Lint

“ David Linton’s eyes lingered hungrily on his son.
“We can only get the beacon ready, and then watch. Two of us can hide near the cave, and the third must be up on the point to light the fire if he hears a shot. If they come—well, we must let them land and get to the cave; and then we must try to prevent their getting back.”
“You will be heavily outnumbered.”
“Yes—but the advantage of surprise will be on our side, and we can take cover. I do not dare to get help; it may not be safe to trust anyone.”
“Very well,” David Lint on said, quietly. “Will you order the motor, O’Neill? ”

“ A small brown paw slid itself into Mr. Linton’s hand.
They were sitting on the verandah in the stillness of an autumn evening, watching the shadows on the lawn become vague and indistinct, and finally merge into one haze of dusk. Mr. Linton had been silent for a long time. Norah always knew when her father wanted to talk. This evening she was content to be silent, too, leaning against his knee in her own friendly fashion as she curled up at his feet. ”

“ Methinks we hear the song of the Grey Lintie, the darling bird of Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to the maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking of the Grey Lintie—its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure—its shape elegant yet unobtrusive—and its song various without any effort—now rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous—now tender, almost mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. ”

“ Linton laughed at the merry face. “Well, take care of yourselves; remember, Norah’s in your charge, Jim, and all the others in yours, Norah! Keep an eye to your ponies, and don’t let them stray too far, even if they are hobbled. And mind you bring me home any amount of fish, Harry and Wal.” ”

“ And so saying, he cantered slowly away.
“Poor fellow!” said Linton, contemptuously, “your little bit of principle haunts you like a superstition.” And with this reflection, he stepped out briskly to where the boy was standing with his horse.
“Oh, Mr. Linton, darlin', only sixpence! and I here this two hours?” said the ragged urchin, with a cunning leer, half roguery, half shame.
“And where could you have earned sixpence, you scoundrel, in that time?” cried Linton, affecting anger. ”

“ When Linton, then, deemed the time expired which his feelings of grief and shame had demanded for retirement, he reappeared in the world pretty much as men had always seen him. A very close observer, if he would have suffered any one to be such, might have perhaps detected the expression of care in certain wrinkles round his mouth, and in the extra blackness of his whiskers, where gray hairs had dared to show themselves ”

“ "Cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull!" he said. "It is in danger of splitting its skull against my knuckles. By God, Mr. Linton, I'm mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down!" ”

“ She seemed almost over fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister, she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. ”

“ Linton was a singularly gifted man, who, in the words of his wife, if he had not bitten the Dead Sea apple of impracticable politics, would have risen higher in the world of both art and letters. As an engraver on wood he reached the highest point of execution in his own line. ”

“ I tell you, I have such faith in Linton’s love, that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn’t wish to retaliate.’
I advised her to value him the more for his affection. ”

“ and you must forgive me, for I struggled only for you!’
‘Catherine, unless we are to have cold tea, please to come to the table,’ interrupted Linton, striving to preserve his ordinary tone, and a due measure of politeness. ”

“ Linton leaned back in his chair, and appeared to be taking counsel with himself, and at length, as if having formed his resolve, said,—
“Of course frankness with such a man is never a mistaken policy.” And with this muttered soliloquy again became silent.
CHAPTER VII. FORGERY It was not “Flattery,” he sold, but “Hope.” Bell.
We left Mr. Linton and Mr. Hammond seated opposite each other, the former lost in seeming reflection, the latter awaiting with eager expectancy for something which might explain the few strange words he had just listened to. ”

“ Mr. Lintot in the mean time coming in, was extremely affrighted at the sudden alteration he observed in him: "Brother Curll," says he, "I fear you have got the vomiting distemper; which I have heard, kills in half an hour. This comes from your not following my advice, to drink old hock in a morning as I do, and abstain from sack." Mr. Curll replied in a moving tone, "Your author's sack, I fear, has done my business." "Z—ds," says Mr. Lintot, "my author! ”

“ The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) —‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. ”

“ I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again—it is hers yet!—he had hard work to stir me; ”

“ you shall not leave me in that temper. I should be miserable all night, and I won’t be miserable for you!’
‘Can I stay after you have struck me?’ asked Linton. ”

“ He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. ”

“ asked Mrs. Linton, appealing to me. "I'll repeat our conversation, word for word, Isabella; and you point out any charm it could have had for you." ”

“ Linton did not appear to remember what she talked of and he had evidently great difficulty in sustaining any kind of conversation. His lack of interest in the subjects she started, and his equal incapacity to contribute to her entertainment, were so obvious that she could not conceal her disappointment. An indefinite alteration had come over his whole person and manner. The pettishness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a listless apathy; ”

“ Before leaving town that summer, she had lunched once with Will at Florian’s chambers and mentioned to him casually in the course of talk the name and position of their Bernese village. Will bore it well in mind. A week or two later, as Linnet strolled by herself in a simple tweed frock and a light straw hat among the upland pastures, she saw to her surprise a very familiar figure in a grey knickerbocker suit, winding slowly along the path from the direction of Beatenberg. Her heart leapt up within her with joy at the sight. Ach, himmel! what was this? It was her Engländer, her poet! ”

“ If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. ”

“ He saw for himself, from the effect she produced on the audience that night, she would yet do wonders. As Linnet left the Austria, Andreas held her cloak for her. But it wasn’t mere gallantry. “Wrap your throat round well, Linnet,” he said, with much zealous care. “For Heaven’s sake don’t take cold. The air on the hills in the daytime won’t hurt you; but after sitting in these crowded, over-heated rooms, the night fogs are so bad for you.”
The goose that lays the golden eggs deserves to be well tended.
CHAPTER XVI SCHLOSS TYROL “Where shall we go to-day?” ”

“ But he talked unceasingly, for the most part to Linnet, Rue, and Florian; very little to Will; hardly at all to Andreas Hausberger. They sat late and long. They had all much to say, and Will, in particular, wished to notice with care the nature of the relations between Linnet and Andreas. At last they rose to go. Will saw Franz sedulously to the door of the supper-rooms. He wanted to make sure the man was really gone. Franz paused for a minute on the threshold of the steps, and gazed out with vague eyes on the slippery Strand. “Zat’s a fine woman,” he said, slowly; “a very fine woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if my wife had drawn a distinction between the linnet and her great parrot, more like a vulture than a cage-bird, I would have candidly confessed to a difference in my regard for the two fowls. Linnets are very harmless, I fancy. At any rate, ours never does anything more outrageous than splash its water and seed about of a morning. For the rest of the day it is mostly hopping off the floor on to the perch and back again, except when you go to look at it close. It then hops only sideways off the perch on to the wires of the cage, and back again. ”

“ A beautiful gift! A real lady might have worn it! Later on, when Linnet had diamonds and rubies at command, there was no trinket she prized among all her jewels like Will Deverill’s coral.
At last the eventful morning itself arrived. The little troupe set out on foot down the mountain to Mairhofen. There, their boxes, sent on over-night, awaited them. They drove in a large open brake to Jenbach⁠—⁠Andreas Hausberger, Franz Lindner, Linnet herself, Philippina, and the two other singers who composed the party. At Jenbach, they descended at the door of the railway station. ”

“ Glancing around the room, however, Will saw at a single look that two young men alone among that eager crowd wore their feathers with a difference⁠—⁠the “hook” being turned round in the opposite direction from all their neighbours’. One of these two was a tall and big-built young man of very florid complexion, with a scar on his forehead; the other was their fiery friend of that morning on the hills, Franz Lindner. From what Linnet had said, Will guessed at once by the turn of the feather that both young men went in for being considered Robblers. ”

“ We cannot but pause again and again as we make our way through the gorse and brushwood, for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is hardly less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all his ways and actions are no less cheering and attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps according to age, in brilliancy of plumage; but a fine cock Linnet in full dress of crimson breast and crown, white wing-bars and tail-feathers, and chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a little bird as these islands can show. ”

“ So he carried off Linnet to an upland village perched high on the slopes behind the Lake of Thun⁠—⁠not to a great hotel or crowded pension, where she would breathe bad air, eat made French dishes, drink doubtful wine, keep very late hours, and mix with exciting company, but to a châlet nestling high beneath a clambering pinewood, among Alpine pastures thick with orchids and globe-flowers, where she might live as free and inhale as pure and unpolluted an atmosphere as in their own green Zillerthal. ”

“ He only gazed at his recovered peasant-love with profound admiration. Fine feathers make fine birds, and it was wonderful how much more of a personage Linnet looked as she stood there to-night in her primrose brocade, than she had looked nearly four years since in her bodice and kirtle on the slopes of the Zillerthal. She was beautiful then, but she was queenly now⁠—⁠and it was not dress alone, either, that made all the difference. Since leaving the Tyrol, Linnet had blossomed out fast into dignified womanhood. ”

“ Linnet looked like a veritable linnet in her brown suit with the crimson plume in her brown hat; I believe the girl affects grays and brown with a dash of crimson, because they remind her of a linnet, and she is like a linnet in her low, sweet voice, not strong, but clear. She will be a lovely, symmetrical woman when she comes out of the fire purified. How do I know she will ever be put in any furnace? Because all God's children must suffer at some times, and then they know they are his children. ”