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

every ones--to have every one--give homage to the great singer--you amuse the time--what do you care? I put such things into her head? No!--not at all! But you! You give her a wishing-cup--what is the wish? You come here often--you are very kind to her--oh, yes, very kind, and Nina is grateful for kindness--you sing with her--what do you call them?--songs of love. Ah, yes, the chansons amoureuses are very beautiful--very charming--but sometimes they break hearts."

"I tell you I had no idea of anything of the kind," he said--for to be rated by the little boy-officer was a new experience. "But I am going to try to find Nina--whatever you may choose to do."

"I respect her wish," said Mlle. Girond, somewhat stiffly. However, the next moment she had changed her mood. "Mr. Moore, if you were to find her, what then?" she asked, rather timidly.

"I should bring her back to her friends," he answered, simply enough.

"And then?"

"I should want to see her as happy and contented as she used to be--the Nina we used to know. I should want to get her back to the theatre, where she was succeeding so well. She liked her work; she was interested in it; and you know she was becoming quite a favorite with the public. Come, Miss Girond," he said, "you needn't be angry with me; that won't do any good. I see now I have been very thoughtless and careless; I ought not to have given her that loving-cup; I ought not to have given her any of those trinkets, I suppose. But it never occurred to me at the time; I fancied she would be pleased at the moment, that was all."

"And you did not reflect, then," said Estelle, regarding him for a second, "what it was that may have brought Nina to England at the beginning?--no?--what made her wish to play at the New Theatre? Ah, a man is so blind!"

"Brought Nina to England?" he repeated, rather bewildered.

"But these are only my conjectures," she said, quickly. "No, I have no secrets to tell. I ask myself what brings Nina to England, to the New Theatre, to the companionship with her old friend--I ask myself that, and I see. But you--perhaps it is not your fault that you are blind; you have so many ladies seeking for favor you have no time to think of this one or that, or you are grown indifferent, it may be. Poor Nina! she that was always so proud, too; it is herself that has struck herself; a deep wound to her pride; that is why she goes away, and she will never come back. No, Mr. Moore, she will never come back. I asked you what you would do if you were to find her--it is useless. She will never come back; she is too proud."

Estelle looked at her watch.

"Soon I must go in to the theatre. There was a note from Mr. Lehmann this morning; he wishes me to go over some parts with Miss Constance, to make sure."

"What hour have you to be there?" he said, taking up his hat.

"Half-past eleven."

"I will walk in with you, if you like," he said; "there will be time. And I want to see that Lehmann isn't put to any inconvenience; for, you know, I introduced Nina to the New Theatre."

On their way into town Estelle was thoughtful and silent; while Lionel kept looking far ahead, as if he expected to descry Nina coming round some street-corner or in some passing cab. But at last his companion said to him,

"You had no quarrel, then, with Nina, on the Saturday night?"

"None. On the contrary, the last time she spoke to me was in the most kindly way," he said.

"Then why does she resolve to send you back those presents?" Estelle asked. "Why is it she knows all at once that her life is broken? You have no conjecture at all?"

"Well," said he, with a little hesitation, "it is a difficult thing to speak of. If Nina were looking forward as you think--if she mistook the intention of those trinkets I gave her--well, you know, there was a young lady and her mother, two friends of mine, who came to the theatre on Saturday night, and I dare say Nina passed while I was talking to the young lady in the wings--and--and Nina may have imagined something. I can only guess--it is possible--"

"Now I know," said Estelle, rather sadly. "Poor Nina! And still you think she would come back if you could find her? Her pride makes her fly from you; and you think you would persuade her? Never, never! She will not come back--she would drown herself first."

"Oh, don't talk like that!" he said, with frowning brows; and both relapsed into silence and their own thoughts.

Mr. Lehmann did not seem much put about by this defection on the part of one of his principal singers.

"It is a pity," he said to Lionel. "She had a fresh voice; she was improving in her stage-business; and the public liked her. What on earth made her go off like this?"

"She left no explanation with me," Lionel said, honestly enough. "But in her letter to Miss Girond she hopes you won't be put to any inconvenience. By the way, if Miss Ross owes you any forfeit, I'll settle that up with you."

"No, there's no forfeit in her agreement; it wasn't considered necessary," the manager made answer. "Of course I am assuming that it's all fair and square; that she hasn't gone off to take a better engagement--"

"You needn't be afraid of that," Lionel said, briefly; and, as Miss Constance here made her appearance, he withdrew from the empty stage, and presently had left the building.

He thought he would walk up to the Restaurant Gianuzzi in Rupert Street, and make inquiries there. But he was not very hopeful. For one thing, if Nina were desirous of concealment or of getting free away, she would not go to a place where, as he knew, she had lodged before; for another, he had disapproved of her living there all by herself, and Nina never forgot even his least expression of opinion. When he asked at the restaurant if a young lady had called there on the previous day to engage a room, he was answered that they had no young-lady visitor of any kind in the house; he was hardly disappointed.

But as he walked along and up Regent Street (here were the well-remembered shops that Nina and he used to glance into as they passed idly on, talking sometimes, sometimes silent, but very well content in each other's society) he began to ask himself whether in truth he ought to seek out Nina and try to intercept her flight, even if that were yet possible. Estelle's questions were significant. What would he do, supposing he could induce Nina to come back? At present, he vaguely wished to restore the old situation--to have Nina again among her friends, happy in her work at the theatre, ready to go out for a stroll with him if the morning were fine, he wanted his old comrade, who was always so wise and prudent and cheerful, whom he could always please by sending her down a new song, a new waltz, an Italian illustrated journal, or some similar little token of remembrance. But if Estelle's theory were the true one, that Nina was gone forever, never to return; her place was vacant now, never to be refilled; and somewhere or other--perhaps hidden in London, perhaps on her way back to her native land--there was a woman, proud, silent, and tearless, her heart quivering from the blow that he had unintentionally dealt. How could he face that Nina? What humble explanations and apologies could he offer? To ask her to come back would of itself be an insult. Her wrongs were her defence? she was sacred from intrusion, from expostulation and entreaty.

At the theatre that evening he let the public fare as it liked, so far as his part in the performance was concerned. He got through his duties mechanically. The stage lacked interest; the wings were empty; the long, glazed corridor conveyed a mute reproach. As for the new Clara, Miss Constance did fairly well; she had not much of a voice, but she was as bold as brass, and her "cheek" seemed to be approved by the audience. At one point Estelle came up to him.

"Is it not a change for no Nina to be in the theatre? But there is one that is glad--oh, very glad! Miss Burgoyne rejoices!"--and Estelle, as she passed on, made use of a phrase in French, which, perhaps fortunately, he did not understand.

After the performance, he went up to the Garden Club--he did not care to go home to his own rooms and sit thinking. And the first person he saw after he passed into the long coffee-room was Octavius Quirk, who was seated all by himself devouring a Gargantuan supper.

"This is luck," Lionel said to himself. "Maurice's Jabberwock will begin with his blatherskite nonsense--it will be something to pass the time."

But on the contrary, as it turned out, the short, fat man with the unwholesome complexion was not at this moment in the humor for frothy and windy invective about nothing; perhaps the abundant supper had mollified him; he was quite suave.

"Ah, Moore," said he, "haven't seen you since you came back from Scotland. It was awfully kind of Lady Adela to send me a haunch of venison."

"It would serve you for one meal, I suppose," Lionel thought; he did not say so.

"I dine with them to-morrow night," continued Mr. Quirk, complacently.

"Oh, indeed," said Lionel? Lady Adela seemed rather in a hurry, immediately on her return to town, to secure her tame critic.

"Very good dinners they give you up there at Campden Hill," Mr. Quirk resumed, as he took out a big cigar from his case. "Excellent--excellent--and the people very well chosen, too, if it weren't for that loathsome brute, Quincey Hooper. Why do they tolerate a fellow like that--the meanest lick-spittle and boot-blacker to any Englishman who has got a handle to his name, while all the time he is writing in his wretched Philadelphia rag every girding thing he can think of against England. Comparison, comparison, continually--and far more venomous than the foolish, feeble sort of stuff which is only Anglophobia and water; and yet Hooper hasn't the courage to speak out either--it's a morbid envy of England that is afraid to declare itself openly and can only deal in hints and innuendoes. What can Lady Adela see in a fellow like that? Of course he writes puffing paragraphs about her and sends them to her; but what good are they to her, coming from America? She wants to be recognized as a clever woman by her own set. She appeals to the dii majorum gentium; what does she care for the verdict of Washington or Philadelphia or New York?"

Well, Lionel had no opinion to express on this point; on a previous occasion he had wondered why these two augurs had not been content to agree, seeing that the wide Atlantic rolled between their respective spheres of operation.

"I have been favored," resumed Mr. Quirk, more blandly, "with a sight of some portions of Lady Adela's new novel."

"Already?"

"Oh, it isn't nearly finished yet; but she has had the earlier chapters set up in type, so that she could submit them to--to her particular friends, in fact.