Prince Fortunatus by William Black (ebook reader with highlighter TXT) 📖

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 protegee 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, Antonia,
Antoniella, Antonia;
Votate, Nenna bella, votate cca,
Vedimmo a pettenessa comme te sta.'"


"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, Antonia,' 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