"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."