Villa Eden Part 97

The ladies withdrew to dress for dinner. Frau Dournay had let down her long gray hair, and sat some time speechless in her dressing-room, with her hands folded in her lap. It seemed to her as if her brain had received a heavy blow from what she had become convinced of by unmistakable indications. Her heart contracted, and her tears forced themselves into her eyes, though they would not fall. Was it for this that a child was cherished, guarded, and nurtured by all that was best, that he might end thus? No, not end,--begin an endless entanglement which must lead to utter ruin. Was it for this that a mind was endowed with all the treasures of knowledge, that they might be turned into toys, and masks, and cloaks of baseness?

"O my G.o.d, my G.o.d!" she moaned, and covered her face with her hands.

Before her mind's eye everything seemed laid waste,--the pure, free, upright, n.o.ble nature of Eric, and her own as well. She could feel no more joy in the glance, the words, the learning, of her son; he had used them all for falsehood and treachery.

Now the tears fell from her eyes, as she thought what her husband would have said to this. How often had he lamented that every one said: "The world is bad and totally corrupt; why should I alone separate myself and deny myself its pleasures? And so every one became an upholder of the empire of sin." But how the ruin embraces everything! This n.o.ble-hearted Clodwig, with his unexampled friendship--they must meet him, greet him, talk with him, and yet wish him dead. Shame! And he goes on teaching the boy, teaching him to rule himself, and to work with n.o.ble aim for others, while he himself--oh horrible! And this pa.s.sionate woman who could not endure to devote herself to the best of men, what was to become of her? And this Sonnenkamp, and his wife, and Fraulein Perini, and the Priest? "Look," they would all cry, "Look!

these are the liberal souls! These are the people who are always talking about humanity, and beneficently work for it; and meanwhile they cherish the lowest pa.s.sions: they shrink from no treachery, no lies, no hypocrisy!"

Oh, these unhappy wives, these wives who call themselves unhappy! There runs through our time a great lie concerning the unhappy wife. The fact is this: girls want a husband of wealth and standing, and a young and brilliant lover besides. Why will they not marry poor men? Because they can give them no fine establishment. And these men, who offer themselves as lovers,--

"Lovers!" she exclaimed aloud. Frau Dournay sprang quickly up and rang the bell violently, for she heard the carriage drive into the court.

She told the servant to ask her son to come to her directly.

Eric came, looking much excited; he gazed in astonishment at his mother, whom he had never seen looking as she did now, with her long hair hanging loose, and her face looking gray like her hair.

"Sit down," she said.

Eric seated himself. His mother pressed her hand to her brow. Could she warn her son plainly? What can a mother, what can parents do, if a child, grown up and free from control, wanders from the right path?

And if he has already wandered, can he still be honest? He _must_ lie; it would be double baseness if he did not shield himself with lies,--himself and her!

"My dear son," she began, in a constrained tone, "bear with me if I feel lost in this restless life, which has broken in upon my loneliness and quiet. I wonder at your calm strength--But no, I won't speak of that now. What was I going to say to you? Ah, yes, the Countess Wolfsgarten, the wife of our friend,"--she laid a quiet but marked emphasis on this word, and paused a moment, then continued, "wishes to have Aunt Claudine go and remain with her."

"That is good! that's excellent!"

"Indeed! and why? Do you forget that it will leave me quite alone in a strange house?"

"But you are never alone, dear mother. And Aunt Claudine can find a n.o.ble vocation at Wolfsgarten; Countess Bella is full of unrest, in spite of all the beauty which encompa.s.ses her life; a strong, true nature like Aunt Claudine's, steadfast, and bringing peace to others, will soften and compose her as nothing else in the world could do. I acknowledge the sacrifice that you must make, but a good work will be accomplished by it."

His mother's eyes grew loss troubled; her face quivered as from an electric shock, as she said smiling:--

"At last we have all found our mission, we are all to be teachers. Let me ask you how Countess Bella, our friend's wife, appears to you."

A two-edged sword went through Eric's heart; he saw how he was bringing a weight upon his mother's spirit. And perhaps Bella had betrayed by some pa.s.sionate word a feeling which must not exist, and he appeared as a sinner and a traitor! There was a short pause; then his mother asked, with a sudden change of expression,--

"Why do you not answer me?"

"Ah, mother, I am still much more inexperienced than I thought myself; I cannot put absolute trust in my judgment of people. I have no knowledge of human nature, though my father used to say that psychology was my _forte_. It may be so. I can follow a given trait of character back to its remote causes, and forward to its consequences, but I have no true knowledge of human nature."

The Mother listened quietly, with downcast eyes, to this long preamble, in which Eric was trying to gain mastery of himself, but when he stopped, she said:--

"You can at least say something, even if it is not very clear-sighted."

"Well, then, I think that in this highly-gifted woman a struggle is going on between worldliness and renunciation of the world; between the desire to _appear_ and the longing really to _be_. It seems to me as if something had been repressed, checked, in the development of her life, and as if she were not yet quite ripe for the beautiful work of making life's evening full and perfect to so n.o.ble a man as Clodwig."

"Yes, he is a n.o.ble man, and to wrong him would be like the desecration of a temple," said his mother significantly.

The words came out sharply, and she went on: "You have judged rightly, the Prankens are a presumptuous and daring race. It was believed that Bella would marry her music-master, with whom she played a great deal; indeed she played with him in a double sense. But that's not to the purpose. An apparently insignificant event brought about in Bella a derangement--I don't know what to call it--a sort of overturn in her character. In her youth, while she might still be considered young,--she was twenty-two or twenty-three--she had to see her younger sister married before her; she bore it with the greatest composure, but I think that, from that time, a change came over her difficult to be described; she had suddenly grown old, older than she would confess to herself; there was something of the matron about her. This was affected, but a bitter tone was real. Her sister died after a few years, leaving no children. All these circ.u.mstances brought out something discordant in Bella; she really hated her sister, and yet behaved as if she were pining for her. She had no mother, or rather, she had one whose highest triumph was to hear people say, 'Your daughter is handsome, but not nearly so handsome as you were when you were a girl.' To be handsome is the chief pride of the Prankens. Bella is unfortunately a development of that unhappy cla.s.s of society, in which people go to the theatre only to satirize and ridicule the performance, to church only to make a formal reverence to the mercy of G.o.d; in which women are held in low esteem unless they are handsome, and know how, as age comes on, to intrigue, and to affect piety. Such a being can say to herself: I have in the course of my life adorned with flowers eight or ten hundred yards of canvas, for perfectly useless sofa-cushions. Is that a life worth living? Now she has no children, no natural fixed duties--"

"And just for these reasons," interrupted Eric, "Aunt Claudine, without knowing it, will have a softening and tranquillizing influence; her calm nature, which never has to renounce, because it never longs for any change, seems just chosen for the work. However highly I value Frau Bella, our friend's wife, for herself, we must think first of all that we are fulfilling a duty to the n.o.ble Clodwig; it will establish anew and increase the purity and beauty of his life."

"Well, Aunt Claudine is going to Wolfsgarten; and now leave me, my dear son,--but no, I must tell you something, though it may seem childish.

When I saw you running so fast through the garden to-day, I thought of your father's pleasure when he had been on a mountain excursion with you; and once, when you were just eleven, when you had been in Switzerland with him, he said on coming home, that his chief delight had been in seeing you run up and down the mountains without once slipping; and you never did get a fall, though your younger brother was never without some b.u.mp or bruise."

It was with a glance of double meaning that she looked at Eric, as she pa.s.sed her hand over his face.

"But we have talked enough; now go. I must dress for dinner."

She kissed his forehead, and he left her; but outside the door, he stopped and said, with folded hands:--

"I thank you. Eternal Powers, that you have left me my mother: she will save us all."

CHAPTER VII.

STATISTICS OF LOVE.

When they a.s.sembled again at the villa, the Doctor chanced to be there.

Or was it not mere chance? Did he desire to note accurately, once for all, the relation between Eric and Bella?

He saluted the Professorin with great respect; she said she must confess that her husband, who made a point of mentioning frequently his distant friends, had never uttered, to the best of her recollection, the name of Doctor Richard.

"And yet I was a friend of his," cried the Doctor in a loud tone.

After a while, he said in a low voice: "I must be honest with you, and tell you that I was only a little acquainted with your husband; but your father-in-law was my teacher. I introduced myself, however, to your son as the friend of your husband, because this seemed to me the readiest way to be of service to him, exposed as he is here, in the house and in its connections, to a variety of perils."

The Professorin warmly expressed her obligation to him, but her heart contracted again. This man had evidently alluded to Bella.

The Artist who had painted the portrait of the Wine-count's daughter was there; and soon the Priest came too, and regret was expressed that the Major could not be present, having gone to celebrate St. John's day in the neighborhood; he considered everything appertaining to the Masonic order in the nature of a military duty.

The company in general were in a genial mood. The Doctor asked the painter how he got along with his picture of Potiphar's wife.

The Artist invited the company to visit shortly the studio, which Herr von Endlich had fitted up for him for the summer months.

"Strange!" cried the Doctor. "We always speak of Potiphar's wife, and we don't know what her own name was; she takes the name of her husband, and you artists don't refrain from painting nude beauties with more or less fidelity. The chaste Joseph presents always an extremely contemptible figure, and perhaps because the world thinks that the chaste Joseph is always a more or less contemptible figure. aeneas and Dido are just such another constellation, but aeneas is not looked upon in so contemptuous a way as the Egyptian Joseph."

It was painful to hear the Doctor talk in this style.

The Priest said:--

"This narrative in the Old Testament is the correlative to that of the adulteress in the New; and after a thousand years, the harmony is rendered complete. The Old Testament strikes the discordant note; the New Testament brings it to the accordant pitch."

Clodwig was exceedingly delighted with this exposition; there was something of the student-nature in him, and he was always enlivened and made happy by any new view, and any enlargement of his knowledge.

"Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin," cried the Doctor, who was to-day more talkative than ever, "with your great experience of life, you two could render a great service to a friend of mine."