Linnet: A Romance
Signora Carlotta Casalmonte she calls herself. But Papadopoli’s the man;
you should come, Mr Deverill; my friend Mr Florian has secured us a box;
I dine at Mrs Palmer’s, and we all go together to the Harmony
afterwards.”
“I should like to go,” Will replied with truth; for he hated to leave
Rue undefended in that impostor’s clutches; “but, unfortunately, I’ve
invited my sister and her husband to dine with me to-night at my rooms
in Craven Street.”
“Well, wire to them at once to come on and dine here instead,” Rue
suggested, with American expansiveness; “and then we can all go in a
party together—the more the merrier.”
Will thought not badly of this idea; it was a capital compromise: the
more so as he had asked nobody else to meet the Sartorises, and a family
_tête-à-tête_ with Maud and Arthur wasn’t greatly to his liking. “I’ll
do it,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “if they’re at home and
will answer me.”
Rue sent out a servant to the nearest office with the telegram at once;
and, in due time, an answer arrived by return that Arthur and Maud would
be happy to accept Mrs Palmer’s very kind invitation for this evening.
It was most properly worded; Maud was nothing if not proper. Her husband
had now been appointed incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone; and her
dignity had received an immense accession. Indeed, she debated for ten
minutes with dear Arthur whether it was really quite right for them to
go at all on such hasty notice; and she was annoyed that Will, after
inviting her himself, should have ventured to put her off with a
vicarious dinner-party. But she went all the same, partly because she
thought it would be such a good thing for Will, “and for our own dear
boys, Arthur, if Will were to marry that rich bourgeoise American,” and
partly because she remembered it would give her such an excellent
opportunity of displaying her pretty new turquoise-blue dinner-dress
among the best company, in a box at the Harmony. Besides, a first night
is a thing never to be despised by the wise man or woman; it looks so
well to see next day in the Society papers, “Mrs Palmer’s box contained,
amongst others, Mr Florian Wood, Mr W. Deverill, his sister, Mrs
Sartoris, and her husband, the incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone.”
So, at half-past seven, Maud Sartoris sailed in, torquoise-blue and all,
and, holding out her hand with a forgiving smile, murmured gushingly to
her hostess, “We thought it _so_ friendly of you, dear Mrs Palmer, to
invite us like that at a moment’s notice, as soon as you knew we were
engaged to Will, and that Will couldn’t possibly go unless he took us
with him! We want to see this new piece at the Harmony so much; a first
night to us quiet clerical folks, you know, is _always_ such a treat.
We’re _immensely_ obliged to you.”
Dinner went off well, as it usually did where Florian was of the party.
To give Florian his due, he bubbled and sparkled, like the Apollinaris
spring, with unfailing effervescence. That evening, too, he was in
specially fine form; it amused him to hear Mr Joaquin Holmes discourse
with an air of profound conviction on his own prophetic art, and then
watch him glancing across the table under his long dark eyelashes to see
between whiles how Florian took it. The follies and foibles of mankind
were nuts to Florian. It gave the epicurean philosopher a calm sense of
pleasure in his own superiority to see Rue and Arthur Sartoris drinking
in open-mouthed the mysterious hints and self-glorificatory nonsense of
the man whom he knew by his own confession to be a cheat and a humbug.
Their eyes seldom met; Joaquin Holmes avoided such disconcerting
experiences; but whenever they did, Florian’s were brimful of suppressed
amusement, while the Seer’s had a furtive hang-dog air as of one who at
once would deprecate exposure and beseech indulgence.
After dinner, the Seer kept them laughing so long at his admirable
stories of the Far West of his childhood (which Arthur Sartoris received
with the conventional “Ah really, now, Mr Holmes!” of forced clerical
disapprobation) that they were barely in time for the beginning of the
opera. As they entered, the tenor held possession of the stage. Will
didn’t think so much of him; Florian, his head on one side in a critical
attitude, observed oracularly, at the end of his first song, that the
Papadopoli was perhaps not wholly without capabilities. That’s the sort
of criticism that Florian loved best; it enables a man to hedge in
accordance with the event. If the fellow turns out well in the near
future, you can say you declared from the very first he had
capabilities; if the public doesn’t catch on, you can remark with
justice that he hasn’t developed what little promise he once showed, and
that from the beginning you never felt inclined to say much for him.
Presently, from the rear of the stage, down the mimic rocks that formed
the background of the scenery, a beautiful woman, entering almost
unobserved, sprang lightly from boulder to boulder of the torrent bed,
with the true elastic step of a mountain-bred maiden. She had a fine
ripe figure, very lithe and vigorous-looking; her features were full,
but extremely regular; her mouth, though large and somewhat rich in the
lips, was yet rosy and attractive. Eyes full of fire, and a rounded
throat, with a waxy softness of outline that recalled a nightingale’s,
gave point to her beauty. She was exquisitely dressed in a pale cream
bodice, with what passes on the stage for a peasant kirtle, and round
her rich brown neck she wore a drooping circlet of half-barbaric-looking
lance-like red coral pendants. Before she opened her mouth, her mere
form and grace of movement took the house by surprise. A little storm of
applause burst spontaneous at once from stalls, boxes, and gallery. The
singer paused, and curtsied. She looked lovelier still as she flushed up
with excitement. Every eye in the house was instinctively fixed upon
her.
Will had been gazing round the boxes as the actress entered, to see what
friends of his they might contain, and to nod recognition. The burst of
applause recalled him suddenly to what was passing on the stage. He
looked round and stared at her. For a moment he saw only a very
beautiful girl, in the prime of her days, gracefully clad for her part,
and most supple in her movements. At the self-same instant, before he
had time to note more, the singer opened her mouth, and began to pour
forth on his ear lavish floods of liquid music. Will started with
surprise; in a flash of recognition, voice and face came back to him. He
seized Florian by the arm. “Great God!” he cried, “it’s Linnet!”
Florian struck a little attitude. “Oh, unexpected felicity! Oh, great
gain!” he murmured, in his supremest manner. “You’re right! So it is! A
most undoubted Linnet!”
And Linnet it was; dressed in the impossible peasant costume of
theatrical fancy; grown fuller and more beautiful about the neck and
throat; with her delicate voice highly trained and developed by all that
Italian or Bavarian masters could suggest to improve it; but Linnet
still for all that—the same beautiful, simple, sweet Linnet as ever.
Joaquin Holmes glanced at the programme. “And this,” he murmured low,
“is Signora Carlotta Casalmonte that I spoke about.”
Florian’s eyes opened wide. “Why, of course!” he exclaimed with a start.
“I wonder we didn’t see it. It’s a mere translation:
Casalmonte—Hausberger: Carlotta—Carolina—Lina—Linnet; there you have
it!” And he turned, self-applausive of his own cleverness, to Rue, who
sat beside him.
As for Rue, her first feeling was a sudden flush of pain; so this girl
had come back to keep Will still apart from her! One moment later that
feeling gave place with lightning speed to another; would he care for
this peasant woman so much, and regret her so deeply, if he saw her here
in England, another man’s wife, and an actress on the stage, dressed up
in all the vulgar tinsel gew-gaws, surrounded by all the sordid
disenchanting realities of theatrical existence?
But Will himself knew two things, and two things alone. That was Linnet
who stood singing there—and she wore the necklet he had sent her from
Innsbruck.
CHAPTER XXIX
FROM LINNET’S STANDPOINT
Yes; it was Linnet indeed! The natural chances of Will’s profession had
thrown them together almost inevitably on the very first night of her
appearance in London.
Linnet had looked forward to that night; she had always expected it.
During those three long years that had passed since they parted, she had
never yet ceased to hope and believe that Andreas would some day take
her to England. And if to England, then to London, and Will Deverill.
But much had happened meanwhile. She was the self-same Linnet still, in
heart and in soul, yet, oh! how greatly changed in externals of every
sort. Those three years and a half had made a new woman of her in art,
in knowledge, in culture, in intellect. She had left the Tyrol a mere
ignorant peasant-girl; she came to London now an educated lady, an
accomplished vocalist, a powerful actress, a finished woman of society.
And it was Will Deverill who had first put into her head and heart the
idea and the desire of attaining such perfect mastery in her chosen
vocation. The capacity, the potentiality, the impulse, the instinct,
were all there beforehand; no polish on earth can ever possibly turn a
common stone into a gem of the first water: the beauty of colour, the
delicacy of grain must be inherent from the outset, only waiting for the
art of the skilful lapidary to bring them visibly out and make them
publicly manifest. So Linnet had been a lady in fibre from the very
first, inheriting the profound Tyrolese capacity for artistic
receptiveness and artistic effort; everything that was beautiful in
external Nature or human handicraft spoke straight to her heart with an
immediate message—spoke so clear that Linnet could not choose but
listen. Still, it was Will Deverill’s words and Will Deverill’s example
that first set her soul upon the true path of development. It was he who
had read her Goethe’s _Faust_ on the Küchelberg; it was he who had
explained to her the rude Romanesque designs on the portal of the
Rittersaal. She had treasured up those first lessons in her inmost
heart: they were the key that unlocked for her the front door of
culture.
Andreas Hausberger, for his part, could never have taught her so. He had
taken her straight from Meran to Verona and Milan. But his soul was
bounded by the one idea of music. Even in the first poignant sorrow of
that hateful honeymoon, however, Linnet had found time to gaze in wonder
at the great amphitheatre, still haunted by the spectral form of the
legendary Dietrich; to cry like a child over the narrow tomb where
Juliet never lay; to tread with silent awe the vast aisles and solemn
crypt of San Zeno Maggiore. At Milan, they loitered long; Andreas set
her to work at once under a famous local teacher, and took her often in
the evening to hear celebrated singers on the stage of La Scala. Such
elements in an artistic education he thoroughly understood, but it never
would have occurred to his mind as any part of a soprano’s training to
make her examine the Luinis and Borgognones of the Brera, or do homage
before the exquisite Botticellis and Peruginos of the Museo
Poldi-Pezzoli. To the _Wirth_ of St Valentin such excursions into the
sister arts would have seemed mere waste of valuable time, for Andreas
regarded music as a branch of trade, and had not that higher wisdom
which understands instinctively how every form of art reflects its
influence indirectly on the musician’s mind and the musician’s
inspiration. That wisdom Linnet possessed, and Andreas, after a few