Villa Eden Part 113

"For heaven's sake, drop this talk! It's not good, 'twill only do harm!"

Then he took another look at Sonnenkamp, shrugging up his shoulders.

"What _does_ the man mean," he thought, "by talking to us in this style! We wouldn't put a hair in his path; what's the use of stirring us up in this matter! Oh, Fraulein Milch had the right of it, when she urged him to stay at home to-day.

"How comfortable it would be to be sitting in the arm-chair, in which Laadi is now lying! And one might have been asleep two hours ago, and now it will be midnight before one gets home! And there's Fraulein Milch sitting up, and sitting up, till he comes in. It was like being saved, when he took out his watch, and could say how late it was."

The Professorin came back at this moment, and told Roland that his mother wished to see him. Roland went to her.

Eric accompanied his mother and the rest, as they set out for home through the snowy night.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BIRD OF NIGHT IS SHOT.

Eric walked in silence with the ladies. The Mother spoke first, saying,--

"I am glad that here, again, I have words of your father's to support me. Nothing is more weakening and more to be avoided than repentance,"

he often said; "the acknowledgment that we have made a mistake must come, quick and sharp, but then we must reconcile ourselves to circ.u.mstances. I have deeply repented no matter how much good I may do, that I have bound myself to this family so firmly that any drawing back or loosening of the ties is extremely difficult. But now that it is done, we must endeavor to make everything turn out for the best."

The Aunt, who spoke but little, added how painful it was that people over whose lives hung some dark crime were banished, as it were, from the kingdom of the spirit; and must meet everywhere with terrible reminders.

They went on again for a while in silence. High above, from the mountain crest, they heard the screech-owl, the harbinger of extreme cold, uttering his dreadful cry; which rose and died away with a mingled tone of lamentation and of triumph. The party stood still.

"Ah," said Eric, "what trouble Herr Sonnenkamp has taken to destroy all the owls in the neighborhood; but he cannot do it."

They walked on once more without speaking. Everything seems a sign and a portent to an excited mood. Hardly breathing the words aloud, the mother said that Frau Ceres' emotion was incomprehensible. She had thrown herself on her neck, sobbing and weeping.

"I do not know how to explain it," she continued; "there is some deep mystery here, and it troubles me."

Eric told them of what had pa.s.sed among the men, and how Roland, to his alarm, had spoken of Parker. It was plain that Sonnenkamp wished to erect into a moral system the existing relations of slavery.

"Nothing more natural," answered the Mother. "Whoever stands in such relations all his life long, must make something for himself which he calls moral principle. I cannot help thinking of your father again; he has shown me a thousand times how people cannot bear to confess to themselves that their life and actions are bad; they feel obliged to prop them up with good principles. Yet, as I said, we must be quiet, we have one good young spirit to be led to n.o.ble ends; that is our part.

Whence it sprang, or through what past life it may have come to us, is not for us to determine. The past is our fate, the present, our duty.

There's another saying of your father's; and now good-night."

With a more composed mind, Eric returned to the villa. The owl had flown from the mountain, and was now perched on the top of a tree in the park, boldly sending forth its cry into the air. Eric heard it, and Sonnenkamp heard it in the ante-room of his wife's chamber. There must he, the father and husband, wait till his son came out, admittance having been refused him while his wife spoke to Roland. At last the boy came out, and his father asked him what his mother had said: he had never done so before, but now he felt obliged to do it.

Roland answered that she had really said almost nothing; she had only kissed him, and cried, and then asked him to hold her hand till she went to sleep, and now she was sleeping quietly.

"Give me Parker's book," said Sonnenkamp.

"I haven't got it now; the Professorin took it away from me, and blamed me very much for having read it secretly, and before I was old enough."

"Give my regards to Herr Eric; you have a better teacher than I thought," said the father.

Roland went to Eric's room, but he had not yet returned.

The owl's cry was heard again from the tree-top in the park. Roland put out the light, opened the window, took his rifle from the wall, fired, and the owl fell from the tree. Roland ran down stairs, met Eric, and told him that he had hit the bird; he then hurried into the park and brought the creature in.

The whole house was in alarm. Frau Ceres was awakened, and her first cry was:

"Has he killed himself?"

Sonnenkamp and Roland had to go to her room again, to show that they were alive. Roland took the dead owl with him, but his mother would not look at it, and only complained of having been deprived of her sleep.

The father and the son withdrew, and Sonnenkamp praised Roland for having brought down the bird so promptly and boldly.

Eric went back to his mother, who must also have been awakened by the shot, and he found her still awake; she too had feared that it had been some suicidal shot.

The whole house was in a commotion, and it was some time before it could be restored to quiet.

In his pride at having shot the owl, Roland forgot everything else, and went contentedly to bed and to sleep.

But above in the castle, and below in Sonnenkamp's work-room, lights burned late. Eric sat gazing at the flame, and strange forms moved confusedly through his mind. There was Shakespeare's play, there were all the people who had listened to it; but more than all he tried to enter into Roland's mind; and it seemed a fortunate thing to him, that the boy's love of sport had driven away all wondering speculation from his mind. Action, action alone makes free. Where is it, the great all-liberating power? It does not show itself. Independent of our will, and of reflection, there is a great power in the Past and in the view of G.o.d working in it, which alone can bring forth the deed. The deed is not ours, but to be armed and ready is in our power.

At last Eric found rest.

Sonnenkamp paced up and down his great room like a prisoner. The lion's skin with the stuffed head lay upon the floor, and the eyes stared at him, till he covered the head with a part of the skin. He asked himself again and again what he ought to do. This Herr Eric was teaching his son to oppose him, and the Mother, who was always regaling them with sayings of her husband, preserved in spirit, forever calling up, as Pranken says, her husband's wandering ghost, the departed Professor Hamlet--no, she was a n.o.ble woman.

But why had he taken upon his shoulders this beggarly family, so puffed up with their own ideas? He could not shake them off, without attracting attention. No, he would make use of them, and then throw them away.

At last, a happy resolution quieted him. We must have new surroundings, new diversions; and then, straight to the goal! The day after to-morrow will be New Year's day. On New Year's day we will go to the capital.

With this thought Sonnenkamp also found rest at last.

CHAPTER X.

PLAYING COURT.

The first thing in the morning, Roland wanted to carry the owl, which lay frozen outside his window, to Claus, who knew how to stuff birds.

All the events of the past day seemed to have vanished from his mind, leaving no trace, in the joy he felt in his splendid shot.

"Stop!" cried Roland suddenly, as he was stretching out the owl's wings, "stop; I've just thought of what a man said to me in my dreams; he looked like Benjamin Franklin, but he was thinner. I dreamed that I was going to battle; the music was making a great noise, discordant, and broken by shouts, and every now and then the man said: 'A good name--a good name'--and then there suddenly appeared thousands of black heads, nothing but black heads, a perfect sea of them; and they all gnashed their teeth, and I woke up in dreadful agony."

Eric could not answer, and Roland went on:--

"To-day is the last day of the year; we ought to enter upon a wholly new world tomorrow; I don't know why, but I long to have it so."

Eric laid his hand on the boy's brow, which was feverishly hot.