Lienhard

“ Herr Will’s so kind and good, no mortal on earth can refuse him anything. He’s a heretic, to be sure, but, O Philippina, there’s no Catholic like him! . . . Besides,” she added, after a pause, rearranging the folds in the Beggar Maid’s dress with pretended pre-occupation, “I prayed Our Lady that she might soften the Archbishop’s heart; and Our Lady heard my prayer; she always hears me.”
As she spoke, a great pang passed suddenly through her bosom: Our Lady had answered that prayer; would she answer the other one? Would she grant Linnet’s wish to love Will Deverill less? ”

“ He knew if he told me beforehand I’d have planted my good knife to the handle in his heart. So he said never a word, but went off unexpectedly, with Linnet and Philippina, leaving the rest of us here stranded, but cancelling all engagements for the next three evenings. The white-livered cur! He’ll never dare to come back again! He knows if I meet him now⁠—⁠it’ll be this in his black heart!” And Franz tapped significantly the short hunting knife that stuck out from his leather belt in true jäger fashion.
“And you haven’t followed him?” Will exclaimed, taken aback at the man’s inaction. ”

“ His experience at the London Pavilion had led him to believe that women in general, and theatrical stars in particular, had all their price, and might all be bought, if you only bid high enough. He didn’t doubt that Linnet was like the rest of her kind in this matter. She didn’t love Andreas; she couldn’t love Andreas. If a good-looking man, with a very fine figure and a very black moustache, laid the untold gold of Monte Carlo at her feet, could Linnet resist? Would she care to resist him? Franz opined she would not. ”

“ Herr Andreas told me you had written this piece for Linnet; but one hardly knows you again, you’ve grown so much older⁠—⁠and better dressed⁠—⁠and richer! And, Dear Frau! in the Tyrol, you wore no beard and whiskers!”
Will turned in surprise. It was a minute, even so, before he quite recognised the stalwart speaker. It was Philippina, still good-humoured and buxom and garrulous as of old; but, oh, great heavens, how much changed from the brown-faced sennerin with the rough woollen petticoat who had offered them milk, all frothy from the cow, in the stoneware mug on the hillside at St Valentin! ”

“ He bent over, shaken and pale, and kissed the palm of her hand.
"It is you who are good," he said huskily. "I, who talked smugly of virtue and tenderness and pity, and who let you go out of my life—I care for you more than I care for anything in this world. I want you—I want you."
Elinor's eyes turned toward the high altar with its cross. Always, when she looked at it, she had seen the cross at Saint Jude's, and the dawn, and sparrows drinking out of the wet gutter at her feet.
"I want you," said Ward, and waited, frightened. ”

“ Franz sat down⁠—⁠a smouldering and seething volcano.
Then came Linnet’s turn. She rose, all tremulous, in her pretty costume, with her beautiful face and her shrinking timidity. Old gentlemen peeped askance over the edge of their papers at the good-looking girl; young ladies took stock of her abundant black hair and her dainty kerchief. “She’s going to sing,” Ethel whispered. “Isn’t she pretty, Eva? And just look, how very odd, she’s got a necklet exactly like the ones Mrs Palmer gave us!” ”

“ She hated the work, but ’tis always imposed, and with sound commercial reason, on the prettiest girl of the troupe, so it naturally devolved upon Linnet to perform it. Even good-humoured Philippina admitted without dispute her claim to the function. Hot in the face, and ill at ease, Linnet walked round the room in a maze of confusion, with her little silver salver. She offered it first to the rich Jew banker from Frankfort-on-the Main, with the diamond pin, and the seals on his watch-chain. Now, your pretty face is a mighty opener of your purse-strings. ”

“ There are woodcutters on the hills we can ask about the path; and if it comes to that, I really don’t mind whether I find it or not⁠—⁠it’s only by way of goal for a day’s expedition.”
Andreas Hausberger, however, was an imperious soul. “Linnet shall go,” he said, shortly, without making more words about it. “She has nothing else to do. It’s bad for her to be cooped up in the house too much. A long walk on the hills will be no end of good for her. That’s what I always say ”

“ Linnet, he knew, had grown fond of him in those few days; when he asked her once how it was she liked Franz Lindner less now than formerly, she looked up at him with an arch smile, and, after a second’s pause, made the frank avowal: “Perhaps it’s because now . . . I think Englishmen nicer.” At the moment his heart had come up in his mouth with pleasure, as will happen with all of us when a pretty woman lets us see for ourselves she really likes us. But he must go all the same: for Linnet’s sake⁠—⁠he must go: if illusion there were, he must at once disillusion her. ”

“ She might be breaking every commandment in her heart at once, but she couldn’t frame that prayer she must and would love him!
Oh, foolishness of men, who think they can bind the human heart with a vow! You may promise to do or leave undone what you will; but promise to feel or not to feel! The bare idea is preposterous!
CHAPTER XXXVIII HUSBAND OR LOVER? The Hausbergers spent that winter in Italy. Andreas thought the London air was beginning to tell upon Linnet’s throat, and he took good care, accordingly, to get her an autumn engagement in Vienna, followed by a winter one at Rome and Naples. ”

“ Andreas Hausberger answered in his Western style. “Meran and Obermais are one enormous gasthaus. If Linnet does as well as she has done at Innsbruck, it’ll take us take three weeks or a month, at least, to get right through with them. We took a good bit, considering all things, the other evening. I think she draws; I noticed old gentlemen slipped their florins under their palms into the plate unobtrusively. Besides, in a Kurort, she’ll soon get talked about. People at one hotel or pension will speak of us at another⁠—⁠‘Seen this Tyrolese troupe going about in the place? Pretty girl ”

“ Now, Linnet, you must be brave; and, above all, you must be practical. This is a crisis in our lives. A great deal depends upon it. If you love me, you must do as I advise you in this emergency. You have done quite right to come away from Andreas⁠—⁠instantly, the very moment you discovered this letter⁠—⁠the very moment he offered you such unmanly violence. In that, you were true woman. You’re in the right now, and if you behave circumspectly, all the world will admit it; all the world will say so. ”

“ So, ever since the first day when he left the Zillerthal, Andreas’s views and ideas about his troupe and his tour had been undergoing a considerable and constant modification. It would cost a good deal, of course, to abandon his first plan, and instead of proceeding to the Riviera as he originally intended, take Linnet to be trained at Milan and Florence. But it was worth the money. You must throw a sprat to catch a herring. And it must be Italy, too, not Munich or Dresden. ”

“ Heaven only knows to what height it may some day lead you.”
CHAPTER V THE WIRTH’S THEORY In the evening, while they dined, the landlord came in to see how they fared, and wish them good appetite: ’tis the custom with distinguished guests in the Tyrol. The moment he entered, Florian, all agog, attacked him at once on the subject of their wonderful find that afternoon on the hillside. “Well, Herr Hausberger,” he cried in his high-flown way, “we’ve seen and heard your Linnet⁠—⁠heard her warbling her native wood-notes wild, to the tune of her own cow-bells on her lonely mountains. ”

“ Those chords could have struck no answering string in the British matron’s severely proper nature. He merely pointed out that Linnet was a friend in distress, whose good name he wished to save against unjust aspersions. Having left her husband she ought to go somewhere to a responsible married woman⁠—⁠“And I’ve come to ask you, Maud,” he concluded, “as an act of Christian charity to a sister in distress, will you take her in, for to-night at least, till I can see with greater clearness what to do with her in future?” ”

“ Philippina had an eye to Andreas Hausberger herself⁠—⁠was he not the wirth, and the master of the troupe?⁠—⁠and she was therefore by no means averse to any little device which might distract poor Linnet from that most desirable admirer. Still, Franz had his suspicions. Women are so deep, a man can never fathom them! He mounted the Küchelberg by the zig-zag path, and turning to the left by the third Madonna, came at last to a little knoll of bare porphyry rock, looking down on the wide vale and the long falls of the Adige. ”

“ Those simple country souls never dreamt in their hearts of suspecting their old comrade, Franz Lindner the jäger, who had come back unexpectedly, like Andreas and Linnet, of being the Karl von Forstemann of Vienna referred to in the announcement. But Franz knew it couldn’t be long before the police were on his track; and he turned and fled upwards to his old home at St Valentin, like a fox to its lair, or a rabbit to its burrow.
All the way up the hill his soul seethed within him. He would sell his life dear, if the worst came to the worst ”

“ How strangely human feelings and ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind, since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting for tastes,” people say; oh, most inept of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s eyes and in her English poet’s. ”

“ Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the air very jauntily. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze world. You mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before he knew how Society is managed. I owe you no grudge. We were bose of us younger. Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I have transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”
“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. ”

“ She was no longer, he saw well, the mere musical peasant girl; she had risen to the situation; she was now a great artist, a great lady, a queen of the theatre.
Primitive natures are quick. Their emotions are few, but strong and overpowering. Mood succeeds mood with something of the rapidity and successive effacement we see in children. Franz Lindner had entered that box, full of rage and anger, thirsting only for blood, eager to wreak his vengeance on the man who had offended him. He had no thought of love for Linnet then; only a fierce, keen sense of deadly resentment towards Andreas. ”

“ She sat there⁠—⁠and thought of Will⁠—⁠and obeyed the Church⁠—⁠and followed Andreas. Yet, oh, how strange that God and our hearts should be thus at open war! that Nature should tell us one thing and the Church another! ’Twas a consequence of the Fall of Man, the Herr Vicar assured her; for the heart, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. And it was desperately wicked of her, no doubt, to think so much about Will; but there⁠—⁠Church or no Church, Linnet couldn’t help thinking of him. ”

“ So he worked upon Linnet’s susceptible Southern nature by striking successively all the profoundest chords of religion, shame, penitence, remorse, and terror. He appalled her with the authoritative voice of the Church; he convicted her of sin; he overawed her with the mysterious sanctity of a divine sacrament. Before he had finished his harangue, Linnet crouched and cowered in abject fear before him. She loved Will with all her heart: she would always love him; she hated Andreas with all her soul: she couldn’t help but hate him. ”

“ They were dressed in full costume; ’twas a form of advertisement Andreas greatly believed in. Franz held himself erect, with his feather still stuck Robbler-wise, and his defiant air, as he strode through the crowd that lined the promenade⁠—⁠the gayest, most varied, and most fashionable throng Linnet had ever set eyes on. He and Philippina stared hard at the world that displayed itself before them. German Jews from Frankfort, great Viennese bankers, the round-faced, engaging Bavarian fräuleins, the tall and tailor-made English lawn-tennis misses. ”

“ Linnet shook her head. “Ah, no,” she answered, with a very decided air; “he’s nothing at all to me⁠—⁠not even my friend. I do not so much as care for him. He’s only Franz Lindner. But then, he was jealous because he see that I walk with you. He has no right of that; I am not anything to him; yet still he must be jealous if somebody speak to me. It is because he is a Robbler, and must do like that. A Robbler shall always fight if any man shall walk or talk with his maiden. ”

“ A little platform overhangs the very edge of the cascade. Linnet stood there long, leaning over the iron rail, and gazing with delight at the white foam beneath, and the placid deep green of the calm rock-basin that received the mountain stream as it leapt from the precipice.
Franz and Philippina wouldn’t let her remain there, however. With the restlessness of their kind, they were eager to explore this new world more fully. They strolled through the town, and up the hills behind, where all seemed fresh and southern and romantic to Linnet. ”