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

flies--if you have plenty of time, that is."

"I shall be delighted," said he, as if she had conferred the greatest favor on him.

"Well, good-bye--I mustn't keep you late for the train."

"But we shall meet in the South?"

"I hope so," she said, in a very amiable and friendly fashion; and she stood waiting there until he had got into the wagonette, and until the horses had splashed their way across the ford; then she waved her hand to him, and, with a parting smile, turned down the stream again, to rejoin Robert and pick up her rod.

Nor was this quite the last he was to see of those good friends. When the horses had strenuously hauled the carriage up that steep hillside and got into the level highway, he turned to look back at the Lodge, set in the midst of the wide strath, and behold! there was a fluttering of white handkerchiefs there, Lady Adela and her sisters and Miss Georgie still lingering in the porch. Again and again he made response. Then, as he drove on, he caught another glance of Miss Honnor, who, far below him, was industriously fishing the Whirl Pool; when she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked up and waved her hand to him as he went by. Finally there came the crack of a gun across the wide strath; it was a signal from the shooting-party--away on a distant hillside--and he could just make out that they, also, were sending him a telegraphic good-bye. At each opening through the birch-wood skirting the road he answered these farewells, until Strathaivron Lodge was no longer in sight; and then he settled himself in his seat and resigned himself to the long journey.

This was not a pleasant drive. He was depressed with a vague aching and emptiness of the heart that he could not well account for. A schoolboy returning to his tasks after a long holiday would not be quite so profoundly miserable--so reckless, dissatisfied, and ill at ease. But perhaps it was the loss of one of those pleasant companions that was troubling him? Which one, then (he made pretence of asking himself), was he sorriest to part from? Lady Adela, who was always so bright and talkative and cheerful, so charming a hostess, so considerate and gentle a friend? Or the mystic-eyed Lady Sybil, who many an evening had led him away into the wonder-land of Chopin, for she was an accomplished pianist, if her own compositions were but feeble echoes of the masters? Or the more quick-spirited Lady Rosamund, the imperious and petulant beauty, who, in a way most unwonted with her, had bestowed upon him exceptional favor? Or that atrocious little flirt, Miss Georgie Lestrange, with her saucy smiles and speeches, her malicious laugh, and demure, significant eyes?--it was hardly to be wondered at if she made an impression on any young man, for the minx had an abundance of good looks, despite her ruddy hair and pert nose. As for Miss Honnor Cunyngham--oh, no!--she was too far away--she lived remote, isolated, apart--she neither gave nor demanded sympathy or society--she was sufficient unto herself alone. But why ask whether it were this one or that? Soon he would be forgotten by them all. He would be swallowed up in the great city--swept away in the current of its feverish activities--his voice hardly heard above the general din; while they would still be pursuing their various pastimes in this little world of solitude and quiet, or moving on to entertain their friends with the more pompous festivities of the Braes.

It was odd that he should be carrying away with him the seeds of homesickness for a place in which his stay had been counted by weeks. So anxious, indeed, was he to assure himself that his relations with that beautiful valley and its inmates were not entirely severed that, the moment he reached Inverness, instead of going into the Station Hotel and ordering his dinner like a reasonable being, he must needs go straightway off to Mr. Watson's shop.

"I suppose," said he, with a little hesitation--for he did not know whether to mention Miss Cunyngham's name or not--he was afraid he might betray some quite uncalled-for embarrassment--"I suppose you know the flies they use on the Aivron this time of year."

Mr. Watson knew well enough; who better!

"I mean on the Strathaivron Lodge stretch of the water?" Lionel continued.

"Oh, yes; I am often sending flies to Miss Cunyngham," was the answer.

"Oh, Miss Cunyngham?" said Lionel. "It is for her I want some flies."

"Very well, sir, I will make up a small packet, and send it to her? Miss Cunyngham has an account with me--"

"No, no, that isn't what I mean at all," Lionel interposed, hastily. "I want to make Miss Cunyngham a little present. The fact is, I was using her book," he observed, with some importance (as if it could in the least concern a worthy tackle-maker in Inverness to know who had gone fishing with Miss Cunyngham), "and I whipped off a good number, so I want to make amends, don't you see?"

"Very well, sir; how many will I put up?"

"All you've got," was the prompt reply.

Mr. Watson stared.

"Oh, yes," Lionel said. "Miss Cunyngham may as well have a good stock at once. You know the proper kinds--Blue Doctors, Childerses, Jock Scotts, Dirty Yellows, Bishops, Bees--that's about it, isn't it?--and put in plenty of various sizes. Then don't make a parcel of them; put them into those japanned boxes with the cork in them--never mind how many; and if you can't tell me at once how much it will all come to, I will leave you my London address, and you'll send the bill to me. Now if you will be so kind as to give me a sheet of paper and an envelope, I will write a note to accompany the packet."

Mr. Watson probably thought that this young man was daft, but it was not his business to say so; he took down his erratic customer's address and said that all his instructions would be attended to forthwith.

Next Lionel went to a tobacconist's shop, and (for he was a most lavish young man) he ordered a prodigious quantity of "twist," which he had made up into two parcels, the smaller one for Roderick, the larger to be divided equally among the other keepers and gillies. The two parcels he had put into a wooden case, which, again, was filled up with boxes of vesuvians, three or four dozen or so; and it is to be imagined that when that small hamper was opened at Strathaivron there was many a chuckle of gratification over the division of the splendid spoil.

Finally--for human nature is but human nature after all; he had been thinking of others so far, and he was now entitled to consider himself a little--he thought he would go along to Mr. Macleay's. When he arrived at the shop, he glanced in at the windows; but among the wild-cats, ptarmigan, black game, mallards, and what not, there was nothing to arrest his attention; it was a stag's head he had in his mind. He went inside, and his first sensation was one of absolute bewilderment. This crowded museum of birds, beasts, and fish--skarts, goosanders, sand-grouse, terns, eagles, ospreys, squirrels, foxes, big-snouted trout, harts, hinds, bucks, does, owls, kestrels, falcons, merlins, and every variety of the common gull shot by the all-pervading Cockney--staring, stuffed, silent, they were a confusion to the eyes, and nowhere could he find his own, his particular, his precious stag. Alas! when Mr. Macleay was so kind as to take him behind into the workshop--which resembled a huge shambles, almost--and when, from among the vast number of heads and horns lying and hanging everywhere around, the Strathaivron head was at last produced, Lionel was horribly shocked and disappointed. Was this, then, his trophy that he hoped to have hung up for the admiration of his friends and his own ecstatic contemplation--this twisted, shapeless, sightless lump of hide and hair, with a great jaw of discolored teeth gleaming from under its flabby folds? It is true that here were the identical horns, for had he not gone lovingly over every tine of them?--but was this rag of a thing all that was left of the splendid stag he had beheld lying on the heather? However, Mr. Macleay speedily reassured him. He was shown the various processes and stages of the taxidermist's art, the amorphous mass of skin and hair gradually taking shape and substance until it stood forth in all its glory of flaming eye and proud nostril and branching antlers; and he was highly pleased to be told that this head he had got in Strathaivron was a fairly good one, as stags now go in the North. So, all his shopping being done, he set off again for the Station Hotel, where he got what he wanted in the shape of dinner, followed by a long and meditative smoke in the billiard-room, with visions appearing among the curls of blue vapor.

What the Highland Railway manages to do with the trains which it despatches from Inverness at 10 P.M. and reproduces the next morning at Perth about 7, it is impossible for the mind of man to imagine; but it is not of much consequence so long as you are snugly ensconced in a sleeping-berth; and Lionel passed the night in profound oblivion. With the new day, however, these unavailing and torturing regrets began again; for now he felt himself more completely than before shut off from the friends he had left; and Strathaivron and all its associations and pursuits had grown distant like a dream. He was lucky enough, on this southward journey, to get a compartment to himself; and here was an excellent opportunity for him to have practised his vocalises; but it was not of vocalises, nor of anything connected with the theatre, that he was thinking. He was much franker with himself now. He no longer tried to conceal from himself the cause of this vague unrest, this useless looking back and longing, this curious downhearted sense of solitariness. A new experience, truly, and a bewildering one! Indeed, he was ashamed of his own folly. For what was it that he wanted? A mere continuance of that friendly alliance and companionship which he had enjoyed all this time? Was he indulging a sort of sentimental misery simply because he could not walk down to the Aivron's banks and talk to Miss Honnor and watch the sun tracing threads of gold among her tightly braided hair? If that were all, he might get out at the next station, make his way back to the beloved strath, and be sure that Honnor Cunyngham would welcome him just as of old, and allow him to carry her waterproof or ask him to have a cast over the Junction Pool. He had no reason to fear any break in this friendship that had been formed. When he should see her in Brighton, she would be to him as she had been yesterday, when they said good-bye by the side of the river. And were not these the only possible relations between them; and ought he not to be proud and content that he could look forward to an enduring continuance of them?

Yes; but some man would be coming along and marrying her; and where would he be then? What would become of this alliance, this friendly understanding--perhaps, even, some little interest on her part in his affairs--what would become of all these relations, then? It was the way of the world. Their paths would be divided--he would hear vaguely of