Villa Eden Part 56

The family of the professor's wife were at breakfast. Roland drank his coffee out of the cup which had Hermann's name upon it, and Eric said that they must be at the station in an hour, since Herr Sonnenkamp would probably come by the express train: it was not to be supposed that he would come by the accommodation train, which had no connection with the West. Just as Eric was saying this, there was a knock; the Major walked in first, and after him, Sonnenkamp.

"Here is our devil of a boy!" cried the Major. "Here is the deserter himself!"

The awkwardness of the first interview was thus removed. Roland sat immovable upon his chair; Eric went to meet Sonnenkamp: he turned then to the boy, and ordered him to ask his father's forgiveness for what he had done. Roland complied.

The mother prayed Herr Sonnenkamp not to punish the boy for his wilfulness. His father replied, good-humoredly, that, on the contrary, this bold stroke of the boy gave him particular delight; he showed courage, resolution, and self-guidance: he would rather reward him for it. Roland looked at his father in amazement, then grasped his hand and held it fast.

Eric requested his mother and aunt to retire with Roland to the study, and he remained with the Major and Sonnenkamp. Sonnenkamp expressed his satisfaction and grat.i.tude to Eric, who must certainly be familiar with magic, to have so bewitched his son that he could not live apart from him.

"Do you think so?" Eric asked. "I must express to you my astonishment."

"Your astonishment?"

"Yes; I have, I am sorry to say, no talent at all of that sort, but I may be permitted to say that I almost envy those who can accomplish such things."

Sonnenkamp looked inquiringly at Eric, who continued:--

"It is a master-stroke of pedagogical science that you have effected. I see now that you have declined my service in Roland's hearing, in order to induce him to act from his own free-will; this will bring him under my influence as nothing else would be likely to do."

Sonnenkamp looked amazed. Is this man making fun of him? Does he wish to ridicule him, or, by means of this refined policy, to get the better of him still farther? This would be a touch of diplomacy of the highest order. Pranken is probably right, and Eric is a wily trickster under the mask of honest plainness. Well, let it be so. Sonnenkamp whistled to himself in his inaudible way; he would appear not to see through Eric. He let it be understood that he had played a nice game with Roland, and he smiled when the Major cried:--

"Fraulein Milch said so--yes, she understand everybody, and she has said,--Herr Eric, he is the man who sees clear through Herr Sonnenkamp's policy. Yes, yes, that is a whole extra train of smartness."

Sonnenkamp continued smiling deprecatingly and gratefully, but his astonishment was renewed, when Eric now made the declaration,--

"Unfortunately, life itself is so self-willed, that the best-laid logical chain is cut in two; I find myself obliged, on my part, to decline positively your friendly offer."

Sonnenkamp again whistled inaudibly. Another stroke of diplomacy, then! He could not grasp him; the antagonist has enticed his foe out of his stronghold; Sonnenkamp joined battle in the open field. Eric related that he had the offer of acting director in the Cabinet of Antiquities, with the promise of a permanent appointment.

"That's it," nodded the Major to himself, "that's it, screw him, make terms for yourself, as a singer does who is in demand; you can have your own price, they must give you all you ask."

But the Major's look suddenly changed, when Eric continued,--

"From your practical American standpoint you would certainly approve of my refusal, if that were necessary, in order to attain higher conditions, whether internal or external, of my own freedom. But I tell you frankly, that I have no motive for this refusal, except the duty of grat.i.tude towards my patron."

Sonnenkamp answered, a.s.sentingly,--

"I am very far from desiring to interfere at all with your plan of life. I regret to be obliged to give it up, but I give it up."

"Yes," interposed the Major, "you give it up, and he declines. That's no go. The youth, what is he going to do? What becomes of him?"

Sonnenkamp and Eric regarded the Major in silence, who uttered the decisive words,--"What becomes of Roland?"

Eric was the first to collect himself, and requested that Sonnenkamp would commit his son to him for a year at the capital; for he himself must acknowledge that he should no longer be happy or at rest, until he could expend his best energies for the boy, in order to establish him in a n.o.ble career in life; and that it would be the best plan for Roland also to be brought up in the companionship of others, and he would see to it that he had good companions.

Sonnenkamp pressed his fingers to his lips, and then said,--

"Such a plan cannot be talked of for a moment; my breath is gone, when I know that the child is away from me. I must therefore beseech you, not a word of this."

He now requested the Major to leave him alone with the Captain.

The Major complied at once, and did not take it at all amiss, that Sonnenkamp disposed of him so readily.

And now that they were alone, Sonnenkamp said, rubbing his chin repeatedly,--

"I see clearly the difficulty of consigning Roland to any one but you; I have already dismissed the man who was employed by me. But now, one question. Were you not, voluntarily, employed in the House of Correction?"

"Why do you ask, since the asking tells me that you already know?"

"And do you think that you can now be Roland's preceptor?"

"Why not?"

"Do you think that it will not revolt the boy, or at least deeply wound him, when he shall at some time learn by chance, that he is under a man who has had the management of convicts?"

"Roland will not learn this by chance. I shall tell him myself, and he will have understanding enough to perceive that this is no degradation of my personal worth, but--I say it with all modesty--an exaltation of it. With my own free will, and holding an honorable position, I desired to devote myself to my fallen fellow-men; and I can only regret that I must acknowledge myself to have no talent for this. I am of the conviction that every man, whatever he has done, can become once more pure and n.o.ble; I was not able, unfortunately, in that position, to carry out my conviction."

Sonnenkamp listened, with closed eyes; he nodded, and thought that he must say something laudatory to Eric, but he did not seem able to bring it out.

At last he said,--

"I have introduced this matter only to show you that I keep nothing in reserve; we are now, I hope, of one mind. Might I ask you to call the Major, and let me join the ladies?"

The Major came, and when Eric was alone with him, naturally related first of all the terrors of the extra train, and that the clattering was no longer a perceptible beat, but one continued rumble. He knew how to imitate it very exactly, and to give the precise difference of sound when going by the stations, and the mountains, and over the dikes.

Eric could have replied that he was accurately acquainted with the road; he had gone over it a few days before, without speaking a word, engaged in his own meditations, but the Major did not suffer himself to be interrupted; he a.s.serted that no one had ever before so rode, and no one would ever ride so again, so long as Europe had its iron rails, for Sonnenkamp had fired up after the American fashion.

Then he said,--

"I have come to know Herr Sonnenkamp very thoroughly, since his son went away. I have, indeed, no son, and cannot enter completely into his way of expressing himself, but such lamentation, such reproaches against himself, such raving, such cursing,--our hardest corporal is a tender nun in comparison--such words he brought out. It must truly be a fact! In countries where good tobacco grows, and snakes and parrots, Fraulein Milch has said, there the soil of men's hearts is much hotter, and there things grow up, and creatures creep out and fly about, such as we have no sort of idea about. And how Frau Ceres carried on, I'll not speak of.

"But you know who first told where the youth is? Fraulein Milch told it. And do you know what she said? 'If I were a young girl, I would run after Herr Eric too, over mountain and valley.' That is to say, she has said that in all honor; she has never loved any one but me, and we have known each other now for nine and forty years, and that is something.

But why do we speak of such things now? we shall have time enough for this by and by. You are right, you are smarter than I thought for; it is shrewd in you not to make terms at once. Now he has come to you, into the house, you can make whatever conditions you want to. In his raving he cried,--A million to him who restores my son to me! You can claim the million, it belongs to you; I am witness of that."

Eric declared that he was irresistibly attracted towards the boy, but that he could not come to terms, for it would be the highest kind of ingrat.i.tude if he should decline the position that had been offered to him in such a friendly way, and of which a report had certainly been made, before this time, to the Prince.

In what light would he stand with his patron, and with the Prince, who had, besides, grounds of displeasure with him, if he should now say, "Thank you kindly; I have, in the mean while, made a previous engagement elsewhere"? The Major drummed with the fore and middle fingers of his right hand rapidly upon the table, as if his fingers were drumsticks.

"Bad, very bad," he said. "Yes, yes, fate often takes an extra train too; everything has an extra train now-a-days."

Eric said, in addition, that service to an individual had its difficulty; he might perhaps be able to consent to appear ungrateful, and forfeit forever all favor, but he feared lest, in the dependent servitude to the rich man, he might often be troubled with the thought how much more free he might have been in the service of the State.

The Major continued to drum and drum, repeating the words,--

"Bad--very bad!"

He uttered the words so oddly, that it sounded like a crow, in the freshly-turned furrow, gulping down an earthworm.