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

beautiful morning--the wide bay all of silver and azure--Vesuvius sending its column of dusky smoke into the cloudless sky--the little steamer churning up the clear as it starts away from the quay. Ah, we have escaped from you, good Maestro Pandiani? there shall be no grumblings and incessant repetitions to-day? no, nor odors of onions coming up the narrow and dirty stairs: here is the open world, all shining, and the sweet air blowing by, and Battista trying to sell his useless canes, and the minstrels playing "Santa Lucia" most sentimentally, as though they had never played it before. Whither, then, Nina? To Castellamare or Sorrento, with their pink and yellow houses, their terraces and gardens, their vine-smothered bowers, or rather to the filmy island out yonder, that seems to move and tremble in the heat? A couple of words in their own tongue suffice to silence the importunate coral-girls; we climb the never-ending steps; behold, a cool and gracious balcony, with windows looking far out over the quivering plain of the sea. Then the soup, and the boiled corn, and the caccia-cavallo--you Neapolitan girl!--and nothing will serve you but that orris-scented stuff that you fondly believe to be honest wine. You will permit a cigarette? Then shall we descend to the beach again, and get into a boat, and lie down, and find ourselves shot into the Blue Grotto--find ourselves floating between heaven and earth in a hollow-sounding globe of azure flame?... Dreams--dreams! "Io te voglio bene assaje, e tu non pienz' a me!"

During the first period of Miss Burgoyne's engagement to Lionel Moore, all went well. Jane, her dresser, had quite a wonderful time of it; her assiduous and arduous ministrations were received with the greatest good-nature; now she was never told, if she hurt her mistress in lacing up a dress, that she deserved to have her face slapped. Miss Burgoyne was amiability itself towards the whole company, so far as she had any relations with them: and at her little receptions in the evening she was all brightness and merriment, even when she had to join in the conversation from behind the heavy portiere. Whether this small coterie in the theatre guessed at the true state of affairs, it is hard to say; but at least Miss Burgoyne did not trouble herself much about concealment. She called her affianced lover "Lionel," no matter who chanced to be present; and she would ask him to help her to hand the tea, just as if he already belonged to her. Moreover, she told him that Mr. Percival Miles had some suspicion of what had happened.

"Not that I would admit anything definite," said the young lady. "There will be time enough for that. And I did not want a scene. But I'm sorry. It does seem a pity that so much devotion should meet with no requital."

"Devotion!" said Lionel.

"Oh, of course you don't know what devotion is. Your fashionable friends have taught you what good form is; you are blase, indifferent; it's not women, it's cards, that interest you. You have no fresh feeling left," continued this ingenue of the greenroom. "You have been so spoiled--"

"I see he's up at the Garden Club," said Lionel, to change the subject.

"Who?"

"The young gentleman you were just speaking of."

"Percy Miles? What does he want with an all-night club?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Ah, well, I suppose he is not likely to get in," she said, turning to the tall mirror. "Percy is very nice--just the nicest boy I know--but I'm afraid he is not particularly clever. He has written some verses in one or two magazines--of course you can't expect me to criticise them severely, considering who was the 'only begetter' of them--"

"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," Lionel interrupted again. "He is sure to get in. There's no qualification at the Garden, so long as you're all right socially. There are plenty such as he in the club already."

"But why does he want to get in?" she said, wheeling round. "Why should he want to sit up all night playing cards? Now tell me honestly, Lionel, it isn't your doing! You didn't ask him to join, did you? You can't be treasuring up any feeling of vengeance--"

"Oh, nonsense; I had nothing to do with it. I saw his name in the candidates' book quite by accident. And the election is by committee--he'll get in all right. What does he want with it?--oh, I don't know. Perhaps he has been disappointed in love and seeks for a little consolation in card-playing."

"Yes, you always sneer at love--because you don't know anything about it," she said, snappishly. "Or perhaps you are an extinct volcano. I suppose you have sighed your heart out like a furnace--and for a foreigner, I'll be bound!"

Nay, it was hardly to be wondered at that Miss Burgoyne should be indignant with so lukewarm and reluctant a lover, who received her coy advances with coldness, and was only decently civil to her when they talked of wholly indifferent matters. The mischief of it was that, in casting about for some key to the odd situation, she took it into her head to become jealous of Nina; and many were the bitter things she managed to say about foreigners generally, and about Italians in particular, and Italian singers, and so forth. Of course Miss Ross was never openly mentioned, but Lionel understood well enough at whom these covert innuendoes were hurled; and sometimes his eyes burned with a fire far other than that which should be in a lover's eyes when contemplating his mistress. Indeed, it was a dangerous amusement for Miss Burgoyne to indulge in. It was easy to wound; it might be less easy to efface the memory of those wounds. And then there was a kind of devilish ingenuity about her occult taunts. For example, she dared not say that doubtless Miss Nina Ross had gone away back to Naples, and had taken up with a sweetheart, with whom she was now walking about; but she described the sort of young man calculated to capture the fancy of an Italian girl.

"The seedy swell of Naples or Rome--he is irresistible to the Italian girl," she said, on one occasion. "You know him; his shirt open at the neck down almost to his chest--his trousers tight at the knee and enormously wide at the foot--a poncho-looking kind of cloak, with a greasy Astrachan collar--a tall French hat, rather shabby--a face the color of paste--an odor of cigarettes and garlic--dirty hands--and a cane. I suppose the theatre is too expensive, so he goes to the public gardens, and strolls up and down, and takes off his hat with a sweep to people he pretends to recognize; or perhaps he sits in front of a cafe, with a glass of cheap brandy before him, an evening journal in his hands, and a toothpick in his mouth."

"You seem to have made his very particular acquaintance," said he, with a touch of scorn. "Did he give you his arm when you were walking together in the public gardens?"

"Give me his arm?" she exclaimed. "I would not allow such a creature to come within twenty yards of me! I prefer people who use soap."

"What a pity it is they can't invent soap for purifying the mind!" he said, venomously; and he went out, and spoke no more to her during the rest of that evening.

Matters went from bad to worse: for Miss Burgoyne, finding nothing else that could account for his habitual depression of spirits, his occasional irritability and obvious indifference towards herself, made bold to assume that he was secretly, even if unconsciously, fretting over Nina's absence; and her jealousy grew more and more angry and vindictive, until it carried her beyond all bounds. For now she began to say disparaging or malicious things about Miss Ross, and that without subterfuge. At last there came a climax.

She had sent for him (for he did not invariably go into her room before the beginning of the last act, as once he had done), and, as she was still in the inner apartment, he took a chair, and stretched out his legs, and flicked a spot or two of dust from his silver-buckled shoes.

"What hour did you get home this morning?" she called to him, in rather a saucy tone.

"I don't know exactly."

"And don't care. You are leading a pretty life," she went on, rather indiscreetly, for Jane was with her. "Distraction! Distraction from what? You sit up all night; you eat supper at all hours of the morning; you get dyspepsia and indigestion; and of course you become low-spirited--then there must be distraction. If you would lead a wholesome life you wouldn't need any distraction."

"Oh, don't worry!" he said, impatiently.

"What's come over that Italian friend of yours--that Miss Ross?"

"I don't know."

"You've never heard anything of her?"

"No--nothing."

"Don't you call that rather cool on her part? You introduce her to this theatre, you get her an engagement, you befriend her in every way, and all of a sudden she bolts, without a thank you!"

"I presume Miss Ross is the best judge of her own actions," said he, stiffly.

"Oh, you needn't be so touchy!" said Grace Thornhill, as she came forth in all the splendor of her bridal array, and at once proceeded to the mirror. "But I can quite understand your not liking having been treated in that fashion. People often are deceived in their friends, aren't they? And there's nothing so horrid as ingratitude. Certainly she ought to have been grateful to you, considering the fuss you made about her--the whole company remarked it!"

He did not answer; he did not even look her way; but there was an angry cloud gathering on his brows.

"No; very ungrateful, I call it," she continued, in the same dangerously supercilious tone. "You take up some creature you know nothing about and befriend her, and even make a spectacle of yourself through the way you run after her, and all at once she says, 'Good-bye? I've had enough of you'--and that's all the explanation you have!"

"Oh, leave Miss Ross alone, will you?" he said, in accents that might have warned her.

Perhaps she was unheeding; perhaps she was stung into retort; at all events, she turned and faced him.

"Leave her alone?" she said, with a flash of defiance in her look. "It is you who ought to leave her alone! She has cheated you--why should you show temper? Why should you sulk with every one, simply because an Italian organ-grinder has shown you what she thinks of you? Oh, I suppose the heavens must fall, because you've lost your pretty plaything--that made a laughing-stock of you? You don't even know where she is--I can tell you!--wandering along in front of the pavement at Brighton, in a green petticoat and a yellow handkerchief on her head, and singing to a concertina! That's about it, I should think; and very likely the seedy swell is waiting for her in their lodgings--waiting for her to bring the money home!"

Lionel rose; he said not a word; but the pallor of his face and the fire in his eyes were terrible to see. Plainly enough she saw them; but she was only half-terrified; she seemed aroused to a sort of whirlwind of passion.

"Oh, say it!" she cried. "Why don't you say it? Do you think I don't see it in your eyes? 'I hate you!'--that's what you want to say; and you haven't the courage--you're a man, and you