sparkling--I tell you it will be the book
of the season!"
"Oh, I'm very glad to hear that," said Lionel, thoughtfully; and then he
went and got his light overcoat and crush-hat, and descended the wide
stone-steps, and made his way home to his rooms in Piccadilly.
CHAPTER V.
WARS AND RUMORS.
Little could Lionel Moore have anticipated what was to come of his
introducing his old comrade Nina to the New Theatre. At first all went
well; and even the prima-donna herself was so good as to extend her
patronage to Lionel's _protégée_; insomuch that, arriving rather early
at the theatre one evening, and encountering Nina in the corridor, she
said to her,
"You come into my room, and I'll show you my make-up."
It was a friendly offer; and the young Italian girl, who was working
hard in every way to fit herself for the stage, was glad to be initiated
still further into these mysteries of the toilet. But when she had
followed Miss Burgoyne into the sacred inner room, and when the dresser
had been told she should not be wanted yet awhile, Nina, who was far
from being a stupid person, began to perceive what had prompted this
sudden invitation. For Miss Burgoyne, as she was throwing off her
things, and getting ready for her stage-transformation, kept plying her
guest with all sorts of cunning little questions about Mr.
Moore--questions which had no apparent motive, it is true, so carelessly
were they asked; but Nina, even as she answered, was shrewd enough to
understand.
"So you might call yourself quite an old friend of his," the prima-donna
continued, busying herself at the dressing-table. "Well, what do you
think of him now?"
"How, Miss Burgoyne?" Nina said.
"Why, you see the position he has attained here in London--very
different from what he had when he was studying in Naples, I suppose.
Don't you hear how all those women are spoiling him? What do you think
of that? If I were a friend of his--an intimate friend--I should warn
him. For what will the end be--he'll marry a rich woman, a woman of
fashion, and cease to be anybody. Fancy a man's ruining his
career--giving up his position, his reputation--becoming nobody at
all--in order to have splendid horses and give big dinner-parties! Of
course she'll have her doll, to drive by her side in the Park; but
she'll tire--and then? And he'll get sick-tired, too, and wish he was
back in the theatre; and just as likely as not he'll take to drinking,
or gambling, or something. Depend on it, my dear, a professional should
marry in the profession; that's the only safe thing; then there is a
community of interests, and they understand each other and are glad of
each other's success. Don't you think so yourself?"
Nina was startled by the sudden appeal; but she managed to intimate
that, on the whole, she agreed with Miss Burgoyne; and that young lady
proceeded to expand her little lecture and to cite general instances
that had come within her own knowledge of the disastrous effects of
theatrical people marrying outside their own set. As to any lesson in
the art of making-up, perhaps Miss Burgoyne had forgotten the pretext on
which she asked Nina to come to her room. Her maid was called in to help
her now. And at last it was time for Nina to go, for she also, in her
humble way, had to prepare herself for the performance.
But this friendliness on the part of the prima-donna towards the young
baritone's _protégée_ did not last very long. For one thing, Lionel did
not come to Miss Burgoyne's sitting-room as much as he used to do, to
have a cup of tea and a chat with one or two acquaintances; he preferred
standing in the wings with Nina, who was a most indefatigable student,
and giving her whispered criticisms and comments as to what was going
forward on the stage. When Miss Burgoyne came upon them so employed,
she passed them in cold disdain. And by degrees she took less and less
notice of Miss Ross (as Nina was now called), who, indeed, was only Miss
Girond's under-study and a person of no consequence in the theatre.
Finally, Miss Burgoyne ceased to recognize Miss Ross, even when they
happened to be going in by the stage-door of an evening; and Nina, not
knowing how she had offended, nevertheless accepted her fate meekly and
without protest, nor had she any thought of asking Lionel to intervene.
But worse was to befall. One day Lionel said to her,
"Nina, I never knew any one work harder than you are doing. Of course
it's very handy your having Mrs. Grey to coach you; and you can't do
better than stand opposite that long mirror and watch yourself doing
what she tells you to do. She's quite enthusiastic about you; perhaps
it's because you are so considerate--she says you never practise until
the other lodgers have gone out. By the way, that reading dialogue aloud
is capital; I can hear how your English is getting freer and freer; why,
in a little while you'll be able to take any part that is offered you.
And in any case, you know, the English audiences rather like a touch of
foreign accent; oh, you needn't be afraid about that. Well, now, all
this hard work can't go on forever; you must have a little relaxation;
and I'm going to take you and Mrs. Grey for a drive down to Hampton
Court, and we'll dine there in the evening, in a room overlooking the
river--very pretty it is, I can tell you. What do you say? Will next
Friday do? Friday is the night of least consequence in a London theatre;
and if you can arrange it with Mrs. Grey, I'll arrange it with Lehmann;
my under-study is always glad of a chance of taking the part. You
persuade Mrs. Grey, and I'll manage Lehmann. Is it a bargain?"
So it came about that on a certain bright and sunny morning in June
Lionel was standing at the window of a private room in a hotel near the
top of Regent Street, where he proposed (for he was an extravagant young
man) to entertain his two guests at lunch before driving them down to
Hampton Court. He had ordered the wine and seen that the flowers on the
table were all right; and now he was looking down into the street,
vaguely noticing the passers-by. But this barouche that drove up?--there
was something familiar about it--wasn't it the carriage he had sent
down to Sloane Street?--then the next moment he was saying to himself,
"My goodness gracious! can that be Nina?"
And Nina it assuredly was; but not the Nina of the black dress and
crimson straw hat with which he had grown familiar. Oh, no; this young
lady who stepped down from the carriage, who waited a second for her
friend, and then crossed the pavement, was a kind of vision of light
summer coolness and prettiness; even his uninstructed intelligence told
him how charmingly she was dressed; though he had but a glimpse of the
tight-fitting gown of cream-white, with its silver girdle, the white
straw hat looped up on one side and adorned on the other with large
yellow roses, the pale-yellow gloves with silver bangles at the wrists,
the snow-white sunshade, with its yellow satin ribbons attached. The
vision of a moment--then it was gone; but only to reappear here at the
open door. And who could think of her costume at all when Nina herself
came forward, with the pretty, pale, foreign face so pleasantly smiling,
the liquid black eyes softly bespeaking kindness, the half-parted lips
showing a glimmer of milk-white teeth.
"Good-morning, Leo!"
"Good-morning, Nina! They say that ladies are never punctual; but here
you are to the moment!"
"Then you have to thank Mrs. Grey--and your own goodness in sending the
carriage for us. Ah, the delightful flowers!" said she, glancing at the
table, and her nostrils seemed to dilate a little, as if she would
welcome all their odors at once. "But the window, Leo--you will have the
window open? London, it is perfectly beautiful this morning!--the air is
sweet as of the country--oh, it is the gayest city in the world!"
"I never saw London fuller, anyway," said he, as he rang the bell, and
told the waiter to have luncheon produced forthwith.
Nina, seated at table in that cool summer costume, merely toyed with the
things put before her (except when they came to the strawberries); she
was chattering away, with her little dramatic gestures, about every
conceivable subject within her recent experience, until, as she happened
to say something about Naples, Lionel cruelly interrupted her by asking
her if she had heard lately from her sweetheart.
"Who?" she said, with a stare; and also the little widow in black looked
up from her plate and seemed to think it a strange question.
"Don't you pretend to have forgotten, Nina," Lionel said, reprovingly.
"Don't you look so innocent. If you have no memory, then I have."
"But who, Leo?" she demanded, with a touch of indignation.
"Who?--who?--who? What is it you mean?"
"Nina, don't you pretend you have forgotten poor Nicolo Ciana."
"Oh, Nicolo!" she exclaimed, with supreme contempt (but all the same
there was a faint flush on the clear olive complexion). "You laugh at
me, Leo! Nicolo! He was all, as they say here, sham--sham jewelry, sham
clothes, all pretence, except the oil for his hair--that was plenty and
substantial, yes. And a sham voice--he told lies to the _maestro_ about
his wonderful compass--"
"Now, now, Nina, don't be unjust," he said. "Mrs. Grey must hear the
truth. Mrs. Grey, this was a young Italian who wanted to be better
acquainted with Miss Nina here--I believe he used to write imploring
letters to her, and that she cruelly wouldn't answer them; and then he
wrote to Maestro Pandiani, describing the wonderful tenor voice he had,
and saying he wanted to study. I suppose he fancied that if the
_maestro_ would only believe in the mysterious qualities of this
wonderful organ of his he would try to bring them out; and in the
meantime the happy Nicolo would be meeting Nina continually. A lover's
stratagem--nothing worse than that! What is the harm of saying that you
could take the high C if you were in ordinary health, but that your
voice has been ill-used by a recent fever? It was Nina he was thinking
of. Don't I remember how I used to hear him coming along the
garden-paths in the Villa Reale--if there were few people about you
could hear his vile falsetto a mile off--and always it was:
'Antoniella, Antonià,
Antoniella, Antonià;
Votate, Nenna bella, votate ccà,
Vedimmo a pettenessa comme te stà.'"
"Leo," she said, with proud lips, "he never called me '_Nenna
mia_'--never! He dared not!"
In another instant, he could see, there would have been protesting tears
in her eyes; and even Mrs. Grey, who did not know the meaning of the
familiar Neapolitan phrase,[1] noticed the tremulous indignation in the
girl's voice.
[Footnote 1: _Nenna mia_ or _Nenna bella_ is the pet phrase used by
the Neapolitan young man in addressing his sweetheart. _Nenna_ has
nothing to do with _Nina_, which is a contraction of Antonia.]
"Of course not, Nina," he said, at once; "I was only joking--but you
know he did use to sing that confounded 'Antoniella, Antonià,' and it
was always you he was thinking of."
"I did not think of _him_, then!" said she, almost instantly recovering
her self-control. "Him? No! When I go out--when I was going out in the
_Santa Lucia_, I looked at the English gentlemen--all so simple and
honest in their dress--perhaps a steel watch-chain to a gold watch--not
a sham gold chain to no watch! Then they looked so clean and
wholesome--is it right, wholesome?--not their hair dripping with grease,
as the peasant-girls love it. And then," she added, with a laugh, for
her face had quickly resumed its usual happy brightness of expression,
"then I grow sentimental. I say to myself, 'These are English
people--they are going away back to England, where Leo is--can they take
him a message?--can they tell him they were going over to Capri, and
they met on the ship--on the steamer--an Italian girl, who liked to look
at the English, and liked to hear the English speak?' And then I say 'No;
what is the use; what would any message do; Leo has forgotten me.'"
"Oh, yes," said he, lightly, "you must have been quite certain that I
had forgotten my old comrade Nina!"
They got a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon for their drive down to
Hampton Court; nor was it fated to be without incident either. They had
passed along Oxford Street and were just turning out of the crowded
thoroughfare to enter Hyde Park--and Lionel, as a man will, was watching
how his coachman would take the horses through the Marble Arch--when
Nina said, in a low voice,
"Leo!"
"Well?" said he, turning to her.
"Did you not see?"
"See what?"
"The carriage that went past." Nina said, looking a little concerned.
"Miss Burgoyne was in it--she bowed to you--"
"Did she? I didn't see her--I'll have to apologize to her to-morrow,"
said he, carelessly. "Perhaps the compliment was meant for you, Nina."
"For me? Ah, no. Miss Burgoyne speaks no more to me."
"She doesn't speak to you? Why?" he asked, in some amazement.
The young Italian lady made a little gesture of indifference.
"How do I know? But I am not sorry. I do not like her--no! she is
not--she is not--straightforward, is it right?--she is cunning--and she
has a dreadful temper--oh! I have heard;--I have heard such stories!
Again, she is not an artist--I said that to you from the beginning,
Leo--no, not an artist: why does she talk to you from behind her fan,
when she should regard the others on the stage? Why does she talk always
and always to you, when she has nothing to say?"
"Oh, but she finds plenty to say!" he observed.
"Yes," said Nina, contemptuously, "she has always plenty to say to you
on the stage, if she has not a word the moment the scene is over. Why?
You don't understand! You don't reflect! I will tell you, Leo, if you
are so simple. You think she does not know that the public can see she
talks to you? She knows it well; and that is why she talks. It is to
boast of her friendship with you, her alliance with you. She says to the
ladies in the stalls, 'See here, I can talk to him when I please--you
are away--you are outside.' It is her vanity. She says to them, 'You can
buy his portrait out of the shop-window perhaps--you can ask him to your
house perhaps--and he goes for an hour, among strangers--but see
here--every night I am talking to him'--"
"Yes, and see here, Nina," he said, with a laugh, "how about my
vanity?--don't you think of that? Who could have imagined I was so
important a person! But the truth is, Nina, they've lengthened out that
comic scene inordinately with all that gagging, and Miss Burgoyne has
nothing to do in it; if she hides her talking behind her fan--"
"Hides?" said Nina, with just a trace of scorn. "No; she shows! It is
display! It is vanity! And you think a true artist would so forget her
part--would wish to show the people that she talks privately--"
"Miss Nina is quite right, you know, Mr. Moore," said the little widow
in black, and she was entitled to speak with authority. "I didn't think
it looked well myself. A ballet-girl would catch it if she went on the
same way."
"What would you have her do?" he said--for he was a very tolerant and
good-natured person. "Sit and look on at that idiotic comic gag?"
"Certainly," said the little dame, with decision. "She is in the scene.
She is not Miss Burgoyne; she is Grace Mainwaring; and she ought to
appear interested in everything around her."
"Oh, well, perhaps I have been to blame," he said, rather uneasily. "I
dare say I encouraged her. But really I had no idea the audience could
have noticed it."
"It was meant for them to notice it," Nina said, vindictively; and then,
as she would have nothing more to say on this wretched subject, she
turned to look at the gay lilacs and laburnums in the neighborhood of
the Serpentine, at the shimmering blue of the wide stretch of water, and
at the fleet of pleasure-boats with their wet oars gleaming in the
golden sunlight.
Her equanimity was soon restored; she would have nothing further to say
of Miss Burgoyne on such a gracious afternoon; and, indeed, when they
had crossed the Thames at Putney, and got into the opener country down
by Barnes and East Sheen and Richmond, she was chattering away in her
delight over everything they encountered--the wide commons, the
luxuriant gardens, the spacious mansions, the magnificent elms, the
hawthorn-trees, red and white, that sweetened all the soft summer air.
Of course when they arrived at the top of Richmond Hill they halted for
a minute or two at the Star and Garter to water the horses, while they
themselves had a stroll along the terrace, a cup of tea, and a look
abroad over the wide, hazy, dream-like landscape stretching far out into
the west. Then they crossed the river again at Richmond Bridge; they
bowled along by Twickenham and Teddington; finally they drove through
the magnificent chestnut-avenues of Bushey Park, which were just now in
their finest blossom. When they stopped at the Mitre, it was not to go
in; Nina was to be shown the gardens of Hampton Court Palace; there
would be plenty of time for a pleasant saunter before dinner.
Miss Burgoyne, indeed! Nina had forgotten all about Miss Burgoyne as the
little party of three passed through the cool gray courtyard of the
palace and entered into the golden glow of the gardens--for now the
westering sun was rich and warm on the tall elms and limes and threw
deep shadows on the greensward under the short black yews. They walked
down towards the river, and stood for a long time watching the irregular
procession of boats--many of them pulled by young girls in light summer
dresses that lent some variety of color to this sufficiently pretty
picture. It was altogether an attractive scene--the placid waters, the
soft green landscape, the swift, glancing boats, from which from time to
time came a ripple of youthful laughter or song. And indeed Nina was
regarding rather wistfully those maidens in palest blue or palest pink
who went swinging down with the stream.
"Those young ladies," she said, in an absent kind of way, to the little
widow, who was standing beside her, "it is a pleasant life they live. It
is all amusement. They have no hard work; no anxieties; no troubles;
everything is made gentle for them by their friends; it is one
enjoyment, and again and again; they have no care."
"Don't be so sure of that, Miss Nina," Mrs. Grey said, with a quiet
smile. "I dare say many a one of those girls has worked as hard at her
music as ever you have done, and has very little to show for it. I dare
say many a one of them would be glad to change her position for yours--I
mean, for the position you will have ere long. Do you know, Mr. Moore,"
she said, turning to Nina's other companion, "that I am quite sure of
this--if Miss Burgoyne's under-study was drafted into a travelling
company, I am quite sure Miss Nina here could take her place with
perfect confidence."
"I don't see why not," he said, as if it were a matter of course.
"Then you know what would happen," Mrs. Grey continued, turning again to
the young lady, in whose future she seemed greatly interested. "Miss
Burgoyne would want a holiday, or her doctor would order her to give her
voice a fortnight's rest, or she might catch a bad cold--and then comes
your chance! You know the music thoroughly? you know every bit of Miss
Burgoyne's 'business;' and Mr. Moore would be on the stage, or in the
wings, to guide you as to your entrances and exits. That will be a proud
night for me, my dear; for I'll be there--oh, yes, I'll be there; and if
I have any stage experience at all, I tell you it will be a splendid
triumph--with such a voice as yours--and there won't be any more talk of
keeping you as under-study to Miss Girond. No," she added, with a shrewd
smile, "but there will be something else. Miss Burgoyne won't like it;
she doesn't like rivals near the throne, from what I can hear. She'll
try to get you drafted off into one of the country companies--mark my
words."
"The country?" said Nina, rather aghast. "To go away into the country?"
"But look at the chance, my dear," said the little ex-actress, eagerly.
"Look at the practice--the experience! And then, if you only take care
of your voice, and don't strain it by overwork, then you'll be able to
come back to London and just command any engagement you may want."
"To come back to London after a long time?" she said, thoughtfully; and
she was somewhat grave and reserved as they strolled idly back through
the gardens, and through the Palace buildings, to the riverside hotel.
But no far-reaching possibilities of that kind were allowed to interfere
with Nina's perfect enjoyment of this little dinner-party that had been
got up in her honor. They had a room all to themselves on an upper
floor; the windows were thrown wide open; even as they sat at table they
could look abroad on the spacious landscape whose meadows and hedges and
woods stretched away into distant heights crowned by a solitary
windmill. Indeed, the young lady was so rude as to leave the table more
than once, and go and stand at the open window; there was a charm in the
dying-out of the day--in the beautiful colors now encircling the
world--in the hushed sounds coming up from the stream--that she could
not withstand. The evening glow was warm on the rose-hued front of the
palace and on the masses of sunny green foliage surrounding it; on the
still, blue river the boats were of a lustrous bronze; while the oars
seemed to be oars of shining gold as they dipped and flashed. By and by,
indeed, the glory faded away; the stream became gray and ghostly; there
were no more ripples of laughter or calls from this side to that; and
Nina resumed her place more contentedly at the table, which was all lit
up now. She made her small apologies; she said she did not know that
England was such a beautiful place. Lionel, who in no way resented her
thus withdrawing herself from time to time, had been leisurely talking
to Mrs. Grey of theatrical things in general; and, now that coffee was
coming in, he begged permission to light a cigarette. Altogether it was
a simple, friendly, unpretentious evening, that did not seem to involve
any serious consequences. As night fell, they set out on their homeward
drive; and through the silent country they went, under the stars. Lionel
left his two friends at their door in Sloane Street; and as he was
driving home to his lodgings, if he thought of the matter at all, he no
doubt hoped that he had given his friends a pleasant little treat.
But there was more to come of it than that. On the following evening
Lionel got down to the theatre rather later than usual, and had to set
to work at once to get ready, so that he had no opportunity of seeing
Miss Burgoyne until he actually met her on the stage. Now, those of the
public who had seen this piece before could not have perceived any
difference of manner on the part of the coquettish Grace Mainwaring
towards the young gentleman who had so unexpectedly fallen in her
way--to wit, Harry Thornhill; but Lionel instantly became aware of it;
and while he was endeavoring, after the fashion of the young stage
gallant, to convey to Miss Grace Mainwaring the knowledge that she had
suddenly captured his fancy and made him her slave for life, he was
inwardly reflecting that he should have come down earlier to the
theatre, and apologized to Miss Burgoyne for the unintentional slight of
the previous day. As soon as the scene was over and they were both in
the wings, he hastened to her (they had left the stage by opposite
sides) and said,
"Oh, Miss Burgoyne, something very awkward happened yesterday--I am so
sorry--I want to apologize--"
"I hope you will do nothing of the kind," said she, haughtily, "it is
quite unnecessary."
"Oh, but look here, I'm really very sorry," he was endeavoring to say,
when she again interrupted him:
"If you choose to go driving through London with chorus-girls," said
she, in measured and bitter tones, "I suppose your attention must be
fully occupied."
And therewith she marched proudly away from him; nor could he follow her
to protest or explain, for he was wanted on the stage in about a second.
He felt inclined to be angry and resentful; but he was helpless; he had
to attend to this immediate scene.
Meanwhile Miss Burgoyne did not long preserve that lofty demeanor of
hers; the moment she left him her rage got the better of her, for here
was the Italian girl most inopportunely coming along the corridor; and
just as poor Nina came up Miss Burgoyne turned to her maid, who was
holding open the dressing-room door for her, and said aloud, so that
every one could overhear,
"Oh, we don't want foreigners in English opera; why don't they take a
barrel-organ through the streets, or a couple of canaries in a cage?"
Nor was that all; for here was Mlle. Girond; and the smart little
boy-officer, as she came along the passage, was gayly singing to
herself,
"Le rôti, la salade,
L'amour, la promenade
À deux dans les
Dans les
Deux dans les
À deux dans les bluets!"
"Oh, there's another of the foreign chimpanzees!" exclaimed Miss
Burgoyne, in her fury; and she dashed into her room, and slammed the
door behind her.
Mlle. Girond stood staring at the door; then she turned to look at Nina;
then she burst out laughing.
"Quel ouragan, grand Dieu!" she cried. "Ma pauvre enfant, qu'allez vous
faire maintenant?" She turned to the door and laughed again. "Elle a la
tête près du bonnet, n'est-ce pas?--mon Dieu, elle s'enflamme comme de
la poudre!"
But Nina did not stay to make any explanation; somewhat paler than
usual, and quite silent and reserved, she took up her position in the
wings; nor had she a word to say to Lionel when he came off the stage
and passed her--with a nod and a smile of greeting--on his way to his
room.
Then things went from bad to worse, and swiftly. On the very next
afternoon, which was a Sunday, Lionel was about to walk down to Sloane
Street, to have a chat and a cup of tea with Mrs. Grey and Nina; but
before going he thought he would just have time to scribble a piece of
music in an album that Lady Rosamund Bourne had sent him and affix his
name thereto. He brought his writing materials to the table and opened
the big volume; and he was glancing over the pages (Lady Rosamund had
laid some very distinguished people, mostly artists, under contribution,
and there were some interesting sketches) when the house-porter came up
and presented a card. Lionel glanced at the name--Mr. Percival
Miles--and wondered who the stranger might be; then he recollected that
surely this was the name of a young gentleman who was a devoted admirer
of Miss Burgoyne. Miss Burgoyne had, indeed, on one occasion introduced
the young man to him; but he had paid little heed; most likely he
regarded him with the sort of half-humorous contempt with which the
professional actor is apt to look upon the moon-struck youths who bring
bouquets into the stalls and languish about stage-doors. However, he
told the house-porter to ask the gentleman to step up-stairs.
But he was hardly prepared for what followed. The young gentleman who
now came into the room--he was a pretty boy, of the fair-haired English
type, with a little yellow moustache and clear, gray eyes--seemed almost
incapable of speech, and his lips were quite pale.
"In--in what I have to say to you, Mr. Moore," he said, in a breathless
kind of way, "I hope there will be no need to mention any lady's name.
But you know whom I mean. That--that lady has placed her interests in my
hands--she has appealed to me--I am here to demand reparation--in the
usual way--"
"Reparation--for what?" Lionel asked, staring at the young man as if he
were an escaped lunatic.
"Your attentions," said the hapless boy, striving hard to preserve a
calm demeanor, "your attentions are odious and objectionable--she will
not submit to them any longer--"
"My attentions?" Lionel said. "If you mean Miss Burgoyne, I never paid
her any--you must be out of your senses!"
"Shuffling will do you no good," said this fierce warrior, who seemed to
be always trying to swallow something--perhaps his wrath. "The lady has
placed her interests in my hands; I demand the only reparation that is
possible between gentlemen."
"Look here, my young friend," Lionel said, in a very cool sort of
fashion, "do you want to go on the stage? Is that a specimen of what you
can do? For it isn't bad, you know--for burlesque."
"You won't fight?" said the young man, getting paler and more breathless
than ever.
"No, I will not fight--about nothing," Lionel said, with perfect
good-humor. "I am not such an ass. If Miss Burgoyne is annoyed because I
passed her on Friday without recognizing her, that was simply a mistake
for which I have already apologized to her. As for any cock-and-bull
story about my having persecuted her with odious attentions, that's all
moonshine; she never put that into your head; that's your own
imagination--"
"By heavens, you shall fight!" broke in this infuriate young fool, and
the next moment he had snatched up the ink-bottle from the table before
him and tossed it into his enemy's face. That is to say, it did not
quite reach its aim; for Lionel had instinctively raised his hand, and
the missile fell harmlessly on to the table again--not altogether
harmlessly, either, for in falling the lid had opened and the ink was
now flowing over Lady Rosamund's open album. At sight of this mishap,
Lionel sprang to his feet, his eyes afire.
"I've a mind to take you and knock your idiotic brains against that
wall," he said to the panting, white-faced youth. "But I won't. I will
teach you a lesson instead. Yes, I will fight. Make what arrangements
you please; I'll be there. Now get out."
He held the door open; the young man said, as he passed,
"You shall hear from me."
And then Lionel went back to Lady Rosamund's ill-fated album, and began
to sponge it with blotting-paper, while with many a qualm he considered
how he was to apologize to her and make some kind of plausible
explanation. Fortunately the damage turned out to be less serious than
at first sight appeared. The open page, which contained a very charming
little sketch in water-color by Mr. Mellord, was of course hopelessly
ruined; but elsewhere the ink had not penetrated very far; a number of
new mounts would soon put that right. Then he thought he would go to Mr.
Mellord and lay the whole affair before him, and humbly beg for another
sketch (artists always being provided with such things); so that, as
regarded the album, no great harm had been done.
But as he was sitting in Mrs. Grey's little parlor, at tea, Nina fancied
he looked a little preoccupied and was not talking as blithely as usual,
and she made bold to ask him if anything were the matter.
"Yes," said he, "something is the matter. I'm afraid I've made a fool of
myself." And then he added, with a smile, "Nina, I'm going to fight a
duel."
"A duel, Leo?" she said, faintly.
"Yes; and what I fear about it is the ridicule that may follow. But
don't be alarmed, Nina," he said, cheerfully, "I don't think I'm going
to fall on the deadly field of battle; I can take care of myself. The
trouble is that the whole thing is so preposterous--so absolutely
ridiculous! The fact is, what the young gentleman really wants is a
thorough good caning, and there's nobody to give it him. Very well, he
must have something else; and I propose to teach him a wholesome lesson.
I'm not going to take the trouble of crossing over to France or
Belgium--I dare say that will be the programme--for nothing. Then
there's another thing, Nina: I am the challenged party; I ought to have
the choice of weapons. Well, now, I am not a very good shot; but I'm
considered a very fair fencer; and I suppose you would say that I should
be magnanimous and choose pistols? Oh, no; I'm not going to do anything
of the kind. There might be a very awkward accident with pistols--that
is to say, if our bloodthirsty seconds put in more than half a charge of
powder. But with swords I fancy I shall be rather master of the
situation; and perhaps a little prod or a scratch, just to show him the
color of his own blood, will do him a world of good. It may turn out the
other way, no doubt; I've heard of bad fencers breaking through one's
guard just by pure ignorance and accident; but the betting is against
that kind of thing."
"But what is it all about, Leo?" Nina exclaimed; she was far more
concerned about this mad project than he appeared to be.
"Oh, I can't tell you that," said he, lightly, "without telling you the
name of the lady--for of course there is a lady in it--and that is never
allowed."
Nina sprang to her feet and stretched out her hands towards him.
"I know--I know!" she said, in a breathless sort of way. "Leo, you will
not deny it to me--it is Miss Burgoyne! Ah, do I not know!--she is a
serpent!--a cat!--a devil!--"
"Nina," he said, almost angrily, "what are you talking about? Do you
suppose Miss Burgoyne would want a duel fought just because I happened
to pass her, by accident, without raising my hat?--it's absurd."
"Ah, there is more than that, Leo!" Nina cried, eagerly; and then she
paused, in some hesitation and embarrassment. "Yes, there is more than
that," she repeated, as if with an effort, and there was a slight flush
in the pretty, pale face. "Why should I not say it to you? You are too
simple, Leo. You do not understand. She wishes to have the reputation to
be allied with you--in the theatre--out of the theatre. Then she sees
that you drive with me in an open carriage; she hates me--what more
natural? And she is angry with you--"
"Now, Nina," said he, "do you think any woman could be so mad as to want
to have a duel fought simply because she saw me driving past in a
carriage with Mrs. Grey and you--is it reasonable?"
"Leo, you did not see her last night," Nina said, but still with a
little embarrassment, "when she meets me in the corridor--oh, such a
furious woman!--her face white, her eyes burning. As for her insulting
me, what may I care? I am a foreigner, yes; if one says so, I am not
wounded. Perhaps the foreigners have better manners a little?--but that
is not of importance; no, what I say is, she will be overjoyed to have
you fight a duel about her--why, it is glory for her!--every one will
talk--your names will be joined in newspapers--when the people see you
on the stage they will say, 'Ah, ah, he is back from fighting the duel;
he must be mad in love with Miss Burgoyne.' A duel--yes, so unusual in
England--every one will talk--ah, that will be the sweetest music for
Miss Burgoyne's ears in the whole world--prouder than a queen she will
be when the public have your name and her name rumored together. And you
do not understand it, Leo!"
He had been listening in silence, with something of vexation deepening
upon his features.
"What you say only makes matters worse and worse!" he exclaimed,
presently. "If that were true, Nina--just supposing that were the true
state of the case--why, I should be fighting a duel over a woman I don't
care twopence about, and with a young jackass whom I could kick across
the street! That is what I ought to have done!--why didn't I throw him
down-stairs? But the mischief of it is that the thing is now inevitable;
I can't back out? I declare I never was in such a quandary in my life
before!"
"And you will go and put yourself in danger, Leo," Nina said,
indignantly, "that a deceitful woman has the pride to hear the public
talk! Have you the right to do it? You say there are sometimes
accidents--both with swords as pistols--yes, every one knows it. And you
put your life in danger--for what? You care nothing for your friends,
then?--you think they will not heed much if--if an accident happens? You
think it is a light matter--nothing--a trifle done to please a boy and a
wicked-minded woman? Leo, I say you have no right to do it! You should
have the spirit, the courage, to say 'no!' You should go to that woman
and say, 'You think I will make sport for you?--no, I will not!' And as
for the foolish boy, if he comes near to you, then you take your
riding-whip, Leo, and thrash him!--thrash him--thrash him!" Nina
exclaimed, with her teeth set hard; indeed, her bosom was heaving so
with indignation that Mrs. Grey put her hand gently on the girl's
shoulder, and reminded her that Lionel was in sufficient perplexity, and
wanted wise counsel rather than whirling words.
As for Lionel himself, he had to leave those good friends very shortly;
for he was going out to dinner, and he had to get home to dress. And as
he was walking along Piccadilly, ruminating over this matter, the more
he thought of it the less he liked the look of it: not that he had been
much influenced by Nina's apprehensions of personal harm, but that he
most distinctly feared the absurdity of the whole affair. Indeed, the
longer he pondered over it, the more morose and resentful he became that
he should ever have been placed in such an awkward position; and when he
was going up-stairs to his room, he was saying to himself, with gloomy
significance:
"Well, if that young fool persists, I'd advise him to look out; I'm not
going over the water for nothing."
CHAPTER VI.
A DEPARTURE.
There was but little sleep for Nina that night. She was sick at heart to
think that in return for the unceasing kindness Lionel had shown her
since her arrival in England, she should be the means of drawing him
into this foolish embroilment. She saw the situation of affairs clearly
enough. Miss Burgoyne was an exacting, irritable, jealous woman, who had
resented Nina's presence in the theatre almost from the beginning, and
who had been driven into a sudden fury by the sight of Lionel (he taking
no notice of her either) driving past with this interloping foreigner.
Moreover, Miss Burgoyne was inordinately vain: to have the popular young
baritone fight a duel on her account--to have their names coupled
together in common talk--what greater triumph could she desire than
that? But while Miss Burgoyne might be the ostensible cause of the
quarrel, Nina knew who was the real cause of it; and again and again she
asked herself why she had ever come to England, thus to bring trouble
upon her old ally and companion Leo.
And then in that world of visions that lies just outside the realm of
sleep--in which great things become small, and small things acquire a
fantastic and monstrous importance--she worried and fretted because
Lionel had laughingly complained on the previous evening that henceforth
there would be no more home-made lemonade for him. Well, now, if
she--that is to say, if Nina--were in her humble way to try what she
could do in that direction? It might not be so good as the lemonade that
Miss Burgoyne prepared; but perhaps Lionel would be a little generous
and make allowance? She would not challenge any comparison. She and Mrs.
Grey between them would do their best, and the result would be sent
anonymously to his rooms in Piccadilly; if he chose to accept it--well,
it was a timid little something by way of compensation. Nina forgot for
the moment that within the next few days an unlucky sword-thrust might
suddenly determine Lionel's interest in lemonade, as in all other
earthly things; these trivial matters grew large in this distorted land
of waking dreams; nay, she began to think that if she were to leave
England altogether, and go away back to Naples, and perhaps accept an
engagement in opera at Malta, then matters would be as before at the New
Theatre; and when Lionel and Miss Burgoyne met in the corridor, it would
be, "Good-evening, Miss Burgoyne!" and "Good-evening, Mr. Moore!" just
as it used to be. There would be no Italian girl interfering, and
bringing dissension and trouble.
But the next morning, when the actual facts of the case were before her
clearer vision, she had better reason for becoming anxious and restless
and miserable. As the day wore on, Mrs. Grey could hardly persuade her
to run down to the Crystal Palace for the opening of the Handel
Festival, though, as the little widow pointed out, Mr. Moore had
procured the tickets for them, and they were bound to go. Of course,
when once they were in the great transept of the Palace, in the presence
of this vast assemblage, and listening to the splendid orchestra and a
chorus of between three and four thousand voices dealing with the
massive and majestic strains of the "Messiah," the spell of the music
fell upon Nina and held absolute sway over her. She got into a curious
state of exaltation; she seemed breathless; sometimes, Mrs. Grey
thought, she shivered a little with the strain of emotion. And all the
time that Mr. Santley was singing "Why do the nations," she held her
hand tightly over her heart; and when he had finished--when the thrilled
multitude broke forth into an extraordinary thunder of enthusiasm--Nina
murmured to herself,
"It is--it is like to take my life-blood away."
But when they were in the train again, and on their way up to town, it
was evident to her companion that the girl had returned to her anxious
fears.
"Mrs. Grey," she said, suddenly, "I speak to Miss Burgoyne to-night."
"Oh, no, don't do that, Miss Nina!" said Mrs. Grey, with much concern,
for she knew something of the circumstances of
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