FullReads

“You give yourself lots of trouble, which you might let alone. You are a wild, wilful fellow. Do you see now that you were in the wrong?”

“You must never speak to that gamekeeper again.”

“I’ll speak to him whenever I please,” said Tony: “I am not a child. I understand my own business.”

“But you needn’t speak to him if you don’t choose to.”

“No, I needn’t; but I am not going to be led about by a halter that way.”

Peace was restored, and no disturbance occurred for a long time, for the gamekeeper did not show himself at Nordstetten again.

Tony often sat in the cherry-copse of a Sunday afternoon, with her playmates, and sometimes with Sepper, laughing and singing. The wild cherries–the only ones which ripen in the climate of the Black Forest–had long disappeared; the rape-seed was brought home; the rye and barley were cut, and the peaceful life of our friends had passed through but little change: Sepper’s and Tony’s love for each other had, if any thing, increased in intensity. That fall Sepper had to go through the last course of drill with the military, and then he would get his discharge, and then–the wedding.

Since that Sunday in the spring Tony had never cast eyes on the gamekeeper. But when she and Sepper were cutting oats in the Molda[2] the gamekeeper came by and said, “Does’t cut well?” Tony started, and plied her sickle busily without answering. Sepper said, “Thank you,” knelt upon a sheaf and twisted down the tie with all his might,–as if he were wringing the gamekeeper’s neck. The gamekeeper passed on.

[Footnote 2: The name of a tract of ground. All the lands belonging to a village are divided into such tracts, every tract having particular qualifications. These are subdivided, and the subdivisions distributed among the farmers: in this manner every farmer has a portion of every kind of ground belonging to the farm-manor.]

It happened that Babbett’s and Caspar’s wedding came off just three days before that on which Sepper was obliged to go to the military. So he made up his mind to enjoy himself once for all, and kept his word. In almost every house where Caspar and his friend left the invitations, somebody said, “Well, Sepper, your turn will come next.” And he smiled affirmatively.

At the wedding Sepper was as happy as a horse in clover. He enjoyed the foretaste of his coming bliss. When the dance began he climbed up to the musicians and bespoke them for his wedding, with two additional trumpeters: he belonged to the Guard, and therefore thought himself entitled to more trumpets than others.

But in the evening a new apparition crossed his path and changed the color of his thoughts. The gamekeeper came to the dance, and the first one he asked to dance with him was Tony.

“Engaged,” answered Sepper for Tony.

“The lassie can speak for herself, I guess,” replied the gamekeeper.

“You and I will dance the next hop-waltz together,” said Tony, taking Sepper’s hand. But she turned around toward the gamekeeper once more before the hop-waltz began. The next waltz Tony danced with the gamekeeper, while Sepper sat down at the table and made up his mind not to stir another foot that evening, and to forbid Tony to dance any more. But Babbett came and asked him to dance. This was the bride’s privilege, and Sepper could not refuse. Of course the dance was a cover for a round lecture. “I don’t know what to make of you at all,” said she: “that gamekeeper seems to have driven every bit of sense out of your head. It’ll be your fault and nobody else’s if Tony should ever come to like him. She wouldn’t have had a thought of him this many a day; but, if you go on teasing her about him this way, what can she do but think of him? And with always thinking about him, and wondering whether he likes her or not, she might get to like him at last, after all, for he does dance a little better than you, that’s a fact: you couldn’t reverse waltz the way he does, could you?”