“Let me see it,” Andreas exclaimed, in his authoritative way; and he skimmed it over carefully. “H’m, h’m . . . that’s not bad,” he muttered from time to time as he went along . . . “suits her style very well . . . not at all a weak close; fine opportunity for that clear upper G of hers; excellently considered piece—have you tried it over, Linnet? I should think it ought to do very nicely indeed for you.”
“I just sang it a bit at sight,” Linnet answered, “on the hillside. When I met Herr Will first, we sat down and talked, because Herr Will was tired; and he showed me his score, and I tried part of it over a bit. But it was not that which you would quite call fairly trying it, for I had not seen it before, and had no time to study it. Still, I thought it very good—oh, exquisite, perfect!—and I should like so much the chance to sing in it.”
“Try it now!” Andreas said, in his dictatorial tone.
And Linnet, without any affected hesitation, or professional airs, opened her rich mouth naturally, and trilled forth upon Will’s delighted ear in a raptured flood her native first reading of his own graceful music.
“That’ll do!” Andreas said, with decision, as soon as she’d finished. “That’ll do, Linnet. We’ll arrange for it.”
And Will, leaning across to her over the plain deal table, as she stood blushing in front of him, exclaimed with delight, “Why, Linnet—Frau Hausberger, I mean—that’s charming, charming! I couldn’t have believed how pretty my own song was, till I heard you sing it!”
So that very day the whole matter was settled, as far, at least, as those three could settle it. It was decided and contracted that Will should definitely write an opera for Linnet; that he should offer it first to Mr Wells, the manager of the Harmony; and that if Wells refused it, it should go next to the Duke of Edinburgh’s, on condition that Linnet was engaged for the title-role. Before evening, Will had shouldered his knapsack once more (though Andreas would fain have constrained him to stay the night at their inn), and, with a timorous farewell to Linnet at the châlet door, had gone on his way rejoicing, to descend towards Oberwesel.
That interview gave him courage. During the course of the autumn he completed his piece, for he was a man of inspirations, and he worked very rapidly when the fit was upon him. The greater part of his opera he wrote and composed in the open air, beneath the singing larks, on those green Swiss hillsides. And the larks themselves did not sing more spontaneous, with heart elate, for pure joy of singing. That one short tête-à-tête with Linnet at her châlet had filled his teeming brain with new chords and great fancies. Words and notes seemed to come of themselves, and to suggest one another; moods seemed to mirror themselves in becoming music. Besides, Will thought with no little pleasure, this new venture would bring him, for a time at least, into closer personal connection with Linnet. While rehearsals and other preliminary arrangements went on, he must be thrown a great deal perforce into Linnet’s company. And how delightful to think they would be working together for a common end; that success, if achieved, would be due in part and in equal degrees to each of them.
Will didn’t return to London till the end of October. He had spent the time meanwhile partly in the Bernese Oberland, and partly, later, on the south side of the Alps, among the valleys and waterfalls of the Canton Ticino. But when he arrived at Charing Cross, it was not empty-handed; he carried in his portmanteau the almost complete manuscript of Cophetua’s Adventure, that exquisite romance of no particular time and place, with its fanciful theme and its curious episodes, which proved at last that poetry is not stone-dead on our English stage, and that exquisite verse wedded to exquisite harmonies has still its fair chance of a hearing in England. He had only to polish it at his rooms in Craven Street, before submitting it to the opinion of the manager of the Harmony.
Linnet came later. She had a two months’ engagement first to fulfil in Paris, where Will read, with a little pang of regret, in the Figaro how she had turned the heads and captured the hearts (if any) of ten thousand boulevardiers. Her very innocence and simplicity at once delighted and surprised the profoundly sophisticated Parisian mind. All the world of the foyer unanimously voted her tout ce qu’il-y-a de plus enfantin. “She has afforded us,” said a famous lady-killer of the Avenue Victor Hugo, “the rare pleasure of a persistent and unreasoning refusal.” So all Paris was charmed, as all Paris always is at any new sensation. An opera-singer insensible to the persuasiveness of diamonds and the eloquence of bank-notes—all Paris shugged its shoulders in incredulous astonishment. “Incroyable!” it muttered: “mais enfin, elle est jeune, cette petite—ça viendra!”