Linnet: A Romance
man’s ear a perfect flood of explanatory eloquence in their native
dialect. Gradually the Robbler’s defiant attitude relaxed; his face grew
calmer; he accepted her account. Then he turned to Will with a more
mollified manner: “You may go on,” he said, graciously, with a regal nod
of his head; “I allow the _sennerin_ to continue her way with you.”
As for Will, he felt half inclined, at first, to resent the lordly air
of the Robbler’s concession. On second thoughts, however, for Linnet’s
sake, in his ignorance of who the young man might be, and the nature of
his claim upon her, he judged it better to avoid any quarrel of any sort
with a native of the valley. So he raised his hat courteously, and let
the stranger depart, with a very bad grace, along the road to the
village.
“What did you tell him?” he asked of Linnet, as the Robbler went his
way, singing defiantly to himself, down the grassy zig-zag.
“Oh, I told him,” Linnet answered, with a little flush of excitement,
“Andreas Hausberger had sent me that you might teach me English.”
“Is he your brother?” Will asked, not that he thought that likely, but
because it was less pointed than if he had asked her outright, “Is this
young man your lover?”
Linnet shook her head. “Ah, no,” she answered, with a very decided air;
“he’s nothing at all to me—not even my friend. I do not so much as care
for him. He’s only Franz Lindner. But then, he was jealous because he
see that I walk with you. He has no right of that; I am not anything to
him; yet still he must be jealous if somebody speak to me. It is because
he is a Robbler, and must do like that. A Robbler shall always fight if
any man shall walk or talk with his maiden. Though I am _not_ his
maiden, but he would have me to be it. So will he fight with anyone who
shall walk or talk with me. But when I tell him Andreas Hausberger send
me that I may learn English, then he go away quietly. For Franz Lindner,
or any other Robbler, will not fight with a stranger so well as with a
Tyroler.”
CHAPTER VII
WAGER OF BATTLE
That evening at the _Wirthshaus_, as things turned out, Will and Florian
had an excellent opportunity afforded them of observing for themselves
the manners and customs of the Tyrolese Robbler. There was a dance at
the inn—a prodigious dance, of truly national severity. It was the eve
of a wedding, and, as is usual on such occasions, the peasants of the
neighbourhood had assembled in full force to drink good luck to the
forthcoming union. The _Gaststube_ or bar-room was crowded with a gay
throng of bright and merry faces. The young men were there, jaunty,
bold, and defiant; the old men, austere and stern of feature from the
hardships of long life among the grim-faced mountains. Groups of
black-eyed lasses stood about the room and bandied repartee with their
gaily-dressed admirers; matrons, unspoilt by conventional restraint,
instead of checking their mirth, looked on smiling and abetting them.
Through the midst, the Herr Vicar strolled, stout and complaisant, an
easy-going man; not his to stem the tide of their innocent merriment; so
long as they confessed twelve times a year, and subscribed to release
their parents’ souls from purgatory, he sanctified by his presence the
beer and the dances. Andreas Hausberger, too, flitted here and there
through the crowd with an anxious eye; ’twas his task to provide for and
protect the bodies of his guests, as ’twas the Herr Vicar’s to save
their priceless souls from undue temptation.
At one end of the room, on a little raised platform, the music sat
installed;—a trombone, a zither, and a wooden hackbrettle made up the
whole orchestra. Scarcely had the performers struck up an enlivening
tune when the men, selecting as partners the girls of their choice,
began to dance round the hall in the very peculiar and (to say the whole
truth) extremely ungraceful Tyrolean fashion. Will and Florian had heard
from the landlord beforehand of the expected feast, to which they were
not invited; but, “at the sound of the harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all
kinds of music,” as Florian phrased it, their curiosity was so deeply
aroused that they crept from their sitting-room and peeped cautiously in
at the door of the _Tanzboden_. The sight that met their eyes in that
close-packed hall was sufficiently striking. Even Florian allowed this
was utterly Arcadian. For a minute or two, just at first, the young men
and maidens, grasping each other wildly round the neck and waist with
both their arms, in a sort of bear-like death-hug, whirled and eddied in
a maze round and round the room, stamping their heavy boots, till Will
almost trembled for the stability of the rafters. For some time that was
all: they twisted and twirled in closely-coupled pairs, clasped breast
to breast, like so many dancing dervishes. But, of a sudden, at a change
of the music, as if by magic, with one accord, the whole figure altered.
Each man, letting his partner go, began suddenly to perform a series of
strange antics and evolutions around her, the relics of some
pre-historic dance, of which the snapping of fingers and uttering of
_heuchs_ in a Highland fling are but a faint and colourless
reminiscence. As the reel went on, the music grew gradually faster and
faster, and the motions of the men still more savage and fantastic. The
two Englishmen looked on in astonishment and admiration. Such agility
and such verve they had never before seen or even dreamt of. Could these
rustic cavaliers be really made of india-rubber? They twisted and turned
and contorted themselves all the time with such obliviousness of their
bones, and such extraordinary energy! They smacked their lips and
tongues as they went; they jumped high into the air; they bent back till
their heads touched the ground behind; they bounded upright once more to
regain their position like elastic puppets, and, in between whiles, they
slapped their resounding thighs with their horny hands; they crowed like
cocks; they whistled like capercailzie; they stamped on the ground with
their hob-nailed shoes; they shouted and sang, and clicked their tongues
in their cheeks, and made unearthly noises deep down in their throats
for which language has as yet no articulate equivalent. Florian gazed
and glowered. And well he might; ’twas an orgie of strange sound, a
phantasmagoria of whirling and eddying motion.
While all this was going on, the two young Englishmen stood undecided
and observant by the lintel of the door, even Florian half-abashed at so
much unwonted merriment. But after a while, the Herr Vicar, whose
acquaintance they had already made among the stones of the churchyard,
spied them out by the entrance, and, with one hospitable fat forefinger
extended and crooked, beckoned them into the _Tanzboden_. “Come on,” he
cried, “come on; there’s room enough for all; our people are still glad
to entertain the Herr strangers: for some, unawares, have thus
entertained angels.”
So encouraged by the authorised mouthpiece of the parish, Will and
Florian stepped boldly into the crowded room, and watched the little
groups of stalwart young men and nut-brown lasses with all the interest
of unexpected novelty. The scene was indeed a picturesque and curious
one. Every Tyrolese is, or has been, or wishes to be thought, a mountain
hunter. So each man wore his hat, adorned with the trophies of his
prowess in the chase; with some, ’twas a _gamsbart_, or so-called
chamois’ beard—the tuft of coarse hair that grows high like a crest
along the creature’s back in the pairing season; with others, ’twas the
tail-feathers of the glossy blackcock, stuck saucily on one side, with
that perky air of self-satisfied assurance so characteristic of hot
youth in the true-born Tyroler. Glancing around the room, however, Will
saw at a single look that two young men alone among that eager crowd
wore their feathers with a difference—the “hook” being turned round in
the opposite direction from all their neighbours’. One of these two was
a tall and big-built young man of very florid complexion, with a scar on
his forehead; the other was their fiery friend of that morning on the
hills, Franz Lindner. From what Linnet had said, Will guessed at once by
the turn of the feather that both young men went in for being considered
Robblers.
As he turned to impart his conjecture to Florian, Linnet caught his eye
mutely from a corner by the mantelpiece. She wasn’t taking part in the
reel herself, so, undaunted by his experience of Franz Lindner that day,
Will strolled over to her side, followed close at heel by Florian. “You
don’t dance?” he said, bending over her with as marked politeness as he
would have shown to a lady in a London drawing-room.
“No; I may not,” Linnet answered, in her pretty broken English, with a
smile of not unnatural womanly pleasure that the strangers should thus
single her out before all her folk for so much personal attention. “I
have refuse Franz Lindner, so may I not dance this time with any one. It
is our custom so. When a girl shall refuse to dance with a man first,
she may not that turn accept any other. Nor may he, in turn, ask her
again that evening.”
“How delightful!” Florian cried, effusively. “Franz Lindner’s loss is
our gain, Fräulein Linnet. No; don’t frown at me like that; it _must_ be
Fräulein; I’ve too much respect for you to call you otherwise. But,
anyhow, we’ll sit out this dance and talk with you.”
“And I,” Will put in with a quiet smile, “I’ll call you Linnet, because
you prefer it.”
“Thank you,” Linnet said, shyly, with a grateful flash of her eyes, and
a side glance towards Franz Lindner; “it seems less as if you mock at
me.”
As they spoke, the figure changed of a sudden once more to a still
stranger movement. The women, falling apart, massed themselves together
in a central group, in attitudes expressive of studied indifference and
inattention to the men; their partners, on the contrary, placing
themselves full in front of them, began a series of most extraordinary
twists and twirls, accompanied by loud cries or snapping of fingers, and
endeavoured by every means in the power, both of lungs and limbs, to
compel their disdainful coquettes to take notice of their antics. While
they stood there and watched—Linnet with eyes askance on Franz
Lindner’s face—Andreas Hausberger strolled up, and took his place
beside them.
“Why, that’s the blackcock’s call!” Will exclaimed, with a start of
recognition, as the dancers, with one accord, uttered all in a chorus a
shrill and piercing note of challenge and defiance. “I’ve heard it on
the mountains.”
“Yes,” the _wirth_ assented; “that’s the blackcock’s call, and this,
that they’re doing, is the blackcock’s love-dance. In the springtime, on
the mountains, you know, the blackcocks and the grey hens assemble in
their dancing place—their _Tanzboden_ we call it, just the same as we
call this one. There, the hens stand aside, and pretend to be coy, and
take no notice of their mates, like the girls in this dance here; while
the blackcock caper in front of them, and flap their wings, and fluff
their necks, and do all they know to display their strength and beauty.
Whoever dances the most and best, gets most of the hens to join his
harem. So our young men have got up this love-dance to imitate them;
they flap their arms the same way, and give the blackcock’s challenge.
Nature’s pretty much the same above and below, I guess—especially here
in the Tyrol, where we haven’t yet learned to hide our feelings under
smooth silk hats as you do in England. But it’s all good for trade, and
that’s the great thing. It makes them thirsty. You’ll see, after this
bout, the beer will flow like water.”