by Grant Allen
It was but a moment, yet that moment to her was worth many eternities. For a second of time she nestled against him confidingly, for now he was hers, and she was his for ever. Their lips had sealed it. But before he could steal another, she had broken away from him again, and stood half-penitent, half-overjoyed, by the roadside, a little way from him. “No more now!” she said, gravely, lifting one finger in command; “we must follow Herr Florian.” And with that, they plunged at once into the gloom of the tunnel.
What happened by the way, no one knows save themselves; but, two minutes later, with blushing cheeks, they rejoined their companions by the gateway of the castle. Even flushed as she was, Linnet couldn’t help admiring it. It was beautiful, wonderful. The ancient wealth and dignity of the first counts of Schloss Tyrol remain well reflected to this day in the rude magnificence of their Romanesque residence. Linnet looked up with wonder at the round-arched portal of the principal doorway, richly carved with quaint squat figures of grotesque fancy, naïve, not to say childish and uncouth, in design, but admirable and exquisite in execution. “Tenth-century workmanship!” Florian said, with a bland smile, as he looked up at it, condescendingly; and Will, pulling himself together again, explained to the two girls in detail the various meanings of the queer little figures. Here were Adam and Eve; here Jonah and the whale; here saints revelled in Heaven; here, lost souls rolled in torment. Linnet gazed, and admired the beauty of the door — but still more, Will’s learning. If only she could understand such things as that! But there! — he was so wise, and she so ignorant!
They passed into the hall — that stately old Rittersaal, adorned with marble carvings of the same infantile type — and looked sheer down from the windows a thousand feet on to the valley below, with the falls of the Adige behind, and a sea of tumultuous porphyritic mountains surging and rolling in the farther background. ’Twas a beautiful view in itself, rendered more beautiful still by its picturesque setting of semi-circular arches, divided and supported by slender shafts of polished alabaster. To an untutored girl of Linnet’s native artistic temperament, it was delightful to pass through those lordly halls and into that exquisite chapel with its quaint old frescoes, in company with somebody who could explain their whole meaning to her simple intelligence so well as Will Deverill. Though she felt her own ignorance — felt it acutely, sensitively — she felt at the same time how fast she could learn from such a teacher; and as she dropped on her knees before the twelfth-century Madonna in the spangled shrine of that antiquated chantry, it was not for herself alone that she murmured below her breath, in very tremulous tones, an Ave Maria.
Will and Florian talked, too, of the Schloss and its history. Linnet listened with all her ears, though she hardly understood half the English words they used to describe it — how it commanded the whole vast plain of Meran and Botzen, the widest and most populous in the Eastern Alps, one basking garden of vines and Indian corn and fruit-trees, thickly dotted with hamlets, churches, and castles. “You can see why the counts who lived here spread their power and their name by slow degrees over the whole of this country,” Will said, as they gazed down on it. And then he went on to talk of how the Counts of Tyrol gradually absorbed Meran and Botzen, and in course of time, by their possession of the Brenner route, the great mediæval highway from Italy to Germany, acquired the over-lordship of the whole wide tract which is now called after them. Oh, what grand words he used! Linnet listened, and wondered at them. She caught, from time to time, the name of Margaret Maultasch — that Meg of the Pocket-Mouth who made over her dominions to the house of Austria — and learned from stray hints how the Counts of the new line moved their capital northward from Meran to Innsbruck. It was marvellous how Herr Will, who was a stranger from England, should know so much more about her people’s history than she herself did! But there! what did she say? Herr Will knew everything.
Florian and Philippina went off by themselves after awhile among the ruins of the ramparts. Linnet was left alone with Will again by the windows of the Rittersaal. All this historical talk had inflamed her eager mind with vague hopes and possibilities. Why should not she too know? Why should not she too be fit for him, like the fair-haired lady? “Herr Will,” she said at last, turning round to him with a shy look in her shrinking eyes, “How I wish you could teach me! How I wish you could tell me how to learn such things! We shall be here for a month. Why shouldn’t I begin? Why shouldn’t I learn now? We may see each other often.”
“Will you be on the hill behind the town to-morrow?” Will asked, half-ashamed of himself for these endless breakings-off, and these fresh re-commencements.
“Perhaps,” Linnet answered timidly, in her accustomed phrase; “if Philippina will come . . . and if she doesn’t tell Andreas.”
“Where will you be?” Will inquired, taking her hand in his own once more and holding it.
Linnet looked down and paused. “I might be near the cross at the turn of the road by the second oratory, about ten o’clock,” she said very low, “if Our Lady permits me.”
Will pressed her hand hard. “And where do you sing to-night?” he asked, with a little smile of pleasure. “I must come and hear you.”
To his immense surprise Linnet drew back at once, red as a rose, and fixed her eyes on him pleadingly. “Oh, no, don’t,” she cried, much distressed. “Don’t, don’t, I beg of you.”
Will, in turn, lifted his head, astonished, and looked hard at her. He couldn’t understand this strange freak of feeling. “Then don’t you like me to hear you?” he cried, regretfully. “It’s such a pleasure to me. I thought you wanted me to hear. And I thought I encouraged you.”
“So you do,” Linnet answered with a burst, half-sidling towards him, half-shrinking. “I love you to hear me. And I’ll sing for you whenever you like. I’ll sing for you till I’m hoarse. But don’t come to the hotels. Oh, don’t come, I implore you!”
“Why not, my child?” Will cried, drawing her close to him once more.
Linnet’s cheeks burnt crimson. She looked down and stammered. Then, with a sudden impulse she hid her face on his bosom, and yielded up her whole soul to him. “Because,” she whispered, all aglow with maiden shame at having confessed the truth, “if Andreas Hausberger sees you, he’ll know you’re in Meran — and then he won’t allow me to come out on the hills to meet you.”
CHAPTER XVII
CAUGHT OUT
That avowal of Linnet’s that she didn’t want Andreas Hausberger to know of Will’s presence in the town put Will’s relations towards her during the next few weeks on a different, and to some extent compromising, footing. It introduced into their meetings a certain shadowy element of clandestine love-making which was in many ways distasteful to Will’s frank and manly nature, though it was at the same time, as Florian felt, a hundred times more “dangerous” for him than any open acquaintance. For Andreas, after all, was Linnet’s ostensible guardian and nearest male protector. To meet Linnet on the hills, without his knowledge or consent, was to place oneself in the position of an unrecognised lover. Will knew it was a mistake. And yet — he did it. We, who have made no mistakes of any sort in all our lives, but have steadily followed the beaten track all through, with sheep-like persistence, can afford to disapprove of him.
So, day after day, during the next few weeks, Will went up on the hills to walk and talk with Linnet. Rue Palmer was delighted. She thought, poor soul, her scheme was succeeding admirably. Will was out every morning on the mountains alone, working hard at his magnum opus, which was to astonish the world, and with which she had inspired him. It was glorious, glorious! And, indeed, in spite of the time wasted in talking with Linnet, though the best spent time, as everybody knows, is the time we waste, Will did really succeed in writing and composing at odd moments and in the night watches no small part of his graceful and beautiful little operetta, “The Chamois Hunter’s Daughter.” But alas for poor Rue, it was not she who inspired it.
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On these morning expeditions up the surrounding hills to some appointed trysting-place, Florian sometimes accompanied him, and sometimes not. But, in any case, he abstained from mentioning their object to Rue; as he put it himself, never should it be said that Florian Wood could split upon two ill-advised but confiding young people. It suited Florian’s book now, indeed, that Will’s attention should be distracted from Rue to Linnet. He wanted to make the running for himself with the American heiress, and he was by no means sorry that so dangerous and important a rival as the author of “Voices from the Hills” should be otherwise occupied. So he kept his own counsel about Will and Linnet; he had abdicated by this time his self-appointed function of moral censor; and seeing they would go to the devil in any case, he was inclined to let them go their own headlong way, into the jaws of matrimony, without preliminary haggling. He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar. Deverill would marry his cow-girl in the end — of that Florian felt certain; and when a man’s quite determined to make a fool of himself, you know, why, you only earn his dislike, instead of his esteem, by endeavouring to win him back again to the ways of wisdom.
And Will? Well, Will himself had as yet no very fixed ideas of his own as to whither he was tending. Being only a poet, he was content to drift with the wind and tide, and watch on what shoals or shores they might finally cast him. Most probably, if things had been allowed to go their own way, he would sooner or later have justified Florian’s pessimistic prophecies by marrying Linnet. He would have gone on and on, falling more and more deeply in love with the pretty peasant every day, and letting her fall every day more and more deeply in love with him, till at last conventional differences sank to nothing in his eyes, and he remembered only that heart answereth to heart, be it poet’s or alp-girl’s. At present, however, he troubled himself little with any of these things. He was satisfied for the moment, Florian said, to bask in the sunshine of that basilisk’s smile, without care for the morrow. Sooner or later, he felt sure, in so small a town, either Florian or he must run up unawares against Andreas Hausberger. Whenever that happened, no doubt, there must be some sort of change or new departure. Meanwhile, he religiously avoided the Promenade, where he was likeliest to come suddenly on the wise impresario. So he stuck to the hills, with or without Linnet.
The very next morning, indeed, after this their chance meeting, he went up the Küchelberg once more, impressed with an ardent desire to aid and abet Linnet’s laudable wish for self-education. He brought a book up with him to read to the two girls under the bright blue sky, as they sat on the hillside. He chose a pleasant spot, in the full eye of the autumn sun, on a rounded boss of rock, whose crumbling clefts were still starred with wild pinks and rich yellow tormentils. Florian had contributed to the feast of reason and the flow of soul a kilogram of grapes — they cost but threepence-halfpenny a pound in the vintage season — unknown luxuries till then to Philippina and Linnet. Philippina found the grapes delicious, but the book rather dry; its style was stilted, and it appeared to narrate the story of a certain Doctor Faust, his transactions with a gentleman of most doubtful shape (who caused Philippina to look round in some fear), and his wicked designs against the moral happiness of a young girl called Gretchen. Philippina yawned; it was a tedious performance. Florian, having reduced his share of the grapes to their skins alone, yawned in concert with the lady, and began to play with his eyeglass. As his German didn’t suffice to understand the lines, even when aided by Will’s dramatic delivery and clear enunciation, he found the play slow, and the reader a nuisance. So he was very well pleased when Philippina suggested, at a break in the first act, they should go off for a walk by themselves alone, and continue their course of oral instruction in the German language. Florian liked Philippina; there was no silly nonsense about her. After all, in a woman, if all you want is a walk on the Küchelberg, the total absence of silly nonsense, you must at once admit, is a great recommendation.
But Linnet sat on. She sat on, and listened. She drank it in, open-eyed, and with parted lips — every line and every word of it. Dear Herr Will read so well, and made her feel and understand every point so dramatically; and the book — the book itself was so profoundly interesting. Never in her life before had Linnet heard anything the least bit like it. It was grand, it was beautiful! She didn’t know till then the world contained such books; her reading had been confined to her alphabet and grammar at the parish folk-school, supplemented by the good little tracts on purgatory and the holy saints, distributed by the Herr Vicar and the sisters at the nunnery. Theological literature was the sole form yet known to her. This weird tale about Gretchen and the transformed philosopher opened out to her new vistas of a world of possibilities. Long after, when she sang in great opera-houses, as Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” she remembered with a thrill how she had first heard that tale, in Goethe’s deathless words, from Will Deverill’s lips, on the green slopes of the Küchelberg.
She sat there for an hour or two, never heeding the time, but listening, all entranced, to that beautiful story. Now and again Will broke off, and held her hand for a moment, and gazed deep into her eyes, and said some sweet words of his own to her. He was a poet, Herr Will, in his own tongue and land; she knew now what that meant — he could make up such lovely things as he read from the book to her. “Tell me some of your own, Herr Will. Tell me some of your own verses,” she said, sighing, at last. “I should love to hear them.”
But Will shook his head. “The English is too hard. You wouldn’t understand them, Linnet,” he answered.
“Let me try,” Linnet pleaded, with such a winning look that Will couldn’t resist her. And to humour her whim, he repeated the simplest of the laughing little love-songs from his book of “Voices.”
The ring of it was pretty — very sweet and musical. Linnet half understood — no more; for the words were too hard for her. But it spurred her on to further effort. “You must lend me some books like that in English,” she said, simply. “I want to be wise, like you and Herr Florian.”
So Will brought her next day from the book-shop in the town the dainty little “Poetry Book of Modern Poets,” in the Tauchnitz edition. He wrote her name in it too; and Linnet took it home, and hid it deep in her box in a white silk handkerchief, and read bits of it by night, very stealthily in her own room, spelling out what it meant with Andreas Hausberger’s dictionary. Long after, she had that precious volume bound in white Florentine vellum, with a crimson fleur-de-lys on the cover, at a house just opposite the Duomo at Florence. But at present she read it in its paper covers. She read other books, too — German books which Will chose for her; not instructive books which were over her head, but poetry and romance and imaginative literature, such as her ardent Tyrolese nature could easily assimilate. Day after day, Will read her aloud something fresh — Undine, the Maid of Orleans, Uhland’s Ballads, Paul Heyse’s short stories — but of all the things he read to her, the one she liked best was a German translation of an English play — a beautiful play by another English poet, whose name was also Will, but who died long ago — a play about two luckless and devoted lovers, called Romeo and Juliet. Linnet cried over that sad story, and Will kissed her tears away; and a little later, when Andreas Hausberger took her to Verona on their way south to Milan, Linnet went of her own accord to see Juliet’s tomb in a courtyard in the town, and wasted much excellent sympathy and sentiment over the shameless imposture of that bare Roman sarcophagus. But she meant very well; and she believed in Juliet even more firmly than she believed in Siegfried and Chriemhild and all the other fine folks to whom Will introduced her.
So three weeks passed away, three glorious golden weeks, and day after day, on those lovely hillsides, Linnet saw her lover. At the end of a fortnight, Rue heard, from various friends at other hotels, of a wonderful singer in a Tyrolese troupe, then performing nightly in the various salons. “Why, that must surely be Linnet!” she said before Will, to t
he first friend who mentioned it.
“Yes; Linnet — that’s her name,” Rue’s friend assented.
“I knew she was in the town,” Will admitted somewhat sheepishly; for he felt as if he were somehow deceiving Rue, though it never would have entered his good, modest head to suppose she herself could care anything about him, except as a poet in whose work she was kind enough to take a friendly interest.
“Ah, I should love to hear her again!” Rue cried, enthusiastically. “She sings like a nightingale — such a splendid soprano! Let’s find out where she’ll be to-night, and go round in a body to the hotel to hear her!”
But Will demurred strongly. He’d rather not go, he said; he’d stop at home by himself and get on with his operetta. At that, Rue was secretly pleased in her own heart; she felt it throb sensibly. After all, then, her poet didn’t really and truly care for the pretty alp-girl. He knew she was in the town — and, in spite of that knowledge, had spent every evening all the time with herself at the Erzherzog Johann! Nor would Florian go either; he invented some excuse to account for his reluctance. So Rue went with two new girls she had picked up at the hotel, in succession to the giggling inarticulates at Innsbruck. Linnet recognised her in the crowd, for the room was crowded — ’twas a nightly ovation now, wherever Linnet sang — and knew her at once as the fair-haired lady. But Florian and Will weren’t with her to-night! That made Linnet’s heart glad. She had come without him! After all, her Engländer didn’t always dance attendance, it seemed, on the fair-haired Frau with the many diamonds!
