“It’s no use wasting words,” Florian observed, with decision. “As our old friend Homer justly remarks, ‘Great is the power of words; wing’d words may make this way or that way.’ I’m a practical man myself: I stick close to the facts; they’re solid; they’re tangible; they’re not to be evaded. I won’t allow myself to be argued out of a reasonable conviction. I put it like this: if it was right for you, as you admitted, to leave St Valentin, then, by parity of reasoning, it’s right for you now to leave Innsbruck instantly. Mill, Whately, and Jevons would allow that that’s logic. Why did we come here? Partly, no doubt, to instruct ourselves in the contents of this most interesting town; but mainly, I submit, to deliver you forthwith from your milkmaid’s clutches. Why should we go away again? Partly because we’ve seen all that Innsbruck contains of historical or artistic; but largely, also, because the milkmaid insists upon pursuing us through the land and jingling her bells till she compels us to listen to her.”

“She didn’t know we were here,” Will interjected, bristling up.

“She didn’t know we were here, that’s true; but she’s followed us all the same, cow-bells and pails and all, and we must break away at once from her. I’ve said so to Rue, and Rue fully agrees with me. As I told you before, if you mean the girl harm,?—?well and good; I don’t meddle with you. But if you mean to go on shilly-shallying like this,?—?saying goodbye for ever?—?and sending her coral necklets; meeting her again at hotels?—?and applauding her rapturously; saying goodbye once more?—?and letting it run, for aught I know to the contrary, to diamonds and rubies?—?why, what I say is this, I’ve seen the same thing tried on more than once before, and my experience is, the man who begins by meaning only to flirt with a girl, sinks down, down, down, by gradual degrees, till at last he loses every relic of self-respect?—?and ends by marrying her!”

Will fingered his under lip, and knit his brow reflectively. “At least,” he said, “I must see her and tell her I’m going away again.”

Stern justice once more embodied itself as Florian. “Certainly not,” the little man answered, with an emphatic shake of the head. “If you say goodbye, she’ll want to know where you’re going. If she knows where you’re going, she’ll want, of course, to follow you. If you don’t mean her harm, then, hang it all, my dear fellow, you must mean her good?—?which is far more dangerous. There are only two possible motifs in such an affair?—?ou le bon, ou le mauvais. You must mean the first, if you don’t mean the second. I’ve talked it over with Rue, and Rue entirely supports me. For the poor girl’s own sake, she says, it’s your duty at once to run away from the spot, post haste, and leave her.”

A little later in the day, on the slopes behind MÜhlan, Will thrashed it out himself, tÊte-À-tÊte with Rue, seated close by her side on the grassy upland. “She’s in love with you, poor thing,” Rue said very seriously. “You mayn’t see it yourself; sometimes, you know, Mr Deverill?—?I can’t always say Will; it seems so forward?—?sometimes, you know, you men?—?even the best of you?—?are unkind to us poor women through pure excess of modesty. You don’t realise how much a girl may really think of you. Your very want of self-conceit may make you blind to her feelings. But consider what you must seem to a child like Linnet. You’re a gentleman, a poet, a man of the great world, wholly removed from her sphere in knowledge, position, culture. She looks up to you, vaguely and dimly no doubt, with a shrinking respect, as some one very grand and great and solemn. But your attentions flatter her. Florian has told me all about how you met her at St Valentin. Now, even a lady,” and Rue looked down as she spoke, and half stifled a sigh, “even a lady might be pleased at attracting the notice of such a man as you; how much more then a peasant-girl! I watched her close last night when you first came into the room, and I saw such a red flush break over her throat and cheeks, like a wave surging upwards, as I never saw before on any woman’s face?—?though long ago ... myself ... when I was very young ... I think I may have felt it. And I knew what it meant at once; I said to myself as I looked, ‘That girl loves Mr Deverill.’”

“I think she’s fond of me,” Will admitted modestly. “I didn’t notice it so much myself, I confess, at St Valentin; but last night, I won’t deny I watched her hard, and I could see she was really very pleased to meet me.”

Rue looked grave. “Mr Deverill,” she said in a serious voice, “a woman’s heart is not a thing to trifle with?—?I’m an old married woman myself, you see, and I can speak to you plainly. You may think very little yourself?—?for I know you’re not conceited?—?of the effect you’re likely to produce on women. I’ve known cruel things done, before now, by very good men, just because they never realised how much store women set on their passing attentions. You’ve only to look at Linnet to see she has a deeply passionate nature. Now, I beg of you, don’t play fast and loose with it any longer. If you don’t mean anything, don’t see her again. The more you see of her, the worse it will be for her.”

Will listened, and ruminated. Rue’s words had more effect on him by far than Florian’s. For one thing, she was a woman, and she treated the matter earnestly, where Florian only treated it with the condescending flippancy of his native clubland. To Rue, in her true womanliness, an alp-girl’s heart was still a sacred object; to Florian, ’twas a toy for the superior creature, man, as he said, “to play skittles with.” But then, again, Florian had dwelt much to him on the chance of his finally marrying Linnet. To Will himself, that contingency seemed too remote to contemplate. As he sat by Rue’s side on the grassy upland, and heard Rue speak so gently to him in her well-turned sentences, the distance between a refined and educated lady like that and a musical alp-girl appeared to his mind too profound to be bridged over. Was it likely, in a world which held such women as Rue, he ever could marry such a girl as Linnet? Now, Rue herself never spoke of marriage between Linnet and himself as even possible. She took it for granted the end must be either Linnet’s ruin or Linnet’s desertion. And all she urged him was not to break the poor child’s heart for her. So, where Florian’s worldly wisdom fell somewhat flat on his ears, Rue’s feminine sympathy and tact produced a deep effect upon him.

“It’ll make her very sad, I’m afraid, if she doesn’t see me again,” he said, looking down, with masculine shyness.

“I know it will,” Rue answered, pushing her point with advantage. “I could see that last night. But all the more reason, then, you shouldn’t let it go any further.”

“Well, but must I never see her again?” Will inquired with an anxious air. For his own sake, even, that counsel of perfection was a very hard saying.

Rue’s face grew still graver. “No; I think you must never see her again,” she answered, seriously. “Remember what it involves. Remember what she is; how dazzled she must be by a gentleman’s advances. The more you see of her, the more she’ll think of it?—?the more she’ll love you, confide in you, lean on you. That’s only womanly. We all of us do it ... with a man we admire and feel greater and better than us. And you and she, after all, are both of you human. Some day, perhaps, carried away by a moment of emotion?—?” She broke off quite suddenly, and let her silence say the rest. “And then,” she went on, after a long pause, “when all’s lost and all’s done, you’ll be sorry, poor child, you’ve spoilt and wrecked her whole life for her....” She paused again, and grew crimson. “Mr Deverill?—?Will?—?” she said, faltering, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if I didn’t feel I was doing it to save this poor child in the end from untold misery. It’s not only the material consequences I’m thinking of now (though those are bad enough), but the girl’s own heart?—?for I can see she has got one. If you don’t go away, sooner or later you’ll break it. What other end can there be to an affair like this between a poet like you and a Tyrolese peasant girl?”

What other end, indeed! Will knew it, and felt it. He saw she was right. And her words thrilled through him. When a beautiful woman discusses your personal affections in such a strain as this it isn’t in human nature (in its male embodiment) not to tingle through and through in pure instinctive response with her. While Rue spoke like that, Will felt he must indeed see no more of Linnet. “But where must I go?” he asked, vaguely, just to distract the talk from his own potential misdeeds. Their original idea was Cortina and the Dolomites.

The innocent question fell in pat with Rue’s plans. Already that morning she had talked it over with Florian; and Florian, for the furtherance of his own designs, had agreed it would be best for them to alter their route, as things stood, in favour of a new project which Rue suggested. She was going to Meran herself, for a month or six weeks of bright autumn weather, on her way down to Italy. Why shouldn’t they come there, too, she asked, and keep the family together? Florian, not unmindful of her seven hundred thousand pounds, admitted at once the cogency of her reasoning. It would be quite delightful, he said?—?in point of fact, consummate. But would Will consent to it? Then Rue expounded to him her views about Will and his future in life?—?how he ought to retire to the wilderness for forty days, after the manner of the prophets, to meditate, and, if possible, to begin some great work, which should bring in the end name and fame and honour to him. Florian admitted, just to humour her, that if Will had the chance, and chose to buckle to, he might really produce something quite worth looking at. “Persuade him to it,” he said, in his mellifluous tones. “To you, Rue, it comes so easy, you see, to be persuasive. One word from your lips is worth fifty from mine. Make him stop away for three months from that dear, delightful, distracting London, and begin some big thing that the world must listen to.”

To inspire a great work is a mission in life for a woman?—?to be some Petrarch’s Laura, some Dante’s Beatrice. So, when Will asked plaintively, “Where must I go?” that afternoon, Rue answered with prompt decision, “Why, of course, to Meran. I’m going there myself. You must come with us and stop there.”

“What for?” Will inquired, not wholly untouched in soul?—?for proximity counts for much, and they were sitting close together?—?that the pretty American should so desire his company.

Then Rue began to explain, to persuade, to reason. And reason from those lips was profoundly conclusive. No syllogism on earth could have failed to convince from them. Meran was the prettiest place in South Tyrol, she said; the pleasantest climate for the autumn months, the loveliest scenery. The sun always shone, and the birds always sang there. Though it froze underfoot, you could bask on the hill-tops. But that wasn’t all;?—?and she leaned forward confidentially?—?she wanted to speak to him again about that subject she had broached the other day on the Lanser Kopf. When a pretty woman interests herself in your private concerns, she’s always charming; when she pays you the delicate flattery of stimulating you to use “your own highest powers”?—?that’s the proper phrase?—?she’s quite irresistible. So Will Deverill found Rue. Why, she asked, should he go back so soon to London? This devotion to mere journalism was penny-wise and pound-foolish. Could he afford to stay away for six weeks at Meran?—?just barely afford it?—?and settle himself down at a quiet hotel to some really big work that would make him famous?

Will, drawing a deep breath, and looking wistfully into her eyes, admitted his funds in hand would permit him, with care, such a hard-working holiday.

Then Rue pressed him close. She brought ghee to his vanity. She was convinced if he stopped in this keen mountain air, among these glorious Alps, fresh inspired from Nature, he could turn out a poem, a play, a romance, some great thing of its kind, that the world must listen to. He had it in him, she felt sure, to make his name famous. Nothing venture, nothing have. If he didn’t believe in himself enough to risk six weeks of his precious time on the effort to sketch out something really worthy of him, then all she could say was?—?and she flooded him as she spoke with the light of her lustrous eyes?—?he believed in himself far less?—?oh, so far, far less?—?than his friends believed in him. Florian had told her Will held no regular staff-appointment on any London paper; he was an occasional journalist, unattached, earning a precarious livelihood, in fear and trembling, by reviews and poems and descriptive articles in half-a-dozen assorted dailies and weeklies. Why shouldn’t he give them up for awhile, then, and play boldly and manfully for some larger stake, some stake such as she knew he could well attain to? And she quoted Queen Elizabeth?—?or was it Walter Raleigh??—?

Now, this line of argument, as it happened, exactly fell in, for a special reason of his own, with Will’s mood for the moment. A holiday, we all know, especially in the pure and stimulating air of the mountains, has always a most invigorating and enlivening effect upon the jaded intellect. And Will’s holiday in the Zillerthal had inspired him by degrees with fresh ideas and scenes for a Tyrolese drama. It was a drama of the hills, with some poeticised version of Linnet for its heroine?—?a half-musical sketch, a little mountain operetta, the songs in which were to be all of his own composing. Hitherto, he had never taken himself quite seriously as a composer; but Linnet and Andreas Hausberger had praised the few pieces he played over for them at St Valentin, and Rue had thought well of the stray snatches from his notes he had given them, under protest, on the very untuneful hotel piano. Now the idea occurred to him to write and compose a little play of his own, while the picture of Linnet was still fresh in his brain; and this holiday Rue dangled so temptingly before him would just suffice to get the first scaffolding of his piece together. The filling in he could manage at his leisure in London. So Rue won her point; but ’twas Linnet who won it for her.

“Yes; I’ll go to Meran,” he said at last, after a long break in their talk, “and I’ll settle down to work there, and I won’t even wait to say goodbye to Linnet.”

Poets are weak, however, where a woman is concerned. In this respect, it may be allowed, Apollo’s sons closely resemble the rest of the children of Adam. Will left Innsbruck, indeed, without bidding Linnet goodbye, but he couldn’t refrain from just dropping her a line before he went, to say he must leave her. “To meet you once more,” he wrote, “would be only to part again. I must say farewell, and this time for ever. But, Linnet, it makes my heart ache to do it!” You see, he was a poet.

CHAPTER XV