It is a little startling, I admit. It gave me a start when Gosch first told me. But absurd? What makes it absurd?”
“I should die,” said she. She sat down in a chair and stopped there without moving.
What was going on? Simply that a buyer had appeared for the house; or, rather, a possible purchaser showed a desire to go over it, with a view to negotiations. And this possible purchaser was—Hermann Hagenström, wholesale dealer and Consul for the Kingdom of Portugal.
When the first rumour reached Frau Permaneder, she was stunned, incredulous, incapable of grasping the idea. But when the rumour became concrete, when it actually took shape in the person of Consul Hermann Hagenström, standing, as it were, before the door, then she pulled herself together, and animation came back to her.
“This must not happen, Thomas, As long as I live, it must not happen. When one sells one’s house, one is bound to look out for the sort of master it gets. Our Mother’s house! Our house! The landscape-room!”
“But what stands in the way?”
“What stands in the way? Heavens, Thomas! Mountains stand in the way—or they ought to! But he doesn’t see them, this fat man with the snub nose! He doesn’t care about them. He has no delicacy and no feeling—he is like the beasts that perish. From time immemorial the Hagenströms and we have been rivals. Old Heinrich played Father and Grandfather some dirty tricks; and if Hermann hasn’t tripped you up yet, it is only because he hasn’t had a chance. When we were children, I boxed his ears in the open street, for very good reasons; and his precious little sister Julchen nearly scratched me to pieces for it. That was all childishness, then. But they have always looked on and enjoyed it whenever we had a piece of bad luck—and it was mostly I myself who gave them the pleasure. God willed it so. Whatever the Consul did to injure you or overreach you in a business
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