Linnet: A Romance
To his immense surprise Linnet drew back at once, red as a rose, and
fixed her eyes on him pleadingly. “Oh, no, don’t,” she cried, much
distressed. “Don’t, don’t, I beg of you.”
Will, in turn, lifted his head, astonished, and looked hard at her. He
couldn’t understand this strange freak of feeling. “Then don’t you like
me to hear you?” he cried, regretfully. “It’s such a pleasure to me. I
thought you wanted me to hear. And I thought I encouraged you.”
“So you do,” Linnet answered with a burst, half-sidling towards him,
half-shrinking. “I love you to hear me. And I’ll sing for you whenever
you like. I’ll sing for you till I’m hoarse. But _don’t_ come to the
hotels. Oh, don’t come, I implore you!”
“Why not, my child?” Will cried, drawing her close to him once more.
Linnet’s cheeks burnt crimson. She looked down and stammered. Then, with
a sudden impulse she hid her face on his bosom, and yielded up her whole
soul to him. “Because,” she whispered, all aglow with maiden shame at
having confessed the truth, “if Andreas Hausberger sees you, he’ll know
you’re in Meran—and then he won’t allow me to come out on the hills to
meet you.”
CHAPTER XVII
CAUGHT OUT
That avowal of Linnet’s that she didn’t want Andreas Hausberger to know
of Will’s presence in the town put Will’s relations towards her during
the next few weeks on a different, and to some extent compromising,
footing. It introduced into their meetings a certain shadowy element of
clandestine love-making which was in many ways distasteful to Will’s
frank and manly nature, though it was at the same time, as Florian felt,
a hundred times more “dangerous” for him than any open acquaintance. For
Andreas, after all, was Linnet’s ostensible guardian and nearest male
protector. To meet Linnet on the hills, without his knowledge or
consent, was to place oneself in the position of an unrecognised lover.
Will knew it was a mistake. And yet—he did it. We, who have made no
mistakes of any sort in all our lives, but have steadily followed the
beaten track all through, with sheep-like persistence, can afford to
disapprove of him.
So, day after day, during the next few weeks, Will went up on the hills
to walk and talk with Linnet. Rue Palmer was delighted. She thought,
poor soul, her scheme was succeeding admirably. Will was out every
morning on the mountains alone, working hard at his _magnum opus_, which
was to astonish the world, and with which _she_ had inspired him. It was
glorious, glorious! And, indeed, in spite of the time wasted in talking
with Linnet, though the best spent time, as everybody knows, is the time
we waste, Will did really succeed in writing and composing at odd
moments and in the night watches no small part of his graceful and
beautiful little operetta, “The Chamois Hunter’s Daughter.” But alas for
poor Rue, it was not _she_ who inspired it.
On these morning expeditions up the surrounding hills to some appointed
trysting-place, Florian sometimes accompanied him, and sometimes not.
But, in any case, he abstained from mentioning their object to Rue; as
he put it himself, never should it be said that Florian Wood could split
upon two ill-advised but confiding young people. It suited Florian’s
book now, indeed, that Will’s attention should be distracted from Rue to
Linnet. He wanted to make the running for himself with the American
heiress, and he was by no means sorry that so dangerous and important a
rival as the author of “Voices from the Hills” should be otherwise
occupied. So he kept his own counsel about Will and Linnet; he had
abdicated by this time his self-appointed function of moral censor; and
seeing they would go to the devil in any case, he was inclined to let
them go their own headlong way, into the jaws of matrimony, without
preliminary haggling. He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar. Deverill
would marry his cow-girl in the end—of that Florian felt certain; and
when a man’s quite determined to make a fool of himself, you know, why,
you only earn his dislike, instead of his esteem, by endeavouring to win
him back again to the ways of wisdom.
And Will? Well, Will himself had as yet no very fixed ideas of his own
as to whither he was tending. Being only a poet, he was content to drift
with the wind and tide, and watch on what shoals or shores they might
finally cast him. Most probably, if things had been allowed to go their
own way, he would sooner or later have justified Florian’s pessimistic
prophecies by marrying Linnet. He would have gone on and on, falling
more and more deeply in love with the pretty peasant every day, and
letting her fall every day more and more deeply in love with him, till
at last conventional differences sank to nothing in his eyes, and he
remembered only that heart answereth to heart, be it poet’s or
alp-girl’s. At present, however, he troubled himself little with any of
these things. He was satisfied for the moment, Florian said, to bask in
the sunshine of that basilisk’s smile, without care for the morrow.
Sooner or later, he felt sure, in so small a town, either Florian or he
must run up unawares against Andreas Hausberger. Whenever that happened,
no doubt, there must be some sort of change or new departure. Meanwhile,
he religiously avoided the Promenade, where he was likeliest to come
suddenly on the wise impresario. So he stuck to the hills, with or
without Linnet.
The very next morning, indeed, after this their chance meeting, he went
up the Küchelberg once more, impressed with an ardent desire to aid and
abet Linnet’s laudable wish for self-education. He brought a book up
with him to read to the two girls under the bright blue sky, as they sat
on the hillside. He chose a pleasant spot, in the full eye of the autumn
sun, on a rounded boss of rock, whose crumbling clefts were still
starred with wild pinks and rich yellow tormentils. Florian had
contributed to the feast of reason and the flow of soul a kilogram of
grapes—they cost but threepence-halfpenny a pound in the vintage
season—unknown luxuries till then to Philippina and Linnet. Philippina
found the grapes delicious, but the book rather dry; its style was
stilted, and it appeared to narrate the story of a certain Doctor Faust,
his transactions with a gentleman of most doubtful shape (who caused
Philippina to look round in some fear), and his wicked designs against
the moral happiness of a young girl called Gretchen. Philippina yawned;
it was a tedious performance. Florian, having reduced his share of the
grapes to their skins alone, yawned in concert with the lady, and began
to play with his eyeglass. As his German didn’t suffice to understand
the lines, even when aided by Will’s dramatic delivery and clear
enunciation, he found the play slow, and the reader a nuisance. So he
was very well pleased when Philippina suggested, at a break in the first
act, they should go off for a walk by themselves alone, and continue
their course of oral instruction in the German language. Florian liked
Philippina; there was no silly nonsense about her. After all, in a
woman, if all you want is a walk on the Küchelberg, the total absence of
silly nonsense, you must at once admit, is a great recommendation.
But Linnet sat on. She sat on, and listened. She drank it in, open-eyed,
and with parted lips—every line and every word of it. Dear Herr Will
read so well, and made her feel and understand every point so
dramatically; and the book—the book itself was so profoundly
interesting. Never in her life before had Linnet heard anything the
least bit like it. It was grand, it was beautiful! She didn’t know till
then the world contained such books; her reading had been confined to
her alphabet and grammar at the parish folk-school, supplemented by the
good little tracts on purgatory and the holy saints, distributed by the
Herr Vicar and the sisters at the nunnery. Theological literature was
the sole form yet known to her. This weird tale about Gretchen and the
transformed philosopher opened out to her new vistas of a world of
possibilities. Long after, when she sang in great opera-houses, as
Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” she remembered with a thrill how she had
first heard that tale, in Goethe’s deathless words, from Will Deverill’s
lips, on the green slopes of the Küchelberg.
She sat there for an hour or two, never heeding the time, but listening,
all entranced, to that beautiful story. Now and again Will broke off,
and held her hand for a moment, and gazed deep into her eyes, and said
some sweet words of his own to her. He was a poet, Herr Will, in his own
tongue and land; she knew now what that meant—he could make up such
lovely things as he read from the book to her. “Tell me some of your
own, Herr Will. Tell me some of your own verses,” she said, sighing, at
last. “I should love to hear them.”
But Will shook his head. “The English is too hard. You wouldn’t
understand them, Linnet,” he answered.
“Let me try,” Linnet pleaded, with such a winning look that Will
couldn’t resist her. And to humour her whim, he repeated the simplest of
the laughing little love-songs from his book of “Voices.”
The ring of it was pretty—very sweet and musical. Linnet half
understood—no more; for the words were too hard for her. But it spurred
her on to further effort. “You must lend me some books like that in
English,” she said, simply. “I want to be wise, like you and Herr
Florian.”
So Will brought her next day from the book-shop in the town the dainty
little “Poetry Book of Modern Poets,” in the Tauchnitz edition. He wrote
her name in it too; and Linnet took it home, and hid it deep in her box
in a white silk handkerchief, and read bits of it by night, very
stealthily in her own room, spelling out what it meant with Andreas
Hausberger’s dictionary. Long after, she had that precious volume bound
in white Florentine vellum, with a crimson _fleur-de-lys_ on the cover,
at a house just opposite the Duomo at Florence. But at present she read
it in its paper covers. She read other books, too—German books which
Will chose for her; not instructive books which were over her head, but
poetry and romance and imaginative literature, such as her ardent
Tyrolese nature could easily assimilate. Day after day, Will read her
aloud something fresh—Undine, the Maid of Orleans, Uhland’s Ballads,
Paul Heyse’s short stories—but of all the things he read to her, the
one she liked best was a German translation of an English play—a
beautiful play by another English poet, whose name was also Will, but
who died long ago—a play about two luckless and devoted lovers, called
Romeo and Juliet. Linnet cried over that sad story, and Will kissed her
tears away; and a little later, when Andreas Hausberger took her to
Verona on their way south to Milan, Linnet went of her own accord to see
Juliet’s tomb in a courtyard in the town, and wasted much excellent
sympathy and sentiment over the shameless imposture of that bare Roman
sarcophagus. But she meant very well; and she believed in Juliet even
more firmly than she believed in Siegfried and Chriemhild and all the
other fine folks to whom Will introduced her.
So three weeks passed away, three glorious golden weeks, and day after
day, on those lovely hillsides, Linnet saw her lover. At the end of a
fortnight, Rue heard, from various friends at other hotels, of a
wonderful singer in a Tyrolese troupe, then performing nightly in the
various _salons_. “Why, that must surely be Linnet!” she said before
Will, to the first friend who mentioned it.
“Yes; Linnet—that’s her name,” Rue’s friend assented.
“I knew she was in the town,” Will admitted somewhat sheepishly; for he
felt as if he were somehow deceiving Rue, though it never would have