Prince Fortunatus Part 38

"Glad you've looked in, Linn."

"Well, you don't seem to be busy, old chap; who ever saw you before without a book or a pipe?"

"I've been musing, and dreaming dreams, and wis.h.i.+ng I was a poet," said this tall, thin, languid-looking man, whose abnormally keen gray eyes were now grown a little absent. "It's only a fancy, you know--perhaps something could be made of it by a fellow who could rhyme--"

"But what is it?" Lionel interposed.

"Well," said the other, still idly staring into the fire before him, "I think I would call it 'The Cry of the Violets'--the violets that are sold in bunches at the head of the Haymarket at midnight. Don't you fancy there might be something in it--if you think of where they come from--the woods and copses, children playing, and all that--and of what they've come to--the gas-glare and drunken laughter and jeers. I would make them tell their own story--I would make them cry to Heaven for swift death and oblivion before the last degradation of being pinned on to the flaunting dress." And then again he said: "No, I don't suppose there's any thing in it; but I'll tell you what made me think of it.

This morning, as we were coming back from Winstead church--you know how extraordinarily mild it has been of late, and the lane going down to the church is very well sheltered--I found a couple of violets in at the roots of the hedge--within a few inches of each other, indeed--and I gave them to Miss Francie, and she put them in her prayer-book and carried them home. I thought the violets would not object to that, if they only knew."

"So you went down to Winstead this morning?"

"Yes."

"And how are the old people?"

"Oh, very well."

"And Francie?"

"Very busy--and very happy, I think. If she doesn't deserve to be, who does?" he continued, rousing himself somewhat from his absent manner. "I suppose, now, there is no absolutely faultless woman; and yet I sometimes think it would puzzle the most fastidious critic of human nature to point out any one particular in which Miss Francie could be finer than she is; I think it would. It is not my business to find fault; I don't want to find fault; but I have often thought over Miss Francie--her occupations, her theories, her personal disposition, even her dress--and I've wondered where the improvement was to be suggested.

You see, she might be a very good woman, and yet have no sense of humor; she might be very charitable, and also a little vainglorious about it; she might have very exalted ideas of duty, and be a trifle hard on those who did not come up to her standards; but in Miss Francie's case these qualifications haven't to be put in at all. She always seems to me to be doing the right thing, and just in the right way--with a kind of fine touch that has no namby-pambiness about it. Oh, she can be firm, too; she can scold them well enough, those children--when she doesn't laugh and pat them on the shoulder the minute after."

"This is, indeed, something, as coming from you, Maurice!" Lionel exclaimed. "Has it been left for you to discover an absolutely perfect human being?"

"It isn't for you to find fault with her, anyway," the other said, rather sharply. "She's fond enough of you."

"Who said I was finding fault with her?--not likely I am going to find fault with Francie!" Lionel replied, with sufficient good-humor. "Well, now that you have discovered an absolutely faultless creature, you might come to the help of another who is only too conscious that he has plenty of faults, and who is so dissatisfied with himself and his surroundings that he is about sick of life altogether."

Notwithstanding the light tone in which he introduced the subject, Mangan looked up quickly, and regarded the younger man with those penetrating gray eyes.

"Where have you been to-day, Linn?"

"Brighton."

"Among the dukes and d.u.c.h.esses again? Ah, you needn't be angry--I respect as much as anybody those whom G.o.d has placed over us--I haven't forgotten my catechism--I can order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters. But tell me what the matter is. You sick of life?--I wonder what the gay world of London would think of that!"

And therewithal Lionel, in a somewhat rambling and incoherent fas.h.i.+on, told his friend of a good many things that had happened to him of late--of his vague aspirations and dissatisfactions--of Miss Cunyngham's visit to the theatre, and his disgust over the music-hall clowning--of his going down to Brighton that day, and his wish to stand on some other footing with those friends of his--winding up by asking, to Mangan's surprise, how long it would take to study for the bar and get called, and whether his training--the confidence acquired on the stage--might not help in addressing a jury.

"So the idol has got tired of being wors.h.i.+pped," Mangan said, at last.

"It is an odd thing. I wonder how many thousands of people there are in London--not merely shop-girls--who consider you the most fortunate person alive--in whose imagination you loom larger than any saint or soldier, any priest or statesman, of our own time. And I wonder what they would say if they knew you were thinking of voluntarily abdicating so proud and enviable a position. Well, well!--and the reason for this sacrifice? Of course, you know it is a not uncommon thing for women to give up their carriages and luxuries and fine living, and go into a retreat, where they have to sweep out cells, and even keep strict silence for a week at a time, which, I suppose, is a more difficult business. The reason in their case is clear enough; they are driven to all that by their spiritual needs; they want to have their souls washed clean by penance and self-denial. But you," he continued, in no unfriendly mood, but with his usual uncompromising sincerity, "whence comes your renunciation? It is simply that a woman has turned your head.

You want to find yourself on the same plane with her; you want to be socially her equal; and to do that you think you should throw off those theatrical trappings. You see, my dear Linn, if I have remembered my catechism, you have not; you have forgotten that you must learn and labor truly to get your own living, and do your duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased G.o.d to call you. You want to change your state of life; you want to become a barrister. What would happen? The chances are entirely against your being able to earn your own living--at least for years; but what is far more certain is that your fas.h.i.+onable friends--whose positions and occupations you admire--would care nothing more about you. You are interesting to them now because you are a favorite of the public, because you play the chief part at the New Theatre. What would you be as a briefless barrister? Who would provide you with salmon-fis.h.i.+ng and deer-stalking then? If you aspired to marry one of those dames of high degree, what would be your claims and qualifications? You say you would almost rather be a gillie in charge of dogs and ponies. A gillie in charge of dogs and ponies doesn't enjoy many conversations with his young mistress; and if he made bold to demand any closer alliance Pauline would pretty soon have that Claude kicked off the premises--and serve him right. If you had come to me and said, 'I am too well off; I am being spoiled and petted to death; the simplicity and dignity of life is being wholly lost in all this fas.h.i.+onable flattery, this public notoriety and applause; and to recover myself a little--as a kind of purification--I am going to put aside my trappings; I will go and work as a hod-carrier for three months or six months; I will live on the plainest fare; I will bear patiently the cursing the master of the gang will undoubtedly hurl at me; I will sleep on a straw mattress'--then I could have understood that. But what is it you renounce?--and why? You think you would recommend yourself better to your swell friends if you dropped the theatre altogether--"

"Don't you want to hire a hall?" said Lionel, gloomily.

"Oh, n.o.body likes being preached at less than I do myself," Mangan said, with perfect equanimity, "but you see I think I ought to tell you, when you ask me, how I regard the situation. And, mind you, there is something very heroic--very impracticably heroic, but magnanimous all the same--in your idea that you might abandon all the popularity and position you have won as a mere matter of sentiment. Of course you won't do it. You couldn't bring yourself to become a mere n.o.body--as would happen if you went into chambers and began reading up law-books. And you wouldn't be any nearer to salmon-fis.h.i.+ng and deer-forests that way, or to the people who possess these by birth and inheritance. The trouble with you, Linn, my boy, as with most of us, is that you weren't born in the purple. It is quite true that if you were called to the bar you could properly claim the t.i.tle of esquire, and you would find yourself not further down than the hundred and fiftieth or hundred and sixtieth section in the tables of precedence; but if you went with this qualification to those fine friends of yours, they would admit its validity, and let you know at the same time you were no longer interesting to them. Harry Thornhill, of the New Theatre, has a free pa.s.sport everywhere; Mr. Lionel Moore, of the Middle Temple, wouldn't be wanted anywhere."

"You are very worldly-wise to-night, Maurice."

"I don't want to see you make a sacrifice that wouldn't bring you what you expect to gain by it," Mangan said. "But, as I say, you won't make any such sacrifice. You have had your brain turned by a pretty pair of eyes--perhaps by an elegant figure--and you have been troubled and dissatisfied and dreaming dreams."

"If that is your conclusion and summing-up of the whole matter," Lionel said, with studied indifference, "perhaps you will offer me a drink, and I'll have a cigarette, and we can talk about something on which we are likely to agree."

"I'm sure I beg your pardon," Mangan said, with a laugh; and he went and brought forth what modest stores he had, and he was quite willing that the conversation should flow into another channel.

And little did Lionel know that at this very moment there was something awaiting him at his own rooms that would (far more effectually than any reasoning and plain speaking) banish from his mind, for the moment at least, all those restless aspirations and vague regrets. When eventually he arrived in Piccadilly and went up-stairs, he was not expecting any letters, this being Sunday; and as there was on the table only a small parcel, he would probably have left that unheeded till the morning (no doubt it was a pair of worked slippers, or a couple of ivory-backed brushes, or something of the kind) but that in pa.s.sing he happened to glance at the note on the top of it, and he observed that the handwriting was foreign. He took it up carelessly and opened it; his carelessness soon vanished. The message was from Mlle. Girond, and it was in French:

"DEAR MR. MOORE,--To-day Mrs. Grey and I have called twice at your apartments, but in vain, and now I leave this letter for you. It is frightful, what has happened. Nina has gone, no one knows where; we can hear nothing of her. This morning when I came down to her room she was gone; there was a letter for me, one for Mr. Lehmann, one for Miss Constance, asking her to be ready to sing to-morrow night, another for Mrs. Grey, with money for the apartments until the end of the month, and also there was this little packet for you. In her letter to me she asks me to see them all delivered. During the night she must have made these arrangements; in the morning she is gone! I am in despair; I know not what to do. Will you have the goodness to come down to-morrow as soon as possible?

"ESTELLE."

And then mechanically he drew a chair to the table, and sat down and pulled the small package towards him; perhaps the contents might help to explain this extraordinary thing that had occurred. But the moment that he took the lid off the pasteboard box he was more bewildered than ever; for the first glimpse told him that Nina had returned to him all the little presents he had made to her in careless moments.

"Nina!" he said, under his voice, in a tone of indignant reproach.

Yes, here was every one of them, from the enclasped loving-cup to the chance trinkets he had purchased for her just as they happened to attract his eye. He took them all out; there was no letter, no message of any kind. And then he asked himself, almost angrily, what sort of mad freak was this. Had the wayward and petulant Nina--forgetting all the suave and gracious demeanor she had been teaching herself since she came to England--had she run away in a fit of temper, breaking her engagement at the theatre, and causing alarm and anxiety to her friends, all about nothing? For he and she had not quarrelled in any way whatsoever, as far as he knew. One fancy, at least, never occurred to him--or, if it occurred to him, it was dismissed in a moment--that Nina might have had a secret lover; that she had honestly wished to return these presents before making an elopement. It was quite possible that Nicolo Ciana, if he had heard of Nina's success in England, might have pursued her, and sought to marry so very eligible a helpmeet; but if the young man with the greasy hair and the sham jewelry and the falsetto voice had really come to England, Lionel knew who would have been the first to bid him return to his native sh.o.r.es and his _zuccherelli_. Had not Nina indignantly denied that he had ever dared to address her as "Nenna mia,"

or that his perpetual "Antoniella, Antonia," in any way referred to her?

No; Lionel did not think that Nicolo Ciana had much to do with Nina's disappearance.

And then, as he regarded this little box of useless jewelry, another wild guess flashed through his brain, leaving him somewhat breathless, almost frightened. Was it possible that Nina had mistaken these gifts for love-gifts, had discovered her mistake, and, in a fit of wounded pride, had flung them back and fled forever from this England that had deceived her? He was not vain enough to think there could be anything more serious, that Nina might be breaking her heart over what had happened to her; but it was quite enough if he had unconsciously led her to believe that he was paying her attentions. He looked at that loving-cup with some p.r.i.c.king of conscience; he had to confess that such a gift was capable of misconstruction. It had never occurred to him that she might regard it as some kind of mute declaration--as a pledge of affection between him and her that necessitated no clearer understanding. He had seen the two tiny goblets in a window; he had been taken by the pretty silver-gilt ornamentation; he had been interested in the old-fas.h.i.+oned custom; and he had lightly imagined that Nina would be pleased--that was all. And now that he thought of it, he had to confess that he had been indiscreet. It is true he had given Nina those presents from time to time in a careless and haphazard fas.h.i.+on that ought not to have been misunderstood--only, as he had to remind himself, Nina must have perceived that he did not give similar presents to Miss Burgoyne, or Estelle Girond, or anybody else in the theatre. And was Nina now thinking that he had treated her badly?--Nina, who had been always his sympathizing friend, his gentle adviser, and kind companion. Was there any one in the world that he less wished to harm? He supposed she must have been angry when she returned these jewels and gew-gaws; clearly she was too proud to send him any other message. And now she would be away somewhere, where he could not get hold of her to pet her into a reconciliation again; no doubt there was some hurt feeling of injury in her heart--perhaps she was even crying.

"Poor Nina!" he said to himself, little dreaming of the true state of affairs. "I hope it isn't so? but if it is so, here have I, through mere thoughtlessness, wounded her pride, and, what is more, interfered with her professional career. I suppose she'll go right away back to old Pandiani; and they'll be precious glad to get her now at Malta, after her success in England. Perhaps some day we shall hear of her coming over here again, as a famous star in grand opera; that will be her revenge. But I never thought Nina would want to be revenged on me."

And yet he was uneasy; there was something in all this he did not understand. He began to long for the coming of the next day, that he might go away down to Sloane Street and hear what Miss Girond had to tell him. Why, for example, he asked himself, had Nina taken this step so abruptly--so entirely without warning? How and when had she made the discovery that she had mistaken the intention of those friendly little acts of kindness and his constant a.s.sociation with her? Then he tried to remember on what terms he had last parted from her. It was at the theatre, as he patiently summoned up each circ.u.mstance. It was at the theatre, on the preceding night. She had come to him in the wings, observing that he looked rather vexed, and she had given him comforting and cheerful words, as was her wont. Surely there was no anger in her mind against him then. But thereafter? Well, he had seen no more of Nina. When Miss Cunyngham had come behind the scenes, he had forgotten all about Nina. And then suddenly he remembered that he must have been standing close by the prompter's box, absorbed in talking to Miss Cunyngham, when Nina would have to come up to go on the stage. Had she pa.s.sed them? Had she suspected? Had she, in her proud and petted way, resented this intimacy, and resolved to throw back to him the harmless little gifts he had bestowed on her? Poor Nina! she had always been so wilful--so easily pleased, so easily offended--but of late he had rather forgotten that, for she had been bearing herself with what she regarded as an English manner; and indeed their friends.h.i.+p had been so constant and unvarying, so kind and considerate on both sides, that there had been no opportunity for the half-vexed, half-laughing quarrels of earlier days. He would seek out this spoiled child (he said to himself) and scold her into being good again. And yet, even as he tried to persuade himself that all would still be well, he could not help recalling the fierce vehemence with which Nina had repudiated the suggestion that perhaps she might let some one else drink out of this hapless loving-cup that now lay before him. "I would rather have it dashed to pieces and thrown into the sea!" she had said, with pale face and quivering lips and eyes bordering on tears. He remembered that he had been a little surprised at the time--not thinking what it all might mean.

CHAPTER XVII.

A CRISIS.

When he went down to Sloane Street in the morning, he found Estelle eagerly awaiting him. She received him in Nina's small parlor; Mrs. Grey had just gone out. A glance round the room did not show him any difference, except that a row of photographs (of himself, mostly, in various costumes) had disappeared from the mantelshelf.

"Well, what is all this about?" he said, somewhat abruptly.

"Ah, do not blame me too quick!" Estelle said, with tears springing to her clear blue eyes. "Perhaps I am to blame--perhaps when I see her in such trouble on Sat.u.r.day night, I should entreat her to tell me why; but I said, 'To-night I will not worry her more; to-morrow morning I will talk to her; we will go for a long walk together? Nina will tell me all her sorrow.' Then the morning comes, and she is gone away; what can I do? Twice I go to your apartment--"

"Oh, I am not blaming you at all, Miss Girond," he said, at once and quite gently. "If anybody is to blame, I suppose it's myself, for I appear to have quarrelled with Nina without knowing it. Of course you understood that that packet you left yesterday contained the various little presents I have given her from time to time--worthless bits of things--but all the same her sending them back shows that Nina has some ground of offence. I'm very sorry; if I could only get hold of her I would try to reason with her; but she was always sensitive and proud and impulsive like that. And then to run away because of some fancied slight--"

Estelle interrupted him with a little gesture of impatience, almost of despair.

"Ah, you are wrong, you are wrong," she said. "It is far more serious than that. It is no little quarrel. It is a pain that stabs to the heart--that kills. You will see Nina never again to make up a little quarrel. She has taken her grief away with her. I myself, when I first saw her troubled at the theatre, I also made a mistake--I thought she was hysteric--"

"At the theatre?" said he, with some sudden recalling of his own surmise.

"You did not regard her, perhaps, towards the end of her part, on Sat.u.r.day night?" said Estelle. "I thought once she would fall on the stage. On the way home I think she was crying--I did not look. Then she is in this room--oh, so silent and miserable--as one in despair, until I persuade her to go to sleep until the morning, when she would tell me her sorrow. Then I was reading; I heard something; I went to the door there--it was Nina crying, oh, so bitterly; and when I ran to her, she was wild with her grief. 'My life is broken, Estelle, my life is broken!' she said--"