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

story, you threaten and vapor and kick up mock-heroics, you throw a bottle of ink over a book belonging to a friend of mine--and then you are to get off by saying two or three words of apology!"

"What can I do more?" said the humble penitent. "I have tried to explain. I--I was as ready to fight as you could be; but--but now I obey the person who has the best right to say what shall be done in such an affair. I have made every apology and explanation I could; and I ask your pardon."

"Oh, very well," Lionel said again.

"Will you give me your hand, then?" Mr. Percival Miles asked; and he somewhat timidly advanced a step, with outstretched palm.

"That isn't necessary," said Lionel, making no other response.

The fair-haired young warrior seemed greatly embarrassed.

"I--I was told--" he stammered; but Lionel, who was now inclined to laugh, broke in on his confusion.

"Did Miss Burgoyne say you weren't to come away without shaking hands with me--is that it?" he asked, with a smile.

"Y--yes," answered the young gentleman, blushing furiously.

"Oh, very well, there's no trouble about that," Lionel said, and he gave him his hand for a second; after which the love-lorn youth somewhat hastily withdrew, and no doubt was glad to lose himself in the busy crowd of Piccadilly.

That same afternoon Lionel drove down to Sloane Street. He was always glad to go along and have a friendly little chat about musical affairs with the eagerly enthusiastic Nina; and, as this particular evening was exceedingly fine and pleasant, he thought he might induce her to walk in to the theatre by way of Belgrave Square and the Green Park. But hardly had they left the house when Nina discovered that it was not about professional matters that Lionel wanted to talk to her on this occasion.

"Nina," said he, with befitting solemnity, "I have great news for you. I am saved. Yes, my life has been saved. And by whom, think you? Why, by Miss Burgoyne! Miss Burgoyne is the protecting goddess who has snatched me away in a cloud just as my enemy was about to pin me to the earth with his javelin."

"There is to be no duel, Leo?" she said, quickly.

"There is not," he continued. "Miss Burgoyne has forbidden it. She has come between me and my deadly foe and held up a protecting hand. I don't know that it is quite a dignified position for me to find myself in, but one must recognize her friendly intentions, anyway. And not only that, Nina, but she sent me a bottle of lemonade yesterday! Just think of it! to save your life is something, but to send you lemonade as well--that is almost too much goodness."

Poor Nina! If this careless young man had only looked at the address on the wrapper of the bottle he could easily have guessed whose was the handwriting--especially recognizable in the foreign-looking L and M. That timidly proffered little gift was Nina's humble effort at compensation; and now he was bringing it forward as a proof of Miss Burgoyne's great good-nature! And it was Miss Burgoyne who had intervened to prevent this absurd duel--Miss Burgoyne, who knew nothing at all about it until Nina told her! Nina, as they now walked along towards Constitution Hill, was too proud to make any explanation; only she thought he might have looked at the address on the wrapper.

"Seriously," he said to his companion, "seriously, Nina, she has put me under a very great obligation and shown herself very magnanimous as well. There is no doubt she was offended with me about something or other; and she had the generosity to put all that aside the moment she found I was embroiled in this stupid affair. And, mind you, I'm very glad to be out of it. It would have looked ridiculous in the papers; and everything gets into the papers nowadays. Of course that young idiot had no right to go and tell her about the duel; but I suppose he wanted to figure as a hero in her eyes--poor devil! he seems pretty bad about her. Well, now that her intervention has got me out of this awkward scrape, how am I to show my gratitude to her? what do you say, Nina?"

But Nina had nothing to say.

"There's one thing I can do for her," he continued. "You know how fond actors and actresses are of titled folks. Well, Miss Burgoyne is going down to Henley Regatta with a lot of other professionals, and I am going too, with another party--Lady Adela Cunyngham has got a house-boat there. Very well, if I can find out where Miss Burgoyne is--and I dare say she will be conspicuous enough, though she's not very tall--I will take Lord Rockminster to pay his respects to her and leave him with her; won't that do! They have already been introduced at the theatre; and if Rockminster doesn't say much, I have no doubt she will chatter enough for both. And Miss Burgoyne will be quite pleased to have a lord all to herself."

"Leo," said Nina, gently, "do you not think you yourself have too much liking for--for that fine company?"

"Perhaps I have," said he, with perfect good-humor. "What then? Are you going to lecture me, too? Is Saul among the prophets? Has Maurice Mangan been coaching you as well?"

"Ah, Leo," said she, "I should wish to see you give it all up--yes--all the popularity--and your fine company--and that you go away back to Pandiani--"

"Pandiani!" he exclaimed. "Here's romance, indeed! You want us both to become students again, and to have the old days at Naples back again--"

"No, no, no!" she said, shaking her head. "It is the future I think of. I wish to hear you in grand opera or in oratorio--I wish to see you a great artist--that is something noble, something ambitious, something to work for day and night. Ah, Leo, when I hear Mr. Santley sing 'Why do the nations'--when I see the thousands and thousands of people sitting entranced, then I say to myself, 'There is something grand and noble to speak to all these people--to lift them above themselves, to give them this pure emotion, surely that is a great thing--it is high, like religion--it is a purification--it is--'" But here she stopped, with a little gesture of despair. "No, no, Leo, I cannot tell you--I have not enough English."

"It's all very well," said he, "for you to talk about Santley; but where will you get another voice like his?"

"Leo, you can sing finer music than 'The Starry Night,'" she said. "You have the capacity. Ah, but you enjoy too much; you are petted and spoiled, yes? you have not a great ambition--"

"I'll tell you what I seem to have, though, Nina," said he. "I seem to have a faculty of impressing my friends with the notion that I could do something tremendous if only I tried; whereas I know that this belief of theirs is only a delusion."

"But you do not try, Leo," said this persistent counsellor. "No? life is too pleasant for you; you have not enthusiasm; why, your talk is always persiflage--it is the talk of the fashionable world. And you an artist!"

However, at this moment Lionel suddenly discovered that this leisurely stroll was likely to make them late in getting to the theatre; so that perforce they had to leave these peaceful glades of the Green Park and get into Piccadilly, where they jumped into a hansom-cab and were rapidly whirled away eastward.

But if Lionel was to be reproached for his lack of ambition, that was a charge which could not be brought against certain of those fashionable friends of his at whom Nina (in unconscious collusion with Maurice Mangan) seemed inclined to look askance. At the very height of the London season Lady Adela Cunyngham and her sisters, Lady Sybil and Lady Rosamund Bourne, had taken the town by storm; and it seemed probable that, before they departed for Scotland, they would leave quite a trail of glory behind them in the social firmament. The afternoon production of "The Chaplet," in the gardens of Sir Hugh's house on Campden Hill, had been a most notable festivity, doubtless; but then it was a combination affair; for Miss Georgie Lestrange had shared in the honors of the occasion; moreover, they had professional assistance given them by Mr. Lionel Moore. It was when the three sisters attacked their own particular pursuits that their individual genius shone, and marked success had attended their separate efforts. His royal highness, the commander-in-chief, it is true, had not as yet invited the colonels of the British army to recommend Lady Sybil's "Soldiers' Marching Song" to the band-masters of the various regiments, but, in default of that, this composition was performed nightly, as the concluding ceremony, at the international exhibition then open in London; and as the piece was played by the combined bands of the Royal Marines, with the drums of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Highland Pipers of the 2d Battalion Scots Guards, and the drums of the 2d Battalion Grenadier Guards, the resultant noise was surely sufficient to satisfy the hungriest vanity of any composer, professional or amateur, who ever lived. Then not only had Lady Rosamund exhibited a large picture at the Lansdowne Gallery (a decorative work this was, representing the manumission of a slave, with the legend underneath, "Hunc hominem liberum esse volo"), but also the proprietors of an illustrated weekly newspaper had published in their summer number, as a colored supplement, what she had ventured to call "An All-the-year-round Valentine." She had taken the following rhyme (or perhaps some one had found it for her)--


"In these fair violets of the veins,
The verdure of the spring remains;
Ripe cherries on thy lips display
The lustre of the summer day;
If I for autumn were to seek,
I'd view the apples on thy cheek;
There's nought could give me pain in thee,
But winter in thy heart to see."


--and she had drawn four pretty little landscapes, which, when reproduced on one sheet by chromo-lithography, looked very neat and elegant, while the fair artist was much gratified to observe her name figuring on the placards at railway-stations or on the boards in front of stationers' shops, as she drove along Kensington High Street.

But, of course, the crowning achievement of the gifted family was Lady Adela Cunyngham's novel. If it was not quite the success of the season, as far as the outer world was concerned, it certainly was the most-talked-of book among Lady Adela's own set. Every character in it was identified as somebody or another; and although Lady Adela, as a true artist, maintained that she did not draw individuals, but types, she could not stem the tide of this harmless curiosity, and had to submit to the half-humorous inquiries and flattering insinuations of her friends. As for the outer world, if it remained indifferent, that only showed its lack of gratitude; for here, there, and everywhere, among the evening and weekly papers (the morning papers were, perhaps, too busy with politics at the time), attention was drawn to Lady Arthur Castletown's charming and witty romance of modern life. Alp called to Alp, and deep to deep, throughout Satan's invisible world; "Kathleen's Sweethearts" was dragged in (apparently with ten men pushing behind) for casual allusion in "Our Weekly Note-book;" Lady Arthur's smart sayings were quoted in the gossip