Prince Fortune and Prince Fatal

Front matter

By MES. CABRINGTON, AUTHOR OF "MT COUSIN MAURICE." "Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Æsop were extreme wise. They had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." — Seldex. IN THBEE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1880. (All rights reserved.) LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, . STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. DeDtcatcO TO THE MARCHESA ADELA MAMELI DEI MANNELLI nata ZOAGLI, AND TO ALL DEAR FRIENDS OF THE PALAZZO DELLA CHIESA. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE Le Levee de Eideau ... ... ... 1 I. Lady Laure ... ... ... ... 13 II. A Fungus ... ... ... i.. ... 29 III. To-day and To-morkow ... ... 43 IV. Chance and Doom ... ... ... ... 63 V. Romance ... ... ... ... 92 VI.

Realities ... ... ... ... ... 105 VII. The Question ... ... ... ... Ill VIII. The Answer ... ... ... ... 118 IX. Love ... 128 X. Antagonisms ... ... • ... ... 134 XL Friendship ... ... ... ... 169 XII. Watch and Wait ... ... ... ... 176 XIII. God bless you all ... ... ... CONTENTS. CHAPTER ' PAGB XIA'. "God be merciful to me a Sinner!" ... 212 XV. Demain, il fera Nuit Encore ... ... 221 XVI. "For so He giveth His Beloved Sleep" ... 232 XVII. Broken Hearts and Broken Heads ... 268 XA'IH. Mother Earth ... ... ... ... 284 XIX. Murderous Meditations ... ... 291 XX. Men and Angels ... ... ... ... LE LEVER DE EIDEAU. Maiden, were I a king, and craved to be Thy slave, and power, and purple luxury, And conquering hosts, and fleets that sway the sea. And crown, and subject millions did resign, To call thee mine ; No larger gifts should I then offer thee, Than did I give, Life, Love, and Liberty, — Did sacrifice to thee, this priceless three, — Did pledge them 'gainst that heart and hand of thine.

To make them mine. A variation. It is New Year's Eve. Away to the North, in one of those fine old houses that make the land so stately, there is a festive gathering. For this night, none but kinsfolk, and friends near and dear as kindred, meet beneath this hospitable roof. But of these favoured guests there is no stint, no lack of house room, no lack of welcome ; three generations make the old hall ring with hearty cheer, and bind themselves in a gay covenant, to see the old year out and the new year in. VOL. I. .- B PRINCE FORTUNE AND PRINCE FATAL. The host, with his handsome face of five and forty years, has a genial word for all. He has had his grief; but he knows how to put black care behind him ; and, though the wife he cherished is no more, he looks with a father's happy smile upon the fair girl and boy at his side.

Chapter I. Lady Laure

How hath God made her good to see ! So holy, full of grace, and fair. For the great gifts that in her be, All haste her praises to declare. Of her what soul could weary be ? Each day her beauty doth repair. How hath God made her good to see ! So holy, full of grace, and fair. Nor hither, nor beyond the sea, No Damozels nor Dames there are Who can with her in gifts compare ; Only in dreams such thoughts can be. How hath God made her good to see ! Rondel, Charles D'Orleans. A GLOWING mid-day sun, set in a sky of unfathomable blue. A scene of soft contrasts, blended into a divine harmony of light and colour. A broad sea, boundless to the eye into its wide distance, sparkling, dancing, and blue as the sky above it ; its snowy fringes playing round reef and islet ; it& murmurs rippling in cave and creek.

A miniature bay, its perfect crescent stretched between a breasting rock crowned with the walls of an antique city, and a pine-clad cape, against whose sombre shades shoot up in bold relief a pile of yellow crags, and in their midst a grey village, like a frown upon the brow of a giant. A background of purple mountains, closing round from shore to sky; their jagged peaks piercing the clear ether, and, on the topmost, the warlike strong hold — a grim sentinel of other days, marking the line of the giddy road that spans the steep ; — and sweeping down in soft masses from the heights, the silvery olive woods, the glossy citron groves, and the white houses nestling in their green vines. There are no words, there is no painter's brush for such a picture : this expanse of water, this strip of land ; a glorious mirror, in a gorgeous frame, all ablaze under the meridian sun.

This day of sunshine was a long while ago, to measure time by events. The man who fell asleep then, if he awoke to-day, would scarcely know the world he had closed his eyes upon ; he would have to open them very wide before he came to feel himself at all at home again, especially wide if he had chanced to fall into his long nap in the small town that lies hidden behind that thickly wooded cape, the eastern headland of this beautiful bay, — one of the gathering places of the world now, but, in those days, of no particular interest, save to the people whose lot it was to live in it and around it, — a fortunate lot, no doubt, but for certain drawbacks, which can convert a paradise into a place of punishment. The bulk of these good folk, however, had light hearts and peaceable natures. They went their ways, taking the good with the bad.

If they sighed under their grievances, they smiled at the sun, gathered in their olives and lemons, put out their fishing-nets, thanked the Madonna for good hauls and crops, and made the best of the bad ones. Keener spirits there were in their midst, whose minds took a wider range, and with less content ; but these ames vrivilegiees — if it be a privilege to be foremost to feel injustice, to resent oppression, and to vindicate men's rights — do not come in a crowd, though they may come to lead one; and here they might be counted on the fingers. This day, however, is the peculiar property of the light-hearted part of the community ; it is the anni versary of the half-yearly fair of the town, and the fete, moreover, of its patron saint. It is a grand day ; and as St. Benoit, the St. Swithin of this land, has hid his head before the better in fluence of the more legitimate saint who presides over all good things (fine weather included), in addition to the more serious business of buying and selling, it will be the occasion of much rustic mirth and mummery.

The town has put on its gayest attire ; the shops do their best to rival the improvised counters which crowd the narrow ways ; the bells are ringing ; High Masses and processions, and rude attempts at miracle plays, present religion in its most attractive form, and remind the holiday-makers that now is the time to make acceptable offerings of cakes and candles, to priest and shrine. The inns and wine-shops do a lively trade ; few are without a fiddler, and card-playing and dancing will go on from morning to evening and throughout the best part of the night. From early dawn, on every side, the mountain-paths have been alive with travellers. None come quite empty-handed, though the lightness of their burdens betrays the meagreness of their possessions — a handful of wheaten corn grown in some sheltered nook, a little flax, a bundle of fodder, a string of onions, a basket of figs, a case of honey, a keg of wine.

If any favoured mortal has a mule to drive, or such a treasure as a coop of fowls, a lean pig, or a tattered sheep in tow, he becomes at once the object of as much envy as respect. By mid-day scarce a soul is left in the village that hangs aloft amidst the yellow crags ; the few who remain, lean over the rude parapets of their eyrie, straining to catch a sight of the unusual life that is stirring about ; — the main road lies too far down in deep shade under the projecting mass ; but further off, on the slopes, they can see dark specks, like strings of black ants hurrying along; and in their turn, to eyes below them, they lose all human semblance, and take the form, in their gay head-gears, of bright plurnaged birds, perched aloft in the glaring light. Viewed from afar, this huge stony cliff seems to descend sheer to the sea ; but, in fact, the bare rock stops short of the waves by about a hundred feet; grounding upon a small promontory, which, with one of Nature's beautiful caprices, is as luxuriant as the height that commands it, is barren.

A villa of some pretensions stands upon its green plateau, half smothered in vine berceaux, and shut in by arbutus and rich-flowering trees and a tangled garden of roses and myrtle hedges. A citron grove covers the sides and reaches to the edge of the blue water, in which the rock again crops up, forming a broken line of reefs that have their foundations fathoms down in the sea-depths. The road that runs between the base of the rock and the small domain of this villa, before it touches its boundaries, is carried with striking effect across one of those perilous stone-ways which bridge the watercourses in these parts. At the present moment, it is slightly more dilapidated than usual, having given way near the centre under the pressure of a very moderate weight. The gap is filled up by the simple expedient of a few pine logs thrown across it — surer repairs are in course of execution ; but for to-day all labour is sus pended.

In appearance, this temporary affair looks alarming, but it is probably quite as stable as the rest of the construction. The folks bound for the fair, however, are too much preoccupied with what is before them to be troubled with their fears to-day. No doubt, some among them have an ex voto hanging up in the shrine over the moun- VOL. I. *~ G tains, depicting some miraculous escape of this nature ; but that is only a better reason for present confidence. This bridge is a converging point for all paths, whether coming from the shore or the hills; and crowds of chattering peasants linger near it, and even upon it, exchanging greetings, aud forming groups as gay and picturesque as possible. The fishermen, handsome fellows, with their red sashes and caps ; jaunty mountain youths, with their wideawake hats set on awry, and their embroidered jackets hung upon one shoulder; the women, in their broad sun hats or gaudier kerchiefs ; rugged-faced shepherds, in their coats of skins ; beggars, in match less rags ; bare-legged children ; and, to complete the picture, the element of the Church — the priest, smooth and heavy ; the lean Capuchin, with his fine cowled features, bare throat, ashy hue, and crisp beard, looking as if he had just stepped out of some mediæval picture-frame ; and behind him a wretched third, the begging friar, mumbling and cringing, with sack and staff, bent and unspeakably dirty, his eyes bloodshot, his beard and hair matted, his knees ready to double under him at each step — a suppliant at all shrines, earthly ones taking the precedence.

There is one exception, however, to the universally idle hands. To observers, Festas seem especially marked out by the washerwomen for plying their labours, and, true to their habit, yonder, down below the bridge, beside the narrow channel of the water's bed, kneel the brown-armed, short-coated women, taking no heed of the trooping crowds above them, their heads bent over the shallow stream, their hands remorselessly engaged in beating, very near to a pulp, their neighbour's linen. Hard-featured enough, you can see they are, if one, exhausted for the moment by her efforts, chances to stop and look up ; for here, where beauty is supremely in the ascendant, hard fare, hard work, and hot suns soon reduce to positive ugliness that portion of man kind commonly called the fairer. But look at that girl, with her ass and wine-skins, who stays to rest at the further end of the bridge.

She has thrown off her flat-crowned hat ; she stands bareheaded, barefooted, and barekneed, in black bodice and snow-white chemisette and sleeves, blue neckerchief, and tucked up yellow skirt. She has a chaussure befitting these upper glories — buckled shoes and the red clocked stockings swing beside the gourds and skins on the ass. Why waste these valuable possessions upon the wear and tear of the mountain stones, and the gnarled roots of the pine trees ahead ? These rude trials safely passed, shoes and stockings will be donned upon the noiseless sward, under the great olive trees — a land mark which tells her the town is near. See how she poses against that jutting bit of wall, maybe with an air of coquettish pride; but that may well be pardoned to her, for her face, her figure, the fold of her arms, the turn of her head, the coil of her hair, take you straight back through the centuries !

She stands before you, the living model of the grand masterpieces of immortal Art. But in a safe retreat at hand is a recumbent pair, who make no part of this rustic panorama. As little have they to do with the classic ideal. They are altogether modern, and a la mode, in look and manner, and talk. Not that they lack beauty. In their regular features, their easy elegance, their exquisite polish, character may be missing, but none of the other charms which grace and youth and the refinements of the world can impart. Out of the sun, into the shade, on the ground under the citron boughs they repose, breathing the fragrant odours of the blossoms, and idly playing with the fallen fruit ; for this, in very truth, is the Land of the Citron, where, with either hand, you may gather fruit and flower.

Conversation between the two has flagged ; at last it ceases; the faint, warm-scented air is slumberous. The blue eyes of the lady follow a skiff across the sea, as it skims the level waves like a dainty swan, its white sail as snowy as the bird's plumage. The dark eyes of her cavalier take the same direction. Watching the sunshiny sea is dazzling, dreamy work. At an indefinite moment, sky, sea, sail, fade from the vision of the blue eyes and the black — the play of thought relaxes in attitude and feature. If a genre painter could have caught this sleeping pair thus, it would have been worth a thousand pounds to him. With a sudden sweep through the overhanging greenery, comes the rustle of the rising breeze. The owner of the black eyes opens them with a leisurely stretch ; he has only been half asleep at the most.

He changes his position indolently, and speaks, without looking at his companion, " Upon my word, Lady Laure, I believe I have been napping. I beg your pardon ; these hot suns are so drowsy ! " The owner of the blue eyes gives an unconscious start ; they open wide as she answers, with a quick shade of colour on her fair cheek, " Indeed, Mr. Lorraine, I believe — I think I was almost asleep too." " Then I must beg pardon again for my awkward ness in awakening you. What sweet dream did I drive away ? Ladies, young ladies, always dream sweet dreams," says he, with a laugh ; " don't they ? " " I cannot tell. I do not think I ever dream." Lady Laure drops her eyes half shyly before the full look that is turned suddenly upon her. " Nor do I." He answers indifferently, with a half yawn. " It is such a waste of good sleep, isn't it ?

" " But who can prevent dreaming ? " "Well, if you're young, and don't eat shell-fish, and avoid the grand emotions, you are pretty safe." He _iv es himself a stretch and starts to his feet. " I'll not run the risk again to-day of sleeping in a fair lady's presence." He stops, as if a thought struck him ; then he goes on, with a quicker tone of interest, •• By-the-by, Lady Laure, when did you say Lucie is i. ■*— to come ? Now he, amongst other good things, would keep us awake to a certainty." "I don't know," says Lady Laure, musingly. " Lucie is full of dreams— waking ones, and he loves to be alone. But I fear we shall not see him yet ; he is bringing out his poem." " Ah ! yes ; strange. I had forgotten it, though I think you spoke of it yesterday. Passing strange, it seems to me. Lucie turned poet and dreamer!

To a certain sense, he was always something of the latter. But poet ! — well, no one's safe till he's dead. But how about the county politics? — how does all that agree with the poetry ? " " You have heard, then ? " says she, hesitatingly. " Heard nothing," he answers, " except what you have told me ; but hustings speeches, which, by his prescriptive rights, Lucie is born to, don't strike me as in a poet's line." " Ah ! " sighs Lady Laure ; " he will have nothing to do with it. It so much disappoints his father ! " Then she sighs again and says quite pathetically, " Lucie has such different opinions to papa ! " " Broken out of harness ? " laughs Lorraine. "But they are always good friends," continues Lady Laure, quickly. " Lucie would be miserable if it were not so ; and my father, you know, is so kind, and he does not mind it quite so much now that " — she stops a moment — " that Mr. Aboyne is going to stand for our division of the countv."

" Aboyne ! Is he still the same confounded silent prig ? " asks Lorraine, bluntly. The colour rises to her face. " That is not a fair question," she says, with a little show of spirit. " I may not understand what you mean by ' prig ; ' but I don't think he is, or ever was one." '* Ah ! a favoured " But Lorraine breaks off ; his eyes are still full on the lovely face, where now the rose shade reddens to crimson. The saucy speech is checked upon his tongue ; not with any confusion, how ever ; he has sang-froid sufficient for the whole brigade to which he belongs. He speaks again, and still in reply to Lady Laure's protest ; but it is in a different voice. " You are quite right, Lady Laure. Friendship — I have a great respect for friendship " — he empha sizes the word — " friendship forbids us to admit the faults of our friends ; but Mr. Aboyne is no friend of mine, nor was, as a boy.

I have not seen him since. He seemed to me the very model of a prig ; if I met him now, I should be surprised if I had to change my opinion." Lorraine sets great store by his opinions, even one formed at such a very early period of his life he cannot bring himself so much as to pretend to relinquish, though at the risk of an ungallant argu ment with his fair companion. But Lady Laure has by nature the art of silence, and the matter drops. But it has stirred up the past ; it has taken Lorraine back to his boyhood and set him thinking. " To fancy," he cries, " that I should be staying with you here, actually under the same roof again with you, after all these years! Your father, Lady Laure, will be hospitable, whether at home or abroad. So remarkable," he adds, with a look as if he were making out a problem, "that we should never have met before !

" "But you have been out of England," suggests Lady Laure. " That's true. Of course ; yes, that may account for it. You in the West, I in the East ; we have been out of each other's beat decidedly. But it's a whole twelve months, you know, since I came home and exchanged into the Guards. Time to get tired of it, I assure you." Somehow all this time Lady Laure is feeling terribly embarrassed by her father's determined hospi tality to the gallant Guardsman. " It is astonishing," continues Lorraine, " how soon one gets tired of most things ! " To which Lady Laure replies not quite to the point, but with a very apologetic accent, " We have such a number of spare rooms in the villa." " Ah ! I dare say," says Lorraine. He makes no other comment, but he looks curiously at her. " Do you remember me ?

" he asks ; " not as I am naturally, but as I was ? I remember you, as if it were only yesterday." "Yes, I think I do; indeed, of course I do. You are not much changed, are you?" But she blushes as she tries, with very ill success, to look him in the face. Lady Laure blushes so much to-day. Yet blushing is not her wont ; her lily cheeks rarely borrow the damask of the rose, nor is her sweet composure often fluttered from its serene repose. " Changed ! " returns he, with a most self-approving smile. " I should think I must be mightily changed. I believe, in my young days, I was a regular beau — so my Eton dame used to declare ; she was the only fair one who ever told me flattering tales. But, you see," he moves a little before her ; " behold ! Hyperion changed to a Satyr ! " A look of pride crosses her face.

She does not blush now ; and yet, before the words are well spoken with which she replies, the pride is gone and the blush comes again. " I am not able to pay you compliments." "Come, I like that; that's just what I like!" declares Lorraine. " You are honest — honest as Lucie was. You can be nothing better than like your brother." Her face softens with pleasure. "You have not forgotten Lucie ! " She looks at him now without embarrassment. A bond of sympathetic union and confidence is set up. "What great friends you were !" she cries. " Forgotten him ! Why should I ? And when we come together again, we shall be as great friends as ever. And you — you and he— you are always devoted to each other still, I suppose ? Let me see. How long is it ago ? Eight — ten years. Well, never mind the time ; but in those days, when we all were young — not grown old, as I have — in those happy days, Lucie hadn't a thought but for you — and for me."

The last word comes slowly. He would have followed it with a sigh, if sighing had been possible to him. " What a worship it was ! " he cries, after a moment's pause. " There was something sublime in it. And the visions he had ! but never for himself ; the plans he wove in his fertile brain ! " But Lorraine brings himself short up ; his memories are running away with his habitual protectors — his prudence and his indifference. But he knows well how to cover his mistake. " What a delightful tie," says he, " is that of brother and sister ! the envy of a lonely fellow like myself." " Ah ! we love each other very dearly," answers Lady Laure, with glistening eyes. " But Lucie is too kind ; he spoils me." " That's impossible ! " Lorraine's voice has the ring for once of genuine sincerity. " Excuse me for flatly contradicting you.

But the sun is growing really too hot. Don't you feel it so? The air is heating like a furnace. I should recommend a move. Let me give you a hand — and an arm, if you will accept one — up this steep path. Climbing is the order of the day hereabouts. A little exhausting under these baking suns." He looks up at the sky, and then at the fragrant arbour they have quitted. " That lemon grove is not the sort of shade for heat like this ; the pine wood over yonder would be much more to the purpose. By-the-by, the town we passed through on our way here yesterday lies, I think, in that direction. We were under the trees, I think, for the greater part of the road. I am afraid I must make my bow to you for the present, Lady Laure, and screw up my courage to the severe task of walking over there to inquire after the rest of my luggage, which I directed to be sent after me to the coach-office, or whatever name they give to the place where the public convey ance stops."

"It is already done," says Lady Laure, simply. " I gave Burton orders, about it this morning." Lady Laure was but just seventeen years old, and something shy, at least with Mr. Lorraine ; but as hostess she was quite at her ease, and played that part, which, indeed, had been her position from her baby hood, with all the graceful foresight and charming prevenance of a matron of twice her years. " A thousand thanks ! But I am sorry to give trouble." Lorraine speaks with politeness; but he fails to look so very much obliged. A gloom, or, at least, a weariness settles upon his face. He was frank when he exclaimed, "How soon one gets tired of most thin_ ! " If he had repeated the remark now, candour, complete candour, would have compelled him to add, even of a prolonged tete-a-tete with a companion lovely as Lady Laure Lucie !

In fact, the move from the citron grove was not otherwise than strategic in this intention ; but Lorraine at least deserved some credit for the offhand natural .ness with which he performed it. C 29 ) CHAPIER II. A FUNGUS. The dyer's hand, the dyer's trade, To its own hue subdueth ; And Shakespeare sings the man is made The very thing he doeth ; Thus sheepish grows the shepherd lout, Habit o'er race prevailing ; And brewers oft are extra stout, And drunkards always ailing. When they entered the garden paths between the myrtle hedges, Lorraine fell a little behind Lady Laure. He pushed his hair from his forehead, stopped for a moment, took a long look right and left, and another look full at the sun ; and the happy result of these observations was that his face, under all circumstances a pretty fair index of his mind, assumed at once a less lugubrious expression.

"After all," thinks he to himself, "walking over there in this heat would be a most tremendous bore." And hereupon he closes quickly up to his companion. with his tactics altogether altered. " Beally, Lady Laure, I owe much to your kindness in sparing me this walk to that miserable little town this afternoon." There was all the difference of day and night, between this tender of thanks and the other. Lady Laure's pretty head turns over her shoulder, with a sweet, graceful smile: it is her silent way of expressing the pleasure she feels. So she smiles now ; yet, then, she did not frown, for she is one of those natures easy to please, hard to displease. He, in his turn, gives a half smile, though more to himself than to her, and chiefly with the feeling that his natural indolence has had a happy escape.

Then, with one of those curious involutions of the mind, common to all, yet hard to account for, he begins playing with the bearings of a subject, from which, but just now, another association of ideas had startled him away with something very like a scare. "You would make a capital soldier's wife, Lady Laure," says he, holding open the glass door of the centre sitting-room to let her pass through. "You are so prompt ; up and off at a word." " It does not take much thinking," she answers, laughing, " to move from the garden into the house." " Well, no, not actually ; but it is a way with most women to make little difficulties. I suppose it is considered interesting; but not by me. It's one reason why women in general go so against my grain ; they are such actresses ! " Lady Laure looks up with surprise written upon her face.

This very frank speaking ! What little ex perience she has had of the polite phrases of mankind is quite at variance with this new specimen of it. " Ah ! you look astonished. You don't know, Lady Laure, that I pass for a regular Orson with your sex ; they give me all sorts of hard names." Lady Laure's face still bears the effects of his previous speech. Lorraine, to be sure, is an old friend, a very old friend. " He never cares for no one " used to be Mrs. Prudence's verdict upon him in those old days ; and he is not much changed, as Lady Laure said to him a while ago. She can see this ; he was not a person likely to change, and she admires him for it — admires him in her secret heart for this, amongst various other things, in which he seems to her quite different, quite superior to the rest of his fellow men.