Villa Eden Part 167

"Take in the package," said Manna to the servant.

She walked quietly on with Eric.

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM SIBYLLINE BOOKS.

On the way Manna said:--

"Do you know that I had an aversion for you, when I came here?"

"Yes indeed, I knew it."

"And why didn't you try to convert me from it?"

Eric was silent, and Manna asked him once more:--

"Is it then a matter of so much indifference to you what people think of you?"

"No, but I am a servant of your house, and have no right to seek for any special consideration in your sight."

"You are very proud."

"I do not deny it."

"Don't you know that pride is a fault?"

"To be sure, when one makes pretensions and detracts from the worth of others. But I keep my pride for myself alone, or rather, I say with St. Simon:--'If I consider myself I feel dejected, if I consider my fellow-men I feel proud.'"

"You are too: clever for me," said Manna, banteringly.

"I don't like to hear you say so, for those are only empty words. No man is too clever for another, if each one says to himself: 'I have something in my own way too. You should not make use of such expressions. My respect for you rests upon the very fact that I never before heard from you an empty phrase. What you say is not always logically true, but it is true for you."

"I thank you." Said Manna quickly, resting the tips of her fingers upon his hand; and, as if recollecting herself, she added hastily once more:--

"I thank you."

"I know not why it is; I have been delivered from an oppressive melancholy, and I feel as if it was a whole year since I was so sad. We have the good fortune to understand each other in the highest, thoughts, and thought in the highest strain admits no measurement of time."

"Ah yes," rejoined Manna, "in the very midst of all my sorrows the thought has been present to me all day: 'Something is coming that will give you joy.' Now I know what it was. You were the friend and instructor of Roland; take me instead of him; be my friend and instructor. Will you?"

She stretched out her hand to him, and both gazed at each other with a look of joy.

"Ah, there sits your mother," cried Manna all at once; with a swift step she hastened to the Professorin, and kissed her pa.s.sionately.

The Professorin was astonished to see her. Is this the same maiden at whose bedside she had sat the evening before, whose chilled hands she had warmed, to whom she had spoken the words of encouragement? Youth is an everlasting riddle.

Manna held her hand to her eyes for some time, and as she opened them once more, she said:--

"Ah, if I only were the bird up there in the air!"

The mother made no answer, and Manna continued:--

"I see everything to-day for the first time; there is the Rhine, there are the mountains, there the houses, there the men; a bird of pa.s.sage,--yes, one that has been hatched in Asia.--is coming towards us, towards you. I am really so sorrowful, so sad; and still there is something within me singing l.u.s.tily and singing always; 'Thou art merry, do not seek to be otherwise.' Ah, mother, it is dreadfully sinful to be as I am."

"No, my child, you are still a child, and a child, they say, has smiles and tears in the same bag. Rejoice that you are so young; perhaps something of childhood has been repressed in you, and now it is coming out. No one can say when, and no one can say where. We take things too hard altogether; things are not quite so frightful as we women imagine.

I am quite cheerful since the Doctor was here. We may become accustomed to look at everything in a gloomy way; then it is well if some one comes and says: 'But just see the world is neither so wicked not so good as we persuade ourselves it! is, and things run on either well or ill, and not in their logical course.' My blessed husband said that many and many a time."

Manna seemed not to have heard what the Mother said; she exclaimed in a merry tone:--

"At this moment we are all enn.o.bled, and still I do not perceive anything of the n.o.bility in me, and yet one ought to be able to perceive something."

There was an unusually light-hearted tone in everything she said, and she continued:--

"Tell me now, how did you feel on the day you laid aside your n.o.bility?"

"No trace of sorrow; it only pained me when my lady friends a.s.sured me strongly that they would always remain the same to me; and in this very a.s.surance lay the conviction that it was otherwise; and they were all the time telling me how they had loved me, as if I were no longer living, and indeed to many I was already dead, for to them a human being that has lost the rank of n.o.ble, is, as it were, sunk into the realm of the departed spirits."

The Mother and Manna sat trustfully beside each other; for a time every sorrow was forgotten, every care, every anxiety.

Eric had left the Mother and Manna alone; he was standing near a rose-bush and observing how the rose leaves were falling off, so softly, so quietly, as if plucked by a spirit-hand. He gazed at the leaves on the ground, he knew not his thoughts. Roland, Manna, his mother, the terrible past of Sonnenkamp, all was confusion in his mind; he believed that he no longer saw the world as it is. If he only had some one to call him to himself. He felt how his cheeks were glowing, and how he was trembling.

You love and are beloved by this maiden, by the daughter of this man.

What is a daughter?

Every one exists for himself alone.

On the ground floor was his father's library; the windows were open; he went in.

It entered into his mind that there must be something in the ma.n.u.scripts left by his father that would give him consolation and support; perhaps the spirit of his father would speak to his joyful and sorrowful perplexity. He began to search amongst the papers; everything seemed to be ready for his hand that was not wanted. He untied a bundle of pieces, the superscription of which bore the t.i.tle, "Sibylline Books;" he took up a leaf.

"That's the thing!" he exclaimed.

He was standing with his back leaned against the open window; he heard his mother advising Manna to adhere right steadfastly and faithfully to her religious convictions. There were, it is true, forms and observances in it which she did not recognize as her own, but there was also in it the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which alone gives us strength to bear misfortune and sustain joy.

"Mother," he called out, suddenly turning round.

The women started.

"Mother, I bring you something that carries on your idea."

He went out, showed them his father's writing, and said that he would read to them.

"Ah yes," exclaimed Manna; "it is good and kind of you to bring your father here; how I would have liked to know him. Do you not believe that he is now looking down upon us?"