by Grant Allen
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 ineffectual remonstrances, let her go her own way and live her own artistic life unchecked to the top of her bent — the more so as he perceived she sang best and most vigorously when least thwarted or worried. Moreover, many well-advised friends assured him in private it was desirable for an actress to know as much as possible of costume, of colour, of posture, and of grouping, which could best be learned by studying the works of the great early painters.
So Linnet went her way, undeterred by her husband, and educated herself in general culture at the same time that she received her strict musical training. She knew Raphael’s Sposalizio as intimately after a while as she knew her own châlet; she gazed on the flowing lines of Luini’s frescoes till they grew familiar to her eyes as the Stations of the Cross in the old church at St Valentin. She drank in the cathedral with an endless joy; she loved its innumerable pinnacles, its thousand statues in the marble niches: she admired the gloomy antiquity of mouldering Sant’ Ambrogio, the dim religious aisles of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Amid surroundings like these, her artistic nature expanded by degrees as naturally as a bud opens out into a flower before the summer sunshine. She revelled in the architecture, the pictures, the statuary: Milan stood to the soul of the peasant-singer as a veritable university.
It was the first time, too, that Linnet had ever found herself in a bustling, business-like, modern city. The hurry and scurry were as new as the art to her. The throng of men and women in the crowded streets, the Piazza, brilliant with the flare of glowing lamps, the great glass-roofed gallery where the gilded Lombard youth promenaded by night in twos and threes, or sipped absinthe before the doors of dazzling cafés: all these were quite fresh, and all these were, in their way, too, an element of education. There are many who can see no more in Milan than this: they know it only as the most go-ahead and modernised of Italian cities. Linnet knew better. To her it was the town of Leonardo and his disciples, of the great marble pile whose infinite detail escapes and eludes the most observant eye, of the vast and stately opera house where Otello and Carmen first unfolded their wonders of sight and sound to her ecstatic senses. Wiser in her generation, she accepted it aright as the vestibule and ante-chamber of artistic Italy.
From Milan they went on in due time to Florence. There they stopped less long, for opportunities of learning were not by any means so good as at Milan and Naples. But those few short weeks in the City of the Soul were to Linnet as a dream of some artistic Paradise; they made her half forget, for the moment at least, her lost English lover — and her husband’s presence. The Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia, the Piazza, the old bridge across the Arno, the enchanted market-place; Michael Angelo’s tomb, Giotto’s crusted campanile! What hours she spent, entranced, in the endless halls of the Uffizi and the Pitti; what moments of hushed awe and rapt silence of soul before the pallid Fra Angelicos in the dim cells of San Marco. Ach, Gott, it was beautiful! Linnet gazed with the intense delight of her mountain nature at Raphael’s Madonnas and Andrea’s Holy Families; she stood spellbound before the exquisite young David of the Academia; she wandered with a strange thrill among the marvellous della Robbias and Donatellos of the Bargello. The Tyrolese temperament is
before all things artistic. A new sense seemed quickened within Linnet’s soul as she trod those glorious palaces instinct with memories of the Medici and their compeers. A great thirst for knowledge possessed her heart. She read as she had never known how to read before. That Florentine time was as her freshman year in the splendid quadrangles of this Italian Oxford.
Then Rome — the Vatican, the Colosseum, the monuments, St Peter’s, the loud organs, the singing boys, the incense, the purple robes and mitres, the great guttering candles! All that could awake in unison every chord of religion and its sister art, in that simple religious artistic nature, was there to gratify her! It was glorious! it was wonderful! So her winter passed away, her first winter with Andreas; she was learning fast, both with eye and with ear, all that Italy and its masters could possibly teach her.
As spring returned, they went northward through Lombardy and the Brenner once more on their way to Munich. Her own Tyrol looked more beautiful than ever as they passed, with its unmelted snows lying thick on the mountains. But, save for a night at Innsbruck, they might not stop there. Yet, even after that short lapse of time in southern cities, oh, how different, how altered little Innsbruck seemed to her! She had thought it before such a grand big town; she thought it now so much shrunken, so old-world, so quaint, so homely. And then, no Will Deverill was there, as before, to brighten it. The mountains gazed down as of old from their precipitous crags upon the nestling town; they were Tyrolese and home-like; and therefore she loved them. But everything had a smaller and meaner air than six months earlier; the queer old High Street was just odd, not magnificent; the Anna Säule was dwarfed, the Rathhaus had grown smaller. She had only seen Milan, Florence, Rome, meanwhile; but Milan, Florence, Rome, made Innsbruck sink at once to its proper place as a mere provincial capital. While they waited for the Munich train next morning, she strolled into the Hofkirche, to see once more Maximilian’s tomb with its attendant figures. She started at the sight. After the Venus and the Laocoon it surprised her to think she could so lately have stood awestruck before those naïf bronze abortions!
That summer they spent in Germany, almost wholly at Munich. There Linnet went through a course of musical training under a well-known teacher, and there, too, she had ample opportunities, at the same time, of cultivating to the full her general artistic faculties. Next winter, back to Italy — this time to Venice, Rome, and Naples. Linnet learnt much once more; it was all so glorious; the Grand Canal, St Mark’s, the Academy, the Frari, Sorrento, Capri, Pozzuoli, the great operas at San Carlo. So she stored her brain all the time with fresh experiences of men, women, and things; with pictures of places, of architecture, of sculpture, of scenery. Everywhere her quick mind assimilated at once all that was best and most valuable in what she saw or listened to; by eye and by ear alike, she was half-unconsciously educating herself.
But that wasn’t all. She had ideas as well of still higher education. Will Deverill had given her the first key to books — and books are the gateways of the deepest knowledge. Partly to escape from the monotony of Andreas Hausberger’s conversation, partly also quite definitely to fit herself for the place in the world she was hereafter to fill — when she went to England — Linnet turned to books as new friends and companions. German literature first of all, and especially the dramatic. Andreas was wise enough in his generation to approve of that; he was aware that acquaintance with plays and with romantic works in general forms no small integral part of an opera-singer’s equipment. German literature, then, first — Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Richter, Paul Heyse, Freiligrath — German literature first, but after it English. Andreas approved of that, too, for was there not much money to be made out of England and America? It was well Linnet should enlarge her English vocabulary; well, too, she should know the plays and novels on which Romeo e Giulietta, and Lucia di Lammermoor, and I Puritani were founded. But Linnet herself had other reasons of her own for wishing to study English. Though she looked upon Will Deverill as something utterly lost to her, a bright element in her life now faded away for ever, she yet cherished the memory of that one real love episode so deep in her heart that, for her Englishman’s sake, she loved England and English. She looked forward to the time when she should go to England; not so much because she thought she should ever meet Will Deverill there — Naples and Munich had taught her vaguely to appreciate the probable vastness of London — but because it was the country where Will Deverill lived, and it spoke the tongue Will had made so dear to her. So she read every English book she could easily obtain — Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray — and she took oral lessons in conversational English, which as Andreas justly remarked, would improve her accent, and enable her to sing better in English opera.
Thus three years passed away, and Linnet in their course saw much of the Continent. They got as far north and west at times as Leipzig, Brussels, and even Paris. But they always spent their winters in Italy; it was best for Linnet’s throat, Andreas thought; it gave her abundance of fresh air and sunshine; and besides, the Italian style of teaching was better suited, he felt sure, to her ardent, excitable Tyrolese temperament, than the colder and more learned Bavarian method.
’Twas at Naples, accordingly, that Linnet came out first as Signora Casalmonte. But after a short season there, Andreas was quite sufficiently assured of ultimate success to venture upon taking his prize at once to England. He would sell his goods, like a prudent merchant that he was, in the dearest market. When Linnet first learned she was to go to London, a certain strange thrill of joy and hope and fear coursed through her irresistibly. London! that was the place where Will Deverill lived! London! that was the place where she soon might meet him!
She clasped the little metal Madonna that still hung from her neck, convulsively. “Our Dear Frau, oh, protect me! Save me, oh, save me from the thoughts of my own heart! Help me to think of him less! Help me to try and forget him!”
She was Andreas Hausberger’s wife now, and she meant to be true to him. Love him she never could, but she could at least be true to him. Not in deed alone, but in thought and in word, as Our Dear Frau knew, she strove hard to be faithful.
Then came the first fluttering excitement and disappointment of London — that dingy Eldorado, so rich, so miserable — the dim, dank streets, the glare, the gloom, the opulence, the squalor of our fog-bound metropolis! For a week or two, thank Heaven, Linnet was too busy at arrangements and rehearsals to think of surroundings. They were the weeks during which Will was away in the Provinces, or he must almost certainly have heard of and attended the preliminary performances of the forthcoming opera. The final day arrived, and Linnet, all tremulous at the greatness of the stake, had to make her first appearance before that stolid sea of unsympathetic, hide-bound English faces. She had peeped at them from the wings before the curtain rose; oh, how her heart sank within her. The respectable sobriety of stalls and boxes, the square-jawed brutality of pit and gallery, the cynical aspect of the gentlemen of the press, in their faultless evening clothes and unruffled shirt-fronts — all contrasted so painfully with the vivid excitement and frank expectancy of the Neapolitan audiences to which alone she had hitherto been accustomed. One brighter thought, and only one, sustained her — Dear Lady, forgive her that she should think of it now! these were all Herr Will’s people, and they spoke Herr Will’s tongue; as Herr Will was kind, would not they too be kind to her?
So, plucking up heart of grace, though trembling all over, she tripped down the stage rocks with her free gait of a sennerin. To her joy and surprise, a burst of applause rose responsive at once from those seemingly irresponsive dress-coated stalls, those stolidly brutal and square-faced pittites. Her mere beauty stirred them. Even the gentlemen of the press, smiling cynically still, drummed their fingers gently on the flat tops of their opera-hats. Thus encouraged, Linnet opened her mouth and sang. Her throat rose and fell in a rhythmical tide. She rendered the first st
anza of her first song almost faultlessly. She knew, herself, she had never sung better. Then came a brief pause before she went on to the second. During that pause, she raised her eyes to a box of the first tier. The Blessed Madonna in Britannia metal on the oval pendant, ever faithful at a pinch, almost crumpled in her grasp as she looked and started. It was Will she saw there, Will, Will, her dear Englishman; and Herr Florian by his elbow, and the grand foreign Frau, the fair-haired Frau, the Frau with the diamonds, ever still beside them!
In a second, Linnet felt from head to foot a great thrill break over her. It broke like a wave of fire, in long, undulating movement, as she had felt it at Innsbruck. The wave rose from her feet, as before, and coursed hot through her limbs, and burnt bright in her body, till it came out as a crimson flush on neck and chin and forehead. Then it descended once more, thrilling through her as it went, in long, undulating movement, from her neck to her feet again. She felt it as distinctly as she could feel Our Blessed Lady clenched hard in her little fist. Her Englishman was there, whom she thought she had lost; as at Innsbruck, so in London, he had come to hear her sing her first song in public!
All at once, yet again, the same strange seizure came over her. As her eyes met Will’s, and that wave of fire ran resistlessly through her, she was conscious of a weird sense she had known but once in all her life before — a sudden failure of sound, a numb deadening of the orchestra. Not a note struck her ear. It was all a vast blank to her. Instinctively, as she sang, her right hand toyed with Will’s coral necklet, but her left, with all its might, still gripped and clasped Our Lady with trembling fingers. She heard not a word she herself was uttering; she knew not how she sang, or whether she sang at all; in an agony of terror, of remorse, of shame, she kept her eyes fixed on the conductor’s bâton. By its aid alone she kept true to her accompaniment. But her heart went up silently in one great prayer to Our Lady. When she felt this at Innsbruck she knew it was love. If it meant love still — Andreas Hausberger’s wife — Oh! Blessed Mother, help! Oh! Dear Lady, protect her!