“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 emotio............