Linnet: A Romance
And, sure enough, the _wirth_ was right. As soon as the dance was ended,
young men and maidens, with equal zest, betook themselves, all alike, to
the consolations of the beer-jug. Their thirst was mighty. And no
wonder, indeed, for this Tyrolese dancing is no drawing-room game, but
hard muscular exercise. Andreas Hausberger looked on with a cynical
smile on those thin, cold lips of his. “It’s good for trade,” he
murmured again, half to himself, once or twice, as the girls at the bar
filled the beer-mugs merrily; “very good for trade. So are all
amusements. That’s the way the foolish get rid of their money—and the
wise get hold of it.”
After the beer came a pause, a long, deep-drawn pause; and then two
young men, standing out from the throng, began to sing alternately at
one another in short Tyrolese stanzas. One of them was Franz Lindner;
the other was the young man with the scar on his forehead, whom Linnet
described as her cousin Fridolin. What they sang, neither Florian nor
Will could make out, for the words of the song were in the roughest form
of the mountain dialect; but it was clear from their manner, and the way
they flung out their words point blank at one another’s heads, that they
improvised as they went, like Virgilian shepherds, and that their
remarks were by no means either polite or complimentary in substance or
character. The rest stood round in a circle and listened, laughing
heartily at times as each in turn scored a point now and then off his
angry rival; while Linnet and the other girls blushed again and again at
some audacious retort, though the bolder among the women only tittered
to themselves or looked up with arch glances at each risky allusion.
Andreas Hausberger too, stood by, all alert to keep the peace; it was
plain from the quick light in his resolute eye, and the rapid upward
movement of his twitching hand, he was ready at a moment’s notice to
intervene between the combatants, and put a stop in the nick of time to
the scoffing contest of defiance and derision.
The song, however, passed off without serious breach of the peace. Then
more dances followed, more beer, and more bucolic contests. As the
evening wore on, the fun grew fast and furious. On the stroke of twelve,
the Herr Vicar withdrew—not one hour too early; his flock were fast
getting beyond control of his counsels. Linnet and a few others of the
more modest-looking girls now sat out from the dance; the rest continued
to whirl round and round the room in still wilder and more fantastic
movements than ever. Andreas Hausberger was now yet more clearly on the
alert. A stray spark would raise a flame in that magazine of gunpowder.
Suddenly, at the end of the first dance after the priest’s departure,
the young man with the scar on his forehead, called Cousin Fridolin,
came forward unexpectedly to where Linnet sat aside between Will
Deverill and Florian. He had danced with her once before in the course
of the evening, and Will observed that through that dance Franz
Lindner’s eyes had never been taken off his rival and Linnet. But now
the tall young man came forward with a dash, and without one word of
warning, placed his conical hat, blackcock’s feather and all, with a
jodel of challenge, on Linnet’s forehead. They had seen the same thing
done before more than once that evening, and Linnet had explained to
them that the custom was equivalent to a declaration of love for the
lady so honoured—’twas as much as to say, “This girl is mine; who
disputes it?” But as the tall young man stood back with a smile of
triumph on his handsome lips, one hand on his hip, staring fixedly at
Linnet, Franz Lindner sprang forth with a face as black as night, and a
brow like thunder. Trembling with rage, he seized the hat from her head,
and tore hastily from its band the offending plume. “Was kost die
Feder?” he cried, in a tone of angry contempt, holding it up in his hand
before the eyes of its owner; “Was kost die Feder?” which is, being
interpreted, “How much for your feather?”
Quick as lightning, the answer rang out, “Fünf Finger und ein
Griff”—“Five fingers and a grip.” It is the customary challenge of the
Tyrolese Robbler, and the customary acceptance.
Before Will had time to understand what was happening next, in the crack
of a finger, in the twinkle of an eye, the two young men had closed,
with hands and arms and bodies, and were grappling with each other in a
deadly struggle. All night long they had been watching and provoking one
another; all night long they had vied in their attentions to Linnet, and
their studious interchange of mutual insults. Sooner or later a fight
seemed inevitable. Now, flown with insolence and beer, and heated from
the dance, they flung themselves together, with one accord, like two
tigers in their fury. Linnet clapped her hands to her ears, and shut her
eyes in horror. For a minute or two, it seemed to every looker-on as
though there would be bloodshed in the inn that evening. Florian
observed this little episode with philosophic interest; ’twas pleasant
to watch these simple dramas of the primary emotions—love, jealousy,
passion—still working themselves out as on the stage of Hellas. He had
never before seen them so untrammelled in their play; he stood here face
to face with Homeric simplicity.
In five minutes, however, to his keen disappointment, the whole scene
was finished. Andreas Hausberger, that cool, calm man of the world,
perceiving at a glance that such contests in his inn were very bad for
trade, and that ’twould be a pity for him to lose by a violent death so
good a singer, or so constant a customer, interposed his heavy hand
between the angry combatants. Your half-tipsy man, be he even a
Tyrolese, though often quarrelsome, is usually placable. A short
explanation soon set everything right again. Constrained by Herr
Andreas, with his imperious will, the two Robblers consented, after
terms interchanged, to drown their differences in more mugs of beer, and
then retire for the evening. The young man with the scar, whom they
called Cousin Fridolin, regretted that he had interfered with Franz
Lindner’s maiden, but excused his act as a mere hasty excess of cousinly
feeling. Franz Lindner in return, not to be outdone in magnanimity,
though still with flashing eyes, and keen side-glance at Linnet,
regretted that he had offered such indignity in his haste to the
dishonoured symbol of his comrade’s championship. Hands were shaken all
round; cuts and bruises were tended; and, almost as soon as said, to
Florian’s infinite disgust, the whole party had settled down by the
tables once more, on an amicable basis, to beer and conversation.
But before they retired from that evening’s revel, Linnet murmured to
Will in a tone of remonstrance very real and aggrieved, “Franz Lindner
had no right to call me his _Mädchen_.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE HUMAN HEART
Next morning Will woke of himself very early. He jumped out of bed at
once, and crossed, as he stood, to the open window. The sun had just
risen. Light wisps of white cloud crawled slowly up the mountains; the
dewdrops on the grass-blades sparkled in the silent rays like
innumerable opals. ’Twas the very time for an early stroll! But the air,
though keen, had the rawness and chill of an autumn morning. Will
sniffed at it dubiously. He had half a mind to turn in again and take an
hour’s more sleep. Should he dress and go out, or let the world have
time to get warmed and aired before venturing abroad in it?
As he debated and shivered, however, a sight met his eye which
determined him at once on the more heroic course of action. It was
Linnet, in her simple little peasant dress, turning up the hill-path
that led behind the _wirthshaus_. Now, a chance of seeing Linnet alone
without Florian was not to be despised; she interested him so much, and,
besides, he wanted to ask her the whole truth about the Robblers.
Without more ado, therefore, he dressed himself hastily, and strolled
out of the inn. She hadn’t gone far, he felt sure; he would find her
close by, sitting by herself on the open grass-slope beyond the belt of
pinewood.
And so, sure enough, he did. He came upon her unseen. She was seated
with her back to him on a round boulder of grey stone, pouring her full
throat in spontaneous music. For a minute or two, Will stood still, and
listened and looked at her. He could see from his point of vantage, a
little on one side behind the boulder, the rise and fall of her swelling
bosom, the delicate trills under her rich brown chin. And then—oh, what
melody! Will drank it in greedily. He was loth to disturb her, so
delicious was this outpouring of her soul in song. For, like her
namesake of the woods, Linnet sang best when she sang of her own accord,
delivering her full heart of pure internal impulse.
At last she ceased, and turned. Her eye fell upon Will She started and
blushed; she had expected no such audience. The young man raised his
hat. “You’re alone,” he said, “Linnet?”
The girl looked up all crimson. “Yes; I came out that I should be
alone,” she answered, shyly, “I did not wish to see anyone. I wished for
time to think many things over.”
“Then you don’t want me to stop?” Will broke in, somewhat crestfallen,
yet drawing a step nearer.
“Oh, no; I do not mean that,” Linnet answered in haste, laying her hand
on her bosom. Then she burst into German, which came so much easier to
her. “I wanted to get away from all the others,” she said, looking up at
him pleadingly—and, as she looked, Will saw for the first time that big
tears stood brimming in her lustrous eyes; “I knew they would tease me
about—about what happened last evening, and I didn’t wish to hear it
till I had thought over with myself what way I should answer them.”
“Then you’re not afraid of _me_?” Will asked, with a little thrill. She
was only an alp-girl, but she sang like a goddess; and it’s always
pleasant, you know, to find a woman trusts one.
“I want you to stop,” Linnet answered, simply.
She motioned him with one hand to a seat on a little heap of dry stones
hard by. Will threw himself down on the heap in instant obedience to her
mute command, and leaned eagerly forward. “Well, so this Robbler man
wants to have you, Linnet,” he said, with some earnestness; “and you
don’t want to have him. And he would have fought for you last night,
against the man with the scar; and the girls in the inn will tease you
about it this morning.”
“Yes; the girls will tease me,” Linnet answered, “and will say cruel
things, for some of them are not fond of me, because, you see, Franz
Lindner and the other man, my cousin Fridolin, are both of them
Robblers, and would both of them fight for me. Now, a village that has a
Robbler is always very proud of him; he’s its champion and head; and if
a Robbler pays attention to a girl, it’s a very great honour. So some of
the other girls don’t like it at all, that the Robblers of two villages
should quarrel about _me_. Though Gott in Himmel knows I’ve not
encouraged either of them.”
“And would you marry Franz Lindner?” Will asked, with genuine interest.
It seemed to him a pity—nay, almost a desecration—that this beautiful
girl, with her splendid voice, and all the possibilities it might
enclose for the future, should throw herself away upon a Tyrolese
hunter, whom the self-confidence engendered by mere muscular strength
had turned for local eyes into a petty hero.
“No; I don’t think I would _marry_ him,” Linnet answered, after a short
pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind
all the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so
also would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me.