Linnet: A Romance
mentioned, at whose houses he had stopped, were all New Yorkers.
“No; not from Boston,” the Vision answered with prompt negation.
“Washington, I suppose?” Florian adventured again. They were the only
three places a self-respecting American could admit she came from
without shipwreck of her dignity. He would not pay so much grace and
eloquence the very bad compliment, as it seemed to him, of supposing it
could “register” from St Louis or New Orleans.
The pretty woman smiled once more, a self-restrained smile. “I come from
New York,” she said, simply. “I’ve lived there long. It’s my native
place. But there are a good many of us there who don’t aspire to know
the Roosevelts or the Livingstones.”
Florian withdrew, with quiet tact, from this false departure. He led
aside the conversation, by graceful degrees, to the old Dutch families,
the New England stock—Emerson, Longfellow, Channing, the Concord set:
Howells, James, and Stedman, the later American poets. On these last he
waxed warm. But the Vision of Beauty, herself cosmopolitan to the core,
was all for our newest school of English bards. She doted on Lang and
Austin Dobson.
“And have you seen the last _Illustrated_?” she asked, after awhile,
with a burst of enthusiasm. “It’s on the table in the _salon_ there. And
there are three, oh, such lovely, lovely stanzas in it,—‘Among Alps,’
by Will Deverill.”
Her words sent a thrill of pleasure through Will’s modest soul. He had
published but little, and ’twas seldom he heard his own name thus
familiarly unhandled. Still, a harassing doubt possessed his soul. Could
the Vision of Beauty have seen his name in the visitors’ book of the
hotel, noticed the coincidence with the lines in the _Illustrated_,
which he had sent from the Zillerthal, and managed this little _coup_
with feminine adroitness, on purpose to deceive him? Yet she didn’t look
guileful. With poetic trustfulness, he cast the evil suggestion at once
behind him. “I’m so glad you liked them,” he said, timidly, looking down
at his plate, and playing in nervous jerks with his fork in the chicken.
“I wrote them in the Tyrol here. They’re fresh-fed from the glaciers.”
The Vision laid down her knife and fork and stared at him, speechless.
“You’re not Will Deverill,” she exclaimed, in some excitement, after a
moment’s pause.
“That’s my name,” Will answered, somewhat abashed, still perusing his
plate. “But I’m very little used to—to—to meeting people who have
heard of it.”
The pretty American clasped her hands with delight “Well, I _am_ glad to
meet you,” she said, “though I’d have given you the benefit of the Mr,
of course, if I’d known it was you. I just love your verses. I have
‘Voices from the Hills’ in my box upstairs, bound in calf, this minute.”
“No; not really?” Will cried, with a young author’s delight at
unexpected recognition.
“I’ll go upstairs after dinner and fetch it down to show you,” his
pretty admirer answered, with some pride. “And your friend, too, is he a
poet?”
“In soul; in soul only!” Florian interposed, airily, dashing in at a
tangent; for it irked him thus to play second fiddle to Will’s first
hand, and he longed to assert his “proper position.” “I string no
sonnets; I play no harmonies; I take the higher place. I sit on a
critical throne, weighing and appraising all arts impartially. Deverill
rhymes; another man paints; a third man strums; a fourth acts, or carves
stone—and all for _me_. I exercise none of these base handicrafts
myself; but I live supreme in the Palace of Art they build,
subordinating each in due place to my soul’s delight, like a subtle
architect.”
“Just the same as all the rest of us,” the pretty American put in,
interrupting his period. “We all do that. We sit still and listen. The
difficulty is—to produce, like Mr Deverill.”
Florian stood aghast. To think a mere woman should thus slight his
pretensions! But the pretty American, disregarding him, turned to Will
once more. “And your friend’s name?” she said, interrogatively.
“My friend’s name,” Will answered, “is Florian Wood. You must know it.”
“Ah, Mr Florian Wood,” the pretty stranger echoed; “I’ve heard of him,
of course. I’m glad to meet him. It’s so nice to see people in the flesh
at last one has often heard talked about.”
“But _you’ve_ heard about everybody, Mrs Palmer,” the first giggling
inarticulate interposed, with a gurgle of admiration.
Florian clapped his hand to his head in theatrical disappointment.
“_Mrs_ Palmer!” he cried, markedly. “Did I hear aright, _Mrs_ Palmer?
This is indeed a blow! Then, I take it, you’re married!”
From anyone else on earth, the remark would have been rude; from
Florian, it was only exaggerated compliment. The Vision of Beauty
accepted it as such with American frankness.
“Well, you needn’t go and take a draught of cold poison offhand,” she
retorted, a little saucily, “for there’s still a chance for you.
Remember, a woman may be maid, wife, . . . or widow.”
“Dear me,” Florian ejaculated, half-choking himself in his haste, “I
never thought of that. You don’t mean to say——”
“Yes, I do,” Mrs Palmer responded, cutting him short with a merry nod.
“Any time these last five years. Now, you’re sorry you spoke. Mr
Deverill, may I trouble you to pass the mustard?”
CHAPTER XI
PRIVATE INQUIRY
During the rest of the young men’s stay at Innsbruck the pretty American
was, as Florian remarked, “a distinct feature.” Such is the fickleness
of man, indeed, that she almost superseded poor Linnet in their minds as
an object of interest. She was attractive beyond a doubt; she was
clever; she was lively; and she was so delighted to make a real live
poet’s acquaintance, that Will hardly knew how to receive her almost
obtrusive attentions. She brought him butter in a lordly dish, as
Florian phrased it. That same evening, in the _salon_, according to
promise, she came down with “Voices from the Hills,” Will’s thin little
volume of fugitive verse, which she had had gorgeously bound in red calf
in Paris, and made that sensitive young bard blush up to his eyes with
modesty, by insisting on pointing out which pieces she liked best, in a
voice that was audible to half the guests in the establishment.
_Ossian’s Tomb_ was her favourite—she knew that one by heart; but
_Khosru Khan_ was sweet too; and _Sister Clare_ made her cry; and then
_Gwyn_!—ah, that dear _Gwyn_ was just too lovely for anything!
And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes,
he liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his
poetry. And besides, he said to himself, Mrs Palmer had discrimination.
She noted in his verse the metrical variety, the pictorial skill, the
strong sense of colour—just the qualities of his poor muse on which he
himself most prided himself. No artist cares for praise except for those
characteristics of his art which he feels to be his strong ones. Mrs
Palmer gave Will that, and he liked the incense.
Florian had said at St Valentin that Will needed change of air, change
of scene, change of company. And at Innsbruck he got them. The pretty
American, having found her poet, didn’t mean to let him slip again too
soon from her clutches. With the pertinacity of her compatriots, she
fastened herself at once upon the two young Englishmen. Not obtrusively,
to be sure, not ungracefully, not awkwardly, not as a European woman
might have done the same thing, but with that occidental frankness and
oblivion of sex which makes up half the charm of the charming American.
The very next morning, at the early breakfast, she happened to occupy a
small table close by them. They chatted together through the meal; at
the end of it Will mentioned, in a casual sort of way that he was going
down the street to the shop where Mrs Palmer had bought the coral
necklet. The dainty young widow seized her cue. “I am going down that
way myself,” she said. “Let me come and show you. I won’t take a minute
to run up for my hat. I’m not one of those women who can never go out
for a morning stroll without spending half-an-hour before their mirrors,
tittivating.” And, in spite of Will’s assurance that he could find the
shop very well by himself, she was as good as her word, and insisted on
accompanying them.
She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in
her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped
lightly downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked
through the streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will,
more mindful of poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to
that taking smile, those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose,
those rounded contours. They turned down the road in the direction of
the Maria-Theresien Strasse. Will knew of old that quaintest and most
picturesque of European High Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its
rococo façades, its mediæval towers, its arcades and pillars. But to
Florian, it all came with the added charm of novelty. Twice or thrice on
their way, the spirit moved him to stop and perorate. Each time, the
pretty widow cut him short at once with some quick retort of truly
American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a second necklet,
exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her nothing before I
came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only indicating by that
very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient of his beautiful gift.
“One couldn’t give her _money_. ’Twould have been a positive insult. But
this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.”
“For your sister, _of course_,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly.
“No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl
at the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.”
Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American _oh_. It deprecated the
fact—and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan though she was, it surprised
her not a little that Will should allude to such persons in a lady’s
company. But there! these poets, you know—so many things must be
condoned to them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven
them. They have licence to break hearts and the most brittle of the
commandments, with far less chance of blame than their even Christians.
Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second
similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the
giggling inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she
looked so envious last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I
couldn’t bear to think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I
think you said? Ah, yes; that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor
little girl so happy!”
From this, and various other circumstances which occurred in the course
of their first few days at Innsbruck, it began to dawn dimly upon
Florian’s open mind that their American friend, though she knew not the
Van Rensselaers, the Vanderbilts, and the Livingstones, must have been
“comfortably left” by the late Mr Palmer. It was clear she had money for
every whim and fancy. She took frequent drives, up the Brenner or down
the Innthal, in a roomy two-horse carriage specially ordered from the
livery stables; and she always gave a seat to one at least of the
giggling inarticulates; and then, “on the girl’s account, you know,”
with good-natured zeal, asked Will and Florian to take part in the
expedition. “It’s so good for them, of course,” she said, “to see a
little, when they can, of young men’s society. They’re each of them here
with an invalid mamma—throat and lungs, poor things—you know the kind
of person; and before I came, they had nobody to talk to, not even one
another, for they were far too much afraid of a mutual snub ever to