For the next three years, Will heard and saw nothing more of Linnet. Not that he failed to make indirect inquiries, as time went on, from every likely source, as to her passing whereabouts; once Linnet was lost to him, he realised to himself how deeply he had loved her, how much he had admired her. But, for her happiness’ sake, he felt it would be wrong of him to write to her direct, or attempt in any way to put himself into personal communication with her. She was Andreas Hausberger’s wife now, and there he must leave her. He knew himself too well, he knew Linnet too well, too, to cheat himself with false ideas of mere friendship in future. A woman with so passionate a nature as hers, married against her will to a man she could never love, and meeting once more the man whom she loved, the man who really loved her, must find such friendship a dangerous pitfall. So, for the very love’s sake he bore her, he refrained from attempting to communicate with her directly; and all indirect inquiries failed to elicit anything more than the bare fact, already known to him, that Linnet was being musically educated for the stage, in Germany and Italy.
Three years, however, must be got through somehow, no matter how drearily; and during those next three years many things of many sorts happened to Will Deverill. To begin with, he was steadily growing in name and fame, in the stage-world of London, as a composer and playwright. That was mainly Rue’s doing; for Rue, having once taken her Englishman up, was by no means disposed to lay him down again easily. Not twice in her life, indeed, does even a pretty American with money at her back stand her solid chance of booming a poet. And Rue boomed Will steadily, after the manner of her countrymen. It didn’t escape her quick womanly eye, indeed, that Linnet’s sudden marriage and hasty flight to Italy had produced a deep effect on Will’s spirits for the moment. But it was only for the moment, she hoped and believed—a mere passing whim, a poet’s fancy; impossible that a man who thought and wrote like Will Deverill—a bard of lofty aim and exquisite imaginings, one who on honey-dew had fed and drunk the milk of Paradise—should be permanently enslaved by a Tyrolese cow-girl. Surely, in the end, common-sense and good taste and right feeling must prevail; he must come back at last—well—to a woman worthy of him!
So, very shortly after Will’s return to London, Rue decided on a complete change in her plans for the winter, and made up her mind, instead of going on as she had intended to Rome and Naples, to take a house for the season in Mayfair or South Kensington. But Florian would hear of no such temporary expedients; she must have a home of her own in London, he said,—in the world’s metropolis,—and he himself would choose it for her. So he found her a shelter in Hans Place, Chelsea, and fitted it up beforehand with becoming magnificence—just such a palace of art as he had dreamed of among the Dolomites; though, to be sure, his own chance of inhabiting it now seemed considerably lessened, since the failure of his scheme for putting off Will Deverill on his musical sennerin. Still, Florian furnished it, all the same, with a strictly business eye to his own tastes and fancies—in case of contingencies. There was a drawing-room for Rue, of course quite utterly Hellenic; there was a dining-room for Society, not grim and gloomy, after the common superstition of all British dining-rooms, but gay and bright and airy, like Florian himself: for Florian held that the cult of the sacred dinner bell, though important enough in the wise man’s scheme of life, should be a blithe and joyous, not a solemn and stolid one; there was a smoking-room, for which Rue herself had certainly no need, but which Florian insisted might be useful in the future, as events demanded. “For, you see,” he said, pointedly, “we’re not in Bombay. You may yet choose a new friend to light his cigars in it.” All was decorated throughout in the most modern taste; incandescent wires shed tempered beams through Venetian glass globes on Liberty brocades and Morris wall-papers. ’Twas a triumph of ornamental art on a very small scale—an Aladdin’s palace in Hans Place,—and Florian took good care that paragraphs should get into the Society papers, both describing the house, and attributing its glories to his own superintendence.
However, he took good care, too, that due prominence should be given on every hand to Rue’s own personal claims to social distinction. He was a first-rate wire-puller. Little notes about the beauty, the wealth, the cleverness, and the fine taste of the pretty American widow cropped up spasmodically in Truth and the Pall Mall. Even the Spectator itself, that high-and-dry organ of intellectual life, deigned to recognise her existence. It was Florian’s intention, in short, to float his new protégée. Now, all the world admitted that Florian, if he chose, could float almost anybody; while Rue, for her part, was without doubt exceptionally easy of flotation. Seven hundred thousand pounds, to say the truth, would have buoyed up a far heavier social subject than the pretty and clever New Yorker. Americans are the fashion; for a woman, at least, the mere fact that she comes from beyond the mill-pond is in itself just at present a passport to the best society. But Rue had also money; and money in these days will admit anyone anywhere. Furthermore, she had good looks, taking manners, much culture, real cleverness. She was well informed and well read; Society itself, that collective critic, could find nothing to criticise or to carp at in her conversation. So, introduced by Florian on one side, and His Excellency the American Minister on the other, Rue made that spring a perfect triumphal progress through the London drawing-rooms. She was the fact of the season; she entertained in her own pretty rooms in Hans Place, where Florian exhibited his decorative skill with bland satisfaction to dowager-marchionesses,—“I edited it,” was his pet phrase—while Will Deverill hung modestly in the background by the door, talking, as was his wont, to those neglected souls who seemed to him most in need of encouragement and companionship.
Before two months were out, everybody was talking of Rue as “our new acquisition.” It was Mrs Palmer this, and Mrs Palmer that. “We understand Mrs Palmer will not be present at the Duchess of Thingumabob’s dance on Tuesday.” “Among the guests on the Terrace, we noticed Lord So-and-so, Lady What’s-her-name of Ware, and Mrs Palmer of New York, whose pretty house in Hans Place is fast becoming a rallying point for all that is most interesting in London Society.” Old Miss Beard, indeed, when she arrived at the Langham Hotel early in May, and found Rue in quiet possession of the Very Best Houses, was positively scandalised. She declared, with a little sneer, it was perfectly disgraceful the way That Woman had forced herself by pure brass on the English Aristocracy. The widow of a dry-goodsman to give herself such airs!—but there, Miss Beard had begun to despair before now of the future of Europe! The Nobility and Gentry of England had degringolated. For true blue blood, she was perfectly convinced, you could only look nowadays to the heirs of the Puritans, the Knickerbockers, and the Virginians.
The very first use Rue made of her new-found friends and position in London was to push Will Deverill’s claims with theatrical managers. Will had sent the manuscript score of his pretty little open-air operetta, “Honeysuckle,” to Wildon Blades of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre. And, before Mr Blades had had time to consider the work submitted to him, backed up as it was by Florian Wood’s powerful recommendation, Rue’s new victoria drew up one day at the door of the manager’s house in St John’s Wood, and Rue herself, in her most becoming and bewitching costume, stepped out, with her blameless footman’s aid, to interview him.
The pretty little American looked prettier and more charming than ever that morning. A dainty blush rose readily to her peach-blossom cheeks; her eyes were cast down; an unwonted tinge of flutter in voice and manner became her even better than her accustomed serenity. Mr Blades bowed and smiled as he scanned her card; he was a bullet-headed man with shifty grey eyes, a dubious mouth, and a sledge-hammer manner. He knew her name well; Florian had already sung the American’s praises to the astute manager. They sat down and talked. With many indirect little feminine twists and turns, Rue gradually got round to the real subject of her visit. She didn’t approach it straight, of course—what woman ever does?—by stray hints and roundabout roads she let Mr Blades understand in dim outline she was to some extent interested—platonically interested—in the success of Will Deverill’s Tyrolese operetta. Mr Deverill, she explained, was merely a young poet of musical tastes, whom she had met last year at an hotel in the Tyrol—a friend of their mutual friend’s, Mr Wood. The manager smiled wisely with that dubious mouth. Rue saw he drew his own inference—and drew it wrong; he thought it was Florian in whom her interest centred, not the unknown poet. Indeed, Florian himself had done his very best already to produce that impression; if you want to marry a rich woman, it’s not a bad plan to let her friends and the world at large believe the matter’s as good as settled already between you. So the manager smiled, and looked intensely wise. “Anything I can do for any friend of our friend Florian’s,” he said, politely, “I’m sure will give me the very greatest pleasure.”
Rue was not wholly unwilling he should make this mistake; she could ask the more easily the favour she had to beg on behalf of Will Deverill. With many further circumlocutions, and many womanly wiles, she gradually let the bullet-headed manager see she was very anxious “Honeysuckle” should be duly produced at an early date at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. But Mr Blades, for his part, like a man of the world that he was, was proof against all the smiles and blandishments of the pretty enchantress. A beautiful woman is thrown away, to say the truth, upon a theatrical manager; they are his stock-in-trade; he’s accustomed to bargaining with them, bullying them, quarrelling with them. He regards them merely as a class of exceptionally exacting and irritating persons, who presume upon their good looks and their popularity with the public to excuse the infinite trouble and annoyance they give in their business relations. So Mr Blades smiled again, this time a hard little mercantile smile, as of a man unimpressed, and answered briefly, in his sledge-hammer style, “Now, let’s be frank with one another, at once, Mrs Palmer. I run this theatre, not for the sake of high art, nor to oblige a lady, but on the vulgarest and commonest commercial grounds—just to make my living, and get a fair percentage on the capital I invest in it. I judge by returns, not by literary merit or artistic value. If Mr Deverill’s little piece seems likely to pay—why, of course, I’ll produce it. If it don’t, why, I won’t. That’s the long and the short of it!”
Rue seized her cue at once with American quickness. “Just so,” she replied, catching him up very sharp, and going straight to the point; “that’s exactly why I’ve come here. I want you to read this play very soon, and to say as a candid business man what you think of it. Then I want you to tell me what you’ll take, money down, to produce it at once, and to run it on your boards till you see whether it’s likely to succeed or fail—if I give you a guarantee, secured against bonds, to reimburse you in full for any loss you may sustain, say, by giving it the chance of a fortnight’s production.”
It was a curious offer. The manager’s shifty grey eyes ran her over with a sharp little stare of astonishment. Her directness amused him. “Well now,” he said, “that’s odd; but it’s business-like—for a woman.”
“You understand,” Rue said, blushing crimson, and letting her eyelids drop once more, “I make this suggestion in strict confidence; I don’t want it talked about.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Mr Blades replied, with a scrutinising glance. “Not even to our friend Florian?” And he eyed her quizzingly.
Rue’s face flushed deeper still. “Above all, not to him,” she answered firmly. “But what do you say to my offer? Is it business or not? Does it seem to you possible?”
The manager hesitated, and drummed with his finger on the desk before him. “Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady,” he answered, evasively, “I couldn’t very well give you any opinion, good, bad, or indifferent, till I’ve read the manuscript, and considered it carefully. You see, a play’s not quite like a book or picture; a deal of capital’s involved in its production; and, besides, its success or its failure don’t stand quite alone; they mean so much in the end to the theatre. It won’t do for me to reckon only how many hundreds or thousands I may possibly lose on this or that particular venture if it turns out badly; there’s the indirect loss as well to take into consideration. Every success in a house means success in future; every failure in a house means gradual increase in the public coldness. It wouldn’t pay me, you understand, if you were merely to offer me a big lump sum down to produce a piece with no chance of a run in it. I never produce anything for anybody on earth unless I believe myself there’s really money in it. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” and he brightened up most amiably; “I’ll read it this very day; and then, if I think it won’t prejudice the Duke’s to bring it out at once, why, . . . I’ll consider whether or not I can accept your offer.”
“Oh, thank you!” Rue cried, very gratefully indeed; for she was a simple soul, in spite of her thousands.
The manager drew himself up, and looked stonily grave. He shook his bullet-head. This charge was most painful. It hurt his feelings as a business man that a pretty woman should even for one moment suppose he meant to make a concession to her.
“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he answered, truthfully; and indeed she hadn’t; for his answer, after all, amounted merely to this: that if he thought the play likely to prove a success, he would generously permit the rich American to indemnify him beforehand against the off-chance of a failure. In other words, if it turned out well, he stood to win all; while if it turned out ill, it was Rue who stood to lose whatever was lost upon it.
Nevertheless, after a few more preliminary arrangements, Rue drove off, not ill-satisfied with her partial success, leaving behind her many injunctions of profoundest secrecy with the blandly-smiling manager. As she disappeared down the road, Mr Blades chuckled inwardly. Was he likely to tell any one else in the world, indeed, that he had even entertained so unequal a bargain? He would keep to himself his own clever compact with the American heiress. But two days later, Rue’s heart was made glad, when she came down to breakfast, by a letter from the manager, couched in politest terms, informing her that he had read Mr Deverill’s manuscript; that he thought on the whole there was possibly money in it; and that he would be pleased to talk over the question of its production on the basis of the arrangement she had herself proposed at their recent interview. Rue read it, overjoyed. In the innocence of her heart, she agreed to promise whatever the astute Mr Blades demanded. Moreover, this being a strictly confidential matter, she couldn’t even submit it to her lawyer for advice; she was obliged to act for once on her own initiative. She longed to rush off the very moment it was settled and tell Will the good news; but prudence and womanly reserve prevented her. However, she had her reward none the less next day, when Will hurried round immediately after breakfast to announce the splendid tidings which had come by that morning’s post, that Blades had accepted “Honeysuckle,” without any reserve, and intended to put it in rehearsal forthwith at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. His face beamed with delight; Rue smiled contentment. She was pleased he should burst in upon her first of all the world in London with news of his good fortune; that really looked as if he rather liked her! And then, how sweet it was to feel she had managed it all herself, and he didn’t know it. It was such a delightful secret that, womanlike, she longed to tell it to him outright—only that, of course, to divulge it would be to spoil the whole point of it. So she merely smiled a tranquil smile, to her own proud heart, and felt as happy as a queen about it. ’Tis delicious to do something for the man you love, and to know he doesn’t even suspect you of doing it. . . . Some day, perhaps, she would be able to tell him. But not till he’d made a great name for himself. Then she might say to him with pride, at some tender moment, “Before the world found you out, Will, I knew what you were, and, all unknown to yourself, it was I who stretched out the first helping hand to your fortunes!”
