“No; I don’t think I would marry him,” Linnet answered, after a short pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind all the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so also would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me. But I don’t like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have kept to them.”
“And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her.
“Yes; I like him—well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never cared for him much indeed; I was never his Mädchen. He had no right to say that, no right at all, at all—for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that means a great deal. How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him any cause at all to say so.”
“And of late you like him less?” Will inquired, pressing her hard with this awkward question. Yet he spoke sympathetically. He had no reason for what he said, to be sure—no reason on earth. He spoke at random, out of that pure instinctive impulse which leads every man in a pretty girl’s presence, mean he little or much, to make at least the best of every passing advantage. ’Tis pure virility that: the natural Adam within us. I wouldn’t give ten cents for the too virtuous man who by “ethical culture” has educated it out of him.
Linnet looked down at her shoes—for she possessed those luxuries. “Yes; of late I like him less,” she answered, somewhat tremulously.
“Why so?” Will insisted. His lips, too, quivered.
Linnet raised her dark eyes and met his for one instant. “I’ve seen other people since; perhaps I like other people better,” she answered, candidly.
“What other people?” Will asked, all on fire.
“Oh, that would be telling,” Linnet answered, with an arch look. “Perhaps my cousin Fridolin—or perhaps the young man with the yellow beard—or perhaps the gnädige Herr’s honoured friend, Herr Florian.”
Will drew figures with his stick on the grass for a minute or two. Then he looked up and spoke again. “But, in any case,” he said, “you don’t mean, whatever comes, to marry Franz Lindner?” It grieved him to think she should so throw herself away upon a village bully.
Linnet plucked a yellow ragwort and pulled out the ray-florets one by one as she answered, “I shan’t have the chance. For, to tell you the truth, I think Andreas Hausberger means himself to marry me.”
At the words, simply spoken, Will drew back, all aghast. The very notion revolted him. As yet, he was not the least little bit in his own soul aware he was in love with Linnet. He only knew he admired her voice very much; for the rest, she was but a simple, beautiful, unlettered peasant girl. It doesn’t occur, of course, to an English gentleman in Will Deverill’s position, to fall in love at first sight with a Tyrolese milkmaid. But Andreas Hausberger! the bare idea distressed him. The man was so cold, so cynical, so austere, so unlovable! and Will more than half-suspected him of avaricious money-grubbing. The girl was so beautiful, so simple-hearted, so young, and Heaven only knew to what point of success that voice might lead her. “Oh no,” he burst out, impetuously; “you can’t really mean that?—you never could dream—don’t tell me you could—of accepting that man Andreas Hausberger as a husband!”
“Why not?” the girl said, calmly. “He’s rich and well to do. I could keep my mother in such comfort then, and pay for such masses for my father’s soul—far more than if I took Franz Lindner or my cousin Fridolin, who are only jägers. Andreas Hausberger’s a wirth, the richest man in St. Valentin; he has horses and cows and lands and pastures. And if he says I must, how can I well refuse him?”
She looked up at him with a look of childlike appeal. In a moment, though with an effort, Will realised to himself how the question looked to her. Andreas Hausberger was her master, and had always been her master. She must do as he bid, for he was very masterful. He was her teacher, too, and would help her to make her fortune as a singer in the world, if ever she made it. He was rich, as the folk of the village counted riches, and could manage that things should be pleasant or unpleasant for her, as it suited his fancy. In a community where men still fought with bodily arms for their brides, Andreas Hausberger’s will might well seem law to his sennerin in any such matter.
“Besides,” Linnet went on, plucking another ragwort, and similarly demolishing it, “if I didn’t want to take him, the Herr Vicar would make me. For the Herr Vicar would do, of course, as Andreas Hausberger wished him. And how could I dare disobey the Herr Vicar’s orders?”
To this subtle question of religion and morals Will Deverill, for his part, had no ready-made answer. Church and State, it was clear, were arrayed against him. So, after casting about for a while in his own mind in vain for a reply, he contented himself at last with going off obliquely on a collateral issue. “And you think,” he said, “Andreas Hausberger really wants to marry you?”
“Well, he never quite told me so,” Linnet replied, half-deprecatingly, as who fears to arrogate to herself too great an honour, “and perhaps I’m wrong; but still I think he means it. And I think it’ll perhaps depend in part upon how he finds the foreign Herrschaft like my singing. For that, he says little to me about it at present. But if he sees I do well, and am worth making his wife—for he’s the best husband a girl could get in St. Valentin—in that case, ja wohl, I believe he’ll ask me.”
She said it all naturally, as so much matter of course. But Will’s poetic soul rebelled against the sacrifice. “Surely,” he cried, “you must love some one else; and why not, then, take the man you love, whoever he may be, and leave Andreas Hausberger’s money to perish with him?”
“So!” Linnet said quickly—the pretty German “so!” Her fingers trembled as she twitched at the rays of the ragwort. She plucked the florets in haste, and flung them away one by one. First love’s conversation deals largely in pauses. “The man one might love,” she murmured at last with a petulant air, “doesn’t always love one. How should he, indeed? It is not in nature. For, doesn’t the song say, ‘Who loves me, love I not; whom I love, loves me not?’ But what would the Herr Vicar say if he heard me talking like this with the foreign gentlefolk? He’d tell me it was sin. A girl should not speak of her heart to strangers. I have spoken too much. But I couldn’t help it, somehow. The gnädige Herr is always so kind to me. You lead me on to confess. You can understand these things, I think, so much better than the others.”
She rose, half-hesitating. Will Deverill, for his part, rose in turn and faced her. For a second each paused; they looked shyly at one another. Will thought her a charming girl—for a common milkmaid. Linnet thought him a kind, good friend—for one of the great unapproachable foreign Herrschaft. Will held out one frank hand. Linnet gave him the tips of her brown fingers timidly. He clasped them in his own while a man might count ten. “Shall you be here … to-morrow … about the same time?” he inquired, before he let them drop, half hesitating.
“Perhaps,” Linnet answered, looking down demurely. Then blushing, she nodded at him, half curtsied, and sprang away. She gave a rapid glance to right and left, to see if she was perceived, darted lightly down the hill, and hurried back to the wirthshaus.
But all that day long, Will was moody and silent. He thought much to himself of this strange idea that Andreas Hausberger, that saturnine man, was to marry this beautiful musical alp-girl.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN OF THE WORLD