Villa Eden Part 46

Bella extolled now, in the warmest terms, the delicious, spicy cakes which the Justice's wife knew how to make so excellently well; she would like to know the ingredients. The Justice's wife said that she had a particular way of giving them their flavor by putting into them a certain quant.i.ty of bitter almonds; and she promised to write out the receipt for her, but she resolved in her own mind never to remember to do it.

They had hardly tasted of the May-bowl, and declared that no one else knew how to mix it so well, before the Justice was informed that Herr von Pranken had arrived. The Justice went down, his wife detained Bella, and Lina, looking out of the window, saw that Pranken decidedly refused to come in for a moment. Bella now drove away, after taking a very hasty leave.

When she had gone, it seemed to all as if the court had withdrawn; they drew near to each other in a more confidential way, and had for the first time a really easy and home-like feeling.

The English ladies were the first to take their departure; the rest would not be less genteel than they, and in a short time the parents and the child were by themselves.

The wife took her husband into an adjoining room, and impressed upon him very earnestly, that it was the duty of a Justice to keep his district clean.

The Justice was faithful in his office, and whoever spoke of him would always affirm that he was the best man in the world. But he had no particular zeal for his calling; he was in the habit of saying,--Why am I mixed up with the affairs of other people? If I were a man of property, I would have nothing to do with the quarrels of other persons, but live quietly and contentedly to myself. But inasmuch as he had been inducted into the office, he performed its duties with fidelity. He was very reluctant to come to the determination to interfere in the matter of Eric, and he consented only when his wife told him in so many words, that the countess Bella had expressed the wish that he should.

They had come to the best understanding, when suddenly a slam, crash, and shriek were heard. Lina had let fall a whole tray full of cups.

The Justice's wife could not give a more satisfactory evidence of her serene content, than by saying, as she did, to Lina,--

"Be quiet, dear child. The mischief is done; it's of no sort of account. Cheer up, you've looked so blooming, and now you're so pale. I could almost thank G.o.d for sending us this trifling mishap, for in every joy there must be some little sorrow intermingled."

Lina was quiet, for she could not tell what she was thinking of when the coffee-tray fell out of her hands.

CHAPTER V.

THE WORLD-SOUL.

"Why did you not look in, for a moment, upon the worthy people?" asked Bella of her brother, after they had both taken their seats in the carriage.

Whenever she came from a company where she had been amiable, this mood continued awhile, and she would look smilingly into the air, then smilingly upon the furniture around; it was so now. There was in her the dying echo of a pleasant and cheerful frame of mind, but her brother came out of an entirely remote world, having spoken to-day with no one,--who would have thought it of him?--but his own soul, or more properly, Manna's soul.

"Ah! don't speak to me of the world," he said; "I wish to forget it, and that it should also forget me. I know it well, all hollow, waste, wilted, mere puppet-show. If you have been helping the puppets dance there awhile, you can lay them away again in the closet of forgetfulness."

"You seem rather low-spirited," said Bella, placing her hand upon her brother's shoulder.

"Low-spirited! that's another catchword! How often have I heard it used, and used it myself! What is meant by low-spirited? nothing. I have been knocked in pieces, and newly put together again. Ah, sister, a miracle has been wrought in me, and all miracles are now clear to me.

Ah! I may come back to the words of the world, but I do not see how."

"Excellent! I congratulate you; you seem to have really fallen in love."

"Fallen in love! For G.o.d's sake, don't say that; I am consecrated, sanctified. I am yet such a poor, timorous, wretched child of the world, that I am ashamed to make my confession even to you, my only sister. Ah! I could never have believed that I should feel such emotion--I don't know what to call it--exaltation, such rapture thrilling every nerve. O sister, what a maiden!"

"It is not true," said Bella, leaning her head back against the soft lining of the carriage, "it not true that we women are the enigma of the world; you men are far more so. Over you, over Otto von Pranken, the ballet connoisseur, has come such a romantic feeling as this! But beautiful, excellent, the mightiest power, is the power of illusion."

Pranken was silent; he heard Bella's words as if they were uttered in a past state of existence. When, where, did they speak and think of the ballet? And yet, at these words there came dancing before his memory merry, aerial, short-dressed, roguish, smiling forms. His heart thumped like a hammer against the book, the book placed there in his breast-pocket. He was about to tell his sister that for several days he had no longer known who he was; that he was obliged often to recall to mind his own name, what he had wished, and what he still wished; that he went like one intoxicated through the world, which was only a flitting by of pa.s.sing shadows; here were swiftly darting railway-trains, there towns and castles reflected in the river: all were fleeting shadows which would soon be gone, while only the soul had real being, the soul alone.

Such had been the influence of Thomas a Kempis, so had he read the words on which Manna's dark-brown eye had rested. All this pa.s.sed through his mind; he could not make his sister comprehend the transformation, he could hardly comprehend it himself. He came to the conclusion to keep it all to himself; and changing his tone, with great self-command, he said smiling:--

"Yes, Bella, love has a sort of sanctifying power, if the word is allowable."

Bella told him in a bantering way, that he uttered this like a Protestant candidate for the ministry, who is making a declaration of love in the parsonage arbor to the minister's blonde little daughter, clad in rose-colored calico. She looked upon it, however, as an excellent, very commendable guaranty of his feelings, that he had declined, in his present state of mind, to enter the Justice's house; she praised his intention of breaking off now his flirtation with Lina.

Otto nodded, with a feeling of shame; and he began now to speak of Manna, in so gentle a tone, and in such serious earnestness, that Bella was more and more amazed. She let him go on without interruption, and, clasping together the fingers of her right and left hand, she said to herself in a low tone:--

"Nut-brown eyes seven times, gazelle three times, glorious beyond all count."

They drove through a little, fragrant pine-wood, and it seemed to Pranken as if this perfumed air from without, and that from the book in his bosom, enveloped him, enwrapped him in its sweet odors, and elevated him above everything. He said, looking fixedly before him:--

"Since our great-uncle, the Archbishop Hubert, no one of our family has entered the service of the church; I shall--"

"You?"

"I shall," continued Pranken, "dedicate my second son to the church."

It appeared exceedingly comical, and yet Pranken said it with the deepest seriousness, while leaning comfortably against the back of the carriage, and puffing thick clouds of smoke in quick succession from the cigar in his mouth.

Bella, who always had some direct reply or some apposite remark to make in continuation, now said nothing, and Otto, who found it very hard to change the tone of conversation, seemed to himself to be under a spell.

He, the merry one, he, always so free and easy, was reduced to the level of some intrusive Swaggerer in a convivial company, who had pretended to be a boon-companion, and must drink and drink, whether he relished it or not.

"I should like to give you one piece of advice," said Bella at last.

"I should like to hear it."

"Otto, I believe that your feeling is genuine, and I will also believe that it will last; but, for heaven's sake, don't let anything of it be perceived, for it will be considered hypocrisy, and the abject submission of a suitor, to win by this means this pious, wealthy heiress. Therefore, for the sake of your own honor, for the sake of your position,--I pa.s.s by every other consideration,--keep all these extravagances under safe lock and key. Otto, it is not my mouth that speaks, I am but the mouth-piece of the world: lock up all these heavenly sensations. Forgive me if I have not used the right word; I can think now of no other. In short, be the same as you were before you took this journey, at least in presence of the world. Are you offended with me? Your features are so painfully contracted."

"O, no, you are shrewd and kind, and I will do as you say."

As if a new stop had been drawn out, Pranken immediately asked:--

"What's the state of things at the Villa? Is the All-wise, the great World-soul, still there?"

"You mean, perhaps, your friend?" Bella could not refrain from bantering her brother.

"My friend? He never was my friend, and I never called him so. I have allowed myself to be bamboozled only through pity. It is a long-standing trait in our family, that we are not able to see anyone in misfortune, and I, when I help an unfortunate one, come readily into a more intimate relation with him than is natural and proper. If one wishes to rescue a man from drowning, one must grasp him in his arms and to his heart, but this does not make him our bosom-friend."

Here was again the flippant, galloping style of speaking, but there was a depth of thought in the ill.u.s.tration derived from the meditations of the previous days.

Bella handed her brother a note which Fraulein Perini had given her for him. Pranken broke the seal and read it; his countenance became cheerful. He put the letter in his breast-pocket, but as it did not seem to suit the neighborhood of Thomas a Kempis, he took it out again, and put it in another pocket. Then he folded his arms over his breast, and looked peacefully and serenely before him.

"Might I be permitted to read Fraulein Perini's note?" said Bella, extending her hand.

Otto took it out, hastily ran through it again, and handed it to his sister. It contained the information that Eric had gone away, and that he had held a secret interview with Frau Ceres; the details must be given by word of mouth.

Otto said that he wanted, some time or other, an answer to this riddle.

"The riddle is solved for me," said Bella exultingly. "Lina, the Justice's daughter--it just occurs to me that Egmont's Clara had no surname, needed none--well, Lina, the Justice's daughter, has declared to all the world, that the Captain World-soul was with her at the convent where Manna is, and without saying a word about it, he gets himself introduced by you, the next day, to her father. You then, as well as the rest of us, have been taken in by this loftily sublime World-soul."

Pranken drew a long breath, doubled up his fist, and then made a repelling motion with his hand. Bella imparted the further information that she had seen to it, at the coffee-party, that the World-soul--this word seemed to her just the one to designate Eric--should be obliged to seek another abiding place; the Justice would give the finishing stroke to him. Bella perceived, to her amazement, that Otto did not agree with her in this method of proceeding. It was entirely unworthy of the higher life--he did not explain whether he meant the higher social or spiritual life--to intrigue in this way against a poor deceitful wretch; he would much rather go openly to work, and directly enlighten Sonnenkamp.