Linnet: A Romance
suitor. He gazed around the room—that little palace of art he had
decorated with such care for his soul to dwell in. “Upon my word, Rue,”
he murmured at last, after some desultory talk, glancing around him
complacently, “I’m proud of this place; I never knew before what a
decorator I was. It’s simply charming.” He gazed at her fixedly. “It’s
the sweetest home in all London,” he went on in a rapt voice, “and it’s
inhabited by the sweetest and brightest creature in the whole of
Christendom. I sometimes think, Rue, as I gaze round this house, how
happy I should be—if I too lived in it.”
For a moment, Rue stared at him without quite understanding what he
meant to convey by this singular intimation. Then all at once it flashed
across her. In spite of her distress, a smile stole over her face. She
held out her hand frankly. “Good night, Florian,” she said, in a very
decided tone. “Let me urge upon you to be content with your chambers in
Pimlico. You’re a delightful and always most amusing friend; I hope
you’re not going to make your friendship impossible for me. I like you
very much, in your own sort of way; but if ever you re-open that subject
again, . . . I’m afraid I could give you no further opportunity of
admiring your own handicraft in this pretty little house of mine. That’s
why I say good-night to you now so plainly. It’s best to be plain—best
to understand one another, once for all, and for ever.”
Two minutes later, a dejected creature named Florian Wood found himself
walking disconsolate, with his umbrella up, on the sloppy wet flags of
ill-lighted Sloane Street. He had sustained a loss of seven hundred
thousand pounds on a turn of fortune’s wheel, at an inauspicious moment.
And Rue, with her face in her hands by the fire, was saying to herself
with many tears and sighs that, Linnet or no Linnet, she never would and
never could love anyone in the world except that dear Will Deverill.
CHAPTER XXVI
A WOMAN’S HEART
The papers next morning, with one accord, were almost unanimous in their
praise of _Honeysuckle_. Will’s operetta didn’t set the Thames on fire,
to be sure—a first work seldom does—but it secured such an amount of
modest success as decided him to change his plans largely for the
future. It was certain, now, that he might take himself seriously as a
musical purveyor. So he began to drop off to some extent from the hack
work of journalism, and devote his energies in earnest to his new task
in life as a playwright and composer. Rue had nothing to pay for her
guarantee of _Honeysuckle_; on the contrary, Will received a very solid
sum for his royalties on the run through the remainder of that season.
He never knew, indeed, how much he had been indebted to the pretty
American’s not wholly disinterested act of kindness; for Mr Blades kept
his word; and, in spite of what he said, Rue’s timely intervention had
decided him not a little in accepting that first piece by an unknown
author.
Thus, during the next few years, as things turned out, Will’s position
and prospects improved very rapidly. He was regarded as one of our most
rising composers; critics spoke of him as the sole representative and
restorer of the serious English poetical opera. Monetary troubles no
longer oppressed his soul; he had leisure to write—and to write, if he
would, the thing that pleased him. His position was secured—so much so,
indeed, that judicious mammas gave him frequent invitations to their
gayest At Homes and garden parties. But he successfully avoided all
snares so set for him. Many people expressed no little surprise that so
nice a young man—and a poet to boot—with a position like his, and such
excellent Principles, should refrain from marriage. Society expects that
every man will do his duty; it intends him to marry as soon as he has
means to relieve it becomingly of one among its many superfluous
daughters. But, in spite of Society, Will still remained single, and met
all the casual feelers of interested acquaintances as to the reasons
which induced him so to shirk his duty as a British citizen with a quiet
smile of self-contained resolution.
Rue came to London now for each succeeding season. Will was much at her
house, and a very real friendship existed between them. Busybodies
wondered, indeed, that those two young people, who were so thick
together, didn’t stop scandal’s mouth by marrying as they ought to do.
The busybodies could see no just cause or impediment why they should not
at once be joined together in holy matrimony. The young woman was rich;
the young man was a genius. She was “mad for him,” every one said, in
every one’s usual exaggerated phraseology; and as for him, though
perhaps he wasn’t quite so wildly in love, yet he liked her so well, and
was so often in her company, that it would surely be better to avoid
whispers at once by marrying her offhand, like the earl in the “Bab
Ballads,” “quite reg’lar, at St George’s!” The busybodies were surprised
he didn’t see it so himself; it really was almost somebody’s duty, they
thought, to suggest the idea to him. But perhaps Mrs Palmer’s money was
strictly tied up; in which case, of course—Society broke off short, and
shrugged its sapient shoulders.
To some extent, in fact, Will agreed with them himself. He almost
fancied he would have proposed to Rue—if he wasn’t so fond of her. As
he sat with her one evening by the drawing-room fire at Hans Place,
before the lights were turned on, during blind-man’s holiday, he said to
her suddenly, after a long, deep pause, “I daresay, Rue, you sometimes
wonder why it is I’ve never tried to ask you to marry me.”
Rue gave a little start of half-tremulous surprise. He could see how the
colour mounted fast to her cheek by the glow of the firelight. She gave
a faint gasp as she answered candidly, with American frankness, “Well,
to tell you the truth, Will, I’ve fancied once or twice you were just
going to do it.”
Will looked across at her kindly. She was very charming. “I won’t be
cruel enough, Rue,” he said, leaning forward to her like a brother, “to
ask you what answer you meant to give, if I’d done as you expected. I
hope you won’t think me conceited if I say I half believe I know it
already. And that’s just why I want to tell you now the reason that has
prevented me from ever asking you. If your nature were a little less
deep, and a little less womanly than it really is, I might have asked
you long ago. But, Rue, you know—I feel sure you know—how deeply I
loved that other woman. I love her still, and I won’t pretend to deny
it. I’ve waited and wondered whether in time her image might fade out of
my heart; but it never has faded. She’s another man’s wife, and probably
I shall never see her again; yet I love her as dearly and regret her as
much as I did on the day when I first heard she’d thrown herself away
for life upon Andreas Hausberger.”
“I’ve felt sure you did,” Rue answered, with downcast eyes. “_I’ve_ felt
it, Will—and for that very reason, I’ve wondered all the less you
didn’t ask me.”
Will looked across at her again. She was beautiful as she sat there with
the glow of the fire on her pensive features. “Dear Rue,” he said,
softly, “you and I are no mere children. We know our own minds. We’re
grown man and woman. We can venture to talk freely to one another of
these things, without the foolish, childish nonsense of false shame or
false blushes. In spite of Linnet, I’d have asked you long ago to be my
wife—if I hadn’t respected and admired you so deeply. But I feel you’re
not a woman who could ever put up with half a man’s heart, or half a
man’s confidence; and half my heart is all I could give you. I love
Linnet still, and I shall always love her. I never shall cease to feel
an undying regret that _I_ didn’t marry her, instead of that fellow
Hausberger. Now, there are women not a few I might still have asked to
marry me, in spite of that regret; but _you’re_ not one of them. I love
you better than I ever have loved anyone else on this earth—anyone
else, but Linnet; and, therefore, I don’t ask you to marry a man who
could give you a second place only in his affections.”
The tears stood dim in Rue’s swimming eyes. She looked at him steadily,
and let them trickle one by one down her cheeks, unheeded. “Dear Will,”
she answered him back, with equal frankness, “it was kind of you to
speak, and I’m glad you’ve spoken. It’ll make our relations all the
easier in future! I guessed how you felt; I guessed it all long ago; but
I’m glad, all the same, to have heard from your own lips the actual
facts of it. And, Will, you quite rightly interpret my feelings. I’m an
American at heart, and, you know, we Americans are very exacting in
matters of affection. Some savage strain of monopoly exists in us still.
I can’t help it. I acknowledge it. I won’t deny to you”—and she
stretched out her hand quite frankly, and let him hold it in his own for
a few brief moments—“I won’t deny that I’m very very fond indeed of
you. If you could have given me your whole heart, I would have accepted
it gratefully. I admired you with a deep admiration from the very first
day I ever met you. I loved you from the time we sat together on the
Lanser Kopf that afternoon at Innsbruck. I’m not ashamed to tell you
so—nay, rather, dear, I’m proud of it; for, Will, you’re a man any
woman might be proud to waste her love upon. But much as I love you,
much as I admire you, I never could accept you if you feel like that. As
an American born, with my monopolist instincts, I must have a whole man
to myself all alone—or I won’t have any of him.”
“I knew it,” Will answered, caressing her hand with his fingers, and
bending over it chivalrously. “And that’s why I never have ventured to
ask you. But I’ve loved you all the same, Rue—as one loves the woman
who stands best of all . . . save one . . . in one’s affections.”
Rue withdrew her hand gently. Her tears were falling faster. “Well,
now,” she said, with a quiet sigh, “we can be friends in future—all the
better, I hope, for this little explanation. I’m rich, of course, Will;
and a great many men, circumstanced as you were, would have been glad to
marry me for the sake of my money. I liked you all the more, I like you
the more to-day, in that _that_ has never counted for one moment with
you. If you’d been a mercenary man, you’d have dissembled and pretended;
you need never have let me see how much you loved that girl; or, if you
had, you might have led me to suppose you had gradually forgotten
her. . . . Dear friend”—and she turned to him once more with a sudden
burst of uncontrollable feeling—“we are man and woman, as you say, not
boy and girl; so why should I be ashamed to open my whole heart to you?
You’ve told me the truth, like a man; why shouldn’t I tell you the
truth, in return, like a woman? I will. I can’t help it. I have waited
and watched and thought often to myself, ‘In time, he must surely,
surely get over it. He must cease to love her; he can never really have
loved her so much as he imagines; he must turn at last to me, when he
forgets all about her.’ So I waited and watched, and, month after month,
I thought at last you must surely begin to forget her. But, month after
month, I have seen you loved her still; and while you loved her still,
. . . Will, Will, dear Will, I didn’t want you to ask me.”
Will seized her hand once more, and kissed it tenderly. “Oh, how good
you are!” he cried, in a very melting voice. “Rue, do you know, when you
talk like that, you make me love you!”
“But not better than _her_?” Rue murmured, softly.
Will couldn’t lie to her. “No; not better than her,” he answered slowly,
in a very low voice. “If it were otherwise, I’d have asked you this very
minute, dear sister.”