Linnet. Allen Grant

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      “Why, certainly,” the landlord answered, retreating to the door, “as soon as ever I can get another good troupe together again.” And with a ceremonious bow, like a courtly gentleman that he was, he retired downstairs to superintend the preparation of those fresh mountain trout he had promised them for dinner.

      As soon as he was gone, Florian raised himself on one elbow like a startled butterfly, with an air of studious vacancy, and stared hard at Will Deverill. “What an extraordinary country,” he murmured, with a pensive sigh. “It’s Babel reversed. Everybody seems to speak and understand every European language. The very babes and sucklings call one names as one passes, in vile gutter English. It’s really quite uncanny. Who’d have thought, now, of meeting in an out-of-the-way lost corner of earth like this, a village innkeeper who’s a man of the world, a distinguished traveller, an accomplished linguist, and an intelligent impresario? The ways of Providence are truly mysterious! What a place to bury such a shining light! Why dump him down so, in this untrodden valley?”

      “Oh, it’s not by any means such a singular case as you suppose,” Will answered, looking up from the knapsack he was engaged in unpacking⁠—⁠“above all, in the Zillerthal. I’ve never been here before myself, but I’ve always been told in other parts of the Tyrol that the Zillerthalers, men and girls, are every one of them born musicians. And as for our landlord here, the Tyrolese wirth is always a man of light and leading in his own society. He opposes the priest, and heads the liberal party. All the popular leaders in the war of independence in the Tyrol were monks or innkeepers. Andreas Hofer, himself, you know, had an inn of his own in the Passer valley.”

      “Ah, to be sure,” Florian ejaculated, in an acquiescent tone of a peculiar calibre, which showed his friend at once he hadn’t the remotest idea who Andreas Hofer was, or why one should be expected to know anything about him. Now, want of knowledge on such a point is, of course, most natural and pardonable in a stranger; but there was no sufficient reason, Will Deverill thought, for Florian’s pretence at its possession where he really knew nothing. That, however, was poor Florian’s foible. He couldn’t bear to have it thought he was ignorant of anything, from mathematics or music to esoteric Buddhism. If a native of Siberia had addressed him casually in the Ostiak dialect of the Tungusian language, Florian would have nodded and smiled a non-committing assent, as though Ostiak had always been his mother-tongue, and he had drunk in Tungusian at his nurse’s bosom.

      “You know who Andreas Hofer was, of course?” Deverill went on, persistently. He was a devil of a fellow for not letting you off when he caught you out in an innocent little piece of social pretension, was Deverill.

      Florian, thus hard pressed, found himself compelled to do what he hated most in the world⁠—⁠confess his ignorance. “I remember the gentleman’s respected name, of course!” he said, dubiously, with a sickly smile and a little forced pleasantry; “but his precise claims to distinction, as Men of the Time puts it in its cheerful circular, entirely escape my memory for the moment.”

      “He was the leader of the spontaneous Tyrolese peasant movement, you know, for the expulsion of the French and their Bavarian allies in 1808 or thereabouts,” Will went on, still unpacking. “Napoleon caught him at last, and had him shot at Mantua. You’ll see his tomb when you go to Innsbruck, and lots of other mementos of him all over the country everywhere. He pervades the place. He’s the national hero, in fact⁠—⁠the martyr of independence⁠—⁠a sort of later and more historical William Wallace.”

      “Dear me, yes; how stupid of me!” Florian cried, clapping his hand to his head in a sudden burst of pretended recollection. “It comes back to me now, of course. Good old Andreas Hofer! How could I ever forget him? The Tyrolese William Tell! The Hampden of the Alps! The undaunted Caractacus of these snow-clad mountains!”

      Deverill pulled off his coat. “If I were you,” he said, drily, “instead of rhapsodising here, I’d go into my own room, have a jolly good wash, and get ready for dinner. We must have walked about twenty-two miles since we got out at Jenbach, and this bracing air gives one a positively Gargantuan appetite.”

      Florian roused himself with a yawn, for though vigorous enough for his size, he was a lazy creature, and when once he sat down it was with difficulty he could be prevailed upon to put himself in motion again. Ten minutes later they were seated at the white-covered table in the tidy little salon, doing the fullest justice to the delicious broiled trout, the foaming amber ale, the fresh laid eggs, and the excellent home-made bread, provided, according to promise, by Herr Andreas Hausberger.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE

       Table of Contents

      Next morning early, aroused by the cloister bell, Will Deverill rose, and looked out of his window. Oh, such an exquisite day! In that clear, crisp air the summits of the Floitenspitze, the Löffler, and the Turnerkamp glistened like diamonds in the full morning sunlight. ’Twas a sight to rejoice his poetic soul. For Will Deverill, though too modest to give himself airs, like Florian, was a poet by birth, and a journalist by trade. Nature had designed him for an immortal bard; circumstances had turned him into an occasional leader-writer. He stood there entranced for many minutes together. He had pushed the leaded window open wide when he first rose, and the keen mountain air blew in at it most refreshingly. All, all was beautiful. He looked out on the fresh green pastures, the deep glen below, the white stream in its midst, the still whiter tops of the virgin mountains beyond it. A stanza for his new poem rose spontaneous in his mind as he leaned his arms on the low sill and gazed out upon the great glaciers:

      “I found it not where solemn Alps and grey

      Draw crimson glories from the new-born day,

      Nor where huge sombre pines loom overhanging

      Niagara’s rainbow spray.”

      He was just feeling in his pocket for a pencil to jot down the rough draft of these few lines, when of a sudden, at the window in the next room at the side, what should he see but Florian’s pale face peeping forth most piteously.

      “What’s the matter? Haven’t you slept?” Will inquired of his disconsolate friend with a sympathetic nod.

      The epicurean philosopher shook a sad, slow head with a painfully cheerful air of stoical resignation. “Not a wink since three o’clock,” he answered, gloomily. “Those dreadful creatures have bothered me without ceasing.”

      “Surely,” Will began, somewhat surprised, “not⁠——”

      Florian shook his head wearily. “No, no; not them,” he murmured with melancholy emphasis. “I don’t mind about them. They, at least, are silent, and, besides, if you like, you can get up and catch them. Bells, bells! my dear fellow; bells, bells, all the morning. They’ve been tinkling in my ear every blessed minute since the clock struck three. It’s unendurable, horrible.”

      “Oh, the cow-bells!” Will answered, laughing. “Why, for my part, I like them. They’re a feature of the place; they sound so countrified. I hardly hear them at all, or if I hear them, they come to me drowsily through the haze of my dreams like the murmur of water or a nurse’s lullaby. I find them, to tell you the truth, positively soothing. Besides,” he added, mischievously, with a malicious СКАЧАТЬ