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

keep in your own sphere, and marry Kate Burgoyne!"

For now--when he was peevish and discontented and restless, or even sick at heart, he hardly knew why--there was no Nina to solace and soothe him with her gentle companionship, her wise counsel, her bright and cheerful and wayward good-humor. Apparently he had as many friends and acquaintances as before, and yet he was haunted by a curious sense of solitude. Of a morning he would go out for a stroll along the familiar thoroughfares--Bond Street, Conduit Street, Regent Street, where he knew all the shops at which Nina used to linger for a moment, to glance at a picture or a bonnet--and these seemed altogether different now. He could not have imagined he should have missed Nina so much. Instead of dining in his rooms at five o'clock and thereafter walking down to Sloane Street to have a cup of tea with Nina and Mlle. Girond before they all three set out for the theatre, he spent most of his afternoons at the Garden Club, where there was a good deal of the game of poker being played by young gentlemen in the up-stairs rooms. And sometimes he returned thither after the performance, seeking anew the distraction of card-playing and betting, until he became notorious as the fiercest plunger in the place. Nobody could "bluff" Lionel Moore; he would "call" his opponent if he himself had nothing better than a pair of twos; and many a solid handful of sovereigns he had to pay for that privilege of gazing.

Day after day went by, and still there was no word of Nina; at times he was visited by sudden sharp misgivings that terrified him. The heading of a paragraph in a newspaper would startle his eyes; and then he would breathe again when he found that this poor wretch who had grown weary of the world was unknown to him. Every evening, when Mlle. Girond came into the theatre, she was met by the same anxious, wondering question; and her reply was invariably the same.

"Don't you think it very strange?" he asked of Estelle. "Nina said she would write to you or send you a message--I suppose as soon as all her plans were made. I hope nothing has happened to her," he added, as a kind of timid expression of his own darker self-questionings.

"Something--something terrible?" said Estelle. "Ah, no. We should hear. No; Nina will make sure we cannot reach her--that she is not to be seen by you or me--then perhaps I have a message. Oh, she is very proud; she will make sure; the pain in her heart, she will hide it and hide it--until some time goes, and she can hold up her head, with a brave face. Poor Nina!--she will suffer--for she will not speak, no, not to any one."

"But look here, Miss Girond," he exclaimed, "if she has gone back to her friends in Italy, that's all right; but if she is in this country, without any occupation, her money will soon be exhausted--she can't have had so very much. What will become of her then? Don't you think I should put an advertisement in the papers--not in my name, but in yours--your initials--begging her at least to let you know where she is?"

Estelle shook her head.

"No, it is useless. Perhaps I understand Nina a little better than you, though you know her longer. She is gentle and affectionate and very grateful to her friends; but under that there is firmness--oh, yes. She has firmness of mind, although she is so loving; when she has decided to go away and remain, you will not draw her back, no, not at all! She will remain where she wishes to be; perhaps she decides never to see any of us again. Well, well, it is pitiable, but for us to interfere, that is useless."

"Oh, I am not so sure of that," he said. "As you say, I have known Nina longer than you have; if I could only learn where she is, I am quite sure that I could persuade her to come back."

"Very well--try!" said Estelle, throwing out both hands. "I say no--that she will not say where she is. And your London papers, how will they find her? Perhaps she is in a small English village--perhaps in Paris--perhaps in Naples--perhaps in Malta. For me, no. She said, 'If you are my friend, you will not seek to discover where I have gone.' I am her friend; I obey her wish. When she thinks it is right, she will send me a message. Until then, I wait."

But if Nina had gone away--depriving him of her pleasant companionship, her quick sympathy, her grave and almost matron-like remonstrances--there was another quite ready to take her place. Miss Burgoyne did not at all appear to regret the disappearance from the theatre of Antonia Rossi. She was kinder to this young man than ever; she showered her experienced blandishments upon him, even when she rallied him about his gloomy looks or listless demeanor. All the time he was not on the stage, and not engaged in dressing, he usually spent in her sitting-room; there were cigarettes and lemonade awaiting him; and when she herself could not appear, at all events she could carry on a sort of conversation with him from the inner sanctuary; and often she would come out and finish her make-up before the large mirror while she talked to him.

"They tell me you gamble," she said to him on one occasion, in her blunt way.

"Not much," he said.

"What good do you get out of it?" she asked again.

"Oh, well, it is a sort of distraction. It keeps people from thinking."

"And what have you to think about?" continued Grace Mainwaring, regarding herself in the glass. "What dreadful crimes have you to forget? You want to drown remorse, do you? I dare say you ought; but I don't believe it all the same. You men don't care what you do, and poor girls' hearts get broken. But gambling! Well, I imagine most men have one vice or another, but gambling has always seemed to me the stupidest thing one could take to. Drink kills you, but I suppose you get some fun out of it. What fun do you get out of gambling? Too serious, isn't it? And then the waste of money. The fact is, you want somebody to take care of you, Master Lionel; and a fine job she'll have of it, whoever undertakes it!"

"Why should it be a she," he asked, "assuming that I am incapable of managing my own affairs?"

"Because it is the way of the world," she answered, promptly. "And you, of all people, need somebody to look after you. Why should you have to take to gambling, at your time of life? You're not shamming ennui, are you, to imitate your swell acquaintances? Ennui! I could cure their ennui for them, if they'd only come to me!" she added, somewhat scornfully.

"A cure for ennui?" he said. "That would be valuable; what is it?"

"I'd tell them to light a wax match and put it up their nostril and hold it there till it went out," she answered, with some sharpness.

"It would make them jump, anyway, wouldn't it?" he said, listlessly.

"It would give them something to claim their very earnest attention for at least a fortnight," Miss Burgoyne observed, with decision; and then she had to ask him to open the door, for it was time for her to get up to the wings.

Christmas was now close at hand, and one evening when Harry Thornhill, attired in his laced coat and ruffles, silken stockings and buckled shoes, went as usual into Miss Burgoyne's room, he perceived that she had, somewhere or other, obtained a piece of mistletoe, which she had placed on the top of the piano. As soon as Grace Mainwaring knew he was there, she came forth from the dressing-room and went to the big mirror, kicking out her resplendent train of flounced white satin behind her, and proceeding to judge of the general effect of her powder and patches and heavily-pencilled eyebrows.

"Where are you going for Christmas?" she asked.

"Into the country," he answered.

"That's no good," said the brilliant-eyed white little bride, still contemplating herself in the glass, and giving a finishing touch here and there. "The country's too horrid at this time of year. We are going to Brighton, some friends and I, a rather biggish party; and a whole heap of rooms have been taken at a hotel. That will be fun, I promise you. A dance in the evening. You'd better come; I can get you an invitation."

"Thanks, I couldn't very well. I am going to play the good boy, and pass one night under the parental roof. It isn't often I get the chance."

"I wish you would tell me where to hang up that piece of mistletoe," she said, presently.

"I know where I should like to hang it up," he made answer, with a sort of lazy impertinence.

"Where?"

"Just over your head."

"Why?"

"You would see."

She made a little grimace.

"Oh, no, I shouldn't see anything of the kind," she retorted, confidently. "I should see nothing of the kind. You haven't acquired the right, young gentleman. On the stage Harry Thornhill may claim his privileges--or make believe; but off the stage he must keep his distance."

That significant phrase about his not having acquired the right was almost a challenge. And why should he not say, "Well, give me the right!" What did it matter? It was of little concern what happened to him. As he lay back in his chair and looked at her, he guessed what she would do. He imagined the pretty little performance. "Well, give me the right, then!" Miss Burgoyne turns round from the mirror. "Lionel, what do you mean?"

"You know what I mean: let us be engaged lovers off the stage as well as on." She hangs down her head. He goes to her and kisses her--without any mistletoe; she murmurs some doubt and hesitation, in her maiden shyness; he laughingly reassures her; it is all over, in half a dozen seconds. And then? Why, then he has secured for himself a sufficiently good-natured life-companion; it will be convenient in many ways, especially when they are engaged at the same theatre; he will marry in his own sphere, and everybody be satisfied. If he has to give up his bachelor ways and habits, she will probably look after a little establishment as well as another; where there is no frantic passion on either side, there will be no frantic jealousy; and, after all, what is better than peace and quiet and content?

Was he too indolent, then, to accept this future that seemed to be offered to him?

"Isn't it rather odd to go to a Brighton hotel for Christmas?" he said, at random.

"It's the swagger thing to do, don't you know?" said Miss Burgoyne, whose phraseology sometimes made him wince. "It's the latest fad among people who have no formal family ties. I can imagine it will be the jolliest thing possible. Instead of the big family gathering, where half the relations hate the sight of the other half, you have all nice people, picked friends and acquaintances; and you go away down to a place where you can have your choice of rooms, where you have every freedom and no responsibility, where you can have everything you want and no trouble in getting it. Instead of foggy London, the sea; and