Villa Eden Part 209

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD OF A DYING SEER.

Clodwig slept several hours, while Eric sat with the Banker, and drew refreshment from his self-forgetting sympathy. The Banker failed in many of the ordinary forms of society; but he possessed a nature full of tact, and, in the midst of his deep emotion, Eric thought that only unselfishness has genuine tact. Want of tact is at bottom selfishness; for the man who is without it thinks and acts only for himself.

Eric now saw the Banker in a new light. In Carlsbad he had made rather an effort to display his intelligence; but now his gentle and sensible character showed itself naturally. Eric remembered the Banker's once having said to him at Carlsbad, "The Jews are the children of compa.s.sion: they understand how to bear and to relieve sorrow much better than to create joy; the remembrance of past oppression gives them sympathy with all suffering."

The Banker was ready to lend help at any moment, but allowed himself to be put in the background again immediately.

Bella treated him with manifest neglect, but he took it good-humoredly, showing without words that he was not offended. She acted like her mother's own child; and moreover, he thought, she was not his friend.

Clodwig was his friend, and he regarded it as a duty to bear something for his sake. He sat in the library, ready to answer any call, and retiring again as soon as he believed himself in the way. Towards midnight, Eric was suddenly summoned; Clodwig had waked, and asked for him.

"Ah! I have slept so well," said Clodwig; "and it's strange, I constantly dream now of my cousin Hatty, whom I am to marry. I like her, and she likes me; but she has learned, and will learn nothing at all, and she has such a shrill laugh, and says, 'Come, Clodwig, you're so sad, come, marry me, we'll be merry.' And then I say, 'Child, I'm so old already! see, I've no teeth left, and what will Bella say to it?'

'Ah, what' she says, 'nonsensical things! Come, we'll dance.' And then we dance down to the chapel; and there stands the priest beckoning to us, and we dance on, past the priest; and she's a splendid child with beautiful eyes, and loves me dearly; and so we dance on and on, and I can keep it up very well till I wake, without being tired."

"Is your cousin Hatty still living?"

"Oh, no! she died long ago. A few weeks since a grandson of hers was here with me. But isn't it strange that my first youthful love--I was hardly ten years old--should have awakened in me? And she had an apple in her hand, and bit into it, and then said, 'Take a bite too;' but, when I wanted to take the apple, she wouldn't let me, and said, 'Don't bite too much.' And, when I awoke, the taste of the apple seemed still in my mouth. Now it just comes back to me that we were once painted together. The painter declared that it would please us very much some time or other. He did it secretly, and, of course, the picture was bought of him; I believe it is still in existence; but I don't know where. Don't you like her name of Hatty? She is a half-grown girl in a pink calico dress and white ap.r.o.n, and that's the way she was always dressed, and she had a broad Florence straw hat, whose brim drooped down upon her shoulders." So Clodwig went on, and said with a repressed sigh, "Bella has never cared to hear about my youth;" but then, as if not wishing to speak of her, he quickly added in a trembling voice, stretching out both hands, "Now attend, and I can tell you my story. I have had a very different life from that Herr Sonnenkamp. My father was Prime-Minister, and I was born in the ministerial residence, the son of a late marriage, an only son, like Herr Sonnenkamp; but my life was different. My father became representative of the Confederacy to the German Diet, and then I often lived here in summer on our estate. The society of the representatives of the Confederacy,--who knows whether it is not pa.s.sing away without any one's having pictured it truly,--I might have done it; even when I was still a student, it was plain to me that it was a society which exists only to stand in the way of every improvement. Come a little nearer and I will tell you what the German Diet is,--it is the evil conscience of the Princes. I thought so very early, and I was soon sure of it, and yet I stayed in the midst of it; and the farther I advanced, the more plainly I saw that it was true.

All progress has built itself up apart from the Diet; and there is something like it in the Church. Progress is made without her, aside from her; she has not done away with capital punishment, nor torture, nor the confinement of prisoners in irons: none of these has she abolished. And now are coming the two great works of emanc.i.p.ation,--the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves and of the serfs, and what is bringing them about? Humanity alone in its freedom of action. You see, this Herr Sonnenkamp lived in quite another world than mine, and yet my life,--Ah, wait a minute, wait, I cannot say more now."

After a while, Clodwig began again,--

"This Sonnenkamp is another proof to me, our civilization has the same defects as religion; it also gives no definite moral laws; it is not a complete, not the true civilization."

He sat up in bed, saying,--

"Come, I want to say my last word to you. Two things I see looming up in the future; the one is imperialism, which is trying to establish itself in America; and the other, yet more terrible, is called a war for religion. One party gathers around Rome; the other, around no man, no idea, but around freedom. Two great standards are raised, and around these standards gather two armies. Invisibly on the one banner is inscribed, 'We cannot!' on the other, 'We will!'

"Hear yet more. A new faith, a new knowledge is to come, which will re-create the world. We wander continually in a grave-yard, our life is dead. Only a renewal through a great idea, through a new religion.

Ah"--

He broke off abruptly as Bella entered the room.

She expressed her satisfaction at Clodwig's animation, and Clodwig still preserved a courtly politeness towards his wife. She wanted to hand him some medicine, and he said,--

"Oh, yes! give it to me, but do not say any thing against Doctor Richard; please do not."

Bella sat quietly by the bed for a while; then Clodwig begged her to go to rest, and she complied. When he was again alone with Eric, he said,--

"In many painless hours by day and night, I have fancied to myself how the human race of to-day will gather in countless hosts, and press, shoulder to shoulder, up some lofty height, to plant the banner under which they a.s.semble. What watch-word can they inscribe upon it which shall unite them one and all? Then I saw you; you were carrying the banner, and on it was your motto, your words which you have spoken, the only motto, Free labor! That is it. Happy are you that you have said it, and I that I have heard and seen."

A glorious light rested on Clodwig's countenance, and beamed from his eyes, as he gazed into the empty air; then he laid back his head, and closed his eyes, but he felt for Eric's hand, and clasped it tight.

After a while he raised himself again, saying,--

"Go into the room that you had when you first came here; take Robert with you, and bring the bust of the Victoria here to me."

Eric went with the servant to the balcony chamber, and had the head of the Victoria taken down; that of the Medusa lay upon the floor in fragments. He asked Robert who had broken it, but Robert knew nothing about it. He hesitated to ask Bella or Clodwig about the matter, but he learned that Clodwig had not been in this room since his return.

When Eric had placed the bust opposite the sick man's bed, and arranged the lights properly, Clodwig said,--

"Yes, it looks like her, your mother knew her too."

He said nothing more. After he had gazed at the bust for a long time in silence, he asked Eric to call the Banker, and, when he came, he said to him with a child-like smile,--

"It belongs to you too. There's a story about a little child, very young, I can see him now, dressed only in a little shirt, sitting on a cushion on the table, and my mother is holding me, and telling me--I think I can feel the warm breath of her words, as it comes against my breast, she had laid her head on my breast, and she said, 'There was once a child who went into the woods to look for flowers, and he found beautiful red flowers, and picked them; and then he found beautiful blue flowers, and he threw the pretty red flowers away, and gathered the blue ones; and then he found beautiful yellow ones, and threw away the beautiful blue flowers to gather those; and next he found beautiful white ones; and he threw the pretty yellow ones away, and picked the white; and then he came out of the wood, and there was a brook; and he threw the lovely white flowers into the brook, and had nothing left in his hands.' That is my story, and that is the other one. I understand it now. The nations all came upon the earth, and they held the revelations in their hands,--the red, the blue, the yellow, and the white flowers--and at last they stood with nothing but their empty hands. And then they said, 'It is well.' The empty hands speak, and say, 'Unforced labor shaft thou perform.' Isn't it true, Eric, that I understand what you said when you first came here? I see you now as you stood under the blossoming apple-tree, and your words came to me like my mother's warm breath on my little breast. And now may you sleep well. Good-night."

Eric sat by Clodwig's bed, with his hand clasped in his, till at last the grasp relaxed, and the sick man slept. Bella came again, and Pranken with her; he prayed with the Sister of Mercy for the dangerously sick man, doing it without shyness or display, with unembarra.s.sed air.

Eric made a sign to Bella to be very quiet. She sat silent for a time, and then withdrew with Pranken.

Eric struggled with sleep and weariness. The morning dawned, and flooded the chamber with its ruddy light. Eric went to the Sister of Mercy, and told her that the long sleep of their patient made him uneasy: he had leaned over him, and could hear no breathing; but perhaps it was on account of his own exhaustion.

They went to Clodwig's bed-side, and bent over him--death had come to him in his sleep.

CHAPTER XV.

A GOOD CONCLUSION TO A BAD RESULT.

Eric had Pranken called, and charged him with the duty of informing his sister; but Pranken insisted that they should let Bella sleep as long as she would, as she needed the strength. So the dawning day grew brighter and brighter, and the Sister of Mercy sat praying by the bedside of him who had fallen asleep.

Eric went down into the garden, where he met the Banker: he silently gave him his hand, and they walked on together without speaking. Eric was called in to Bella, who was upon the sofa, weeping. The Sister of Mercy had broken the news to her when she woke. Bella had been with the corpse, and now was mourning loud and immoderately. Eric consoled her, requesting that she would excuse his absence for a few hours, as he must see how they all were at the Villa, and would return by evening.

He rode homewards.

At the foot of the mountain, Claus met him with his son, the Cooper; and the field-guard cried,--

"Good luck, Herr Captain! good luck for you; and you are good luck for us too. We've just bought the Carp Inn for Ferdinand. Could there be any thing better? I'm father of an inn."

Eric hushed him, but could not get in a word; for Claus exclaimed,--

"Do you know that now Sevenpiper's going to let his daughter marry Ferdinand? and it's all owing to you."

"Me?"

"Yes, indeed. If the rich Sonnenkamp can let his daughter marry a teacher, Sevenpiper can give his daughter to the Cooper. Isn't that so?

O Herr Captain! You are a good luck for us all. And here, Herr Captain, here's my hand: I'll drink not a drop more after to-day, except when I'm thirsty: mayn't I quench my thirst? Thank heaven, I've got a very good thirst. But at the wedding I'll have a time of it; for n.o.body can go it like the Screamer. Come along with me, Herr Captain, put up your horse, we've a good stable, it's a first-rate inn."

Eric could not reconcile the contradiction: he comes from a death-bed into the very midst of jollity. He told Claus nothing of Clodwig's decease, and only begged to be allowed to ride on, and so left them.

He reached Villa Eden.

"Has Bella any female friend with her," the Professorin asked, as soon as she learned of Clodwig's death.

Eric said that she had not. It was painful to the Professorin that she could not render any a.s.sistance and consolation to Bella. Bella had triumphed in the fact, that, self-contained, she had been more feared than loved by women; and now, in her time of affliction, she had no one whose right and dutiful privilege it was to come to her, that she might lay her head, weighed down with sorrow and tears, upon a friendly bosom. But Aunt Claudine said to Eric,--