Villa Eden Part 101

"My second point is only a repet.i.tion of the first. I remember your father's saying once, that the first and only true support, or rather the very foundation of education, must be:--'Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; straight forward without comment, without explanation, without ill.u.s.tration.' Now ask yourself whether you are not weakening his character. When our Roland is brought into a conflict, I don't know whether knowledge will help him, rather than the ancient command: 'Thou shalt and thou shalt not.' I only say this to you that you may think it over; others may praise you, I must warn you. I can say, though, that you have attained one important point; the boy has a holy reverence for the spirit of the Past."

Eric grasped his mother's hand, and walked on sometime in silence. Then he explained to her how he wished to give Roland not only knowledge, but a firm foundation of self-reliance, on which his life might rest.

"My son," replied his mother, "you have set yourself a difficult task; you want to accomplish a three-fold work at once; that is not possible.

Listen to me patiently. You want to complete and perfect a neglected education; you want to lead to higher aims, gaining at the same time a moral foothold and moral elevation, without using the means handed down to you; and, finally, you want to train a youth, who knows his own wealth, to be a useful, unselfish, even self-sacrificing man. Now why do you laugh, pray? I will stop, though I might add, that you want to make a boy without a family affectionate, and a boy without a country patriotic. Now tell me why you laugh."

"Forgive me, mother; there's reason in your being called Professorin; you have discoursed like a Professor from his desk. But let me tell you that the two-fold or the five-fold task is only a simple one in the end. I confess I have often said to myself that I might make it easier, but then I would ask myself whether this was not an attempt to excuse my own desire of comfort. I must make the experiment of placing a youth upon the platform of acting freely from----"

"Reason?" responded the mother. "Reason may give composure, but not happiness nor blessedness; reason may not be the nourishment which suits the young spirit. Remember, my son, that meat is good food, but we do not feed a new-born child on meat instead of milk. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes; you mean that religion is the mother's milk of the spirit."

"Exactly," said the Mother, in triumph. "Your father always said that no man had ever produced any great work, or accomplished any great deed, who did not believe in G.o.d; G.o.d is the highest object of imaginative thought. So long as philosophy cannot show a moral law which can be written, concisely and with perfect clearness, upon two tables of stone, education must make its progress through religion."

"Mother," answered Eric, "we believe in G.o.d more truly than those who would confine him within the limits of a book, of a church, or of a special form of worship."

"Ah," said his mother, "let us drop the subject. Do you see that b.u.t.terfly, flitting in great circles against the window pane? The b.u.t.terfly takes the gla.s.s, from its transparency, to be the open air, and thinks that he can pa.s.s through it, but dashes his head at last against the gla.s.s wall that seemed to be nothing but air. But enough, I am not strong enough for you. If your father still lived, he could help you as no one else can."

The conversation, now turning on the father's death, wandered away from the previous subject.

CHAPTER XI.

AN EXTRAORDINARY SCHOOL-COMMITTEE.

Frau Ceres was jealous because the Professorin devoted less time to her, and surprised them by suddenly expressing the desire to be present at the lessons, saying that she had more need of instruction than the rest. And Sonnenkamp also betook himself to Roland's room. He could never be idle, and so, when he did not smoke, he had the habit of whittling all sorts of figures out of a small piece of wood; and he was especially fond of cutting into grotesque shapes fragments of grape-vine roots. This was the only way he could sit and listen.

Eric saw that his instruction was interfered with by this heterogeneous a.s.semblage. The Mother understood his disquiet, without a word being said, and staid away from the lessons. Frau Ceres and Herr Sonnenkamp soon did the same.

While Eric was enabled to banish, by a strict fulfilment of his duties, every trace of the disturbing element introduced by Bella, the Mother was full of restlessness. She had attained what had been the object of her strongest wishes, access to a large garden of plants and unlimited sway therein, and yet she was not quite content.

One morning, as she was walking early in the park with her son, she said:--

"I have discovered something new in myself: I have no talent for being a guest."

Eric interposed no questions, for he knew that she would reach the goal, even if she took a roundabout way. The Mother continued:--

"I have the feeling that I must bring something to pa.s.s; I cannot be forever a pa.s.sive recipient; and here is the special danger of riches.

The rich look upon themselves as guests in this world; they themselves have nothing to do, and others must do everything for them. I tell thee; my dear son, that I cannot stand it, I must do something. You men, you can work, create, influence, and renew your life by what you do, while we women can only recreate and restore our life by loving."

Eric suggested that she accomplished her part by simply being, but the Mother very energetically responded:--

"I am always vexed with Schiller for this: he should not have said, it isn't like him to write, 'Ordinary natures pay with what they do; n.o.ble ones with what they are.' That sounds like a carte blanche for all do-nothings, with or without coronets upon their seals."

Eric held up to her the satisfaction arising from her influence upon Frau Ceres; but the Mother shook her head without any remark.

She had placed great hopes in that, but such an enigmatical and incomprehensible person was presented to her view, that she seemed to herself wholly useless. She would not acknowledge to her son that the house had something oppressive to her; that the family had all its glory and pride in external possessions, so that everything here appeared external, directed by alien hands, and altogether dest.i.tute of any strength developed from within.

Fraulein Perini spoke always of Frau Ceres as "the dear sufferer." From what was Frau Ceres suffering?

The Professorin had once lightly touched upon the thought how greatly Frau Ceres must miss her daughter; when, with eyes sparkling like those of a snake as it suddenly darts up its head, she sent Fraulein Perini, who was at hand, into the garden; she then said to the Professorin, looking timidly round:--

"He is not to blame; I, only I. I wished to punish him when I said that to my child; but I did not mean she should go away."

The Professorin begged that she would confide the whole to her, but Frau Ceres laughed like a person wholly beside herself.

"No, no, I shall not say it again, and certainly not to you."

The distress which the Professorin had experienced at the first interview with Frau Ceres was felt anew. She believed now that she knew the suffering of the dark-eyed woman, who, sometimes listless, and sometimes restless as a lizard, was troubled by a thought which she could not reveal, and could not wholly keep back.

Like a child to whom a story is told, she was urged by Frau Ceres to tell her over and over again about the court fetes, which alone seemed to awaken any interest. Frau Ceres was delighted to hear the same things repeated.

But the mother took care to show that a princess has a special employment for every hour, and that a regular performance of duty was of great importance. She spoke earnestly, and came back often to the consideration, that a woman like Frau Ceres, born in a Republic, could have not the remotest conception of all this, and that it was like being suddenly removed into another century.

"I understand everything that you and your son say," Frau Ceres stated, "but what other people say, except the Major, I hear it indeed, but I don't know where I am. Just think, I was afraid of you at first."

"Of me? No one was ever afraid of me before."

"I will tell you about it some other time. Ah, I am sick, I am always sick."

The Mother did not succeed in arousing Frau Ceres out of her life of mere alternate sleeping and waking.

Sonnenkamp met the Mother with demonstrations of deepest respect, and seemed to practise upon her his airs and att.i.tudes of genteel behavior.

He delicately hinted that he had faithfully kept the agreement, and had never asked her what his wife said and desired; and now he would only beg to be permitted to make one inquiry, whether Frau Ceres had never spoken of Manna.

"Certainly, but very briefly."

"And may I not be allowed to know what this brief communication was?"

"I don't know myself; it is still a riddle. But, I beseech you, do not lead me to disloyalty and breach of trust."

"Breach of trust." cried Sonnenkamp with trembling lips.

"Ah, it was not the right word. Your wife has confided nothing to me, but I believe,--I pray you not to mistake me,--I suspect, she is secretly afraid of Fraulein Perini, or is vexed or angry with her. As I said before, I am very far from meaning to blame Fraulein Perini, and I almost repent of having said as much as I have."

"You can be at rest on that point. My wife would like to send Fraulein Perini out of the house ten times every day, and ten times every day to call her back again. There is no person, not even yourself, who is more needful to her and more useful than Fraulein Perini." The Professorin longed to be out of the house, and she could find no adequate reason for the deep hold which the desire had taken upon her. She had no desire to be made the depositary of secrets, nor to solve riddles, and yet she was incessantly occupied with the thought of the daughter of the house. A child, a grownup girl, whom such a family abandoned, perhaps this maiden was a charge for her; but how it was to be, she could not perceive, and yet the thought would not leave her.

She wanted to question the Major, Clodwig, and Bella; and she would even have liked to have recourse to Pranken, but Pranken had not been visible for several weeks. She got Joseph to show her Manna's room one day; and while there, it seemed to her as if the dear child were calling her, and as if it were her duty to lend her a helping hand.

She wrote a letter to the Superior, informing her that she would pay her a visit at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER XII.