VI.
Six weeks after this occurrence—it was St. John's day—there was a merry festival in the village of Mayrhofen. Ilka and Hänsel were bride and groom, and as they returned from church the maidens of the village walked in the wedding procession and strewed flowers before them. And in the evening, when the singing and fiddling and dancing were at an end, and the guests had departed, Mother Uberta beckoned Hänsel aside, and with a mysterious air handed him something heavy tied up in the corner of a handkerchief.
"There," she said, "is eight hundred and fifty florins. It is Ilka's own money which she earned in Berlin. Now you may pay off the mortgage, and the farm is yours."
"Mother Uberta," answered Hänsel laughing, and pulling out a skin purse from his bosom. "Here is what I have been saving these many years. It is eight hundred and fifty florins."
"Hänsel, Hänsel," cried Mother Uberta in great glee, "it is what I have always said of you. You are a jewel of a lad."
ANNUNCIATA.
In the gallery of one of the famous Roman villas which commands a splendid view of the city, Mr. Henry Vincent, a young American, was lounging. Judging by his appearance he was a college graduate, or, to speak more definitely, a graduate of Harvard; for he had that jaunty walk and general trimness of attire which are the traditional attributes of the academical denizens of Cambridge. He swung his arms rather more than was needed to assist locomotion, and betrayed in an unobtrusive manner a consciousness of being well dressed. His face, which was not without fine possibilities, had an air of well-bred neutrality; you could see that he assumed a defensive attitude against æsthetic impressions,—that even the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo would not have surprised him into anything like enthusiasm or abject approval. It was evident, too, that he was a little bit ashamed of his Baedeker, which he consulted only in a semi-surreptitious way, and plunged into the pocket of his overcoat whenever he believed himself to be observed. Such a contingency, however, seemed remote; for the silence that reigned about him was as heavy and profound as if it had been unbroken since creation's day. The large marble halls had a grave and inhospitable air, and their severe magnificence compelled even from our apathetic traveller a shy and reluctant veneration. He tried to fix his attention upon a certain famous Guido which was attached by hinges to the wall, and which, as he had just learned from Baedeker, was a marvel of color and fine characterization; he stood for a few moments staring with a blank and helpless air, as if, for the first time in his life, he was beginning to question the finality of his own judgment. Then his eyes wandered off to the cornice of the wall, whose florid rococo upholstery won his sincere approval.
"Hang it!" he murmured impatiently, pulling a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. "That loon Jack—he never does keep an engagement."
At this moment, distant footsteps were heard, which, as they approached, resounded with a sepulchral distinctness on the marble pavement. Presently a young man entered breathlessly, holding his hat in one hand and a white handkerchief in the other.
"Harry," he cried, excitedly, "I have found the goddess of the place. Come quick, before she vanishes. It is a rare chance, I tell you."
He seized his companion's arm and, ignoring his remonstrances, almost dragged him through the door by which he had entered.
"What sort of lunacy is it you are up to now, Jack?" the other was heard to grumble. "I'll bet ten to one you have been making an ass of yourself."
"I dare say I have," retorted Jack, good-naturedly; "a man who has not the faculty of making a fool of himself occasionally is only half a man. You would be a better fellow, too, Harry, if you were not so deucedly respectable; a slight admixture of folly would give tone and color to your demure and rigid propriety. For a man so splendidly equipped by fortune, you have made a poor job of existence, Harry. When I see you bestowing your sullen patronage upon the great masterpieces of the past, I am ashamed of you—yes, by Jove, I am."
"Don't you bother about me," was the ungracious response of his comrade. "I cut my eye-teeth a good while before you did, even though you may be a few years older. I'll take care of myself, you may depend upon it, and of you, too, if you get yourself into a scrape, which you seem bent upon doing."
"Now, do be amiable, Harry," urged the other with gentle persuasiveness. "I can't take it upon my conscience to introduce you to a lady, and far less to a goddess, unless you promise to put on your best behavior. You know from your mythology that goddesses are capable of taking a terrible vengeance upon mortals who unwittingly offend them."
Mr. John Cranbrook—for that was the name of the demonstrative tourist—was a small, neat-looking man, with an eager face and a pair of dark, vivid eyes. His features, though not in themselves handsome, were finely, almost tenderly, modelled. His nose was not of the classical type, but nevertheless of a clear and delicate cut, and his nostrils of extreme sensitiveness. On the whole, it was a pleasant, open, and enthusiastic face,—a face in which there was no guile. By the side of his robust and stalwart friend, Cranbrook looked almost frail, and it was evident that Vincent, who felt the advantages of his superior avoirdupois, was in the habit of patronizing him. They had been together in college and had struck up an accidental friendship, which, to their mutual surprise, had survived a number of misunderstandings, and even extended beyond graduation. Cranbrook, who was of a restless and impetuous temperament, found Vincent's quiet self-confidence very refreshing; there was a massive repose about him, an unquestioning acceptance of the world as it was and an utter absence of intellectual effort, which afforded his friend a refuge from his own self-consuming ambition. Cranbrook had always prophesied that Harry would some day wake up and commit a grand and monumental piece of folly, but he hoped that that day was yet remote; at present it was his rich commonplaceness and his grave and comfortable dulness which made him the charming fellow he was, and it would be a pity to forfeit such rare qualities.
Cranbrook's own accomplishments were not of the kind which is highly appreciated among undergraduates. His verses, which appeared anonymously in the weekly college paper, enjoyed much popularity in certain young ladies' clubs, but were by the professor of rhetoric pronounced unsound in sentiment, though undeniably clever in expression. Vincent, on the other hand, had virtues which paved him an easy road to popularity; he could discuss base-ball and rowing matters with a gravity as if the fate of the republic depended upon them; he was moreover himself an excellent "catcher," and subscribed liberally for the promotion of athletic sports. He did not, like his friend, care for "honors," nor had he the slightest desire to excel in Greek; he always reflected the average undergraduate opinion on all college affairs, and was not above playing an occasional trick on a freshman or a professor. As for Cranbrook, he rather prided himself on being a little exceptional, and cherished with special fondness those of his tastes and proclivities which distinguished him from the average humanity. He had therefore no serious scruples in accepting Vincent's offer to pay his expenses for a year's trip abroad. Vincent, he reasoned, would hardly benefit much by his foreign experiences, if he went alone. His glance would never penetrate beneath the surface of things, and he therefore needed a companion, whose æsthetic culture was superior to his own. Cranbrook flattered himself that he was such a companion, and vowed in his heart to give Harry full returns in intellectual capital for what he expended on him in sordid metals. Moreover, Harry had a clear income of fifteen to twenty thousand a year, while he, Cranbrook, had scarcely anything which he could call his own. I dare say that if Vincent had known all the benevolent plans which his friend had formed for his mental improvement, he would have thought twice before engaging him as his travelling companion; but fortunately he was so well satisfied with his own mental condition, and so utterly unconscious of his short-comings in point of intellect, that he could not have treated an educational scheme of which he was himself to be the subject as anything but an amiable lunacy on Jack's part, or at the worst, as a practical joke. Jack was good company; that was with him the chief consideration; his madness was harmless and had the advantage of being entertaining; he was moreover at heart a good fellow, and the stanchest and most loyal of friends. Harry was often heard to express the most cheerful confidence in Jack's future; he would be sure to come out right in the end, as soon as he had cut his eye-teeth, and very likely Europe might be just the thing for a complaint like his.