world is a masquerade."
The words of Fraeulein Milch came back to him, and he added to them,--
"And I am not called to tear off the mask from the faces of the
maskers?"
Inwardly composed he went to the villa.
CHAPTER VII.
A MILLION OF POUNDS IN HAND, AND A UNIFORM TO BACK IT.
When Roland came to the Villa, he was at once summoned to his father;
and as he approached him, Sonnenkamp exclaimed:--
"My son! my son! it is thou indeed! everything for thee; thou art
forever secure, and elevated forever. My beloved son! Everything for
thee!"
The strong man now raised up the youth like a child, and
exclaimed:--"Roland, it is accomplished; forget not this moment, the
crowning moment of my whole life, crowded as it has been with dangers
and wanderings. My son, from this day forth, you are to be called
Roland von Lichtenburg."
Roland stood once more on the floor, and trembled as he cast an
involuntary glance into the large mirror.
"Yes," laughed the father, "look at yourself; so does the young baron
appear. Ah! my child, you will know after a while what has been done
for you. But let it remain concealed between ourselves how we have been
affected by this, for I cannot show the world, and you must not, that I
laid so much stress on the matter. I shall appear indifferent; we must
both appear so. Above all, do not let Herr Dournay know anything of it.
You came quick to-day; where did you meet my messenger?" Roland said
that he knew nothing of any messenger. He now heard that his father, in
the night, had sent a messenger to Mattenheim, with word to come back
at once; and also that the son of the Cabinetsrath, the ensign, had
been on a visit to the house with many companions, who were again
coming at noon to see Roland.
"And where is Herr Dournay?" again asked Sonnenkamp.
Roland replied that he had remained behind with Fraeulein Milch.
Sonnenkamp laughed, and impressed his son with the necessity of
continuing his customary deportment towards Eric; he must always be
grateful to him, and he should be especially careful to be right
modest.
"You must also learn to treat our elevation of rank as unimportant
before the world. Now go to your mother--no, wait. You must still have
something more that will make you strong, that will make you proud,
that will make you feel safe. Stand here, I will show you how highly I
esteem you, how I look upon you as a grown man."
He fumbled hurriedly in his pocket finally he brought out the ring of
keys, went to the fire-proof safe built in the wall, rattled back the
knobs on it, and at once opened both the folding-doors.
"See here," said he, "all this will, one day, be yours, yours and your
sister's. Come here, hold out your hands--so." He took a large package
out of the safe, and said:--
"Attend to what I say; here I put a million pounds sterling--so--hold
tight. Do you know what that is, a million pounds? more than six
millions of thalers are contained in these papers, and, beside that, I
have something to spare. Does your head whirl? it must not; you must
know what you possess, what will make you master of the world, superior
to everything. Now give it to me. See, here it lies in this place;
close by it are the other papers; underneath them is gold, coined gold;
a good deal of it; I like coined gold; uncoined, too; that lies here. I
may die. I often feel that a vertigo might suddenly seize me, and carry
me off. Over here, see here--here lies my will. When I die, you are of
age. Now, my full-grown son, you are a man, give me your hand. How does
the hand feel that held in it millions of your own? That gives
strength, does it not? Be not faint-hearted; I trust you, you and I
alone know it. Now go, my son, be proud within yourself and modest
before the world; you are more, you have more, than all the nobility of
this land, more perhaps than the Prince himself. There, my child,
there! this moment makes me happy--very happy. If I die, you know
already--you know all now. There, go now. Come and let me kiss you
once. Now go."
Roland could not utter a word; he went, he stood outside the door, he
stared at his hands,--these hands had held millions of his own;
everything that, he had ever thought and heard of the joy and woe of
riches, everything was in utter confusion in his mind; inwardly,
however, he experienced a sensation of joy, of proud enthusiasm, that
had almost made him shout aloud. If he had only been permitted to tell
it all to Eric! He felt as if he could not keep it to himself; but then
he was not allowed to communicate it to any one. His father had put his
trust in him; he dared not betray the trust.
He went to his mother. Frau Ceres, handsomely dressed, was walking up
and down in the great hall; she gave Roland a haughty nod, and gazed at
him a long while without saying a word; at length she said:--
"How am I to be saluted simply with 'Good-morning, mamma?' It ought to
be, 'Good-morning, Frau mamma, good-morning, Frau Baroness. You are
very gracious, Frau Baroness--I commend myself to your grace, Frau
Baroness--you look extremely well, Frau Baroness.' Ha, ha, ha!"
Roland felt a painful shudder thrill through him; it seemed to him as
if his mother had suddenly become insane. But in a moment she was
standing before a mirror, and saying:--
"Your father is right--quite right; we have all been born to-day for
the first time, we have come into the world anew, and we are all noble.
Now come, kiss your mother, your gracious mother."
She kissed Roland passionately, and then said, that if she could only
have all the malicious tale-bearers there, they would be smothered with
envy at beholding the good fortune that had befallen her.
"But where is Manna?" asked Roland.
"She is silly, she has been spoiled in the convent, and will not hear a
word about anything; she has shut herself up in her room, and will not
let any one see her. Go try if she will not speak to you, and get her
to smile. The Professorin has always told me that I was sensible; yes,
now I will be sensible; I will show that I am. The big Frau von
Endlich, and the Countess Wolfsgarten, proud as a peacock--we are noble
too, now--will burst with indignation. Go, dear child, go to your
sister, bring her here; we will rejoice together, and dress up finely,
and to-morrow you shall go with your father and Herr von Pranken to the
capital."
Roland went to Manna's room, he knocked and called; she answered
finally that she would see him in an hour's time, but now she must be
left alone.
As Roland was going to his own room, Pranken met him; he embraced him
warmly, called him brother, and accompanied him with congratulations to
his room. Here lay the uniform, which had been ordered for Roland.
Pranken urged him to put it on at once; but Roland did not want to,
before he had passed his examination.
"Pah!" laughed Pranken, "examination! that is a scare-crow for poor
devils of commoners. My young friend, you are now a Baron, and by that
means you have passed the best part of the examination: what is now to
come is only form."
It required no great persuasion to induce Roland to put on the uniform.
Pranken helped him. The uniform became him admirably; he looked both
lithe and strong; he had broad shoulders, and the pliancy of his form
did not disguise his manly strength of muscle.
"Really, I had rather have gone into the navy," said he, "but there
doesn't happen to be any."
Once more, accompanied by Pranken, he went to Manna's room, and cried
out, that she ought to see him in his uniform, but Manna returned no
answer whatever.
Pranken now went with Roland to his father, and both conducted him to
his mother; she was ravished at his appearance. Roland did not know
what to do with himself from excitement; he went into the park, he
saluted the trees; he showed his uniform to the sky and to the plants;
but his salutations met with no response. He showed himself to the
servants, and they all congratulated him. While he was standing, his
left hand upon his sword, near the porter, who was saluting him in
military fashion like a veteran, Eric came up. He did not recognize
Roland at first, and seemed to wake up only when his pupil began to
speak. Roland's cheek was glowing with excitement, and he exclaimed in
a loud voice:--
"Ah, if I were only able to tell you all, Eric! I feel as if I were
intoxicated, and metamorphosed. Tell me, am I awake or dreaming? Ah,
Eric, I can't say anything more now."
Roland went with Eric to his room, and questioned him eagerly whether
he had not also been as happy the first time he had put on his uniform.
Eric could not give him an answer; he tried to remember how he felt the
first time he had donned his uniform, but he recollected much better
how he felt the last time he had doffed it. A remembrance did come to
him, however, a long forgotten remembrance. The Doctor had once said
that Roland never took any pleasure in a new suit, but now he was in
raptures over the gay-colored soldier's coat; all ideals seemed to have
disappeared, or at least to have concentrated in this coat. Eric gazed
at him sadly; he came near saying that the two most beautiful moments
in the soldier's life were, when he put on the uniform, and when he
took it off forever. But he could not now make this reply, for there
are things which every one must experience for himself, and cannot
learn from others; and what would anything amount to on this present
occasion?
Joseph came and said that Eric must repair to Herr Sonnenkamp.
With the ground reeling under him, with everything swimming before his
eyes, like one in a dream, Eric went across the court and up the steps;
he stood in the antechamber. Now is the decisive moment.
CHAPTER VIII.
RESERVATIONS.
Eric entered; he did not venture to look at Sonnenkamp; he dreaded
every word he might have to say to him; for every thought that
Sonnenkamp expressed to him, everything which his thoughts had touched
on, seemed to him polluted. But now as he fixed his gaze upon him,
Sonnenkamp seemed to be transformed, as if he had by some charm
contracted his powerful frame. He looked so modest, so humble, so
childlike, smiling there before him. He informed Eric, in a quiet tone,
that the Prince had seen fit in his graciousness to invest him with a
title of nobility, and was soon to deliver him the patent confirming it
with his own hand.
Eric breathed with still greater difficulty, and could not utter a
word.
"You are surprised?" asked Sonnenkamp. "I know the Jewish banker has
been refused,--and I even think--the gentlemen are very shrewd--I even
think--however, it doesn't make any difference; every one works his own
way. I know also that a certain Doctor Fritz has been at the
philanthropist Weidmann's, and that he has spoken a good deal of
slander about a man whom I unfortunately resemble--isn't it so? I see
it in your countenance. I hope, however, that you will not--no, be
quite at ease, my dear, good friend; rejoice with me and for our
Roland."
Eric looked up now freely. There is certainly some mistake here, for
the man could not be so composed, if he had anything to dread.
Sonnenkamp continued:--
"You will remain our friends, you and your noble mother."
He held out his hand; now again Eric shuddered all over. The ring on
his thumb--is that too a mystery, a deception? Sonnenkamp could not but
feel that there was something wrong; he suddenly drew back the
outstretched hand, as if a wild beast had extended its claw towards it,
but said with great composure:--
"I know you are an opposer of election to the nobility."
"No; more than that, I wanted to say something," interposed Eric; but
Sonnenkamp interrupted him hastily.
"Excuse me if I do not wish to hear any more."
Suddenly shifting the conversation, he continued in an earnest tone,
saying that Eric had now only the finishing stroke to put to his work,
by guiding and fortifying Roland into a true appreciation of his new
position and his new name.
"It would be a fine thing if you should take the Professorship; I would
then let Roland, until we ourselves moved into town, and perhaps even
then, occupy the same residence with you; you would remain his friend
and instructor, and everything would go on excellently."
With great frankness, he added, that he desired, since he, as a father,
was not in the position to see to it himself, that Roland should be
wisely and discreetly led to a personal knowledge of that thing which
men call vice; this alone would preserve him from excess.
Eric remained silent; he had come with warnings, and full of anxiety;
now the whole affair was ended, now nothing remained to be done; yes,
through Sonnenkamp's own acknowledgment that he was mistaken for Herr
Banfield, every objection seemed to be put at rest. For the sake of
saying something, Eric asked where the Major was. With great
satisfaction, Sonnenkamp replied that the building of the castle had
fortunately so far progressed, that they would be able on their return
from the capital to open it; the Major had just gone to the castle to
make the necessary arrangements.
"Have you seen your mother yet?"
"No."
"She has, I am sorry to say, sent word to me that she is a little
unwell, and will not be able to partake in our rejoicing."
Eric hastened to his mother. He had never yet seen her ill; now she lay
exhausted on the sofa, and was delighted at his returning so
immediately upon the reception of her letter. Eric knew nothing of any
letter, and heard now, also for the first time, that Sonnenkamp had
sent a messenger, to whom his mother had also given a letter.
His mother, who was feverish, said that she felt as if a severe
sickness was threatening her; it seemed to her as if the house in which
she was, was floating on the waves nearer and nearer to the sea; she
had to force herself to keep awake, for as soon as she closed her eyes,
this sensation returned to her more frightful than ever. She sat up and
said:--
"Now you have come back, everything will be well once more. I felt
timid alone here in this perverse world."
Eric felt that it was impossible to tell his mother anything of what he
had learned at Weidmann's.
His mother complained:--
"Ah, I wish it may not be with you as it is with me; the older I
become, the more mysterious and complicated are many things to me. You
men are fortunate; individual things do not vex you so much, because
you can see a united whole."
As the mother gazed confusedly about her she looked upon her son, and
her eye sank; she would willingly have imparted her trouble to him; but
why burden him when he could do no good? She kept it to herself.
Eric told her of the interesting life he had seen at Mattenheim, and
how fortunate he had been in gaining there a fatherly friend. In the
way in which he described the energetic activity of the family, it
seemed as if he were bringing a fresh breeze into the room; and the
mother said:--
"Yes, we forget in our troubles that there are still beautiful,
harmonious existences in the world for a maiden like Manna." And just
as she mentioned her name, a messenger from Manna came with the
request, that the Professorin would come to her.
Eric wanted to say to the messenger in reply, that his mother was
unwell, and to ask Fraeulein Manna therefore to have the goodness to
come to her; but his mother sat erect, and said:--
"No, she requires my assistance; I must be well, and I am well. It is
best that my duty saves me from yielding to this weakness."
She got up quickly, and said to the messenger:--
"I will come."
She dressed hurriedly, and went with her son to the villa.
CHAPTER IX.
HERO ROLAND'S MOTTO.
The Professor's wife announced herself at Manna's door; Manna opened
it. With a bloodless countenance, she stood, before the Mother and
languidly-held out her hand.
"I have wrestled with myself all alone," she said; "I cannot find the
outlet; I must tell you all."
And now Manna related how she had grown up in most reverent respect for
her father, and how she had often painfully lamented that her mother
was so harsh and cold to him; but once--she had never learned what had
transpired previously--her mother had said in the presence of her
father:--
"'Know then who your father is, who your father is.' Don't look at me,
I beg of you; I beg you, let me speak it softly in your ear."
She whispered the words softly in the ear of the Professorin. The
latter sat there and held her hands in her lap, and shut her eyes; not
a sound was heard in the room: it seemed as if the whole world was
dead, and the two human beings that sat there opposite to each other,
dead as well. Manna went on to say that she did not at first understand
what this meant, but gradually it had come to her, and she had
persuaded her, parents to let her go to the convent. On the way thither
the thought was continually present to her, how, in old times,
Iphigenia had offered herself up as a propitiatory sacrifice, and so
she longed to offer herself up a willing and a hopeful victim, to wash
away all the guilt of those who were dear to her.
"I felt then as if something had been cleft within me, as if a vein had
burst in my heart. I looked upon myself as a victim on the altar. I had
the courage then, I wanted to act decisively before that courage
deserted me, for I was afraid of my own cowardice, and for that reason
was anxious to bind myself at once."
Again, after a longer pause--the Professorin did not interrupt with a
single word--Manna said that she did not understand what her father was
doing, and she, she herself must be made noble, and become Pranken's
bride, of equal rank with him. She had honored and esteemed Pranken; he
was a man of the world, but of a profoundly generous and religious
character.
Sobbing bitterly, she threw herself upon the mother's neck, and
exclaimed:--
"I cannot! I cannot be his wife. Ah! I am too weak. You have told me
that I should have to experience trying conflicts, but I had never
thought, never dreamt of such a thing as this. No; no, indeed."
"What more?" asked the Mother.
Manna hid her face in her hands, then threw herself upon the Mother's
neck and wept.
"The Mother entreated her to let her know the rest, but Manna remained
silent; finally she uttered the words:--
"No, I shall take it with me into the grave; it is mine alone."
The Professorin spoke words of hope and comfort to her, and asked her
whether she had ever mentioned in confession what she now confessed to
her. Manna said no, and then threw herself upon her knees before the
Mother, and besought her to tell no one what she had related of her
father. But she started up suddenly as if bitten by a serpent, when the
Professorin told her that she had known it all a long while, that it
had been a heavy burden to her, but that it was the duty of the
innocent not to withdraw themselves from one who seeks to efface a
wretched past.
A strange agitation swept over Manna's countenance.
"Who else knows it? Tell me."
"Why should I, my child? Why do you so torment your soul, and make it
wander from house to house, from man to man, crushed, begging, and
imploring forgiveness?"
"My prayer, my sacrifice is rejected; I am cast out, we are all cast
out. No, I am free; the holy ones in heaven have not been willing to
accept my sacrifice. It shall live within my own bosom only, within
myself, within my crushed and shattered heart. I am free--free."
"Your laugh makes me feel uneasy," said the Professorin, who was
observing closely the play of Manna's features. Manna moaned that her
sorrow was sevenfold.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I have spoken with my brother only once about
slavery, and then I felt as if something was whirling around me, when
he said, Beings who are admitted to religious life are our equals. He
is right; whoever enters the sanctuary of the knowledge of God is a
free child of God; and I shuddered when I thought for the first time
how it could be possible for a man to be praying in church, and have
near by, separated from him only by a railing, men who were slaves. Is
not his every word of prayer, is not his offering, a lie? It was a
frightful pathway upon which I had entered, and all the powers of evil
were pushing me on further and further. How is it then? how can a
priest receive the child of a man, how could he receive us into the
church, while our father still----"
As if a weight lay on her heart. Manna placed her hand there, and
seemed unable to go on.
The Professorin consoled her.
"My child," she said, "do not lay the blame on Religion; cast no stone
at those who cannot accomplish everything, who cannot equalize all the
inequalities that have come into the world from sin. The temple is
great, pure, and sublime, even though cares, sloth, and base submission
have found hiding-places in it."
From the bottom of her heart, the Professorin sought to keep Manna from
losing her hold upon religion; she spoke with enthusiasm of those who
devote their whole existence to the Most High, who restlessly work and
strive, without reward, to fashion the earth into a dwelling-place of
love and virtue.
Manna looked up astonished at the woman who thus counselled her; her
lips parted, but she could not utter the words that lay upon her
tongue; she wanted to ask. "But are you not a Huguenot?" But she kept
back the words, for it seemed to her at this moment as if every
difference in form of religious belief had been blotted out; here was
indeed nothing but a heart simple in its purpose, gentle, patient,
suffering, and devoted to good. Now she felt that she had fully and
entirely devoted herself to the noble woman; she flung herself into her
arms; with tears in her eyes she kissed the Mother's cheeks, forehead,
and hands, and asked her to lay her hands upon her head, and save her
from dying of grief.
Silent and locked in each other's arms sat the two women, when a knock
was heard at the door.
Sonnenkamp called out that he must speak with his daughter.
"You must speak to him," said the Professorin.
Manna rose, and pushed back the bolts of the door.
Sonnenkamp entered.
"I am glad you are well again," said he in a clear voice to the
Professor's wife.
He did not dream with what eyes the Professorin and his child regarded
him.
"I thank you," he continued, making a gesture which was intended to
signify that he desired to be alone with Manna.
Manna perceived it, and she begged--she could not express her agony,
but she begged earnestly--that her father would permit the Professorin
to be present at the conversation; she had no secrets from the noble
woman.
Sonnenkamp shrugged his shoulders.
Was it possible? No, it could not be, his own child could not have
betrayed him.
He now said plainly that he would rather speak with Manna alone.
The Professorin rose to go, and Sonnenkamp begged her in a kindly tone
to keep his wife company during his absence, and give her all the
instruction and advice necessary to enable her to enter upon her new
sphere of life with becoming repose and dignity.
The Professorin bowed and left them.
Manna had to sit down; she felt as if her limbs would never again
support her; Sonnenkamp said to her that she had doubtless long ago
forgotten the bitter epithet that her mother had applied to him; she
might now go to her mother, who would assure her, that she had only
made use of the words in anger.
Manna nodded, without saying a word; and then Sonnenkamp spoke of her
marriage with Pranken, in regard to which he took a pride in feeling
that he had never laid any constraint upon his child. Manna implored
him not to press the matter upon her then.
"Very well, you need not make up your mind till our return, but promise
me to be friendly to him."
Manna could promise this, and Sonnenkamp smiled inwardly at the thought
of his keeping Pranken in suspense until everything was finally
arranged; if any insurmountable difficulty came up then, it could not
change what would be already settled.
"You are now a Freifraeulein," said he impressively and smiling to his
child, "you shall be free in everything; only, to-day, let everything
remain still in suspense. I cannot be dishonorable." He really meant,
that he did not so much mind deceiving Pranken, but he added that it
would be much more proper to consent or to refuse when they had been
for a short time, in the full possession of their new rank. And with
that, he took leave of his child with friendly words.
At noon there was great rejoicing at the villa, for the Ensign with a
number of his comrades had arrived; they rode out with Roland, who was
treated as one of themselves.
In accordance with Pranken's wish, they started that evening for the
capital.
When Roland took leave of Eric's mother, she gave him a paper on which
was written,--
On the rim of the Hero Roland's helmet was once and is again inscribed,
in golden letters,--"The weapons of the whole world must leave me still
unstained."
CHAPTER X.
DOWN BELOW.
At the servants' table in the basement there was a big gap; the seat at
the head, which belonged to Bertram, was not occupied by any one;
Joseph and Lootz were also wanting, for they had gone with the old and
the young master to the capital. The men and women at the table were
whispering in a low tone; at last the head gardener said that the
affair was no longer a secret; he maintained that, at the time of the
Prince's visit, he had perceived the thing clearly. With a look of
modest condescension, that plainly signified his regret at being
obliged to exhibit his shrewdness before these people, he let out his
words as if such folks could not appreciate what he had to say; Joseph
alone, if he had been there, could have bestowed upon him suitable
praise. The remaining servants, however, had an ill will against the
self-asserting and pretentious head gardener. No one answered him. The
big cook, who sat down to table very seldom, for she maintained that
she ate hardly anything at all, now ventured to take Bertram's place,
so that she could get up at any moment. She said that she had served
with the nobility her whole life, and now it was going to be so again.
Now the thing was out; and all felt as if a load had been taken off
their hearts, since they were at liberty to speak of the matter. The
second coachman turned up the skirts of his long waistcoat a little,
and contemplated them with a searching look.
"Now then, buttons with coats-of-arms are coming," he said at last;
"and our carriage will be new varnished, and a crest will be put on the
coach-door; no more of the bare, solitary 'S'. Let Herr von Endlich's
coachman say again that the S looks like an interrogation point, for no
one really knows who Herr Sonnenkamp is."
One of the grooms was glad that on the horse-blankets a five-pointed
coronet would stare everybody in the face.
The laundress complained of the great trouble it would be to mark all
the linen anew, and the maid who took care of the silver was glad that
she was going to have new spoons and forks, for everything would have
to be melted over again and engraved anew.
"And the collars of the hounds will be renewed," exclaimed a hoarse
voice.
Everybody laughed at the boy, who had charge of the dogs, who was
grinning slyly at the idea of his having said something funny.
The old kitchen maid, who persisted in sitting on her stool and holding
her plate in her lap, called over to the second cook:--
"We shall soon have a Frau Lootz. The master will now consent to the
marriage."
"Has he given you his consent?"
"God be praised, I don't need it any more. But now he will remain here
forever, and never go away any more. Now you can all marry."
The second gardener, the so-called Squirrel, declared with unction:--
"I should not have said a word, but if I were such a rich man I would
never have had myself ennobled; no, I had rather be the richest
commoner all up and down the Rhine, than the newest noble. I wouldn't
flatter the nobility so much. If one has money, he is noble enough."
Everybody sneered at the forward fellow, and the head gardener looked
at him with a patronizing air, nodding, his features saying at the same
time, "I would never have given the simpleton credit for such an idea."
They now began to discuss what sort of livery the master would adopt,
and whether he would have a "_von_" before his old name, or whether he
would take an entirely new name. Finally the conversation turned upon
Pranken's marriage. The fat cook reminded them that when Eric first
came to the house, the old kitchen maid had prophesied that Eric would
be the son of the house; now the reputation she had as a prophetess was
gone, for the marriage was a fixed thing, and they were only delaying
the announcement of it till the Fraeulein was ennobled. Old Ursel made a
wry face, looked about her and winked, pressed her apron against her
mouth, and nodded triumphantly; at length she began to make her
explanation:--
"I don't believe yet, that she will marry the light, twisted moustache.
Remember what I say."
The laundress told the fat cook in confidence, that Joseph, the
valet--she had observed it the whole winter through--was making love to
the daughter of the landlord of the Victoria.
The conference in the basement lasted a long while; it was not broken
up until a voice from overhead fell upon their ear with the message,
that the horses would have to be harnessed again, night as it was, for
the gracious Frau wished to drive out.
Where? No one knew.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST NIGHT OF A BARONESS.
"Yes, it's all very nice for him, he goes off on his pleasure, and
leaves me here alone! What am I to do now?"
Thus Frau Ceres was complaining to Fraeulein Perini, when Sonnenkamp,
Pranken, and Roland were gone. With the hurry and restlessness of fever
she was walking up and down the room, every now and then asking whether
there was nothing to be done, and begging Fraeulein Perini to tell her
what she ought to do. The latter urged her to be composed, and asked
her to sit down by her side, and fill out the ground at the other end
of her embroidery.
"Yes," exclaimed Frau Ceres suddenly, "now I have it. I'll do something
that will please him too; I'll embroider a sofa-cushion with our
coat-of-arms. Besides, I have seen hassocks in the church with
coats-of-arms embroidered on them; we'll have those too."
Fraeulein Perini nodded.
"And something else yet!" said she.
"Really? Do you know of something else?" exclaimed Frau Ceres.
"Yes, it will be something well befitting your pious mind. You have
already thought of it, only you have forgotten about it."
"What? what have I forgotten?"
"You intended, when the title was obtained, to embroider an altar-cloth
at once."
"Yes, so we will. Did I ever say so? Ah! I forget everything. Ah, dear
madame, stay with me always, advise me in everything. Have you a large,
frame? Let us begin at once."
Fraeulein Perini had everything ready, silk, worsted, gold-thread and
silver-thread, frame and patterns. Frau Ceres actually made a few
stitches, but then stopped and said:--
"I am trembling to-day; but I have commenced the altar-cloth, and now
we will work on at it. You will help me, will you not?"
Fraeulein Perini assented; she knew that she would have to do the whole
herself, but Frau Ceres had now become somewhat calmer.
"Will you not send for the Priest, or hadn't we better go and visit him
ourselves?"
"As you see fit."
"No, we had better be alone. Where is Manna, I wonder? She ought to
come, she ought to be with her mother."
She rang and sent for Manna; but received for answer, that she had just
gone to rest; she begged her mother to excuse her, she was very tired.
"But where is the Professorin? Oughtn't she to come and congratulate
me?"
"She was with Fraeulein Manna, and went home again," answered Fraeulein
Perini.
"She was in the house, and didn't come to see me?" said Frau Ceres, in
an angry tone; "she shall come at once--this very moment. Send for her.
I am the Mother, to me is honor first due, then to the daughter. Send
for her, she must come at once."
Fraeulein Perini had to gratify her, but with great caution, she
impressed upon Frau Ceres the necessity of being quite composed and
dignified in her manner toward the learned court-lady, who must not
suppose that people would have to learn from her, at the outset, how to
comport themselves in elevated positions.
"You should be rather quiet in your manner, Frau Baroness."
"Frau Baroness! Am I to expect that the Professorin will address me
so?"
"Certainly, she is perfectly well bred."
Frau Ceres began once more to walk restlessly up and down the room.
Every once in a while, she would stand still before the large mirror,
and make a courtesy before some imaginary personage. The courtesy was
very successful; she would lay her left hand upon her heart, her right
hanging down naturally, and bend very low. On both sides of the mirror
four branched candlesticks stood lighted, and once in a while Frau
Ceres would put her hand to her brow.
"He has promised me a five-pointed coronet; it will become me, will it
not?"
With an exceedingly gracious smile she bowed once more before the
mirror.
Fraeulein Perini heard outside the arrival of the Professorin; she went
to meet her, and begged her to be very forbearing and circumspect with
the much agitated Frau Ceres, and not call her anything but Frau
Baroness.
"Why did you send me word that she was ill, and call me out in the
middle of the night on that account?"
"I beg your pardon; you know that there are sick people who do not go
to bed."
The Professorin understood how matters were.
When she entered, Frau Ceres, with her face still turned to the mirror,
exclaimed:--
"Ah, that's good! It was gracious in you to come, my dear Professorin,
very friendly--very kind. I am a good friend of yours, too."
She then turned round and held out her hand to the new-comer.
The Professorin did not congratulate her, nor did she call her Frau
Baroness.
Frau Ceres now wished to know what her husband--but she corrected
herself quickly and said: "I should say the Baron now; well--what has
the Baron to do in town; must he pass a Knight's examination, and will
he be knighted before the assembled multitude?"
The Professorin replied that there was nothing of the kind now, there
would be simply a parchment patent delivered to him.
"Parchment--parchment?" repeated Frau Ceres several times to herself.
"What is parchment?"
"It is dressed skin," said the Professorin in explanation.
"Ah, a scalp--a scalp. I understand. On it--will the patent be written
with ink just the same as everything else that they write?"
She stared a long while before her, then after first shutting and again
opening her eyes, she begged the Professorin to choose one of her
finest dresses for herself; angry and astonished, the Professorin rose,
but she sat down again hastily, and said that she was sensible of the
kindness of Frau Sonnenkamp, but she no longer wore such fine dresses.
"Frau Sonnenkamp doesn't wear them any more either. Frau Sonnenkamp,
Frau Sonnenkamp!" rejoined Frau Ceres.
She wished to remind the Professorin that she had not called her Frau
Baroness.
"Have you ever known of the elevation of an American to the ranks of
the nobility?" she asked all at once.
The Professorin said no.
When it was now mentioned that Herr Sonnenkamp had received the name of
Baron von Lichtenburg from the castle which was rebuilding, Frau Ceres
exclaimed:--
"Ah, that's it! that's it! Now I know! This very evening, this very
moment, I will visit the castle--our castle! Then I shall sleep sound.
You shall both accompany me."
She rang forthwith, and ordered the horses to be harnessed; both the
ladies looked at each other, terror-stricken. What would come of it?
Who knows but that on the road she might suddenly become distracted and
break out into a fit of insanity?
The Professorin had sufficient presence of mind to say to Frau Ceres,
that it would be much better to make the visit to the castle the next
morning in the daytime; that if they went there in the night, it would
make a great talk in the neighborhood.
"Why so? Is there a legend about our castle?"
There was indeed such a legend, but the Professorin took care not to
tell it to her just then; she said she was ready to drive for an hour
in the mild night, out on the high road with Frau Ceres; she was in
hopes that it would quiet her.
And so the three women set out together through the darkness of that
pleasant night. The Professorin had so arranged matters that there was
not only a servant sitting beside the coachman, but also another on the
back seat. She sought to provide against all contingencies. But this
precaution was not necessary, for as soon as Frau Ceres was well seated
in the carriage, she became very quiet, nay, she began to speak of her
childhood.
She was at an early age left an orphan, the daughter of a captain on
one of Sonnenkamp's ships, who had made long and very perilous
voyages--yes, very perilous, she repeated more than once. After the
death of her parents, Herr Sonnenkamp had taken her under his sole
guardianship, and had her brought up by herself under the care of an
old female servant, and of one man servant.
"He didn't let me learn anything, not anything at all," she complained
once more; "he told me, 'It is better for you to remain as you are.' I
was not quite fifteen years old when he married me."
She wept; but then, a moment after, clapping her hands like a child,
she exclaimed,--
"It's all a story. It was another creature entirely that went through
all this, that used to lie in her hammock all day long and dream out
there, and now in Europe--but it is just as well, just as well, isn't
it?" she said, and reached out her hands affectionately to the
Professorin and Fraeulein Perini.
"Do you think," she said, turning to the Professorin mysteriously, "do
you think that our noble rank is altogether safe and sure?"
"After the decree is issued, everything is secure, but no one can say
that anything is certain before it comes to pass; unforeseen obstacles
may arise at the very last moment."
"What obstacles? what do you mean? what? what do you know? Tell me
all."
The Professorin shuddered inwardly. The restlessness and terror, the
wilful, overbearing, and weak nature of Frau Ceres were now for the
first time made clear to her; here was a woman who sought to torment
her husband by revealing to her child the father's past life.
With entreaties and commands Frau Ceres endeavored to get a statement
of the possible obstacles, and she was only quieted by the Professorin
assuring her that she knew of nothing definite. In spite of the
darkness, Fraeulein Perini noticed how painfully this untruth fell from
the lips of the Professorin; in fact she was just able to let it pass
her lips, because she felt herself in the situation of the physician
who does not venture to tell his fever-stricken patient the bitter
truth.
Frau Ceres lay back in the corner of the carriage; she went to sleep
like a child that has cried itself out with temper. Fraeulein Perini
earnestly begged the Professorin to call Frau Ceres 'Baroness' when she
woke up. She told the coachman to turn back; they were on their way
home to the Villa.
Frau Ceres was hard to wake; they put her to bed. She thanked the two
ladies sincerely, and smiled pleasantly, when the Professorin said at
last,--
"I hope you'll sleep well, Frau Baroness."
CHAPTER XII.
AN EMPTY NEST AND A HOME FOR ALL.
Toiling hard, and still singing lustily, the bird has built his nest
from odds and ends from every quarter; restless in his task, he has fed
his young while starving himself, contenting himself with the growth of
the young birds; and now they have all flown away, the nest is empty
and forsaken,--torn to shreds.
Such was the reflection in Eric's mind, as he stood in the evening by
Roland's bedside, and felt his heart trembling with anxiety for the
beloved youth. He wandered out across the country; he felt as if he
must go to some friend, to some human being, on whose breast he could
lay his weary head.
He would have gone to Clodwig, to the Doctor, to Weidmann, once more;
but they could not change the unchangeable, and who knows but that in
another hour he would be needed here? he must not leave his mother, he
must not leave the house, he must not think of himself.
Thus he roamed about like a wandering spirit through the night. He saw
the carriage with the three ladies in it coming along the road; he hid
himself quickly behind a hedge; he could not understand what it meant;
he had recognized his mother, Frau Ceres, and Fraeulein Perini. Where
are they hurrying to? Or had he only fancied that he saw them? He
watched a long while, then the carriage returned, and he himself went
homeward. He sat for some time on a bench in the field-path, opposite
the green cottage; he saw the light go out; at last he went to the
villa.
At Manna's window, in which there was no light burning, he thought he
saw her looking out; he would like to have called out to her; but he
did not venture to; he had no right to disturb her in her sad
meditation.
It seemed to him as if a white hand was stretched out of the window; he
passed hurriedly by.
With mute lips he walked up and down his room; it seemed to him so
strange not to be talking with Roland as he had done every evening, for
so long.
Eric thought that he would seek relief from his own thoughts in some
book, but he pushed away the book with the hand he had reached out to
take it up. Professor Einsiedel was right, he had cut off his soul from
the empire of clear ideas; he cannot easily resume the connection. He
had devoted himself to a single human being, and now that he had left
him, he was undermined, and without support. And still he said again to
himself. If thou hadst not sacrificed thyself for Roland, he would not
be so well equipped as he is, and as he will yet prove himself to be,
in dangers and temptations. I wonder whether he is thinking of and
yearning for me at this moment as I am for him? Not now; now the
whirlpool of life is laying hold of him; but moments will come when he
will turn towards me, and I will be prepared.
Eric was revolving in his mind what would become of himself now; he
could not imagine, but consoled himself with the reflection that each
coming day would bring its task with it.
It occurred to him now, for the first time, that he had in his
possession some of the property which had been earned in such a way. He
was determined not to retain it. Where should he bestow it? To whom
could he restore it? He knew not, but there was in his soul a certain
fullness of freedom, as he thought, and said aloud to himself,--
"Thou art poor once again, thou hast again nothing but thyself; but
thou hast thyself."
What fortunes had he not experienced in these rooms! how his soul, his
heart had been swayed to and fro with emotion! and to-morrow, within a
few days, is this house to be forsaken, left far behind, a remembrance.
And then?
"Come day, come fate, thou shalt find me ready!"
Eric felt utterly forsaken and robbed of his all; he longed after a
being outside of himself, to clasp him in her arms, and say to him:
Thou art at home, thou art at home, thou art with me. He trembled when
he thought: How would it be if Bella should see me? And his cheeks
began to glow, for he thought to himself thus: No, Manna, thou alone
thou shalt never know, 'twill be better for thee and for me. And how?
Should I call thee mine, and bear with thee the burden of this horrid
wealth? Wealth! Thou wouldst not be in my way; I have pride enough. But
no, it shall be put to death before it has time to live; never shall it
cross these lips.
He held his hand for some time pressed against his mouth. At last,
shutting his eyes, he said half aloud:--
"Good-night, Roland."
When he woke up--and his first thought was, "How is Roland this
morning?"--he heard the church-bells ringing. He left the house and
would have gone to his mother's, but he dreaded meeting her, for the
remembrance of what Weidmann had imparted to him was reviving in his
breast, as if he were listening to it now for the first time. He raised
his eyes to heaven and said to himself: O sun, what bringest thou new
today?
And wonderful! In the midst of all his forlornness, in the midst of all
his sorrow, there came upon him suddenly, as if he were standing on the
threshold of fortune, something unspeakable, something undiscernible,
and, no one could tell whence it was sent.
The bells were still ringing. There is yet something calling upon men,
upon every one, and every one may listen to and follow after it,
wherefore not also thou? He did not like to be wandering about in
aimless dissipation of thought. "The walk in the open air," as Knopf
had called it, came into his mind.
He went to the church, and on the way the good Knopf's words haunted
him:--"Our life is not simply a walk in the open air."
He entered the church just as the organ pealed out. Knopf is right, he
continued to himself; there are the seats, the candlesticks, the
kneeling-stools, and they are waiting peacefully and quietly for the
comers. Who knows what his neighbor cherishes in his heart? But it is a
meeting-place where we find each other and we find ourselves.
Eric sat down quietly behind a pillar.
As he looked up, he saw Manna kneeling not far from the altar.
So will she soon kneel when she is married to Pranken.
Terrified, as if some one had seized him from behind, Eric looked
round; there was no one there. He would have left the church, but the
quiet hour and the quiet service did him good. What further he thought
of, he knew not. The organ sounded, Manna passed him by, he heard the
rustle of her dress, he did not stir. The lights on the altar were
extinguished, he left the church.
"Ah, you too were in the church?" was the question put to him in a
woman's voice.
He looked up astonished; Fraeulein Milch stood before him. He greeted
her pleasantly, and said he was not aware that she also was a Catholic.
"I am not one, but there are times when I cannot pray alone, I must go
into another house, into one that has been erected to the Most High;
then must I be with my fellow-creatures, who, like me, seek consolation
and peace in the Eternal, even if they do call upon him in another way
than mine. I do not pray as the others do, but I pray with them."
She looked confidingly into his countenance, as if she meant to say,
"Thou canst not be alone either." As Eric did not make any answer, she
asked after his mother, and begged him to say to her, that she had not
been to visit her because she was afraid of disturbing her; but that
she herself would always be found at home.
"And you, Captain, must come and see us whenever you feel like it. We
have not a great deal to offer, but there is one thing that can always
be had at our house, and that is quiet. And you need not even bid
good-day when you come, but you can make yourself at home with us,
whenever you happen to feel the need."
She now asked how Eric felt since Roland had left him, and she was the
first to whom Eric expressed his great longing for the youth.
"Roland has become more to me than my dead brother was!" he exclaimed.
And just as he was uttering these words in a somewhat loud and
trembling voice, Manna passed by; she had come out of the Priest's
house. She greeted both quietly, and pressed her prayer-book tightly to
her heart.
"I would be glad to have her a happy nun, but she will not be a happy
nun," said Fraeulein Milch.
"Naturally," said Eric, jokingly; "she will be Frau von Pranken."
"Frau von Pranken! Never."
"And are you earnest in saying so?"
"Yes, for Herr von Pranken is going to marry the young widow, the
daughter of Herr von Endlich."
"I don't understand this."
"Don't forget, Captain, that I have told you so this day. I know a
little something about men. I have never had a word from Baron Pranken
except the question, 'Where is the Major?' He never addressed me myself
in any way, and I do not take it ill of him, but still, for all that, I
know him."
Eric's countenance brightened; he had no reason for putting faith in
Fraeulein Milch's conjecture, and still he did put faith in it. And now
it occurred to him, that he had joyfully anticipated something, he knew
not what, to-day; now he had experienced it.
He accompanied Fraeulein Milch home. The Major was not in; he had gone
to the castle, for there was still a great deal to be done, to be ready
for the solemn opening of the castle-which was soon to take place.
Eric turned back and went, to his mother's.
CHAPTER XIII.
A GRACIOUS HAND POURS OUT THE WINE.
"Are you, too, down-hearted and meditative?" cried the Doctor, meeting
him as he was entering the house. "I find here a whole colony of
low-spirited people. What is there then in this whole affair so
discouraging? Herr Sonnenkamp is getting new clothes and a new equipage
made. In old times, I still remember them, a commoner did not dare to
drive out in a coach and four, or, if he did, the horses had to be put
in hempen traces. Well, Herr Sonnenkamp is getting leather traces made.
What of that? Frau Ceres is sick, Manna is sick, the Professorin is
sick, the Captain looks sick; Fraeulein Perini and your aunt are the
only ones in health in the hospital. Effervescing powders must be the
prescription for everybody to-day." The Doctor brought with him a
cheerful tone, which, like a spicy breeze from the mountain forests,
was sweeping away the mists. The Mother could not tell why she was so
uneasy, Eric could not tell why he was. The Doctor counselled Eric to
take shares in the new mine; and keep his knowledge as a jewel for
himself.
They had discovered a new stratum of manganese in the soil of
Mattenheim; his son-in-law had been to see him, and had said a great
deal to him about the favorable impression Eric had left behind him in
the family there.
The Doctor took Eric back to the villa with him, and just as they were
entering the courtyard there came a telegram to Eric. It was from Herr
Sonnenkamp, and contained a request that he would let Frau Ceres know
that at that very moment he was on his way to court.
The Doctor undertook the responsibility of holding back this news from
Frau Ceres; she was near enough to delirium without that; he had
ordered her a sleeping potion.
At table appeared Fraeulein Perini, Manna, and Eric. After the first
course, Fraeulein Perini was called to Frau Ceres, and did not come
back.
Manna and Eric were left alone.
"You were also in the church to-day," said Manna.
"Yes."
"I must beg your forgiveness, I have done you wrong."
"Done me wrong?"
"Yes, I thought you were without religion."
"So I am, according to strict opinions."
Manna said nothing; she laid the bit she was just raising to her mouth
down again on her plate. Both sat silent, opposite each other, for a
long while; each was seeking after a safe topic of conversation.
"You had a younger brother whom you have lost? I heard you speaking of
him to-day," began Manna, blushing up to her temples.
"Yes, he was of the age of Roland, and this very day I have been
wondering why I could not be as much to my dear brother as I have been
to our Roland."
"Do not say _have been_; you are still, and will remain so to him.
Roland repeated to me, an expression of yours: 'Friends who can forsake
one another were never friends.'"
"Certainly, but what comfort is that thought, if one no longer breaks
the daily bread of life with another? I have known, however, that this
separation must occur, I have recognized it as necessary; and still,
for the first time, I see how almost constantly, for a long while, I
have thought of nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing, but that I
forthwith connected Roland with it,--living only for him. Now the whole
bent of my thoughts must be changed, a new object found, for the old
chain is crushed, severed, cast off, and I feel so homeless and
forlorn."
"I understand that perfectly," said Manna, as Eric paused for a moment.
She sipped the wine that stood before her.
Eric continued:--
"I have a poetic friend, a peculiar man, who takes everything terribly
hard: he is a man, who, with his whole soul, unreservedly and
exclusively, forgetful of all else, loves his calling. He complained to
me once how empty, lonely and forsaken he seemed to himself, when he
had put the finishing stroke to a work which was then about to go forth
from him into the wide world, to find its home everywhere, and to
remain with him no more. He had devoted all his thought and feeling,
night and day, to the creations of his fancy, and now they had wandered
across the sea into another world, there to be no longer his. He could
not withdraw his thoughts from them, and yet he could do nothing more
for them, for their clearer presentation, for their perfect
development. Yes, my dear Fraeulein, and these are only creations of the
fancy that forsake the man and make him so lonely. How much stronger
must the feeling be then, when a living man, who has taken root in our
soul, has forsaken us."
Manna was gazing full at him; big tears hung on her long eye-lashes,
and she saw a dewy lustre in his; she folded her hands on the table,
and quietly looked into Eric's countenance.
He felt this look, and said confusedly:--
"Forgive my egotism in speaking only of myself. I would not put any
further burden upon the sister, and I can straightway give you the
consolation which I have found for myself, and which will serve for you
too. We have no right to give our soul one exclusive interest, and in
that way lose sight of all the world beside; our soul must be satisfied
to feel that there are other things in the world, of which account must
be taken. Only, in the sense of desertion, while this inevitable wound
still bleeds, one can do nothing else than wait quietly, and compose
one's self in the thought of the fullness of the powers of the world,
and the fullness of the duties and joys which lie in our fitness to use
those powers. Ah, my dear Fraeulein," he said, interrupting himself, "my
mother likes to tell of an old parson, who cried out to his
congregation:--'Children, I preach not for you alone, I preach also for
myself; I have need of it.'"
A smile flitted across Manna's countenance, and Eric smiled too.
"Yes, so it is!" he continued, "it is not to the isolated, to the
wandering, to the changeable, but to the Everlasting, we should devote
our service; to the Spirit abiding in the universal, that we should be
submissive, until he calls us to another post. Whither? Wherefore? Who
can say? We experience the death of sweet individual relations, to
enter anew into the grand community of the eternal whole."
"You are without religion--no; you shall not say that of yourself, you
are not irreligious," exclaimed Manna.
"Many hold me for a laggard, others as cowardly and obsequious, because
I believe in God, in a wise consistency and gracious providence, in the
events which we meet in the history of mankind in general, and in the
course of life of individual men in particular."
Manna's cheeks were glowing, she unfolded her hands, she stretched
forth her hand as if she wished to give it to Eric, but, on its way, it
seized the flask and she said:--
"We are so grave; and really, am I not a sorry hostess?"
She poured out the wine for him, he drank it at a draught, and while he
was drinking, his gaze rested on Manna. She knew that he was
contemplating her, she cast down her eyes.
"I must make still another acknowledgment to you," she said. She
stopped as if waiting for breath, then she continued:--
"As you were speaking of your being now so sad because you can do
nothing more for Roland, it was becoming clearer and clearer to me anew
what happiness, what faith I also have lost."
She closed her eyes, she breathed heavily; then she opened her eyes
once more, and said:--
"I believed at one time that one could pray for another, for one
absent, a distant one, wherever and whatever he might be; I believed
that one could sacrifice himself for another, and everything would be
atoned for. Ah! now I believe so no more."
Eric made no answer; he knew with what a struggle this acknowledgment
was wrung from her lips. Silent they sat opposite each other, and a
thrill went through Eric. Now he knew that Manna loved him, for only to
the man she loved could she have confided what she had. A spiritual
cloud of joy and of grief seemed around him; this maiden loved him and
he loved her, her with such a dowry from such a father.
Luckily, a servant entered and told Eric that his mother was expecting
him.
"I will accompany you," said Manna, rising. She went to get her hat.
Eric was standing in the dining-hall; the plates and glasses and dishes
were dancing before his eyes. Manna returned quickly; her countenance
was more serene than ever; she was once more the young maiden, she had
the clear voice and the brisk movement of youthfulness, as she made a
gentle bow, and invited Eric to go with her. They were detained in the
entrance hall; a package for Manna had been received.
"Ah! the silk dress from the Moravians," she said. "I suppose you know,
Captain, that these people are not of our church, and still they get
their support from the church. Or are you a contemner, of the
Moravians, also?"
"'Contemner' is not my word, but I find their conduct inconsistent.
They are constantly preaching simplicity, renunciation of self,
contempt of show, and of worldly enjoyments, and they trade in silken
goods and, Havana cigars; they rely on the sinfulness of other men just
like the mendicant friar who says: 'I will not work and earn money, but
of course others should earn money for me to beg.'"
"Take in the package," said Manna to the servant.
She walked quietly on with Eric.
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM SIBYLLINE BOOKS.
On the way Manna said:--
"Do you know that I had an aversion for you, when I came here?"
"Yes indeed, I knew it."
"And why didn't you try to convert me from it?"
Eric was silent, and Manna asked him once more:--
"Is it then a matter of so much indifference to you what people think
of you?"
"No, but I am a servant of your house, and have no right to seek for
any special consideration in your sight."
"You are very proud."
"I do not deny it."
"Don't you know that pride is a fault?"
"To be sure, when one makes pretensions and detracts from the worth of
others. But I keep my pride for myself alone, or rather, I say with
St. Simon:--'If I consider myself I feel dejected, if I consider my
fellow-men I feel proud.'"
"You are too: clever for me," said Manna, banteringly.
"I don't like to hear you say so, for those are only empty words. No
man is too clever for another, if each one says to himself: 'I have
something in my own way too. You should not make use of such
expressions. My respect for you rests upon the very fact that I never
before heard from you an empty phrase. What you say is not always
logically true, but it is true for you."
"I thank you." Said Manna quickly, resting the tips of her fingers upon
his hand; and, as if recollecting herself, she added hastily once
more:--
"I thank you."
"I know not why it is; I have been delivered from an oppressive
melancholy, and I feel as if it was a whole year since I was so sad. We
have the good fortune to understand each other in the highest,
thoughts, and thought in the highest strain admits no measurement of
time."
"Ah yes," rejoined Manna, "in the very midst of all my sorrows the
thought has been present to me all day: 'Something is coming that will
give you joy.' Now I know what it was. You were the friend and
instructor of Roland; take me instead of him; be my friend and
instructor. Will you?"
She stretched out her hand to him, and both gazed at each other with a
look of joy.
"Ah, there sits your mother," cried Manna all at once; with a swift
step she hastened to the Professorin, and kissed her passionately.
The Professorin was astonished to see her. Is this the same maiden at
whose bedside she had sat the evening before, whose chilled hands she
had warmed, to whom she had spoken the words of encouragement? Youth is
an everlasting riddle.
Manna held her hand to her eyes for some time, and as she opened them
once more, she said:--
"Ah, if I only were the bird up there in the air!"
The mother made no answer, and Manna continued:--
"I see everything to-day for the first time; there is the Rhine,
there are the mountains, there the houses, there the men; a bird of
passage,--yes, one that has been hatched in Asia.--is coming towards
us, towards you. I am really so sorrowful, so sad; and still there is
something within me singing lustily and singing always; 'Thou art
merry, do not seek to be otherwise.' Ah, mother, it is dreadfully
sinful to be as I am."
"No, my child, you are still a child, and a child, they say, has smiles
and tears in the same bag. Rejoice that you are so young; perhaps
something of childhood has been repressed in you, and now it is coming
out. No one can say when, and no one can say where. We take things too
hard altogether; things are not quite so frightful as we women imagine.
I am quite cheerful since the Doctor was here. We may become accustomed
to look at everything in a gloomy way; then it is well if some one
comes and says: 'But just see the world is neither so wicked not so
good as we persuade ourselves it! is, and things run on either well or
ill, and not in their logical course.' My blessed husband said that
many and many a time."
Manna seemed not to have heard what the Mother said; she exclaimed in a
merry tone:--
"At this moment we are all ennobled, and still I do not perceive
anything of the nobility in me, and yet one ought to be able to
perceive something."
There was an unusually light-hearted tone in everything she said, and
she continued:--
"Tell me now, how did you feel on the day you laid aside your
nobility?"
"No trace of sorrow; it only pained me when my lady friends assured me
strongly that they would always remain the same to me; and in this very
assurance lay the conviction that it was otherwise; and they were all
the time telling me how they had loved me, as if I were no longer
living, and indeed to many I was already dead, for to them a human
being that has lost the rank of noble, is, as it were, sunk into the
realm of the departed spirits."
The Mother and Manna sat trustfully beside each other; for a time every
sorrow was forgotten, every care, every anxiety.
Eric had left the Mother and Manna alone; he was standing near a
rose-bush and observing how the rose leaves were falling off, so
softly, so quietly, as if plucked by a spirit-hand. He gazed at the
leaves on the ground, he knew not his thoughts. Roland, Manna, his
mother, the terrible past of Sonnenkamp, all was confusion in his mind;
he believed that he no longer saw the world as it is. If he only had
some one to call him to himself. He felt how his cheeks were glowing,
and how he was trembling.
You love and are beloved by this maiden, by the daughter of this man.
What is a daughter?
Every one exists for himself alone.
On the ground floor was his father's library; the windows were open; he
went in.
It entered into his mind that there must be something in the
manuscripts left by his father that would give him consolation and
support; perhaps the spirit of his father would speak to his joyful and
sorrowful perplexity. He began to search amongst the papers; everything
seemed to be ready for his hand that was not wanted. He untied a bundle
of pieces, the superscription of which bore the title, "Sibylline
Books;" he took up a leaf.
"That's the thing!" he exclaimed.
He was standing with his back leaned against the open window; he heard
his mother advising Manna to adhere right steadfastly and faithfully to
her religious convictions. There were, it is true, forms and
observances in it which she did not recognize as her own, but there was
also in it the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which alone gives us
strength to bear misfortune and sustain joy.
"Mother," he called out, suddenly turning round.
The women started.
"Mother, I bring you something that carries on your idea."
He went out, showed them his father's writing, and said that he would
read to them.
"Ah yes," exclaimed Manna; "it is good and kind of you to bring your
father here; how I would have liked to know him. Do you not believe
that he is now looking down upon us?"
Eric looked at his mother; he did not know what answer to give, and the
Mother said:--
"According to the ordinary conception of the word 'looking,' we cannot
conceive its being done without eyes. We have no conception how a
spirit exists, but there is not a day nor an hour that I do not live in
communion with my departed husband; he has come with me here, he will
remain with me wherever I go, till my last breath. But let me see--what
is it, Eric?"
"It has an odd title," answered the latter; "it treats of these things,
which I cannot explain, and which perhaps no one can explain."
"Read, I beg of you," entreated Manna.
Eric began to read:--
"Two things there are which stand firm, while the heart of man is
kept vacillating between defiance and despondency, haughtiness and
faint-heartedness; they are _nature_ and the _ideal within us_. The
church is also a strong-hold of the ideal, firm and secure; although
for me and many like me, it is not the only one.
"You say, nature does not help us. What help is she to me, when the
crushing conviction of imperfection, of perdition, of guilt comes upon
me and takes me captive? Well, nature does not speak; she simply
permits herself to be explained, understood; she gives back the echo of
what we call out to her. The church, on the contrary, speaks to us in
our individual griefs, she takes us up into the universal; that is the
great lesson of the expiatory suffering. We lay our grief aside when we
think of the great grief which the greatest of hearts took unto itself.
"And what is the third? you ask.
"A third is, nature and the ideal combined, which together elevate and
sustain us.
"What is the third? We call it art, we can also call it love, heroism.
In this view of mine, all philosophy also belongs to art. What the
genius of a man has created and fashioned out of himself as the
evidence of his existence, insight, and will, appears in art as visible
forms, looks down upon us in marble and in color, makes itself heard by
us in word and in melody, allows us to be conscious and to feel sure
that our fractional, half-expressed being has fullness and completion.
"These are the images, these are the deeds of genius, wrought in
consecrated moments.
"Art does not console sorrow, it does not heal directly, but it brings
before the eyes, it sounds in the ear, saying, 'Attend! there is a
life, pure and perfect, that we carry within us. Art is an image of
strength, of joy, of content, of courage; it does not reach out its
hand to us, it simply enables us to compose ourselves in the knowledge,
in the consciousness, in the perception of an existence reposing in
itself outside of us; this we comprehend.'"
Eric interrupted himself, saying:--
"Here the remark is made: 'I knew a woman once, who would neither make
nor listen to music during her period of mourning, showing what art was
to her.'"
A pause followed.
Eric continued his reading:--
"In the hours of deepest tribulation I have found consolation, peace,
restoration, solely in wandering among ancient works of art; others may
derive the same benefit from music that I have from viewing these forms
of antiquity. It was not the thought of the grand world which had here
become bronze and marble; it was not the remembrance of the soul
speaking out of these forms that held me fast, but something far
different from either. Behold here, they seemed to say to me, a
blissful repose, which has nothing in common with thee, and yet is with
thee. A breath of the Eternal was wafted over me, a peaceful rest
flowed into my troubled heart, filled my gaze, and calmed my emotions.
In listening to music I could always dwell dreamily upon my own life
and thought, but never here.
"If I were only able to unfold whither this led me, how I wandered in
the infinite, and then how I went abroad into the tumultuous whirl of
life, feeling that I was attended by these steadfast, peaceful, godlike
forms; that I was----"
Eric broke off abruptly.
Manna begged:--
"Do read on."
"There is nothing further. My beloved father, alas! left only fragments
behind him."
"This is no fragment, it is complete and perfect. No man could say or
write anything further," said Manna; "nothing else is needed but to
allow it to have its inward work. Ah, I have one request--give me the
sheet."
Eric looked towards his mother, who said that she had never yet parted
with a single line of her husband's.
"But you, my child," she said, "you shall have it. Eric shall copy it
for us so that we may not lose it."
She gave the manuscript to Manna, who pressed it to her heaving breast.
"Oh, I never imagined," she cried, "that there was such a world in the
world."
Every drop of blood seemed to have retreated from her face; she begged
the Mother to be allowed to go into the house; she would like to be
alone, she was so weary.
The Mother accompanied her. Manna reclined upon the sofa, and the
curtains were drawn; she fell asleep with the manuscript in her hand.
The Mother and Eric sat together, and Eric determined to make use of
this first opportunity, when there was no immediate duty binding him,
to publish the incomplete and fragmentary writings left by his father,
as there would be found many to make them into a whole within their own
souls.
He now felt all at once free and full of life; now there was something
for him to do; and he could fulfil at the same time a pious, filial
duty, and his duty as a man. He could make essential additions from his
own knowledge, and from his father's verbal statements.
He went back to the library, and was deeply engaged in the writings,
when Manna entered.
"You here?" she said. "I wanted to take one look at the outside of all
the books on which your father's eye has rested. I must now go home,
but I have to day received a great deal more than I can tell."
"May I accompany you?"
Manna assented.
They went together across the meadow to the Villa.
CHAPTER XV.
EVERYTHING IN FLAMES.
With lingering step they walked by each other's side, Manna often
looking aside to survey the landscape, and yet conscious all the time
that Eric was observing her. And then Eric would turn away, still
feeling that her eye rested upon him.
"You are happy in possessing the thoughts of such a father," said
Manna, feelingly.
Eric could make no reply, for the feeling oppressed him, how the poor
rich child would be overwhelmed, if she knew what he did concerning her
own father; he had no conception that Manna's words were wrung out by
this very tribulation.
"I cannot become the heir of my father's thoughts," he said, after an
interval. "Each child must live out his own life."
They continued to walk side by side, and it seemed to them, at every
step, that they must stop and hold each other in a loving embrace.
"Roland and my father are now on their way home," said Manna.
"And Herr von Pranken also," Eric was about to add, but refrained from
doing it.
Manna perhaps felt that he might think strangely of her omitting to
mention Pranken's name, and she asked:--
"Were not you and Baron von Pranken formerly intimate friends?"
"We were comrades, never friends."
They were silent again; there were so many things to be spoken of,
crowding upon both of them, that they did not seem to know where to
begin.
The evening bell tolled, and Manna saw that Eric did not remove his
hat. She trembled. Every thing stood as an obstacle between them; even
the Church separated them from each other.
Manna wore around her waist, beneath her clothes, a small hempen cord
that a nun had given her as a perpetual reminder of her promise to
assume in public the hempen girdle. It seemed to her now as if the
hidden cord were suddenly tightened, and then it appeared to have
become loosened. With her left hand she grasped tightly a tree by the
road-side, and breathed heavily.
"What is the matter?" asked Eric.
"Oh, nothing, and every thing. I thank you for remaining with us. Look
there--there above--high over the castle-tower, two falcons are flying.
Ah, if one could thus mount aloft, and leave behind and forget all that
is beneath! What was life to me? A labor, a labor upon our shroud. I
wanted to live above the world and do penance, to implore heaven's
grace in another's behalf--in behalf of another! Ah, I can do it no
longer--no longer."
She passed her hand over her forehead, and what she said she knew not.
She continued walking, and yet she felt as if she would like to remain
in the same spot.
A woman, who was mowing the third crop of grass in the meadow, called
out to Manna, saying that her father had got well, and would help take
in the hay to-morrow.
"I wish I was yonder mower," Manna exclaimed.
"Forgive me," answered Eric, "if I cannot help expressing my surprise
at your uttering a wish like that."
"I, like that? Why should I not?"
"You have to-day shown such clearness of thought, that I cannot
comprehend your giving utterance to an expression so common on the lips
of thousands. What does it mean, when one says, 'I would like to be
somebody else'? If you were some one else, you would still not be a
different person; and if you retain the consciousness you had before,
you would not be some one else. To speak in this way is not only
unreasonable, but, as I view it, irreligious."
Manna stopped, and Eric continued,--
"We are what we are, not through our own instrumentality, but through
an eternal ordination for which we have no other name but God. We must
try to reconcile ourselves to what we are, and to be happy in our
condition, whether poorer rich, beautiful or ugly."
"Well, I will never again indulge or utter so irrational a thought,"
replied Manna, extending her hand to Eric. She trembled.
They walked along in silence. It began to be dusk in the shaded paths;
neither of them spoke.
"I see my mother yonder," said Manna, sighing deeply as she stopped.
Did she not want to meet her mother while walking with Eric? She had
often walked with him, and he seemed like a brother; there was no harm
in being alone with him.
"I bid you farewell here," Manna added in a low tone. "What a day this
has been! Has it been only a day?"
"And as this sun now going down," interposed Eric, "will again return,
and be the same in good days and in evil days, so you have a true
friend in me, one whose eye watches over you, and will watch over you
until it shall be closed by death."
"I know it! I know it!" cried Manna. "O God, I'm sure of it!"
She trembled violently.
"I entreat you, go now," she added.
Eric turned away, but looking back, he saw that Manna was kneeling at
the foot of a large fir-tree, while the descending sun shone upon her
countenance, as she stretched her folded hands up towards heaven. Then
she rose up; he hastened to meet her as she came towards him, and they
were enfolded in each other's arms.
"Heaven and earth, do what ye will!" she cried. "Now come what will!"
They held each other in a close embrace, as if they had but one breath,
and were eternally joined in one kiss.
"You are mine! mine! my father, my hope, my world! Oh, Eric, leave me
not again,--never again!"
"I leave you?"
"No, you cannot. Heaven will forgive,--no, will bless. See, Eric!
Everything is on fire, the trees, the grass, the Rhine, the mountains,
the sky, everything is on fire! Ah, Eric, if the whole earth were in
flames, I would hold thee in my arms, and in thine arms would I gladly
die. Take me, kill me, do with me what you will, I can't do otherwise."
"Come, look up. Is it indeed you?" replied Eric. "You know not how I
have struggled. Now you are here, now you are mine! You are, mine, you
call me thine. Oh, call me so once more."
In trembling accents, now beginning and now breaking off again, they
related to each other their struggles with themselves and with the
world around them, and they recognized each other's purity and
truthfulness of soul; and in proportion as Manna had hitherto closed
her heart to Eric, the whole fountain of her love now welled up and
overflowed.
As they stood with hands clasped, Eric said,--
"O Manna, how I wish you could be so happy as to see your own look."
"And you yours. Everyone who sees and knows you must love you. How then
can I help it, who see and know you as nobody else can?"
They kissed each other with closed eyes, and over them the trees
rustled in the gentle breeze of evening.
On that bench where he had once sat with Bella, Eric now sat by Manna's
side, and a thrill passed through him as he thought of that time. He
shrank from the recollection. With love's penetrating glance Manna
noticed the passing emotion, and asked:--
"Have you too had to wrestle and struggle so sorely, before you saw and
acknowledged that it must be?"
"Ah, let us not recall it; care and trouble, conflict and struggle,
will be sure to come. Now is the marriage of our spirits; there must be
no other thought, no discordant tone. We are blessed, twice blessed. I
know that you are mine as I am yours. It must be so."
They embraced; and as she cried, "O, Eric, I. could bear you in my arms
over all the mountains!" He saw subdued in her a wild, lawless,
passionate strength of nature, such as a daughter of Sonnenkamp must
inherit.
No one who had seen the modest, humble, gentle child of the morning
could have believed that she could become so impassioned. Eric felt
himself taken possession of by a stronger power.
"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, as if she read his soul. "You think I am a
passionate child, do you not? You've no idea how untamed I am; but you
shall never see it again, never, rely upon that." She sat by his side,
stroking his hand, and with an arch glance she said:--
"Ah, dear Eric, you don't know what a foolish child I am, and you are
so learned and wise. Now tell me truly without any reserve--you can
tell me what you please, for I am yours now--tell me truly, do you
honestly believe that I am worthy of you? I am so ignorant and
insignificant compared with you!"
"Ignorant and insignificant? You can freely, fearlessly, and without
any qualification, match yourself with any one else in sincere
aspiration, in pure self-devotion, and in disinterested affection. No
one can surpass you here; everything else is of no account. Knowledge,
beauty, wealthy--these do not bring love."
"And I will learn a great deal from you," said Manna, gently caressing
and kissing his hands. "Ah, keep on talking; say what you will; it is
music to me, you cannot think how like music it is to hear you. And do
you know that I have heard you sing too? Twice. Once in the great
festival, and once here on the Rhine."
"And do you know," he replied, "that I saw you in the twilight at the
convent?"
"Yes. You looked at me in this way." She tried to imitate his look.
"And at that time, when we returned from the festival, a dozen of the
pupils were in love with you; but I was afraid of you, and yet I cannot
now imagine it. What will they say in the convent? They will look upon
me as a hypocrite in regard to you, and--oh, Eric, how much I renounce,
but I renounce it willingly. And oh, how rejoiced Roland will be!"
"But your parents?"
"Yes, my parents!" said she. "My parents!" Her voice became fainter,
her countenance turned suddenly pale, and she drew closer to Eric, as
if she were cold. He put his hand upon her head, and played with her
tresses, while she held his other hand closely pressed to her lips. No
words were needed, they could not speak, for each wanted to say to the
other: Do you know what I would say?
"Why do you tremble so, all at once?" asked Manna.
"Ah, I wish you were not rich."
"I wish so too," said she, in a drowsy tone. "Let us be quiet. So--let
me sleep here only half a minute. Oh, how like music is the beating of
your heart!" She reclined her head for a few moments against his
breast, and then said:--
"A hundred years have passed over me, a blissful hundred years. Now I
am strong and fresh and wide-awake; now forget all I have done and
said, all except one thing, that I am yours, and I love you so long as
I breathe, and you are mine."
"You wanted to become a nun, and I--I wanted also to renounce the
world."
"But are you not a Huguenot."
"I did not mean that, my Manna. I wanted to renounce what is called the
world, and be wholly devoted to a life of thought."
"And can you not do that if I am yours?"
"No. But why speak of this now? I am no longer alone, I am myself and
you too!"
"And I too am you as well as myself," repeated Manna. "Now I must go to
my mother," she said, raising herself up; "no one is to know about us,
neither your mother nor mine, no one."
"Shall I see you this evening in the garden?"
"No, it will be better not to see each other until to-morrow; I
cannot--I must first compose myself. Ah, I deny myself. Early to-morrow
morning."
She now untied a blue silk scarf that she wore around her neck, and
placed it about his.
Another kiss, and still another, and they parted.
CHAPTER XVI.
REJOICE in YOUR LIFE.
Eric sat a long time on the bench; night came on, and he saw a light in
his mother's house. He knew that she and his aunt were together, and he
fancied that he heard the tones of a harp, but yet it was too far off
for the sound to roach him. But the tones resounded within him, and the
question darted through his mind: How will Manna bear it when she
learns the terrible secret? And canst thou share in possessions so
acquired? How Sonnenkamp will rave! What will Pranken do? The world
will say, it was nicely contrived; while the father and the betrothed
were absent, he has with his mother's help stolen away the daughter of
the house. Let the world come on! Love conquers everything!
He saw a light in Manna's room, and heard the window shut; he looked
for a long time up to it, and then went to the courtyard and ordered
the groom to saddle a horse.
The groom said there was none there except Herr Sonnenkamp's black
steed.
"Saddle him then."
"I dare not do it. My master allows no one to ride him."
"Do as I order you."
The horse was led out; he opened his large eyes on Eric, distended his
nostrils, and tossed back his mane as he neighed.
"That's well!" exclaimed Eric.
He mounted and rode off at a tearing trot. He felt perfectly safe on
the horse, who seemed to take delight in his free rider.
Where will he go? Far away--away to the world's end. He felt buoyant,
as if the weight of the body were removed, and he could fly away into
the wide, wide world.
He rode now down the mountain to the village where Claus lived. All
that he had experienced on this road, and all that he had thought,
thronged in upon his mind at once, and he even looked to see if Roland
were riding by his side.
Roland! How strange! It struck him as an immeasurably long time since
Roland had left him; it was the recollection of a far-off event, that
he once had instructed a youth on the verge of manhood.
He gazed at the fields, at the vineyards, as if he must ask them: How
is it, how will it be when I call you mine--a bit of the world my own!
Trees, meadows, vine-hills, fields and vineyards danced before his
eyes.
He rode into the village.
Here all was quiet. He drew up at the field-guard's house, he knew not
for what reason. The blackbird was singing alone in the still night,
'Rejoice in your life.' She got no farther on in the tune, and this
melody, so old and yet so good, now accompanied Eric, and chimed in
with the hoof-beats of his swift steed.
From the village he made a bend, and rode up the height where he had
formerly sat with Knopf. He had asked Knopf: What would you do if you
should come into the possession of millions? And now it seemed to him
that a hundred-pound weight lay upon his shoulders. He called out into
the night:--
"No, I shall not become the possessor of millions, no, never!"
Now Weidmann's plans rushed into his mind. Above, on the height yonder,
hundreds of men were living on their own acres, which once they had
never thought of owning, free and happy in the independence secured
through that man.
The horse looked round at his rider, as he exclaimed aloud:--
"That would be the thing? But on property so obtained? No!"
Quietly he rode down the mountain, and came in sight of the villa, and
the glass of the hot-houses, but he turned his horse's head again. Yes,
he must tell one man, one only. He rode to the Major's. Like a wanderer
who sees a distant gleam of light, he was glad at heart when he saw the
light twinkling in the modest house.
The Major, who had heard the clattering of hoofs--and he knew the black
horse's trot--called out of the window:--
"Herr Baron von Lichtenburg, are you here so soon?"
"Up to this time my name has been Eric Dournay," replied the horseman.
He dismounted, tied the horse to the garden-fence, entered the house,
and was welcomed cordially by both of the inmates.
"What's to pay? Is all well?" asked the Major.
Eric relieved the anxiety of the Major, who kept saying:--
"Just see, Fraeulein Milch,--don't be afraid to put on your
spectacles,--just see! our Herr Eric looks like another being. You're
in a fever; how red your lips are!"
Eric could not reply; he could not say that they were still burning
with kisses.
The Major went to a cupboard, and mixing a powder in half a glass of
water, returned to Eric. Putting his hand on Eric's forehead he said,--
"You had better take something." He then shook into it another powder,
so that it effervesced, and Eric had to drink the hissing draught,
without another word. The Major made the sage remark that there was
nothing in the world so good for all sorts of excitement as a Rochelle
powder.
Fraeulein Milch, who saw very plainly that Eric had something to
communicate, was about to leave the room, but he called out,--
"You are to hear it too, you and my friend here. I entrust it to your
true hearts. I am betrothed."
"To Manna?" said Fraeulein Milch.
Eric looked amazed, and the Major cried:--
"God be thanked that she lives in our days; in the past dark ages they
would have burnt her for a witch. She knows everything, and sees into
the future; nobody could ever believe it. But here you have it. As we
were sitting together, she said: This very evening Eric and Manna have
been betrothed. And when I laughed, she said: Don't laugh, I'll go for
a bottle of wine. Look, comrade, there it stands; and she said: They
will come here this very evening together. Well, she isn't yet an
infallible prophetess, for you've come alone, comrade. Come here, let
me kiss you, my heart's brother."
He gave him a hearty kiss, and went on:--
"You have no father, and I,--I'll go with you to the altar when you're
married. Give me your hand. And people say, there are no miracles in
these days! Every single day there's a miracle wrought, just exactly as
much as in the good old times; only we know how to explain it to-day,
and in old times they didn't understand it."
Fraeulein Milch had uncorked the bottle and filled the glasses.
"Drink with me, my son!" cried the Major. "Drink! real Johannisberg."
They touched glasses, and the Major, emptying his, kissed Eric again,
and then said,--
"Whew! You've learned to kiss. Give one to Fraeulein Milch, too,--you've
my permission. Fraeulein Milch, no flinching! Come here--there--give her
a kiss. She's a friend,--you've not a better in the world except your
mother,--and you'll find out she's more than the whole world knows; you
deserve to."
"I beg, Herr Major," Fraeulein Milch interrupted with trepidation.
"Very well," said the Major, in a soothing tone, "I'll say nothing
more. But now a kiss."
Eric and Fraeulein Milch kissed each other, the Fraeulein's face turning
red as fire.
They now engaged in a friendly talk together, the Major taking special
delight that Pranken would not get the magnificent girl and her
millions; but his chief satisfaction arose from the convent's being
circumvented.
As Eric returned home, late at night, he heard the blackbird still
singing: Rejoice in your life!
There was no light in Manna's chamber, but Manna was standing at the
window.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SERPENT IN EDEN.
As Manna stood at the window, looking out into the darkness, she laid
her burning bands upon the window-sill, uttering brief exclamations to
herself of hope and desolation, of rejoicing and complaint. Only the
stars saw her face with its changing expression of rapture and of
agony, and her kisses were given to the empty air. She looked up to the
well-known stars, and all their glittering host seemed but the
reflection of Eric's beaming eyes.
"Why am I alone? Why should I ever be alone again for an instant?" she
asked of the night.
A feeling of utter loneliness came over her. She thought of the nun
whom she had seen the day before at the station, who looked neither to
the right or to the left, going from convent to convent, and from one
sick-bed to another, and who wanted nothing that the world could give.
How would it be if a voice should now say to her; Thou art mine; turn
thy gaze, put off that disfiguring disguise; look around; let others
look at thee and greet thee with smiles; hope, despair, be joyous, be
sad, be not forgetful of all else in subjection to one fond, painful
idea!
It seemed to Manna as if she were standing upon the verge of a dizzy
precipice, now about to be dashed over it, and now drawn back; she
looked round, for she felt as if Eric's arm were actually about her,
and lifting her up into the world. Into the world! What a world! She
passed her hand over her face, and the hand seemed no longer to be
hers. Turning back into the room, she threw herself on her knees.
"Woe is me! I love!" she cried. "No; I thank thee, O God, that thou
hast laid this trial upon me. This trial? no, I cannot help it! Thou,
Thou who art Love itself, whom a thousand lips name, and whom yet none
can comprehend, forgive and help me, help him, and help us all! May I
live in him and in all that is holy and great, all that is beautiful
and pure! Here I lie, slay me--slay me, if it is a sin! Heimchen, thou,
my sister, a part of my own soul, thou didst flutter a moment in the
air, like a blossom fallen from the tree. I, I must, amidst storm and
tempest, remain upon the tree of life. O, let the fruit of good deeds
ripen in me, O Thou to whom I pray, and whom he reveres, though he
prays not, he whose thought is prayer, whose action is prayer, and
whose whole life is prayer."
She rose up and stood again at the window, gazing long, in a reverie,
up at the starry sky. Out into the night flew something from Manna's
window and was caught in the branches of a tree; it was the girdle
which she had taken off.
As Eric was sitting alone in his room, he heard a gentle rustling, and
was startled as if he had seen a ghost. What is that? He opened the
door, and Manna stood before him. They silently embraced, and Manna
said:--
"I come to you; I am always with you in my thoughts,--in everything.
Oh, Eric! I am so happy, and so miserably wretched. My father--do you
know it?"
"I know everything."
"You know, and still love me?"
She kneeled down and embraced his feet. He raised her, and seating
himself by her side, they talked together of the dreadful secret.
"Tell me," she asked, "how you have borne it?"
"Ask rather, how Roland will bear it!"
"Do you think he will hear of it?"
"Certainly, who knows how soon the world----"
"The world! the world!" exclaimed Manna. "No, no; the world is good,
the world is beautiful. Oh, thanks to the Unsearchable for giving to me
my Eric, my world, my whole world!"
Calmly, clearly, and with wonderful insight. Manna apprehended
everything; but in the very midst of the recital, she suddenly threw
herself upon Eric's breast, and sobbed forth:--
"Oh! why must I have this knowledge so young, so early; why must I
experience and overcome all this?"
After Eric had calmed and soothed her, she went away.
An eye had watched, an eye had seen. But they knew not that an eye had
watched and an eye had seen.
In an eye had the morning, on awakening, Manna cried, "I am beloved!
his beloved! Is he awake yet, I wonder?"
She opened the window. A young starling, that was now, even in the
autumn, building its nest, found the thin hempen cord on the tree
before Manna's window, snapped it up in its bill, and flew away to
weave it into the nest. Eric was below in the garden, and Manna called
to him:--
"I'll be down immediately." And in the early dawn they embraced and
kissed each other, and spoke words of encouragement to one another,
needed for what must be borne to-day, for to-day her father and Pranken
were expected to return.
They went towards the green cottage hand in hand, sat down where they
had sat with the Mother on the previous day, and waited for her waking.
In the midst of all the joy and all the suffering of a secret love,
encompassed by perils, they wanted to learn what had taken glace at the
capital. They could not anticipate what had really occurred.
Eric let Manna return alone. He told her that he had been at the
Major's the evening before, and he, wanted to go again, in order to
request him and Fraeulein Milch to keep the matter a profound secret.
As Eric was going along the road, a carriage came up; his name was
called, and Bella got put.
"I am rejoiced to meet you alone. Do you know that we never see each
other alone in these days? But to-day I shall not be with you. Clodwig
sends his greeting, and an earnest request that you will visit him at
Wolfsgarten. He is lonely and you are lonely, and it will be pleasant
for you to pass with him these first days of separation, and to stay
with us until you have got somewhat reconciled to the absence of your
dear pupil. Clodwig has grand projects in your behalf. You can go back
at once in our carriage to Wolfsgarten, and I shall be here with my
sister-in-law until matters are arranged. Where is the dear child?"
Eric escorted Bella to the villa, but he could not utter a word.
Fortunately, Fraeulein Perini came up, and he could hand Bella over to
her. He hastened to Manna and informed her in a few hasty words that
Bella had arrived. She looked up, half roguishly, half pitifully, and
asked:--
"Is it true that you once loved her?"
"Yes and no. Are you jealous?"
"No, for I know that you have never loved, never; you can never have
loved any one but me. Come, Eric, let us now go up to her, hand in
hand, and acknowledge at once what we are to each other, and also
before the world. Let us have no single moment of deception or
concealment. I have the courage to confess all, and I am happy to have
it to confess. Regard to the world must not deprive us of a moment, of
one single moment, in which we can see each other, freely take each
other's hand, and appear before the world, as we are in reality, one."
Eric had great difficulty in bringing Manna to use foresight and
prudence; he desired her, as the first token of their relation as
husband and wife, to conform to his will.
Manna wept, and said peevishly:--
"Very well; I will obey you, but I'll see no one."
Eric tried every means to induce her to see Bella, but she refused,
saying:--
"Can you, the pure, the good, allow me to be so debased for an hour?
How am I to endure it, how am I to conduct myself, if she salutes me as
her sister-in-law?"
Eric told her that Bella wanted him to go at once to Wolfsgarten, in
order to spend with Clodwig these few days in which he was unsettled.
And when he pointed out the abnormal position of a dependant, Manna
tenderly stroked his face, saying:--
"You good man, you have to serve; yes, I know now what this is for you,
the pure, lofty soul, whom all ought to serve. Ah, how much have you,
dear heart, been obliged to bear! But it is well, for otherwise we
should not have become acquainted with one another. Come, I shall be
able to do it. I will make myself do it."
She went to receive Bella, and she had self-control enough to do it in
an unexceptionable manner.
Eric soon went away, and Bella was amazed to see the glance with which
Manna followed him. Manna was desperate, talking much and in an
unusually lively way, so that Bella was puzzled afresh.
The Major was now announced; he came to congratulate Manna, and he did
it in his cordial and clumsy way.
"Do favor us with congratulations this evening, Herr Major, after my
brother has returned."
Manna turned away.
Bella had seen enough; it suddenly flashed across her: She loves Eric.
But no, that cannot be! She offered to embrace and kiss Manna, but
Manna begged her, with tears, to leave her in quiet to-day.
Bella stood up erect and looked at Manna; it was the Medusa-look, but
Manna bore it quietly. Without another word Bella strode out of the
house, and left the villa. What she thought, what she meditated, who
can tell? She herself did not know, and no one at the villa was at all
anxious about it.
After Bella had gone, the Major stepped up to Manna, who was standing
motionless, and said:--
"You have done bravely, child--you've stood fire well--that's good! You
shall have a backer in me, and in Fraeulein Milch too; and if they
bother you here in the house, you'll come to us; be easy, you're not
all alone in the world. You'll ask her pardon, you'll find out--don't
speak--you've a backer in me--and she told me to come here, she'd go to
the Professorin; she knows where there's need. I only wish when you've
been nine and forty years together you may be to one another what we
are--you'll know--you'll have your eyes opened. Very well! Some people
can hold out bravely, she's done so. Very well--I haven't blabbed any
thing,--have I blabbed?"
Manna smiled amidst her tears at the odd, incomprehensible, and yet
affectionate speech of the good Major.
Whilst Manna and the Major were standing together, Bella went through
the park.
Hate, deadly hate was excited within her, and her eye seemed to be
seeking something on which to vent her rage. What can I destroy here?
what can I do to make people angry? Here are pyramids of flowers--if I
should throw them all in a heap, if I should nip off the choice
plants?--that would be childish! She looked round for something in
vain.
She had forced herself to appear friendly, but the constraint was
evident. She especially hated Eric and his mother; there was a
different tone all through the neighborhood, and she had nothing to do
with it; these people had given it. Who are they? sermonizing
pedagogues,--nothing but eternal second-hand traders in sublime
thoughts! And she, Bella, the brilliant, the admired, who could once
confer happiness by a single word, she stood in the background! But
they must be off, these parasites, and they should be made to feel who
they are, and they should know who has found them out, who has
demolished them!
She thought about Eric, about the Mother, about the Aunt, as if looking
everywhere for some hook by which to grapple them and dash them to
pieces.
She went restlessly to and fro several times between the villa and the
green cottage, and at last went into the Professorin's. Here she met
Fraeulein Milch.
Stop! this is just the person! she shall be the hammer to hit the
others.
When Bella entered, Fraeulein Milch got up, bowed very politely, and was
about to go.
"Do remain," urged the Professorin. "You are already acquainted with
the Countess Wolfsgarten?"
"I have the honor."
Bella looked at the modest person whom she was desiring to demolish,
and then said:--
"Ah, yes, I recollect. The Major's housekeeper, if I do not mistake?"
"Fraeulein Milch is my friend," interposed the Professorin.
"Your friend? I was not aware of that. You are very kind."
"Fraeulein Milch is my friend, and is my noble assistant in the work of
charity."
"Ah, yes, you peddle out the money of Herr Sonnenkamp."
It was uncertain whether this was addressed to both the ladies present,
or solely to Fraeulein Milch.
Bella saw how the Professorin's face quivered, and she felt greatly
encouraged. Now she had found out the point to begin at. This
Professorin had inflicted a wound upon her by means of her son--no, not
that, but she had wounded her personally, she had assumed a first part
that did not belong to her.
And Bella continued:--
"This wasteful expenditure on the abandoned, on notorious tipplers,
will shortly cease."
The Professorin now requested Fraeulein Milch to leave her; she had
never kissed her yet, but to-day she embraced her affectionately and
gave her a kiss. She wanted to calm her wounded feelings, to make her
some amends, and show the countess how highly she esteemed the person
she had so rudely attacked, who appeared so defenceless, or who did not
choose to defend herself. After Fraeulein Milch had gone, Bella said,--
"I cannot conceive how you can be so intimate with this person; you
dishonor thereby all who stand in relations of friendship with you."
"I think that any one whom I esteem, and whom I unite to myself in
friendship, is placed by this fact in a position of respect, and I have
a right to expect that every one will show it."
"Of course, of course, so long as you are here. But if you leave the
vicinity before long----"
"Leave the vicinity?"
"The work here is now accomplished, and--"
The Professorin had to sit down. Bella's eyes flashed; she had attained
what she wished; she had torn off all the tinsel from these people, who
were forever making a parade of spirituality, and decking themselves
out with sublime ideas, and now here they were naked and helpless.
In a very courteous tone she said,--
"Oh, I assure you, I should be very sorry to anticipate Herr
Sonnenkamp's dismissal."
The calm bearing which the Professorin had been accustomed to maintain
in all extremities, now failed her for the first time. She had had an
extensive observation of life, but never had she seen this, had never
regarded it as even possible that there should be such a thing as pure
malice, which has no other motive than to be malicious, and derives its
joy from the suffering of others. In the feeling that this additional
experience must now be hers, and in the endeavour to settle this in her
thought and give it lodgment as an actual and accepted truth, she lost
all ability to make any resistance.
She cast up a glance at Bella that ought to have overcome her, but
Bella was resolved not to give way a single hair's breadth; she must
have something to rend in pieces, and as Eric could not be got at, his
mother must answer instead. She continued talking for a long time,
using very polite phrases, but the Professorin hardly listened, and
scarcely noticed when she took her leave.
Bella rushed triumphantly back to the villa across the meadow-path, got
into the carriage, which was standing ready in the yard, and returned
to Wolfsgarten.
Her passion for destruction was sated, and she felt relieved, and in
good spirits.
BOOK XII.
CHAPTER I.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE EXECUTION.
On the journey to the capital, Sonnenkamp and Pranken were astonished
at Roland's fluency and mental activity; he was the only one who
expressed himself freely, for both Sonnenkamp and Pranken could not
entirely repress a feeling of anxiety. They appeared to be so
confidential and open with each other, and yet Sonnenkamp was
continually asking himself: Do you know it? and Pranken, on the other
hand: Do you know that I know it?
But neither of them spoke out. How were they to do it? Pranken wanted,
when the revelation took place, to appear as the innocent, the
ignorant, the deluded individual; he had been imposed upon, he as well
as the rest of the world, and more than all, the Prince himself. The
Prince had conferred the title of nobility--how was Pranken to do
otherwise than confide in the man!
Sonnenkamp on the contrary was undecided, and he was glad that Pranken
was determining everything; it was no longer a question of will, all
was settled and must proceed.
He looked through the coach-door every now and then, and put out his
hand, as if he were going to lay hold of the handle, spring out and
flee. What a bold game it was he was trying his hand at! He was angry
with himself that, close upon the last critical moment, he allowed a
feeling of apprehension to come over him. He could not help declaring
to Pranken that he felt very much excited. Pranken thought this quite
natural, for elevation to the nobility is no small affair. And now, in
the conversation that took place, Sonnenkamp discovered the cause of
his timidity. Those Huguenots, mother, aunt, and son, with their
double-distilled transcendental notions, had brought around him an
element of weakness; it would be as well to throw them aside, politely,
of course, but they must go their way, like instruments that have done
their work, like paid-off workmen.
In this thought of casting something from him, there was a sense of
power which restored him to himself once more.
It was not merely allowing others to act for him, he was an active
agent himself; he let the puppets dance, for all men are puppets to him
who knows how to govern them. He looked smilingly over at Pranken; this
man, too, was his puppet now. He began to whistle merrily but
inaudibly.
It was late in the evening when they reached the capital. Roland went
to bed directly. Pranken took his leave, saying that he had to make a
necessary call.
"Don't forget that you are a bridegroom," Sonnenkamp cried out after
him with a laugh.
For the first time in his life was Pranken troubled by such a jest; it
hurt him because it came from Manna's father, and because he was really
going on an errand very serious and moral in its nature and object; he
was going to the house of the Dean of the cathedral.
The house was in the garden behind the cathedral, hidden from the whole
world, and amidst a quiet that was never broken by the bustle of the
capital.
Pranken rang, a servant opened the door, and Pranken was not a little
astonished at hearing himself instantly called by name. The servant was
the soldier whom he had employed for some little time as an attendant.
He received Pranken's commission to inform him personally the next
morning, at the Victoria Hotel, whether the Dean could receive him
alone at eleven o'clock.
Pranken turned away, and he smiled, when, still thinking of his
father-in-law's admonition, he stopped before a certain house. He knew
it well, the pretty, quiet house that he himself had once furnished,
the carpeted stairs, the banisters with their stuffed velvet, and
everything so cosy, the bell up-stairs with its single note, the cool
ante-chamber full of green plants, the parlor so cheerful, the carpets,
and the furniture of the same pattern of silk throughout, a green
ground and yellow garland. Pranken liked the national colors even here.
In the corner stands an alabaster angel holding in its hand a fresh
bunch of flowers every day. Many a time too, the angel has to bear a
woman's jaunty hat, and many a time too a man's hat. And then the
door-curtains. Who is laughing behind them? No, he passes on.
He stopped at a shop window with large panes of glass; when going to
that cosy little house, he had always brought with him from this shop
some trifle, some comical little thing--there are many new things of
that kind in it now; he enters and purchases the very latest.
The young salesman looks at him inquiringly, Pranken nods and says:--
"You can show me everything."
And then the hidden treasures of the establishment are shown to him; he
does not take anything, however, but says that he will make a purchase
some other time, and goes off with his trifle.
No, it is only for a jest, for a farewell. He wishes simply to ask
little Nelly what people are saying of him; he is vexed at his being
troubled about the matter, and still he is tempted to make the inquiry.
He is not aware that he has rung--he goes up-stairs--he feels for the
key in his pocket--he has quite forgotten that he hasn't one any more.
The door is opened, the maid looks at him with astonishment. Nobody is
in. A lamp of pale red glass is burning in the balcony room; the little
alabaster statue is smiling; Pranken has another lamp brought to him;
he will wait. He looks through the rooms, he recognizes the chairs, the
sofas, everything is still as he had arranged it.
A perfume strange to him pervades the room; it must be the fashion
now,--one always falls a little behind the times in the country.
The clock of the cathedral strikes, the theatre performances must be
over. On the table lie photograph albums; Pranken looks through them,
he searches for his own picture; it is no longer there, but there are
other faces that he does not know. He shuts the albums.
There is a book lying on the table, too; flowers culled from the German
poets "for women by a woman's hand." Pranken begins to read it. They
are strange beings, these poets! He stands up by the fireplace, glowing
coals are sparkling in it; but really there was no fire-place, and no
glowing coals; for they never burned, but were always piled up in that
way; fire-place and coals were only an elegant ornament of the room.
The cathedral clock strikes again; still no one comes. At length
Pranken takes out his card, and leaves it on the bouquet which the
alabaster statue holds in its hand; he leaves the place. It is better
so. You have acted bravely, as you meant to do--of course.
He smiled at his virtue.
Pah! He would have to laugh and give a little play to his exuberance of
spirit again one of these days; this everlasting morality begins to be
tiresome. But Manna----
All at once Pranken felt a pang shoot through his heart, as if he had
inflicted a wound on Manna.
He shook his head, and laughed outright at the childishness into which
he had fallen. And still he could not shake off an impression, that at
that hour something was happening to Manna; he knew not what it was,
but the feeling possessed him.
He went on hurriedly.
The military club house was still brilliantly lighted, but Pranken
passed it by too. He turned back to the hotel. With great satisfaction
he retired to rest without having again seen Sonnenkamp. He wanted to
read a little while in the little book that was quite filled with a
piny odor from the twig which lay in it; the twig was bare, but the
falling leaves were preserved like a relic. But he could not endure the
words of the book, he felt a certain awe of it to-night.
While Pranken was out in the town, Sonnenkamp grew discontented at
being alone. He wanted to be with new people, live men, who could
divert his thoughts. He sent for the Cabinetsrath.
The latter came soon, and Sonnenkamp sat down well pleased by his side,
and asked what it meant that the Prince had not sent his patent, but
chose to give it to him in person.
With much freedom and sarcasm, the Cabinetsrath ironically expressed
his admiration of his gracious master, and described his character. He
said that no one could really understand a ruler who wished to rule
without advice, particularly in the exercise of that prerogative which
had been allowed to remain in his hands without the interference of the
Chamber of Deputies,--the conferring of orders and of nobility.
Sonnenkamp heard with astonishment how the Prince designated everything
as "mine"; my manufacturers, my university, my freemason lodge, my
agriculturalists, my Chamber of Deputies. The Prince had the best will
in the world, but he lived in continual fear of the democrats,
communists and liberals, whom he classed together; he was convinced,
that every one who did not coincide with the government was a walking
barricade from behind which shots might be fired at any moment. He
would like to have everything go well with all men, and he had a very
fine sentiment which a chamberlain had once composed for him, and which
he brought out in moments of elevated feeling. If I knew that all men
would be bettered by it, I would renounce the throne and do away with
the civil-list. But as he was sure that all men would not be bettered
by it, he could remain as he was, in quiet possession of both. He had
two hobbies, the theatre and the welfare of the capital. He liked to
have very wealthy people attracted to the capital, so that a good deal
of money might be made out of them. And he had done a great thing, he
had modified essentially the strict rules of ceremony; strangers who
formerly were, without exception, debarred of the privilege of
appearing at court, had access to it now, if they only spent a good
deal of money in the city and were presented by their ambassadors. The
Prince does this out of a pure desire for the welfare of his people,
for he called all the inhabitants of the capital "my people," even the
unyielding democrats contained in it; they had unpleasant
peculiarities, it is true; but they were still "my people."
The Prince took a special interest in Sonnenkamp, because he had been
told that the latter was intending to build a large palace for his
winter-residence in the capital in such a situation that it would be an
ornament to the castle park, having it front on an avenue which at
present led into a new part of the city. The Prince flattered himself
that this would be of great benefit to his people.
The Cabinetsrath related, besides, that Sonnenkamp's affair had taken a
particularly decisive turn in consequence of Clodwig's having, in the
expression of his opinion, said that, aside from the injudiciousness of
creating a new nobility, it appeared doubtful to him whether German
sovereigns individually possessed the right to do it. The Prince was
beside himself at this remark of the old diplomat, whom he had always
regarded as a concealed democrat; and so, partly in consequence of
Clodwig's boldness, Sonnenkamp's affair was decided hastily and without
further ado.
Sonnenkamp heard all this with delight, and the Cabinetsrath cautioned
him expressly to remember that the Prince was really very modest, and
not merely modest in words; he liked to say that he was not a man of
genius, and it was very hard to find the best bearing to use towards
him. The Prince was offended by the flattery, if any one praised him
and combated his opinion of himself, and still it would not do to
support him in his modesty. Sonnenkamp was advised to say as little as
possible; he might exaggerate the apprehension he really felt: timidity
would find favor with their gracious master, who was always secretly
pleased at inspiring awe.