Linnet: A Romance

And Linnet, without any affected hesitation, or professional airs, opened her rich mouth naturally, and trilled forth upon Will’s delighted ear in a raptured flood her native first reading of his own graceful music.

“That’ll do!” Andreas said, with decision, as soon as she’d finished. “That’ll do, Linnet. We’ll arrange for it.”

And Will, leaning across to her over the plain deal table, as she stood blushing in front of him, exclaimed with delight, “Why, Linnet – Frau Hausberger, I mean – that’s charming, charming! I couldn’t have believed how pretty my own song was, till I heard you sing it!”

So that very day the whole matter was settled, as far, at least, as those three could settle it. It was decided and contracted that Will should definitely write an opera for Linnet; that he should offer it first to Mr Wells, the manager of the Harmony; and that if Wells refused it, it should go next to the Duke of Edinburgh’s, on condition that Linnet was engaged for the title-role. Before evening, Will had shouldered his knapsack once more (though Andreas would fain have constrained him to stay the night at their inn), and, with a timorous farewell to Linnet at the châlet door, had gone on his way rejoicing, to descend towards Oberwesel.

That interview gave him courage. During the course of the autumn he completed his piece, for he was a man of inspirations, and he worked very rapidly when the fit was upon him. The greater part of his opera he wrote and composed in the open air, beneath the singing larks, on those green Swiss hillsides. And the larks themselves did not sing more spontaneous, with heart elate, for pure joy of singing. That one short tête-à-tête with Linnet at her châlet had filled his teeming brain with new chords and great fancies. Words and notes seemed to come of themselves, and to suggest one another; moods seemed to mirror themselves in becoming music. Besides, Will thought with no little pleasure, this new venture would bring him, for a time at least, into closer personal connection with Linnet. While rehearsals and other preliminary arrangements went on, he must be thrown a great deal perforce into Linnet’s company. And how delightful to think they would be working together for a common end; that success, if achieved, would be due in part and in equal degrees to each of them.

Will didn’t return to London till the end of October. He had spent the time meanwhile partly in the Bernese Oberland, and partly, later, on the south side of the Alps, among the valleys and waterfalls of the Canton Ticino. But when he arrived at Charing Cross, it was not empty-handed; he carried in his portmanteau the almost complete manuscript of Cophetua’s Adventure, that exquisite romance of no particular time and place, with its fanciful theme and its curious episodes, which proved at last that poetry is not stone-dead on our English stage, and that exquisite verse wedded to exquisite harmonies has still its fair chance of a hearing in England. He had only to polish it at his rooms in Craven 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 tunes from the delicious individualisation conferred upon them by Signora Casalmonte’s voice and acting. The prima donna’s first appearance on the stage as the Beggar Maid, lightly clad in a graceful though ostentatiously simple costume, was the signal for a burst of irrepressible applause from stalls, boxes, and gallery. In the second act, as Cophetua’s Queen, the popular diva looked, if possible, even more enchantingly beautiful; while the exquisite naïveté with which she sang the dainty aria, ‘Now all ye maidens, matrons, wives, and widows,’ brought down the house in one prolonged outburst of unmixed appreciation. Our operatic stage has seldom boasted a lady so perfectly natural, in manner, gesture, and action, or one who allowed her great native gifts to degenerate so little into affectations or prettinesses.”

Franz flung down the paper and sighed. He admitted it; he regretted it. What a fool he had been not to marry that girl, offhand, when he once had the chance, instead of dawdling and hanging about till Hausberger carried the prize off under his nose to St Valentin. It was disgusting, it was silly of him! And now it began to strike him very forcibly indeed that his chance, once gone, was gone for ever. A full year and more had passed since Linnet and her husband first came to London. During that year it had dawned slowly upon Franz’s mind that Linnet had risen into a higher sphere, and could never by any possibility be his in future. He was dimly conscious by this time that he himself was a music-hall gentleman by nature and position, while Linnet was born to be a special star of the higher opera. Never could he recover the ground thus lost; the woman he loved once, and now loved again distractedly, had climbed to a higher plane, and was lost to his horizon.

What annoyed Franz more than anything, however, was his feeling of chagrin that he had let himself be cajoled, on the night of Linnet’s first appearance in London, into abandoning his designs against her husband’s person. He knew now he had done wrong; he ought to have stabbed Andreas Hausberger, then and there, as he intended. In a moment of culpable weakness, he had allowed himself to be beguiled from his fixed purpose by the blandishments of Linnet and the rich American widow. That would indeed have been the dramatic time to strike; he had let the psychological moment go by unheeded, and it would never return, or, at least, it would never return in so effectual a fashion. To have struck him then and there, on their very first meeting after Linnet’s marriage, and on the night when Linnet made her earliest bow before an English audience – that would have been splendid, that would have been beautiful, that would have been romantic: all London would have rung with it. But now, during those past months, he had met Andreas twice or thrice, on neutral ground, as it were, and the relations between them, though distant and distinctly strained, had been nominally friendly. The Robbler felt he had committed a fatal error in accepting Mr Will’s invitation to supper on that critical evening. It had compelled him to treat Andreas as an acquaintance once more; to turn round upon him now, and stab him in pure pique, would be feeble and self-stultifying. Franz wished he had had strength of mind to resist the women’s wiles that first night at the Harmony, and to draw his rival’s blood before their very eyes, as his own better judgment had told him he ought to do.

He had seen Linnet, too, and there came the unkindest cut of all; for he recognised at once that the girl he had described to Will Deverill as beneath his exalted notice since he rose to the front ranks of the profession at the London Pavilion, was now so much above him that she scarcely thought of him at all, and evidently regarded him only in the light of the man who had threatened her husband’s life when they came to England.

Yes; Linnet thought nothing of him now; how could you expect it to be otherwise? She had money and rank and position at her feet; was it likely, being a woman, she would care greatly, when things were thus, for a music-hall singer who earned as much in six months as she herself could earn in one easy fortnight? And yet.. Franz rose, and gazed abstractedly at his own face in the glass over the mantelpiece. No fault to find there! Many women did worse. He was excellently pleased with his black moustache, his flashing dark eyes, his well-turned figure; he even thought not ill of his blazing blue necktie. And Andreas was fifty if he was a day, Franz felt sure; old Andreas with his solid cut, his square-set shoulders, his steely-grey eyes, his heavy, unimpassioned, inexpressive countenance! Ach, if only he himself had the money to cut a dash – the mere wretched rhino – the miserable oof – for Franz had lived long enough in England now to have picked up a choice collection of best British slang – he might stand a chance still against that creature Andreas!

It was one o’clock by this time, though Franz had only just risen from his morning coffee. What would you have? A professional man must needs sing till late at night, and take his social pleasures at his café afterwards. So Franz was seldom in bed till two or three in the morning, recouping himself next day by sleeping on till mid-day. ’Twas the hour of the promenade. He went into his bedroom, doffed his flannel smoking-coat, and arrayed himself in the cheaply-fashionable broadcloth suit in which it was his wont to give the daily treat of seeing him to the girls in Bond Street. Then he lighted a bad cigar, and strolled out towards Piccadilly. At the Circus, he met a friend, an English betting man, who was a constant patron of the London Pavilion.