Linnet: A Romance
a wife and family, and become thereby the perpetuators of their race in
future. It’s a wonderful dispensation; I admire it—at a distance!”
“But you said you’d marry yourself,” Will objected, “if you met the
right person; and, to tell you the truth, Florian, I fancied you’d been
rather markedly attentive to Rue for the last few weeks or so.”
Florian stroked a smooth small chin with five meditative fingers.
“That’s _quite_ another matter,” he answered, in a self-satisfied tone.
“Circumstances, it has been well remarked by an anonymous thinker, alter
cases. If an Oriental potentate in all his glory were to order me to
flop down on my marrow-bones before him and kiss his imperial foot as an
act of pure homage, I should take my proud stand as a British subject,
and promptly decline so degrading a ceremony. But if he offered me a
thousand pounds down to comply with his wishes, I would give the polite
request my most earnest consideration. If he made it ten thousand, I
would almost certainly accede; and if he went to half-a-million, which
is a fortune for life, well, no gentleman on earth could dream of
disputing the question any further with him. Just so, I say, with
marriage. If a lady desires me, without due cause assigned, to become
her abject slave, and serve her alone for a lifetime, I will politely
but firmly answer, ‘No, thank you.’ If she confers upon me,
incidentally, a modest competence, I shall perpend for a moment, and
murmur, ‘Well, possibly.’ But if she renders me independent and
comfortable for life, with a chance of surrounding myself with books,
pictures, music, without a moment’s hesitation I shall answer, ‘Like a
bird,’ to her. Slavery, in short, though in itself disagreeable, may be
mitigated or altogether outweighed by concomitant advantages.”
“Florian,” Will said, earnestly, “I don’t know what you mean. You speak
a foreign language to me. If I felt like that, I could never bring
myself to marry any woman. If I married at all, I must do it for the
sake of the girl I loved—and to make her happy.”
Florian gazed at him compassionately. “Quixotic,” he answered low,
shaking his sculpturesque head once or twice with a face of solemn
warning. “Quixotic, exceedingly! The pure lemming instinct; they _will_
rush into it! It’s the moth and the candle again: dazzle, buzz, and
flutter,—and _pom! pom! pom!_—in a second, you’re caught, and sizzled
hot in the flame, and reduced to ashes. That’s how it’ll be with you, my
dear fellow: you’ll go back to Meran and, by Jingo, to-morrow, you’ll go
straight up the hill, and ask the cow-girl to marry you.”
“I think I will,” the poet answered, taking up his candlestick with a
sigh to leave the room. “I think I will, Florian. I’ll fight it out to
the bitter end, sloppy slavey and all, on your threatened south side, in
those dingy lodgings.” And he took himself off with a hurried nod to his
bland companion.
Florian rose, and closed the door behind the poet softly. He had played
his cards well, remarkably well, that evening. If he wanted to drive
Will into proposing to Linnet, he had gone the right way to effect his
object. “And I,” he thought to himself with a contented smile, “will
stand a fair chance with Rue, without fear of a rival, when once he’s
gone off and got well married to his cow-girl. It’ll be interesting to
ask them to a nice little dinner, from their Surrey side garret, at our
snug small den in Park Lane or South Kensington. Park Lane’s the most
fashionable, but South Kensington’s the pleasantest:
In Cromwell Road did Florian Wood,
A stately pleasure dome decree.
Such a palace of art as it will be, too! I can see it now, in my mind’s
eye, Horatio!—Botticellis, Della Robbias, Elzevirs, Stradivariuses!
William Morris on the floor! Lewis Day on the ceiling! It rises like an
exhalation, all beautiful to behold! Such things might I do—with Rue’s
seven hundred thousand!”
CHAPTER XXI
FORTUNE’S WHEEL
It was with no little trepidation that Will mounted the Küchelberg on
the morning after his return to Meran from the Dolomites. Would Linnet
be there, he wondered, or would he somehow miss her? He didn’t know why,
but a certain vague foreboding of possible evil possessed his soul. He
was dimly conscious to himself of danger ahead. He couldn’t feel
reassured till he stood once more face to face with Linnet.
When he arrived at the appointed place, however, by the Station of the
Cross which represented the Comforting of the Daughters of Jerusalem, a
cold shudder of alarm came over him suddenly. No Linnet there! Not a
sign of her to be seen! And hitherto she had always kept her tryst
before him. He took out his watch and looked. Ha, a moment’s respite! In
his eagerness, he had arrived five minutes early. But Linnet was
usually, even so, five minutes ahead of him. He couldn’t make it out;
this was ominous, very!
With heart standing still, he waited a quarter of an
hour—half-an-hour—three-quarters. And still no Linnet came!—And still
he watched eagerly. He paced up and down, looking again and again at his
watch with impatience. Could she have mistaken the place? Yet he told
her plain enough! On the bare chance of some error, he would try the
other stations. He went to them all, one by one, from the Crown of
Thorns to the Calvary. The same luck still! No Linnet at any of them!
Then he mounted the great boss of ice-worn rock with the bench on its
top, that commands far and wide the whole expanse of the Küchelberg.
Gazing down on every side upon the long, low hog’s back, he saw nobody
all around save the women in the fields, watching their cows at pasture,
and the men with the carts urging overtasked oxen to drag too heavy a
load up the cobble-paved hill-track.
Thoroughly alarmed by this time, and uncertain how to act, Will
determined to take a very bold measure. He descended the hill once more,
and, passing under the archway of the old town gate, and through the
narrow streets, and past the high-towered parish church, he made his way
straight to Andreas Hausberger’s inn in the street that is called Unter
den Lauben. At the doorway, Franz Lindner, all on fire, was standing.
Wrath smouldered in his face; his hat was cocked fiercely; his feather,
turned Robblerwise, looked angrier, more defiant, more aggressive than
ever. But to Will’s immense surprise, the village champion, instead of
scowling challenge at him, or receding under the arch, stepped forward
with outstretched palm to meet him. He grasped Will’s hand hard. His
pressure struck some note of a common misfortune.
“You’ve come to look for Linnet?” he said, holding his head very
haughtily. “She wasn’t on the hill? She’d promised to meet you there?
Well, we’re both in the same box, it seems. He’s done two of us at once.
This is indeed a dirty trick Andreas Hausberger has played upon us!”
“What do you mean?” Will cried, aghast, clapping his hand to his head.
“Where’s Linnet? I want to see her.”
“You won’t see her ever again as Lina Telser, that’s sure,” the Robbler
answered aloud, with an indignant gesture. His wrath against Andreas had
wholly swallowed up all memory of his little quarrel on the hills with
Will Deverill. It was common cause now. Andreas had outwitted both of
them.
“You can’t mean to tell me——” Will cried, drawing back in horror.
Franz took him up sharply. “Yes; I do mean to tell you just what I say,”
he answered, knitting his brows. “Andreas Hausberger has gone off with
her . . . to St Valentin . . . to marry her.”
It was a bolt from the blue—an unforeseen thunder-stroke. Will raised
his hat from his brow, and held his hand on his stunned and astonished
forehead. “To marry her!” he repeated, half-dazed at the bare thought.
“Andreas Hausberger to marry her!—to marry Linnet! Oh no; it can’t be
true; you never can mean it!”
Franz stared at him doggedly. “He gave me the slip on Wednesday
morning,” he answered, with a resounding German oath. “He went off quite
secretly. May the Evil One requite him! He knew if he told me beforehand
I’d have planted my good knife to the handle in his heart. So he said
never a word, but went off unexpectedly, with Linnet and Philippina,
leaving the rest of us here stranded, but cancelling all engagements for
the next three evenings. The white-livered cur! He’ll never dare to come
back again! He knows if I meet him now—it’ll be _this_ in his black
heart!” And Franz tapped significantly the short hunting knife that
stuck out from his leather belt in true _jäger_ fashion.
“And you haven’t followed him?” Will exclaimed, taken aback at the man’s
inaction. “You know all this, and you haven’t gone after him to prevent
the wedding!” In an emergency like the present one, with Linnet’s
happiness at stake, he was only too ready to accept as an ally even the
village bully.
Franz shrugged his broad shoulders. “How could I?” he asked, helplessly.
“Have I money at command? Have I wealth like the _wirth_, to pay my fare
all the way from Meran to Jenbach?”
Will drew back with a deep sigh. He had never thought of that
difficulty. It’s so natural to us all to have money in our pockets, or
at least at our command, for any great emergency, that we seldom realise
how insuperable a barrier a bare hundred miles may often seem to men of
other classes. It was as impossible for Franz Lindner to get from Meran
to St Valentin at a day’s notice as for most of us to buy up the house
of Rothschild.
“Come with me!” Will cried, starting up. “The man has cheated us vilely.
Come with me to St Valentin, Herr Franz—forget our differences—and
before he has time to get through with the legal formalities, help me,
help me, to prevent this nefarious wedding!”
“It’s too late to prevent it now!” Franz answered, shaking his head,
with a settled gloom on his countenance. “It’s all over by this. She’s
his wife already. They were married on Friday.”
At those words Will felt his heart stand still within him. He gasped for
breath. He steadied himself mechanically. Never till that moment had he
known how much he loved the Tyrolese singer-girl, and now the blow had
come, he couldn’t even believe it. “Married!” he faltered out in a
broken voice; “what, married already! Linnet married to that man! Oh,
impossible! Impossible!”
“But it’s _true_, all the same,” Franz answered sturdily. “Philippina
was there, and she saw them married. She came back last night to collect
their things and pack up for Italy. She’s to meet them to-morrow by the
mid-day train, at a place called Verona.”
“But how did he do it in the time?” Will exclaimed still incredulous,
and clinging still to the last straw with a drowning man’s instinct.
“Your Austrian law has so many formalities. Perhaps it’s a story the man
has made up on purpose to deceive us. He may have told Philippina, and
she may be in league with him.”
Franz shook his head with gloomy determination. “No, no,” he said; “it
won’t do; don’t flatter your soul with that; there’s no doubt at all in
the world about it. He’s as deep as a well, and as false as a fox, and
he’d laid all his plans very cunningly beforehand. He made the
arrangements and swore to the Civil Act without consulting Linnet. He
and the priest were in league, and the priest helped him out with it. At
the very last moment, Andreas carried her off, and before she could say
nay, he went straight through and married her.”
Will’s brain reeled round; his mind seemed to fail him. The sense of his
loss, his irreparable loss, deadened for the moment every other feeling.
Linnet gone from him for ever! Linnet married to somebody else!—and
that somebody else so cold, so calculating, so cruel a man as Andreas