CHAPTER VIII
UNEXPECTED HAPPENINGS
STEFELI’S summer after Vinzi’s departure had passed much more pleasantly than she could have forseen. This was due to Mr. Delrick, who never started off on a long walk without calling into the room and asking, “Can Stefeli come with me?”
As the child had given up her life on the pasture since Vinzi had gone away, the mother always welcomed this opportunity of sending her out. Stefeli had really been obliged to sit at home a great deal, and the poor child could not help fretting and sighing. Every time she heard that question, she gladly tossed the horrid long stocking aside and skipped out into the sunshine. There was no end to all the things Stefeli discussed with her companion. He was always interested in whatever she told him about herself and Vinzi, their life at home and on the pasture. He heard about the music lessons and the strange consequences they had brought, also how the members of the household differed on certain subjects.
In this way Mr. Delrick acquired a minute knowledge of the happenings in the Lesa household. But he became intimate with the three members of the family in other ways besides. Vinzenz Lesa liked to spend his free evenings on the bench before his house. Here the walnut tree wafted to him the perfume of its fragrant leaves. When he smoked his pipe, he was always glad if Mr. Delrick came to talk to him, for the farmer loved to discuss the affairs of the world. Mr. Delrick who had a wide knowledge, could explain many things that were not quite clear to him and also showed a lively interest in everything connected with agriculture. They discussed the problems of the farm together, and even when Mr. Lesa was the instructor, Mr. Delrick’s suggestions proved very useful. Many changes and improvements were made on the place in consequence.
Mr. Delrick’s conversation with Mrs. Lesa was very different. It always drifted to the same subject, even if they had begun to talk of something else. This absorbing subject was Vinzi. The mother had told Mr. Delrick of Vinzi’s intense love of music from the time he had been a little lad, and how the father’s whole ambition was centered on bringing him up as a successful farmer. The father’s pride and joy consisted in the work he was doing and he naturally expected the boy to look after the property some day. This conflict filled her with deep anxiety. She saw no way out of the difficult situation and was constantly anticipating some great sorrow as the final outcome.
Mr. Delrick was filled with sympathetic interest and tried to allay her anxiety. He comforted her by saying that young boys often put aside such fancies, especially when a smiling future lay before them, as was the case with Vinzi. Her troublesome thoughts kept on recurring nevertheless, and it was hard for the mother to anticipate the future calmly. His sympathetic words seemed to ease her heart, however, and therefore he regularly led back to their usual subject of conversation.
In this way Mr. Delrick had succeeded in becoming the special friend and confidant of every member of the little household. Whenever a question came up which was hard to solve, Stefeli, as well as her father and mother, said right away, “We must ask Mr. Delrick, he’ll know,” or when something was worrying them, “If we ask Mr. Delrick, he’ll tell us what to do.”
When the good news was brought from the mountain that Vinzi was loved there by old and young and had grown so merry that everybody else had grown still more so, Mr. Delrick took as lively an interest in the news as if he were a member of the family, too. The mother remained rather quiet, but he as well as the father could not help hoping that the lad had at last found satisfaction in his work. He looked forward, therefore, to the happy reunion of the little family in which he had grown so intimate before he left them.
The day came when father Lesa had given his wife, in the presence of Mr. Delrick, the news of Vinzi’s homecoming in five days. Meeting an old acquaintance who was driving across the mountain, he had made use of the opportunity to ask him to bring his boy home. This the man had promised to do.