A CRITICAL EVENING
Florian and Rue, as it happened, were very ill-informed as to the
Tyrolese minstrel market, otherwise they would certainly never have
chosen Meran as a place of refuge for Will Deverill against the pressing
temptations of his acquaintance with Linnet. They chose it because it
was a delightful and frequented autumn resort; because the climate was
charming and the sunshine unfailing; because the grape-cure was then on
in full swing in the valley; and because everybody else at Innsbruck
that moment was going there. For those very reasons, the wisdom of the
serpent might have taught them to avoid it: ’twas the innocence of the
dove that led them to fly right into it. In point of fact, Meran is
crowded in October and November. High well-born Graf and consumptive
plebeian disport themselves all day long on the leafy promenades, eating
grapes as they go, beside the band and the Kurhaus. It stands to the
world of Berlin and Vienna as Cannes and Mentone to the world of London.
That was precisely why Andreas Hausberger had marked it out long since,
as the next southward point on their way Riviera-wards.
“Are there many hotels there?” Franz Lindner asked dubiously, much
crestfallen at his own comparative failure with the public of Innsbruck.
A little of his jauntiness had been washed for the moment out of Franz
Lindner’s figure; he looked limper in the back and not so stiff in the
neck—nay, even his hat stood cocked on his head at a less aggressive
angle.
“There isn’t anything else,” 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; sings sweetly.’ I
take it there can’t be less than thirty houses in Meran where we could
get an audience. That carries us well on to the end of November. By that
time, San Remo and Bordighera’ll be filling up fast, and from there we
can go on to Cannes, Nice, Mentone.”
So three days later saw them safe at Meran. To Linnet, that journey from
north to south, across the great ridge of the Alps, seemed like
transplantation into an earthly fairyland. She had never seen the
luscious wealth of vineclad lands before; for North and South Tyrol are
two different countries, one cold, bleak, Germanic, the other soft,
warm, Italian. Meran itself appeared to her ardent imagination more
beautiful than anything eye hath seen or mind conceived of. And, indeed,
it is beautiful. Whoever knows it loves it. A brawling little mountain
stream, the Passer, rushes headlong from the glaciers of the Otzthaler
Alps through a wild upland glen, to join in due time the broader stream
of the Adige, which threads the bleak Vintschgau on its precipitous
course from the lofty snow-fields of the Ortler and the Wild-Spitze.
Near the point where the two unite, on a long tongue of land, the little
town of Meran nestles close among its vines, under shelter of the
rounded ice-worn Küchelberg. It clings with its ancient walls, its
steeples, its watch-towers, as if glued to the lower slopes of the
basking mountain. Linnet gazed at it, delighted. For here, on the south
side of the Alps, looking down the broad valley to sunny Italy, the
vegetation differed greatly, both in richness and in character, from
anything she had ever seen in her native Zillerthal. Indeed, even Italy
itself, parched as it often is with excessive heat, seldom shows such
wild luxuriance of foliage and fruit as these green and well-watered
South Tyrolese valleys. There is a bowery, flowery lavishness and
lushness about it all that defies description. The vines that trail
loose across their trellised archways; the gourds that hang pendent from
their wooden frails; the great yellow pumpkins that lean temptingly over
every terraced wall; the lizards that bask blinking on the sun-smitten
rock-face; the crimson sprays of Virginia creeper that droop in festoons
from the brown verandah wood-work of coquettish châlets, mingled with
the pine-clad slopes and bare snow-sprinkled peaks of the upper
background, make a charming hybrid between Switzerland and Lombardy.
Imagine for yourself an ancient German town, with mouldering walls and
high turrets, like Boppard or Andernach, and crenellated castles of
quaint mediæval architecture, but with arcaded streets and Italian
loggias, plumped down incongruously in the midst of this half-Alpine,
half-southern scenery, and you get a very fair bird’s-eye view indeed,
in its way, of the main traits of Meran.
On the very first morning of her arrival in the town, Linnet took her
way out with Franz Lindner and Philippina along the brawling stream that
forms the centre and rallying point of the gay little watering-place.
Meran is all parade, winter-garden, and band, and they walked through
its midst to see and be seen of the lounging Herrschaft. 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 gazed at
them, too, but cast her eyes now and then from the people and the shops
to the great cleft mountain peaks that soared everywhere high and
clear-cut into the sky above them.
In the lower part of their walk the river was smooth, and the roadway
was bordered by fantastic _pensions_ and quaint Tyrolese buildings; but
in the upper part, which they reached beyond a single bold arch of
stone-work that spanned the Passer, precipitous rocks began to hem it
in, the river assumed the guise of a foaming torrent, and the ruined
fortress of the Zenoburg, with its Romanesque portal, frowned down from
high above them on a water-worn gorge where the stream forced its way in
a dashing cataract. 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. Through
green alleys of vines, trained like bowers over their heads, they
mounted at last by a cloven ravine to the chestnut-covered slopes, where
they looked down like a map on the vast garden of the Etschthal. It was
a wonderful view. Linnet drank it in eagerly. In front crouched the town
with its huddling red roofs wedged in between the hill and the scurrying
river; beyond lay a wide plain of such luxuriant tilth as Linnet till
then had never dreamt of. Villages and churches clustered thick by the
dozen on slope and hill-top; but what added the last touch of charm to
the strange scene in Linnet’s eyes was the extraordinary number and
variety of its feudal châteaux. Every height was crowned by its
castellated Schloss, ivy-clad Planta, huge sun-smitten Labers, the
terraced front of Rametz, the frowning bastions of Fragsburg: Franz
Lindner, with his keen eyes, could count no less than forty-three of
them. The exhilaration of the fresh scene, and of the southern trees and
creepers, so different from the stunted pines of their own chilly
Zillerthal, filled Linnet with a certain vague and indefinable delight:
had but her Engländer been there, she would have been perfectly happy.
Andreas Hausberger had taken charge of the health of his troupe, in
strict accordance with his own favourite theories. The two girls were to
walk on the hills for three hours every morning. They were to dine thus
and thus. They were to do or avoid this, that, or the other thing. He
himself had gone off meanwhile to one of the smaller hotels to make
arrangements beforehand for that evening’s concert. One of the smaller
hotels, _bien entendu_, for Andreas knew well the money value of mere
gossip as a means of advertisement. Not till he had seen what impression
Linnet made on the public of the lesser houses would he launch her on
the Meranhof or the Erzherzog Johann. That ensured him the full benefit
of the talk of the town. A shrewd man, Andreas Hausberger! By the time
he reached those larger and richer houses in his nightly rounds, he
didn’t doubt the world of Meran would have heard and tattled much of his
new-found singer; people would say to one another, “Don’t miss the
Tyrolese troupe that’s coming to us to-night; they say there’s one girl
in it worth seeing and hearing.” For Andreas was above all things a man
of the world; he never threw away the chance of earning an extra gulden.
That evening, in due course, their concert came off at the Austria at
Obermais. You know the Austria?—a small but select and aristocratic
_pension_, much affected by the Von So-and-so’s of Berlin and Vienna.
The result (in net cash) surpassed the prudent Andreas’s highest
expectations. Though no Will Deverill was there to inspire her efforts,
Linnet sang divinely. Indeed, to say the truth, though she had met him
and lost him once more at Innsbruck, that meeting and losing, instead of
dashing her hopes to the ground, as Rue and Florian expected, had only
produced on her simple little mind a general impression that now, by the
blessed Madonna’s aid, her Engländer might turn up any day, anywhere. In
that innocent hope, born of the age of faith, she sang her best with a
will, and charmed her audience, looking hard at the door all the while,
to see if, peradventure, her Engländer would enter. And when no
Engländer came, she comforted her soul with the thought that Andreas had
said there were twenty-nine other hotels in Meran and Obermais—at any
one of which, no doubt, that dear friend might be stopping. Her heart
wasn’t crushed—not the least bit of it—and her trust in the blessed
Madonna on the Britannia metal pendant that hung round her neck was as
vivid and as childishly unquestioning as ever. Our Dear Frau had brought
her her lover at Innsbruck; Our Dear Frau could bring him her just as
well at Meran here.
She sang three times. Each time the audience applauded vociferously. The
Austria, you see, is mainly frequented by Germans. Now, your German is
musical; he has little reserve; he loves a good noise; and he’s never
afraid of displaying his feelings. Moreover, the little party in the
_salon_ that night was largely composed of Viennese or Bavarians; they
understood the zither and the Tyrolese songs; they were to the manner
born, good judges of execution. Franz Lindner’s feather curled once
more, quite as perkily as ever, when they applauded the bravado of his
facile playing. Philippina smiled and bobbed, a wicked twinkle in her
eye, when they cried “Bis!” to the loudest and sauciest of her jodels.
But at each of Linnet’s songs, her hearers grew silent, then burst as
she ceased into uproarious approbation. She was the heroine of the
night, the black swan of the party; not often had they heard such a
voice as hers at so humble a performance.
When all was finished, ’twas Linnet’s task to hand round the plate and
make the little collection. 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. The rich Jew banker, holding out one fat thumb
and forefinger gingerly, after a second’s hesitation (for ’tis hard to
part with so much money at once) dropped a ten-florin piece in good
Austrian gold, plump into the middle of the silver salver. It fell with
a ring. His example was contagious. Christian Freiherrs could not stand
being beaten in their appreciation of vocal art by Jewish financiers
from Frankfort. People who meant to give one florin now gave two; people
who meant to put off on their wives the duty of dispensing the family
bounty now drew out their purses and became their own almoners. Linnet
had never seen a gold piece in her life before; when she finished her
round, bowing low, that night, there were three of them on the salver.
Andreas Hausberger eyed the plate with a carefully-suppressed smile of
subdued satisfaction. His mouth never moved; only the corners of his
eyes betrayed his emotion. But that evening’s haul had far-reaching
consequences—for him and for Linnet. He saw in a moment he had found
indeed, as he thought, a treasure. He didn’t need the assurances of the
rich Jew banker, and the lady amateur with the tortoise-shell eyeglasses
who came from Berlin, that Linnet should be placed at once for
instruction in a proper conservatorium. 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.