That evening at the Wirthshaus, as things turned out, Will and Florian had an excellent opportunity afforded them of observing for themselves the manners and customs of the Tyrolese Robbler. There was a dance at the inn?—?a prodigious dance, of truly national severity. It was the eve of a wedding, and, as is usual on such occasions, the peasants of the neighbourhood had assembled in full force to drink good luck to the forthcoming union. The Gaststube or bar-room was crowded with a gay throng of bright and merry faces. The young men were there, jaunty, bold, and defiant; the old men, austere and stern of feature from the hardships of long life among the grim-faced mountains. Groups of black-eyed lasses stood about the room and bandied repartee with their gaily-dressed admirers; matrons, unspoilt by conventional restraint, instead of checking their mirth, looked on smiling and abetting them. Through the midst, the Herr Vicar strolled, stout and complaisant, an easy-going man; not his to stem the tide of their innocent merriment; so long as they confessed twelve times a year, and subscribed to release their parents’ souls from purgatory, he sanctified by his presence the beer and the dances. Andreas Hausberger, too, flitted here and there through the crowd with an anxious eye; ’twas his task to provide for and protect the bodies of his guests, as ’twas the Herr Vicar’s to save their priceless souls from undue temptation.

At one end of the room, on a little raised platform, the music sat installed;?—?a trombone, a zither, and a wooden hackbrettle made up the whole orchestra. Scarcely had the performers struck up an enlivening tune when the men, selecting as partners the girls of their choice, began to dance round the hall in the very peculiar and (to say the whole truth) extremely ungraceful Tyrolean fashion. Will and Florian had heard from the landlord beforehand of the expected feast, to which they were not invited; but, “at the sound of the harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music,” as Florian phrased it, their curiosity was so deeply aroused that they crept from their sitting-room and peeped cautiously in at the door of the Tanzboden. The sight that met their eyes in that close-packed hall was sufficiently striking. Even Florian allowed this was utterly Arcadian. For a minute or two, just at first, the young men and maidens, grasping each other wildly round the neck and waist with both their arms, in a sort of bear-like death-hug, whirled and eddied in a maze round and round the room, stamping their heavy boots, till Will almost trembled for the stability of the rafters. For some time that was all: they twisted and twirled in closely-coupled pairs, clasped breast to breast, like so many dancing dervishes. But, of a sudden, at a change of the music, as if by magic, with one accord, the whole figure altered. Each man, letting his partner go, began suddenly to perform a series of strange antics and evolutions around her, the relics of some pre-historic dance, of which the snapping of fingers and uttering of heuchs in a Highland fling are but a faint and colourless reminiscence. As the reel went on, the music grew gradually faster and faster, and the motions of the men still more savage and fantastic. The two Englishmen looked on in astonishment and admiration. Such agility and such verve they had never before seen or even dreamt of. Could these rustic cavaliers be really made of india-rubber? They twisted and turned and contorted themselves all the time with such obliviousness of their bones, and such extraordinary energy! They smacked their lips and tongues as they went; they jumped high into the air; they bent back till their heads touched the ground behind; they bounded upright once more to regain their position like elastic puppets, and, in between whiles, they slapped their resounding thighs with their horny hands; they crowed like cocks; they whistled like capercailzie; they stamped on the ground with their hob-nailed shoes; they shouted and sang, and clicked their tongues in their cheeks, and made unearthly noises deep down in their throats for which language has as yet no articulate equivalent. Florian gazed and glowered. And well he might; ’twas an orgie of strange sound, a phantasmagoria of whirling and eddying motion.

While all this was going on, the two young Englishmen stood undecided and observant by the lintel of the door, even Florian half-abashed at so much unwonted merriment. But after a while, the Herr Vicar, whose acquaintance they had already made among the stones of the churchyard, spied them out by the entrance, and, with one hospitable fat forefinger extended and crooked, beckoned them into the Tanzboden. “Come on,” he cried, “come on; there’s room enough for all; our people are still glad to entertain the Herr strangers: for some, unawares, have thus entertained angels.”

So encouraged by the authorised mouthpiece of the parish, Will and Florian stepped boldly into the crowded room, and watched the little groups of stalwart young men and nut-brown lasses with all the interest of unexpected novelty. The scene was indeed a picturesque and curious one. Every Tyrolese is, or has been, or wishes to be thought, a mountain hunter. So each man wore his hat, adorned with the trophies of his prowess in the chase; with some, ’twas a gamsbart, or so-called chamois’ beard?—?the tuft of coarse hair that grows high like a crest along the creature’s back in the pairing season; with others, ’twas the tail-feathers of the glossy blackcock, stuck saucily on one side, with that perky air of self-satisfied assurance so characteristic of hot youth in the true-born Tyroler. 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.

As he turned to impart his conjecture to Florian, Linnet caught his eye mutely from a corner by the mantelpiece. She wasn’t taking part in the reel herself, so, undaunted by his experience of Franz Lindner that day, Will strolled over to her side, followed close at heel by Florian. “You don’t dance?” he said, bending over her with as marked politeness as he would have shown to a lady in a London drawing-room.

“No; I may not,” Linnet answered, in her pretty broken English, with a smile of not unnatural womanly pleasure that the strangers should thus single her out before all her folk for so much personal attention. “I have refuse Franz Lindner, so may I not dance this time with any one. It is our custom so. When a girl shall refuse to dance with a man first, she may not that turn accept any other. Nor may he, in turn, ask her again that evening.”

“How delightful!” Florian cried, effusively. “Franz Lindner’s loss is our gain, FrÄulein Linnet. No; don’t frown at me like that; it must be FrÄulein; I’ve too much respect for you to call you otherwise. But, anyhow, we’ll sit out this dance and talk with you.”

“And I,” Will put in with a quiet smile, “I’ll call you Linnet, because you prefer it.”

“Thank you,” Linnet said, shyly, with a grateful flash of her eyes, and a side glance towards Franz Lindner; “it seems less as if you mock at me.”

As they spoke, the figure changed of a sudden once more to a still stranger movement. The women, falling apart, massed themselves together in a central group, in attitudes expressive of studied indifference and inattention to the men; their partners, on the contrary, placing themselves full in front of them, began a series of most extraordinary twists and twirls, accompanied by loud cries or snapping of fingers, and endeavoured by every means in the power, both of lungs and limbs, to compel their disdainful coquettes to take notice of their antics. While they stood there and watched?—?Linnet with eyes askance on Franz Lindner’s face?—?Andreas Hausberger strolled up, and took his place beside them.

“Why, that’s the blackcock’s call!” Will exclaimed, with a start of recognition, as the dancers, with one accord, uttered all in a chorus a shrill and piercing note of challenge and defiance. “I’ve heard it on the mountains.”

“Yes,” the wirth assented; “that’s the blackcock’s call, and this, that they’re doing, is the blackcock’s love-dance. In the springtime, on the mountains, you know, the blackcocks and the grey hens assemble in their dancing place?—?their Tanzboden we call it, just the same as we call this one. There, the hens stand aside, and pretend to be coy, and take no notice of their mates, like the girls in this dance here; while the blackcock caper in front of them, and flap their wings, and fluff their necks, and do all they know to display their strength and beauty. Whoever dances the most and best, gets most of the hens to join his harem. So our young men have got up this love-dance to imitate them; they flap their arms the same way, and give the blackcock’s challenge. Nature’s pretty much the same above and below, I guess?—?especially here in the Tyrol, where we haven’t yet learned to hide our feelings under smooth silk hats as you do in England. But it’s all good for trade, and that’s the great thing. It makes them thirsty. You’ll see, after this bout, the beer will flow like water.”

And, sure enough, the wirth was right. As soon as the dance was ended, young men and maidens, with equal zest, betook themselves, all alike, to the consolations of the beer-jug. Their thirst was mighty. And no wonder, indeed, for this Tyrolese dancing is no drawing-room game, but hard muscular exercise. Andreas Hausberger looked on with a cynical smile on those thin, cold lips of his. “It’s good for trade,” he murmured again, half to himself, once or twice, as the girls at the bar filled the beer-mugs merrily; “very good for trade. So are all amusements. That’s the way the foolish get rid of their money?—?and the wise get hold of it.”

After the beer came a pause, a long, deep-drawn pause; and then two young men, standing out from the throng, began to sing alternately at one another in short Tyrolese stanzas. One of them was Franz Lindner; the other was the young man with the scar on his forehead, whom Linnet described as her cousin Fridolin. What they sang, neither Florian nor Will could make out, for the words of the song were in the roughest form of the mountain dialect; but it was clear from their manner, and the way they flung out their words point blank at one another’s heads, that they improvised as they went, like Virgilian shepherds, and that their remarks were by no means either polite or complimentary in substance or character. The rest stood round in a circle and listened, laughing heartily at times as each in turn scored a point now and then off his angry rival; while Linnet and the other girls blushed again and again at some audacious retort, though the bolder among the women only tittered to themselves or looked up with arch glances at each risky allusion. Andreas Hausberger too, stood by, all alert to keep the peace; it was plain from the quick light in his resolute eye, and the rapid upward movement of his twitching hand, he was ready at a moment’s notice to intervene between the combatants, and put a stop in the nick of time to the scoffing contest of defiance and derision.

The song, however, passed off without serious breach of the peace. Then more dances followed, more beer, and more bucolic contests. As the evening wore on, the fun grew fast and furious. On the stroke of twelve, the Herr Vicar withdrew?—?not one hour too early; his flock were fast getting beyond control of his counsels. Linnet and a few others of the more modest-looking girls now sat out from the dance; the rest continued to whirl round and round the room in still wilder and more fantastic movements than ever. Andreas Hausberger was now yet more clearly on the alert. A stray spark would raise a flame in that magazine of gunpowder. Suddenly, at the end of the first dance after the priest’s departure, the young man with the scar on his forehead, called Cousin Fridolin, came forward unexpectedly to where Linnet sat aside between Will Deverill and Florian. He had danced with her once before in the course of the evening, and Will observed that through that dance Franz Lindner’s eyes had never been taken off his rival and Linnet. But now the tall young man came forward with a dash, and without one word of warning, placed his conical hat, blackcock’s feather and all, with a jodel of challenge, on Linnet’s forehead. They had seen the same thing done before more than once that evening, and Linnet had explained to them that the custom was equivalent to a declaration of love for the lady so honoured?—?’twas as much as to say, “This girl is mine; who disputes it?” But as the tall young man stood back with a smile of triumph on his handsome lips, one hand on his hip, staring fixedly at Linnet, Franz Lindner sprang forth with a face as black as night, and a brow like thunder. Trembling with rage, he seized the hat from her head, and tore hastily from its band the offending plume. “Was kost die Feder?” he cried, in a tone of angry contempt, holding it up in his hand before the eyes of its owner; “Was kost die Feder?” which is, being interpreted, “How much for your feather?”

Quick as lightning, the answer rang out, “FÜnf Finger und ein Griff”?—?“Five fingers and a grip.” It is the customary challenge of the Tyrolese Robbler, and the customary acceptance.

Before Will had time to understand what was happening next, in the crack of a finger, in the twinkle of an eye, the two young men had closed, with hands and arms and bodies, and were grappling with each other in a deadly struggle. All night long they had been watching and provoking one another; all night long they had vied in their attentions to Linnet, and their studious interchange of mutual insults. Sooner or later a fight seemed inevitable. Now, flown with insolence and beer, and heated from the dance, they flung themselves together, with one accord, like two tigers in their fury. Linnet clapped her hands to her ears, and shut her eyes in horror. For a minute or two, it seemed to every looker-on as though there would be bloodshed in the inn that evening. Florian observed this little episode with philosophic interest; ’twas pleasant to watch these simple dramas of the primary emotions?—?love, jealousy, passion?—?still working themselves out as on the stage of Hellas. He had never before seen them so untrammelled in their play; he stood here face to face with Homeric simplicity.

In five minutes, however, to his keen disappointment, the whole scene was finished. Andreas Hausberger, that cool, calm man of the world, perceiving at a glance that such contests in his inn were very bad for trade, and that ’twould be a pity for him to lose by a violent death so good a singer, or so constant a customer, interposed his heavy hand between the angry combatants. Your half-tipsy man, be he even a Tyrolese, though often quarrelsome, is usually placable. A short explanation soon set everything right again. Constrained by Herr Andreas, with his imperious will, the two Robblers consented, after terms interchanged, to drown their differences in more mugs of beer, and then retire for the evening. The young man with the scar, whom they called Cousin Fridolin, regretted that he had interfered with Franz Lindner’s maiden, but excused his act as a mere hasty excess of cousinly feeling. Franz Lindner in return, not to be outdone in magnanimity, though still with flashing eyes, and keen side-glance at Linnet, regretted that he had offered such indignity in his haste to the dishonoured symbol of his comrade’s championship. Hands were shaken all round; cuts and bruises were tended; and, almost as soon as said, to Florian’s infinite disgust, the whole party had settled down by the tables once more, on an amicable basis, to beer and conversation.

But before they retired from that evening’s revel, Linnet murmured to Will in a tone of remonstrance very real and aggrieved, “Franz Lindner had no right to call me his MÄdchen.”

CHAPTER VIII