PLAYING WITH FIRE
And yet, Linnet was happier that first season in London than ever before
since her marriage with Andreas. She knew well why. In fear and
trembling, with many a qualm of conscience, she nevertheless confessed
to herself the simple truth; it was that Will was near, and she felt at
all times dimly conscious of his nearness. Not that she saw much of him;
both she and Will sedulously avoided that pitfall; but from time to time
they met, for the most part by accident; and even when they didn’t, she
knew instinctively Will was watching over her unseen, and guarding her.
She was no longer alone in the great outer world; she had some one to
love her, to care for her, to observe her. Often, as she sang, her eyes
fell on his face upturned in the stalls towards her; her heart gave a
throb; she faltered and half-paused—then went on again all the happier.
Often, too, as she walked in Kensington Gardens with Andreas, Will would
happen to pass by—_so_ natural for a man who lives in Craven Street,
Strand, to be strolling of an afternoon in Kensington Gardens!—and
whenever he passed, he stopped and spoke a few words to her, which
Linnet answered in her pretty, hardly foreign English.
“How well you speak now!” Will exclaimed, one such day, as she described
to him in glowing terms some duchess’s house she had lately visited.
The delicate glow that rose so readily to that rich brown cheek flushed
Linnet’s face once more as she answered, well pleased, “Oh yes; I had so
many reasons, you see, Herr Will, for learning it!”—she called him Herr
Will even in English still—it was a familiar sound, and for old times’
sake she loved it;—then she added, half-shamefacedly, “Andreas always
said it was wiser so; I should make my best fortunes in England and
America.”
Will nodded, and passed on, pretending not to catch at her
half-suppressed meaning; but he knew in his own heart what her chief
reason was for taking so much pains to improve her English.
They saw but little of one another, to be sure, and that little by
chance; though Andreas Hausberger, at least, made no effort to keep them
apart. On the contrary, if ever they met by appointment at all, ’twas at
Andreas’s own special desire or invitation. The wise _Wirth_ of St
Valentin was too prudent a man to give way, like Franz Lindner, to
pettish freaks of pure personal jealousy. He noted, indeed, that Linnet
was happiest when she saw most of Will Deverill; not many things escaped
that keen observer’s vision. But when Linnet was happiest she always
sang best. Therefore, Andreas, being a wise and prudent man, rather
threw them together now and again than otherwise. That cool head of his
never allowed anything to interfere with the course of business; he was
too sure of Linnet to be afraid of losing her. It was a voice he had
married, not a living, breathing woman—an exquisite voice, with all its
glorious potentialities of wealth untold, now beginning to flow in upon
him that season in London.
But to Linnet herself, struggling hard in her own soul with the love she
could not repress, and would never acknowledge, it was a very great
comfort that she could salve her conscience with that thought: she
seldom saw Will save at Andreas’s invitation!
The next three years of the new singer’s life were years of rapid rise
to fame, wealth, and honour. Signora Casalmonte grew quickly to be a
universal favourite, not in London alone, but also in Berlin, Vienna,
Paris. ’Twas a wonderful change, indeed, from the old days in the
Zillerthal. Her name was noised abroad; crowned heads bowed down to her;
Serene Highnesses whispered love; Archdukes brought compliments and
diamond necklaces. No one mounts so fast to fame as the successful
singer. She must make her reputation while she is young and beautiful.
She may come from nowhere, but she steps almost at once into the front
rank of society. It is so with all of them; it was so with Linnet. But
to Will she was always the same old Linnet still; he thought no more of
her, and he thought no less, than he had thought in those brief days of
first love in the Tyrol.
At the end of Linnet’s first London season, after some weeks in Paris,
when August came round, Andreas took his wife for her yearly
villeggiatura to a hill-top in Switzerland. He was for ozone still; he
believed as much as ever in the restorative value of mountain air and
simple life for a vocalist. It gave tone to the larynx, he said, and
tightened the vocal chords: for he had taken the trouble to read up the
mechanism of voice production. So he carried off Linnet to an upland
village perched high on the slopes behind the Lake of Thun—not to a
great hotel or crowded _pension_, where she would breathe bad air, eat
made French dishes, drink doubtful wine, keep very late hours, and mix
with exciting company, but to a châlet nestling high beneath a
clambering pinewood, among Alpine pastures thick with orchids and
globe-flowers, where she might live as free and inhale as pure and
unpolluted an atmosphere as in their own green Zillerthal. For reasons
of his own, indeed, Andreas wouldn’t take her to St Valentin, lest the
homesickness of the mountaineer should come over her too strong when she
returned once more to London or Berlin. But he chose this lofty Bernese
hamlet as the next best thing to their native vale to be found in
Europe. There, for six happy weeks, Linnet drank in once more the fresh
mountain breeze, blowing cool from the glaciers,—climbed, as of old,
among alp and crag and rock and larch forest—felt the soft fresh turf
rise elastic under her light foot as she sprang from tussock to tussock
of firmer grass among the peaty sward of the hillside.
Before leaving town that summer, she had lunched once with Will at
Florian’s chambers and mentioned to him casually in the course of talk
the name and position of their Bernese village. Will bore it well in
mind. A week or two later, as Linnet strolled by herself in a simple
tweed frock and a light straw hat among the upland pastures, she saw to
her surprise a very familiar figure in a grey knickerbocker suit,
winding slowly along the path from the direction of Beatenberg. Her
heart leapt up within her with joy at the sight. _Ach, himmel!_ what was
this? It was her Engländer, her poet! Then he had remembered where she
was going; he had come after her to meet her!
Next moment, she reproached herself with a bitter reproach. The little
oval Madonna, which kept its place still round her neck amid all her new
magnificence, felt another hard grip on its sorely tried margin. Oh,
Dear Lady, pardon her, that her heart should so jump for a stranger and
a heretic—which never jumped at all for her wedded husband.
The Church knew best! The Church knew best! For her soul’s sake, no
doubt, the Herr Vicar was right—and dear Herr Will was a heretic. But
if only they had wedded her to Herr Will instead,—her heart gave a
great thump—oh, how she would have loved him!
Though now, as things stood, of course, she could never care for him.
And with that wise resolve in her heart, and Our Lady clasped hard in
her trembling hand,—she stepped forth with beaming eyes and parted lips
to greet him.
Will came up, a little embarrassed. He had no intention, when he set
out, of meeting Linnet thus casually. It was his design to call in due
form at the _châlet_ and ask decorously for Andreas; it made him feel
like a thief in the night to have lighted, thus unawares, upon Linnet
alone, without her husband’s knowledge. However, awkward circumstances
_will_ arise now and again, and we have all of us to face them. Will
took her hand, a trifle abashed, but still none the less cordially.
“What, Frau Hausberger!” he cried in German—and Linnet winced at the
formal name, though of course it was what he now always called her; “I
didn’t expect to see you here, though I was coming to ask after . . .
your husband in the village,” and he glanced down at his feet with a
little nervous confusion.
“I saw you coming,” Linnet answered, in English, for she loved best to
speak with her Engländer in his own language; “and I knew that it was
you, so I came on to meet you. Isn’t it lovely here? Just like my own
dear Fatherland!”
Will was hot and dusty with his long tramp from Interlaken. It was a
broiling day. He sat down by Linnet’s side on the grassy slope that
looks across towards the lake and the great snow-clad giants of the
Bernese Oberland. That was the very first time he had been quite alone
with her since she married Andreas. The very first time since those
delicious mornings on the vine-draped Küchelberg. They sat there long
and talked, Linnet picking tall grasses all the while with her twitching
fingers, and pulling them into joints, and throwing them away bit by
bit, with her eyes fixed hard on them. After a time as they sat, and
grew more at home with one another, they fell naturally into talk of the
old days at St Valentin. They were both of them timid, and both
self-conscious; yet in the open air, out there on that Alpine hillside,
it all seemed so familiar, so homely, so simple—so like those lost
hours long ago in the Zillerthal—that by degrees their shyness and
reserve wore off, and they fell to talking more easily and
unrestrainedly. Once or twice Will even called her “Linnet,” _tout
court_, without noticing it; but Linnet noticed it herself, and felt a
thrill of strange joy, followed fast by a pang of intense remorse,
course through her as she sat there.
By-and-by, their talk got round by slow degrees to London. Linnet had
seen one of Will’s pieces at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, in June, and
admired it immensely. “How I should love to sing in something of your
composing, Herr Will,” she exclaimed, with fervour. “Just for old times’
sake, you know—when neither of us was well-known, and when we met at St
Valentin.”
Will looked down a little nervously. “I’ve often thought,” he said, with
a stifled sigh; “I should love to write something on purpose for you,
Linnet. I know your voice and its capabilities so well, I’ve watched you
so close—for your career has interested me; and I think it would
inspire one, both in the lines and in the music, to know one was working
for a person one—well . . . one knew and liked, and . . . had met
before, under other circumstances.”
He looked away, and hesitated. Linnet clasped her hands in front of her
between her knees, on her simple tweed frock, and stared studiously at
the mountains. “Oh, that would be lovely!” she cried, pressing her
fingers ecstatically. “That would be charming! that would be beautiful!
I should love that I should sing in something you’d written, and, above
all, in something you’d written for _me_, Will. I’m sure it would
inspire me too—it would inspire both of us. I do not think you could
write for anybody, or I could sing for anybody, as we could write and
sing, each one of us, for one another. We should do ourselves justice
then. Why don’t you try it?”
She looked deep into his eyes. Will quailed, and felt his heart stand
still within him. “There are difficulties in the way, my child,” he
answered, deliberating. “You’re more or less bound to the Harmony, I
think; and I’m more or less bound to the Duke of Edinburgh’s. And then,
there’s Herr Hausberger to consider as well. Even if _we_ could arrange
things with our respective managers, do you think he’d be likely to fall
in with our arrangements?”
Linnet seized his arm impulsively. With these warm southern natures,
such acts are natural, and mean less than with us northerners. “Oh, do
try, dear Herr Will!” she exclaimed, bending forward in earnest
entreaty. “Do try if we can’t manage it. Never mind about Andreas. I’m
sure he would consent, if he saw it was a good piece, and I could sing
in it with spirit. And I would sing in it—_ach, lieber Gott_,—how well
I would sing in it! You would see what I could do, then! It would be
splendid, splendid!”
“But I’m afraid Willdon Blades——”
Linnet cut him short impatiently, jerking her little curled forefinger
with a contemptuous gesture. “What matter about Willdon Blades!” she
cried. “We can easily settle _him_. If you and I decide to work this
play together, the manager _must_ give in: we can arrange it somehow.”
And she looked at him with more conscious dignity and beauty than usual;
for, simple peasant-girl as she was, and a child still at heart, she
knew by this time she was also a queen of the opera. How the _gommeux_
had crowded her _salon_ in her Paris hotel; how great ladies had fought
for stalls at her triumphant _première_!
“I might think about it,” Will answered, after a brief pause,
half-alarmed at her eagerness. Was it not too dangerous?
But Linnet, quite sure in her own soul she was urging him from purely
artistic motives, had no such scruples. “Do try,” she cried, laying her
hand impulsively on his arm once more. “Now, promise me you’ll try!
Begin to-day! I should love to see what sort of a part you’d write for
me.”
Will stammered, and hesitated. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve begun
already, Linnet,” he answered, fingering the pencil-case that hung from
his watch chain with ill-concealed agitation. “I’ve been walking about
for a fortnight through the mountains alone—Florian wanted to come, but
I wouldn’t bring him with me, that I might have time for thinking; and
everything I saw seemed somehow to recall . . . well, why shouldn’t I
confess it?—those days on the Küchelberg. I thought of you a great
deal—I mean of your voice and the sort of words and chords that would
be likely to suit you. I always compose best in the open air. The breeze
whispers bars to me. And I’ve begun a few songs—just your part in the
play, you know—words and airs together, Wagner-wise—that’s how I
always do it. The country I passed through brought the music of itself;
it all spoke to me direct—and I thought it would be something new to
bring this breezy Alpine air to freshen the stuffy atmosphere of a
London theatre.”
“Have you got what you’ve done with you?” Linnet inquired, with deep
interest.
“It’s here in my knapsack,” Will answered, half reluctant.
“Ah, do let me see it!” And she pressed one hand to her breast with
native southern vehemence.
“It’s only in pencil, roughly scratched on bits of paper over rocks or
things anyhow,” Will replied, apologetically. “I don’t suppose you’ll be
able to read one word of it. But, if you like, you can try,” and he
pulled it forth and opened it.
For twenty minutes or more of terrestrial time Linnet sat entranced in
the seventh heavens. She tried over parts of the songs, half to herself,
half to Will, with many an “Oh” and an “Ach, Gott,” and was charmed and
delighted with them. They were written straight at her—not a doubt in
the world about that; and they suited her voice and manner admirably.
It’s so innocent for a singer to sit on the grassy mountain sides like
this, with a poet and composer close at hand to consult and talk over
the work they mean to produce together. This was art, pure art; the
sternest moralist could surely find nothing to object to in it Linnet
didn’t even feel bound to give another hard squeeze to the poor
much-battered, and hardly-used Madonna. She only sat and sang—with Will
smiling by her side—there in the delicate mountain air, among the
whispering pines, gazing across at the stainless peaks, and thrilling
through to the finger tips.
“O Herr Will,” she cried at last, “how lovely it is out here—how high,
how soft, how pure—how much lovelier than in London! I’ve never enjoyed
anything in my life so much, since,” . . . her voice sank low—“since
those days on the Küchelberg.”
Will leant over towards her for a moment. His heart beat hard. He laid
one palm on the ground and rested on it as he looked at her. He was
trembling all over. Surely, surely he must give way! For a moment he
paused and debated; then he rose to his feet suddenly. “I think,
Linnet,” he said, in a very serious voice, “for your sake—I think—we
ought to go on and find your husband.”