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

all for waiting on him and talking to him at the same time.

"It is so awfully kind of you to come," Lady Adela said, with one of her most gracious smiles. "Now we shall hear about something else than dogs and guns and grouse."

"Oh, Mr. Moore," cried Lady Rosamund (who was the youngest, and had a bit of a temper, and was allowed to interfere when she liked), "do you know a masque called 'Alfred'? You do? how delightful! Well, then, you remember the visions of the future kings and queens that pass before Alfred when he is in the Isle of Athelney? how can I get that done in the open air? What kind of gauze do you use in the theatre? Could you get me a bit? And would painted shades do instead of living persons?--you see we have so few people to come and go on up here."

"And, Mr. Moore," cried Lady Sybil, "how are we to manage about an accompaniment? A single violin is no use out in the open. Would it be too dreadful if we had a harmonium concealed somewhere? We could get one from Inverness; and you know a harmonium would do very well for the music that introduces the visions."

"Mr. Moore," put in Miss Georgie Lestrange, with a complaining air, "fancy their having given me another of Kitty Clive's characters; isn't it too bad? Why, I'll go on and on until I identify myself with her altogether; and then, you know, Kitty Clive wasn't--I'm afraid she wasn't quite--"

"Oh, Mrs. Clive was all right; she was a great friend of Dr. Johnson," Lionel made answer, to reassure the young lady.

"But I wish you girls would leave off chattering, and let Mr. Moore get something to eat," the young matron said, impatiently; and she herself was so kind as to go and fetch the claret jug from the glide-table and fill his glass.

However, there was peace in store for him. When he had finished with this late lunch, Lady Adela begged him to excuse them if they left him to shift for himself; they were busy dressmaking, she said. Would she send for one of the keepers, who would show him one or two of the nearest pools, so that he might try for a salmon? The gentlemen had all gone down the strath, to test some new rifle, she thought; this was out of consideration for her, for she could not bear shooting close to the house; would he walk in that direction, and see what they were doing?

"Don't you trouble," he said, instantly. "You leave me to myself. I like to wander about and find out my surroundings. I shall go down to the river, to begin with; I saw some picturesque bits higher up when we were coming along."

"You'll almost certainly find Honnor Cunyngham there," said Miss Lestrange. "I suppose she has gone storking, as usual."

"Stalking?" said he, in some amazement.

"No, no--storking, as I call it. She haunts the side of the river like a crane or a heron," said the red-haired damsel. "I think she would rather land a salmon than go to heaven."

"Georgie," said the young matron, severely, "you are not likely ever to do either; so you needn't be spiteful. Come away and get to work. Mr. Moore, we dine at eight; and, if you are anywhere up or down the strath, you'll hear the bell over the stables rung at seven, and then at half-past."

So they went off and left him; and he was not displeased; he passed out by the front door, lit a cigar, and strolled down towards the banks of the Aivron. It was a bright and sweet-aired afternoon; he was glad to be at the end of his journey; and this was a very charming, if somewhat lonely, stretch of country in which he now found himself. The wide river, the steep hillside beyond hanging in foliage, the valley narrowing in among rocks and then leading away up to those far solitudes of moorland and heather, broken only here and there by a single pine--all these features of the landscape seemed so clear and fine in color; there was no intervening haze; everything was vivid and singularly distinct, and yet aerial and harmonious and retiring of hue. But of course it was the stream--with its glancing lights, its living change and motion, its murmuring, varying voice--that was the chief attraction; and he wandered on by the side of it, noting here and there the long, rippling shallows where the sun struck golden on the sand beneath, watching the oily swirls of the deep black-brown pools as if at any moment he expected to see a salmon leap into the air, and not even uninterested in the calm eddies on the other side, where the smooth water mirrored the yellow-green bank and the bushes and the overhanging birch-trees. He sat down for a while, listening absently to this continuous, soothing murmur, perhaps thinking of the roar of the great city he had left. He was quite content to be alone; he did not even want Maurice Mangan to be discoursing to him--in those seasons of calm in which questions, long unanswered, perhaps never to be answered, will arise.

Then he rose and went on again, for, from the high-road along which he had driven, he had caught a glimpse of a wilder part of the glen, where the river seemed to come tumbling down a rocky chasm, with some huge boulders in mid-channel; and even now he could hear the distant, muffled roar of the waters. But all of a sudden he stopped. Away along there, and keeping guard (like a stork, as Miss Georgie Lestrange had suggested) above the pool that lay on this side of the double waterfall, was a young lady, her back turned towards him. So far as he could make out, she wasn't doing anything; a long fishing-rod, with the butt on the ground, she held idly in her right hand; while with her left hand she occasionally shaded her face across towards the west--probably, as he imagined, she was waiting for some of those smooth-sailing clouds to come and obscure the too-fierce light of the sun. He knew who she was; this must be Honnor Cunyngham, Lady Adela's sister-in-law; and of course he did not wish to intrude on the young lady's privacy; he would try to pass by behind her unobserved, though here the strath narrowed until it was almost a defile.

He was soon relieved from all anxiety. Sharper eyes than his own had perceived him. The young lady wheeled round; glanced at him for a second; turned again; and then a thin, tall, old man, who had hitherto been invisible to him, rose from his concealment among the rocks close to her and came along the river bank. He was a very handsome old man, this superannuated keeper, with his keen, aquiline nose, his clear, gray eyes, and frosted hair.

"Miss Honnor says will you hef a cast, sir? There's some clouds will be over soon."

"Oh, no, thank you, I could not dream of interrupting her," Lionel said; and then it occurred to him that he ought to go and thank the young lady herself for this frank invitation. "I--I'll go along and tell her so."

As he walked towards her he kept his eye, somewhat furtively, on her, though now she had turned her back again; and all he could make out was that she had a very elegant figure; that she was tall--though not so tall as her three sisters-in-law; and that her abundant brown hair was short and curly and kept close to her head, almost like a boy's. Were not her shoulders a trifle square-set for a woman?--but perhaps that appearance was owing to her costume, for she wore a Norfolk jacket of gray homespun that looked as if it could afford a good defence against the weather. She was entirely in gray, in fact; for her short-skirted dress was of the same material; and so also was the Tam o' Shanter, adorned with salmon flies, that she wore on her shapely head of golden-brown curls. Oh, yes, she looked sufficiently picturesque, standing there against the glow of the western skies, with the long salmon-rod in her right hand; but he was hardly prepared for what followed. The moment that she heard him draw near, she wheeled round and regarded him for a second--regarded him with a glance that rather bewildered him by reason of its transparent honesty and directness. The clear hazel eyes seemed to read him through and through, and yet not to be aware of their own boldness; and he did not know why he was so glad to hear that she had a soft and girlish voice, as she said,

"You are Mr. Moore. I am Lady Adela's sister--of course you know. Won't you take my rod? There will be some shadow very soon, I think."

"Oh, certainly not--certainly not," said he. "But I should be delighted if you would let me stay and look on; it would interest me quite as much--every bit as much."

"Oh, stay by all means," said she, turning to look at the western sky. "But I wish you would take my rod. What are they all about to let you come wandering out alone, on the first day of your arrival?"

"Oh, that's quite right," said he, cheerfully. "Lady Adela and the young ladies are all busy dressmaking."

"Ye may be getting ready, Miss Honnor," old Robert interposed. "There'll be a cloud over the sun directly."

Thus admonished, the tall young fisher-maiden stepped down by the side of a rock overhanging this wide, black-swirling pool, and proceeded to get her tackle in order.

"You know I'll give you my rod whenever you like to take a turn," said she, addressing Lionel even as she was getting the fly on to the water. "But we can't afford to waste a moment of shadow. I have done nothing all day on account of the sunlight."

And now the welcome shade was over, and, after a preliminary cast or two to get the line out, she was sending her fly well across, and letting it drift quietly down the stream, to be recovered by a series of small and gentle jerks. Lionel was supposed to be looking on at the fishing; but, when he dared, he was stealing covert glances at her; for this was one of the most striking faces he had seen for many a day. There was a curiously pronounced personality about her features, refined as they were; her lips were proud--and perhaps a little firmer than usual just now, when she was wielding a seventeen-foot rod; her clear hazel eyes were absolutely fearless; and her broadly marked and somewhat square eyebrows appeared to lend strength rather than gentleness to the intellectual forehead. Then the stateliness of her neck and the set of her head; she seemed to recall to him some proud warrior-maiden out of Scandinavian mythology--though she was dressed in simple homespun and had for her only henchman this quiet old Robert, who, crouching down under a birch-tree, was watching every cast made by his mistress with the intensest interest. And at last Lionel was startled to hear the old man call out, but in an undertone--"Ho!"

Honnor Cunyngham began coolly to pull in her line through the rings.

"What is it?" Lionel asked, in wonder.

"I rose a fish then, but he came short," she said, quietly. "We'll give him a rest. A pretty good one, wasn't he, Robert?"

"Ay, he wass that, Miss Honnor, a good fish. And ye did not touch him?"