Linnet. Allen Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ as you’d suppose, though,” his companion answered with a smile; for he knew the Tyrol. “There are no people on earth so vagrant in their ways as the Tyrolese. They go away as pedlars, musicians, or waiters; but when they’ve made their pile, almost without exception, they come back in the end to their native valleys. I’ve more than once met hunters or farmers in these upland glens who spoke to me in English, not always without a tinge of American accent. Perhaps it’s not so much that these people emigrate as that they always come back again. They think other countries good enough to make money in, but the Zillerthal’s the one place where they’d care to spend it.”

      Florian answered nothing. He strode on, sore distressed. The only Tyrol worth tuppence, he now knew to his cost, was the one he had erected, anterior to experience, in his own imagination.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

A FRESH ACQUAINTANCE

       Table of Contents

      It was a steep pull up to the little village on the hill, which Florian had selected by pure intuition for their immediate headquarters. But once they had arrived there the glorious panorama which disclosed itself in one burst to their enchanted eyes made them forget the fatigues of their long tramp to reach it. The village was a tiny one, but comely and prosperous; composed of great farm-houses with big boulders piled high on their shingled roofs to keep them in place, and a quaint old church, whose tall and tapering spire was prettily tiled with bright green slates, after the country fashion. Moreover, what was more important just then to the footsore travellers, a hospitable wirthshaus or village inn occupied a place of honour on the small green in the centre. It was cheerful though homely, and clean in a certain rough countrified way; and it faced due south, toward the sun and the snow-fields. Florian saw at a glance there would be a ravishing outlook from the bedroom windows; and Will Deverill, more practical, and better accustomed to these out-of-the-way nooks, felt inclined to believe they might count at least on decent beds, plain wholesome fare, fresh trout from the stream, and sweet venison from the mountains.

      The name over the door was Andreas Hausberger. Will entered the inn with a polite inclination of the head, and inquired in his very best German of the first man he saw if he could speak with the landlord.

      “I am he,” the stranger said, drawing himself up with much dignity. “This inn is my Schloss. My name is Hausberger.”

      Will Deverill surveyed him with a critical air. He had seen such men before; they are not uncommon in the rural Tyrol. Tall, powerful, big-built, with a resolute face and a determined mien, he looked like a man well able to keep order among the noisy frequenters of his rustic tavern. For the wirth or innkeeper of these remote villages is often, after the priest, the most important personage of the little community: he represents the temporal as the pfarrer represents the spiritual authority. The owner of four or five horses, the entertainer of strange guests, the dispenser of liquor to the countryside, the organiser of festivals, marriage-feasts, and dances, the proprietor of the one club and assembly-room of the village, the wirth is necessarily a man of mark and of local position, beyond anything that is usual with his kind elsewhere. In the communal council his voice is supreme; the parlour is his court-house: he settles all quarrels, attests all deeds, arranges all assemblies, and assists, as a matter of course, at all rural ceremonies.

      “Can we have rooms here for a week?” Will inquired, still in German.

      The landlord led them upstairs and showed them two bedrooms on the first floor, roughly furnished, but neat, and, as Florian had foreseen, with a glorious outlook. Will proceeded to inquire, as interpreter for the 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 СКАЧАТЬ