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.