Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

CHAPTER XII.

A TRYING INTERVIEW

Eric rode to Wolfsgarten. He met on the way the Major and Fräulein Milch, who were walking close together under one large umbrella.

Eric told them that Clodwig was dangerously sick, and the Major said, —

"Don't let him have any other nurse. Fräulein Milch will come and take care of him. Herr Captain, one ought to be sick for once, so as to have Fräulein Milch nurse him."

Fräulein Milch declared herself ready to come to Clodwig, if she were called upon.

Eric rode on, and now sought to put in a right point of view all that he had experienced, so that he might gain the strength necessary to bear up under coming events. How much had happened to him and to others since he rode out from Wolfsgarten to Villa Eden? Every thing passed through his soul, and he breathed deep in silent satisfaction as he thought what would have been his condition now, if he had not exerted all his strength to bring himself into right relations with Bella. How different would it be, were he riding now with a soul torn by conflicting feelings, unable to help wishing for Clodwig's death in order that he might get possession of Bella, and obliged to stand like the most abject hypocrite by the bedside of the dying one. No poet yet has ventured to depict the mental state of two people who expect to base their happiness on the news of another's death; and these, no criminals but cultivated, and intelligent.

Eric looked upon himself as one rescued from destruction. Never was a man possessed by more pious emotions than Eric was now, as, stopping, he said to himself, —

"I thank thee, thou Eternal and Ineffable Spirit; for it is not I who have, through my education and inherited tendencies, become what I am. I am now pure; I will not be unworthy of it, but keep myself pure and innocent."

Wanting to get rid, finally, of his thoughts and speculations, he spoke to the messenger, an old confidential servant of the Wolfsgarten family. The messenger related how Clodwig had come home from Villa Eden in company with the Banker, and how they had thought he would have died at that time.

The servant turned round, and, pointing with his whip to Villa Eden, said, "There's no queerer state of things anywhere than in this world." In the midst of his deep distress, Eric could not help laughing aloud at this odd remark.

"Is any one of the relatives at Wolfsgarten?"

"No: the Jew is the only one there. But he is a friend of our master."

Eric regretted that he had entered into conversation with the servant, for he could not restrain him from talking about what he thought would be done, if the gracious master should die.

At the last hill, Eric dismounted, and walked over the wooded height. It was all still. The hornbeam tree, which first leaves out, was now the first to let fall its yellow leaves: there was a rustling and a low crackling in the wood, and only the hawk screeched above on the height.

Eric came in front of the manor-house, and entered the courtyard. He went to Bella, who looked pale and as if suffering severely. He entered just at the moment that Bella was asking her brother of the news at Villa Eden.

Eric was startled to meet Pranken here. Both had to use the strongest self-control in order to stand up under the interview.

Bella thanked Eric for being the first one to come to her.

"He is now asleep," said she: "he talks constantly of you. Be composed: you will hardly know him; give in to him in every thing, he is very excitable."

Bella's voice was hoarse; and, covering her eyes with a white handkerchief, she asked, —

"Were you present when your father died?"

Eric said that he was.

Bella went to inform Clodwig of Eric's arrival. Pranken and Eric were by themselves. For a long time neither spoke: at last, Pranken began, —

"I never thought that I should speak again to Herr Dournay; but we are now at a sick-bed, and for the sake of the invalid" —

"I thank you."

"I beg you to give me no thanks, and to speak to me just as little as possible, – just enough to excite no remark and nothing more."

He turned round and was about to go.

"Just one word," Eric requested. "We shall soon see an eye closed in death that has always beamed with gentle and noble feeling; let all bitterness toward me disappear, or, for a time, be suspended. Let us not, at such an hour as this, stand in hostility to each other."

"You can talk well: I know that."

"And I want to say what it is well for you to listen to. It troubles me that I appear to you ungrateful; but now, in this mysterious presence which awaits us all, I repeat" —

Bella returned and said, —

"He is still asleep. O Herr Dournay! Clodwig loves you more than he loves any other person in the world."

She gave Eric her hand, and it was cold as ice. The three were speechless for some time, until Eric asked, —

"Is there no hope?"

"No. The Doctor says that he has probably only a few hours to live. Do you hear any thing? The Doctor has promised to come, – to return immediately. Oh, if I could only induce Clodwig to call in another physician! Do urge him to do it: I have no confidence in Doctor Richard."

Eric made no reply.

"Ah, my God!" lamented Bella, "how forsaken we are in our need. You will remain with us, will you not? You will not abandon us?"

Eric promised to remain.

It had a strange sound, a reminiscence out of the past, with its forms of courtesy, as Bella now asked pardon for not having inquired after Eric's mother, Frau Ceres, and Manna; and, with a peculiar jerking out of the words, she asked, —

"How is Herr Sonnenkamp?"

A servant came, and announced that the Herr Count had waked up, and had asked immediately, if Herr Captain Dournay had not yet come.

"Go to him," said Bella, laying her hand upon Eric's shoulder. "Go to him, I beg you; but let it come as if from you, and not from me, that another physician should be called in."

Eric went; and, as soon as he had gone, "Bella said hurriedly to Pranken, —

"Otto, get rid of the Jew as politely as you can. What does he want here?"

Pranken went to the Banker.

Bella was alone, and could not control her feeling of unrest. She had already arranged in thought the announcement of the decease, and had even written the words, —

"To relatives and friends I make the painful announcement, that my beloved husband, Count von Wolfsgarten of Wolfsgarten, formerly ambassador of his royal Highness at Rome, Knight of the first rank, has died after a short illness, at the age of sixty-five. I beg their silent sympathy.

"BELLA COUNTESS VON WOLFSGARTEN (née, Von Pranken)."

A demon continually whispered to her this announcement: she saw it before her eyes with a black border, even while Clodwig was still living. Why is this? What suggests these words, and brings them so clearly before her eyes? She could not get away from them. She took up the sheet of paper, tore it up, and threw the pieces out of the window into the rain.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST BLUE FLOWER

Eric, meanwhile, had entered the sick-chamber.

"Are you here at last?" cried Clodwig. His voice was faint; and the small childlike hand which the sick man extended toward him appeared more delicate than ever.

"Sit down," said he; "don't be so broken down: you are young and strong, and have a good conscience. Let me take your hand. It is a happiness to die in the full possession of my senses: I have often desired to die a sudden death. Better as it is. Tell me, how is your mother? Are you really betrothed to the daughter of that terrible man."

Eric could not yet utter a word: he only nodded without speaking, and Clodwig continued, —

"That is fine, an instance of the grand truth of compensation in the world. Once, you were to become my son – my son! It is better as it is. I am to have no son. But tell me, how is Roland? Did he not want to come with you? I see him, the splendid youth! he is present all the time. You have done well, Eric, entirely well. You will stay with the young man. If we could only know what will become of the father!"

Before Eric could answer, the invalid lay back upon the pillow. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Nothing was heard but the ticking of the clock; and now a carriage drove into the court-yard, the wheels cutting into the gravel.

Clodwig awoke.

"That is the Doctor," he said aloud. He requested the attendant to say to the physician that he would like to be left with Eric alone for a time. The nurse gave the commission to the servant, and remained in the anteroom. Sitting upright, Clodwig said, —

"Shut the door: I want to speak to you in private."

Eric sat by the bedside, and Clodwig began, —

"This Sonnenkamp, so audacious, and yet – hypocrisy, it is everywhere; a jumble of grimaces, of masks who do not know one another. A sentence upon Sonnenkamp? I have let him off entirely. His path is zigzag, his goal horrible. Who shall judge? I say it here to you, my brain received a fatal lesion when the fearful thought entered into it. When I look over my own life, what is it? I have filled out a uniform: we are walking, empty sentry-boxes, painted with the national color. If a discharge comes, we think it something very mysterious; we whisper – all a farce. The life of most persons is hypocrisy, and so is mine, so long, so honorable! We have no courage, we do not confess what we are. We are encumbered with forms, compliances, courtesies, conformities; and all is false inside. We never tell each other what we are as we acknowledge it to ourselves. Don't be afraid. I have no crime, no transgression, now, to acknowledge and to feel remorse for. I have been all my life pure as thousands, as millions, by my side; but I have not been the person that I really am. Do you know that grand word which God spake when he revealed himself in the desert to the holy Shepherd? It is this. This is God. 'I am that I am.' This is the truth, truthfulness, the divine in every man; and men deny it. Who can say I am that I am? I never could, and millions by my side could not. We are all glossed over outside, all and everywhere over-refined – no, not all, but most of us: were all so, the sun would never again rise upon the earth. But the time will come, and you are one of those awaiting its coming, you will share in its life, – the time will come, when men shall dissemble no more, shall lie no more, shall pass themselves off for no more than they are, and shall be what they profess to be. Do you comprehend me?"

"Perfectly, perfectly."

"Know, then, I tell you that I have not done what I ought to have done. I have not gone from hour to hour into the presence of those in power, and said, 'Thus am I, and thus must you be.' I have lulled myself with a false philosophy; I have persuaded myself that all would be spontaneously unfolded of itself; that we are in the direct line of the developing tendencies, and we have nothing to do in furtherance thereof. Ha, ha! unfold of itself! Yes, death comes of itself, death comes, and takes away the life that was no real life, no candid revealment, no genuine self. I once knew a great actor. To an actor, death will always be the hardest, not only because he has so often counterfeited death, but because he knows that he leaves behind him his parts, his masks, his paints, his wilted wreaths, his rounds of applause, and he can never be called out again. My son, we diplomatists, we die the death of the actor. I have led an unprofitable life. I had no fatherland to give me other than diplomatic farces to perform. My life has been a busy inactivity: I have spent the greatest part of my life in the livery and the defence of a cause which I did not respect, scarcely had any regard for. Here is this slave-trader. Fie! the whole world calls out in horror: and yet, in circles held in high estimation, there are far worse than slave-traders. Others, again, are not in the house of correction, because they were under no necessity of stealing, and because they were bought off by money from being positively immoral. There, give me now, I beg, a cooling draught, my mouth is parched."

Eric gave Clodwig a draught; but they were both so awkward, that it was almost all spilled.

"No matter, no matter," said Clodwig, smiling, "that's the way in this world: only the smaller part is really drunk, the larger part gets spilled, wasted. There, now go, and let the Doctor come, but come back again afterwards."

Eric went and called the physician. Bella asked what Clodwig had been talking about. He could only answer in general terms, and begged to be allowed to go into the open air for refreshment.

Eric went into the garden. The November wind was raging, and the rain driving fiercely. Eric wrapped himself in his cloak, and went into the wood: it did him good to walk in the midst of the uproar of the elements. He went through the park and the wood, by the game path which he had followed on the morning after telling the story of his life to his newly-won friend Clodwig. Now he could not stride on in exultant mood, as if borne onward by an external force; now he must battle with the storm which roared over him through the tree-tops. Now, as then, he stood under the covered pavilion; but in the wide landscape he could see nothing but clouds of driving rain. Close to the wall of the building there was still one beautiful blue-bell: unconsciously he broke it off, and, as he returned to the house, it occurred to him to carry the flower to the invalid. He entered the sick-chamber, and Clodwig cried, —

"Ah, the blue flower! You gather it and bring it to me. We have dreamed of them often in my youth. Youth, youth!" repeated the sick man often.

He seized the flower, then leaned far out of bed, and smelled of Eric's clothes, saying, —

"Ah I my son, why do the Bible pictures come up before me now? The patriarch Isaac said to his son as he came to his sickbed, 'The smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.' Yes, Eric, you bring all the free air of the fields into my sick-room. When I am no more, remember that you have done me good."

Eric wept.

"Yes, weep, it is well, it will do you no harm that I make your heart heavy. You will be happy and active on the earth whose clods will soon rest on me. Only, I pray you, stay by me when I die; and when I am dead, and they prepare me for the grave, take something from my heart which must stay there till it has stopped beating. Stay with me, Eric, I will not think of petty, individual interests. I will not leave the world in hatred and anger – no, not in hatred and anger against any man. Help me to attain to the universal, the grand: in those I will live and die."

He lay back on his pillows; and, as Eric leaned over him, his breath came quietly, and on his face was a gentle smile. What thoughts might now be stirring this soul?

Eric wanted to send a messenger to Villa Eden, to say that he must remain where he was. Lootz, who had been sent by Herr Sonnenkamp to inquire for the Count, carried the message back.

CHAPTER XIV.

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD OF A DYING SEER

Clodwig slept several hours, while Eric sat with the Banker, and drew refreshment from his self-forgetting sympathy. The Banker failed in many of the ordinary forms of society; but he possessed a nature full of tact, and, in the midst of his deep emotion, Eric thought that only unselfishness has genuine tact. Want of tact is at bottom selfishness; for the man who is without it thinks and acts only for himself.

Eric now saw the Banker in a new light. In Carlsbad he had made rather an effort to display his intelligence; but now his gentle and sensible character showed itself naturally. Eric remembered the Banker's once having said to him at Carlsbad, "The Jews are the children of compassion: they understand how to bear and to relieve sorrow much better than to create joy; the remembrance of past oppression gives them sympathy with all suffering."

The Banker was ready to lend help at any moment, but allowed himself to be put in the background again immediately.

Bella treated him with manifest neglect, but he took it good-humoredly, showing without words that he was not offended. She acted like her mother's own child; and moreover, he thought, she was not his friend. Clodwig was his friend, and he regarded it as a duty to bear something for his sake. He sat in the library, ready to answer any call, and retiring again as soon as he believed himself in the way. Towards midnight, Eric was suddenly summoned; Clodwig had waked, and asked for him.

"Ah! I have slept so well," said Clodwig; "and it's strange, I constantly dream now of my cousin Hatty, whom I am to marry. I like her, and she likes me; but she has learned, and will learn nothing at all, and she has such a shrill laugh, and says, 'Come, Clodwig, you're so sad, come, marry me, we'll be merry.' And then I say, 'Child, I'm so old already! see, I've no teeth left, and what will Bella say to it?' 'Ah, what' she says, 'nonsensical things! Come, we'll dance.' And then we dance down to the chapel; and there stands the priest beckoning to us, and we dance on, past the priest; and she's a splendid child with beautiful eyes, and loves me dearly; and so we dance on and on, and I can keep it up very well till I wake, without being tired."

"Is your cousin Hatty still living?"

"Oh, no! she died long ago. A few weeks since a grandson of hers was here with me. But isn't it strange that my first youthful love – I was hardly ten years old – should have awakened in me? And she had an apple in her hand, and bit into it, and then said, 'Take a bite too;' but, when I wanted to take the apple, she wouldn't let me, and said, 'Don't bite too much.' And, when I awoke, the taste of the apple seemed still in my mouth. Now it just comes back to me that we were once painted together. The painter declared that it would please us very much some time or other. He did it secretly, and, of course, the picture was bought of him; I believe it is still in existence; but I don't know where. Don't you like her name of Hatty? She is a half-grown girl in a pink calico dress and white apron, and that's the way she was always dressed, and she had a broad Florence straw hat, whose brim drooped down upon her shoulders." So Clodwig went on, and said with a repressed sigh, "Bella has never cared to hear about my youth;" but then, as if not wishing to speak of her, he quickly added in a trembling voice, stretching out both hands, "Now attend, and I can tell you my story. I have had a very different life from that Herr Sonnenkamp. My father was Prime-Minister, and I was born in the ministerial residence, the son of a late marriage, an only son, like Herr Sonnenkamp; but my life was different. My father became representative of the Confederacy to the German Diet, and then I often lived here in summer on our estate. The society of the representatives of the Confederacy, – who knows whether it is not passing away without any one's having pictured it truly, – I might have done it; even when I was still a student, it was plain to me that it was a society which exists only to stand in the way of every improvement. Come a little nearer and I will tell you what the German Diet is, – it is the evil conscience of the Princes. I thought so very early, and I was soon sure of it, and yet I stayed in the midst of it; and the farther I advanced, the more plainly I saw that it was true. All progress has built itself up apart from the Diet; and there is something like it in the Church. Progress is made without her, aside from her; she has not done away with capital punishment, nor torture, nor the confinement of prisoners in irons: none of these has she abolished. And now are coming the two great works of emancipation, – the emancipation of the slaves and of the serfs, and what is bringing them about? Humanity alone in its freedom of action. You see, this Herr Sonnenkamp lived in quite another world than mine, and yet my life, – Ah, wait a minute, wait, I cannot say more now."