Villa Eden Part 216

"Oh, no! What seems eccentric to others appears to me the only natural and consistent course, Bella could not have acted otherwise than she has: this very step was a part of her heroism. Your son can tell you that I suspected something of this sort before it happened. There is much in common between Bella and Sonnenkamp. Both are quick and clear in judgment where others are concerned; but, when self is touched, they are tyrannical, malicious, and self-a.s.serting. And, now that she is fairly gone, I may say that she has fled a murderess: to be sure, she did not kill Clodwig with poison or dagger, but she smote him to the heart with killing words and thoughts. He confessed to me that it was so, and now I may repeat it."

"I am confounded," said the Professorin. "With all her culture, how were such things possible?"

"That was just it," broke in the Doctor delighted. "All this intellectual life was nothing to Frau Bella: she found herself in it, she knew not how. She had to destroy something, or what would she have done with all this culture? Formerly there was hypocrisy only in religion; now there is hypocrisy in education. But, no: Frau Bella was no hypocrite, neither was she really ill-natured; she was simply crude."

"Crude?"

"Yes. Thought of others educates at once the heart and the mind; Frau Bella thought only and always of herself; of what she had to say and to feel."

"Do you think," asked the Professorin with some hesitation, "that these two persons can be happy together for a single hour?"

"Certainly not, according to our ideas of happiness. They have no real affection for each other: pride and disappointment, and a desire to shock the world, have induced them to make their escape together. There is one other motive which persons like us cannot enter into. I tried for a long time to discover it, and believe at last that I have succeeded: it is the consciousness of beauty. I am a beauty: that is a principle on which a whole system is founded. Other people are only made for the purpose of seeing and admiring the beauty. Bella committed an act of treason against herself when she married Clodwig: she could not have done it except in a moment of forgetfulness of this great principle. But how can we judge such people aright? The longer I live, the more clearly I see that human beings are not alike: they are of different species."

"You want to provoke us by heresies."

"By no means: that is the reason why this anti-slavery fever is distasteful to me. This claiming equality for all men is a wrong."

"A wrong?"

"Yes. Men are not all the same kind of beings; one is a nightingale that sings on a tree; another is a frog that croaks in the marsh. Now, to require of the frog that he should sing up in a tree is a wrong, a perversion of Nature. Let the frog alone in his marsh, he is very well off there, and to him and his wife his song sounds as sweet as that of the bird to his mate. Men are of different kinds."

The Major called from his room to know what the Doctor was talking so loudly and excitedly about. Fraulein Milch soothed him by telling him it was nothing for a sick man to hear, though she confessed that they had been talking of Bella. As she re-entered the sitting-room, a messenger arrived from Villa Eden with intelligence which summoned the Doctor and the Professorin thither instantly: Frau Ceres was dangerously ill.

The Doctor and the Professorin made all haste back to the Villa.

CHAPTER V.

THE BLACK HORROR.

"Henry, come! Henry, come back! these are your trees, and your house.

Come back! I will dance with you. Henry, Henry!"

Such was Frau Ceres' incessant cry.

She refused all nourishment; she insisted on waiting till her husband said "Dear child, do take something." Only after the most urgent entreaties of Fraulein Perini, did she at last consent to eat something. She wanted to embroider, and took up her work; but the next moment she laid it down again.

Weeping and lamenting, she went through the gardens and greenhouses.

Fraulein Perini had the greatest difficulty in soothing her.

Then Frau Ceres reprimanded the gardener for raking over the paths. The marks of her husband's feet were in the gravel, and they must not be removed, or he would die.

At other times, she would sit at the window for hours together, looking out upon the hills and the clouds, and the river where the boats were sailing up and down; and all the while she would be grieving in a low voice to herself,--

"Henry, I grieved you sorely, I wounded you; you may whip me as you would your slaves; only let me be with you, forgive me. Do you remember that day when you came out to me, and Caesar played the harp, and I danced in my blue frock and my gold-colored shoes? Do you remember?"--"Manna," she suddenly cried; "Manna, bring your harp and play for me. I want to dance; I am still pretty. Come, Henry!"

Suddenly she turned to Fraulein Perini, and asked, "He is coming back, is he not?" Her tone was so quiet and natural as for the moment to re-a.s.sure them.

"Tell him he shall marry Frau Bella when I die," she suddenly began again, her great eyes gazing vacantly before her. "Frau Bella is a handsome widow, very handsome; and he shall give her my ornaments, they will look so well on her."

"Pray, do not speak so."

"Come, we must see that his heaths are well taken care of. He taught me all about them. We will have some good bog-earth dried and pounded and sifted. Then, when he comes home, he will say, 'That was very clever of you, Ceres: you did that well.'"

She went with Fraulein Perini to the hot-house, and gave intelligent directions to the head gardener that he should be careful to keep the heaths very moist, and not in too high a temperature.

Fraulein Perini sent one of the boys who was working in the garden to fetch Eric. Her anxiety was so great, she could not bear to be left longer alone with Frau Ceres.

Frau Ceres appeared very composed. After examining all the heaths, and lifting each one up to see that the saucers were kept properly damp, she left the hot-house, saying as she went,--

"It is quite time that Captain Dournay should learn the care of plants.

These scholars fancy there is nothing they can learn from us: I can a.s.sure them they can learn a great deal from my husband. There are more than two hundred heaths at the Cape. Yes, you may take my word for it; he told me so. Now let us go back into the house."

On their way, they came to an open s.p.a.ce, where was a pond, and a little fountain playing.

Suddenly Frau Ceres uttered a piercing cry. Down the broad path towards them came the black man Adams, with Roland on one arm, and Manna on the other.

"You are changed into a negro! Who did that to you? Henry! Fie, Henry!

Take off the black skin!" With piercing cries, she threw herself upon Adams, and tore the clothes from his body; then sank lifeless on the ground before him. They were just bearing her into the house, when Doctor Richard and the Professorin arrived.

Frau Ceres never woke.

Her body was laid in the great music room; and the flowers that Sonnenkamp had so tenderly cared for were set about his wife's corpse.

Here in the music room, where the young people had so often sung and danced--would there ever be dancing and music here again?

The friends came, and kissed and embraced Roland; Lina also appeared, and embraced Manna in silence. By a pressure of the hand, a silent embrace, each one expressed to the mourners his sympathy, his desire to help them.

Pranken appeared also among the mourners, and, with Fraulein Perini, knelt beside the body.

After a blessing had been p.r.o.nounced in the church, the funeral-train moved towards the burial-ground.

The members of the music-club had been gathered together by Knopf and Fa.s.sbender, and sang at the open grave. Roland stood leaning on Eric, while the Mother and aunt Claudine supported Manna.

Eric's thoughts reverted to that day in spring when he had sat over his wine with Pranken, and had looked out at the churchyard where the nightingale was singing. Who could have foretold then that he would be standing here a mourner at the grave of the mother of his betrothed, and of his pupil?

The music ceased, and the Priest advanced to the edge of the grave.

There was a hush for a while over the whole a.s.sembly. The chattering of the magpies, and the screaming of the nut-p.e.c.k.e.rs, was heard in the trees.

After repeating a prayer in a low tone, the Priest raised his voice, and cried,--

"Thou poor rich child from the New World! Now thou art in the new world indeed. Thou hast gone hence with thy sins unforgiven, in delusion, in frenzy. Thou hast left thy children behind to atone, to suffer, to sacrifice, for thee. They will do it: they must do it. Children, G.o.d is your father; the church is your mother. Hearken unto me. Here we stand beside an open grave. Ye can live without us, without the church; but, when ye come to die, ye must call upon us: and, though ye have scorned us, we shall come full of grace and compa.s.sion; for G.o.d so commandeth us. O thou departed one! now thou art enn.o.bled; for death gives n.o.bility: thou art decked with ornaments fairer than thy diamonds; for, with all thy worldliness, thou didst have a believing spirit. Grief set her crown of thorns upon thee: thou hast suffered much, and thou wilt be forgiven. But I call upon ye who stand here this day alive: Ye can build country houses, and furnish them sumptuously; but the prince of all life, which is death, shall come and mow you down, and ye shall moulder in the ground. A house of boards, that is the country house which is decreed to every one, deep in the bosom of the earth. But woe to those men whose holy ark is the fire-proof safe! The men of so-called philosophy and natural science come and flatter the believers in the fire-proof safe, and when the bolt from heaven falls, they say, 'There is a lightening-rod on our house, we have nothing to fear.' And if death comes, what say ye then? Ye have no answer. O ye poor, rich children! Turn unto us! The arms of mercy are open to receive you; they alone can defend you. To that rich young man the answer was:--I speak not of how the wealth was won from which the young soul will not part; I only call--no, it is not I who call--my pa.s.sing breath but bears the eternal word. Leave all that thou hast and follow me. Wilt thou too, go hence weeping, because thou canst not give up the riches of the world?

Oh! I call thee--no, He who has brought this day upon us, who looks down from the height of heaven into this grave--He calls to thee: Rend asunder the bonds of slavery! Thou art thyself a slave: be free! And thou, n.o.ble maiden, who hast the highest in thyself, look down into this grave, and forward to the time when such a grave shall open for thee. Save thyself! Despise not the hand that will save thee. Days of sorrow, nights of desolation will come upon thee. In the day thou wilt ask, 'Where am I?' and for what is my life on the earth? And thou wilt send forth thy voice weeping into the night, and wilt shudder at the night of death? Thou knowest what is salvation; thou bearest it in thyself. And now? Faithless--thrice faithless! Faithless to thyself, to thy friends, to thy G.o.d!" Beating himself upon the breast, he cried in a voice broken by tears,--

"How willingly, how joyfully would I die, I who am speaking to ye now, if I could say, I have saved them. And yet, not I, but the Spirit through the breath of my mouth. Come, leave all that holds ye back, all on which ye lean--come to me, ye children of sorrow; to me, ye children of misery, of pain, of riches, and of helpless poverty!"