Linnet: A Romance
entered his good, modest head to suppose she herself could care anything
about him, except as a poet in whose work she was kind enough to take a
friendly interest.
“Ah, I should love to hear her again!” Rue cried, enthusiastically. “She
sings like a nightingale—such a splendid soprano! Let’s find out where
she’ll be to-night, and go round in a body to the hotel to hear her!”
But Will demurred strongly. He’d rather not go, he said; he’d stop at
home by himself and get on with his operetta. At that, Rue was secretly
pleased in her own heart; she felt it throb sensibly. After all, then,
her poet didn’t really and truly care for the pretty alp-girl. He knew
she was in the town—and, in spite of that knowledge, had spent every
evening all the time with herself at the Erzherzog Johann! Nor would
Florian go either; he invented some excuse to account for his
reluctance. So Rue went with two new girls she had picked up at the
hotel, in succession to the giggling inarticulates at Innsbruck. Linnet
recognised her in the crowd, for the room was crowded—’twas a nightly
ovation now, wherever Linnet sang—and knew her at once as the
fair-haired lady. But Florian and Will weren’t with her to-night! That
made Linnet’s heart glad. She had come without him! After all, her
Engländer didn’t always dance attendance, it seemed, on the fair-haired
Frau with the many diamonds!
So easily had Will made two women’s hearts happy, by stopping at home at
his hotel that evening! For women think much more of men than men
imagine—their poor little breasts live for the most part in a perpetual
flutter of love and expectancy.
As the weeks wore away, however, it began to strike Franz Lindner as a
singular fact, that Philippina and Linnet severed themselves so much
every day from the rest of the troupe, and went up on the hills all
alone for exercise. That fierce young Robbler was a true Tyrolese in his
treatment of his women. Though he never abated one jot or tittle of his
attentions to Linnet, it hardly occurred to him as forming any part of a
lover’s duty to accompany his _mädchen_ in her morning rambles. Franz
was too much engaged himself, indeed, with the young men of the place in
the _cafés_ and beer-gardens, to find much time hanging idle on his
hands for female society. He had made many friends in the gay little
town. His hat and his feather were well known by this time to half the
gilded youth in the Meran restaurants. Andreas Hausberger had turned out
the young women on the hills; and there they might stop, so far as Franz
Lindner was concerned to prevent them. Andreas Hausberger had been
wondrous careful of Linnet’s health of late, since he saw he was likely
to make pots of money from her. He had bound them all down by a three
years’ engagement, and he knew now that Linnet was worth at least five
times the sum he had bargained to pay her. But Franz Lindner’s health
might take care of itself; and Franz didn’t think much, personally, of
the air of the mountains. He’d had enough of all that in his jäger days;
now the chrysalis had burst, and let loose the butterfly; his
wander-years had come, and he meant to sip the sweets of advanced
civilisation. And he sipped them in the second-rate bars and
billiard-rooms of a small town in South Tyrol.
On this particular morning, however, it occurred to his Robblership to
inquire in his own mind why the womenkind loved to walk so much by
themselves on the mountains. Philippina hadn’t told him, to be sure;
Philippina had an eye to Andreas Hausberger herself—was he not the
_wirth_, and the master of the troupe?—and she was therefore by no
means averse to any little device which might distract poor Linnet from
that most desirable admirer. Still, Franz had his suspicions. Women are
so deep, a man can never fathom them! He mounted the Küchelberg by the
zig-zag path, and turning to the left by the third Madonna, came at last
to a little knoll of bare porphyry rock, looking down on the wide vale
and the long falls of the Adige.
A very small and dainty, not to say effeminate, young man, in a
knickerbocker suit of most Britannic aspect, was strolling some distance
off, with his arm encircling a woman’s plump waist, which suspiciously
reminded Franz of his friend Philippina’s. The Robbler could hardly
believe his eyes; could that be Herr Florian? Oh no; for they had left
the foreign Herrschaft at the hotel at Innsbruck. But here, close by,
behind the shadow of some junipers—stranger sight still!—stretched at
length on the ground, and reading aloud in German to some unseen person,
lay another young man in another tourist suit, with a voice that most
strikingly and exactly recalled the other Engländer’s at St Valentin.
Franz drew a deep breath, and strode a long step forward. At sound of
his foot, the unseen person sprang back where she sat with a quick,
small scream. Black as night in his wrath, Franz peered round and faced
them. It was undoubtedly Will; quite as undoubtedly Linnet!
The Robbler spoke angrily. “You again!” he cried, clenching his fist,
and knitting his brow hard, with bullet head held forward. “Are you
following us in hiding? What do you mean by this trick? You daren’t show
your face, coward, at our inn in the town! You steal up here and skulk!
What do you mean with the _mädchen_?”
At that imputation of secrecy, and still worse of cowardice, Will sprang
up and confronted him. “I dare show my face anywhere you like,” he
answered in hot blood. “I have _not_ followed this lady; I came here
before her, and met her at Meran by the purest accident. But I refuse to
be questioned about her by you or by anyone. What right have you to ask?
She is no _mädchen_ of yours. Who gave you any power or authority over
her?”
For a moment the Robbler instinct rose fierce and hot in Franz Lindner’s
breast. He drew back half a pace, as if making ready to spring at him.
In a few angry words he repeated his cutting taunts, and spoke savagely
to Linnet. “Go home, go home, girl; you are here for no good! What can
this Engländer want, save one thing, with a _sennerin_?”
He laid his hand roughly on Linnet’s shoulder. Will couldn’t stand that
sight; he clutched the man’s arm fiercely, twisted it round in the
socket, and pushed him back like a child, in the white heat of his
anger. Franz saw the interloper was strong—far stronger than he
supposed. “If you dare to lay your hand on this lady again,” Will cried,
standing in front of her like a living buckler, “I give you due warning,
you do it at your peril. Your life is at stake. I won’t permit you to
behave with brutality before me.”
In his native valley the Robbler would have flown at Will’s throat on
those words, and fought him, strong as he was, to the death, for his
_mädchen_. But since he came to Meran he had learned some new ways: such
were not, he now knew, the manners of civilisation. Will’s resolute
attitude even produced a calming effect upon the young barbarian. He
felt in his heart he had a better plan than that. To beat Will in fair
fight would, after all, be useless; the _mädchen_ wouldn’t abide, as
_mädchen_ ought, by the wager of battle. But he could wound him far
worse. He could go down to the town—and tell Andreas Hausberger how his
ward spent her mornings on the slopes of the Küchelberg!
Already he was learning the ways of the world. With a sarcastic smile,
he raised his hat ceremoniously, turned feather and all, in mock
politeness. “Good morning, mein Herr,” he drawled out, with a fine north
German accent, picked up in the billiard-rooms. “Good morning,
_sennerin_.” And without another word he strode away down the mountain.
But as soon as he was gone Linnet burst into tears. “Ah, I know what
he’ll do!” she cried, sobbing and trembling. “He’ll go down to the town
and tell Andreas Hausberger. He’ll go down to the town and tell how he
met us here. And, of course, after this, Andreas will put the very worst
face upon it.”
CHAPTER XVIII
TAKEN BY SURPRISE
Andreas Hausberger was a wise and prudent man. He felt convinced by this
time that Linnet, as he said to himself—though to no one else, for to
confess it would have been foolish—was a perfect gold mine, if only a
man knew how to work her properly. And in exploiting this mine, like a
sensible capitalist that he was, he determined to spare neither time nor
pains nor money. Night after night, as the audiences at the hotels grew
more and more enthusiastic, the truth forced itself upon his wise and
prudent mind that what they said was right: Linnet was a singer fit for
the highest undertakings. She must be trained and instructed for the
operatic stage; and on the operatic stage, with that voice and that
presence, she’d be worth her weight in gold if she was worth a penny.
So, ever since the first day when he left the Zillerthal, Andreas’s
views and ideas about his troupe and his tour had been undergoing a
considerable and constant modification. It would cost a good deal, of
course, to abandon his first plan, and instead of proceeding to the
Riviera as he originally intended, take Linnet to be trained at Milan
and Florence. But it was worth the money. You must throw a sprat to
catch a herring. And it must be Italy, too, not Munich or Dresden. He
wouldn’t put her precious life in jeopardy, now, in those cold northern
towns, during the winter months, for he had grown wonderfully careful of
Linnet’s health since he saw how her voice conjured florins into the
plate for him; and though he believed as much as ever in the virtues of
fresh air and a Spartan diet, he feared to expose the throat that
uttered such golden notes to the rigours and changes of a Bavarian or
Saxon December. So Milan and Florence it must be, though he had Franz
Lindner and Philippina and the others on his hands to pay and care for.
And in those great settled towns, where theatres and amusements were
regularly organised, he couldn’t hope his little troupe, deprived of its
chief ornament, could compete, save at a loss, with more showy
establishments. Still, to one thing he had made up his mind: Linnet
should never utter another note in public, after they moved from Meran,
until she could blaze forth, a full-fledged star, armed and equipped at
every point with all that art could do for her, on the operatic stage of
London, Paris, or Petersburg. He must put up with present loss for the
sake of future gain; he must pay for his little troupe and for Linnet’s
training, though he spent by the way his bottom dollar.
Not that the wise impresario was moved in this affair by any mere
philanthropic desire to benefit a favourite pupil. As a prior condition
to any expenditure on fitting and preparing Linnet for the operatic
stage, Andreas proposed to obtain a clear hold on her future earnings by
the simple little business preliminary of marrying her. And he proposed
this plan to himself in the same simple-hearted and entirely dictatorial
way in which he would have proposed some arrangement about his cows or
his horses. That Linnet could possibly object to his designs for her
advancement in life was an idea that hardly so much as even occurred to
him. He was her master, and, if he ordered her, she could scarcely say
him nay. That would be plain contumacy. Besides, the match would be one
so much to her own advantage! Not a girl in St Valentin but would be
overjoyed to catch him. Philippina, he knew, would give her eyes for
such a chance; but Philippina’s high notes were shrill—a great deal too
shrill—while Linnet’s were the purest and clearest and most silvery
ever uttered by woman. He was a husband any girl might well be proud of,
and though Linnet would be worth money, too, if properly trained, yet