Linnet: A Romance. Allen Grant
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Mr, of course, if I’d known it was you. I just love your verses. I have ‘Voices from the Hills’ in my box upstairs, bound in calf, this minute.”
“No; not really?” Will cried, with a young author’s delight at unexpected recognition.
“I’ll go upstairs after dinner and fetch it down to show you,” his pretty admirer answered, with some pride. “And your friend, too, is he a poet?”
“In soul; in soul only!” Florian interposed, airily, dashing in at a tangent; for it irked him thus to play second fiddle to Will’s first hand, and he longed to assert his “proper position.” “I string no sonnets; I play no harmonies; I take the higher place. I sit on a critical throne, weighing and appraising all arts impartially. Deverill rhymes; another man paints; a third man strums; a fourth acts, or carves stone – and all for me. I exercise none of these base handicrafts myself; but I live supreme in the Palace of Art they build, subordinating each in due place to my soul’s delight, like a subtle architect.”
“Just the same as all the rest of us,” the pretty American put in, interrupting his period. “We all do that. We sit still and listen. The difficulty is – to produce, like Mr Deverill.”
Florian stood aghast. To think a mere woman should thus slight his pretensions! But the pretty American, disregarding him, turned to Will once more. “And your friend’s name?” she said, interrogatively.
“My friend’s name,” Will answered, “is Florian Wood. You must know it.”
“Ah, Mr Florian Wood,” the pretty stranger echoed; “I’ve heard of him, of course. I’m glad to meet him. It’s so nice to see people in the flesh at last one has often heard talked about.”
“But you’ve heard about everybody, Mrs Palmer,” the first giggling inarticulate interposed, with a gurgle of admiration.
Florian clapped his hand to his head in theatrical disappointment. “Mrs Palmer!” he cried, markedly. “Did I hear aright, Mrs Palmer? This is indeed a blow! Then, I take it, you’re married!”
From anyone else on earth, the remark would have been rude; from Florian, it was only exaggerated compliment. The Vision of Beauty accepted it as such with American frankness.
“Well, you needn’t go and take a draught of cold poison offhand,” she retorted, a little saucily, “for there’s still a chance for you. Remember, a woman may be maid, wife… or widow.”
“Dear me,” Florian ejaculated, half-choking himself in his haste, “I never thought of that. You don’t mean to say – ”
“Yes, I do,” Mrs Palmer responded, cutting him short with a merry nod. “Any time these last five years. Now, you’re sorry you spoke. Mr Deverill, may I trouble you to pass the mustard?”
CHAPTER XI
PRIVATE INQUIRY
During the rest of the young men’s stay at Innsbruck the pretty American was, as Florian remarked, “a distinct feature.” Such is the fickleness of man, indeed, that she almost superseded poor Linnet in their minds as an object of interest. She was attractive beyond a doubt; she was clever; she was lively; and she was so delighted to make a real live poet’s acquaintance, that Will hardly knew how to receive her almost obtrusive attentions. She brought him butter in a lordly dish, as Florian phrased it. That same evening, in the salon, according to promise, she came down with “Voices from the Hills,” Will’s thin little volume of fugitive verse, which she had had gorgeously bound in red calf in Paris, and made that sensitive young bard blush up to his eyes with modesty, by insisting on pointing out which pieces she liked best, in a voice that was audible to half the guests in the establishment. Ossian’s Tomb was her favourite – she knew that one by heart; but Khosru Khan was sweet too; and Sister Clare made her cry; and then Gwyn! – ah, that dear Gwyn was just too lovely for anything!
And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes, he liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his poetry. And besides, he said to himself, Mrs Palmer had discrimination. She noted in his verse the metrical variety, the pictorial skill, the strong sense of colour – just the qualities of his poor muse on which he himself most prided himself. No artist cares for praise except for those characteristics of his art which he feels to be his strong ones. Mrs Palmer gave Will that, and he liked the incense.
Florian had said at St Valentin that Will needed change of air, change of scene, change of company. And at Innsbruck he got them. The pretty American, having found her poet, didn’t mean to let him slip again too soon from her clutches. With the pertinacity of her compatriots, she fastened herself at once upon the two young Englishmen. Not obtrusively, to be sure, not ungracefully, not awkwardly, not as a European woman might have done the same thing, but with that occidental frankness and oblivion of sex which makes up half the charm of the charming American. The very next morning, at the early breakfast, she happened to occupy a small table close by them. They chatted together through the meal; at the end of it Will mentioned, in a casual sort of way that he was going down the street to the shop where Mrs Palmer had bought the coral necklet. The dainty young widow seized her cue. “I am going down that way myself,” she said. “Let me come and show you. I won’t take a minute to run up for my hat. I’m not one of those women who can never go out for a morning stroll without spending half-an-hour before their mirrors, tittivating.” And, in spite of Will’s assurance that he could find the shop very well by himself, she was as good as her word, and insisted on accompanying them.
She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped lightly downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked through the streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will, more mindful of poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to that taking smile, those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose, those rounded contours. They turned down the road in the direction of the Maria-Theresien Strasse. Will knew of old that quaintest and most picturesque of European High Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its rococo façades, its mediæval towers, its arcades and pillars. But to Florian, it all came with the added charm of novelty. Twice or thrice on their way, the spirit moved him to stop and perorate. Each time, the pretty widow cut him short at once with some quick retort of truly American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a second necklet, exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her nothing before I came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only indicating by that very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient of his beautiful gift. “One couldn’t give her money. ’Twould have been a positive insult. But this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.”
“For your sister, of course,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly.
“No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl at the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.”
Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American oh. It deprecated the fact – and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan though she was, it surprised her not a little that Will should allude to such persons in a lady’s company. But there! these poets, you know – so many things must be condoned to them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven them. They have licence to break hearts and the most brittle of the commandments, with far less chance of blame than their even Christians.
Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the giggling inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she looked so envious last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I couldn’t bear to think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I think you said? Ah, yes; that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor little girl so happy!”
From this, and various other circumstances which occurred in the course of their first few days at Innsbruck, it began to dawn dimly upon Florian’s open mind that their American friend, though she knew not the Van Rensselaers, the Vanderbilts, and the Livingstones, must have been “comfortably left” by the late Mr Palmer. It was clear she had money for every whim