Villa Eden Part 223

Weidmann paused, adding the remark that Prince Valerian, who was now leaving for his native land, would there find a similar state of transition.

The last remark was lost upon Manna, who said to Eric in an undertone,--

"Oh, our father! Do you not think that he will take part in this struggle?"

"I do; and that, too, we must bear."

The Prince departed. At the last moment, Lina and Eric had to sing, "We meet again." He deeply regretted that he could not take Knopf with him; but the latter had promised Lilian that he would come to America, and do something there. He did not specify what it was to be.

After the Prince had left, they drew closer together. Roland, Manna, and Eric were sitting in Roland's room when the latter said,--

"Manna, if it comes to war in our native land, I shall go there. I have decided, and no one can deter me."

The words were upon Manna's lips, "And what if our father is fighting on the other side?" but she checked herself, and only said,--

"If you go to the New World, I shall go with you."

"And then Eric will go too. I have talked with Herr Weidmann about it.

He has consented; and the thing which he sanctions is, beyond question, right and safe. But I have promised him that I will not go until he says, 'Now is the time.'"

Manna was comforted. She saw that her brother's life was in safe keeping.

On their way home, Aunt Claudine expressed the general feeling, when she said,--

"It seems to me as if these days had been all music and feasting."

"Yes," cried Lina; "one could eat there enough for the whole year."

And they drove on their way laughing.

CHAPTER XII.

FETTERED HANDS UPLIFTED.

The great law of our time, that of the unity of all existence, a.s.serted itself with peculiar and perpetual force in the busy home at Mattenheim. A man of mature years had deliberately concentrated his thoughts upon the movement in the New World; and the destiny of a youth was bound up in the same.

Papers and despatches from America came thicker and faster.

They lived a twofold life, immersed in pressing and manifold business here, but intent, meanwhile, upon the sharp crisis so rapidly approaching in a remote quarter of the world.

Roland devoured the letters and journals in which the so-called slavery-question was discussed. Doctor Fritz wrote doubtfully of Lincoln. The man's nature was so simple, and his faith in men's goodness so thorough, that he feared he would not be decided enough with the chivalry of the South.

For the first time, Roland heard the slaveholders called _chivalry_; and Weidmann declared that it was no mere form of speech, but a perfectly explicit term. The slave-owners wanted to live merely for the n.o.bler pa.s.sions, as they were called: other men must toil for their subsistence, and even for their luxuries. This is the true feudal spirit, which looks upon labor as something humiliating and disgraceful, whereas, in reality, man's only true n.o.bleness consists in labor.

Two books exercised a powerful influence upon Roland's mind. He read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the first time, and wept over it, but presently roused himself, and asked,--

"How is this? Shall we point the scourged and oppressed to a reward in the next world, where the master will be punished and the slave elevated? But who can compensate him for the torment he has endured here? Is it not as it was with Claus? Who could indemnify him for the captivity he had to undergo before he was p.r.o.nounced innocent?"

Very different was the effect produced upon the young man's mind by a book of Friedrich Kapp's, ent.i.tled "Slavery in America," which had grown up out of a dense ma.s.s of previously acc.u.mulated material, and, by a remarkable coincidence, appeared at precisely this time.

At first, Roland could not comprehend how it was possible for a man to give so clear and lifelike a picture of facts so revolting. When he came to the ensuing pa.s.sage, he wept aloud.

"The owners of the slave-ships are almost always foreigners,--Spaniards, Portuguese, and, alas!" here followed a dash that was like a dagger to the reader,--"alas! even Germans."

Everywhere, by day and by night, Roland talked of what was agitating his soul; and, for the first time, he felt something like distrust of Benjamin Franklin. He learned, indeed, that Franklin was president of the Abolition Society in Philadelphia, but, also, that he, like the other great heroes of the American War for Independence, in his earnest desire for unanimity at the time the Union was founded, had trusted to the expectation that slavery would be extinguished within a lifetime by the mere increase of free labor.

This hope had proved deceptive, and Roland recalled with anguish that remark of Theodore Parker's,--

"All the great charters of humanity have been written in blood."

Often did Roland stand thoughtfully before a picture of Ary Scheffer's, which hung in the large sitting-room. It represented the adoration of Jesus; and there was a negro in it, stretching out his fettered arms toward the redeeming and consoling Saviour, with a most affecting expression. For two thousand years, this race had been extending its fettered hands toward the redemptive thought of mankind. Why had this lasted so long?

To Weidmann, Roland confessed what was weighing on his heart; and Weidmann succeeded in changing his sorrow into joy, that the time had now come in which these things would have an end. He was peculiarly severe upon those, who, like sentimental criminals, represent, sin and crime as _evil_, and yet say, "There is no help for it. So it has been, and so it must be."

Goethe's verses now occurred to Roland, and he repeated them to Weidmann, who said,--

"It is the free man's inherited privilege to see absolute perfection in no man. Like Goethe, the Americans boast in having no mediaeval conditions to overcome; but they have inherited slavery, which many even declare to be the natural condition of the laboring cla.s.ses."

Weidmann gave Roland, Abraham Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Inst.i.tute in New York.

Roland was requested to read it aloud; but his voice choked, and his utterance was painfully agitated, when he came to the words,--

"Were we even to withhold our votes, Republicans, you may be sure the Democrats would not be satisfied. We could not stop there. We must leave off calling slavery a wrong, and justify it loudly and unconditionally; we must pull down our Free State Const.i.tutions; the whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

"And since the Southerners pretend that slavery is a righteous inst.i.tution, honorable to mankind, the logical inference is, that it ought universally to be recognized as a moral good and a social blessing, and everywhere introduced.

"Our sense of duty forbids such a thought. And, if so, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored,--contrivances such as seeking for some middle ground between the right and wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man,--such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care,--such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling not sinners but the righteous to repentance.

"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us; nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and, in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Tears rose to Roland's eyes. He glanced up at the picture where the slave was stretching out his fettered hands; and within him rose the words, "Thou art free."

CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE BOND OF BROTHERHOOD.

"The bees we brought from Europe are flying out into the spring air,"

wrote Lilian from New York.

At Mattenheim, also, spring was close at hand. Out-door work became pressing; sunshine and hail followed one another in swift succession; but the buds were swelling, and verdure refreshed the eye. In the new shoots, or _sleeping eyes_, as they are called, choice grafts were set, that the tree henceforward might bear richer fruit. The same thing was to take place elsewhere.