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

come behind the scenes, he had forgotten all about Nina. And then suddenly he remembered that he must have been standing close by the prompter's box, absorbed in talking to Miss Cunyngham, when Nina would have to come up to go on the stage. Had she passed them? Had she suspected? Had she, in her proud and petted way, resented this intimacy, and resolved to throw back to him the harmless little gifts he had bestowed on her? Poor Nina! she had always been so wilful--so easily pleased, so easily offended--but of late he had rather forgotten that, for she had been bearing herself with what she regarded as an English manner; and indeed their friendship had been so constant and unvarying, so kind and considerate on both sides, that there had been no opportunity for the half-vexed, half-laughing quarrels of earlier days. He would seek out this spoiled child (he said to himself) and scold her into being good again. And yet, even as he tried to persuade himself that all would still be well, he could not help recalling the fierce vehemence with which Nina had repudiated the suggestion that perhaps she might let some one else drink out of this hapless loving-cup that now lay before him. "I would rather have it dashed to pieces and thrown into the sea!" she had said, with pale face and quivering lips and eyes bordering on tears. He remembered that he had been a little surprised at the time--not thinking what it all might mean.


CHAPTER XVII.


A CRISIS.

When he went down to Sloane Street in the morning, he found Estelle eagerly awaiting him. She received him in Nina's small parlor; Mrs. Grey had just gone out. A glance round the room did not show him any difference, except that a row of photographs (of himself, mostly, in various costumes) had disappeared from the mantelshelf.

"Well, what is all this about?" he said, somewhat abruptly.

"Ah, do not blame me too quick!" Estelle said, with tears springing to her clear blue eyes. "Perhaps I am to blame--perhaps when I see her in such trouble on Saturday night, I should entreat her to tell me why; but I said, 'To-night I will not worry her more; to-morrow morning I will talk to her; we will go for a long walk together? Nina will tell me all her sorrow.' Then the morning comes, and she is gone away; what can I do? Twice I go to your apartment--"

"Oh, I am not blaming you at all, Miss Girond," he said, at once and quite gently. "If anybody is to blame, I suppose it's myself, for I appear to have quarrelled with Nina without knowing it. Of course you understood that that packet you left yesterday contained the various little presents I have given her from time to time--worthless bits of things--but all the same her sending them back shows that Nina has some ground of offence. I'm very sorry; if I could only get hold of her I would try to reason with her; but she was always sensitive and proud and impulsive like that. And then to run away because of some fancied slight--"

Estelle interrupted him with a little gesture of impatience, almost of despair.

"Ah, you are wrong, you are wrong," she said. "It is far more serious than that. It is no little quarrel. It is a pain that stabs to the heart--that kills. You will see Nina never again to make up a little quarrel. She has taken her grief away with her. I myself, when I first saw her troubled at the theatre, I also made a mistake--I thought she was hysteric--"

"At the theatre?" said he, with some sudden recalling of his own surmise.

"You did not regard her, perhaps, towards the end of her part, on Saturday night?" said Estelle. "I thought once she would fall on the stage. On the way home I think she was crying--I did not look. Then she is in this room--oh, so silent and miserable--as one in despair, until I persuade her to go to sleep until the morning, when she would tell me her sorrow. Then I was reading; I heard something; I went to the door there--it was Nina crying, oh, so bitterly; and when I ran to her, she was wild with her grief. 'My life is broken, Estelle, my life is broken!' she said--"

But here Estelle herself began to sob, and could not get on with her story at all; she rose from her chair and began to pace up and down.

"I cannot tell you--it was terrible--"

And terrible it was for him, too, to have this revelation made to him. Now he knew it was no little quarrel that had sent Nina away; it was something far more tragic than that; it was the sudden blighting of a life's hopes.

"Estelle," said he, quite forgetting, "you spoke of a letter she had left for you; will you show it to me?"

She took it from her pocket and handed it to him. There was no sign of haste or agitation in these pages; Nina's small and accurate handwriting was as neat and precise as ever; she even seemed to have been careful of her English, as she was leaving this her last message, in the dead watches of the night:

"DEAR ESTELLE" [Nina wrote],--"Forgive me for the trouble I cause
you; but I know you will do what I ask, for the sake of our
friendship of past days. I leave a letter for Mr. Lehmann, and one
for Miss Constance, and a packet for Mr. Moore; will you please
have them all sent as soon as possible? I hope Mr. Lehmann will
forgive me for any embarrassment, but Miss Constance is quite
perfect in the part, and if she gets the letter to-day it will be
the longer notice. I enclose a ring for you, Estelle; if you wear
it, you will sometimes think of Nina. For it is true what I said to
you when you came into my room to-night--I go away in the morning.
I have made a terrible mistake, an illusion, a folly, and, now that
my eyes are opened, I will try to bear the consequences as I can;
but I could not go on the stage as well; it would be too bad a
punishment; I could not, Estelle. I must go, and forget--it is so
easy to say forget! I go away without feeling injured towards any
one; it was my own fault, no one was in fault but me. And if I have
done wrong to any one, or appear ungrateful, I am sorry; I did not
wish it. Again I ask you to say to Mr. Lehmann, who has been so
kind to me in the theatre, that I hope he will forgive me the
trouble I cause; but I could not go on with my part just now.

"Shall I ever see you again, Estelle? It is sad, but I think not;
it is not so easy to forget as to write it. Perhaps some day I send
you a line--no, perhaps some day I send you a message; but you will
not know where I am; and if you are my friend you will not seek to
know. Adieu, Estelle! I hope you will always be happy, as you are
good; but even in your happiest days you will sometimes give a
thought to poor Nina."

He sat there looking at the letter, long after he had finished reading it; there was nothing of the petulance of a spoiled child in this simple, this heartbroken farewell. And Nina herself was in every phrase of it--in her anxiety not to be a trouble to any one--her gratitude for very small kindnesses--her wish to live in the gentle remembrance of her friends.

"But why did no one stop her?--why did no one remonstrate?" he asked, in a sort of stupefaction.

"Who could, then?" said Mlle. Girond, returning to her seat and clasping her hands in front of her. "As soon as the housemaid appears in the morning, Nina asks her to come into the room; the money is put into an envelope for Mrs. Grey; the not great luggage is taken quiet down the stair, so that no one is disturbed. Everything is arranged; you know Nina was always so--so business-like--"

"Yes, but the fool of a housemaid should have called Mrs. Grey!" he exclaimed.

"But why, Mr. Moore?" Estelle continued. "She only thought that Nina was so considerate--no one to be awakened--and then a cab is called, and Nina goes away--"

"And of course the housemaid didn't hear what direction was given to the cabman!"

"No; it is a misfortune," said Estelle, with a sigh. "It is a misfortune, but she is not so much in fault. She did not conjecture--she thought Nina was going to catch an early train--that she did not wish to disturb any one. All was in order; all natural, simple; no one can blame her. And so poor Nina disappears--"

"Yes, disappears into the world of London, or into the larger world, without friends, without money--had she any money, Miss Girond?"

"Oh, yes, yes!" Estelle exclaimed. "You did not know? Ah, she was so particular; always exact in her economies, and sometimes I laughed at her; but always she said perhaps some day she would have to play the part of the--the--benevolent fairy to some poor one, and she must save up--"

"Had she a bank account?"

Estelle nodded her head.

"Then she could not have got the money yesterday, if she wished to withdraw it; she must have been in London this morning!"

"Perhaps," said Estelle. "But then! Look at the letter. She says if I am her friend, I will not seek to know where she is."

"But that does not apply to me," he retorted--while his brain was filled with all kinds of wild guesses as to whither Nina had fled.

"You are not her friend?" Estelle said, quietly.

"If I could only see her for three minutes!" he said, in his despair, as he rose and went to the window. "Why should she go away from her friends if she is in trouble? Besides ourselves and the people in the theatre, she knows no one in this country. If she goes away back to her acquaintances in Italy, she will not say a word; she will have no sympathy, no distraction of any kind; and all the success she has gained here will be as good as lost. It is like Nina to say she blames no one; but her sending me back those bits of jewelry tells me who is to blame--"

Estelle hesitated.

"Can I say?" she said, in rather low tones, and her eyes were cast down. "Is it not breaking confidence? But Nina was speaking of you--she took me into the shop in Piccadilly to show me the beautiful gold cup--and when I said to her, 'It is another present soon--it is a wedding-ring soon he will give you--'"

"Then it is you who have been putting those fancies into her head!" he said, turning to her.

"I? Not I!" answered Estelle, with a quick indignation. "It is you! Ah, perhaps you did not think--perhaps you are accustomed to have