Rachel Busk - Household stories from the Land of Hofer

“ Buy it, man! you don’t mean buy it! She got it out of you one way or another, but you don’t mean she bought it, in the sense of paying for it?”

“Yes, I do. I say, she paid for it in pure gold!”

“No, that won’t do!” said other voices; “where could she get gold from?”

“Oh, that’s not my affair,” replied the pedlar, “where she got it from! It wouldn’t do for a poor pedlar to ask where his customers get their money from – ha! ha! ha! I’m not such a fool as that! I know the girl couldn’t have it rightfully, as well as you do, but it wouldn’t do for me to refuse all the money I suspect is not honestly come by – ha! ha! I should then drive a sorry trade indeed!”

Jössl’s first impulse had been to fly at the Langer Peterl, and, as he would have expressed it, thrust the lie down his throat; but then, he reflected; where had the girl got the money from? what could he say? To dispute it without having means of disproving it was only opening wider the sore; and while he stood dejected and uncertain the conversation went on more animated than before.

“I agree with you!” cried, between two whiffs of smoke, an idle Bursch, on whom since the death of the Wilder Jürgl that nickname had descended by common consent. “What right have we to be prying into our neighbour’s business? If the girl’s got money, why should any one say she hasn’t a right to it? She’s an uncommon fine girl, I say, and looks a long way better than she did before in her beggarly rags; and a girl that can afford to dress like that is not to be despised, I say.”

That the speaker had only received the cognomen of Wild after the Wilder Jürgl was only in that he was younger; he had earned the right to it in a tenfold degree. None of the steady lads of either Goign or Reith or Elmau, or any other place in the neighbourhood, would make a friend of him, and that is why he now sat apart from the others smoking in a corner.

To be praised and defended by the Wilder Karl was a worse compliment than to be suspected by the steadier ones. The words therefore threw the assembly into some embarrassment for a moment, till the Kleiner Friedl 57 57 Little Frederick. , a sworn friend of Jössl, thinking he ought to strike a blow in his defence somewhere, cried out, in a menacing tone, —

“Very well played, Wilder Karl! but I see your game. You think because the girl’s got money she’s a good chance for you. You think her flaunting way will estrange steady Goigner Jössl, and then you think you may step in between them – and a sorry figure she’d cut two days after you’d had the handling of her! She wouldn’t have much finery left then, I’ll warrant! The Langer Peterl there would have it all back at half-price, and that half-price would all be in the pocket of our honest Wirth am Stangl. But it’s in vain; whatever she is, she’ll be true to the Goigner Jössl, I’ll warrant – and as for you, she wouldn’t look at you!”

Wilder Karl rose to his feet, and glared at the Kleiner Friedl with a glance of fury. “I wager you every thing you and I have in the world, that I’ll make her dance every dance with me at the Jause 58 58 A local expression for a village fête. this very night!” and he shook his fist with a confident air, for he had a smooth tongue and a comely face, and Aennerl would not have been the first girl these had won over.

“That you won’t,” said the Wirth, coming to Friedl’s rescue, who was but a young boy, and had felt rather dismayed at the proposed wager, “for I’m not sure, till all this is cleared up, that I should admit her to the dance. But the difficulty will not arise, for Aennerl herself told my daughter Moidl that now she could wear a lady’s clothes it would be impossible for her to come any more to the village dance.”

Strengthened by the support of the Wirth 59 59 The old race of innkeepers in Tirol were a singularly trustworthy, honourable set, acting as a sort of elder or umpire each over his village. This is still the case in a great many valleys out of the beaten track. , the Kleiner Friedl felt quite strong again; and he could not forbear exclaiming, “There, I told you there was no chance for you, Wilder Karl!”

But Wilder Karl, furious at the disappointing news of the Wirth, and maddened by the invective of the Kleiner Friedl, rushed at the boy head-over-heels, bent on mischief.

But Wilder Karl, though a bully and a braggart, inspired no respect, because no feather adorned his hat, and that showed he was no champion of any manly pursuit. So the whole room was on the side of Kleiner Friedl; and the bully having been turned out, and the subject of conversation pretty well exhausted, the Goigner Jössl turned slowly home.

Now I don’t say that he was right here. He was an excellent young man, endowed in an especial degree with Tirolese virtues. His parents had never had a moment’s uneasiness about him; no one in the whole village was more regular or devout at church; in the field none more hard-working or trustworthy; at the village games and dances none acquitted himself better; and had a note of danger to his country sounded in his time I am sure he would have been foremost to take his place among its living ramparts, and that none would have borne out the old tradition of steadfastness more manfully than he.

But of course he had his faults too. And one of his faults was the fault of many good people, – the fault of expecting to find every one as good as themselves, of being harsh and unforgiving, of sulking and pining instead of having an open explanation.

Now, mind you, I think it would have been much better if Jössl had, after hearing the conversation I have just narrated, gone straight on to Aennerl’s, and had it all out with her, had heard from her own lips the truth of the matter about which all Reith and Goign were talking, and judged her out of her own mouth, giving her, if he could not approve her conduct, advice by which she might mend it in the future.

But this was not his way. He had thought his Aennerl a model, almost a divinity. He had always treated her as such, talked to her as such, loved her as such. It was clear now, however, that in some way or other she had done wrong. Instead of getting to the bottom of it, and trying to set it straight, he gave himself up to his disappointment and went home and sulked, and refused to be comforted.

Aennerl, meantime, knew nothing of all this. She had had a great desire to be a lady and no longer a servant; and having plenty of money, and plenty of fine clothes, she thought this made her a lady, and had no idea but that every one acknowledged the fact. I don’t think she exactly wished that all the village should be envious of her, but at all events she wished that she should enjoy all the prerogatives of ladyhood, and this, she imagined, was one. Then she had no parents to teach her better, and Jössl, who might have been her teacher, had forsaken her.

But it was all too new and too exciting for her to feel any misgivings yet. She amused herself with turning over all her fine things, and fancied herself very happy.

In another day or two the Hof of good neighbour Bartl was put up for sale, and another visit to the Bergmännlein enabled her to become the purchaser. She thus became the most important proprietor in Reith; but she was so little used to importance that she did not at all perceive that the people treated her very differently from the former proprietor of the Hof.

Before him every hat was doffed with alacritous esteem due to his age and worth. But poor Aennerl hardly received so much as the old greeting, which in the days of companionship in poverty had always been the token of good fellowship with her, as with every one.