Prince Fortunatus. Black William

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      When they arrived at the Garden Club (so named from its proximity to Covent Garden) they went forthwith into the spacious apartment on the ground floor which served at once as dining-room, newspaper-room, and smoking-room. There was hardly anybody in it. Four young men in evening dress were playing cards at a side-table; at another table a solitary member was writing; but at the long supper-table—which was prettily lit up with crimson-shaded lamps, and the appointments of which seemed very trim and clean and neat—all the chairs were empty, and the only other occupants of the place were the servants, who wore a simple livery of white linen.

      "What for supper, Maurice?" the younger of the two friends asked.

      "Anything—with salad," Mangan answered; he was examining a series of old engravings that hung around the walls.

      "On a warm night like this what do you say to cold lamb, salad, and some hock and iced soda-water?"

      "All right."

      Supper was speedily forthcoming, and, as they took their places, Mangan said,

      "You don't often go down to see the old people, Linn?"

      "I'm so frightfully busy!"

      "Has Miss Francie ever been up to the theatre—to see 'The Squire's Daughter,' I mean?"—this question he seemed to put rather diffidently.

      "No. I've asked her often enough; but she always laughs and puts it off. She seems to be as busy down there as I am up here."

      "What does she think of the great name and fame you have made for yourself?"

      "How should I know?"

      Then there was silence for a second or two.

      "I wish you'd run down to see them some Sunday, Linn; I'd go down with you."

      "Why not go down by yourself?—they'd be tremendously glad to see you."

      "I should be more welcome if I took you with me. You know your cousin likes you to pay a little attention to the old people. Come! Say Sunday week."

      "My dear fellow, Sunday is my busiest day. Sunday night is the only night I have out of the seven. And I fancy that it is for that very Sunday evening that Lord Rockminster has engaged the Lansdowne Gallery; he gives a little dinner-party, and his sisters have a big concert afterwards—we've all got to sing the chorus of the new marching-song Lady Sybil has composed for the army."

      "Who is Lady Sybil?"

      "The sister of the authoress whose novel you were reading."

      "My gracious! is there another genius in the family?"

      "There's a third," said Lionel, with a bit of a smile. "What would you say if Lady Rosamund Bourne were to paint a portrait of me as Harry Thornhill for the Royal Academy?"

      "I should say the betting was fifty to one against its getting in."

      "Ah, you're unjust, Maurice; you don't know them. I dare say you judged that novel by some high literary standard that it doesn't pretend to reach. I am sure of this, that if it's half as clever as Lady Adela Cunyngham herself, it will do very well."

      "It will do very well for the kind of people who will read it," said the other, indifferently.

      This was a free-and-easy place; when they had finished supper, Lionel Moore lit a cigarette, and his friend a briar-root pipe, without moving from the table; and Mangan's prayer was still that his companion should fix Sunday week for a visit to the little Surrey village where they had been boys together, and where Lionel's father and mother (to say nothing of a certain Miss Francie Wright, whose name cropped up more than once in Mangan's talk) were still living. But during this entreaty Lionel's attention happened to be attracted to the glass door communicating with the hall; and instantly he said, in an undertone:

      "Here's a stroke of luck, Maurice; Quirk has just come in. How am I to sound him? What should I do?"

      "Haven't I told you?" said Mangan, curtly. "Get your swell friends to feed him."

      Nevertheless, this short, fat man, who now strode into the room and nodded briefly to these two acquaintances, speedily showed that on occasion he knew how to feed himself. He called a waiter, and ordered an underdone beefsteak with Spanish onions, toasted cheese to follow, and a large bottle of stout to begin with; then he took the chair at the head of the table, thus placing himself next to Lionel Moore.

      "A very empty den to-night," observed this new-comer, whose heavy face, watery blue eyes, lank hair plentifully streaked with gray, and unwholesome complexion would not have produced a too-favorable impression on any one unacquainted with his literary gifts and graces.

      Lionel agreed; and then followed a desultory conversation about nothing in particular, though Mr. Octavius Quirk was doing his best to say clever things and show off his boisterous humor. Indeed, it was not until that gentleman's very substantial supper was being brought in that Lionel got an opportunity of artfully asking him whether he had heard anything of Lady Adela Cunyngham's forthcoming novel. He was about to proceed to explain that "Lady Arthur Castletown" was only a pseudonym, when he was interrupted by Octavius Quirk bursting into a roar—a somewhat affected roar—of scornful laughter.

      "Well, of all the phenomena of the day, that is the most ludicrous," he cried, "—the so-called aristocracy thinking that they can produce anything in the shape of art or literature. The aristocracy—the most exhausted of all our exhausted social strata—what can be expected from it? Why, we haven't anywhere nowadays either art or literature or drama that is worthy of the name—not anywhere—it is all a ghastly, spurious make-believe—a mechanical manufactory of paintings and books and plays without a spark of life in them—"

      "When they had finished supper, Lionel Moore lit a cigarette, and his friend a brier-root pipe."

      Lionel Moore resentfully thought to himself that if Mr. Quirk had been able to do anything in any one of these directions he might have held less despairing views; but, of course, he did not interrupt this feebly tempestuous monologue.

      "—We are all played out, that is the fact—the soil is exhausted—we want a great national upheaval—a new condition of things—a social revolution, in short. And we're going to get it" he continued, in a sort of triumphant way; "there's no mistake about that; the social revolution is in the air, it is under our feet, it is pressing in upon us from every side; and yet at the very moment that the aristocracy have got notice to quit their deer-forests and their salmon-rivers and grouse-moors, they so far mistake the signs of the times that they think they should be devoting themselves to art and going on the stage! Was there ever such incomprehensible madness?"

      "I hope they won't sweep away deer-forests and grouse-moors just all at once," the young baritone said, modestly, "for I am asked to go to the Highlands at the beginning of next August."

      "Make haste, then, and see the last of these doomed institutions" observed Mr. Quirk, with dark significance, as he looked up from his steak and onions. "I tell you deer-forests are doomed; grouse-moors are doomed; salmon-rivers are doomed. СКАЧАТЬ