Seed-time and Harvest Part 33

"What?" asked Mining, making herself free, and pushing him back a little way, "do you say that in earnest?"

"In solemn earnest. It was the first and last time I shall enter a pulpit."

"Rudolph!" exclaimed Mining, in astonishment.

"Why should that trouble you?" cried Rudolph, hastily. "Look at Gottlieb, look at me! Am I fit for a pastor? And if I had whole systems of theology in my head, so that I could even instruct the learned professors, they would not let me through my examination; they demand also a so-called religious experience. And if I were the apostle Paul himself, they would have nothing to do with me, if they knew about the little scar on my cheek."

"But what will you do, then?" asked Mining, and laid her hand hastily on his arm. "Ah, don't be a soldier!"

"G.o.d forbid! Don't think of such a thing! No, I will be a farmer."

"Confounded scamp!" said Brasig, up in the tree.

"Yes, my dear little Mining," said Rudolph, drawing her down on the bench beside him, "I will be a farmer, a right active, skilful farmer, and you, my little old dear Mining, shall help me about it."

"She shall teach him to plough and to harrow," said Brasig.

"I, Rudolph?" asked Mining,

"Yes, you, my dear, sweet child,"--and he stroked the shining hair, and the soft cheeks, and lifted the little chin, and looked full in the blue eyes,--"if I only knew, with certainty, that in a year and a day you would be my little wife, it would be easy for me to learn to be a skilful farmer. Will you, Mining, will you?"

And the tears flowed from Mining's eyes, and Rudolph kissed them away, here and there, over her cheeks, down to her rosy mouth, and Mining laid her little round head on his breast, and when he gave her time to speak, she whispered softy that she would, and he kissed her again, and ever again, and Brasig called, half aloud, from the tree, "But that is too much of a good thing! Have done!"

And Rudolph told her, between the kisses, that he would speak with his father, to-day, and remarked also, by the way, it was a pity Brasig was not there; he could help him finely in his undertaking, and he knew the old man thought a great deal of him.

"Confounded scamp!" said Brasig, "catching away my tench!"

And Mining said Brasig was there, and was taking his afternoon nap.

"Just hear the rogue, will you?" said Brasig. "This looks like an afternoon nap! But it is all finished now. Why should I torment my poor bones any longer?" And as Rudolph was saying he must speak to the old gentleman, Brasig slid down the cherry-tree, until his trousers were stripped up to his knees, and caught by the lowest branches, saying, "Here he hangs!" and then he let himself fall, and stood close before the pair of lovers, with an expression on his heated face, which said quite frankly he considered himself a suitable arbiter in the most delicate affairs.

The young people did not conduct themselves badly. Mining did like Lining in putting her hands before her face, only she did not cry, and she would have run away like Lining, if she had not, from a little child, stood on the most confidential footing with her Uncle Brasig.

She threw herself, with her eyes covered, against her Uncle Brasig's breast, and crept with her little, round head almost into his waistcoat pocket, and cried,--

"Uncle Brasig! Uncle Brasig! you are an abominable old fellow!"

"So?" asked Brasig. "Eh, that is very fine."

"Yes," said Rudolph, with a little air of superiority, "you should be ashamed to play the listener here."

"Monsieur Noodle," said Brasig, "let me tell you, once for all, I have never in my life done anything to be ashamed of, and if you think you can teach me good manners you are very much mistaken."

Rudolph had sense enough to see this, and, although he would have relished a little contest, it was clear to him that on this occasion he must yield to Mining's wishes. So he remarked, in a pleasanter tone, that if Brasig were up in the tree by chance--he would take that for granted--he might at least have advised them of his presence, by coughing, or in some way, instead of listening to their affairs from A to Z.

"So?" said Brasig, "I should have coughed, should I? I _groaned_ often enough and if you had not been so occupied with your own affairs, you might easily have heard me. But you ought to be ashamed, to be making love to Mining without Frau Nussler's permission."

That was his own affair, Rudolph said, and n.o.body's else, and Brasig knew nothing about such matters.

"So?" asked Brasig, again. "Did you ever have three sweethearts at once? I did, sir; three acknowledged sweethearts, and do I know about such matters? But you are such a sly old rascal, fishing my tench out of the Black Pool, on the sly; and fishing my little Mining, before my very eyes, out of the arbor. Come, leave him alone, Mining! he shall have nothing to do with you."

"Ah, Uncle Brasig," begged Mining so artlessly, "be good to us, we love each other so much."

"Well, never mind Mining, you are my little G.o.ddaughter; though that is all over now."

"No, Herr Inspector!" cried Rudolph,--laying his hand on the old man's shoulder, "no, dear, good Uncle Brasig, that is not over, that shall last as long as we live. I will be a farmer, and if I have the prospect of calling Mining my wife, and"--he was cunning enough to add--"and you will give me your valuable advice, the devil must be in it, if I cannot make a good one."

"A confounded rascal!" said Brasig to himself, adding, aloud, "Yes, you will be such a Latin farmer as Pistorius, and Praetorius, and Trebonius, and you will sit on the bank of the ditch and read that fellow's book, with the long t.i.tle, about oxygen and carbonic acid gas, and organisms, while the cursed farmboys are strewing manure, behind your back, in lumps as big as your hat-crown. Oh, I know you! I never knew but one man who had been to the great schools, and was worth anything afterward, and that was the young Herr yon Rambow, who was with Habermann."

"Ah, Uncle Brasig," said Mining, lifting her head, suddenly, and stroking the old man's cheeks, "what Franz can do, Rudolph can do also."

"No, Mining, that he can _not_! And why? Because he is a greyhound, and the other is a decided character!"

"Uncle Brasig," said Rudolph, "you are thinking of that stupid trick of mine, about the sermon; but Gottlieb had teased me so with his zeal for proselyting, I must play some little joke on him."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Brasig, "well, why not, it amused me, it amused me very much. So he wanted to convert you too, from fishing, perhaps? Oh, he has been trying to convert somebody here, this afternoon, but Lining ran away from him; however, that is all right."

"With Lining and Gottlieb?" asked Mining anxiously, "and have you listened to that, too?"

"Of course I listened to it, it was on their account I perched myself in this confounded cherry-tree. But now come here Monsieur Rudolph.

Will you, all your life long, never again go into the pulpit and preach a sermon?"

"No, never again."

"Will you get up at four o'clock in the morning, and three o'clock in the summer-time, and give out fodder grain?"

"Always, at the very hour."

"Will you learn how to plough and harrow and mow properly, and to reap and bind sheaves, that is, with a band,--there is no art in using a rope?"

"Yes," said Rudolph.

"Will you promise never to sit over the punch-bowl, at the Thurgovian ale-house, when your wagons are already gone, and then ride madly after them?"

"I will never do it," said Rudolph.

"Will you also never in your life--Mining, see that beautiful larkspur, the blue, I mean, just bring it to me, and let me smell it--will you,"

he continued, when she was gone, "never entangle yourself with the confounded farm-girls?"

"Herr Inspector, what do you take me for?" said Rudolph angrily, turning away.

"Come, come," said Brasig, "every business must be settled beforehand, and I give you warning: for every tear my little G.o.dchild sheds on your account I will give your neck a twist," and he looked as fierce as if he were prepared to do it immediately.

"Thank you Mining," said he, as she brought him the flower, and he smelled it, and stuck it in his b.u.t.tonhole.

"And now, come here, Mining, I will give you my blessing. No, you need not fall on your knees, since I am not one of your natural parents, but merely your G.o.dfather. And you, Monsieur Rudolph, I will stand by you this afternoon, when your father comes, and help you out of this clerical sc.r.a.pe. And now, come, both of you, we must go in. But I tell you, Rudolph, don't sit reading, by the ditches, but attend to the manure-strewing. You see there is a trick in it, the confounded farm-boys must take the fork, and then not throw it off directly, no!

they must first break it up three or four times with the fork, so that it gets well separated. A properly manured field ought to look as neat and fine as a velvet coverlid."

With that, he went, with the others, out of the garden gate.