Linnet: A Romance
Rue rose and faced him. The firelight flickered red on her soft white
dress; he could see by its bright glow the tears still trickling slow
down those full round cheeks of hers. “After this, Will, I must go,” she
said. “Don’t come again to-morrow. Next week, you may call if you like,
some afternoon, casually; but for Heaven’s sake, please, don’t refer to
this interview. I have only one thing to say, and when I’ve said it, I
must run from you. Remember, I’m a woman; my pride is fighting hard
against my love to-night—and, if I let love win, I should for ever
despise myself. As long as you live, don’t speak to me of this matter
again, unless you speak to say, ‘Rue, Rue, I’ve forgotten her.’ If ever
that day comes—” and she flushed rosy red—“you have my answer already;
you know you can claim me.”
She moved over to the door, with hurried step and beating heart, hardly
able to trust herself. With a true sense of delicacy, Will abstained
from opening it. He stood on the hearth-rug, irresolute, and just
watched her depart; he felt, in the circumstances, that course was the
more respectful.
With her fingers on the handle, Rue paused, and looked round again. “I
wouldn’t have said so much, even now,” she faltered, “if it weren’t for
this—that I feel you’re the one man I’ve ever met in my life to whom
the question of my money was as dust in the balance. You speak the
truth, and I know I can trust you. If ever you can say to me, ‘I love
you better now, Rue, than I ever loved anyone,’ I am yours: then, take
me! But till that day comes, if come it ever does, let us only be
friends. Never speak to me again, for Heaven’s sake, never speak, as we
have spoken this evening.”
She opened the door and passed out, all tremulous. Will waited a moment,
and then, with a throbbing heart, went slowly down the stairs. As he did
so, something moist fell suddenly on his hand that grasped the
bannister. To his immense surprise, he found it was a tear from his own
eyelids—for he too was crying. Poet that he was, he felt more than
half-inclined, while he stood there, hesitating, to rush after her as
she went, and seize her in his strong arms, and cover her with warm
kisses that very minute. For a poet is a man even more than the rest of
us. But could he tell her with truth he had quite forgotten Linnet? Oh,
no, no, no; Linnet’s image on his heart remained graven, even then,
quite as deeply as ever. We men are built so.
CHAPTER XXVII
AULD LANG SYNE
A week or two later, one bright spring afternoon, Will was strolling by
himself down the sunny side of Bond Street. All the world was there—for
the world was in town—and the pavements were crowded. But Will moved
through the stream of well-dressed dawdlers, seeing and hearing little.
In the midst of all that idle throng, his head was full of melodies; he
was working up rhymes to ready-made tunes, undisturbed by the hubbub and
din of London. Of a sudden, somebody stopped and stood straight in front
of him. “Mr Deverill, I believe!” a tuneful voice said, brusquely.
Will’s eyes returned at once from heaven to earth, and saw standing
before them—a tall young man, of somewhat defiant aspect, dressed in
the black frock coat and shiny silk hat of Metropolitan respectability.
Will paused, and surveyed him. He was a good-looking young man, with
much swagger in his air, and a black moustache on his upper lip; but his
face seemed somehow strangely familiar to Will, while his voice stirred
at once some latent chord in the dim depths of his memory. But he wasn’t
one of Will’s fine London acquaintances—the poet saw that much at once
by the cheap pretentiousness of his coat and hat, the flaring blue of
his made-up silk tie, the obtrusive glitter of the false diamond pin
which adorned its centre. The stranger’s get-up, indeed, was redolent of
the music halls. Yet he was handsome for all that, with a certain
strange air of native distinction, not wholly concealed by the vulgar
tone of his costume and his solicitous jewellery. Will held out his hand
with that dubitative air which we all of us display in the first moment
of uncertainty towards half-recognised acquaintances.
“I see you have forgotten me, zen,” the stranger said, in very decent
English, drawing himself up with great dignity, and twirling his black
moustache airily between one thumb and forefinger. “It is long, to be
sure, since we met in ze Tyrol. And I have changed much since zen, no
doubt: I have mixed with ze world; I have grown what you call in English
cosmopolitan. But I see it comes back; I see you remember me now; my
voice recalls it to you.”
Will grasped his hand more cordially. “Yes, perfectly, when you speak,”
he said; “though you are very much changed indeed, as you say; but I see
you’re Franz Lindner.”
“Yes; I’m Mr Franz Lindner,” the stranger replied, half-imperceptibly
correcting him—for it was indeed the Robbler. Will scanned him from
head to foot, and took him in at a glance. He was a fiery young man
still, and his mien, as of old, was part fierce, part saucy. But, oh,
what a difference the change of dress had made in him! No conical hat,
no blackcock’s feather now, whether “turned” or otherwise. In his
Tyrolese costume, with his rifle in his hand, and his cartridges at his
side, Franz Lindner had looked and moved of yore a typical Alpine
_jäger_. But, in black frock-coat and shiny tall hat, strolling like a
civilised snob that he was down the flags of Bond Street, all the
romance and poetry had faded utterly out of him. The glamour was gone.
He looked and moved for all the world to-day like any other young man of
the baser mock-swell sort, dressed up in his Sunday best to lounge and
ogle and bandy vulgar chaff in Burlington Arcade with his predestined
companions.
“Why, what has brought you to London, then?” Will asked, much
astonished.
“Art, art,” the transfigured Robbler responded, offhand, with inimitable
swagger. “You must surely zen know my stage name, zough you don’t seem
to have heard me.” He pulled out a printed card, and handed it to Will
with a flourish. “I am ze Signor Francesco,” he continued, “all ze world
is talking about.” And he threw back his chin and cocked his head on one
side, looking, even as he spoke, more pretentious than ever.
“Oh, indeed!” Will answered with a bewildered little laugh. But it was
the non-committing “Oh, indeed!” of mere polite acquiescence.
Franz Lindner caught the tinge of implied non-recognition in the
Englishman’s voice, and hastened to add, as if parenthetically, “I
perform at ze Pavilion.”
“What, the London Pavilion at the top of the Hay market?” Will
exclaimed, beginning to realise.
Franz Lindner looked hurt. “I’ve seen _your_ name often enough,” he
said, asserting himself still more vigorously as Will seemed to know
less of him; “and I sought, as you were a pillar of ze profession
yourself, you would certainly have seen _mine_, if it were only on ze
posters. I’m advertised largely. All London rings wis me. Ze County
Council has even taken notice of me. I’m a public character! And I have
had ze intention more zan once of looking you up, as also Mr Florian.
But zere, here in London our time is so occupied! You and I, who are
public men, wis professional engagements—we are ever overtaxed; we know
not how to find ze leisure or ze space for ze claims of friendship.”
“Have you been long in London?” Will asked, turning down with him
towards Piccadilly.
“More zan two years now,” the Robbler answered briskly, lounging on at
his own pace, with a cane in his gloved hand, and staring hard, as he
passed, at every pretty girl he saw on foot or in the carriages. “After
I leave you at Meran, I worked my way slowly—singing, singing, ever
singing—by degrees to Paris. But Paris didn’t suit me; zere is too much
_blague_ zere; zey go in for buffoons; zey laugh at a man of modest
merit. I hate _blague_ myself. So zen I came on pretty soon to London.
At first I had to sing in common low music halls—sous side and zat; but
talent, talent is sure to make its way in ze end. I rose very quick, and
now—I am at ze head of my branch of ze profession.”
“You sing, of course?” Will interposed, restraining a smile at the
Robbler’s delicious self-satisfaction. The man himself was the very same
as ever, to be sure; but ’twas strange what a difference mere externals
had made in him!
“Yes; I sing, and sometimes, too, I play ze zither. But mostly, I sing.
It surprises me, indeed, you should not have heard of my singing.”
“And what’s the particular branch of which you’re the acknowledged
head?” Will asked, still amused at the Tyroler’s complacency.
Franz Lindner held his head very high in the air, and gave a twirl to
his cane, as he answered, with much importance, “My line is ze Mammoss
Continental Comique; ze serio-comic foreigner; zey call me Frenchy. I
sing ze well-known songs in broken English zat are in everybody’s
mous—‘Mossoo Robert is my name,’ or ‘Lay-ces-terre Squarre,’ or ‘Ze
leetle black dawg,’ or ‘Zat lohvely Matilda.’ I wonder you have not
heard of me. ‘Mossoo Robert’ is all ze talk of London. Frank Wilkins
writes songs especially for my voice. If you look in ze music shops, you
will see on ze covers, ‘Written expressly for Signor Francesco.’ Signor
Francesco—zat’s me!” And he tapped his breast, and swelled himself
visibly.
“I remember to have seen the name, I think,” Will answered, with a
slight internal shudder, well pleased, none the less, to give some tardy
salve to his companion’s wounded vanity. “I’m glad you’ve got on, and
delighted to find you have such kindly recollections of me.”
Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the
air very jauntily. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze
world. You mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before
he knew how Society is managed. I owe you no grudge. We were bose of us
younger. Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I
have transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”
“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler
had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. “And Hausberger
himself? What of him . . . and his wife? Have you ever knocked up
against them?”
The Robbler’s brow gathered; his hand clenched his cane hard. It was
clear civilisation and cosmopolitanism, however neatly veneered, hadn’t
made much serious change in his underlying nature. “Zat rascal!” he
exclaimed, bringing his stick down on the pavement with a noisy little
thud; “zat rogue; zat liar! If ever I _had_ come across him, it would be
bad for his head. Sousand devils, what a man! . . . Here, we’re close to
ze Cri; will you come and have a drink? We can talk zis over afterward.
I like to offer somesing to a friend new discovered.”
“It’s not much in my line,” Will answered, smiling; “but still, for old
times’ sake, I’ll go in and have a glass with you.” To say the truth, he
was so eager to find out what Franz might have to communicate that he
stretched a point for once, and broke through his otherwise invariable
rule never to drink anything anywhere except at meal times.
Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion
like one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll
you take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the
question in English was a very familiar one to him.
“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the
Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more
at his ease with the London barmaid.
“Two half porters and two small Scotch, miss,” the Robbler cried briskly
to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll find