Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine
"What is the matter?" asked Eric.
"Oh, nothing, and every thing. I thank you for remaining with us. Look there – there above – high over the castle-tower, two falcons are flying. Ah, if one could thus mount aloft, and leave behind and forget all that is beneath! What was life to me? A labor, a labor upon our shroud. I wanted to live above the world and do penance, to implore heaven's grace in another's behalf – in behalf of another! Ah, I can do it no longer – no longer."
She passed her hand over her forehead, and what she said she knew not. She continued walking, and yet she felt as if she would like to remain in the same spot.
A woman, who was mowing the third crop of grass in the meadow, called out to Manna, saying that her father had got well, and would help take in the hay to-morrow.
"I wish I was yonder mower," Manna exclaimed.
"Forgive me," answered Eric, "if I cannot help expressing my surprise at your uttering a wish like that."
"I, like that? Why should I not?"
"You have to-day shown such clearness of thought, that I cannot comprehend your giving utterance to an expression so common on the lips of thousands. What does it mean, when one says, 'I would like to be somebody else'? If you were some one else, you would still not be a different person; and if you retain the consciousness you had before, you would not be some one else. To speak in this way is not only unreasonable, but, as I view it, irreligious."
Manna stopped, and Eric continued, —
"We are what we are, not through our own instrumentality, but through an eternal ordination for which we have no other name but God. We must try to reconcile ourselves to what we are, and to be happy in our condition, whether poorer rich, beautiful or ugly."
"Well, I will never again indulge or utter so irrational a thought," replied Manna, extending her hand to Eric. She trembled.
They walked along in silence. It began to be dusk in the shaded paths; neither of them spoke.
"I see my mother yonder," said Manna, sighing deeply as she stopped.
Did she not want to meet her mother while walking with Eric? She had often walked with him, and he seemed like a brother; there was no harm in being alone with him.
"I bid you farewell here," Manna added in a low tone. "What a day this has been! Has it been only a day?"
"And as this sun now going down," interposed Eric, "will again return, and be the same in good days and in evil days, so you have a true friend in me, one whose eye watches over you, and will watch over you until it shall be closed by death."
"I know it! I know it!" cried Manna. "O God, I'm sure of it!"
She trembled violently.
"I entreat you, go now," she added.
Eric turned away, but looking back, he saw that Manna was kneeling at the foot of a large fir-tree, while the descending sun shone upon her countenance, as she stretched her folded hands up towards heaven. Then she rose up; he hastened to meet her as she came towards him, and they were enfolded in each other's arms.
"Heaven and earth, do what ye will!" she cried. "Now come what will!"
They held each other in a close embrace, as if they had but one breath, and were eternally joined in one kiss.
"You are mine! mine! my father, my hope, my world! Oh, Eric, leave me not again, – never again!"
"I leave you?"
"No, you cannot. Heaven will forgive, – no, will bless. See, Eric! Everything is on fire, the trees, the grass, the Rhine, the mountains, the sky, everything is on fire! Ah, Eric, if the whole earth were in flames, I would hold thee in my arms, and in thine arms would I gladly die. Take me, kill me, do with me what you will, I can't do otherwise."
"Come, look up. Is it indeed you?" replied Eric. "You know not how I have struggled. Now you are here, now you are mine! You are, mine, you call me thine. Oh, call me so once more."
In trembling accents, now beginning and now breaking off again, they related to each other their struggles with themselves and with the world around them, and they recognized each other's purity and truthfulness of soul; and in proportion as Manna had hitherto closed her heart to Eric, the whole fountain of her love now welled up and overflowed.
As they stood with hands clasped, Eric said, —
"O Manna, how I wish you could be so happy as to see your own look."
"And you yours. Everyone who sees and knows you must love you. How then can I help it, who see and know you as nobody else can?"
They kissed each other with closed eyes, and over them the trees rustled in the gentle breeze of evening.
On that bench where he had once sat with Bella, Eric now sat by Manna's side, and a thrill passed through him as he thought of that time. He shrank from the recollection. With love's penetrating glance Manna noticed the passing emotion, and asked: —
"Have you too had to wrestle and struggle so sorely, before you saw and acknowledged that it must be?"
"Ah, let us not recall it; care and trouble, conflict and struggle, will be sure to come. Now is the marriage of our spirits; there must be no other thought, no discordant tone. We are blessed, twice blessed. I know that you are mine as I am yours. It must be so."
They embraced; and as she cried, "O, Eric, I. could bear you in my arms over all the mountains!" He saw subdued in her a wild, lawless, passionate strength of nature, such as a daughter of Sonnenkamp must inherit.
No one who had seen the modest, humble, gentle child of the morning could have believed that she could become so impassioned. Eric felt himself taken possession of by a stronger power.
"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, as if she read his soul. "You think I am a passionate child, do you not? You've no idea how untamed I am; but you shall never see it again, never, rely upon that." She sat by his side, stroking his hand, and with an arch glance she said: —
"Ah, dear Eric, you don't know what a foolish child I am, and you are so learned and wise. Now tell me truly without any reserve – you can tell me what you please, for I am yours now – tell me truly, do you honestly believe that I am worthy of you? I am so ignorant and insignificant compared with you!"
"Ignorant and insignificant? You can freely, fearlessly, and without any qualification, match yourself with any one else in sincere aspiration, in pure self-devotion, and in disinterested affection. No one can surpass you here; everything else is of no account. Knowledge, beauty, wealthy – these do not bring love."
"And I will learn a great deal from you," said Manna, gently caressing and kissing his hands. "Ah, keep on talking; say what you will; it is music to me, you cannot think how like music it is to hear you. And do you know that I have heard you sing too? Twice. Once in the great festival, and once here on the Rhine."
"And do you know," he replied, "that I saw you in the twilight at the convent?"
"Yes. You looked at me in this way." She tried to imitate his look.
"And at that time, when we returned from the festival, a dozen of the pupils were in love with you; but I was afraid of you, and yet I cannot now imagine it. What will they say in the convent? They will look upon me as a hypocrite in regard to you, and – oh, Eric, how much I renounce, but I renounce it willingly. And oh, how rejoiced Roland will be!"
"But your parents?"
"Yes, my parents!" said she. "My parents!" Her voice became fainter, her countenance turned suddenly pale, and she drew closer to Eric, as if she were cold. He put his hand upon her head, and played with her tresses, while she held his other hand closely pressed to her lips. No words were needed, they could not speak, for each wanted to say to the other: Do you know what I would say?
"Why do you tremble so, all at once?" asked Manna.
"Ah, I wish you were not rich."
"I wish so too," said she, in a drowsy tone. "Let us be quiet. So – let me sleep here only half a minute. Oh, how like music is the beating of your heart!" She reclined her head for a few moments against his breast, and then said: —
"A hundred years have passed over me, a blissful hundred years. Now I am strong and fresh and wide-awake; now forget all I have done and said, all except one thing, that I am yours, and I love you so long as I breathe, and you are mine."
"You wanted to become a nun, and I – I wanted also to renounce the world."
"But are you not a Huguenot."
"I did not mean that, my Manna. I wanted to renounce what is called the world, and be wholly devoted to a life of thought."
"And can you not do that if I am yours?"
"No. But why speak of this now? I am no longer alone, I am myself and you too!"
"And I too am you as well as myself," repeated Manna. "Now I must go to my mother," she said, raising herself up; "no one is to know about us, neither your mother nor mine, no one."
"Shall I see you this evening in the garden?"
"No, it will be better not to see each other until to-morrow; I cannot – I must first compose myself. Ah, I deny myself. Early to-morrow morning."
She now untied a blue silk scarf that she wore around her neck, and placed it about his.
Another kiss, and still another, and they parted.
CHAPTER XVI.
REJOICE in YOUR LIFE
Eric sat a long time on the bench; night came on, and he saw a light in his mother's house. He knew that she and his aunt were together, and he fancied that he heard the tones of a harp, but yet it was too far off for the sound to roach him. But the tones resounded within him, and the question darted through his mind: How will Manna bear it when she learns the terrible secret? And canst thou share in possessions so acquired? How Sonnenkamp will rave! What will Pranken do? The world will say, it was nicely contrived; while the father and the betrothed were absent, he has with his mother's help stolen away the daughter of the house. Let the world come on! Love conquers everything!
He saw a light in Manna's room, and heard the window shut; he looked for a long time up to it, and then went to the courtyard and ordered the groom to saddle a horse.
The groom said there was none there except Herr Sonnenkamp's black steed.
"Saddle him then."
"I dare not do it. My master allows no one to ride him."
"Do as I order you."
The horse was led out; he opened his large eyes on Eric, distended his nostrils, and tossed back his mane as he neighed.
"That's well!" exclaimed Eric.
He mounted and rode off at a tearing trot. He felt perfectly safe on the horse, who seemed to take delight in his free rider.
Where will he go? Far away – away to the world's end. He felt buoyant, as if the weight of the body were removed, and he could fly away into the wide, wide world.
He rode now down the mountain to the village where Claus lived. All that he had experienced on this road, and all that he had thought, thronged in upon his mind at once, and he even looked to see if Roland were riding by his side.
Roland! How strange! It struck him as an immeasurably long time since Roland had left him; it was the recollection of a far-off event, that he once had instructed a youth on the verge of manhood.
He gazed at the fields, at the vineyards, as if he must ask them: How is it, how will it be when I call you mine – a bit of the world my own! Trees, meadows, vine-hills, fields and vineyards danced before his eyes.
He rode into the village.
Here all was quiet. He drew up at the field-guard's house, he knew not for what reason. The blackbird was singing alone in the still night, 'Rejoice in your life.' She got no farther on in the tune, and this melody, so old and yet so good, now accompanied Eric, and chimed in with the hoof-beats of his swift steed.
From the village he made a bend, and rode up the height where he had formerly sat with Knopf. He had asked Knopf: What would you do if you should come into the possession of millions? And now it seemed to him that a hundred-pound weight lay upon his shoulders. He called out into the night: —
"No, I shall not become the possessor of millions, no, never!"
Now Weidmann's plans rushed into his mind. Above, on the height yonder, hundreds of men were living on their own acres, which once they had never thought of owning, free and happy in the independence secured through that man.
The horse looked round at his rider, as he exclaimed aloud: —
"That would be the thing? But on property so obtained? No!"
Quietly he rode down the mountain, and came in sight of the villa, and the glass of the hot-houses, but he turned his horse's head again. Yes, he must tell one man, one only. He rode to the Major's. Like a wanderer who sees a distant gleam of light, he was glad at heart when he saw the light twinkling in the modest house.
The Major, who had heard the clattering of hoofs – and he knew the black horse's trot – called out of the window: —
"Herr Baron von Lichtenburg, are you here so soon?"
"Up to this time my name has been Eric Dournay," replied the horseman. He dismounted, tied the horse to the garden-fence, entered the house, and was welcomed cordially by both of the inmates.
"What's to pay? Is all well?" asked the Major.
Eric relieved the anxiety of the Major, who kept saying: —
"Just see, Fräulein Milch, – don't be afraid to put on your spectacles, – just see! our Herr Eric looks like another being. You're in a fever; how red your lips are!"
Eric could not reply; he could not say that they were still burning with kisses.
The Major went to a cupboard, and mixing a powder in half a glass of water, returned to Eric. Putting his hand on Eric's forehead he said, —
"You had better take something." He then shook into it another powder, so that it effervesced, and Eric had to drink the hissing draught, without another word. The Major made the sage remark that there was nothing in the world so good for all sorts of excitement as a Rochelle powder.
Fräulein Milch, who saw very plainly that Eric had something to communicate, was about to leave the room, but he called out, —
"You are to hear it too, you and my friend here. I entrust it to your true hearts. I am betrothed."
"To Manna?" said Fräulein Milch.
Eric looked amazed, and the Major cried: —
"God be thanked that she lives in our days; in the past dark ages they would have burnt her for a witch. She knows everything, and sees into the future; nobody could ever believe it. But here you have it. As we were sitting together, she said: This very evening Eric and Manna have been betrothed. And when I laughed, she said: Don't laugh, I'll go for a bottle of wine. Look, comrade, there it stands; and she said: They will come here this very evening together. Well, she isn't yet an infallible prophetess, for you've come alone, comrade. Come here, let me kiss you, my heart's brother."
He gave him a hearty kiss, and went on: —
"You have no father, and I, – I'll go with you to the altar when you're married. Give me your hand. And people say, there are no miracles in these days! Every single day there's a miracle wrought, just exactly as much as in the good old times; only we know how to explain it to-day, and in old times they didn't understand it."
Fräulein Milch had uncorked the bottle and filled the glasses.
"Drink with me, my son!" cried the Major. "Drink! real Johannisberg."
They touched glasses, and the Major, emptying his, kissed Eric again, and then said, —
"Whew! You've learned to kiss. Give one to Fräulein Milch, too, – you've my permission. Fräulein Milch, no flinching! Come here – there – give her a kiss. She's a friend, – you've not a better in the world except your mother, – and you'll find out she's more than the whole world knows; you deserve to."
"I beg, Herr Major," Fräulein Milch interrupted with trepidation.
"Very well," said the Major, in a soothing tone, "I'll say nothing more. But now a kiss."
Eric and Fräulein Milch kissed each other, the Fräulein's face turning red as fire.
They now engaged in a friendly talk together, the Major taking special delight that Pranken would not get the magnificent girl and her millions; but his chief satisfaction arose from the convent's being circumvented.
As Eric returned home, late at night, he heard the blackbird still singing: Rejoice in your life!
There was no light in Manna's chamber, but Manna was standing at the window.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SERPENT IN EDEN
As Manna stood at the window, looking out into the darkness, she laid her burning bands upon the window-sill, uttering brief exclamations to herself of hope and desolation, of rejoicing and complaint. Only the stars saw her face with its changing expression of rapture and of agony, and her kisses were given to the empty air. She looked up to the well-known stars, and all their glittering host seemed but the reflection of Eric's beaming eyes.
"Why am I alone? Why should I ever be alone again for an instant?" she asked of the night.
A feeling of utter loneliness came over her. She thought of the nun whom she had seen the day before at the station, who looked neither to the right or to the left, going from convent to convent, and from one sick-bed to another, and who wanted nothing that the world could give. How would it be if a voice should now say to her; Thou art mine; turn thy gaze, put off that disfiguring disguise; look around; let others look at thee and greet thee with smiles; hope, despair, be joyous, be sad, be not forgetful of all else in subjection to one fond, painful idea!
It seemed to Manna as if she were standing upon the verge of a dizzy precipice, now about to be dashed over it, and now drawn back; she looked round, for she felt as if Eric's arm were actually about her, and lifting her up into the world. Into the world! What a world! She passed her hand over her face, and the hand seemed no longer to be hers. Turning back into the room, she threw herself on her knees.
"Woe is me! I love!" she cried. "No; I thank thee, O God, that thou hast laid this trial upon me. This trial? no, I cannot help it! Thou, Thou who art Love itself, whom a thousand lips name, and whom yet none can comprehend, forgive and help me, help him, and help us all! May I live in him and in all that is holy and great, all that is beautiful and pure! Here I lie, slay me – slay me, if it is a sin! Heimchen, thou, my sister, a part of my own soul, thou didst flutter a moment in the air, like a blossom fallen from the tree. I, I must, amidst storm and tempest, remain upon the tree of life. O, let the fruit of good deeds ripen in me, O Thou to whom I pray, and whom he reveres, though he prays not, he whose thought is prayer, whose action is prayer, and whose whole life is prayer."
She rose up and stood again at the window, gazing long, in a reverie, up at the starry sky. Out into the night flew something from Manna's window and was caught in the branches of a tree; it was the girdle which she had taken off.
As Eric was sitting alone in his room, he heard a gentle rustling, and was startled as if he had seen a ghost. What is that? He opened the door, and Manna stood before him. They silently embraced, and Manna said: —
"I come to you; I am always with you in my thoughts, – in everything. Oh, Eric! I am so happy, and so miserably wretched. My father – do you know it?"
"I know everything."
"You know, and still love me?"
She kneeled down and embraced his feet. He raised her, and seating himself by her side, they talked together of the dreadful secret.
"Tell me," she asked, "how you have borne it?"
"Ask rather, how Roland will bear it!"
"Do you think he will hear of it?"
"Certainly, who knows how soon the world-"
"The world! the world!" exclaimed Manna. "No, no; the world is good, the world is beautiful. Oh, thanks to the Unsearchable for giving to me my Eric, my world, my whole world!"
Calmly, clearly, and with wonderful insight. Manna apprehended everything; but in the very midst of the recital, she suddenly threw herself upon Eric's breast, and sobbed forth: —
"Oh! why must I have this knowledge so young, so early; why must I experience and overcome all this?"
After Eric had calmed and soothed her, she went away.
An eye had watched, an eye had seen. But they knew not that an eye had watched and an eye had seen.
In an eye had the morning, on awakening, Manna cried, "I am beloved! his beloved! Is he awake yet, I wonder?"
She opened the window. A young starling, that was now, even in the autumn, building its nest, found the thin hempen cord on the tree before Manna's window, snapped it up in its bill, and flew away to weave it into the nest. Eric was below in the garden, and Manna called to him: —
"I'll be down immediately." And in the early dawn they embraced and kissed each other, and spoke words of encouragement to one another, needed for what must be borne to-day, for to-day her father and Pranken were expected to return.
They went towards the green cottage hand in hand, sat down where they had sat with the Mother on the previous day, and waited for her waking. In the midst of all the joy and all the suffering of a secret love, encompassed by perils, they wanted to learn what had taken glace at the capital. They could not anticipate what had really occurred.
Eric let Manna return alone. He told her that he had been at the Major's the evening before, and he, wanted to go again, in order to request him and Fräulein Milch to keep the matter a profound secret.
As Eric was going along the road, a carriage came up; his name was called, and Bella got put.
"I am rejoiced to meet you alone. Do you know that we never see each other alone in these days? But to-day I shall not be with you. Clodwig sends his greeting, and an earnest request that you will visit him at Wolfsgarten. He is lonely and you are lonely, and it will be pleasant for you to pass with him these first days of separation, and to stay with us until you have got somewhat reconciled to the absence of your dear pupil. Clodwig has grand projects in your behalf. You can go back at once in our carriage to Wolfsgarten, and I shall be here with my sister-in-law until matters are arranged. Where is the dear child?"
Eric escorted Bella to the villa, but he could not utter a word. Fortunately, Fräulein Perini came up, and he could hand Bella over to her. He hastened to Manna and informed her in a few hasty words that Bella had arrived. She looked up, half roguishly, half pitifully, and asked: —
"Is it true that you once loved her?"
"Yes and no. Are you jealous?"
"No, for I know that you have never loved, never; you can never have loved any one but me. Come, Eric, let us now go up to her, hand in hand, and acknowledge at once what we are to each other, and also before the world. Let us have no single moment of deception or concealment. I have the courage to confess all, and I am happy to have it to confess. Regard to the world must not deprive us of a moment, of one single moment, in which we can see each other, freely take each other's hand, and appear before the world, as we are in reality, one."
Eric had great difficulty in bringing Manna to use foresight and prudence; he desired her, as the first token of their relation as husband and wife, to conform to his will.
Manna wept, and said peevishly: —
"Very well; I will obey you, but I'll see no one."
Eric tried every means to induce her to see Bella, but she refused, saying: —
"Can you, the pure, the good, allow me to be so debased for an hour? How am I to endure it, how am I to conduct myself, if she salutes me as her sister-in-law?"
Eric told her that Bella wanted him to go at once to Wolfsgarten, in order to spend with Clodwig these few days in which he was unsettled. And when he pointed out the abnormal position of a dependant, Manna tenderly stroked his face, saying: —
"You good man, you have to serve; yes, I know now what this is for you, the pure, lofty soul, whom all ought to serve. Ah, how much have you, dear heart, been obliged to bear! But it is well, for otherwise we should not have become acquainted with one another. Come, I shall be able to do it. I will make myself do it."
She went to receive Bella, and she had self-control enough to do it in an unexceptionable manner.
Eric soon went away, and Bella was amazed to see the glance with which Manna followed him. Manna was desperate, talking much and in an unusually lively way, so that Bella was puzzled afresh.
