Linnet: A Romance
cauldron, suspended from a crane over the open fireplace, and used—so
Will assured him—as the principal utensil in the manufacture of cheese.
The fire itself blazed in a hole, dug roughly in the floor of native
turf; the edge of this hole, cut out into a rude seat, did duty as sofa,
couch, chair, and chimney-corner. Florian sniffed somewhat dubiously.
“And she sleeps here all alone?” he said, with a suppressed shudder.
This was Arcadian simplicity, he felt, with quite too much of the bloom
off.
“Yes; she sleeps here all alone,” Will answered, undisturbed. “Comes up
in May, when the snow first melts, and goes down in October, when it
begins to lie thick again.”
The _sennerin_, laughing aloud, confirmed his report with many nods and
shrugs, and much good-humoured merriment. It amused her to see the
stranger’s half-incredulous astonishment.
“And aren’t you frightened?” Florian asked, Will interpreting the
question for him.
The _sennerin_ laughed the bare idea to scorn. “Why should I be?” she
exclaimed, brimming over with smiles of naïve surprise at such a
grotesque notion. “There are plenty more girls in all the other huts on
the alps round about. This hut’s Andreas Hausberger’s, and so are that
and that. He owns all these pastures; we come up and herd cows for him.”
“Isn’t it terribly lonely, though?” Florian inquired with open eyes,
reflecting silently to himself that after all there were advantages—of
a sort—in Bond Street.
“Lonely!” the _sennerin_ cried, in her own country dialect. “We’ve no
time to be lonely. We have to mind the cows, don’t you see, worthy
well-born Herr, and give milk to the calves, and make cheese and butter,
and clean our pots and pans, and do everything ourselves for our food
and washing. I can tell you we’re tired enough when the day’s well over,
and we can creep into our loft, and fall asleep on the straw there.”
“And she has no Society?” Florian exclaimed, all aghast at the thought.
For to him the companionship of his brother man, and perhaps even more
of his sister woman, was a necessary of existence.
The girl’s eye brightened with an unwonted fire as Will explained the
remark to her. “Ah, yes,” she said half-saucily, with a very coquettish
toss of her pretty black head; “when Saturday night comes round then
sure enough our mountain lads climb up from the valley below to visit
us. We have Sunday to ourselves—and them—till Monday morning; for you
know the song says—” and she trilled it out archly in clear, quick
notes—
“With my pouch unhung,
And my rifle slung,
And away to my black-eyed alp-girl!”
She sang it expressively, in a rich full voice, far sweeter than could
have been expected from so stalwart a maiden. Florian saw an opportunity
for bringing out one stray phrase from his slender stock of German. “Das
ist schön,” he cried, clapping his hands; “sehr schön! So schön!” Then
he relapsed into his mother-tongue. “And you sing it admirably!”
Their evident appreciation touched the alp-girl’s vanity. Like most of
her class she had no false modesty. She broke out at once spontaneously
into another native song, with a wild free lilt, which exactly suited
both her voice and character. It was excellently rendered; even Florian,
that stern critic, admitted as much; and as soon as she ended both men
clapped their hands in sincere applause of her unpremeditated
performance. The _sennerin_ looked down modestly when Will praised her
singing. “Ah, you should just hear Linnet!” she cried, in unaffected
self-depreciation.
“And who’s Linnet?” Will asked, smiling at the girl’s perfect frankness.
“Oh, she’s one of Herr Hausberger’s cow-girls,” the _sennerin_
answered, with a little shake of her saucy head. “But you needn’t ask
_her_; she’s a great deal too shy; she won’t give you a chance; she
never sings before strangers.”
“That’s a pity,” Will replied, lightly, not much thinking what he said;
“for if she sings better than you, worthy friend, she must be well worth
hearing.”
The _sennerin_ looked down again. Her ruddy cheek glowed ruddier. Such
praise from such lips discomposed her serenity. Will glanced at his
watch. “We must be going, Florian,” he said. “Half-past twelve already!
I’ve no coppers in my pocket. Have you anything you can offer this lady
gay for her agreeable entertainment?”
Florian pulled out his purse, and took from it gingerly a well-worn
twenty-kreuzer piece—one of those flimsy silvered shams which the
Austrian Government in its paternal stinginess imposes as money upon its
faithful lieges. The _sennerin_ accepted it with a profusion of thanks,
and smothered the generous donor’s hand with unstinted kisses. So much
happiness may a man diffuse in this world of woe with a fourpenny bit,
bestowed in due season! But Florian mistook that customary symbol of
thanks on the alp-girl’s part for an expression of her most heart-felt
personal consideration; and not to be outdone when it came to idyllic
courtship, he lifted her hand in return to his own gracious lips and
kissed it gallantly. Will raised his hat and smiled, without commenting
on this misconception, and with a cheery “Auf wiedersehen!” they went on
their way rejoicing once more up the slopes of the mountain.
CHAPTER IV
ENTER LINNET
Lunch on the summit was delicious that day, and the view was glorious.
But when they returned in the evening to the inn at St Valentin—that
was the name of their village—and described to Andreas Hausberger how
an alp-girl had sung for them in a mountain hut, the _wirth_ listened to
the description with a deprecatory smile, and then said with a little
shrug: “Ah, that was Philippina; she can’t do very much. Her high notes
are too shrill. You should just hear Linnet!”
“Is Linnet such a songstress then?” Florian cried, with that dubious
smile of his.
The _wirth_ looked grave. “She can _sing_,” he said, pointedly. His
dignity was hurt by the young man’s half-sceptical, half-bantering tone.
And your Tyroler is above all things conservative of his dignity.
These repeated commendations of this unknown Linnet, however, with her
quaintly pretty un-German-sounding name, piqued the two Englishmen’s
curiosity in no small degree as to her personality and powers, so that
when the _wirth_ next morning announced after breakfast, with a
self-satisfied smile, “Linnet’s coming down to-day,” Florian and Will
looked across at each other with one accord, and exclaimed in unison,
“Ah, now then, we shall see her!”
And, sure enough, about five o’clock that afternoon, as the strangers
were returning from a long stroll on the wooded heights that overhang
the village, they came unexpectedly, at a turn of the mountain footpath,
where two roads ran together, upon a quaint and picturesque Arcadian
procession. A long string of patient cows, in the cream-coloured coats
of all Tyrolese cattle, wound their way with cautious steps down the
cobble-paved zig-zags. A tinkling bell hung by a leather belt from the
neck of each; garlands of wild flowers festooned their horns; a group of
peasant children assisted at the rude pageant. In front walked a boy,
with a wreath slung across his right shoulder like a sash, leading the
foremost cow most unceremoniously by the horns; the rear was brought up
by a pretty sunburnt girl, with a bunch of soft pasque-flowers stuck
daintily in her brown hair, and a nosegay of bluebells peeping
coquettishly out of her full round bosom. Though vigorous-looking in
figure, and bronzed in face by the sun and the open air, she was of
finer mould and more delicate fibre, Will saw at a glance, than most of
the common peasant women in that workaday valley. Her features were full
but regular; her mouth, though large and very rich in the lips (as is
often the case with singers), was yet rosy and attractive; her eyes were
full of fire, after the true Tyrolese fashion; her rounded throat, just
then trembling with song, had a waxy softness of outline in its curves
and quivers that betrayed in a moment a deep musical nature. For she was
singing as she went, to the jingling accompaniment of some thirty
cow-bells; and not even the sweet distraction of that rustic discord
could hide from Will Deverill’s quick, appreciative ear the fact that he
stood here face to face with a vocalist of rare natural gifts, and some
homespun training.
He paused, behind the wall, as the procession wound round a long double
bend, and listened, all ears, to a verse or two of her simple but
exquisite music.
“This _must_ be Linnet!” he cried at last, turning abruptly to Florian.
And the boy at the head of the procession, now opposite him by the bend,
catching at the general drift of the words with real Tyrolese quickness,
called out with a loud laugh to the singer just above: “Sagt er, das
musz ja Linnet seyn!” and then exploded with merriment at the bare idea
that the Herrschaft should have heard the name and fame of his
companion.
As for the girl herself, surprised and taken aback at this sudden
interruption, she stood still and hesitated. For a moment she paused,
leaning hard on the long stick with which she guided and admonished her
vagrant cows; then she looked up and drew a long breath, looked down and
blushed, looked up once more and smiled, looked down and blushed again.
They had overtaken her unawares where the paths ran together; but as
each was enclosed with a high wall of granite boulders, overgrown with
brambles, she had no chance of perceiving them till they were close upon
her. She broke off her song at once, and stood crimson-faced beside
them.
“Ah, sing again!” Florian cried, folding two dainty palms in a rapture
on his breast, and putting his delicate head on one side in a transport
of enchantment “Why, Deverill, how she sings! what a linnet, indeed! and
how pretty she is, too! For the first time in my life, I really regret I
can’t speak German!”
The singer, looking up, all tremulous to have overheard this unfeigned
homage, made answer, to Florian’s equal delight and surprise, “I can
speak a little English.”
It would be more correct, perhaps, to put it that what she actually
said, was: “Ei kann schpiek a liddle Ennglisch”; but Florian, in his joy
that any means of inter-communication existed between them at all, paid
small heed at the time to these slight Teutonic defects in her delivery
of our language.
“You can speak English!” he exclaimed, overjoyed, for it would have been
a real calamity to him to find a pretty girl in the place, with a
beautiful voice, and he unable to converse in any known tongue with her.
“How delightful! How charming! How quite too unexpected! I’m so glad to
know that! For had it been otherwise, I should really have had to learn
German to talk with you!”
This overstrained compliment, though it rose quite naturally to
Florian’s practised lips, and was far more genuine than a great deal of
his talk, made the girl blush and stammer with extreme embarrassment.
She was unaccustomed, indeed, to such lavish praise, above all from the
gentlefolk. Was the _gnädige Herr_ making fun of her, she wondered? She
grew hot and uncomfortable. Fortunately for her self-possession,
however, Will Deverill intervened with a more practical remark. “You
speak English, do you?” he repeated. “That’s odd, in these parts. One
would hardly have thought that! How did you come to learn it?”
“My father was a guide,” the girl answered, slowly, making a pause at
each word, and picking her way with difficulty through the insidious
pit-falls of British pronunciation. (She called it _fahder_.) “He taked
plenty Ennglish gentlemen up the mountains before time. I learn so well