Linnet: A Romance
none of the affected airs and graces of the everyday great singer; she
sang because she must; at heart she was, as always, the mountain-bred
peasant-girl.
Will Deverill saw but little of her. ’Twas better so, he knew, and
kinder so for Linnet. Once or twice that year, however, he supped after
the theatre in the Strand with “the Hausbergers,” as he had learned to
call them. On all these occasions, he noticed, Andreas watched his wife
close. “_One_ glass of champagne, Linnet; you remember, last time, when
you dined at the Mowbrays’, you took _two_ glasses, and you sang next
day very much less well for it”; or else—“If I were you, Linnet, I
wouldn’t touch that lobster. It disagreed with you once, and I noticed
in the evening one or two of your high notes were decidedly not so clear
or so sharp as usual.”
“But, Andreas,” Linnet answered, on one such occasion, “I’m sure it
doesn’t hurt me. I _must_ take _something_. I’ve hardly eaten a single
mouthful yet, and to-night I’m so hungry.”
“It does you no harm to be hungry,” Andreas answered, philosophically.
“Nobody ever reproached himself afterwards for having eaten too little.
A taste of something to eat, after playing a trying part like Melinda,
before you go to bed, helps you to sleep sound, and keeps you well and
healthy; but a square meal at this hour can’t be good for anybody. It
interferes with rest; and what interferes with rest, tells, of course,
upon the voice—which is very serious. You may have a bit of that
sweetbread, if you like—no; that’s a great deal too much; half that
quantity, if you please, Mr Florian. Pull your woollen thing over your
shoulder, so, Linnet; there’s a draught from that door! I can’t have you
getting as hoarse as a frog to-night, with the Prince and Princess
coming to hear you on Monday!”
“Why on earth does she stand it?” Florian asked of Will afterwards, as
they walked home together down the unpeopled Strand. “I can’t make it
out. There she’s earning Heaven only knows how much a night, and filling
the treasury; yet she allows this fellow to bully her and badger her
like this; to dictate to her how much she’s to eat and to drink; to make
her whole life one perpetual torment to her. Why doesn’t she rise and
strike for freedom, I wonder? He’d have to come to terms; she’s too
useful to him, you see, for him to risk a quarrel with her.”
“She’s too good—that’s where it is,” Will responded, with a tinge of
stifled sadness in his voice; “and, besides, she doesn’t care for him.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Florian answered, airily. “How could she,
indeed!—a mass of selfishness like him!—so mean, so sordid! But that
only makes it all the stranger she should ever put up with it. If she
doesn’t love him, why on earth does she permit him to dictate to her as
he does—to order her and domineer over her?”
“Ah, that’s how it looks to you,” Will answered, with a sigh; “but
Linnet—well, Linnet sees things otherwise. You must remember, Florian,
above all things, she’s a Catholic. She doesn’t _love_ that man, but
she’s entered with him into the sacrament of marriage. To her, it has
all a religious significance. The less she loves Andreas, the more does
she feel she must honour and obey him, and be a good true wife to him.
If she loved him, she might perhaps sometimes rebel a little; because
she doesn’t love him, she has become a mere slave to do his bidding.”
“I suppose that’s it,” Florian answered, swinging his stick in his hand,
and stepping along gingerly. “_Drôle de croyance_, isn’t it? Still, I
call it disgraceful. An exquisite creature like that—a
divinely-inspired singer, a supply-moulded form of Hellenic sculpture,
whom the Gods above have given us as a precious gift for the common
delight and the common enjoyment—to be thwarted and pulled up short at
every twist and turn—and by whom, I’d like to know? Why, by a Tyrolese
innkeeper—a mere village host—who arrogates to himself the right of
monopolising what Heaven meant for us all—_Ach!_ I call it detestable,
just simply detestable. He hardly allows her enough to eat and drink.
She might just as well be a _sennerin_ on her hillside again, for any
pleasure or delight she gets out of her success, tied and hampered as
she is with this creature Hausberger.”
“That’s quite true,” Will replied. “She was happier in the Zillerthal.
She has money, and fine dresses, and jewellery, and applause; but, for
any good they can do her, she might as well be without them. Hausberger
treats her as a mere machine for making money for him. He’s careful to
see the machine works thoroughly well, and doesn’t get out of
order—absurdly careful, in fact, for he’s by nature over-cautious; but
as for allowing her to enjoy anything of what she earns herself, in any
reasonable way—why, it never even occurs to him.”
“Do you think he’s unkind to her?” Florian asked, somewhat carelessly.
“I mean, do you think he ill-treats her—keeps her short, and so forth?”
“He doesn’t actively ill-treat her, I’m sure,” Will answered with
confidence; “he has far too great a sense of the value of her health to
do anything to injure it. And I don’t suppose he even keeps her actually
short; she’s always beautifully dressed, of course—that’s part of the
advertisement; and he takes her about as much as he can, without risk to
her voice, and lavishes a certain sort of wooden care upon her. But I
don’t think he ever regards her as a human being at all; he regards her
as a delicate musical instrument in which he has invested money, and out
of which, during a given number of years, he has to recoup himself and
make his fortune. As to sympathy between them, why, naturally, that’s
quite out of the question; he’s a harsh, stern man who hardly knows how
to be kind, I should say, to anyone.”
Florian brought down his stick on the pavement with a bang. “It’s
atrocious,” he said, snorting; “I declare, quite atrocious. Here’s this
exquisite creature—a banquet fit for the Gods—with her superb voice
and her queenly beauty; a creature almost too ethereal for ordinary
humanity to touch or handle; one that should be reserved by common
consent for the delectation of the very pink and pick of the
species”—and he drew himself up to his five feet nothing with a full
consciousness of his own claim to be duly enrolled in that select
category—“here’s this exquisite creature, who should be held in trust,
as it were, for the noblest and truest and best of our kind—a
Koh-i-noor among women—flung away upon a solid, stolid, three-per-cent.
investing, money-grubbing, German-speaking beerhouse-keeper. Pah! It
makes me sick! This Danae to a Satyr! How a Greek would have writhed at
it!”
“And yet I thought,” Will murmured, reflectively, with a quiet little
smile, “you considered her a cow-girl, and looked upon her as just fit
for gentlemen to play skittles with!”
It took a great deal to abash Florian. He paused for a second, then he
answered with warmth, “Now, there, Deverill! that’s just like you. You
want me to be consistent! But the philosophic mind, as Herbert Spencer
remarks, is always open to modification by circumstances. Consistency is
the virtue of the Philistine intellect; it means, inability to march
abreast with events, to readjust one’s ideas, one’s sympathies, one’s
sentiments, to the ever-changing face of circumambient nature. When we
saw Linnet first in the Tyrol, long ago, why, the girl was a cow-girl; a
cow-girl she was, and a cow-girl I called her. I frankly recognised the
facts of life as I found them—though I saw even then, with a voice like
that, there was no perilous pinnacle of name or fame to which fate might
not summon her. Now that she reappears in London once more, a flaming
meteor of song, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, a flashing diamond of
the purest water, I recognise equally the altered facts. I allow that
training, education, travel, the society of cultivated men and women,
have practically made a brand-new Linnet of her. It’s that brand-new
Linnet I admire and adore—that queen of the stage, not the Tyrolese
cow-girl.”
Will turned sharp down Craven Street “And I,” he said, with a Parthian
shot, “I admire and adore the real woman herself—the same Linnet still
that we knew in the Zillerthal.”
Meanwhile, Andreas Hausberger, lighting a big cigar, had taken his wife
down to a cab outside the supper-room.
“O Andreas!” Linnet cried, in German, “you’ve called a hansom. I can’t
bear those things, you know. I wanted a four-wheeler.”
Andreas looked at her fixedly. “Get in!” he said, with curt decision.
“Don’t stand and talk like that out here in the cold street, opening
your throat in this foggy air after those over-heated rooms. It’s simply
ridiculous. And mind you don’t knock your dress against that muddy
wheel! Pick it up, I say! pick it up! You _are_ so careless!”
“But, Andreas!” Linnet exclaimed, in an imploring tone, “I hate these
hansoms so. Whenever I go in one, the horse invariably either kicks or
jibs. I wish, just this once, you’d let me have a four-wheeler.”
She spoke almost coaxingly. Andreas turned to her with an angry German
oath. “Didn’t I tell you to get in at once?” he cried. “Pull that thing
over your shoulder. Don’t stand here chattering and catching cold all
night. Jump in when I bid you. A pretty sort of thing, indeed, if you’re
going to stop and discuss in a dress like that on an English evening
upon these muddy pavements!” He helped her up the step, guarding her
skirt with one hand, and jumped after her sulkily. “Avenue Road, St
John’s Wood!” he called out through the flap to the attentive cabman.
“Half-past twelve! Ach, _donner-wetter_! How late we’ve stayed! We’ll
have to pay double fare! Have you got your purse with you?”
“Yes,” Linnet half sobbed out; “but I’ve hardly any money—not enough
for the cab in it. You gave me half-a-sovereign, you know, and I paid
for those gloves, and got a new bottle of that mixture at the
chemist’s.”
“Only three shillings left!” Andreas exclaimed, opening the purse, and
screwing his mouth up curiously. “Only three shillings left, out of a
whole half-sovereign! So! London’s the dearest town for everything on
earth I ever lived in. Only three shillings left! Well, that’s enough
for the cab; it’s a one-and-sixpenny fare, and I rather think they
double it at midnight.”
“Mayn’t I have sixpence over for _trinkgeld_?” Linnet ventured to
inquire, in a timid voice. “When they go so far at this time of night,
they always expect something.”
“No; certainly not,” Andreas answered; “why on earth should you give it
to them? If you or I expect something, do other people make that any
reason for giving it us? Three shillings is the legal fare; if he
doesn’t like that—there’s no compulsion—he needn’t be a cabman.
Three-and-sixpence indeed! why you talk as if it was water!
Three-and-sixpence is a lot to spend on oneself in a single evening.”
“I should have thought so at St Valentin,” Linnet answered, softly; “but
I earn so much, now. You must save a great deal, Andreas.”
“And I spent a great deal in getting you trained and educated,” Andreas
retorted with a sneer. “But that’s all forgotten. You never think about
_that_. You talk as though it was you yourself by your unaided skill who
earned all the money. How could you ever have earned it, I should like
to know, if I hadn’t put you in the way of getting a thorough musical
training? You were a _sennerin_ when I married you—and now you’re a
lady, Signora. Besides, there’s your dress; remember, that swallows up a
good third of what we earn. I say _we_ advisedly, for the capital
invested earns its share of the total just as truly as you do.”
“But, Andreas, I only want sixpence,” Linnet pleaded, earnestly. “For
the poor cold cabman! I’m sure I don’t spend much—not compared with