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.”

CHAPTER XXXIV