“Where shall we go to-day?” Will inquired next morning, as they sipped their early coffee at the Erzherzog Johann. He was already hard at work on his projected operetta, but ’twas a fad of his to compose in the open air; he went out for a long stroll every morning with Florian, and sat on the hillsides, jotting his thoughts down with a pencil, exactly as they occurred, face to face with Nature.

“Rue won’t meet us to-day, she says,” his friend answered with a yawn. “Her nerves are tired after her walk of yesterday. So, for my part, I vote we go and see Schloss Tyrol. It inspires me, that place,” Florian went on, warming up?—?for he had been reading his guide-book. “It has the interest of a germ, a nucleus, a growing point. I like to think that here we stand before the embryo of a State?—?the very heart and core of the evolving Tyrol. We watch its development, so to speak, from its central cell. It’s the evolution of law, of order, of authority. The robber chiefs of that high stronghold perched aloft on the hills”?—?and Florian extended one small white hand, as was his wont when he perorated?—?“are the centre round which clusters by successive degrees the whole Tyrolese and Austrian history. I see them pushing their power in concentric rings from their eagle’s eyrie on the crags above the valley of the Adige, to Botzen and the Brenner, the basin of the Inn, the Bavarian March, the entire Eastern Alps, from the Engadine to the Dolomites. Their Schloss there is the original and only genuine Tyrol. By successful robbery, which is the basis of all the divine rights of governments, they become the masters and lords of a mighty province; they dictate peace and justice to obedient villagers; they stand out in course of time as an earthly providence. But what were they at first? Why, a den of thieves! There you have the whole evolution of morality in a nutshell?—?the rule of the strong, established and maintained by continued aggression. So I will see Schloss Tyrol; I will be a pilgrim at the shrine; I will refresh myself at the fount of law and order as it exists and envisages itself for these innocent mountains.”

“It’s an interesting place,” Will replied, taking no notice of Florian’s gush, “and it’s well worth visiting. I’ve seen it before. I’ll sit on the rocks outside and write, while you go in and look at it.”

So after breakfast they started up the narrow old road, paved in places with cobble-stones, and overarched in its lower slopes by graceful festoons of trellised vines, that leads from Meran along a shoulder of the hills to the earliest home of the counts of Tyrol. ’Twas a true South Tyrolese November morning. It froze hard through the night, and the ice still lay thick on the pools by the wayside; but in that keen, crisp air, and with that cloudless sky, the sun overhead blazed as warm as summer. Up the Passer valley to their right, as they mounted, the villages and churches on the slopes of the Ifinger stood out in dazzling white against their dark green background. The little mountain path, bordered as usual by countless petty crucifixes and whitewashed shrines, wound in continuous zig-zags up the face of the KÜchelberg, a wedge of rounded rock that overlooks the town, draped with vineyards on its sides, and worn smooth on its summits by the titanic ice mills of the glacial epoch. The chapels in particular excited Florian’s interest. “There’s more religion to the square mile in the Tyrol,” he said, “than in any other country I ever visited!”

They rose by slow degrees till they reached the long hog’s back which separated the wild Passer glen from the wider and more luxuriant Adige valley. Florian stood still to gaze. Tier upon tier of vines, in endless galleries, roofed the southern slope as with one leafy arbour; the long shoulder itself on whose top they now stood was green with pastures, and watered by plashing artificial leats which had worn themselves deep beds like natural streamlets. The music of falling water accompanied them all the way; the cow-bells tinkled pleasantly from the fields on either hand; and the views, as they walked along the crest of the ridge, looking down into the two valleys with their villages and klosters, their castles and towers, seemed infinite in the variety of their beauty and interest. Above soared the bare peaks of the Muthspitze and the Tschigatspitze; to the east rose the fissured summits of the cloven Dolomites; the white mass of the Lanser Ferner closed the glen to westward.

After nearly an hour’s walk, as they approached the little village of Dorf Tyrol on the hill-top, they passed a huddled heap of wayside boulders, over whose ledge the stream that had accompanied them so far on their road tumbled from a small sluice in a bickering cataract. Two girls were seated on the brink of the torrent with their backs turned towards them. As the young men approached, one of the girls looked round, and gave a start of surprise. “Why, Linnet,” she cried in German, “here he is again!?—?your EnglÄnder!”

Linnet turned, with a crimson flush on her nut-brown face, to think that Philippina should speak so openly of Will, as of some one that belonged to her. But her cheek, to say the truth, was hardly redder than Will’s own, as he heard himself so described by the laughing sennerin as Linnet’s EnglÄnder. He couldn’t conceal from himself, however, the fact that he was glad to meet Linnet under whatever circumstances. With a wondering heart, he went up and took her hand. “Why, when did you come here?” he asked, all astonished.

“The day before yesterday,” Linnet answered, tingling.

“And she sang last night at the Austria,” Philippina put in, with her good-humoured smile, “and made a great success, too, I can tell you that; and took, oh, ever and ever so much money. Herr Andreas is so pleased. He goes chuckling to himself. I think he thinks Linnet will make his fortune.”

“And how long do you stop here?” Will inquired, half-anxiously, half-eagerly.

“About a month,” Linnet answered, looking deep into his eyes, and keeping down the rising tears as well as she could in her own. “And you, Herr Will? how long do you mean to remain here?”

“A month or six weeks,” Will replied with a thrill. Then he added, gazing hard at her, in spite of Florian, “so I hope we may still have many chances of meeting?”

Florian flung his fragile form at full length on the heap of stones by their side, and began to laugh unrestrainedly. “Well, it’s no use fighting against fate,” he cried, looking up at the blushing pair, with philosophic indulgence for the errors and foibles of youth and beauty and the poetic temperament. “You must go your own way, I suppose. I retire from the contest. I’ve done my very best, dear boy, to preserve you from yourself; but the stars in their courses seem to fight against Sisera.” He extended both his small hands with paternal unction. “Bless you, my children,” he cried, theatrically. “Be happy. Be happy.”

“Which way are you walking?” Will asked in German, to cover his confusion.

“Well, we were going towards the Schloss,” Philippina replied, smiling. “But the climb’s rather stiff, so we sat down for awhile by these stones, just to rest on the hill-top.”

“The finger of fate again!” Florian cried, much amused, raising his hands deprecatingly. “Well, Will, there’s no help for it; I see they must go with us. It’s useless trying to keep you and your Oread apart any longer, so I won’t attempt it. Two’s company, three’s none. The only thing left for a wise man like me?—?is just to walk on in front and take a German lesson from FrÄulein Philippina.”

Fortunately for Florian, too, Philippina proved to be one of those gay and easy-going young ladies with whom the want of a common tongue wherein to express one’s thoughts forms a very slight barrier to the course of conversation. Already at her chÂlet he had guessed as much; and now on the hill-top, they walked along side by side, chatting and laughing as they went, with expressive eyes, and making themselves mutually understood as much by nods and becks and wreathÈd smiles?—?so Florian poetically phrased it in his silent soul?—?as by any articulate form of the German language. Before they had reached the Schloss they stood already on excellent terms with one another, and Florian even consoled himself for the enforced loss of Linnet’s society with the reflection that Philippina was, after all, in many ways “a great deal more practical.”

But Linnet, walking behind, was in the seventh heavens. She had found her EnglÄnder once more, and that alone would have been enough for her. But that wasn’t all; this second chance meeting, perfectly natural as it was?—?for Andreas had but followed the stream of tourists southward?—?impressed her simple mind with the general idea that the world, after all, wasn’t as big as she had supposed it, and that she’d be liable now to meet the gnÄdige Herr wherever she went, quite casually and accidentally. Not, indeed, that she troubled her head much just then about the future in any way: with Will by her side, she lived wholly in the present. She didn’t even ask him why he had gone away from Innsbruck without coming to say goodbye to her in person; she didn’t utter a single word of reproach or complaint; she accepted all that; she took it all for granted. Will never could marry her; she didn’t expect him to marry her: a gentleman like him couldn’t marry a peasant-girl; a Catholic like herself couldn’t marry a heretic who scarcely bowed the knee to Our Blessed Lady. But she loved him for all that, and she was happy if he would but let her walk beside him. And in this she was purely and simply womanly. True love doesn’t ask any end beyond itself: it is amply satisfied with being loved and loving.

And Will? Well, Will had a poet’s nature, and the poet lives in the passing emotion. Only a man of moods can set moods before us. Like Linnet herself, Will thought little of the future when Linnet was beside him. He meant her no harm, as he said truly to Florian; but he meant her no good either: he meant nothing at all but to walk by her side, and hold her hand in his, and feel his heart beat hard, and her finger-touch thrill through him. Walking thus as in a mist, they passed Dorf Tyrol; and the road at once grew wilder and more romantic. It grew also more sequestered, with deeper bends and nooks, as it turned the corners of little ravines and gulleys, where they could look at one another more frankly with the eager eyes of young love; and once, Will raised his hand to Linnet’s nut-brown cheek, and pressed it tenderly. Linnet said nothing, but the hot blood rushed to her face with mingled shame and pleasure; and who was so glad as she that Will Deverill should touch her!

The path wound round a deep gorge, overhanging a torrent, with Schloss Tyrol itself frowning beyond on its isolated crag?—?a picturesque and half-ruinous mediÆval fortress, almost isolated on a peninsular mass of crumbling mud-cliff, interspersed with the ice-worn dÉbris of pre-historic glaciers. ’Tis a beautiful spot. Pretty Alpine rills, tearing headlong down the sides, have carved out for themselves steep ravines which all but island the castle; their banks rise up sheer as straight walls of cliff, displaying on their faces the grey mud of the moraine, from which the ice-worn boulders project boldly here and there, or tumble from time to time to encumber the littered beds of the streams that dislodged them. But what struck Florian most of all, as he paused and looked, was the curious effect produced where a single large boulder has resisted the denuding action of the streams and the rainfall, so as to protect the tapering column of hardened mud beneath it. Each big rock thus stood paradoxically perched on the summit of a conical pillar, called locally an earth-pyramid, and forming, Florian thought, the most singular element in this singular landscape. Close to its end the track bends round an elbow to skirt the ravine, and then plunges for a hundred yards or more into a dark and narrow underground passage through the isthmus of moraine stuff, before drawing up at the portcullis of the dismantled fortress. A more romantically mysterious way of approaching a mediÆval stronghold Florian could hardly imagine: it reminded him of Ivanhoe or the Castle of Otranto.

But as Florian and Philippina disappeared under the shadow of the darkling archway, Will found himself alone for one moment with Linnet, screened from observation by the thick trellis-work of the vineyards. They were walking close together, whispering in one another’s ears those eternal nothings which lovers have whispered in the self-same tones, but in a hundred tongues, for ten thousand ages. Occasion favoured them. Will glanced round for a moment; then with a rapid movement he drew the trembling girl to himself, half unresisted. Her cheek was flushed, partly with joy, partly with fear, that he should dare to lay hands on her. His boldness thrilled her through with a delicious thrill?—?the true womanly joy in being masterfully handled. “No, no,” she cried in a faint voice; “you mustn’t, you mustn’t.” But she said it shyly, as one who half-wishes her words to fail of their effect: and Will never heeded her “no”?—?and oh, how glad she was that Will never heeded it! He held her face up to his, and bent his own down tenderly. Linnet tried to draw back, yet pursed up her lips at the same time and let him kiss her when he tried; but she made him try first, though when at last he succeeded, she felt the kiss course trembling through her inmost being.

It was but a moment, yet that moment to her was worth many eternities. For a second of time she nestled against him confidingly, for now he was hers, and she was his for ever. Their lips had sealed it. But before he could steal another, she had broken away from him again, and stood half-penitent, half-overjoyed, by the roadside, a little way from him. “No more now!” she said, gravely, lifting one finger in command; “we must follow Herr Florian.” And with that, they plunged at once into the gloom of the tunnel.

What happened by the way, no one knows save themselves; but, two minutes later, with blushing cheeks, they rejoined their companions by the gateway of the castle. Even flushed as she was, Linnet couldn’t help admiring it. It was beautiful, wonderful. The ancient wealth and dignity of the first counts of Schloss Tyrol remain well reflected to this day in the rude magnificence of their Romanesque residence. Linnet looked up with wonder at the round-arched portal of the principal doorway, richly carved with quaint squat figures of grotesque fancy, naÏve, not to say childish and uncouth, in design, but admirable and exquisite in execution. “Tenth-century workmanship!” Florian said, with a bland smile, as he looked up at it, condescendingly; and Will, pulling himself together again, explained to the two girls in detail the various meanings of the queer little figures. Here were Adam and Eve; here Jonah and the whale; here saints revelled in Heaven; here, lost souls rolled in torment. Linnet gazed, and admired the beauty of the door?—?but still more, Will’s learning. If only she could understand such things as that! But there!?—?he was so wise, and she so ignorant!

They passed into the hall?—?that stately old Rittersaal, adorned with marble carvings of the same infantile type?—?and looked sheer down from the windows a thousand feet on to the valley below, with the falls of the Adige behind, and a sea of tumultuous porphyritic mountains surging and rolling in the farther background. ’Twas a beautiful view in itself, rendered more beautiful still by its picturesque setting of semi-circular arches, divided and supported by slender shafts of polished alabaster. To an untutored girl of Linnet’s native artistic temperament, it was delightful to pass through those lordly halls and into that exquisite chapel with its quaint old frescoes, in company with somebody who could explain their whole meaning to her simple intelligence so well as Will Deverill. Though she felt her own ignorance?—?felt it acutely, sensitively?—?she felt at the same time how fast she could learn from such a teacher; and as she dropped on her knees before the twelfth-century Madonna in the spangled shrine of that antiquated chantry, it was not for herself alone that she murmured below her breath, in very tremulous tones, an Ave Maria.

Will and Florian talked, too, of the Schloss and its history. Linnet listened with all her ears, though she hardly understood half the English words they used to describe it?—?how it commanded the whole vast plain of Meran and Botzen, the widest and most populous in the Eastern Alps, one basking garden of vines and Indian corn and fruit-trees, thickly dotted with hamlets, churches, and castles. “You can see why the counts who lived here spread their power and their name by slow degrees over the whole of this country,” Will said, as they gazed down on it. And then he went on to talk of how the Counts of Tyrol gradually absorbed Meran and Botzen, and in course of time, by their possession of the Brenner route, the great mediÆval highway from Italy to Germany, acquired the over-lordship of the whole wide tract which is now called after them. Oh, what grand words he used! Linnet listened, and wondered at them. She caught, from time to time, the name of Margaret Maultasch?—?that Meg of the Pocket-Mouth who made over her dominions to the house of Austria?—?and learned from stray hints how the Counts of the new line moved their capital northward from Meran to Innsbruck. It was marvellous how Herr Will, who was a stranger from England, should know so much more about her people’s history than she herself did! But there! what did she say? Herr Will knew everything.

Florian and Philippina went off by themselves after awhile among the ruins of the ramparts. Linnet was left alone with Will again by the windows of the Rittersaal. All this historical talk had inflamed her eager mind with vague hopes and possibilities. Why should not she too know? Why should not she too be fit for him, like the fair-haired lady? “Herr Will,” she said at last, turning round to him with a shy look in her shrinking eyes, “How I wish you could teach me! How I wish you could tell me how to learn such things! We shall be here for a month. Why shouldn’t I begin? Why shouldn’t I learn now? We may see each other often.”

“Will you be on the hill behind the town to-morrow?” Will asked, half-ashamed of himself for these endless breakings-off, and these fresh re-commencements.

“Perhaps,” Linnet answered timidly, in her accustomed phrase; “if Philippina will come ... and if she doesn’t tell Andreas.”

“Where will you be?” Will inquired, taking her hand in his own once more and holding it.

Linnet looked down and paused. “I might be near the cross at the turn of the road by the second oratory, about ten o’clock,” she said very low, “if Our Lady permits me.”

Will pressed her hand hard. “And where do you sing to-night?” he asked, with a little smile of pleasure. “I must come and hear you.”

To his immense surprise Linnet drew back at once, red as a rose, and fixed her eyes on him pleadingly. “Oh, no, don’t,” she cried, much distressed. “Don’t, don’t, I beg of you.”

Will, in turn, lifted his head, astonished, and looked hard at her. He couldn’t understand this strange freak of feeling. “Then don’t you like me to hear you?” he cried, regretfully. “It’s such a pleasure to me. I thought you wanted me to hear. And I thought I encouraged you.”

“So you do,” Linnet answered with a burst, half-sidling towards him, half-shrinking. “I love you to hear me. And I’ll sing for you whenever you like. I’ll sing for you till I’m hoarse. But don’t come to the hotels. Oh, don’t come, I implore you!”

“Why not, my child?” Will cried, drawing her close to him once more.

Linnet’s cheeks burnt crimson. She looked down and stammered. Then, with a sudden impulse she hid her face on his bosom, and yielded up her whole soul to him. “Because,” she whispered, all aglow with maiden shame at having confessed the truth, “if Andreas Hausberger sees you, he’ll know you’re in Meran?—?and then he won’t allow me to come out on the hills to meet you.”

CHAPTER XVII