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

go up in the spring, you said?"

"Yes. That is the real fishing-time. My brother Hugh and I have it all to ourselves then; Lady Adela and the rest of them prefer London."

And then it was almost in his heart to cry out to her, "May not I, too, go up there, if but for a single week--for six clear-shining days in the springtime?" Ben More, Suilven, Canisp--oh, to see them once again!--and the windy skies, and Geinig thundering down its rocky chasm, and Aivron singing its morning song along the golden gravel of its shoals! what did he want with any theatre?--with the harlequinade in which he was losing his life? Could he not escape? Euston station was not so far away--and Invershin? It seemed to him as though he had already shaken himself free--that a gladder pulsation filled his veins--that he was breathing a sweeter air. The white April days shone all around him; the silver and purple clouds went flying overhead; here he was by the deep, brown pools again, with the gray rocks and the overhanging birch-woods and the long shallows filling all the world with that soft, continuous murmur. As for his singing?--oh, yes, he could sing--he could sing, if needs were,


"O lang may his lady-love
Look frae the Castle Doune,
Ere she see the Earl o' Moray
Come sounding through the toun"--


but there is no gaslight here--there are no painted faces--he has not to look on at the antics of a clown, with shame and confusion in his heart--

The wild fancy was suddenly snapped in twain; Lady Cunyngham rose; the two younger people did likewise.

"Now, I know you gentlemen like a cigar or cigarette after luncheon," she said to Lionel, "and we are going to leave you quite by yourself--you will find us in the drawing-room when you please."

Of course he would not hear of such a proposal; he opened the door for them, and followed them up-stairs; what were cigars or cigarettes to him when he had such a chance of listening to Honnor Cunyngham's low, modulated voice, or watching for a smile in the calmly observant hazel eyes? Indeed, in the drawing-room, as Miss Honnor showed him a large collection of Assiout ware which had been sent her by an English officer in Egypt (by what right or title, Lionel swiftly asked himself, had any English officer made bold to send Miss Cunyngham a hamperful of these red-clay idiotcies?), this solitary guest had again and again to remind himself that he must not outstay his welcome. And yet they seemed to find a great deal to talk about; and the elder of the two ladies was exceedingly kind to him; and there was a singular fascination in his finding himself entirely en famille with them. But alas! Even if he or they had chosen to forget, the early dusk of the November afternoon was a sufficient warning; the windows told him he had to go. And go he did at last. He bade them good-bye; with some friendly words still dwelling in his ears he made his way down the dim stairs and had the door opened for him; then he found himself in this now empty and hopeless town of Brighton, that seemed given over to the low, multitudinous murmur of that wide waste of waves.

He did not go along to the Orleans Club; his heart and brain were too busy to permit of his meeting chance acquaintances. He walked away towards Shoreham till a smart shower made him turn. When he got back to the town the lamps were lit, throwing long, golden reflections on the wet asphalt, but the rain had ceased; so he continued to pace absently along through this blue twilight, hardly noticing the occasional dark figures that passed. What was the reason, then, of this vague unrest--this unknown longing--this dissatisfaction and almost despair? Had he not been more fortunate than he could have hoped for? He had met Miss Honnor and her mother in the morning, and had been with them all the way down; they had been most kind to him; he had spent the best part of the day with them; they had parted excellent friends; looking back, he could not recall a single word he would have liked unsaid. Then a happy fancy struck him: the moment he got up to town he would go and seek out Maurice Mangan. There was a wholesome quality in Mangan's saturnine contempt for the non-essential things of life; Mangan's clear penetration, his covert sympathy, his scorn or mock-melancholy, would help him to get rid of these vapors.

When Lionel returned to town a little after ten o'clock that night he walked along to Mangan's rooms in Victoria Street, and found his friend sitting in front of the fire alone.

"Glad you've looked in, Linn."

"Well, you don't seem to be busy, old chap; who ever saw you before without a book or a pipe?"

"I've been musing, and dreaming dreams, and wishing I was a poet," said this tall, thin, languid-looking man, whose abnormally keen gray eyes were now grown a little absent. "It's only a fancy, you know--perhaps something could be made of it by a fellow who could rhyme--"

"But what is it?" Lionel interposed.

"Well," said the other, still idly staring into the fire before him, "I think I would call it 'The Cry of the Violets'--the violets that are sold in bunches at the head of the Haymarket at midnight. Don't you fancy there might be something in it--if you think of where they come from--the woods and copses, children playing, and all that--and of what they've come to--the gas-glare and drunken laughter and jeers. I would make them tell their own story--I would make them cry to Heaven for swift death and oblivion before the last degradation of being pinned on to the flaunting dress." And then again he said: "No, I don't suppose there's any thing in it; but I'll tell you what made me think of it. This morning, as we were coming back from Winstead church--you know how extraordinarily mild it has been of late, and the lane going down to the church is very well sheltered--I found a couple of violets in at the roots of the hedge--within a few inches of each other, indeed--and I gave them to Miss Francie, and she put them in her prayer-book and carried them home. I thought the violets would not object to that, if they only knew."

"So you went down to Winstead this morning?"

"Yes."

"And how are the old people?"

"Oh, very well."

"And Francie?"

"Very busy--and very happy, I think. If she doesn't deserve to be, who does?" he continued, rousing himself somewhat from his absent manner. "I suppose, now, there is no absolutely faultless woman; and yet I sometimes think it would puzzle the most fastidious critic of human nature to point out any one particular in which Miss Francie could be finer than she is; I think it would. It is not my business to find fault; I don't want to find fault; but I have often thought over Miss Francie--her occupations, her theories, her personal disposition, even her dress--and I've wondered where the improvement was to be suggested. You see, she might be a very good woman, and yet have no sense of humor; she might be very charitable, and also a little vainglorious about it; she might have very exalted ideas of duty, and be a trifle hard on those who did not come up to her standards; but in Miss Francie's case these qualifications haven't to be put in at all. She always seems to me to be doing the right thing, and just in the right way--with a kind of fine touch that has no namby-pambiness about it. Oh, she can be firm, too; she can scold them well enough, those children--when she doesn't laugh and pat them on the shoulder the minute after."

"This is, indeed, something, as coming from you, Maurice!" Lionel exclaimed. "Has it been left for you to discover an absolutely perfect human being?"

"It isn't for you to find fault with her, anyway," the other said, rather sharply. "She's fond enough of you."

"Who said I was finding fault with her?--not likely I am going to find fault with Francie!" Lionel replied, with sufficient good-humor. "Well, now that you have discovered an absolutely faultless creature, you might come to the help of another who is only too conscious that he has plenty of faults, and who is so dissatisfied with himself and his surroundings that he is about sick of life altogether."

Notwithstanding the light tone in which he introduced the subject, Mangan looked up quickly, and regarded the younger man with those penetrating gray eyes.

"Where have you been to-day, Linn?"

"Brighton."

"Among the dukes and duchesses again? Ah, you needn't be angry--I respect as much as anybody those whom God has placed over us--I haven't forgotten my catechism--I can order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters. But tell me what the matter is. You sick of life?--I wonder what the gay world of London would think of that!"

And therewithal Lionel, in a somewhat rambling and incoherent fashion, told his friend of a good many things that had happened to him of late--of his vague aspirations and dissatisfactions--of Miss Cunyngham's visit to the theatre, and his disgust over the music-hall clowning--of his going down to Brighton that day, and his wish to stand on some other footing with those friends of his--winding up by asking, to Mangan's surprise, how long it would take to study for the bar and get called, and whether his training--the confidence acquired on the stage--might not help in addressing a jury.

"So the idol has got tired of being worshipped," Mangan said, at last. "It is an odd thing. I wonder how many thousands of people there are in London--not merely shop-girls--who consider you the most fortunate person alive--in whose imagination you loom larger than any saint or soldier, any priest or statesman, of our own time. And I wonder what they would say if they knew you were thinking of voluntarily abdicating so proud and enviable a position. Well, well!--and the reason for this sacrifice? Of course, you know it is a not uncommon thing for women to give up their carriages and luxuries and fine living, and go into a retreat, where they have to sweep out cells, and even keep strict silence for a week at a time, which, I suppose, is a more difficult business. The reason in their case is clear enough; they are driven to all that by their spiritual needs; they want to have their souls washed clean by penance and self-denial. But you," he continued, in no unfriendly mood, but with his usual uncompromising sincerity, "whence comes your renunciation? It is simply that a woman has turned your head. You want to find yourself on the same plane with her; you want to be socially her equal; and to do that you think you should throw off those theatrical trappings. You see, my dear Linn, if I have remembered my catechism, you have not; you have forgotten that you must learn and labor truly to get your own living, and do your duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call you. You want to change your state of life; you want to become a barrister. What would happen? The chances are entirely against your being able to earn your own living--at least for years; but what is far more certain