CHAPTER V.
SECRET, SILENT LOVE
The parents entered Manna's cell. Manna calmly met them, and said, —
"Welcome, and may God's blessing be with you!" She extended her hand to her father; her hand thrilled as she felt the ring on her father's thumb. Then she threw herself upon her mother's breast and kissed her.
"Forgive me," she cried, "forgive me! Do not think me heartless; I must do so – no, I will to do so. I thank you, that you have granted my request."
"Yes, indeed, we put no constraint upon you," said the mother; and Sonnenkamp, who had not yet assented, was obliged to comply with her wishes.
Manna's countenance became suddenly lighted up; she said that she was glad to see her parents looking so well, and that she prayed for them daily, and that heaven would hearken to her prayer. Manna had a tone of voice in which one seemed to feel the repressed tears; this voice appeared to affect Sonnenkamp, so that he placed his hand upon his heart, and his posture and look were as if he were making a silent vow.
When Manna asked after Roland, he said, with the mien of one speaking to a person who has been ill and is just convalescent, that Roland was in the park, and Manna must go with them, and greet the ladies and Herr von Pranken.
When her father mentioned this name, a slight shudder went over Manna, but she said with immediate composure, —
"I will see no one but you and Roland."
A lay-sister was sent for Roland. Meanwhile, Manna explained, that, according to the regulations, she must return for a year to the world, and then – she hesitated a moment, and ended with the words – if her present resolution continued, she would take the veil.
"And will you never tell me, why and how this thought has sprung up in you?" asked Sonnenkamp in a supplicating tone.
"Indeed I will, father, when it is all over."
"I don't comprehend! I don't comprehend it!" cried Sonnenkamp aloud. Manna hushed the loud tone of her father with her hand, signifying to him that here in the convent no one spoke so loud.
Roland, after whom they had been looking for a long time, was terrified and shrank back, when, awakened suddenly by a form clothed in black, he found himself in the church. He was conducted to Manna. He embraced his sister heartily, crying out, – ? "You good, bad sister!"
He could say no more, from the impetuosity of his feelings.
"Not so violent," said the maiden, soothingly. "Indeed! what a strong lad you have got to be!"
"And you so tall! And you look like him, but Eric, is handsomer than you are. Yes, laugh if you will! Isn't it so, mother? Isn't it, father? Ah, how glad he will be when you return home, and how much you will like him too!"
Roland talked sometimes of St. Anthony, sometimes of Eric, mingling them together, and telling what an excellent man he had for a teacher and friend: and when Manna said that she should not go home until spring, Roland ended by saying, —
"You can very well imagine how Herr Eric looks; when you go into the chapel, look at St. Anthony, he looks exactly like him, exactly as good. But he can also be strict; he has been an artillery-officer."
Again the father made the request, and the mother joined in it, that Manna would accompany them in their journey to the baths, after which she would be allowed to come back to the convent.
Manna informed them that she could not interrupt her studies and her retreat.
The strange, thrilling tone of her voice had something saddening in it, and when she now stated how earnestly she hoped to become clear and resolute in her determination to be constant to the religious life, tears came into her mother's eyes. But her father gazed fixedly at her; he hardly saw his child, hardly knew where he was. He heard a voice, which once – it seemed incredible that he was the same person – he had heard many, many years ago; and as he thus gazed, he saw not his child, not the scenes around him, he saw nothing but a neglected little mound of earth in the churchyard of a Polish village. He passed his broad hand over his whole face, and, as if waking up, he looked now at his child, and heard her saying, —
"I shall be constant to the life."
He had heard all that had here transpired, and yet his thought and his internal eye had been fixed upon a far distant scene, scarcely comprehensible. Now he repeated his request that Manna would just go with them into the park, and salute the friends; that she ought not to slight them; but Manna firmly persisted that she could not go.
Manna had requested a sister to send for Heimchen; the child came, and looked wonderingly at the strangers. Manna pointed out to the child her parents and her brother. The child, scarcely glancing at the parents, nestled up to Roland, when Manna said, —
"This is my brother I have told you of."
"I like you," said the child, "I like you."
She was as confiding with Roland as if she had always played with him. "And will you be my brother?" asked the child.
Manna declared how happy it made her, to be able to do so much for the child.
Sonnenkamp hummed to himself, —
"Yes, yes, that's the way. I know what you are, a child who takes to a stranger child. But enough!"
He rose hastily.
The parents and Roland left the cell. Manna remained there with Heimchen.
Upon the steps, Sonnenkamp said to his wife, —
"This is your doing! The child is estranged from me; you have turned her heart from me, you have said to her-"
A strange laugh, a laugh sounding as if it came from some other person, was uttered by Frau Ceres. Roland stared at her; here is something incomprehensible to him.
The parents and the boy rejoined the visitors in the park, and Sonnenkamp informed them very calmly that he had given permission to his daughter, in order not to interrupt and disturb her education by outside impressions, to remain at the convent until Easter. Pranken darted a strange glance at Sonnenkamp, and then expressed his admiration of the imperturbable composure with which Sonnenkamp accomplished everything.
Bella and Fräulein Perini had walked over the island. They did not return for a long time; at last they came from the room of the Superior.
Evening was approaching, and as they embarked on the boat, Roland cried, looking towards the convent, —
"Good-night, Manna."
Manna had heard the good-bye, she had slipped into the park, taken a farewell look at the departing visitors, and then went quietly into the chapel.
As they reached the shore, they heard the choir of girls' voices singing with clear tone at the convent.
"This may sound very fine to him who has no child joining in it," said Sonnenkamp to himself.
In the large inn there was hurrying and commotion, as if a prince had arrived with his suite, for Sonnenkamp was fond of making a display of his wealth. The large garden was festively illuminated, this party of travellers was served with special consideration, and every other arrival, on this evening, hardly received any attention. When all was still, a boat, in which Pranken sat, rowed over to the convent. He landed on the island, and heard the music of a harp from an open window. That came from Manna, he was sure. Soon a light was visible in a cell, here and there, windows were opened, the heads of girls appeared and looked out once more into the night; then the windows were closed, the lights extinguished, and the harp-playing ceased.
Pranken saw the church open, and entering, he knelt down and prayed silently. Then he heard a light step, and a sound, as if some one knelt down before the altar; a thrill passed over him, and yet he did not look up, and if he had, he could not have recognized any thing in the darkness lighted only by the solitary, ever-burning lamp. The form arose, and went towards the open church door. The moon cast a broad beam as far as the middle aisle of the church; now, as the form stood in the doorway, Pranken approached and said, —
"Fräulein Manna, a friend. Fear not, a man, who through you has known salvation, stands before you. I have not come to shake your holy resolve, I have only come to tell you what I have become by your instrumentality. No, I cannot tell you – but you ought to know this, – if you take the veil, then I also will renounce the world; apart from each other, so long as we live on this earth, we will live for heaven. Farewell, a thousand times farewell, thou pure, thou blessed one! farewell!"
The young man and the maiden looked upon each other as if they were no longer living creatures of human passions, as if they were transported above the world. Manna could not utter a single word; she simply dipped her hand into the vessel of holy water, and sprinkled Pranken's face three times.
With hasty step, Pranken went to the shore. Manna stood and laid her hand upon her brow.
Has all this been only a vision of her own fancy?
Then she heard the stroke of oars in the river, and a voice again cried: —
"Thou pure, thou blessed one!"
Then all was still.
On the other side a chain rattled, the boat was drawn up to the shore, and no sound was heard; only the waves of the river, which are not heard by day, rippled and plashed and murmured in the still night. Manna thought that she could hear the blood as it flowed through her heart, so full, so oppressed, and yet so blissful.
CHAPTER VI.
A DAY WITHOUT PEN OR TYPE
Eric stood on the shore gazing after the boat, from which Roland was waving at a distance his white handkerchief. To see a person so attached to us flitting away from us in a vessel, seems as if one should love a bird which soars freely up into the air where it cannot be reached; and yet it is different. Human love connects by invisible ties, and this signalizing from afar is a sign of a thought in common, of communication of feeling and participation of interest, notwithstanding all separation by space.
When the boat had disappeared, and only a light streak of vapor floated along the vine-covered slopes, Eric remained standing upon the hill, and as the faint mists hovered in the air, so hovered in his soul the last words of Roland's farewell, – "You and the house do not move from your place."
What a commotion, what an upheaving and swelling, there is in the soul of youth, until it comes to some expression, like an opening blossom!
But that which is closed and wrapped up in the bud has an equal beauty and depth of sentiment, but it is not manifest to us, and does not breathe upon us with such a fragrant and charming loveliness.
So thought Eric as he looked at an acacia-tree, whose buds were yet unopened, and which had put forth not even a green leaf.
Eric was now alone at the villa. He inhaled the quiet, the peace, and the stillness in full draughts, as if, after long days and nights of travel upon the noisy steam-cars, he should suddenly come into the silent woods; yes, as if he were lying deep down at the bottom of the river, and over him were gently rippling the cooling waves. He did not read, he did not write, he enjoyed only an unfathomable rest.
He did not mean to comply with Clodwig's invitation to visit him, until the next day. Eric was certainly removed from all selfishness, but the freedom of living for a whole day without being called upon to talk, and of being entirely by himself, had a charm for him as if he had now, for the first time, escaped out of the captivity of servitude, and acquired the disposal of himself. The thought came over him at one time, that Clodwig was expecting him but he said almost aloud, —
"I cannot! – I must not!" He wished to pass a single day without speaking or being spoken to, to be by himself, alone, speechless, solitary, referring to no one, and no one referring to him.
He thought, for one moment, of writing to his mother, but he dismissed the idea. No one was to have anything of him, he would have all of himself. This perpetual obligation to think for others, this striving for them and love to them, seemed to him a painful and keen suffering; there was now, in the depths of his soul, a call for solitude. For a single day only would he be an egoist, live in absolute rest, and let no book, no relation of life, no longing, no endeavor, deprive him of aught of this entire loneliness.
This villa was called Eden, and he would, for one day, be the first man alone in Eden. He looked at a tree and nodded to it. Fixed thus, abiding in himself, like this tree, would he live for just a single day.
He lay down in the park under a spreading beech-tree, and dreamed away the day. There is a low, gladsome rippling of being and of feeling, without definite thought or volition, which is the inmost desire of those harassed with restless thought and anxious care. Eric lay thus, happy in himself, contemplating and breathing alone, so that the step of a gardener upon the grating gravel aroused him as from a dream. The gardener began to rake the path; it was a strangely harsh sound. Eric would have liked to bid him keep still, but he forbore, and said to himself, smiling, —
"Thou art just such a raker of the paths."
He looked into the branches of the trees, and as the gentle breeze moved them to and fro, so he allowed his thoughts to be swayed hither and thither, with no desire, no conscious endeavor, – simply living. All was peaceful and silent within him. How long, ever since its first shooting forth, has such a leaf been moved by the wind the whole summer long, until it drops, and then – well, then?
A smile passed over his countenance. We are no longer alone, because there is a second self, and one is conscious of his own unconsciousness. And the thought proceeded farther. Yes, solitude, this is the rest upon the mother-earth, this is the story of Antæus, who is inspired with fresh strength from the ever-present energies of mother-earth, as soon as he touches her. We are raised from the ground by our constant thinking, and so are rendered powerless. And farther yet went his dreaming and meditation. This is one trouble of wealth, this is its curse, that it does not enter into the heavens, cannot again be immersed in the primitive might of earthly being, for wealth possesses everything except this, a deliverance from the world, a being alone with one's self. Ballast! ballast! too much ballast!
The doctor's word came into his mind, and the word ballast again and again recurred to his thoughts, just as the finch in the tree over his head continually repeated the same notes.
In the midst of this dreaming and unlimited contemplation, he fell asleep, and when he waked up, he was invigorated and full of a fresh life; for the first time, since a long period, he felt at home within himself. He smiled, for a new thought occurred to him, and, as it were, shone through him. Adam slept in Paradise, and when he waked, he saw his wife by his side; a world is his, and also another who is to become one with him.
It was one of those days and hours in which all the past and the present, all that humanity has ever dreamed and ever obtained for itself by toil, bright with a reflected glory, and gleaming in its own splendor, stands before the eyes. All riddles seem solved. All is peaceful, harmonious, and divine.
So must it be to the thoughtful man when he awakens from the sleep of death, and the eternal life opens to his view.
But the struggle must be entered upon anew, in order to maintain the battle of life.
Eric went into the park and around the house, and took in all with newly opened eyes; he had forgotten how all looked, it had been put far away, and now he surveyed everything like a man newly awakened and endowed with fresh strength.
It is well that the world abides, and is always ready in its place when we return to it again from the sphere of unconscious forgetfulness.
A whole day passed, in which Eric read nothing and wrote nothing.
The next morning, ordering his horse to be saddled, he mounted and rode towards Clodwig's house.
He had scarcely been riding fifteen minutes, when a boy called to him, and brought him a letter. He read it, nodded, and rode in good spirits to the village.
CHAPTER VII.
OUR FRIEND KNOPF
On the bright summer days people sail joyously up and down the river, everything sparkles and glitters in the sunlight, and is full of gladness. Who there thinks how much sorrow, how much weariness, anguish, and care, dwell within the houses they pass by? Look yonder at the high-perched village, that seems to rise so prettily out of the river, and sends to us now the sound of bells; there goes a poor village schoolmaster, with depressed countenance, from the church to the school-house. But to-day his face is lighted up, for a faithful friend stands in front of the schoolhouse, and extends to him his hand.
"Hey! you here, Herr Knopf?" cried the schoolmaster.
"The free Republic of the United States gives me a day's freedom. You see before you an independent man. Ah, dear Fassbender, I am specially born to be a teacher of girls; I tell you that previous to the deluge of their first ball, girls are the choicest blossoms of our planet."
Knopf related to his fellow-teacher how happy he was to have for a pupil a bright American girl, quick of apprehension; and his homely countenance, as he spoke, assumed a wholly different expression.
Knopf had, in fact, an ugly face, it was so full of seams. His nose, mouth, brow, even his eyebrows, which projected somewhat over his light-blue eyes whenever he wore no spectacles, as was now the case, all seemed kneaded out of dough. But now, as he spoke of his pupil, his countenance, was lighted up.
He made known that he had come hither, in order to give Roland's present instructor some hints concerning the character of his pupil, and the manner in which he could best be advanced. He had already been walking since before sunrise, and it was a refreshing walk. He felt now that it was not needful for him to go to the villa, he would make an appointment with the tutor to meet him here, and requested that a boy might carry a note from him to Captain Dournay.
The children came up one after another, and saluted Herr Knopf, whom they already knew. A curly-headed boy was very happy to be the bearer of the note to Villa Eden, instead of being obliged to sit in school.
Knopf knew a beautiful spot back of the village, under a linden on the crown of the hill, where there was a wide prospect on every side. Strolling thither, he laid himself down under the tree, and surveyed the landscape with a joyful glance.
"In grass and flowers I love to lie,
And hear afar the flute's sweet sigh,"
he said almost aloud to himself. And since in our steam-puffing times there is no flute to be heard, Knopf screwed his cane, which was intended also for a flute, into the right shape, and played upon it the tune set by Conrad Kreuzer to Uhland's song. He was more pleased at the thought that others would hear this at a distance, than that he was hearing it himself.
No boat went up or down the stream that he did not signalize it with a white handkerchief. What matter if those on board were strangers? He has given them a sign that he on the height here is happy; they below there are to be happy too. The signal may tell them that.
Yes, Knopf deserves to be known more intimately.
The son of a poor schoolmaster, Knopf had gone through his university course with great difficulty, and had passed his examination; but now he fell into great misfortune. On the very first day of his year of probation, the boys stamped and hissed, and the more he bade them be quiet, so much the more noisy were they; and the more enraged he became, so much the more insolent was their derision. The director came to his assistance, but as soon as he went away from the schoolroom, the noise and stamping began afresh. It was granted to Knopf to pass his year of probation in a distant city; but some invisible sprite must have spread abroad his mishap, for very soon after he began teaching, the same thing happened here. And now he gave up entirely the office of a public school teacher.
Knopf was abundantly liked at the capital as a teacher of girls. Inasmuch as he was so fabulously ugly, mothers could entrust their half-grown daughters to his private instruction, without the least anxiety lest they should fall in love with him. He was conscientious and painstaking, but he did not succeed. He was liked in all the families, but no one wished to employ him exclusively, or for any considerable length of time; he was only a temporary teacher. No other one had so many deceased scholars as he, for many were committed to his instruction only after they became ailing.
Knopf had been much at the watering-places, and when the parents could not go with their children to the baths, he was entrusted with that service; he was both tutor and attendant. He was also teacher for some time in an asylum for idiots, and his conscience often reproved him, then and afterwards, for not remaining in that position; but he asserted that he was too much a devotee of the beautiful.
Yes, he wanted to explore what kind of humane institutions were established among the Greeks and Romans. He found that they had very few children morally and physically diseased. Knopf had a plan, which he held on to for some time, of establishing an institution for the care of sick children at some salt-spring; for iodine is the watch-word of the cultivated, that is, the possessing world, whose humours are acrid: he hoped to find an associate for the sacred iodine. Meanwhile he remained a make-shift teacher for girls.
Greek and Roman mythology was his strong point, and it is extremely important that a maiden in cultivated society should make no mistake in that. His favorite pursuit was, however, the interpretation of the poets, especially the romantic. Of course, he was himself a poet, but modestly, only to himself. There, were probably in the capital few albums, begun by very young girls and afterwards abandoned, which did not contain a sonnet, or oftener a triolet, beautifully written by Emil Knopf for his dear pupil. He had also a musical knowledge sufficient to direct the private practising of pupils, and he was particularly strict, yes, even unmerciful, in keeping time. He could also draw sufficiently well to give assistance in that respect, especially in drawing flowers. He was also handy and popular in wedding-games, whenever one of his pupils was married. He not only knew how to make the maidens speak, in the language of flowers, as "I am the rose," "I am the violet," but he could bring out jokes and sportive allusions; and while the players in their fine dresses were declaiming; and forming charming tableaux, he sat in the prompter's box, and breathed to them the words. How happy he was, too, at some public dinner, and how assentingly he nodded, when this or the other speaker recited by heart, or read from a manuscript, the toast he had himself composed!
Emil Knopf was one of the most serviceable of men; he was proud of never having advertised in the newspapers; he was recommended from mouth to mouth, and for the most part from one fair mouth to another, one mother speaking in his commendation to another, and the fathers smiling and saying, "Yes, Herr Knopf is a very conscientious teacher."
If he were in a house where smoking was disagreeable, he chewed roasted coffee-berries, and he was just as contented with that. Knopf liked to take snuff, but he did it only when he was alone, and very quietly; he carried a colored and a white pocket-handkerchief, so that the gentleman and the lady of the house might not notice that he took snuff. One very peculiar habit he could not break himself of, that of hitching up the trousers on both legs, as if they were going suddenly to drop down from his body.
But this is no sufficient reason for his appearing destined to be only a temporary teacher, nothing but a pedagogical nurse for a few weeks. Knopf is taken into some family until the stress of sickness or need of some kind is over, and then he is dismissed with very courteous, very friendly words; but still always dismissed. Fourteen half-yearly terms – Knopf always reckoned by the semester, and we must do the same by him – Knopf lived at the capital; and, during this period, he always intended to procure a wholesale quantity of a brand of cigars which should taste right, but he never made up his mind. Fourteen semesters he smoked, from week's end to week's end, different kinds of cigars on trial, and was perpetually asking what was the price by the thousand, but he never succeeded in getting the thousand at one time.
Knopf was, naturally, one of the clumsiest of mortals, but he trained himself to be one of the best swimmers and gymnastic performers, so that he was, for a time, assistant teacher of gymnastics. Having been employed twice in the country, where it is so difficult to procure piano-tuners, he had been led to learn how to tune pianos himself; but he would never do it except in the house where he happened to be temporarily living. Several persons asserted that he could also knit and do plain sewing, but this was unmitigated slander. He could darn stockings in a most masterly style, but no one had ever seen him do it, he always did it secretly by himself.
Knopf had come to Herr Sonnenkamp likewise as a temporary candidate and temporary teacher; here a longer tarrying seemed to be allotted to him, and a future free from anxiety. Knopf had an enthusiastic love for Roland, and although the boy learned nothing thoroughly with him, Knopf used to say to his crony, the teacher Fassbender, —
"The Gods never learned anything, they had it all in themselves. Who can tell us the name of Apollo's teacher of music, or with what chief-butler Ganymede served his apprenticeship? Fine natures have all in themselves, and do not require instruction. We are only cripples with all our learning; we are tyrannized over by the four Faculties, but life is no four-sided figure."
This, then, is our friend Knopf; and he was called "our friend Knopf" in the best families of the land.
Knopf had just left off playing the flute, and was now sitting with his writing-tablets upon his knee, looking sometimes, round upon the landscape, sometimes writing rapidly a few words; then he would put his pencil in his mouth, and seemed ruminating for some new turn of expression. One could see the road for a great distance, leading from the village, by the villa, to the neighboring hamlet. Now Knopf saw a man on horseback coming towards him. He transformed speedily his flute into a walking-stick again, concealed his tablets, and then hastened across the vineyard down to the highway.
"Yes, he who sits a horse so well, he is just the right teacher for him," said Knopf. He took off his hat; while still at a distance, the rider nodded to him.