Prince Fortunatus, William Black [pdf e book reader .txt] 📗

her--perhaps see her name in the papers as being at a drawing-room or something of the kind. She would have forgotten all those long, still days by the Aivron and the Geinig; no echo would remain in her memory of "The Bonnie Earl o' Morau," as he had sung it for her, with all the passionate pathos of which he was capable; she would be a stranger--moving afar--one heard of only--a remembrance--and no more. So the impalpable future was interwoven with those dreams and not too happy forecasts, as the train thundered on its way, along the wooded banks of the Allan Water and towards the winding Links of Forth.

But there was an alternative that would recur again and again to his fancy, though in rather a confused and breathless way. What if, in the very despair of losing her altogether, at the very moment of parting with her, he had made bold to claim this proud-spirited maiden all for himself? Might not some such sudden and audacious proposal have been the very thing to appeal to her--the very thing to capture her? A challenge--a demand that she should submit--that she should come down from those serene heights of independence and yield herself a willing and gracious helpmeet and companion for life to this daring suitor; might not that have secured for him this wondrous prize? If she had any regard for him at all, she might have been startled into confession. A couple of words--there by the side of the Aivron--might have been enough. No theatrical professions nor mock homage, no kneeling at her feet or swearing by eternal stars; but a look into her eyes--a clasp of the hand--a single question? Something he had indeed meant to say to her, as they stood face to face there for the last time--something, he hardly knew what; and yet his hesitation had been but natural; he might have been hurried into saying too much; he dared not offend. Nay, even as he held her hand, he was unaware of the true state of his feeling towards her; it was this separation--this ever-increasing distance between them--that had enabled him to understand.

And then again his mood changed into one of bitter self-reproach and self-contempt. What miserable folly was this crying for the moon--this picturing of a marriage between the daughter of an ancient and wealthy house--one, too, who was unmistakably proud of her lineage--and a singer in comic opera! Not for nothing had he heard of the twin brothers Cunyngham who fell on Flodden Field. It is true that at the present time he and she mingled in the same society; for he was the pet and plaything of the hour in the fashionable world; but he was not entirely blinded by that favor; he did not wholly mistake his position. And even supposing--a wild conjecture!--that she entertained an exceptional regard for him--that she could be induced to think of marrying him--would she be content that her husband remained on the stage and painted his face every evening and postured before the footlights? On the other hand, apart from the stage, what was he?--a mere nobody, not too-well instructed, having no particular gifts of wit or conversation, without even a well-filled purse--the meanest of qualifications--to recommend him. No doubt they might make a very pretty bargain between them; he might go to her and say,

"Let there be a sacrifice on both sides. I give up the theatre--I give up the applause, the popularity, the opportunities of making pleasant friendships--all the agreeable things of a stage-life; and you on your part give up your pride of birth, and, it may be, something of your place in society. It is a surrender on both sides. Let our motto be, 'All for love, and the world well lost.'" Yes, a very pretty bargain; but as he considered that he was now wandering into the region of romance--a region which he unhesitatingly scorned as having no relation with the facts of the world--he withdrew from that futile and useless and idle speculation, and took to thinking of Miss Honnor Cunyngham as she actually was, and wondering over which of the Aivron pools the proud-featured fisher-maiden would be casting at this moment.

And here, again, as the hours crept by, was something of a more practical nature to remind him of the now far-distant strath. In order to save him from the hurry of a twenty-minutes' railway-station dinner, Lady Adela had ordered a luncheon-basket to be packed for him, and her skill and forethought in this direction were unequalled, as many a little shooting-party had joyfully discovered. When Lionel leisurely began to explore the contents of the basket, he was proud to think that it was under her own immediate supervision that these things had been put together for him. There was some kind of sentimental interest attaching to the chicken and tongue and galantine, to the salad and biscuits and cake and what not; and he knew that it was no servant who had thought of filling a small tin canister with peaches and grapes, even as he knew that only Lady Adela was aware of his preference for the particular dry Sillery of which a half-bottle here lay in its covering of straw. As he took out the things and placed them on the seat beside him, he could have imagined that a pair of very gentle hands had arranged that repast for him. Then from this much too sumptuous banquet his mind wandered away back to the simple fare that old Robert used to bring forth from the fishing-bag, when Miss Honnor had taken her place among the bracken. Again he was with her in that little dell away among the solitudes of the hills, with the murmur of the Geinig coming up to them from the chasm below. The sunlight flashed on the rippling burn at their feet; the leaves of the birches trembled, and no more than trembled, in the still air; the deep, clear blue of the sky overhead told them to be in no hurry--they would have to wait till the afternoon for clouds. In the perfect silence (for the humming of the bees in the heather was hardly a sound at all) he could hear every soft modulation of her voice--though, to be sure, it was not lovers' talk that passed between them. "Mr. Moore, won't you have the rest of this soda-water?" or, "Yes, one of those brown biscuits, thank you," or, "Please, Mr. Moore, will you crush those bits of paper together and bury them in a hole? Nothing is so horrid as to come upon traces of a pic-nic on a hillside or along a river." Already those long days of constant companionship seemed to be becoming remote. It was the black night-journey between Inverness and Perth that had severed that shining time from the dull and commonplace hours he had now entered upon. He looked out of the window as the train thundered along--Preston--Wigan--Warrington--everywhere squalor, hurry, and noise, with a smoke-laden sky lowering over the sad and dismal country, different, indeed, from that other world he knew of, with its crimson slopes of heather, its laughing waters, its lonely solitudes in their noonday hush, the fair azure of the heavens becoming paler and paler towards the horizon until it touched the distant peaks and shoulders of Assynt. "Muss aus dem Thal jetzt scheiden, wo alles Lust und Klang;" but at least the memory of it would remain with him--a gracious possession.

The long afternoon wore on; Crewe, Stafford, Lichfield, Tamworth went by, as things in a dream, for his thoughts were far away. Sometimes, it is true, he would rebel against this morbid, restless, useless regret that had got hold of him; and he would valiantly attack the newspapers, of which he had an ample supply; but somehow or another the gray columns would fade away, and in their place would come a picture of Strathaivron Lodge, and the valley, and the river, and of an upturned face smiling a last farewell to him as the wagonette rolled on. Was it really only yesterday that he had seen her--talked with her--taken her hand? A yesterday that seemed years away! A vision already growing pale.

Well, London came at last, and all the hurry and bustle of Euston Station; and when he had got his things put on the top of a hansom, and given his address to the driver, there was an end of dreams. No more dreams were possible in this great vortex of a city into which he was now plunged--a turbulent, bewildering, vast black hole it seemed, and yet all afire with its blaze of windows and lamps. In Strathaivron the night was a gentle thing--it came stealing over the landscape as soft as sleep; it brought silence with it and a weight to tired eyes; it bade the woods be still; and to the lonely and darkened peaks of the hills it unveiled its canopy of trembling stars. But here there was no night--there was yellow fire, there were black phantoms unceasingly hurrying hither and thither, and a dull and constant roar more continuous than that of any sea. Tottenham Court Road after Strathaivron! But here at least was actuality; the time for sentimental sorrows, for dumb and hopeless regrets, was over and gone.

And who was the first to greet him on his return to London--who but Nina?--not in person, truly, but by a very graceful little message. The moment he went into his sitting-room his eye fell on the tiny nosegay lying on the table; and when he took the card from the accompanying envelope, he knew whose handwriting he would find there. "Welcome home--from Nina!"--that was all; but it was enough to make him rather remorseful. Too much had he neglected his old comrade and ally; he had scarcely ever written to her; she had been but little in his thoughts. Poor Nina!--It was a shame he should treat so faithful a friend so ill; he might have remembered her a little more had not his head been stuffed with foolish fancies. Well, as soon as he had changed his clothes and swallowed a bit of food he would jump into a hansom and go along to the New Theatre; he would be too late to judge of Nina's Grace Mainwaring as a whole, but he would have a little chat with her in the wings.

He was later in getting there than he had expected; indeed, as he made his way to the side of the stage, he discovered that his locum tenens had just been recalled and was singing for the second time the well-known serenade, "The Starry Night"--and very well he sang it, too, confound him! Lionel said to himself. And here was Nina, standing on a small platform at the top of a short ladder, and waiting until the passionate appeal of her sweetheart (in the garden without) should be finished. She did not know of the presence of the new-comer. Lionel might have pulled her skirts, it is true, to apprise her of his being there; but that would not have been decorous; besides, he dared not distract her attention from the business of the stage. As soon as the last verse of the serenade had been sung, with its recurring refrain--


"Appear, my sweet, and shame the skies,
That have no splendor
That have no splendor like thine eyes"--


Nina--that is, Grace Mainwaring--carefully opened the casement at which she was supposed to be standing. A flood of moonlight--lime-light, rather--fell on her; but Lionel could not see how she looked the part, because her back was towards him. Very timidly Grace Mainwaring glanced this way and that, to make sure that no one could observe her; she took a rose from