Edelweiss: A Story

CHAPTER XIX.

A VISIT TO GARRET AND CELLAR

The first congratulations Annele received were from Faller. She quite looked down on the poor fellow, but was gratified by his deference. He could not make too many apologies for coming so early. His fondness for Lenz would not let him rest till he had paid his respects to her. Lenz had grown to be a part of his very self. He would pour out every drop of blood in his veins to serve him.

"I am glad my bridegroom has such good friends. There is no one, however small, but may be of some service."

Faller did not or would not understand this last thrust, but began to describe in glowing colors Lenz's noble qualities. "Annele," he said in conclusion, with tears in his eyes, "his heart is as pure as an angel's, as a new-born child's. For Heaven's sake never be harsh with him, it would be sinning against the Highest. Remember that every quick word will wound him like the thrust of a dagger. His temper is not hasty, but he lays every little thing too much to heart. Don't be offended with me for speaking so to you; it is for your good. I would so gladly serve him in some way, if I only might. You are favored of Heaven in having such a husband. He is a man whose presence and word all respect. No one can reproach him with a single wrong action in his whole life. Be gentle with him, – kind and gentle."

"Have you done?" asked Annele, her eyes flashing, "or have you more to say?"

"No."

"Then I have something to say to you. You have been most insolent. You deserve to be turned out of the house this moment. What do you mean by taking such a liberty? Who asked you to be mediator between us? What business have you to suppose I shall be unkind? But I am glad to have found you out in season. I see now what a set of beggarly hangers-on my Lenz has. I shall make a clean sweep of them every one. You shall have no more chance to drain his substance with your pretty speeches. I make you a present of the wine you have drunk. Now you may go. But I shall let my Lenz know of your impertinence. It shall be recorded against you. Good by!"

Faller's protestations, asseverations, prayers, entreaties, were all in vain. Annele showed him the door, and he had to go; nor did she vouchsafe to cast a glance after him.

Soon after Faller came Franzl, radiant with happiness, and was taken at once by the mother into the private sitting-room. Franzl was full of self-congratulations at having brought about this happy result, and assured the landlady that now she could die content. But she injured her cause by claiming more credit than was her due, and so got none. She was soon made conscious of her mistake. "What are you talking of, Franzl? You had nothing at all to do with the matter, nor I either. The young people were too sharp for us. Only a few days ago we were discussing the possibility of the match, and they had settled it behind our backs long before. I might have suspected my Annele of such doings, but never Lenz. However, it is better so. It is the work of Heaven, and we will be thankful."

Franzl stood open-mouthed and open-eyed; but no more did she get to put into her mouth than she could have held in her eye. Empty she had to go home, and with scarcely a word from Annele, for, just as she was leaving, Pilgrim entered.

Annele did not venture to treat Pilgrim in the same way she had Faller. She knew he did not like her, and therefore, without giving him a chance to speak, at once began thanking him for his kindly interest. He treated the matter in his usual good-natured, joking way, at the same time protesting that no one was to be trusted, for Lenz had not confided a syllable to him beforehand. Thus he satisfied his conscience, and yet said nothing to disturb what he could not prevent.

There was one more tough knot to saw in Petrovitsch, which had to be left to the father to deal with. Petrovitsch took his place at table as if nothing had happened. The landlord officially announced the engagement to him, adding that Lenz would appear in a minute, as he was coming to dinner. Annele was extremely childlike and respectful to the old man. She almost went so far as to kneel, and ask his blessing. He shook hands with her kindly. The landlady, too, insisted on shaking hands with him, but received only his two left hand fingers. Most happy was Lenz, when he came, to find everything so amicably settled. The one drawback to his pleasure was having Pilgrim at table, after the language he had used the night before. But even that feeling passed off at last, under the influence of Pilgrim's perfect self-possession.

The skies frowned upon Lenz's betrothal. It rained incessantly for days. An ugly drizzle kept on all the time, like a monstrous talker, who never comes to a period. Lenz naturally spent much of his time at the Lion, which was so comfortably arranged that he could either be as retired as in a private house, or could sit in a "market-place with a fire in it," as he once called the large public room, with its sixteen tables. "That is capital," said Annele; "I must repeat that to my father. He enjoys a good joke."

"It is not worth while. If I say it to you, that is quite enough. Don't let it go further."

Lenz went up and down the long, and now almost impassable, footway between the Morgenhalde and the Lion as if he were only stepping from one room into another. All who met him, men and women, stopped and congratulated. "You look as if you had grown taller since your engagement," some would say. Lenz's bearing had, in fact, been more erect and proud of late than ever before. He smiled when persons said to him, "You stand high in the market, for the sort of wife a man gets is the test of his worth." "Without meaning to intrude upon others' concerns, I must say I never supposed Annele would remain in the village. It was always said she would marry a hotel-keeper in Baden-Baden, or the engineer. You may laugh, for you are a precious lucky fellow."

Lenz took no offence at being thought the lesser of the two; but, on the contrary, was proud of Annele's modesty in choosing him. He could not help saying sometimes, when he was sitting with her and her mother in their private room, the old man looking in occasionally, and growling out some of his pithy sentences: "Thank Heaven for once more giving me parents, and such parents! I have started life afresh. It seems incredible that I should be actually at home in the Lion inn. How grand it looked to my childish eyes when the upper story was added and plate-glass put in all the windows! We children used to think the castle at Karlsruhe could not be more magnificent. I remember seeing the golden lion hung out too. What should I have thought then to be told I should one day have a home in that castle? It is hard my mother could not have lived to see this day."

His sincerity really touched the two women, though Annele had all the while kept on counting the stitches of the embroidered slipper she was working for her lover. They said nothing for some time. At last the mother began: "What pleasant relatives you will find, too, in my other sons-in-law! I have told you how fond I am of them, though they are not the same to me that you are. I have known you since you were a baby. You are almost as near to me as if I had nursed you at my own bosom. But you know what refined, aristocratic gentlemen they are, and good business men into the bargain. Many men would be lucky if their whole property equalled what my sons-in-law make in a year."

"If this stupid rain would only stop!" said Annele, after a pause. "Do you know, Lenz, we will have the horses harnessed the moment it does, and take a drive together."

"I shall be glad to be with you once under God's broad heaven. The house is too narrow to contain my happiness."

"We will drive to the city, – won't we?"

"Wherever you like. I am glad my Magic Flute is so well protected. It would be a shame to have any harm come to it."

"You carry your feeling too far," remonstrated the mother. "The thing is sold. The risk now is with the purchaser."

"No, mother, you don't understand my Lenz. He is right. What he has made takes such deep hold of his heart that he would like always to keep a protecting hand upon it. We cannot bear to have a thing injured that we have cared for day and night for months."

"My own dear Annele!" cried Lenz, enchanted at this beautiful expression of her quick, intelligent sympathy.

"There is no use talking with you lovers," replied the mother, with pretended amiability; "unless one is in love himself, he can say nothing to please you." She went to and fro about the house, for Lenz had requested that Annele might be excused from attendance in the public room, at least for a few days. "Not that I am at all jealous," he assured her, "but I begrudge every look you bestow on any one but me. All are mine now."

One day towards noon the rain held up for about an hour, and Lenz teased Annele to go up to his house with him. "Everything is waiting for you there," he urged; "all the kettles and cupboards, and other things, too, that you will take pleasure in."

Annele resisted long, but at last consented to go if her mother would. Contrary to her expectation the mother was soon ready. Every person they met on their way through the village saluted. Hardly, however, had they gone a hundred steps before Annele began to complain: "O Lenz! what a horrid path! I sink in at every step. You must have it put in better order. And do you know you ought to have a road made up the mountain, so that carriages can drive to the door. Sister Babette's husband had a private road broken through the fields to his house."

"I could hardly do that," answered Lenz; "it would cost a great deal of money, besides my having to buy the field. See, my meadow does not begin till that hazel hedge, and our business requires no carriage-road. You know I would do anything in my power to please you, Annele, – don't you? – but that is impossible."

Annele plodded on, without returning any answer. "Why need you have made such a talk about it?" whispered the mother in his ear. "If you had only said, 'Very well, dear Annele, we will think of it,' or something of that sort, you could have done as you pleased afterwards. She is a child, and children must be treated to pretty words. You can do what you will with her if you only set the right way to work. Don't weigh every word she says and make a great matter of it; let a subject rest over for a day or so, till you see the right moment is come for settling it. She will think it out for herself, or else forget it. She is only a child."

"Annele is not a child," contradicted Lenz, looking in displeased surprise at her mother; "I can talk over everything with her. There is nothing she does not understand."

The mother shrugged her shoulders. "As you please," she said, sulkily.

About half-way up the meadow Annele broke out again: "Good Heavens, what a journey! I had no idea it was so far. It will be a perfect eternity before we get up there."

"I cannot make the way any shorter," answered Lenz, sharply. Annele turned and looked at him searchingly. "I am sure," he added, in some confusion, "you will rejoice one day that the walk is so long, for it shows what a good large meadow we own. I could pasture three cows here, if it were worth while."

Annele gave a forced laugh. The house was reached at last, and she drew a long breath, complaining of being so hot and tired.

"In God's name, welcome home!" said Lenz, grasping her hand on the threshold. She stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language, then suddenly exclaimed, "You are a dear good fellow. You manage to bring good out of everything."

Lenz was content, and Franzl's joy knew no bounds. First the mother shook hands with her and then Annele, while both praised the neatness of passage-way, kitchen, and sitting-room.

"I shall find it hard to get used to these low rooms," said Annele, stretching up her hand till it nearly touched the ceiling.

"I cannot make the rooms higher. Besides, they are more easily warmed than high ones."

"To be sure. You must remember, Lenz, what a big house I have always lived in. The ceiling seems to be pressing on my head at first; but I sha'n't mind it. Don't be afraid that will disturb me."

Lenz turned round the tool-receiver that hung like a chandelier from the ceiling, and began to explain to Annele the various implements with which it was covered, – the names of the different drills, and the special purpose each was used for. "But you will soon get acquainted with all these things that make up so much of my life. They are my silent work-fellows. Now I will show you our house."

The mother stayed with Franzl in the kitchen, while Lenz took Annele all over the house, showing her the seven beds already stuffed, besides two great bags of feathers from which others could be filled, and opening boxes and chests wherein were stored rich heaps of linen. "What do you say to that, Annele? Aren't you surprised? Did you ever see anything so splendid?"

"It is all very good and in nice order. But, dear me! I won't tell you of all my sister Theresa has, for of course, where there are often sixteen guests in a house, heaps of linen are necessary; they are part of the business. But if you could only see the chests that Babette's mother-in-law has! These are nothing to them."

Lenz turned as pale as death, and could hardly stammer out: "Annele, don't talk in that way, don't be making fun now."

"I am not making fun. I am in sober earnest. Really I am not in the least surprised, for I have seen finer and better linen, and more of it. Do be reasonable, and not expect me to stand on my head at a thing which is all very well, but no way remarkable. I have seen more of the world than you have."

"Very likely," said Lenz, with white lips.

Annele passed her hand over his face, and said jestingly, "What does it matter, dear Lenz, whether your stores astonish me or not? Your mother has done bravely, very bravely, for one in her position; no one can deny that. I do not marry you for your property, dear Lenz, but for yourself. You yourself are what I love."

The apology was both bitter and sweet. Lenz tasted only the bitter. It turned to gall in his mouth.

They returned to the sitting-room, where Franzl had laid out an abundant repast for them.

Annele protested she had no appetite, but upon Lenz remonstrating that it would never do not to eat something when she entered a house for the first time, she consented to take a piece of a crust of bread and ate it languidly.

Lenz had frequently to check Franzl in her lavish praises of himself.

"You must have done some good in the world to deserve such a husband," she said to Annele.