Linnet: A Romance
Mrs Palmer sighed too. She felt his difficulty. Her parasol played more
nervously on the grass than before. She answered nothing, but she
thought a great deal. How small a matter for her to secure this young
poet whom she admired so much, six months of leisure for an immortal
work—and yet, how impossible! There was only one way, she knew that
very well; and the first step towards that way must come, not from her,
but from this modest Will Deverill.
’Twas a passing thought, half formed, or scarce half formed, in the
pretty widow’s mind. But nothing came of it. As she paused, and sighed,
and played trembling with her parasol, and doubted what to answer him,
Florian came up once more with the giggling inarticulates, “Well, Mr
Wood?” she said, looking up, just by way of saying something, for the
pause was an awkward one.
“Pardon me,” the mannikin of culture answered in his impressive way; “my
name is Florian.”
“But _I_ can’t call you so,” Mrs Palmer answered, recovering herself,
with a merry little laugh.
“It’s usual in Society,” Florian responded with truth. “Just ask Will
Deverill.”
Will nodded assent. “Quite true,” he admitted. “Men and women alike in
London know him only as Florian. It’s a sort of privilege he has, an
attribute of his own. He’s arrogated it to himself, and the world at
large acquiesces in his whim, and grants it.”
“It makes things seem so much more real and agreeable, you see, as Dick
Swiveller said to the marchioness,” Florian continued blandly. “Now
suppose we five form an elective family, a little brotherhood of our
own, a freemasonry of culture, and call one another, like brothers and
sisters, by our Christian names only! Wouldn’t that be delightful! I’ve
just been explaining to Ethel and Eva that I mean henceforth to Ethel
and Eva them. Soul gets nearer to soul without these flimsy barriers.
I’m Florian; this is Will; and you, Mrs Palmer, your Christian name
is——?”
The pretty widow drew back with a little look of alarm. “Oh no,” she
said, shortly; “I never could tell you my given name for anything. It’s
much too dreadful.” She pulled out a pencil from the pocket at her side.
“See here,” she said to Will, writing down one word for him on the
silver-cased tablets that hung pendant from her delicate Oriental
chatelaine, “there’s a name, if you like, for two Puritan parents to
burden the life of their poor innocent child with! Don’t tell Mr
Wood—or Florian if he wishes it; he’d make fun of it behind my back,
I’m perfectly certain. I know his way. To him nothing, not even a
woman’s name, is sacred.”
Will glanced at the word curiously. He couldn’t forbear a quiet smile.
“It’s bad enough, I must admit,” he answered, perforce. The Vision of
Beauty had been christened Jerusha!
“But I make it _Rue_ for short,” she added, after a moment, with a
deprecating smile.
Florian caught at the word, enraptured. “The very thing!” he cried,
eagerly. “Capital, capital, capital! ‘There’s rue for you, and here’s
some for me: we may call it herb-o’-grace o’ Sundays.’ But Rue shall be
your weekday name for the Brotherhood. Let’s read the roll-call!
Florian, Will, Rue, Ethel, Eva! Those are our names henceforth among
ourselves. We scorn formalities! No mystery for us. We abolish the
_misters_!”
And so indeed it was. As Will, Rue, and Florian, those three of the
Elective House knew each other thereafter.
CHAPTER XIII
A FIRST NIGHT
’Twas with no little trepidation that Linnet arrayed herself that
eventful night for her first appearance on this or any other public
platform. When her hair was dressed and her costume complete, Philippina
declared, with good-humoured admiration, she looked just lovely—for
Philippina at least was never jealous of her. And Philippina was right:
Linnet did look beautiful. She had tied her crossed kerchief very low
about the neck, so as to leave her throat bare for the better display of
Will Deverill’s corals. They became her admirably. Andreas Hausberger
inspected his prima donna with well-satisfied eye. The wise impresario
had heard, of course, where the necklet came from; but that didn’t in
the least disturb his serenity. Will Deverill was gone, evaporated into
space; and the coral at least was “good for trade,” inasmuch as it
enhanced and set off to the utmost the nut-brown alp-girl’s almost
gipsy-like beauty. For the sake of trade, Andreas could pardon much. And
Will Deverill in England was no serious rival.
At eight o’clock sharp the concert was to begin at one of the big
hotels. To the guests in the house it was just a matter of “some music,
I hear, to-night—the usual thing, don’t you know—Tyrolese singers with
a zither in the _salon_.” But to Linnet, oh, the difference! It was the
most important musical event, the most momentous performance in the
world’s history. She trembled like a child at the thought of standing
forth and singing her simple mountain songs alone, in a fine-furnished
room, before all those grand well-dressed and well-fed Britons. She
would have given thousands (in kreuzers), if only she had them, to
forego that ordeal. But Andreas Hausberger said “You must,” and she had
to obey him. And the blessed Madonna, in Britannia metal, on an oval
pendant, gave her courage for the trial.
By eight o’clock sharp, then, the troupe trooped in. Electric light, red
velveted chairs, soft carpet on the floor, gilded mirrors by the
mantelpiece and opposite console. So much grandeur and magnificence
fairly took poor Linnet’s breath away. ’Twas with difficulty she
faltered across the open space to a chair by the table which was placed
at one end of the room for the use of the performers. Then she raised
her eyes timidly—to know the worst. Some twenty-five people, more or
less listless all of them, composed the audience. Some leaned back in
their chairs and crossed their hands resignedly, as who expects to be
bored, and makes up his mind betimes to bear his boredom patiently. Some
read the latest _Times_ or the Vienna papers, hardly deigning to look up
as the performers entered. ’Twas a lugubrious function; more chilling
reception prima donna never met with. Linnet clutched the blessed
Madonna in her pocket convulsively. One breath of mild applause alone
reached her ears. “Pretty girl,” one stout Briton observed aloud in his
own tongue to his plentiful mate. Linnet looked down and blushed, for he
was staring straight at her.
“Let’s sit it out, here,” Florian exclaimed in the smoking-room. The
folding doors stood open, so that all might hear; but their group sat a
little apart—Will, Rue, and he—in the farther corner, away from the
draught, and out of sight of the musicians. “It’s more comfortable
so—just the family by itself; and besides, I’ve a theory of my own that
one should hear the zither through an open door; it mitigates and
modifies the metallic twang of the instrument.”
Will and Rue were all acquiescence. Next to a _tête-à-tête_, a
_parti-à-trois_ is the pleasantest form of society. So they kept their
seats still, in the rocking-chairs by the corner, and let the sound
float idly in to them through the open portal.
Linnet waited, all trembling. Thank heaven, it wasn’t her part to begin.
Franz Lindner came first with a solo on the zither. Bold, confident,
defiant, with his hat stuck a little on one side of his head, and his
feather in his band, turned Robbler-wise, wrong way, quite as jaunty as
ever, Franz faced his audience as if his life had been passed in
first-class hotels, and an Edison light had been the lamp of his
childhood. Nothing daunted or disconcerted by the novelty of the
circumstances, he played his piece through with a certain reckless
brilliancy, wholly in keeping with the keynote of the Tyrolese
character. Florian observed outside, with connoiseur complacency, that
the fellow had _brio_. But the audience went on unmoved with its _Times_
and its _Tagblatt_. The audience was chilling; Franz Lindner, accustomed
to his own mercurial and magnetic fellow-countrymen, could hardly
understand it. His self-love was mortified. He had expected a triumph, a
sudden burst of wild applause; he received instead a faint clap of the
hands from Ethel and Eva, and an encouraging nod from the mercantile
gentleman of nonconformist exterior.
Franz sat down—a smouldering and seething volcano.
Then came Linnet’s turn. She rose, all tremulous, in her pretty costume,
with her beautiful face and her shrinking timidity. Old gentlemen peeped
askance over the edge of their papers at the good-looking girl; young
ladies took stock of her abundant black hair and her dainty kerchief.
“She’s going to sing,” Ethel whispered. “Isn’t she pretty, Eva? And just
look, how very odd, she’s got a necklet exactly like the ones Mrs Palmer
gave us!”
As they gazed and gurgled, Linnet opened her mouth, and began her song,
quivering. She trembled violently, but her very trembling increased the
nightingale effect of those beautiful trills which form so marked a
feature in all Tyrolese singing. Her throat rose and fell; her clear
voice flooded the room with bell-like music. At the very first line, the
old gentlemen laid their _Times_ contentedly on their laps, and beamed
attention through their spectacles; the old ladies let the
knitting-needles stand idle in their hands, and looked up with parted
lips to listen. Andreas Hausberger was delighted. Never in her life had
Linnet sung so before. Occasion had brought her out. And he could judge
of her here more justly than at home; he was quite sure now he had found
a treasure.
But at the very first sound of her well-known voice, Will started from
his chair. He clapped his hands, fingers apart, to his cheeks in wonder,
and stared hard at Florian. Florian in return opened his eyes very wide,
leaned back in his seat with a sudden smile of recognition, and stared
hard at Will, with a certain amused indulgence. Then both with one voice
cried out all at once in surprise, “That’s Linnet!”
After that, it was Florian who first broke the forced silence. “I see in
this the finger of fate,” he murmured slowly. But Will didn’t want to
see the finger of fate, or any other abstraction; what he wished to see,
then and there, was his recovered Linnet. It was thoughtless, perhaps,
to disturb her song; but young blood is thoughtless. Without a moment’s
hesitation, he walked unobtrusively but hastily into the room in front,
and took a seat near the door, just opposite Linnet. Andreas Hausberger
didn’t notice him, his eyes were firmly fixed on Linnet’s face, watching
anxiously to see how his pupil would acquit herself in this her first
great ordeal. But Linnet—Linnet saw him, and felt from head to foot a
great thrill break over her, like a wave of fire, in long undulating
movement. The wave rose from her feet and coursed hot through her limbs
and body, till it came out as a crimson flush on her neck and chin and
forehead; then it descended once more, thrilling through her as it went,
in long undulating movement from her neck to her feet again. She felt it
as distinctly as she could feel the blessed Madonna clenched hard in her
little fist. And she knew now she loved him. Her Englishman was there,
whom she thought she had lost; he had come to hear her sing her first
song in public!
Strange to say, the interruption didn’t impair her performance. For one
second she faltered, as her eyes met his; for one second she paused,
while the wave coursed through her. But almost before Andreas had time
for anxiety, she had recovered at once her full self-possession. Nay,
more; Will’s presence seemed actually to encourage her. She sang now
with extraordinary force and brilliancy; her voice welled from her soul;
her notes wavered on the air as with a sensible quivering.