Prince Fortunatus. Black William
the gay life he leads in London."
"Dull and monotonous!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have been preaching to him all the morning that he should be delighted to come down into the quietude of the country, as a sort of moral bath after the insensate racket of that London whirl. But no one ever knows how well off he is," he continued, as they walked along between the fragrant hawthorn hedges; "it's the lookers-on who know. Good gracious, what wouldn't I give to be in Linn's place!"
"Do you mean in London, Mr. Mangan?" she asked, and for an instant the pretty gray eyes looked up.
"Certainly not!" he said, with unnecessary warmth. "I mean here. If I could run down of a Sunday to a beautiful, quiet, old-fashioned place like this, and find myself in my own home, among my own people, I wonder how many Sundays would find me in London? You can't imagine, you have no idea, what it is to live quite alone in London, with no one to turn to but club acquaintances; and I think Sunday is the worst day of all, especially if it is fine weather, and all the people have gone to the country or the seaside to spend the day with their friends."
"But, Mr. Mangan," said Miss Francie Wright, gently, "I am sure, whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if you would consider us your friends—unless you think the place too dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it."
"It is very kind of you—very," said he. "And I know the old doctor and Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday afternoon."
"Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?" said she, quietly. "For Linn's sake alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?"
"You mustn't put such visions before me," he said. "It's too good to be true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning and find myself in London!"
"You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead," said she, "if you would take Linn's room for the night."
"Ah, no," he said, "it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's place in any way whatever. He has always had everything—everything seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that nobody could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has been."
"In what way, Mr. Mangan?" his companion asked, rather wonderingly.
"In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right."
"Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk," observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fashionable friends," Mangan rejoined. "Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't seem the least bit spoiled, does he?"
"Really, I see so little of him," Miss Francie said, with a smile, "he honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell."
"No, he is not spoiled—you may take my word for it," her companion said, with decision. And then he added, "I suppose he gets too much of that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy—as he said this morning about marrying."
"What was that, Mr. Mangan?" she asked.
"He said he was too busy to think of getting married."
"Oh, indeed?" she said, with her eyes directed towards the ground. "We—we have always been expecting to hear of his being engaged to some young lady—seeing he is made so much of in London—" She could say no more, for now they were arrived at the doctor's house, which was separated from the highway by a little strip of front garden. They passed in through the gate and found the door left open for them.
"Well, Miss Savonarola," said Lionel, as he hung up his hat in the hall and turned to address her, "how have you been all this time?"
"I have been very well, Mr. Pagan," said she, smiling.
"And how are all those juvenile Londoners that you've planted about in the cottages?"
"They're getting on nicely, every one of them," said she, with quite an air of pride; and then she added, "When is your Munificence going to give me another subscription?"
"Just now, Francie," was the instant reply. "How much do you want?"
"As much as ever you can afford," said she.
He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coin, and began to pick out the sovereigns. But Miss Francie, with a little touch of her fingers, put the money away.
"No, Linn, not from you. You've given me too much already. You give too freely; I like to have a little difficulty in obtaining subscriptions; it feels nicer somehow. But if my funds should run very low, then I'll come to you, Linn."
"Whenever you like, Francie," said he, carelessly; he poured the money into his pocket again and bade Maurice Mangan come up to his room, to get the dust of travel removed from his hands and face before going in to luncheon.
Then while Mangan was busy with his ablutions in this small upper chamber, Lionel drew a chair to the open window and gazed absently abroad on the wide stretch of country visible from the doctor's house. It was a familiar view; yet it was one not easy to get tired of; and of course on such a morning as this it lost none of its charm. Everywhere in the warm breeze and the sunshine there was a universal rustling and trembling and glancing of all beautiful things—of the translucent foliage of the limes, the pendulous blossoms of lilacs and laburnums, the swaying branches of the larch, and the masses of blue forget-me-nots in the garden below. Then there were all the hushed sounds of the country: the distant, quick footfall of a horse on some dusty road; the warning cluck of a thrush to her young ones down there among the bushes; the glad voices and laughter of some girls in an adjacent garden—they, too, likely to be soon away from the maternal nest; the crow of a cock pheasant from the margin of the wood; the clear, ringing melody of an undiscoverable lark. Everywhere white light, blue skies, and shadows of great clouds slow-sailing over the young green corn and over the daisied meadows in which the cows lay half-asleep. And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering mist of heat; and he could only guess that there, too, under the glowing sky, some other fair expanse of our beautiful English landscape lay basking in the sunlight and sweet air of the early summer.
Of course Lionel was the hero of the hour when they were all assembled in the dining-room—at a very sumptuously furnished board, by the way, for the hale old doctor was fond of good living and a firm believer in the virtues of port wine. Moreover, the young man had an attentive audience; for the worthy old lady at the head of the table never took her admiring eye's off this wonderful boy of hers; and Miss Francie Wright meekly listened too; while as for Maurice Mangan, who was he in his humble station to interrupt this marvellous tale of great doings and festivities? Not that Lionel magnified his own share in these things; nay, he modestly kept himself out altogether; it was merely to interest these simple country folk that he described the grand banquets, the illuminated gardens, the long marquees, and told them how the princess looked, and who it was who had the honor of taking her in to supper. But when he came, among other things, to speak of the rehearsal of the little pastoral comedy, in the clear light of the dawn, by Lady Adela Cunyngham and her friends, he had to admit that he himself was present on that occasion; and at once the fond mother took him to task.