by Grant Allen
He hugged himself with wild joy. Mrs. Egremont stood facing him, as white as death. “Oh, Walter, Walter,” she cried, “are you quite inhuman?”
Her son touched her arm. “You need not fear, mother,” he said, softly. “Let him vapor as he likes. Let him wear this mood out. It won’t last long. The end is coming.” But the Colonel continued in his heroic act. “She sees it!” he cried. “She sees it! She knows it’s all up with her! I’ve dispossessed her son. I have ruined her character. I’ve exposed her intrigue. And now, I’m coming back to Milworth Manor to live with her!” Hubert advanced once more. “Give me those letters!” he said, with calm persistence.
“Never!” the Colonel replied raising his voice to a loud shout. “Don’t dare to touch me, sir. I shall shoot the first man who lays hand on my shoulder. I’ve a regiment in reserve. Up, Guards, and at ’em!”
As he spoke, the door opened, and Sir Emilius entered.
“Tut, tut, tut, what’s the matter with the man?” the great doctor said, glancing at him.
“So! Egremont again? God bless my soul, what’s the fellow doing here?” As he looked, his manner changed abruptly from one of remonstrance to pure medical concern. “Stand back, Julia,” he went on, in an altered voice. “The man’s mad drunk — and worse than that! Don’t go too near him. What in heaven’s name brought him here?”
“My rights!” the Colonel answered, with a very thick sound in his hectoring voice. “I’ve come to claim my own! I’m the lord of Milworth Manor.” He strutted about as he spoke and steadied himself with a chair. “I’m monarch of all I survey,” he went on. “I am the Earl of Devon!”
“You’re a drunkard and a madman, my dear sir, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Sir Emilius said coldly, yet with professional interest. “What you want is a keeper.” He turned to Hubert. “This is the beginning of the end,” he added, in a lower voice. “I suspected it long ago. He’s rapidly approaching a state of collapse. Alcoholic insanity.”
“I’m the Duke of Devonshire, I say,” the Colonel mumbled incoherently. “I’m the lord of the manor.” He waved his hand towards the view with an expansive air. “I’m the owner of the county.”
Hubert touched his mother’s arm. “Go away, dearest,” he whispered, in a low voice. “I’ll get the letters back quietly. The expected triumph has turned his head. He’s going mad before our eyes. You mustn’t stop to see him.”
“I can’t go away,” the poor woman answered gasping, “till I see they’re safe. And besides I don’t know what things he may happen to blurt out before Emilius.”
The doctor laid his hand gently on the lunatic’s shoulder. “Come, come,” he said; “you’re not well: you had better go away with me, Egremont. You’re indisposed, I can see. A little rest would be good for you.”
He spoke in the persuasive professional manner. But the Colonel shook off the kindly hand with an indignant gesture. “Don’t touch me, sir!” he broke forth, with insane indignation. “How dare you lay your hand upon me? I’m a soldier, I say. I’m an officer and a gentleman. I’m Wolfe at Quebec. I’m the Commander-in-Chief. I’m a British Field Marshal. Don’t venture to interfere with a Royal Highness.”
The doctor held out one deprecating hand. But the madman drew back, with his head drawn down between his shoulders. He sprang at Sir Emilius’s throat with a sudden spring like a wild beast. “Now, then,” the doctor said, shaking him off, “this won’t do, you know, Egremont. You’re getting ungovernable. Help me to hold him, Hubert. Julia, stand off: ring the bell there, quick! We must have Reece to take care of him.”
The doctor gripped him. But with the strange adroitness of the insane, in spite of his paralysis, Colonel Egremont wriggled suddenly out of that quiet grasp, stood three paces off, and drew his revolver. For a second, Sir Emilius and Hubert recoiled at the sight of so deadly a weapon in the madman’s hands — for that he was a madman indeed they had now no doubt. “If you touch me, I fire,” he cried, raising it, and covering Hubert as he spoke.
“Now, clear the decks for action! Forward the Light Brigade! I’m the General in command. England expects every man to do his duty!”
There was no time to be lost. At all hazards, they must secure him. Sir Emilius approached him cautiously from one side. Mrs. Egremont shrank away with a terrified look at the revolver. Hubert faced him, ready to pounce. But at the same moment, Fletcher, who had been quietly watching the development of events from outside the window, saw the psychological moment arrive for declaring himself. He stepped into the room with an air of businesslike decision. “Don’t be dismayed,” he said calmly, seizing the Colonel’s arm. “Don’t trouble to take it from him. It isn’t loaded. I saw to that. I took the. caution to withdraw the cartridges.” And he drew them out of his pocket and showed them.
The Colonel, not noticing him, turned round fiercely, and snapped the trigger at Hubert. It gave an abortive little click — no more. He looked at it curiously. For a second he turned it over like a child, astonished. “What, no cartridge!” he cried. Then he flung it away from him and rushed upon Fletcher. “You villain!” he exclaimed. “You’ve betrayed me!” He turned to the others. “Choke him, soldiers, choke him!” he burst out. And he grasped the man’s neck in his hands as if to strangle him.
Hubert and Sir Emilius darted forward and secured him. But the detective was prepared. He drew a set of handcuffs quietly from his pocket. “I always carry a pair of these about with me,” he said, in an apologetic tone. “They do come in handy. In my profession, one never just knows when one may happen to want them.”
The two other men held the madman’s wrists. Fletcher slipped on the handcuffs like one well accustomed to them. The Colonel raved and blustered. He hardly seemed to notice the little episode now, so wild was he with excitement. “What does it matter?” he cried, triumphant. “I’ve got the title-deeds of the estate this moment in my pocket!”
He held up his handcuffed hands. “How dare you?” he said, maundering. “I’m the Duke of Devonshire! I’m the Earl of Trafalgar! I’m Nelson at Quebec! I’m Wolfe at Milworth Manor! I’m — I’m — I’m the Commander — the Commander—” He began to dodder suddenly; then all at once he collapsed and fell back on the sofa.
He fell in a heap, like a drunken man. The detective leaned over him. “Let me take him away,” he whispered. “I brought him here, you know, and I disarmed him when he gave me his revolver to look at. I’ve been like a keeper to him. He’ll go quietly with me.” For he reflected that the letters, whatever they might contain, were in the Colonel’s pocket, and that no other chance now remained of repaying his expenses.
“No, no,” Hubert answered, determined at all hazards to retain the letters. “He can be cared for here. You need not trouble.”
Sir Emilius, meanwhile, with a doctor’s instinct, had unloosed the madman’s collar, and was fanning him with his handkerchief. “This is a hopeless case,” he said slowly. “He is in utter collapse. Give him air there, Hubert! Julia, quick! a fan, and sal-volatile if you have any!” He lifted the Colonel’s fainting body in his arms, and tore his coat off. Hubert snatched it, and, searching the pocket unobtrusively, took out the packet of letters which he handed to his mother. Mrs. Egremont received them without a word, slipped them into her bosom, and rushed off distractedly to find the sal-volatile.
Sir Emilius watched his patient with close attention. “He’s in the very last stage,” he murmured. “Hold his head up, Hubert! Suppressed insanity, breaking out all at once. I’ve always expected it. He’s not fit to be at large. Send Reece post-haste for any local doctor. We must sign a committal order, and get him into an asylum.”
“An asylum,” Mrs. Egremont cried, returning, and just catching the words. “Oh, Mill, is it that? At once? At once?” A certain womanly remorse seemed to come over her for a moment.
“It won’t be for long, mother,” Hubert answered, in a soft voice. “He has killed himself at last. This collapse is final. I knew it was coming. Only bra
ndy kept him up. The excitement of the return, and this scene, have finished him.”
Sir Emilius was rubbing the Colonel’s cold hands meanwhile. “You’re quite right, Hubert,” he answered, low. “He can’t live six weeks. And meanwhile, he will be nothing but a helpless imbecile.”
As he spoke, the Colonel’s eyes opened, and he stared about him vacantly. Then he lifted himself on his elbows, and gazed around with a distraught air. “I’m the Earl of Devonshire,” he muttered feebly. “I’m Duke Nelson of Trafalgar.” Then he lost his balance and fell back, mumbling.
“Take those things off again!” Sir Emilius said in an authoritative voice to Fletcher.
The detective obeyed, and unfastened the handcuffs. Colonel Egremont felt his hands free, and lifted them up with an effort. His eye caught Sir Emilius’s. “Ha! Rawson, old boy!” he mumbled, smiling at him. “You were always my friend, Rawson. Do you remember, when we two were boys together at Winchester, on a half-remedy afternoon, down by the playing-fields—” He broke into a fatuous smile, and left off suddenly, laughing.
Sir Emilius looked at him with compassionate eyes. “Poor fellow! Poor fellow!” he said. “He’s all gone to pieces! He has been a blackguard all his life, Julia, and he has treated you like a blackguard. But, ‘pon my soul, when one sees him now, one can’t help pitying him. To think a truculent bully should be reduced to that! He needs no asylum now, my dear. He won’t want restraint. He’s past any violence. A good home, where he can be nursed and tended while he lasts, is all he will require. Come this way with me, Egremont,” and Sir Emilius lifted him tenderly. “He’d better go to a bedroom, and lie down and rest for an hour or so. Then I’ll take him off myself to a home that is fit for him. The collapse, when it comes, is always final.”
The shadow of the Colonel rose feebly and clutched Sir Emilius’s arm. He was smiling a bland smile. “Yes, I’ll go and lie down,” he said with an abortive laugh. “And then you’ll take me home, Rawson! Milworth’s looking nice! Fine boy that of Julia’s! You’ll see me home, I hope. I’m a bit screwed, I think, and you’ll see me home, Rawson, won’t you? Ha, ha, ha! old boy; you and I were always good chums together, weren’t we?”
He tottered out of the room on the doctor’s arm. Hubert and Mrs. Egremont followed them silently at a little distance.
“Send Reece to help me up-stairs with him,” Sir Emilius said, in his quiet way. “He must rest here for an hour or two; then Dr. Wills and I must take him over by road to that nursing home at Exeter.”
They carried him up-stairs. Outside the bedroom door Mrs. Egremont broke into a sudden flood of tears. Hubert led her into her own room. There she sat down on the sofa, buried her face in her hands, and cried to herself in silence.
Hubert seated himself by her side for some minutes without a word, just smoothing her cheek with one hand, and holding hers with the other.
At last he spoke. “I know what it is, dear,” he whispered. “Some last tinge of needless remorse — now you see him dying.”
Mrs. Egremont bowed her head. “The ages behind me, I suppose,” she answered, half sobbing. “One cannot wholly escape from the false creeds of one’s ancestors. Though he would have told me I ought rather to feel the acute disgrace of having lived for one day, as wife, with that creature!”
Hubert paused again a second. “Mother,” he said earnestly, “on the morning you first told me that great secret in Switzerland, I said to you, ‘Thank you; ten thousand times, thank you!’ Everyday since that time, when I reflect from what inheritance of vice and madness you saved me, I have said again in my heart, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ Now I see him lying there, where his own wicked life has justly led him, I say to you yet more fervently than ever, ‘Thank you!’ You have preserved me from that; you have given me a father and a heritage to be proud of.”
Mrs. Egremont clasped him in her arms. “I will go to him,” she said slowly. “I will do what I can for him. Now, run down again, darling, to the Marchese and Fede!”
“I will,” Hubert answered, pressing her forehead with his lips. “For, more than all, mother, you have given me Fede!”
Linnet
Linnet was first published in book form by Grant Richards in 1898 and is Allen’s last substantial novel. A melodrama with well-drawn characters, the action-packed narrative moves between the Tyrol, London and Monte Carlo. The novel’s protagonist, Will Deverill, a composer of light operas, is on holiday in Austria, when he falls in love with a sennerin (dairymaid), the ‘Linnet’ of the title. A gifted but untrained singer, the uneducated peasant girl is a devout Catholic. In time, after terrific pressure is applied by her parish priest, she is married off to the greedy impresario of her village, Andreas Hausberger, during Deverill’s absence. Hausberger now faces the enmity of not only Deverill, but also Linnet’s other lover, Franz Lindner, a fiery young Alpine jager.
CONTENTS
NOTE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L
CHAPTER LI
CHAPTER LII
The first edition’s title page
NOTE
This story was written in the midst of the scenery which it describes; but the author desires to acknowledge his obligations for many touches of local colour to Mr. Baillie-Grohman’s admirable work on “Tyrol and the Tyrolese.” The quatrain on is quoted, with some slight modifications (to adapt it to its place in this novel), from a poem by Mr. William Watson.
CHAPTER I
“TO INTRODUCE MR FLORIAN WOOD”
’Twas at Zell in the Zillerthal.
Now, whoever knows the Alps, knows the Zillerthal well as the centre of all that is most Tyrolese in the Tyrol. From that beautiful green valley, softly smiling below, majestically grand and ice-clad in its upper forks and branches, issue forth from time to time all the itinerant zither-players and picturesquely-clad singers who pervade every capital and every spa in Europe. Born and bred among the rich lawns of their upland villages, they come down in due time, with a feather in their hats and a jodel in their throats, true modern troubadours, setting out on the untried ocean of the outer world — their voice for their fortune — in search of wealth and adventures. Guitar on back and green braces on shoulders, they start blithely from home with a few copper kreuzers in their leather belts, and return again after a year or two, changed men to behold, their pockets full to bursting with dollars or louis or good English sovereigns.
Not that you must expect to see the Tyrolese peasant of sober reality masquerading about in that extremely operatic and brigand-like costume in the upper Zillerthal. The Alpine minstrel in the sugar-loaf hat, much-gartered as to the leg
s, and clad in a Joseph’s coat of many colours, with whom we are all so familiar in cosmopolitan concert-halls, has donned his romantic polychromatic costume as an integral part of the business, and would be regarded with surprise, not unmixed with contempt, were he to appear in it among the pastures of his native valley. The ladies in corset-bodices and loose white lawn sleeves, who trill out startling notes from the back attics of their larynx, or elicit sweet harmonies from mediæval-looking mandolines in Kursaals and Alcazars, have purchased their Tyrolese dress direct from some Parisian costumier. The real cowherds and milkmaids of the actual Zillerthal are much more prosaic, not to say commonplace, creatures. A green string for a hat-band, with a blackcock’s plume stuck jauntily or saucily at the back of the hat, and a dirty red lappel to the threadbare coat, is all that distinguishes the Tyrolese mountaineer of solid fact from the universal peasant of European Christendom. Indeed, is it not true, after all, that the stage has led us to expect far too much — in costume and otherwise — from the tillers of the soil everywhere? Is it not true that the agricultural and pastoral classes all the world over, in spite of Theocritus and Thomas Hardy, are apt, when one observes them impartially in the flesh, to be earthy, grimy, dull-eyed, and unintelligent?
Florian Wood didn’t think so, however, or affected not to think so — which in his case was probably very much the same thing; for what he really thought about anything on earth, affectation aside, it would have puzzled even himself not a little to determine. He was a tiny man of elegant proportions: so tiny, so elegant, that one felt inclined to put him under a glass case and stick him on a mantelpiece. He leant his small arms upon the parapet of a wall as they were approaching Zell, shifted the knapsack on his back with sylph-like grace, and murmured ecstatically, with a side glance at the stalwart peasant-women carrying basketfuls of fodder in huge creels on their backs in the field close by, “How delicious! How charming! How essentially picturesque! How characteristically Tyrolean!”