So, plucking up heart of grace, though trembling all over, she tripped down the stage rocks with her free gait of a sennerin. To her joy and surprise, a burst of applause rose responsive at once from those seemingly irresponsive dress-coated stalls, those stolidly brutal and square-faced pittites. Her mere beauty stirred them. Even the gentlemen of the press, smiling cynically still, drummed their fingers gently on the flat tops of their opera-hats. Thus encouraged, Linnet opened her mouth and sang. Her throat rose and fell in a rhythmical tide. She rendered the first stanza of her first song almost faultlessly. She knew, herself, she had never sung better. Then came a brief pause before she went on to the second. During that pause, she raised her eyes to a box of the first tier. The Blessed Madonna in Britannia metal on the oval pendant, ever faithful at a pinch, almost crumpled in her grasp as she looked and started. It was Will she saw there, Will, Will, her dear Englishman; and Herr Florian by his elbow, and the grand foreign Frau, the fair-haired Frau, the Frau with the diamonds, ever still beside them!
In a second, Linnet felt from head to foot a great thrill break over her. It broke like a wave of fire, in long, undulating movement, as she had felt it at Innsbruck. The wave rose from her feet, as before, and coursed hot through her limbs, and burnt bright in her body, till it came out as a crimson flush on neck and chin and forehead. Then it descended once more, thrilling through her as it went, in long, undulating movement, from her neck to her feet again. She felt it as distinctly as she could feel Our Blessed Lady clenched hard in her little fist. Her Englishman was there, whom she thought she had lost; as at Innsbruck, so in London, he had come to hear her sing her first song in public!
All at once, yet again, the same strange seizure came over her. As her eyes met Will’s, and that wave of fire ran resistlessly through her, she was conscious of a weird sense she had known but once in all her life before—a sudden failure of sound, a numb deadening of the orchestra. Not a note struck her ear. It was all a vast blank to her. Instinctively, as she sang, her right hand toyed with Will’s coral necklet, but her left, with all its might, still gripped and clasped Our Lady with trembling fingers. She heard not a word she herself was uttering; she knew not how she sang, or whether she sang at all; in an agony of terror, of remorse, of shame, she kept her eyes fixed on the conductor’s bâton. By its aid alone she kept true to her accompaniment. But her heart went up silently in one great prayer to Our Lady. When she felt this at Innsbruck she knew it was love. If it meant love still—Andreas Hausberger’s wife—Oh! Blessed Mother, help! Oh! Dear Lady, protect her!
CHAPTER XXX
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
How she got through that song, how she got through that scene, Linnet never knew. She was conscious of but two things—Will Deverill’s presence and the Blessed Madonna. Remorse and shame almost choked her utterance. But mechanically she went on, and sang her part out to the end—sang it exquisitely, superbly. Have you ever noticed that what we do most automatically, we often do best? It was so that night at the Harmony with Linnet. She knew her music well; she had studied it carefully; and the very absence of self-consciousness which this recognition gave her, made her sing it more artlessly, yet more perfectly than ever. She forgot the actress and the singer in the woman. That suited her best of all. Her mental existence was divided, as it were, into two distinct halves; one conscious and personal, absorbed with Will Deverill and Our Dear Lady in Britannia metal; the other unconscious and automatic, pouring forth with a full throat the notes and words it was wound up to utter. And the automatic self did its work to perfection. The audience hung entranced; Andreas Hausberger, watching them narrowly from a box at the side, hugged his sordid soul in rapture at the thought that Linnet had captured them on this her first night in that golden England.
She sang on and on. The audience sat enthralled. Gradually, by slow stages, the sense of hearing came back to her. But she had done as well, or even better without it. The act went off splendidly. Andreas Hausberger was in transports. At the first interval between the scenes, Rue debated in her own soul what to do about Linnet; but, being a wise woman in her way, she determined to wait till the end of the piece before deciding on action. Act the Second, Act the Third, Act the Fourth followed fast; in Act the Fifth when Linnet, no longer a peasant girl, but the bride of the Grand Duke, came on in her beautiful pale primrose brocade, cut square in the bodice like a picture of Titian’s, the audience cheered again with a vociferous outburst. Linnet blushed and bowed; a glow of conscious triumph suffused her face; then she raised her eyes timidly to the box on the first tier. Her victory was complete. She could see by his face Will Deverill was satisfied—and the grand lady with the diamonds was sincerely applauding her.
Was the grand lady his wife? Why not? Why not? What could it matter to her now? She was Andreas Hausberger’s. And Will—why, Will was but an old Zillerthal acquaintance.
Yet she clutched Our Blessed Frau tighter than ever in her grasp, at that painful thought, and somehow hoped illogically Our Blessed Frau would protect her from the chance of the grand lady being really married to Will Deverill. Not even the gods, says Aristotle, in his philosophic calm, can make the past not have been as it was. But Linnet thought otherwise.