LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Well, I don’t care, you’re good,” reiterated Ottilia, a little flushed by having failed to understand.

      “I will tell you one thing,” replied Otto: “You are!”

      “Ah, well, that’s what they all said of you,” moralised the girl; “such a tongue to come round – such a flattering tongue!”

      “O, you forget, I am a man of middle age,” the Prince chuckled.

      “Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or no Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a napkin to your tails… And, O Lord, I declare I hope your Highness will forgive me,” the girl added. “I can’t keep it in my mind.”

      “No more can I,” cried Otto. “That is just what they complain of!”

      They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that horse-tail of water made them raise their voices above lovers’ pitch. But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close proximity might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft of brambles began calling on Ottilia by name. She changed colour at that. “It is Fritz,” she said. “I must go.”

      “Go, my dear, and I need not bid you go in peace, for I think you have discovered that I am not formidable at close quarters,” said the Prince, and made her a fine gesture of dismissal.

      So Ottilia skipped up the bank, and disappeared into the thicket, stopping once for a single blushing bob – blushing, because she had in the interval once more forgotten and remembered the stranger’s quality.

      Otto returned to his rock promontory; but his humour had in the meantime changed. The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and over its brown, welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden green of the spring foliage danced in fleeting arabesque. The eddies laughed and brightened with essential colour. And the beauty of the dell began to rankle in the Prince’s mind; it was so near to his own borders, yet without. He had never had much of the joy of possessorship in any of the thousand and one beautiful and curious things that were his; and now he was conscious of envy for what was another’s. It was, indeed, a smiling, dilettante sort of envy; but yet there it was: the passion of Ahab for the vineyard, done in little; and he was relieved when Mr. Killian appeared upon the scene.

      “I hope, sir, that you have slept well under my plain roof,” said the old farmer.

      “I am admiring this sweet spot that you are privileged to dwell in,” replied Otto, evading the inquiry.

      “It is rustic,” returned Mr. Gottesheim, looking around him with complacency, “a very rustic corner; and some of the land to the west is most excellent fat land, excellent deep soil. You should see my wheat in the ten-acre field. There is not a farm in Grünewald, no, nor many in Gerolstein, to match the River Farm. Some sixty – I keep thinking when I sow – some sixty, and some seventy, and some an hundredfold; and my own place, six score! But that, sir, is partly the farming.”

      “And the stream has fish?” asked Otto.

      “A fish-pond,” said the farmer. “Ay, it is a pleasant bit. It is pleasant even here, if one had time, with the brook drumming in that black pool, and the green things hanging all about the rocks, and, dear heart, to see the very pebbles! all turned to gold and precious stones! But you have come to that time of life, sir, when, if you will excuse me, you must look to have the rheumatism set in. Thirty to forty is, as one may say, their seed-time. And this is a damp, cold corner for the early morning and an empty stomach. If I might humbly advise you, sir, I would be moving.”

      “With all my heart,” said Otto gravely. “And so you have lived your life here?” he added, as they turned to go.

      “Here I was born,” replied the farmer, “and here I wish I could say I was to die. But fortune, sir, fortune turns the wheel. They say she is blind, but we will hope she only sees a little farther on. My grandfather and my father and I, we have all tilled these acres, my furrow following theirs. All the three names are on the garden bench, two Killians and one Johann. Yes, sir, good men have prepared themselves for the great change in my old garden. Well do I mind my father, in a woollen night-cap, the good soul, going round and round to see the last of it, ‘Killian,’ said he, ‘do you see the smoke of my tobacco? Why,’ said he, ‘that is man’s life.’ It was his last pipe, and I believe he knew it; and it was a strange thing, without doubt, to leave the trees that he had planted, and the son that he had begotten, ay, sir, and even the old pipe with the Turk’s head that he had smoked since he was a lad and went a-courting. But here we have no continuing city; and as for the eternal, it’s a comfortable thought that we have other merits than our own. And yet you would hardly think how sore it goes against the grain with me, to die in a strange bed.”

      “And must you do so? For what reason?” Otto asked.

      “The reason? The place is to be sold: three thousand crowns,” replied Mr. Gottesheim. “Had it been a third of that, I may say without boasting that, what with my credit and my savings, I could have met the sum. But at three thousand, unless I have singular good fortune and the new proprietor continues me in office, there is nothing left me but to budge.”

      Otto’s fancy for the place redoubled at the news, and became joined with other feelings. If all he heard were true, Grünewald was growing very hot for a sovereign Prince; it might be well to have a refuge; and if so, what more delightful hermitage could man imagine? Mr. Gottesheim, besides, had touched his sympathies. Every man loves in his soul to play the part of the stage deity. And to step down to the aid of the old farmer, who had so roughly handled him in talk, was the ideal of a Fair Revenge. Otto’s thoughts brightened at the prospect, and he began to regard himself with a renewed respect.

      “I can find you, I believe, a purchaser,” he said, “and one who would continue to avail himself of your skill.”

      “Can you, sir, indeed?” said the old man. “Well, I shall be heartily obliged; for I begin to find a man may practise resignation all his days, as he takes physic, and not come to like it in the end.”

      “If you will have the papers drawn, you may even burthen the purchase with your interest,” said Otto. “Let it be assured to you through life.”

      “Your friend, sir,” insinuated Killian, “would not, perhaps, care to make the interest reversible? Fritz is a good lad.”

      “Fritz is young,” said the Prince drily; “he must earn consideration, not inherit.”

      “He has long worked upon the place, sir,” insisted Mr. Gottesheim; “and at my great age, for I am seventy-eight come harvest, it would be a troublesome thought to the proprietor how to fill my shoes. It would be a care spared to assure yourself of Fritz. And I believe he might be tempted by a permanency.”

      “The young man has unsettled views,” returned Otto.

      “Possibly the purchaser – ” began Killian.

      A little spot of anger burned in Otto’s cheek. “I am the purchaser,” he said.

      “It was what I might have guessed,” replied the farmer, bowing with an aged, obsequious dignity. “You have made an old man very happy; and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares. Sir, the great people of this world – and by that I mean those who are great in station – if they had only hearts like yours, how they would make the fires burn and the poor sing!”

      “I would not judge them hardly, sir,” said Otto. “We all have our frailties.”

      “Truly, sir,” said Mr. Gottesheim, with unction. “And by what name, sir, am I to address my generous landlord?”

      The double recollection of an English traveller, whom he had received the week before at court, and of an old English rogue called Transome, whom he had known in youth, came pertinently to the Prince’s help. “Transome,” he answered, “is my name. I am an English traveller. It is, to-day, Tuesday. On Thursday, before noon, the money shall be ready. Let us meet, if you please, in Mittwalden, at the ‘Morning Star.’”

      “I am, in all things lawful, your servant

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