Villa Eden Part 99

She knew not what she desired here, but she was happy, or rather soothed, when she saw them sitting so confidentially together. Yes, she thought, every one who gives an ear to him, and returns a stimulating reply occasionally, is as much to him as I.

She rose and went into the park; she walked about restlessly, knowing that Eric must get released from Roland, in order to keep the appointment with her. But she had no idea how hard it was for him to effect this; not so much because Roland was not obedient, and mindful every hour of the task set him, but because Eric was inwardly disturbed that he was obliged to a.s.sign to his pupil as a duty and a theme some n.o.ble thought, some lesson, some subject of study, merely to become temporarily freed from his presence. The book he gave him, the place he selected for him to read until his return, appeared to him perverted to a wrong use, dishonored and profaned; yet nothing else could be done.

It was a bitter experience, but it was the last time; he would come out from this final interview pure and strong; and have a plain and straight path before him.

He became composed with this thought, and entered the park. He found Bella on the seat upon the height; she had evidently been weeping freely.

Hearing his step, she removed the handkerchief from her eyes. "You have been weeping?"

"Yes, for your mother, for myself, for us all! O, how often have I heard your mother ridiculed, blamed, pitied, and despised, for following the impulse of her heart and the man of her choice. For some time the saying was, To live on love and eight hundred thalers. She is now more highly favored than any of us. With blessed satisfaction she surveys now the past, and looks forward to the future in her son, and what are her deriders? Puppets, dolls,--gossipping, music-making, dancing, chattering, scandal-making dolls! They turn up their noses at the man who has become so rich on the labor of slaves, and our aristocratic fathers sell their children, and the children sell themselves, for a high rank in society, for horses and carriages, for finery and villas. The n.o.bility, the poor n.o.bility, is the inherited curse from ancestral pride, from slavery to the ancestral idea! A peasant woman, who gleans barefooted in the stubble-field, is happier and freer than the lady who is driven through the streets in her carriage, leaning back and cooling herself with her fan."

"I have one request," began Eric in a constrained voice; "will you bestow upon me one hour of your life?"

"One hour?"

"Yes. Will you listen to me?"

"I am attentive." As she gazed at him, her eye-brows seemed to grow larger and larger, the corners of her mouth to be drawn slowly down, and her lips to open as if parched with a feverish heat; nothing was wanting but the wings upon her head, and the snaky heads knotted under her chin, to give the perfect Medusa-look.

Eric was for an instant petrified; then collecting himself, he continued:--

"Two questions now rend my heart; one is, Has the violence of love taken from me life, study, and the power of abstract thought? The other is, Must a child of humanity, because destiny has once decided for him, become a lifelong victim to this determination? And these two questions resolve themselves into one, just as those snaky heads form one knot under the chin of the Medusa."

"Go on!" urged Bella.

"Well, then, there was one hour when I would like to have said to the beautiful wife sitting before me, 'I love thee!' and I would have embraced and kissed her, but then,"--Eric pressed his hand upon his heart, and gnashed his teeth,--"but that hour over, I should have put a bullet through my brain!"

Bella let her eyes fall, and Eric went on: "One hour, and then my peace was gone; I had nothing left. I could not sleep. I could not think.

This could not last. I lost myself, and what did I gain? I saw all that this love devastated, and could it be love? No. Could I take it lightly like others, it would be light. But why is this the only thing to be made light of? Why is not the ideal of life also to be made light of, and why is not all feeling only a plausible lie?"

In a hoa.r.s.e voice he added:--

"But I do not believe that love has the right to lay everything in ruins; but then perhaps it may be said, it is not real love. Pluck up heart, look at the world for yourself, see how pleasantly, respectably, and shrewdly it lies, the women tricked out with artificial beauty, and the men with superficial knowledge. Do you see the abyss on whose brink I stood? And here I said to myself. We are placed in the world in order to live, and knowledge and culture have been given us that we may get from them life and not death. And how could I look a n.o.ble man in the face, how could I look up to the sun in heaven, how was I to educate a human being, to stand erect in the world, to abhor crime, to discern the holy; how was I to take the word mother upon my lips, with the consciousness that I was myself the vilest of all, and that there was no moment in which I, and another also, must not tremble, and be filled with cowardly fear and despair."

Eric paused and placed his hand on his forehead; his voice choked, tears stood in his eyes.

"Go on!" cried Bella, "I am listening."

"It is well. This once do I speak thus to you, and only this once. You have courage to hear the truth. Our relation is not love, must not be love; for love cannot thrive on murder, hypocrisy, and treachery. I clasp your hand--no, I clasp it not, for I know I could not let it go, if I did. Here I stand--I speak to you, you listen to me--I speak to you, as if I were miles away, as if I were dead; there must be distance, there must be death, before there is any life."

"What do you mean?" interposed Bella.

She looked at Eric's hand as if he were about to draw a weapon from his bosom.

Breathing deep, he went on: "It must be possible for human beings who have been made conscious of where they are, to find again the right path from which they have wandered. My friend! you are happy if you understand the happiness, and you can and must learn to appreciate it; and I am happy. Howsoever my heart may be shattered, I know I shall come to understand my duty and my happiness. I have been, heretofore, so proud, I thought I had mastered the world and brought it under my feet, and so did you; and that we have met, is to be not for our destruction, but rather for our awakening into a new life.

"I foresee that the days will come when we shall coldly extend to each other our hands, and say, or even not say, though we feel and know it, that there was one pure hour, an hour won by a severe struggle, when we were exalted in our own souls, and because we held each other so highly, we did not debase nor degrade ourselves. This hour is hard, is overwhelming; but what is hard and overwhelming now, will be, in the future, tender and full of restoring strength.

"We would hold each other high, that we may not destroy the laws of righteous living. And here is life's duty. My friend, it was a saying of my father, The man of understanding must be able to obey the command of duty, with the same glow of zeal that others obey the command of pa.s.sion. So must it be. The stars shine over our heads, I look upon you as upon a star that shines in its purity and in its ordained orbit. Ah!

I do not know what I am saying. Enough! Let me now bid you farewell; when we meet again--"

"No, stay here!" Bella cried, grasping his arm, which she let go immediately, as if she had touched a snake.

She withdrew two steps, and threw back her head, saying:--

"I thank you."

Eric wanted to reply, but it was better that he should say nothing; he was about to go away in silence, when Bella cried:--

"One question! Is it true that you saw Manna Sonnenkamp, before you came here?"

"Yes."

"And you love her, and are here on her account?"

"No."

"I believe you, and I thank you."

There seemed to be in this utterance something consolatory to her, that she had not been sacrificed to love for another. She looked wildly around, moved her head right and left, and when she had become calm again, she said:

"You are right. It is well."

She seemed to be looking for something to give to Eric, without being able to find it; and now, as if she were giving utterance to a thought that had long lain upon her mind, and which anxiety for his welfare forced from her, she cried,--

"Be warned! Be on your guard against my brother; he can be terrible."

Eric went away; it was a hard matter to return to Roland, but he must.

He sat still by Roland's side for a short time, with his hands over his eyes; the light pained them, and he did not venture to look at Roland.

Then a servant, came with the message that the Count and the Countess were going to take their departure at once; Eric and Roland could bid them good-bye in the court-yard.

They went down, and heard that, contrary to the original plan, they were to set out immediately, and send the next day a carriage for Aunt Claudine.

Bella extended her gloved right hand to Eric, saying in a low tone:--

"Good-night, Herr Captain."

The carriage drove off.

CHAPTER IX.

THOUGHTS OF THE RELEASED.

Bella sat quietly as she rode homewards with her husband. After a long silence. Count Clodwig said,--