Linnet: A Romance
party, about various details of price, possibilities as to meals,
excursions in the neighbourhood, and other practical matters. The
landlord answered all in the same self-respecting and almost haughty
tone as before, assuring him in few words as to the excellence of the
bread and the meat, the cleanliness of the beds, the soundness of the
beer, and the advantages and respectability of his establishment in
general. “You will be as well here,” he said, summing up, “as in New
York or London—a little less luxury, perhaps, but quite as much real
and solid comfort.”
“What does he say?” Florian asked, languidly, as the landlord finished.
For, though in his capacity as man of culture, the philosopher of taste
was prepared to give a critical opinion offhand at any moment, on Goethe
or Heine, the Minnesänger, or the Nibelungenlied, he was innocent of
even the faintest acquaintance with the German language. Two words in it
amply served his turn: with _wieviel_ and _ja wohl_, he made the tour of
the Fatherland.
Will explained to him in brief, and in the vulgar tongue, the nature of
the landlord’s somewhat high-flown commendations.
By way of answer Florian unslung his knapsack, which he flung on the bed
with as much iron determination as his height permitted. “This’ll do,”
he said, decisively—this time in his character as the man of impulse.
“I like the house; I like the place; I like the view; I like the
landlord. He’s a dignified looking old boy in his way, the landlord,
with that independence of mien and that manly chivalry which forms an
integral part of my mental conception of the Tyrolese character. No
bowing and scraping there; no civilised flunkeydom. And that scar on his
face, you observe; what a history it conceals: some free fight on the
hills, no doubt, or some tussle with a wounded bear in his native
forest!”
“Wal, no; not pre-cisely that,” the landlord answered, in very Teutonic
English, strangely tinged with an under-current of a most Western
flavour. “I got that mark in a scrimmage one day on a Mississippi
steamer. It was a pretty hard fight, with a pretty hard lot, too—he was
a real rough customer—one of these professional monte-sharpers that go
up and down on the boats on the lookout for flats; but I settled him,
anyway. He didn’t want another when we’d squared accounts over that gash
on my face. He retired into private life at the St Louis hospital for
the next few voyages.”
Poor Florian collapsed. This was too, too much! He sank on the sofa with
a dejected face, drew a very long breath from the innermost depths of
his manly bosom, and at last gasped out with a violent effort: “Are
there no Tyrolese in the Tyrol at all, then?”
The landlord smiled, a restrained and cautious smile. He was a
self-contained sort of man, very large and roomy. “Why, I’m a Tyroler,
myself,” he said, opening the second window, and bustling about the room
a little—“as Tyrolese as they make ’em; but I’ve been around the world
a bit, for all that, both in Europe and America.”
“You play the zither?” Will inquired, guessing at once what quest was
most likely to have taken him there.
The landlord shook his head. “No; I sing,” he answered. “It was in
charge of a troupe that I went over the water. You know Ludwig Rainer?”
“Who has an hotel on the Achensee?” Will replied. “The well-known jodel
singer? Yes; I’ve stayed there and heard him.”
“Wal, _he_ set the thing going,” Herr Andreas Hausberger continued,
still bustling about the room; “he took over a troupe to New York and
Chicawgo. The first time, he fell in with a pack of scoundrels who
cheated him of everything he made by the trip. The second time, he came
back with a few hundred dollars. The third time, he got into a very good
thing, and made money enough out of his tour to start the Seehof. So _I_
followed suit, but I only saved enough on my first venture to set me up
here in this house in the village. It’s a one-horse affair for a man
like me. Next time, I hope I shall make a little capital to start a big
hotel for foreign tourists and kur-guests at Meran or Innsbruck.”
“Then you mean to go again?” Will Deverill asked, sitting down.
“Why, certainly,” the landlord answered, retreating to the door, “as
soon as ever I can get another good troupe together again.” And with a
ceremonious bow, like a courtly gentleman that he was, he retired
downstairs to superintend the preparation of those fresh mountain trout
he had promised them for dinner.
As soon as he was gone, Florian raised himself on one elbow like a
startled butterfly, with an air of studious vacancy, and stared hard at
Will Deverill. “What an extraordinary country,” he murmured, with a
pensive sigh. “It’s Babel reversed. Everybody seems to speak and
understand every European language. The very babes and sucklings call
one names as one passes, in vile gutter English. It’s really quite
uncanny. Who’d have thought, now, of meeting in an out-of-the-way lost
corner of earth like this, a village innkeeper who’s a man of the world,
a distinguished traveller, an accomplished linguist, and an intelligent
impresario? The ways of Providence are truly mysterious! What a place to
bury such a shining light! Why dump him down so, in this untrodden
valley?”
“Oh, it’s not by any means such a singular case as you suppose,” Will
answered, looking up from the knapsack he was engaged in
unpacking—“above all, in the Zillerthal. I’ve never been here before
myself, but I’ve always been told in other parts of the Tyrol that the
Zillerthalers, men and girls, are every one of them born musicians. And
as for our landlord here, the Tyrolese _wirth_ is always a man of light
and leading in his own society. He opposes the priest, and heads the
liberal party. All the popular leaders in the war of independence in the
Tyrol were monks or innkeepers. Andreas Hofer, himself, you know, had an
inn of his own in the Passer valley.”
“Ah, to be sure,” Florian ejaculated, in an acquiescent tone of a
peculiar calibre, which showed his friend at once he hadn’t the remotest
idea who Andreas Hofer was, or why one should be expected to know
anything about him. Now, want of knowledge on such a point is, of
course, most natural and pardonable in a stranger; but there was no
sufficient reason, Will Deverill thought, for Florian’s pretence at its
possession where he really knew nothing. That, however, was poor
Florian’s foible. He couldn’t bear to have it thought he was ignorant of
anything, from mathematics or music to esoteric Buddhism. If a native of
Siberia had addressed him casually in the Ostiak dialect of the
Tungusian language, Florian would have nodded and smiled a
non-committing assent, as though Ostiak had always been his
mother-tongue, and he had drunk in Tungusian at his nurse’s bosom.
“You know who Andreas Hofer was, of course?” Deverill went on,
persistently. He was a devil of a fellow for not letting you off when he
caught you out in an innocent little piece of social pretension, was
Deverill.
Florian, thus hard pressed, found himself compelled to do what he hated
most in the world—confess his ignorance. “I remember the gentleman’s
respected name, of course!” he said, dubiously, with a sickly smile and
a little forced pleasantry; “but his precise claims to distinction, as
_Men of the Time_ puts it in its cheerful circular, entirely escape my
memory for the moment.”
“He was the leader of the spontaneous Tyrolese peasant movement, you
know, for the expulsion of the French and their Bavarian allies in 1808
or thereabouts,” Will went on, still unpacking. “Napoleon caught him at
last, and had him shot at Mantua. You’ll see his tomb when you go to
Innsbruck, and lots of other mementos of him all over the country
everywhere. He pervades the place. He’s the national hero, in fact—the
martyr of independence—a sort of later and more historical William
Wallace.”
“Dear me, yes; how stupid of me!” Florian cried, clapping his hand to
his head in a sudden burst of pretended recollection. “It comes back to
me now, of course. Good old Andreas Hofer! How could I ever forget him?
The Tyrolese William Tell! The Hampden of the Alps! The undaunted
Caractacus of these snow-clad mountains!”
Deverill pulled off his coat. “If I were you,” he said, drily, “instead
of rhapsodising here, I’d go into my own room, have a jolly good wash,
and get ready for dinner. We must have walked about twenty-two miles
since we got out at Jenbach, and this bracing air gives one a positively
Gargantuan appetite.”
Florian roused himself with a yawn, for though vigorous enough for his
size, he was a lazy creature, and when once he sat down it was with
difficulty he could be prevailed upon to put himself in motion again.
Ten minutes later they were seated at the white-covered table in the
tidy little salon, doing the fullest justice to the delicious broiled
trout, the foaming amber ale, the fresh laid eggs, and the excellent
home-made bread, provided, according to promise, by Herr Andreas
Hausberger.
CHAPTER III
WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE
Next morning early, aroused by the cloister bell, Will Deverill rose,
and looked out of his window. Oh, such an exquisite day! In that clear,
crisp air the summits of the Floitenspitze, the Löffler, and the
Turnerkamp glistened like diamonds in the full morning sunlight. ’Twas a
sight to rejoice his poetic soul. For Will Deverill, though too modest
to give himself airs, like Florian, was a poet by birth, and a
journalist by trade. Nature had designed him for an immortal bard;
circumstances had turned him into an occasional leader-writer. He stood
there entranced for many minutes together. He had pushed the leaded
window open wide when he first rose, and the keen mountain air blew in
at it most refreshingly. All, all was beautiful. He looked out on the
fresh green pastures, the deep glen below, the white stream in its
midst, the still whiter tops of the virgin mountains beyond it. A stanza
for his new poem rose spontaneous in his mind as he leaned his arms on
the low sill and gazed out upon the great glaciers:
“I found it not where solemn Alps and grey
Draw crimson glories from the new-born day,
Nor where huge sombre pines loom overhanging
Niagara’s rainbow spray.”
He was just feeling in his pocket for a pencil to jot down the rough
draft of these few lines, when of a sudden, at the window in the next
room at the side, what should he see but Florian’s pale face peeping
forth most piteously.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you slept?” Will inquired of his
disconsolate friend with a sympathetic nod.
The epicurean philosopher shook a sad, slow head with a painfully
cheerful air of stoical resignation. “Not a wink since three o’clock,”
he answered, gloomily. “Those dreadful creatures have bothered me
without ceasing.”
“Surely,” Will began, somewhat surprised, “not——”
Florian shook his head wearily. “No, no; not _them_,” he murmured with
melancholy emphasis. “I don’t mind about _them_. They, at least, are
silent, and, besides, if you like, you can get up and catch them. Bells,
bells! my dear fellow; bells, bells, all the morning. They’ve been
tinkling in my ear every blessed minute since the clock struck three.
It’s unendurable, horrible.”
“Oh, the cow-bells!” Will answered, laughing. “Why, for my part, I like
them. They’re a feature of the place; they sound so countrified. I
hardly hear them at all, or if I hear them, they come to me drowsily
through the haze of my dreams like the murmur of water or a nurse’s
lullaby. I find them, to tell you the truth, positively soothing.
Besides,” he added, mischievously, with a malicious little smile, “in