"I shall be delighted," said he, as if she had conferred the greatest favor on him.

"Well, good-bye--I mustn't keep you late for the train."

"But we shall meet in the South?"

"I hope so," she said, in a very amiable and friendly fashion; and she stood waiting there until he had got into the wagonette, and until the horses had splashed their way across the ford; then she waved her hand to him, and, with a parting smile, turned down the stream again, to rejoin Robert and pick up her rod.

Nor was this quite the last he was to see of those good friends. When the horses had strenuously hauled the carriage up that steep hillside and got into the level highway, he turned to look back at the Lodge, set in the midst of the wide strath, and behold! there was a fluttering of white handkerchiefs there, Lady Adela and her sisters and Miss Georgie still lingering in the porch. Again and again he made response. Then, as he drove on, he caught another glance of Miss Honnor, who, far below him, was industriously fishing the Whirl Pool; when she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked up and waved her hand to him as he went by.

Finally there came the crack of a gun across the wide strath; it was a signal from the shooting-party--away on a distant hillside--and he could just make out that they, also, were sending him a telegraphic good-bye.

At each opening through the birch-wood skirting the road he answered these farewells, until Strathaivron Lodge was no longer in sight; and then he settled himself in his seat and resigned himself to the long journey.

This was not a pleasant drive. He was depressed with a vague aching and emptiness of the heart that he could not well account for. A schoolboy returning to his tasks after a long holiday would not be quite so profoundly miserable--so reckless, dissatisfied, and ill at ease. But perhaps it was the loss of one of those pleasant companions that was troubling him? Which one, then (he made pretence of asking himself), was he sorriest to part from? Lady Adela, who was always so bright and talkative and cheerful, so charming a hostess, so considerate and gentle a friend? Or the mystic-eyed Lady Sybil, who many an evening had led him away into the wonder-land of Chopin, for she was an accomplished pianist, if her own compositions were but feeble echoes of the masters?

Or the more quick-spirited Lady Rosamund, the imperious and petulant beauty, who, in a way most unwonted with her, had bestowed upon him exceptional favor? Or that atrocious little flirt, Miss Georgie Lestrange, with her saucy smiles and speeches, her malicious laugh, and demure, significant eyes?--it was hardly to be wondered at if she made an impression on any young man, for the minx had an abundance of good looks, despite her ruddy hair and pert nose. As for Miss Honnor Cunyngham--oh, no!--she was too far away--she lived remote, isolated, apart--she neither gave nor demanded sympathy or society--she was sufficient unto herself alone. But why ask whether it were this one or that? Soon he would be forgotten by them all. He would be swallowed up in the great city--swept away in the current of its feverish activities--his voice hardly heard above the general din; while they would still be pursuing their various pastimes in this little world of solitude and quiet, or moving on to entertain their friends with the more pompous festivities of the Braes.

It was odd that he should be carrying away with him the seeds of homesickness for a place in which his stay had been counted by weeks. So anxious, indeed, was he to a.s.sure himself that his relations with that beautiful valley and its inmates were not entirely severed that, the moment he reached Inverness, instead of going into the Station Hotel and ordering his dinner like a reasonable being, he must needs go straightway off to Mr. Watson's shop.

"I suppose," said he, with a little hesitation--for he did not know whether to mention Miss Cunyngham's name or not--he was afraid he might betray some quite uncalled-for embarra.s.sment--"I suppose you know the flies they use on the Aivron this time of year."

Mr. Watson knew well enough; who better!

"I mean on the Strathaivron Lodge stretch of the water?" Lionel continued.

"Oh, yes; I am often sending flies to Miss Cunyngham," was the answer.

"Oh, Miss Cunyngham?" said Lionel. "It is for her I want some flies."

"Very well, sir, I will make up a small packet, and send it to her? Miss Cunyngham has an account with me--"

"No, no, that isn't what I mean at all," Lionel interposed, hastily. "I want to make Miss Cunyngham a little present. The fact is, I was using her book," he observed, with some importance (as if it could in the least concern a worthy tackle-maker in Inverness to know who had gone fishing with Miss Cunyngham), "and I whipped off a good number, so I want to make amends, don't you see?"

"Very well, sir; how many will I put up?"

"All you've got," was the prompt reply.

Mr. Watson stared.

"Oh, yes," Lionel said. "Miss Cunyngham may as well have a good stock at once. You know the proper kinds--Blue Doctors, Childerses, Jock Scotts, Dirty Yellows, Bishops, Bees--that's about it, isn't it?--and put in plenty of various sizes. Then don't make a parcel of them; put them into those j.a.panned boxes with the cork in them--never mind how many; and if you can't tell me at once how much it will all come to, I will leave you my London address, and you'll send the bill to me. Now if you will be so kind as to give me a sheet of paper and an envelope, I will write a note to accompany the packet."

Mr. Watson probably thought that this young man was daft, but it was not his business to say so; he took down his erratic customer's address and said that all his instructions would be attended to forthwith.

Next Lionel went to a tobacconist's shop, and (for he was a most lavish young man) he ordered a prodigious quant.i.ty of "twist," which he had made up into two parcels, the smaller one for Roderick, the larger to be divided equally among the other keepers and gillies. The two parcels he had put into a wooden case, which, again, was filled up with boxes of vesuvians, three or four dozen or so; and it is to be imagined that when _that_ small hamper was opened at Strathaivron there was many a chuckle of gratification over the division of the splendid spoil.

Finally--for human nature is but human nature after all; he had been thinking of others so far, and he was now ent.i.tled to consider himself a little--he thought he would go along to Mr. Macleay's. When he arrived at the shop, he glanced in at the windows; but among the wild-cats, ptarmigan, black game, mallards, and what not, there was nothing to arrest his attention; it was a stag's head he had in his mind. He went inside, and his first sensation was one of absolute bewilderment. This crowded museum of birds, beasts, and fish--skarts, goosanders, sand-grouse, terns, eagles, ospreys, squirrels, foxes, big-snouted trout, harts, hinds, bucks, does, owls, kestrels, falcons, merlins, and every variety of the common gull shot by the all-pervading c.o.c.kney--staring, stuffed, silent, they were a confusion to the eyes, and nowhere could he find his own, his particular, his precious stag.

Alas! when Mr. Macleay was so kind as to take him behind into the workshop--which resembled a huge shambles, almost--and when, from among the vast number of heads and horns lying and hanging everywhere around, the Strathaivron head was at last produced, Lionel was horribly shocked and disappointed. Was this, then, his trophy that he hoped to have hung up for the admiration of his friends and his own ecstatic contemplation--this twisted, shapeless, sightless lump of hide and hair, with a great jaw of discolored teeth gleaming from under its flabby folds? It is true that here were the identical horns, for had he not gone lovingly over every tine of them?--but was this rag of a thing all that was left of the splendid stag he had beheld lying on the heather?

However, Mr. Macleay speedily rea.s.sured him. He was shown the various processes and stages of the taxidermist's art, the amorphous ma.s.s of skin and hair gradually taking shape and substance until it stood forth in all its glory of flaming eye and proud nostril and branching antlers; and he was highly pleased to be told that this head he had got in Strathaivron was a fairly good one, as stags now go in the North. So, all his shopping being done, he set off again for the Station Hotel, where he got what he wanted in the shape of dinner, followed by a long and meditative smoke in the billiard-room, with visions appearing among the curls of blue vapor.

What the Highland Railway manages to do with the trains which it despatches from Inverness at 10 P.M. and reproduces the next morning at Perth about 7, it is impossible for the mind of man to imagine; but it is not of much consequence so long as you are snugly ensconced in a sleeping-berth; and Lionel pa.s.sed the night in profound oblivion. With the new day, however, these unavailing and torturing regrets began again; for now he felt himself more completely than before shut off from the friends he had left; and Strathaivron and all its a.s.sociations and pursuits had grown distant like a dream. He was lucky enough, on this southward journey, to get a compartment to himself; and here was an excellent opportunity for him to have practised his _vocalises_; but it was not of _vocalises_, nor of anything connected with the theatre, that he was thinking. He was much franker with himself now. He no longer tried to conceal from himself the cause of this vague unrest, this useless looking back and longing, this curious downhearted sense of solitariness. A new experience, truly, and a bewildering one! Indeed, he was ashamed of his own folly. For what was it that he wanted? A mere continuance of that friendly alliance and companionship which he had enjoyed all this time? Was he indulging a sort of sentimental misery simply because he could not walk down to the Aivron's banks and talk to Miss Honnor and watch the sun tracing threads of gold among her tightly braided hair? If that were all, he might get out at the next station, make his way back to the beloved strath, and be sure that Honnor Cunyngham would welcome him just as of old, and allow him to carry her waterproof or ask him to have a cast over the Junction Pool. He had no reason to fear any break in this friendship that had been formed. When he should see her in Brighton, she would be to him as she had been yesterday, when they said good-bye by the side of the river. And were not these the only possible relations between them; and ought he not to be proud and content that he could look forward to an enduring continuance of them?

Yes; but some man would be coming along and marrying her; and where would he be then? What would become of this alliance, this friendly understanding--perhaps, even, some little interest on her part in his affairs--what would become of all these relations, then? It was the way of the world. Their paths would be divided--he would hear vaguely of her--perhaps see her name in the papers as being at a drawing-room or something of the kind. She would have forgotten all those long, still days by the Aivron and the Geinig; no echo would remain in her memory of "The Bonnie Earl o' Morau," as he had sung it for her, with all the pa.s.sionate pathos of which he was capable; she would be a stranger--moving afar--one heard of only--a remembrance--and no more. So the impalpable future was interwoven with those dreams and not too happy forecasts, as the train thundered on its way, along the wooded banks of the Allan Water and towards the winding Links of Forth.

But there was an alternative that would recur again and again to his fancy, though in rather a confused and breathless way. What if, in the very despair of losing her altogether, at the very moment of parting with her, he had made bold to claim this proud-spirited maiden all for himself? Might not some such sudden and audacious proposal have been the very thing to appeal to her--the very thing to capture her? A challenge--a demand that she should submit--that she should come down from those serene heights of independence and yield herself a willing and gracious helpmeet and companion for life to this daring suitor; might not that have secured for him this wondrous prize? If she had any regard for him at all, she might have been startled into confession. A couple of words--there by the side of the Aivron--might have been enough. No theatrical professions nor mock homage, no kneeling at her feet or swearing by eternal stars; but a look into her eyes--a clasp of the hand--a single question? Something he had indeed meant to say to her, as they stood face to face there for the last time--something, he hardly knew what; and yet his hesitation had been but natural; he might have been hurried into saying too much; he dared not offend. Nay, even as he held her hand, he was unaware of the true state of his feeling towards her; it was this separation--this ever-increasing distance between them--that had enabled him to understand.

And then again his mood changed into one of bitter self-reproach and self-contempt. What miserable folly was this crying for the moon--this picturing of a marriage between the daughter of an ancient and wealthy house--one, too, who was unmistakably proud of her lineage--and a singer in comic opera! Not for nothing had he heard of the twin brothers Cunyngham who fell on Flodden Field. It is true that at the present time he and she mingled in the same society; for he was the pet and plaything of the hour in the fashionable world; but he was not entirely blinded by that favor; he did not wholly mistake his position. And even supposing--a wild conjecture!--that she entertained an exceptional regard for him--that she could be induced to think of marrying him--would she be content that her husband remained on the stage and painted his face every evening and postured before the footlights? On the other hand, apart from the stage, what was he?--a mere n.o.body, not too-well instructed, having no particular gifts of wit or conversation, without even a well-filled purse--the meanest of qualifications--to recommend him. No doubt they might make a very pretty bargain between them; he might go to her and say,

"Let there be a sacrifice on both sides. I give up the theatre--I give up the applause, the popularity, the opportunities of making pleasant friendships--all the agreeable things of a stage-life; and you on your part give up your pride of birth, and, it may be, something of your place in society. It is a surrender on both sides. Let our motto be, 'All for love, and the world well lost.'" Yes, a very pretty bargain; but as he considered that he was now wandering into the region of romance--a region which he unhesitatingly scorned as having no relation with the facts of the world--he withdrew from that futile and useless and idle speculation, and took to thinking of Miss Honnor Cunyngham as she actually was, and wondering over which of the Aivron pools the proud-featured fisher-maiden would be casting at this moment.

And here, again, as the hours crept by, was something of a more practical nature to remind him of the now far-distant strath. In order to save him from the hurry of a twenty-minutes' railway-station dinner, Lady Adela had ordered a luncheon-basket to be packed for him, and her skill and forethought in this direction were unequalled, as many a little shooting-party had joyfully discovered. When Lionel leisurely began to explore the contents of the basket, he was proud to think that it was under her own immediate supervision that these things had been put together for him. There was some kind of sentimental interest attaching to the chicken and tongue and galantine, to the salad and biscuits and cake and what not; and he knew that it was no servant who had thought of filling a small tin canister with peaches and grapes, even as he knew that only Lady Adela was aware of his preference for the particular dry Sillery of which a half-bottle here lay in its covering of straw. As he took out the things and placed them on the seat beside him, he could have imagined that a pair of very gentle hands had arranged that repast for him. Then from this much too sumptuous banquet his mind wandered away back to the simple fare that old Robert used to bring forth from the fishing-bag, when Miss Honnor had taken her place among the bracken. Again he was with her in that little dell away among the solitudes of the hills, with the murmur of the Geinig coming up to them from the chasm below. The sunlight flashed on the rippling burn at their feet; the leaves of the birches trembled, and no more than trembled, in the still air; the deep, clear blue of the sky overhead told them to be in no hurry--they would have to wait till the afternoon for clouds. In the perfect silence (for the humming of the bees in the heather was hardly a sound at all) he could hear every soft modulation of her voice--though, to be sure, it was not lovers' talk that pa.s.sed between them. "Mr. Moore, won't you have the rest of this soda-water?"

or, "Yes, one of those brown biscuits, thank you," or, "Please, Mr.

Moore, will you crush those bits of paper together and bury them in a hole? Nothing is so horrid as to come upon traces of a pic-nic on a hillside or along a river." Already those long days of constant companionship seemed to be becoming remote. It was the black night-journey between Inverness and Perth that had severed that shining time from the dull and commonplace hours he had now entered upon. He looked out of the window as the train thundered along--Preston--Wigan--Warrington--everywhere squalor, hurry, and noise, with a smoke-laden sky lowering over the sad and dismal country, different, indeed, from that other world he knew of, with its crimson slopes of heather, its laughing waters, its lonely solitudes in their noonday hush, the fair azure of the heavens becoming paler and paler towards the horizon until it touched the distant peaks and shoulders of a.s.synt. "Muss aus dem Thal jetzt scheiden, wo alles l.u.s.t und Klang;" but at least the memory of it would remain with him--a gracious possession.

The long afternoon wore on; Crewe, Stafford, Lichfield, Tamworth went by, as things in a dream, for his thoughts were far away. Sometimes, it is true, he would rebel against this morbid, restless, useless regret that had got hold of him; and he would valiantly attack the newspapers, of which he had an ample supply; but somehow or another the gray columns would fade away, and in their place would come a picture of Strathaivron Lodge, and the valley, and the river, and of an upturned face smiling a last farewell to him as the wagonette rolled on. Was it really only yesterday that he had seen her--talked with her--taken her hand? A yesterday that seemed years away! A vision already growing pale.

Well, London came at last, and all the hurry and bustle of Euston Station; and when he had got his things put on the top of a hansom, and given his address to the driver, there was an end of dreams. No more dreams were possible in this great vortex of a city into which he was now plunged--a turbulent, bewildering, vast black hole it seemed, and yet all afire with its blaze of windows and lamps. In Strathaivron the night was a gentle thing--it came stealing over the landscape as soft as sleep; it brought silence with it and a weight to tired eyes; it bade the woods be still; and to the lonely and darkened peaks of the hills it unveiled its canopy of trembling stars. But here there was no night--there was yellow fire, there were black phantoms unceasingly hurrying hither and thither, and a dull and constant roar more continuous than that of any sea. Tottenham Court Road after Strathaivron! But here at least was actuality; the time for sentimental sorrows, for dumb and hopeless regrets, was over and gone.

And who was the first to greet him on his return to London--who but Nina?--not in person, truly, but by a very graceful little message. The moment he went into his sitting-room his eye fell on the tiny nosegay lying on the table; and when he took the card from the accompanying envelope, he knew whose handwriting he would find there. "_Welcome home_--_from Nina!_"--that was all; but it was enough to make him rather remorseful. Too much had he neglected his old comrade and ally; he had scarcely ever written to her; she had been but little in his thoughts.

Poor Nina!--It was a shame he should treat so faithful a friend so ill; he might have remembered her a little more had not his head been stuffed with foolish fancies. Well, as soon as he had changed his clothes and swallowed a bit of food he would jump into a hansom and go along to the New Theatre; he would be too late to judge of Nina's Grace Mainwaring as a whole, but he would have a little chat with her in the wings.

He was later in getting there than he had expected; indeed, as he made his way to the side of the stage, he discovered that his _loc.u.m tenens_ had just been recalled and was singing for the second time the well-known serenade, "The Starry Night"--and very well he sang it, too, confound him! Lionel said to himself. And here was Nina, standing on a small platform at the top of a short ladder, and waiting until the pa.s.sionate appeal of her sweetheart (in the garden without) should be finished. She did not know of the presence of the new-comer. Lionel might have pulled her skirts, it is true, to apprise her of his being there; but that would not have been decorous; besides, he dared not distract her attention from the business of the stage. As soon as the last verse of the serenade had been sung, with its recurring refrain--

"Appear, my sweet, and shame the skies, That have no splendor That have no splendor like thine eyes"--

Nina--that is, Grace Mainwaring--carefully opened the cas.e.m.e.nt at which she was supposed to be standing. A flood of moonlight--lime-light, rather--fell on her; but Lionel could not see how she looked the part, because her back was towards him. Very timidly Grace Mainwaring glanced this way and that, to make sure that no one could observe her; she took a rose from her hair, kissed it, and dropped it to her enraptured lover below. It was the end of the act. She had to come down quickly from the platform for the recall that resounded through the theatre; she did not chance to notice Lionel; she was led on and across the stage by Harry Thornhill, she bowing repeatedly and gracefully, he reserving his acknowledgment until he had handed her off. The reception both of them got was most gratifying; there could be no doubt of the sincerity of the applause of this crowded house.

"It seems to me I am not wanted here any more," Lionel said to himself.

"Even Nina won't take any notice of the stranger."

The next moment Nina, who was coming across the stage, caught sight of him, and with a little cry of delight she ran towards him--yes, ran; for what cared she about carpenters and scene-shifters?--and caught both his hands in hers.

"Ah, Leo!" she cried, with glad-shining eyes. "Oh, so brown you are!--a hunter!--you are from the forests! And to-day you arrive--and already at the theatre--did you hear the duet--no? Ah, it is good to see you again, after so long!--I could laugh and cry together, it is such a joy to see you--and see you looking so well--"

"I say, Nina," he said, "that fellow Doyle sings tremendously well--he's ever so much improved--they'll be wanting him to take my place altogether and sending me off into the country."

"You, Leo!" she said, with a merry laugh, and still she regarded him with those delighted, welcoming eyes. "Ah, yes, it is likely! Ah, you will see what reception they will give you on Monday. Yes, it is in all the papers already--everywhere I see it; but come--Miss Girond and I, we have Miss Burgoyne's room for the present--you can wait for a few minutes, then I come out to talk to you."

Lionel (feeling very much like a stranger in this place) followed her into Miss Burgoyne's room, where he found Mlle. Girond only too ready to throw away the French novel she was reading. Nina had to disappear into the dressing-room; but this small boy-officer in the gay uniform, with his or her pretty gesticulation and charm of broken English, was quite willing to entertain Mr. Moore, though at times she would forget all about him and walk across to the full-length mirror and twist her small moustache. She chatted to him now and again; she returned to the mirror to touch her eyebrows and adjust her sash; she walked about or flicked the dust from her shining Wellingtons with a silk handkerchief; again she contemplated herself in the gla.s.s, and lightly sang,

"En debordant de Saint-Malo Nos longs avirons battaient l'eau!"

Then she was called away for the beginning of the last act; and Nina, having made the change necessary for her next appearance, came out from the dressing-room and sat down.

"Oh, you are wicked, Leo," she said, as she contentedly crossed her hands in her lap and looked at the young man with those friendly eyes, "that you stayed away so long. I wished to sing the duet with you--but no--you begin Monday--and Miss Burgoyne comes back Monday--"

"Does she? I thought she was ordered a long rest."

Nina laughed.

"She sees in the papers that you come back--it is to be a great occasion--she says to herself, 'Will he sing with that Italian girl? No!

Let my throat be well or ill, I am going back;' and she is coming, Leo.

Never mind; I am to have the part of Clara; is it not an advancement?