Linnet: A Romance
Street, before submitting it to the opinion of the manager of the
Harmony.
Linnet came later. She had a two months’ engagement first to fulfil in
Paris, where Will read, with a little pang of regret, in the _Figaro_
how she had turned the heads and captured the hearts (if any) of ten
thousand _boulevardiers_. Her very innocence and simplicity at once
delighted and surprised the profoundly sophisticated Parisian mind. All
the world of the _foyer_ unanimously voted her _tout ce qu’il-y-a de
plus enfantin_. “She has afforded us,” said a famous lady-killer of the
Avenue Victor Hugo, “the rare pleasure of a persistent and unreasoning
refusal.” So all Paris was charmed, as all Paris always is at any new
sensation. An opera-singer insensible to the persuasiveness of diamonds
and the eloquence of bank-notes—all Paris shugged its shoulders in
incredulous astonishment. “_Incroyable!_” it muttered: “_mais enfin,
elle est jeune, cette petite—ça viendra!_”
So it was March before Linnet was in London once more. Andreas, ever
business-like, had preceded her by a week or two, to conclude the
needful arrangements with the people at the Harmony. By the time the
_prima donna_ herself arrived, everything was already well in train for
the rehearsals. Linnet had studied her part, indeed, in Paris
beforehand, till she knew every line, every word, every note of it. She
had never learnt anything so easily in her life before, though she would
hardly admit, even to herself, the true reason—because Will had written
it. They met at the Harmony the very next afternoon, to discuss the
details. Andreas was there, of course—he never left his wife’s side
when business was in question; he must protect her interests: erect,
inflexible, tall, powerful, big-built, with his resolute face and his
determined mien, he was a man whom no theatrical manager on earth could
afford to bully. He bargained hard with the Harmony for his wife’s
services in this new engagement; for, indeed, her late Parisian vogue
had put up her price another twenty per cent, or so; and now he stood
there, triumphant, self-conscious, jubilant, aware that he had done a
good stroke of business for himself, and ready to do battle again on his
wife’s behalf with all and sundry. So satisfied was he, indeed, with
their rising fortunes, that he had presented Linnet spontaneously with a
five-pound note, all pocket-money of her own to do as she liked with, on
their way to the theatre.
Linnet stood a little behind. Will grasped her hand eagerly. She took
his in return without the faintest pressure—for Our Dear Lady knew well
how wisely and circumspectly she meant to behave now towards him. The
circumstances were dangerous: so much the more, Beloved Frau, would she
strive to comport herself as becomes a good Catholic wife in the hour of
temptation.
“You like your part, Signora?” Will asked of her, half-playfully,
adopting her theatrical Italian style and title.
Linnet raised her big eyes. “I have never sung in anything I liked half
so well,” she answered, simply.
The company assembled by degrees, and the usual preliminary discussion
ensued forthwith as to parts, and cues, and costumes, and properties.
Will’s own ideas, conceived among the virgin snows and pure air of the
high Alps, were a trifle too ethereal and a trifle too virginal for that
practical manager. He modified them considerably. Various points had to
be talked over with various persons. In the midst of them all, Will was
surprised to feel of a sudden a sturdy gloved hand laid abruptly on his
shoulder, and a powerful though musical feminine voice exclaiming
volubly at his ear in very high German, “_Ach mein Gott!_ it’s Herr
Will! So we meet again in London. Herr Andreas told me you had written
this piece for Linnet; but one hardly knows you again, you’ve grown so
much older—and better dressed—and richer! And, Dear Frau! in the
Tyrol, you wore no beard and whiskers!”
Will turned in surprise. It was a minute, even so, before he quite
recognised the stalwart speaker. It was Philippina, still good-humoured
and buxom and garrulous as of old; but, oh, great heavens, how much
changed from the brown-faced _sennerin_ with the rough woollen petticoat
who had offered them milk, all frothy from the cow, in the stoneware mug
on the hillside at St Valentin! If Linnet was altered, Philippina was
transmogrified. Her jolly round face was surmounted incongruously by the
latest and airiest thing out in Parisian bonnets; her dress was the very
glass and mirror of fashion; her delicate gloves looked as dainty as
seven-and-a-halfs are ever likely to look upon feminine fingers.
Civilisation, indeed, had done its worst for Philippina: it had
transformed her outright from a simple and natural if somewhat
coarse-fibred cow-girl into the jolly, bouncing, distinctly vulgar type
of third-rate actress. With all the good-humoured coarseness of her
original nature, she now possessed in addition all the airs and graces,
all the coquettish affectations, all the noisy self-assertion of the
theatrical utility.
“Why, I didn’t know you were in England,” Will exclaimed, taken aback at
her unexpected salute, and surveying from head to foot with no very
pleased eye the fly-away peculiarities of her over-trimmed costume.
“Then you’ve taken to the stage!” He turned hastily to Linnet, and added
in English, which Philippina did not understand when he last met her,
“She isn’t surely going to play in this piece of mine, is she?”
“_So!_” Philippina answered, in a very Teutonic voice, indeed, but in
our native vernacular. “Ach, yes; I am going to play in it; Herr Andreas
has arranched all zat wis ze manager. You are surbrized to zee zat I
shall blay in your biece. But I haf blay pevore in many bieces in
Paris.”
Will glanced at Linnet, a mute glance of inquiry. He didn’t know why,
but Linnet’s eyes fell, and a blush spread quick over that clear brown
cheek of hers. It wasn’t the familiar blush he was accustomed to see
there; he noted at once some tinge of shame and personal humiliation in
the look that accompanied it. But she answered quickly, “Oh yes;
Philippina’s to play. My husband and Mr Wells have settled all about
it.”
“What part?” Will inquired, with a slight sense of sinking; for he
wasn’t over-well pleased to hear those dainty lines of his were to be
murdered by Philippina’s coarse guttural utterance.
“Ze Brincess Berylla,” Philippina replied, with glib promptitude and
great self-satisfaction. “It’s a very schmall part; bod I shall do my
best in it.”
Will gave a slight sigh of relief. The Princess Berylla would do at a
pinch. If she _must_ sing at all, it was well at least she should sing
in so minor a character. Though, to be sure, he had his misgivings how
his water-fairies’ song would sound on the stage when delivered with her
clumsy Teutonic pronunciation:
“They loved to dwell
In a pearly shell
And to deck their cell
With amber;
Or amid the caves
That the riplet laves
And the beryl paves
To clamber.
By the limpets’ home
And the vaulted dome
Where the star-fish roam
They’d linger;
In the mackerel’s jaw,
Or the lobster’s claw,
They’d push and withdraw
A finger.”
He trembled to think what sort of strange hash those thick lips of hers
would make of his lilting versification.
However, for the moment, and for Linnet’s sake, he said nothing against
it. A little later in the afternoon, he had five minutes with the _prima
donna_ alone in one of the passages. “Look here, Linnet,” he said
hurriedly with a beseeching glance, “_must_ we have Philippina?”
“There’s no _must_ at all in the matter, except the musts you make,”
Linnet answered, trembling. “If _you_ say she must go, Mr Wells will cut
her out, I suppose, to please you. Only——” and she hesitated.
“Only what?” Will cried, inquiringly.
“Only . . . I’m afraid Andreas wouldn’t like it.”
Her face flushed again. Will looked down at her and paused. A great many
thoughts ran through his head in a second. Linnet scanned the floor,
embarrassed. After awhile, Will spoke again in a very low tone. “I’d let
_anybody_ sing, Linnet,” he said, “with a voice like a frog’s, rather
than allow—well, any trouble to crop up between myself and your
husband.”
“Thank you,” Linnet answered simply. But she lifted her eyes and gave
him one grateful look that was more than full recompense.
“How did Philippina learn English?” Will asked once more, hardly daring
to press the subject.
“Oh, Andreas has always taken—well—a very great interest in her, you
know,” Linnet answered, with a faintly evasive air. “She went with us to
Italy. He kept her on when he paid off the rest of his troupe at Meran;
and he got her trained under agreement, and put her into a minor part
when I sang at San Carlo. When we came to England first, she went for
awhile to Paris; but he’s always been getting her English lessons
everywhere. He has a claim on her, he says, for money advanced to train
her for the stage. . . . She’s a very good-natured girl, and she’s
always been kind to me.”
“I see,” Will answered, with a suddenly sobered air. “Very well, then,
Linnet,” and he drew a deep sigh—though not for himself; “she shall
sing the part of Princess Berylla.”
“Thank you,” Linnet said simply, with a sigh, once more.
But till then, he had never thought Linnet had _that_ to put up with.
CHAPTER XXXV
GOLDEN HOPES
Mr Franz Lindner, _alias_ Signor Francesco of the London Pavilion, laid
down his morning paper at his lodgings in Soho, with unmistakable
outward and visible signs of a very bad humour. Montepulciano and
Lacrima-Christi, as Florian put it, had evidently disagreed with him.
But that was not all. The subject which roused his undisguised
discontent was the marked success of the woman he once loved—the woman
he loved now even more than ever.
For this was what Franz had read, amid much else of the same cheap
laudatory strain, in the theatrical column of the _Daily Telephone_.
“The first performance of Mr W. Deverill’s new English opera,
_Cophetua’s Adventure_, at the Harmony last night marks an epoch in the
renascence of the poetical drama in England. Never has the little house
on the Embankment been so crowded before; never has an audience received
a new play with more unanimous marks of profound enthusiasm. Both as a
work of literature and as a musical composition, this charming piece
recalls to mind the best days of the great Italian outburst of song at
the beginning of the century.” Franz snorted internally as he ran his
eye in haste over the learned digression on the various characteristics
of the various operas which _Cophetua’s Adventure_ suggested to the
accomplished critic who works the drama for that leading newspaper.
Then, skipping the gag, he read on once more with deeper interest, “It
would be hard to decide whether the chief honours of the night belonged
more unmistakably to Mr Deverill himself or to his charming exponent,
Signora Casalmonte. The words of the songs, indeed, possessed to a rare
degree high literary merit; the music, as might be expected from so
accomplished a composer, was light and airy, yet with the genuine ring
of artistic inspiration; but the ever-delightful soprano rendered her
part so admirably that ’twas difficult to disentangle Mr Deverill’s