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?”