Linnet: A Romance. Allen Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ inconvenient restraints of parental supervision, society, or priestcraft, which impede its true course in our too complex communities. Florian’s lungs breathed freer in this rarified air: he had risen above the zone of Mrs Grundy.

      At the end of their brisk colloquy, which he followed but in part, the sennerin, with a gesture of countrified courtesy, turned to the door with a pretty smile and waved Florian into her châlet. “She says you may look over it and welcome,” Will Deverill explained, interrupting. Florian, nothing daunted, entered and gazed around. It was a rough log hut, divided into two rooms by a wooden partition – a big one, with a door behind, for the cows and calves; and a little one, with a door in front, for the sennerin’s own bedchamber, kitchen, and parlour. The chief article of furniture seemed to him to consist of a great black 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 СКАЧАТЬ