by Grant Allen
Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion like one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll you take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the question in English was a very familiar one to him.
“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more at his ease with the London barmaid.
“Two half porters and two small Scotch, miss,” the Robbler cried briskly to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll find it a very good mixture for zis time of day, Mr Deverill. I always take it myself. It softens ze organ.”
The young woman fulfilled the order with unwonted alacrity — Franz was a favourite at the bar, and gave his commands leaning across it with the arch smile of an habitué — and Will then discovered that the mixture in question consisted of a glass of Dublin stout, well fortified with a thimbleful of Highland whisky. He also observed, what he had not at first sight noticed, that Franz Lindner’s face, somewhat redder than of old, bore evidence, perhaps, of too frequent efforts for the softening of the organ. Franz nodded to the barmaid.
“Here’s our meeting!” he said to Will. “Shall we step a little aside here? We can talk wisout overhearing.”
They drew aside to a round table for their unfinished gossip. “You’re not in town often, I suppose,” the Tyroler began, scanning his companion from head to foot with a critical scrutiny.
“Why, I live here,” Will answered, taken aback — ”in Craven Street, Strand; I’ve always lived here.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Robbler responded, with a somewhat superior air; “I sought from your costume you’d just come up from ze country.”
Will smiled good-humouredly. He was wearing, in point of fact, a soft slouch hat and a dusty brown suit of somewhat poetical cut, which contrasted in more ways than one with the music-hall singer’s too elaborate parody of the glossy silk chimney-pot and regulation frock-coat of the orthodox Belgravian.
Then Franz came back at a bound to the subject he had quitted on the flags of Piccadilly. He explained, with much circumlocution and many needless expletives, how he had heard from time to time, through common friends at St Valentin, that Andreas Hausberger and his wife had fluctuated of late years between summer at Munich, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and winter at Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice. Linnet got on with him very well — oh, very well indeed — yes; Linnet, you know, was just the sort of girl to get on very well with pretty nearly anyone. No doubt by this time she’d settled down into tolerably amicable relations with Andreas Hausberger! Any children? Oh dear, no; Hausberger’d take care of that; a public singer’s time is far too valuable to be wasted on the troubles of a growing young family. Had she come out yet? Well, yes; that is to say, from time to time she’d sung at concerts in Munich, Florence, and elsewhere. Successfully? Of course; she’d a very good voice, as voices go, for her sort, and training was sure to do something at least for it. Franz had heard rumours she was engaged next season for San Carlo at Naples; you might count upon Hausberger’s doing his very best, now he’d invested his savings in preparing her for the stage, to make money out of his bargain.
Through all Franz said, however, there ran still, as of yore, one constant thread of undying hatred to the man who had outwitted him at Meran and St Valentin. “Then you haven’t forgiven him yet?” Will inquired at last, after one such spiteful allusion to Andreas’s meanness.
The Robbler’s hand moved instinctively of itself to his left breast pocket. He had changed his coat, but not his customs. “I carry it here still,” he answered, with the same old defiant air, just defining with finger and thumb the vague outline of the knife that bulged between them through the glossy broadcloth. “It’s always ready for him. Ze day I meet him — ” and he stopped short suddenly, with a face like a bulldog’s.
“You Tyrolers have long memories,” Will answered, with a little shudder. “It’s very unfashionable you know, to stab a rival in London.”
Franz showed his handsome teeth. “Unfashionable or not,” he replied, with a shrug, “it is so I was born; it is so I live ever. As we say in ze song, I am made zat way. I cannot help it. I never forget an injury. . . . Zough, mind you,” he continued, after a telling little pause, during which he drove many times an imaginary knife into an invisible enemy, “it isn’t so much now zat I grudge him Linnet. Let him keep his fine Frau. Zere are better girls in ze world, you and I have found out, zan Lina Telser — to-day Frau Hausberger. We were younger zen; we are men of ze world now; we know higher sings, I sink, zan a Zillerthal sennerin. What I feel wis him at present is not so much zat he took away ze girl, as zat he played me so mean a trick to take her.”
Will smiled to himself in silence. How strangely human feelings and ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind, since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting for tastes,” people say; oh, most inept of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s eyes and in her English poet’s.
But before Franz and Will parted at the Circus that afternoon, they had made mutual promises, for old acquaintance’s sake — Franz, that he would graciously accept a stall, on an off-night, at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, to see Will’s new piece, The Duchess of Modena; and Will, that he would betake himself to the London Pavilion one of these next few evenings, to hear Signor Francesco, alias the Frenchy, in his celebrated and universally encored impersonation of Mossoo Robert in Regent Street.
CHAPTER XXVIII
SIGNORA CASALMONTE
Three years and more had passed since Will’s visit to the Tyrol. Events had moved fast for his fortunes meanwhile. He was a well-known man now in theatrical circles. Florian Wood went about, indeed, boasting in clubs and drawing-rooms that ’twas he who had discovered and brought out Will Deverill. “It’s all very well to be a poet,” he said, “and it’s all very well to be born with a head full of rhymes and tunes, of crochets, clefs, and quavers; but what’s the use of all that, I ask you my dear fellow, without a critic to push you? A Critic is a man with a fine eye for potentialities. Before the world sees, he sees; before the world hears, he listens. He sits by the world’s wayside, as it were, with open eye or ear, and catches unawares the first faint lisping notes of undeveloped genius. He divines in the bud the exquisite aroma and perfect hue of the full-blown blossom. Long ago, I said to Deverill, ‘You have the power within you to write a good opera!’ He laughed me to scorn; but I said to him, ‘Try!’ — and the outcome was, Honeysuckle. He took up a battered fiddle one day at an old inn in the Zillerthal, when we two were rusticating on the emerald bosom of those charming unsophisticated Tyrolese valleys; he struck a few notes on it of his own composing; and I said to him, ‘My dear Will, Sullivan trembles on his pedestal.’ At the time he treated it as a mere passing joke; but I made him persevere; and what was the result? — why, those exquisite airs which found their way before long to the sheep-runs of Australia, and resounded from lumberers’ camps in the backwoods of Canada! The Critic, I say, is the true prophet and sage of our modern world; he sees what is to be, and he helps to produce it.”
But whether Florian was right in attributing Will’s success to himself or not, it is certain, at least, that Will was rapidly successful. The world recognised in him a certain genuine poetical vein which has seldom been vouchsafed to the English librettist; it recognised in him, also, a certain depth and intensity of musical sense which has seldom been vouchsafed to the English dramatic composer.
One afternoon that spring, Will returned to town from a visit to the Provinces in connection with his new opera, The Lady of
Llandudno, then about to be performed in several country theatres by Mr D’Arcy Clift’s operatic company. He drove almost straight from the station to Rue’s. Florian was there in great form; and Mr Joaquin Holmes, the Colorado Seer, had dropped in for afternoon tea at his fair disciple’s. In spite of Will’s ridicule, Rue continued to believe in Mr Holmes’ thought-reading and other manifestions. For the Seer had added by this time a touch of spiritualism to the general attractions of his flagging entertainments at the Assyrian Hall; and it is a mysterious dispensation of Providence that wealthy Americans, especially widows, fall a natural prey to all forms of transcendentalism or spiritualistic quackery. It seems to be one of the strange devices which Providence adopts for putting excessive or monopolised wealth into circulation.
“Mr Holmes wants me to go to the Harmony to-night,” Rue said, with a smile — ”you know what it is — the new Harmony Theatre. He says there’s a piece coming out there this evening I ought to see — a pretty new piece by an American composer. You’re going to be crushed, Will. They’ve got a fresh tenor there, a very good man, whom Mr Holmes thinks a deal of. I’ve half a mind to go; will you join our party?”
“You ought to hear it,” the Seer remarked, with his oracular air, turning to Will, and looking critical. “This new tenor’s a person you should keep your eye upon; I heard him rehearse, and I said to myself at once, ‘That fellow’s the very man Mr Deverill will want to write a first part for; if he doesn’t, I’ll retire at once from the prophetic business.’ He has a magnificent voice; you should get Blades to secure him next season for the Duke of Edinburgh’s. He’s worth fifty pounds a night, if he’s worth a penny.”
“Very good trade, a tenor’s,” Florian mused philosophically. “I often regret I wasn’t brought up to it.”
“What’s his name?” Will asked with languid interest, for he had no great faith in the Seer’s musical ear and critical acumen.
“His name? Heaven knows,” the Seer answered, with a short laugh; “but he calls himself Papadopoli — Signor Romeo Papadopoli.”
“There’s a deal in a name, in spite of that vastly overrated man, Shakespeare,” Florian murmured, musingly. “It’s my belief, if the late lamented Lord Beaconsfield had only been christened Benjamin Jacobs, or even Benjamin Israels, he never would have lived to be Prime Minister of England. But as Benjamin Disraeli — ah, what poetry, what mystery, what Oriental depth, what Venetian suggestiveness! And Romeo’s good, too; Signor Romeo Papadopoli! Why, ’twas of Romeo himself the Bard first asked, ‘What’s in a name? the rose,’ etcætera. And in the fulness of time, this singer man crops up with that very name to confute him. ‘Ah, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Why, because it looks so extremely romantic in a line of the playbill, and helps to attract the British public to your theatre! Papadopoli, indeed! and his real name’s Jenkins. I don’t doubt it’s Jenkins. There’s a Palazzo Papadopoli on the Grand Canal. But this fellow was born, you may take your oath, at Haggerston or Stepney!”
“Well, your own name has floated you in life, at any rate,” Rue put in, a little mischievously.
Florian gazed at her hard — and changed the subject abruptly. “And there’s a woman in the troupe who sings well, too, I’m told,” he interposed, with airy grace — the airy grace of five feet — turning to Joaquin Holmes. “I haven’t heard her myself; I’ve been away from town — you know how engaged I am — visits, visits in the country — Lady Barnes; Lady Ingleborough. But they say she sings well; really, Will, you ought to come with us.”
“Yes; she’s not bad in her way,” the Seer admitted, with a stifled yawn, stroking his long moustache, and assuming the air of a connoisseur in female voices. “She’s got a fine rich organ, a little untrained, perhaps, but not bad for a débutante. A piquante little Italian; Signora Carlotta Casalmonte she calls herself. But Papadopoli’s the man; you should come, Mr Deverill; my friend Mr Florian has secured us a box; I dine at Mrs Palmer’s, and we all go together to the Harmony afterwards.”
“I should like to go,” Will replied with truth; for he hated to leave Rue undefended in that impostor’s clutches; “but, unfortunately, I’ve invited my sister and her husband to dine with me to-night at my rooms in Craven Street.”
“Well, wire to them at once to come on and dine here instead,” Rue suggested, with American expansiveness; “and then we can all go in a party together — the more the merrier.”
Will thought not badly of this idea; it was a capital compromise: the more so as he had asked nobody else to meet the Sartorises, and a family tête-à-tête with Maud and Arthur wasn’t greatly to his liking. “I’ll do it,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “if they’re at home and will answer me.”
Rue sent out a servant to the nearest office with the telegram at once; and, in due time, an answer arrived by return that Arthur and Maud would be happy to accept Mrs Palmer’s very kind invitation for this evening. It was most properly worded; Maud was nothing if not proper. Her husband had now been appointed incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone; and her dignity had received an immense accession. Indeed, she debated for ten minutes with dear Arthur whether it was really quite right for them to go at all on such hasty notice; and she was annoyed that Will, after inviting her himself, should have ventured to put her off with a vicarious dinner-party. But she went all the same, partly because she thought it would be such a good thing for Will, “and for our own dear boys, Arthur, if Will were to marry that rich bourgeoise American,” and partly because she remembered it would give her such an excellent opportunity of displaying her pretty new turquoise-blue dinner-dress among the best company, in a box at the Harmony. Besides, a first night is a thing never to be despised by the wise man or woman; it looks so well to see next day in the Society papers, “Mrs Palmer’s box contained, amongst others, Mr Florian Wood, Mr W. Deverill, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone.”
So, at half-past seven, Maud Sartoris sailed in, torquoise-blue and all, and, holding out her hand with a forgiving smile, murmured gushingly to her hostess, “We thought it so friendly of you, dear Mrs Palmer, to invite us like that at a moment’s notice, as soon as you knew we were engaged to Will, and that Will couldn’t possibly go unless he took us with him! We want to see this new piece at the Harmony so much; a first night to us quiet clerical folks, you know, is always such a treat. We’re immensely obliged to you.”
Dinner went off well, as it usually did where Florian was of the party. To give Florian his due, he bubbled and sparkled, like the Apollinaris spring, with unfailing effervescence. That evening, too, he was in specially fine form; it amused him to hear Mr Joaquin Holmes discourse with an air of profound conviction on his own prophetic art, and then watch him glancing across the table under his long dark eyelashes to see between whiles how Florian took it. The follies and foibles of mankind were nuts to Florian. It gave the epicurean philosopher a calm sense of pleasure in his own superiority to see Rue and Arthur Sartoris drinking in open-mouthed the mysterious hints and self-glorificatory nonsense of the man whom he knew by his own confession to be a cheat and a humbug. Their eyes seldom met; Joaquin Holmes avoided such disconcerting experiences; but whenever they did, Florian’s were brimful of suppressed amusement, while the Seer’s had a furtive hang-dog air as of one who at once would deprecate exposure and beseech indulgence.
After dinner, the Seer kept them laughing so long at his admirable stories of the Far West of his childhood (which Arthur Sartoris received with the conventional “Ah really, now, Mr Holmes!” of forced clerical disapprobation) that they were barely in time for the beginning of the opera. As they entered, the tenor held possession of the stage. Will didn’t think so much of him; Florian, his head on one side in a critical attitude, observed oracularly, at the end of his first song, that the Papadopoli was perhaps not wholly without capabilities. That’s the sort of criticism that Florian loved best;
it enables a man to hedge in accordance with the event. If the fellow turns out well in the near future, you can say you declared from the very first he had capabilities; if the public doesn’t catch on, you can remark with justice that he hasn’t developed what little promise he once showed, and that from the beginning you never felt inclined to say much for him.
Presently, from the rear of the stage, down the mimic rocks that formed the background of the scenery, a beautiful woman, entering almost unobserved, sprang lightly from boulder to boulder of the torrent bed, with the true elastic step of a mountain-bred maiden. She had a fine ripe figure, very lithe and vigorous-looking; her features were full, but extremely regular; her mouth, though large and somewhat rich in the lips, was yet rosy and attractive. Eyes full of fire, and a rounded throat, with a waxy softness of outline that recalled a nightingale’s, gave point to her beauty. She was exquisitely dressed in a pale cream bodice, with what passes on the stage for a peasant kirtle, and round her rich brown neck she wore a drooping circlet of half-barbaric-looking lance-like red coral pendants. Before she opened her mouth, her mere form and grace of movement took the house by surprise. A little storm of applause burst spontaneous at once from stalls, boxes, and gallery. The singer paused, and curtsied. She looked lovelier still as she flushed up with excitement. Every eye in the house was instinctively fixed upon her.
Will had been gazing round the boxes as the actress entered, to see what friends of his they might contain, and to nod recognition. The burst of applause recalled him suddenly to what was passing on the stage. He looked round and stared at her. For a moment he saw only a very beautiful girl, in the prime of her days, gracefully clad for her part, and most supple in her movements. At the self-same instant, before he had time to note more, the singer opened her mouth, and began to pour forth on his ear lavish floods of liquid music. Will started with surprise; in a flash of recognition, voice and face came back to him. He seized Florian by the arm. “Great God!” he cried, “it’s Linnet!”
