“It’s too late to prevent it now!” Franz answered, shaking his head, with a settled gloom on his countenance. “It’s all over by this. She’s his wife already. They were married on Friday.”
At those words Will felt his heart stand still within him. He gasped for breath. He steadied himself mechanically. Never till that moment had he known how much he loved the Tyrolese singer-girl, and now the blow had come, he couldn’t even believe it. “Married!” he faltered out in a broken voice; “what, married already! Linnet married to that man! Oh, impossible! Impossible!”
“But it’s true, all the same,” Franz answered sturdily. “Philippina was there, and she saw them married. She came back last night to collect their things and pack up for Italy. She’s to meet them to-morrow by the mid-day train, at a place called Verona.”
“But how did he do it in the time?” Will exclaimed still incredulous, and clinging still to the last straw with a drowning man’s instinct. “Your Austrian law has so many formalities. Perhaps it’s a story the man has made up on purpose to deceive us. He may have told Philippina, and she may be in league with him.”
Franz shook his head with gloomy determination. “No, no,” he said; “it won’t do; don’t flatter your soul with that; there’s no doubt at all in the world about it. He’s as deep as a well, and as false as a fox, and he’d laid all his plans very cunningly beforehand. He made the arrangements and swore to the Civil Act without consulting Linnet. He and the priest were in league, and the priest helped him out with it. At the very last moment, Andreas carried her off, and before she could say nay, he went straight through and married her.”
Will’s brain reeled round; his mind seemed to fail him. The sense of his loss, his irreparable loss, deadened for the moment every other feeling. Linnet gone from him for ever! Linnet married to somebody else!—and that somebody else so cold, so calculating, so cruel a man as Andreas Hausberger! It was terrible to contemplate. “He must have forced her to do it!” the Englishman cried in his distress. “But how could she ever consent? How could she ever submit? I can’t believe it! I can’t even understand it!”
“He didn’t exactly force her,” Franz answered, tilting his hat still more angrily on one side of his head. “But he brought the Herr Vicar from St Valentin to persuade her; and you know what priests are, and you know what women! The Herr Vicar just turned on purgatory and all the rest of it to frighten the poor child—so Philippina says. She was crying all the time. She cried in the train, and she cried on the road, and she cried in the church, and she cried at the altar! She cried worst of all when Herr Andreas took her home to the Wirthshaus to supper. . . . But I’ll be even with him yet.” And Franz tapped his knife once more. “When I meet him again—ten thousand devils!—this goes right up to the hilt in the base black heart of him!”
“Can I see Philippina?” Will gasped out, white as death.
“Yes; certainly you can see her,” the Robbler answered with a burst, leading him in through the dark archway to the sunless courtyard. “Come this way into the parlour. She’s upstairs just now, but I’ll bring her down to speak to you.”
In a minute or two more, sure enough, Philippina appeared in her very best dress, looking bright and smiling. She was garrulous as usual, and most gay and lively. “Oh yes; they had been to St Valentin, and no mistake—the Herr Vicar going with them—no scandal of any sort—and ’twas a very grand affair; never anything like it! Andreas Hausberger had spared no expense or trouble; red wine at the supper, and fiddlers for the dance, and all the world of the valley bidden to the feast on the night of the wedding! Linnet had cried a good deal; ach, yes, she had cried, how she had cried—but cried!—mein Gott, it was wonderful! But there, girls always will cry when they’re going to be married; and you know, Herr Will,” archly, “she was very, very fond of you.” For herself, Philippina couldn’t think what the child had to cry about—except, of course, what you call her feelings; but all she could say was, she’d be very glad herself to make such a match as Lina Telser was making. Why, would the gnädige Herr believe it? Herr Andreas was going to take her to a place called Mailand, away off in Italy, to train her for the stage—the operatic stage—and make in the end a real grand lady of her!