Signora Casalmonte scored a distinct success. She was the great dramatic and musical reality of that London season. All the world flocked to hear her; her voice made the fortune of the Harmony Theatre. She was invited everywhere—“You must have the Casalmonte,” Florian laid down the law in his dictatorial way to Belgravian hostesses—and Andreas Hausberger went always in charge, wherever she moved, to guard his splendid operatic property. And what care Andreas took of her! It was beautiful, beautiful! Unobservant people thought him a most devoted husband. He lingered always by the Signora’s side; he supplied wraps and shawls on the remotest threat of a coming chill; he watched what she ate and drank with the composite eye of a lynx and a physician; he guarded her health from the faintest suspicion of danger in any way. On off-nights, he would seldom allow her to dine out or attend evening parties; on Sundays, he took her down for change of scene and fresh air to the sea or the country. Ozone was his hobby. Every day, the prima donna drove out in the Park, and then walked for exercise a full hour in Kensington Gardens. Unobservant people set all this down to the account of the domestic affections; Will Deverill noticed rather that Andreas guarded his wife as a racing man guards the rising hope of his stables. Andreas was far too sensible a man of the world to run any needless risks with the throat of the woman who made his fortune. He had staked a great deal on her, and he meant to be repaid with compound interest.
As for London itself, it went wild about Linnet. ’Twas the Casalmonte here, the Casalmonte there; the diva will sing at Lady Smith’s to-night; the diva will go with Sir Thomas Brown and party to supper. Linnet’s head was half-turned with so much admiration; if she hadn’t been Linnet, indeed, it would have been turned altogether. But that simple childlike nature, though artistically developed and intellectually expanded, remained in emotion as straightforward and unaffected and confiding as ever. Still, that season did the best it knew to spoil her. She was queen of the situation. It rained choice flowers; diamond bracelets and painted fans showered down upon her plentifully. Linnet accepted all this homage, hardly realising its money worth; she was pleased if she gave pleasure; what others gave in return, she took as her right, quite simply and naturally. This charm of her simplicity surprised and delighted all who grew to know her; she had none of the affected airs and graces of the everyday great singer; she sang because she must; at heart she was, as always, the mountain-bred peasant-girl.
Will Deverill saw but little of her. ’Twas better so, he knew, and kinder so for Linnet. Once or twice that year, however, he supped after the theatre in the Strand with “the Hausbergers,” as he had learned to call them. On all these occasions, he noticed, Andreas watched his wife close. “One glass of champagne, Linnet; you remember, last time, when you dined at the Mowbrays’, you took two glasses, and you sang next day very much less well for it”; or else—“If I were you, Linnet, I wouldn’t touch that lobster. It disagreed with you once, and I noticed in the evening one or two of your high notes were decidedly not so clear or so sharp as usual.”
“But, Andreas,” Linnet answered, on one such occasion, “I’m sure it doesn’t hurt me. I must take something. I’ve hardly eaten a single mouthful yet, and to-night I’m so hungry.”
“It does you no harm to be hungry,” Andreas answered, philosophically. “Nobody ever reproached himself afterwards for having eaten too little. A taste of something to eat, after playing a trying part like Melinda, before you go to bed, helps you to sleep sound, and keeps you well and healthy; but a square meal at this hour can’t be good for anybody. It interferes with rest; and what interferes with rest, tells, of course, upon the voice—which is very serious. You may have a bit of that sweetbread, if you like—no; that’s a great deal too much; half that quantity, if you please, Mr Florian. Pull your woollen thing over your shoulder, so, Linnet; there’s a draught from that door! I can’t have you getting as hoarse as a frog to-night, with the Prince and Princess coming to hear you on Monday!”
“Why on earth does she stand it?” Florian asked of Will afterwards, as they walked home together down the unpeopled Strand. “I can’t make it out. There she’s earning Heaven only knows how much a night, and filling the treasury; yet she allows this fellow to bully her and badger her like this; to dictate to her how much she’s to eat and to drink; to make her whole life one perpetual torment to her. Why doesn’t she rise and strike for freedom, I wonder? He’d have to come to terms; she’s too useful to him, you see, for him to risk a quarrel with her.”
“She’s too good—that’s where it is,” Will responded, with a tinge of stifled sadness in his voice; “and, besides, she doesn’t care for him.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Florian answered, airily. “How could she, indeed!—a mass of selfishness like him!—so mean, so sordid! But that only makes it all the stranger she should ever put up with it. If she doesn’t love him, why on earth does she permit him to dictate to her as he does—to order her and domineer over her?”
“Ah, that’s how it looks to you,” Will answered, with a sigh; “but Linnet—well, Linnet sees things otherwise. You must remember, Florian, above all things, she’s a Catholic. She doesn’t love that man, but she’s entered with him into the sacrament of marriage. To her, it has all a religious significance. The less she loves Andreas, the more does she feel she must honour and obey him, and be a good true wife to him. If she loved him, she might perhaps sometimes rebel a little; because she doesn’t love him, she has become a mere slave to do his bidding.”
“I suppose that’s it,” Florian answered, swinging his stick in his hand, and stepping along gingerly. “Drôle de croyance, isn’t it? Still, I call it disgraceful. An exquisite creature like that—a divinely-inspired singer, a supply-moulded form of Hellenic sculpture, whom the Gods above have given us as a precious gift for the common delight and the common enjoyment—to be thwarted and pulled up short at every twist and turn—and by whom, I’d like to know? Why, by a Tyrolese innkeeper—a mere village host—who arrogates to himself the right of monopolising what Heaven meant for us all—Ach! I call it detestable, just simply detestable. He hardly allows her enough to eat and drink. She might just as well be a sennerin on her hillside again, for any pleasure or delight she gets out of her success, tied and hampered as she is with this creature Hausberger.”
“That’s quite true,” Will replied. “She was happier in the Zillerthal. She has money, and fine dresses, and jewellery, and applause; but, for any good they can do her, she might as well be without them. Hausberger treats her as a mere machine for making money for him. He’s careful to see the machine works thoroughly well, and doesn’t get out of order—absurdly careful, in fact, for he’s by nature over-cautious; but as for allowing her to enjoy anything of what she earns herself, in any reasonable way—why, it never even occurs to him.”
“Do you think he’s unkind to her?” Florian asked, somewhat carelessly. “I mean, do you think he ill-treats her—keeps her short, and so forth?”
“He doesn’t actively ill-treat her, I’m sure,” Will answered with confidence; “he has far too great a sense of the value of her health to do anything to injure it. And I don’t suppose he even keeps her actually short; she’s always beautifully dressed, of course—that’s part of the advertisement; and he takes her about as much as he can, without risk to her voice, and lavishes a certain sort of wooden care upon her. But I don’t think he ever regards her as a human being at all; he regards her as a delicate musical instrument in which he has invested money, and out of which, during a given number of years, he has to recoup himself and make his fortune. As to sympathy between them, why, naturally, that’s quite out of the question; he’s a harsh, stern man who hardly knows how to be kind, I should say, to anyone.”
Florian brought down his stick on the pavement with a bang. “It’s atrocious,” he said, snorting; “I declare, quite atrocious. Here’s this exquisite creature—a banquet fit for the Gods—with her superb voice and her queenly beauty; a creature almost too ethereal for ordinary humanity to touch or handle; one that should be reserved by common consent for the delectation of the very pink and pick of the species”—and he drew himself up to his five feet nothing with a full consciousness of his own claim to be duly enrolled in that select category—“here’s this exquisite creature, who should be held in trust, as it were, for the noblest and truest and best of our kind—a Koh-i-noor among women—flung away upon a solid, stolid, three-per-cent. investing, money-grubbing, German-speaking beerhouse-keeper. Pah! It makes me sick! This Danae to a Satyr! How a Greek would have writhed at it!”
“And yet I thought,” Will murmured, reflectively, with a quiet little smile, “you considered her a cow-girl, and looked upon her as just fit for gentlemen to play skittles with!”
It took a great deal to abash Florian. He paused for a second, then he answered with warmth, “Now, there, Deverill! that’s just like you. You want me to be consistent! But the philosophic mind, as Herbert Spencer remarks, is always open to modification by circumstances. Consistency is the virtue of the Philistine intellect; it means, inability to march abreast with events, to readjust one’s ideas, one’s sympathies, one’s sentiments, to the ever-changing face of circumambient nature. When we saw Linnet first in the Tyrol, long ago, why, the girl was a cow-girl; a cow-girl she was, and a cow-girl I called her. I frankly recognised the facts of life as I found them—though I saw even then, with a voice like that, there was no perilous pinnacle of name or fame to which fate might not summon her. Now that she reappears in London once more, a flaming meteor of song, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, a flashing diamond of the purest water, I recognise equally the altered facts. I allow that training, education, travel, the society of cultivated men and women, have practically made a brand-new Linnet of her. It’s that brand-new Linnet I admire and adore—that queen of the stage, not the Tyrolese cow-girl.”
Will turned sharp down Craven Street “And I,” he said, with a Parthian shot, “I admire and adore the real woman herself—the same Linnet still that we knew in the Zillerthal.”
Meanwhile, Andreas Hausberger, lighting a big cigar, had taken his wife down to a cab outside the supper-room.
“O Andreas!” Linnet cried, in German, “you’ve called a hansom. I can’t bear those things, you know. I wanted a four-wheeler.”
Andreas looked at her fixedly. “Get in!” he said, with curt decision. “Don’t stand and talk like that out here in the cold street, opening your throat in this foggy air after those over-heated rooms. It’s simply ridiculous. And mind you don’t knock your dress against that muddy wheel! Pick it up, I say! pick it up! You are so careless!”
“But, Andreas!” Linnet exclaimed, in an imploring tone, “I hate these hansoms so. Whenever I go in one, the horse invariably either kicks or jibs. I wish, just this once, you’d let me have a four-wheeler.”
She spoke almost coaxingly. Andreas turned to her with an angry German oath. “Didn’t I tell you to get in at once?” he cried. “Pull that thing over your shoulder. Don’t stand here chattering and catching cold all night. Jump in when I bid you. A pretty sort of thing, indeed, if you’re going to stop and discuss in a dress like that on an English evening upon these muddy pavements!” He helped her up the step, guarding her skirt with one hand, and jumped after her sulkily. “Avenue Road, St John’s Wood!” he called out through the flap to the attentive cabman. “Half-past twelve! Ach, donner-wetter! How late we’ve stayed! We’ll have to pay double fare! Have you got your purse with you?”
“Yes,” Linnet half sobbed out; “but I’ve hardly any money—not enough for the cab in it. You gave me half-a-sovereign, you know, and I paid for those gloves, and got a new bottle of that mixture at the chemist’s.”
“Only three shillings left!” Andreas exclaimed, opening the purse, and screwing his mouth up curiously. “Only three shillings left, out of a whole half-sovereign! So! London’s the dearest town for everything on earth I ever lived in. Only three shillings left! Well, that’s enough for the cab; it’s a one-and-sixpenny fare, and I rather think they double it at midnight.”
“Mayn’t I have sixpence over for trinkgeld?” Linnet ventured to inquire, in a timid voice. “When they go so far at this time of night, they always expect something.”
“No; certainly not,” Andreas answered; “why on earth should you give it to them? If you or I expect something, do other people make that any reason for giving it us? Three shillings is the legal fare; if he doesn’t like that—there’s no compulsion—he needn’t be a cabman. Three-and-sixpence indeed! why you talk as if it was water! Three-and-sixpence is a lot to spend on oneself in a single evening.”
“I should have thought so at St Valentin,” Linnet answered, softly; “but I earn so much, now. You must save a great deal, Andreas.”
“And I spent a great deal in getting you trained and educated,” Andreas retorted with a sneer. “But that’s all forgotten. You never think about that. You talk as though it was you yourself by your unaided skill who earned all the money. How could you ever have earned it, I should like to know, if I hadn’t put you in the way of getting a thorough musical training? You were a sennerin when I married you—and now you’re a lady, Signora. Besides, there’s your dress; remember, that swallows up a good third of what we earn. I say we advisedly, for the capital invested earns its share of the total just as truly as you do.”
“But, Andreas, I only want sixpence,” Linnet pleaded, earnestly. “For the poor cold cabman! I’m sure I don’t spend much—not compared with what I get; and the man looks old and cold and tired. I ought to have a shilling or two a week for pocket money. It’s like a child to have to ask you for every penny I’m spending.”
Andreas pulled out half-a-crown, which he handed her grudgingly. “There, take that, and hold your tongue,” he said. “It’s no use speaking to you. I told you before not to talk in this misty air. If you don’t care yourself whether it hurts you or not, you owe it to me, at least, after all I’ve done for you.”
Linnet leant back in her place, and began to cry silently. She let the tears trickle one by one down her cheeks. As Andreas grew richer, she thought, he grew harder and harder to her. For some minutes, however, her husband didn’t seem even to notice her tears. Then he turned upon her suddenly. “If you’re going to do like that,” he said, “your eyes’ll be too red and swollen to appear at all on Monday—and what’ll happen then, I’d like to know, Signora. Dry them up; dry them up at once, I tell you. Haven’t I given you the money?”
Linnet dried her eyes as she was bid; she always obeyed him. But she thought involuntarily of how kind Will had been, and how nicely he had spoken to her. And then—oh, then, she clasped the little Madonna hard in her fist once more, and prayed low to be given strength to endure her burden!
