Linnet: A Romance
But I don’t like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have
kept to them.”
“And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the
grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her.
“Yes; I like him—well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked
him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never
cared for him much indeed; I was never his _Mädchen_. He had no right to
say that, no right at all, at all—for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that
means a great deal. How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him
any cause at all to say so.”
“And of late you like him less?” Will inquired, pressing her hard with
this awkward question. Yet he spoke sympathetically. He had no reason
for what he said, to be sure—no reason on earth. He spoke at random,
out of that pure instinctive impulse which leads every man in a pretty
girl’s presence, mean he little or much, to make at least the best of
every passing advantage. ’Tis pure virility that: the natural Adam
within us. I wouldn’t give ten cents for the too virtuous man who by
“ethical culture” has educated it out of him.
Linnet looked down at her shoes—for she possessed those luxuries. “Yes;
of late I like him less,” she answered, somewhat tremulously.
“Why so?” Will insisted. His lips, too, quivered.
Linnet raised her dark eyes and met his for one instant. “I’ve seen
other people since; perhaps I like other people better,” she answered,
candidly.
“What other people?” Will asked, all on fire.
“Oh, that would be telling,” Linnet answered, with an arch look.
“Perhaps my cousin Fridolin—or perhaps the young man with the yellow
beard—or perhaps the gnädige Herr’s honoured friend, Herr Florian.”
Will drew figures with his stick on the grass for a minute or two. Then
he looked up and spoke again. “But, in any case,” he said, “you don’t
mean, whatever comes, to marry Franz Lindner?” It grieved him to think
she should so throw herself away upon a village bully.
Linnet plucked a yellow ragwort and pulled out the ray-florets one by
one as she answered, “I shan’t have the chance. For, to tell you the
truth, I think Andreas Hausberger means himself to marry me.”
At the words, simply spoken, Will drew back, all aghast. The very notion
revolted him. As yet, he was not the least little bit in his own soul
aware he was in love with Linnet. He only knew he admired her voice very
much; for the rest, she was but a simple, beautiful, unlettered peasant
girl. It doesn’t occur, of course, to an English gentleman in Will
Deverill’s position, to fall in love at first sight with a Tyrolese
milkmaid. But Andreas Hausberger! the bare idea distressed him. The man
was so cold, so cynical, so austere, so unlovable! and Will more than
half-suspected him of avaricious money-grubbing. The girl was so
beautiful, so simple-hearted, so young, and Heaven only knew to what
point of success that voice might lead her. “Oh no,” he burst out,
impetuously; “you can’t really mean that?—you never could dream—don’t
tell me you could—of accepting that man Andreas Hausberger as a
husband!”
“Why not?” the girl said, calmly. “He’s rich and well to do. I could
keep my mother in such comfort then, and pay for such masses for my
father’s soul—far more than if I took Franz Lindner or my cousin
Fridolin, who are only _jägers_. Andreas Hausberger’s a _wirth_, the
richest man in St Valentin; he has horses and cows and lands and
pastures. And if he says I must, how can I well refuse him?”
She looked up at him with a look of childlike appeal. In a moment,
though with an effort, Will realised to himself how the question looked
to her. Andreas Hausberger was her master, and had always been her
master. She must do as he bid, for he was very masterful. He was her
teacher, too, and would help her to make her fortune as a singer in the
world, if ever she made it. He was rich, as the folk of the village
counted riches, and could manage that things should be pleasant or
unpleasant for her, as it suited his fancy. In a community where men
still fought with bodily arms for their brides, Andreas Hausberger’s
will might well seem law to his _sennerin_ in any such matter.
“Besides,” Linnet went on, plucking another ragwort, and similarly
demolishing it, “if I didn’t want to take him, the Herr Vicar would make
me. For the Herr Vicar would do, of course, as Andreas Hausberger wished
him. And how could I dare disobey the Herr Vicar’s orders?”
To this subtle question of religion and morals Will Deverill, for his
part, had no ready-made answer. Church and State, it was clear, were
arrayed against him. So, after casting about for a while in his own mind
in vain for a reply, he contented himself at last with going off
obliquely on a collateral issue. “And you think,” he said, “Andreas
Hausberger really wants to marry you?”
“Well, he never quite _told_ me so,” Linnet replied, half-deprecatingly,
as who fears to arrogate to herself too great an honour, “and perhaps
I’m wrong; but still I _think_ he means it. And I think it’ll perhaps
depend in part upon how he finds the foreign Herrschaft like my singing.
For that, he says little to me about it at present. But if he sees I do
well, and am worth making his wife—for he’s the best husband a girl
could get in St Valentin—in that case, ja wohl, I believe he’ll ask
me.”
She said it all naturally, as so much matter of course. But Will’s
poetic soul rebelled against the sacrifice. “Surely,” he cried, “you
must love some one else; and why not, then, take the man you love,
whoever he may be, and leave Andreas Hausberger’s money to perish with
him?”
“So!” Linnet said quickly—the pretty German “so!” Her fingers trembled
as she twitched at the rays of the ragwort. She plucked the florets in
haste, and flung them away one by one. First love’s conversation deals
largely in pauses. “The man one might love,” she murmured at last with a
petulant air, “doesn’t always love one. How should he, indeed? It is not
in nature. For, doesn’t the song say, ‘Who loves me, love I not; whom I
love, loves me not?’ But what would the Herr Vicar say if he heard me
talking like this with the foreign gentlefolk? He’d tell me it was sin.
A girl should not speak of her heart to strangers. I have spoken too
much. But I couldn’t help it, somehow. The _gnädige Herr_ is always so
kind to me. You lead me on to confess. You can understand these things,
I think, so much better than the others.”
She rose, half-hesitating. Will Deverill, for his part, rose in turn and
faced her. For a second each paused; they looked shyly at one another.
Will thought her a charming girl—for a common milkmaid. Linnet thought
him a kind, good friend—for one of the great unapproachable foreign
Herrschaft. Will held out one frank hand. Linnet gave him the tips of
her brown fingers timidly. He clasped them in his own while a man might
count ten. “Shall you be here . . . to-morrow . . . about the same
time?” he inquired, before he let them drop, half hesitating.
“Perhaps,” Linnet answered, looking down demurely. Then blushing, she
nodded at him, half curtsied, and sprang away. She gave a rapid glance
to right and left, to see if she was perceived, darted lightly down the
hill, and hurried back to the _wirthshaus_.
But all that day long, Will was moody and silent. He thought much to
himself of this strange idea that Andreas Hausberger, that saturnine
man, was to marry this beautiful musical alp-girl.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN OF THE WORLD
For some four or five mornings after this hillside interview, Florian
noticed every day a most unaccountable fancy on Will Deverill’s part for
solitary walks at early dawn before breakfast. Neither dew nor
hoar-frost seemed to damp his ardour. Florian rose betimes himself, to
be sure, but Will had always already distanced him. And on every one of
those five mornings, when Will said farewell to Linnet by the big grey
boulder, he used the same familiar formula of leave-taking, “You’ll be
here again to-morrow?” And every time, Linnet, thrilling and trembling
inwardly, answered back the same one conscience-salving word, “Perhaps,”
which oracular and highly hypothetical promise she nevertheless most
amply fulfilled with great regularity on the following morning. For,
when Will arrived at the trysting-place, he always found Linnet was
there before him; and she rose from her rocky seat with a blush of
downcast welcome, which a less modest man than he might easily have
attributed to its true motive. To Will, however, most unassuming of men
and poets, she was only an interesting alp-girl, who liked to meet him
on the hillside for a lesson in English. Though, to be sure, why it was
necessary to give the lesson alone in the open air at six o’clock in the
morning, and, still more, why the professor should have thought it
needful to hold the pupil’s hand in his own for many minutes together,
to enforce his points, Will himself would no doubt have been hard put to
explain on philological principles. Moreover, strange to say, for
Linnet’s sake, the conversation was conducted mostly in German.
Lookers-on, however, see most of the game. On the sixth such morning, it
occurred casually to Florian as he lay abed and reflected, to get up
early himself and go out on the hillside. Not that the airy epicurean
philosopher was by any means afflicted with the essentially vulgar vice
of curiosity. He was far too deeply occupied with Mr Florian Wood to
think of expending much valuable attention on the habits and manners of
less-interesting personalities. But in this particular case he felt he
had a positive Duty to perform. Now, a Duty had for Florian all the
luxury of novelty. He was troubled with few such, and whenever he found
one, he made the most of it. Just at present, he was persuaded Will
Deverill was on the eve of “getting himself into an entanglement” with
the beautiful milkmaid who so paradoxically preferred his society to
Florian’s. Plain Duty, therefore, to Will himself, to Mrs Deverill
_mère_, to the just expectations of the ladies of England (who had
clearly a prior claim on Will’s fortune and affection), compelled
Florian to interfere before things went too far, so as to save his
friend from the consequences of his own possible folly. Animated by
these noble impulses, Florian did not even shrink from leaving a very
snug bed at five o’clock that cold morning, and waiting at the window,
like a private detective, till Will took his way up the path to the
hillside.
About six, Will emerged from the door of the inn. Florian gave him law,
five minutes law—just rope enough to hang himself. Then, marking from
the back window which way Will had gone, he followed the trail up hill
with all the novel zest of an amateur policeman. Skulking along the
pinewood, he came upon them from behind, by the same path which Will
himself had taken on the morning when he followed Linnet first to the
boulder in the pasture. Then, treading softly over the green turf with
muffled footfall, he was close upon the unconscious pair before they
knew or suspected it. The ill-advised young people were seated side by
side on a little ledge of rock that protruded from the green-sward. Will
leant eagerly forward, holding Linnet’s hand, and looking hard into her
eyes; the girl herself drew back, and cast down her glance, as if half
fearing the ardour of his evident advances. Respect for the conventions
made Florian cough lightly before disturbing their interview. At the
sound, both looked up. Some five feet nothing of airy observant humanity
beamed blandly down upon them. Linnet gave a little cry, started up in
surprise, hid her crimson face hurriedly between two soft brown hands,