Ottilia’s eyelids were set blinking by one look
aloft. Rain and lightning filled heaven and earth.
‘Direct us, you!’ she said to me gently.
The natural proposal was to despatch her giant by
the direct way down the lake to fetch a carriage from
the stables, or matting from the boathouse. I
mentioned it, but did not press it.
She meditated an instant. ‘I believe I
may stay with my beloved?’
Schwartz and I ran to the boat, hauled it on land,
and set it keel upward against a low leafy dripping
branch. To this place of shelter, protecting
her as securely as I could, I led the princess, while
Schwartz happed a rough trench around it with one
of the sculls. We started him on foot to do the
best thing possible; for the storm gave no promise
that it was a passing one. In truth, I knew that
I should have been the emissary and he the guard;
but the storm overhead was not fuller of its mighty
burden than I of mine. I looked on her as mine
for the hour, and well won.
PRINCESS OTTILIA’S LETTER
That hour of tempest went swift as one of its flashes
over our little nest of peace, where we crouched like
insects. The lightning and the deluge seemed
gloriously endless. Ottilia’s harbouring
nook was dry within an inch of rushing floods and
pattered mire. On me the torrents descended,
and her gentle efforts drew me to her side, as with
a maternal claim to protect me, or to perish in my
arms if the lightning found us. We had for prospect
an ever-outbursting flame of foliage, and the hubbub
of the hissing lake, crimson, purple, dusky grey, like
the face of a passionate creature scourged. It
was useless to speak. Her lips were shut, but
I had the intent kindness of her eyes on me almost
unceasingly.
The good hour slipped away. Old Warhead’s
splashed knees on the level of our heads were seen
by us when the thunder had abated. Ottilia prepared
to rise.
‘You shall hear from me,’ she said, bending
with brows measuring the boat-roof, like a bird about
to fly.
‘Shall I see you?’
‘Ultimately you surely will. Ah! still
be patient.’
‘Am I not? have I not been?’
‘Yes; and can you regret it?’
‘No; but we separate!’
‘Would you have us be two feet high for ever?’
she answered smiling.
‘One foot high, or under earth, if it might
be together!’
‘Poor little gnomes!’ said she.
The homeliness of our resting-place arrested her for
an instant, and perhaps a touch of comic pity for
things of such diminutive size as to see nothing but
knees where a man stood. Our heads were hidden.
‘Adieu! no pledge is needed,’ she said
tenderly.
‘None!’ I replied.
She returned to the upper world with a burning blush.
Schwartz had borne himself with extraordinary discretion
by forbearing to spread alarm at the palace.
He saluted his young mistress in the regulation manner
while receiving her beneath a vast umbrella, the holiday
peasant’s invariable companion in these parts.
A forester was in attendance carrying shawls, clogs,
and matting. The boat was turned and launched.
