Villa Eden Part 67

He was sixty-four years old, but seemed still very vigorous. He had the same reason for complaining which all public teachers have, and related with a mingled pride and bitterness that his son, twenty-one years of age, was receiving more than twice the pay in a cement-factory of the young Herr Weidmann, than his father was receiving after a service of two and thirty years. He had four sons, but not one should become a schoolmaster. Another son was a merchant, and the oldest a building-contractor in America.

"Yes," cried he, "we schoolmasters are no better off than any common day-laborer."

"Would you remain a schoolmaster," asked Eric, "if you had a competency?"

"No."

"And you would never have become one?"

"I think not."

"This is the deplorable part of it," cried Knopf, "that riches always say, and say rightly, I ought not to remove all need, for through this the beautiful and n.o.ble build themselves up; need calls into being the ideal, the virtuous. See here, Herr Captain Colleague, Herr Sonnenkamp, who is a good deal of a man, of wide observation, says,--

"'I must not trouble myself concerning the people about me, neither must Roland, for if he did, he would lose all comfort of his life; he would never be able to ride out, without thinking of the misery and suffering he witnessed in this place and in that.' See, here is our riddle. How can one at the same time be a person of elevated thought, and be rich? We teachers are the guardians of the ideal. Look at the villages all around; there is in them all a visible and an invisible tower, and the invisible is the ideality of the schoolmaster sitting there with his children. I honor you, because you also have become a schoolmaster."

Eric looked up in a sort of surprise, for his vanity was inwardly wounded at being reckoned a schoolmaster, but he quickly overcame it, and was happy in the thought. He prevailed upon the village schoolmaster to go on with the history of his life. He was a good mathematician, had been employed in the land-registry and in the custom-house; he lost his situation when the Zollverein was established; for two years he looked round for something to do, almost in a starving condition, and then became a schoolmaster. He had married well, that is, into a wealthy family, so that he was able to give his sons a good education.

Evening had come on. Eric promised the village schoolmaster to give him something to do with the instruction of Roland.

Knopf accompanied Eric for some distance, and then requested him to mount his horse.

Knopf stood looking after Eric for a long time, until he was hidden by a bend of the mountain, and his puffed lips addressed words in a low tone to him, after he had disappeared.

On the way home, Eric was surprised that he thought less about Roland, than he did about Manna, who was to arrive this evening.

Laughable old stories, how the tutor fell in love with the daughter of the house, and was expelled by the hard-hearted, rich father, and here he stands before the house all lighted up, he hears music; above, the lovely one celebrates her marriage with a very n.o.ble c.o.xcomb, and a pistol-shot--no; it would be more practical to find some better situation.

Eric had humor enough to dismiss every such fancy; he would remain distant, composed, and respectful towards the daughter of the house.

When he rode up to the villa, the carriages had already arrived, and Eric received from Herr Sonnenkamp a reproof for his want of friendliness in not remaining at home, or taking note of the hour of their arrival.

After the conversation that he had had with Knopf, the feeling of being in service seemed to him now very strange; or was this reception intended to give him a hint of how he was to conduct himself towards Manna?

Eric made no reply to the reprimand, for such it was. He came to Roland, who warmly embraced him and cried,--

"Ah! with you only is it well, all the rest are--"

"Say nothing about the rest," interrupted Eric.

But he could not restrain Roland from relating the disappointment of all, that Manna did not return with them.

Eric breathed more freely.

Roland mixed up in his relation an account of Bella's getting out at the water-cure establishment on their return, because a message from Count Clodwig had informed her that he would meet her there. Finally he said,--

"What does all the rest amount to? You are there in the convent, and I have told Manna that you look just like the Saint Anthony in the church of the convent. Yes, laugh, if you please! If he should laugh, he would laugh just like you; he looked just as you look now. Manna told me the story. The saint has been praying to heaven, and the Christ-child has laid himself there in his arms, when he was all alone, and he looks at him so lovingly, so devoutly."

Eric was thrilled; a pure living being has also been given into his hands. Is he worthy to receive it, and can his look rest purely upon it?

They sat together without speaking, and Roland, at last, cried,--

"We will not leave each other again, ever. To-day when I sat there upon the deck, all alone, it seemed to me--I was not asleep, I was wide awake--it seemed that you came, and took me in your arms and held me."

Roland's face glowed; he was feverishly excited, and Eric had great difficulty in calming him down. But what he could not easily do was easy for the dogs; Roland became the self-forgetting child again, when he was with the dogs, who had grown so astonishingly in a few days.

Pranken also came in a very friendly way to Eric, and said that he admired his stimulating power, for Roland had exhibited during their absence a susceptibility of mind and a sensitiveness of feeling, which no one would have supposed him capable of.

Now say what you please, candid reader! Yesterday, an hour ago, you held in little esteem some man's judgment, you saw distinctly his limitations, and now he shows that he recognizes your worth, he praises you, he extols you, and suddenly, without being aware of it, your opinion is changed concerning him whom you before regarded as one-sided and contracted, especially if you are a person struggling with yourself, withdrawn into yourself, and often self-doubting.

This was the case with Eric. Pranken seemed to him a man of very good judgment, very amiable indeed; and he even expressed openly his satisfaction, that the friends of the family stood by him and cheered him in his difficult work of education.

Pranken was content; Eric manifestly acknowledged his position; he showed this by not accompanying them on the journey, and not thrusting himself into the family; perhaps also there was a certain touch of pride in not wanting to appear as a part of the retinue; at any rate, Eric did not seem dest.i.tute of tact.

Pranken understood how to make this patronizing protection appear as a sort of friendly confidence.

CHAPTER X.

ENTICEMENTS ABROAD.

Eric and Roland lived together in the castle, for so the rooms in the turret were called, as if they had taken possession of a new abode, and were all alone; no sound from the human world penetrated here, nothing but the song of birds, and the ringing of the bells of the village church on the mountain.

A regular employment of the time was inst.i.tuted; until noon they knew nothing of what was going on in the house, and Roland lived almost exclusively in the thought of Benjamin Franklin.

New a.n.a.logies were continually presenting themselves, and it was especially productive of them that an American youth, a rich youth besides, who had never been deprived of anything, should lay out for himself a life full of deprivations. Roland lived and moved wholly in Franklin; he spoke, at the table, of Benjamin Franklin, as if he were a man who had just appeared, and was invisibly present and speaking with them. Roland wished to keep a regular record of what he thought and did, exactly as Franklin had done, but Eric restrained him, knowing that he would not persevere in it, being as yet too fickle. And this calling one's self to account was peculiarly adapted to one who stood alone, or was seeking the way by himself. But Roland was with Eric from morning till night. They repeated Franklin's physical experiments, they entered into his various little narratives, and Roland would often ask on some occurrence:--

"What would Franklin say to that?" Eric had been in doubt whether he should say anything to Roland of the interview with Herr Knopf. He was waiting for a more suitable time; he felt that the fixed order of Roland's method of life should not now be disturbed.

There was a great commotion at the villa, for the entire contents of the hothouse were brought out into the park, and a new garden was made in the garden. Roland and Eric did not see it until everything was arranged.

Pranken made a brief visit almost every day, and when he remained to dinner, he spoke a great deal of the princes of the church; he always called the bishop the church-prince. A second court-life seemed to have been opened to him, and this court had a consecrating element, was self-ordering, and needed no Court-marshals.

Herr Sonnenkamp enquired with much interest about all the arrangements at the Episcopal court; but Frau Ceres was wholly indifferent, for she had discovered that there was no court ball given, and no ladies were visible, except some very worthy and respectable nuns. Frau Ceres entertained a great dislike to all nuns, princ.i.p.ally because they had such great feet, and wore such clumsy shoes and cotton gloves. Frau Ceres hated cotton gloves; and whenever she thought of them, she affirmed that she experienced a nervous _shiver_.

The days were still; the trees from the South grew green and fragrant, with those that were native to the soil; but the quiet days came to an end, for they were packing up and making other preparations in the house. Lootz was the director, and huge trunks had already been sent off.

It was a rainy morning: Eric and Roland were sitting together with Franklin's life again before them. Eric perceived that Roland was inattentive, for he often looked towards the door.

At last there was a knock, and Sonnenkamp, who had never before disturbed their morning's occupation, now entered the room. He expressed his satisfaction that the course of instruction had been so regularly arranged, and he hoped that it would suffer only a temporary derangement from the journey, as they could immediately resume it on arriving at Vichy.

Eric asked in amazement what this reference to Vichy meant, and was told that the family, with the whole corps of servants, male and female, as well as Roland and Eric, were going to the mineral baths of Vichy, and from there to the sea-baths at Biarritz.

Eric composed himself with great effort; the struggle had come sooner than he antic.i.p.ated, and he said that he did not know what Roland thought about it, but that, for his own part, he had made up his mind, that he could not take the journey to the Baths.

"You cannot go with us? Why not?"