Villa Eden Part 90

"Forgive me! forgive!" was echoed and re-echoed within her. At first it was directed to Clodwig, and now to Eric.

"Forgive! forgive my pride! But thou canst not know how proud I have been: and I sacrificed to thee more than a thousand others, more than the whole world, can even conceive and comprehend."

She shuddered at being alone, rang for her dressing-maid, and made an elaborate toilet.

"Tell me how old I am. Do you not know?" she suddenly asked.

The dressing-maid was startled at the question, and not returning an immediate answer, Bella continued:--

"I have never been young."

"O my gracious lady, you are still young, and you never looked better than you do now."

"Do you think so?" said Bella, throwing back her head, for a voice within her said: Why shouldest thou not be also young for once? Thou art! Thou art what thou canst not help being; and let the world be what it must be too.

Leaving the house, she went around the garden, seeming to herself to be a captive. Unconsciously she went into the room on the ground-floor, and as she stood near the unearthed antiquities, a voice within her said:--

"What are all these? What are these vessels? Lava-ashes! all ashes!

What is all this antiquarian rummaging? What is the use of this picking up of old buried trash, this perpetual thinking and talking about humanity and progress? all foreign, dead, a conversation over a death-bed; nothing but distraction, forgetfulness; no life, no hope, no future; never towards the day, always towards the night,--the night of the past, and the ideal of humanity. But I am not the past, I am not an ideal of humanity. I am the to-day, I will be the today. Ah me, where am I!" She went into the garden, and watched two b.u.t.terflies hovering hither and thither in the air, now alighting upon the flowers, now coming together, separating again, and again uniting.

"This is life!" was the cry within her. "This is life! they grub up no ancient relics, they live with no antiquities."

Then came a swallow darting down, seized one of the b.u.t.terflies, and vanished.

What is thy life to thee now, thou poor b.u.t.terfly?

Below, over the Rhine, clouds of smoke from the steamboats were floating in the air, and Bella thought:--

"If one could only thus fly away! What do we here? We heat with our blood this dead earth, so that it may have some little life. Our life-breath is nothing but a puff of vapor that mingles with thousands of other vaporous films; this we call life, and it vanishes like the thousands----"

The children of the laborers upon the estate, coming out of school, saluted the gracious lady.

Bella stared at them. What becomes of these children? What is the use of this fatuous renewing of humanity?

As if to conceal herself from herself, she buried her face in a flowering shrub. She left the park; she saw in the court outside the dove cooing about his mate. The beautiful mate was so coy, picked up its food so quietly, hardly paying any attention to the tender gurgling, and then flew away to the house-top, where she trimmed her feathers. The dove flew after his mate, but she shook her head again and took flight.

Then as Bella was gazing with a fixed look, she saw a servant yoking some oxen. He first placed a pad upon the head of the beast, and over that a wooden yoke.

"This is the world! This is the world," said a voice within her. "A pad between yoke and head, a pad of thoughts, of got-up feelings."

The servant was astounded to see the gracious lady staring so fixedly, and now she asked him:--

"Does it not hurt them?" He did not understand what she meant, and she was obliged to repeat the question; he now replied:--

"The ox don't know anything different, he's made for just this. Since the gracious Herr has let the double yoke be taken off, and each ox has now his own yoke to himself, they're harder to manage, but they draw a deal easier than when they were double-yoked."

Bella s.h.i.+vered.

"Double yoke--single yoke," was sounding in her ears, and suddenly it seemed to her as if it were night, and she herself only a ghost wandering around. This house, these gardens, this world, all is but a realm of shadows that vanishes away.

It was terribly sultry, and Bella felt as if she should suffocate. Then a fresh current of air streamed over the height, a thunderstorm unexpectedly came up, and Bella had hardly reached the house before there came thunder, lightning, and a driving rain.

Bella stood at the window and stared out into the distance, and then up at an old ash-tree, whose branches were das.h.i.+ng about in every direction, and whose trunk was bending from the gale. The tree inclined itself towards the house, as if it must there get help. Bella thought to herself,--For years and years this tree has been rooting itself here and thriving, and no tempest can wrench it away and lop off its boughs.

Does it know that this storm will pa.s.s over, and serve only to give it new strength? I am such a tree also, and I stand firm. Come tempest, come lightning and thunder, come beating rain, neither shall you uproot me, nor lop off my boughs!

"Eric!" she suddenly exclaimed aloud to herself. Clodwig now entered, saying,--

"Dear wife, I have been looking for you."

Bella's soul was deeply moved when she heard him call her "dear wife."

Clodwig showed her a letter that he had been writing to the Professor's widow, inviting her, according to Bella's expressed desire, to make a visit of several weeks at Wolfsgarten.

"Don't send the letter," said she abruptly, "let us again be quietly by ourselves; I would rather not be disturbed now by the Dournay family."

Clodwig expressed his opinion that the n.o.ble lady, so far from interfering with their quiet, would be an additional element of beautiful companions.h.i.+p, and would be the means of their seeing Eric in a pleasant way.

The storm had ceased, and when Bella opened the window, a refres.h.i.+ng breeze drew in. She held the letter in her hand; it had been tempest, lightning, rain, and thunder that raged to-day in her soul, and now there was refres.h.i.+ng life. She agreed with her husband; she said to herself, that intercourse with the n.o.ble woman would restore her to herself; and for a moment the thought occurred to her that she would confess all to the mother, and be governed by her. Then came the thought that this was not necessary; it would be very natural for Eric to come to Wolfsgarten, and her intercourse with him would fall back into the old peaceful channels.

Bella wrote a short postscript to the letter of her husband; and the Doctor also, who came in just as they were closing the letter, added a few words.

CHAPTER XII.

AN OPEN COURT AND AN OPEN INVENTORY.

The fireworks were still crackling and snapping in their ears, the dazzling lights still gleaming in their eyes, and the music of the band still sounding in their recollection, when they were obliged to make ready for appearance at court, as witnesses in the affair of the burglary.

Pranken remained with the guests at the Villa, having undertaken to show them the recently purchased country-house.

Sonnenkamp, Roland, and Eric, and also the porter, the coachman, Bertram, the head-gardener, the little "Squirrel," and two gardeners repaired to the county town to attend the trial. They went by the house of the Wine-count, now styled Baron von Endlich, where the remnants of fireworks were still visible, scattered here and there; the house was yet shut up, the family still sleeping their first sleep as members of the n.o.bility.

Eric spoke of the beautiful and genuinely pious conduct of the priest towards the prisoners. He was a living example of the grand doctrine that religion required one to interest himself in the stumbling and the unfortunate, whether they were guilty or innocent. The Doctor, on the other hand, maintained in a very droll fas.h.i.+on that it was an extremely beneficial thing for the Ranger to pa.s.s, once in his life, several weeks within walls and under a roof.

There was little else said; they reached the county town in good season.

Sonnenkamp went to the telegraph office, in order to send some messages, one of which was directed to the University-town for the widow of the Professor.

"At that time--does it not seem to you as if it were ten years ago?--at that time it was very different from to-day. Don't you think that there were villains also among the singers, perhaps worse ones than those in prison yonder?"

It pained Eric grievously that Roland must be initiated so early into the bitterness and the dissensions of life. They went together to the court-house.

The president and the judges occupied a raised platform; on the right sat the jury, and on the left, the accused and their counsel; the room was full of spectators, for there was a general curiosity to hear the mysterious Herr Sonnenkamp speak in public, and no one knew what might be picked up in the way of information.

The dwarf, the groom, and the huntsman sat on the criminals' seat. The dwarf took snuff very zealously, the groom looked around imploringly, and Claus held his hands before his eyes.

The dwarf looked as if he had had good keeping, and thriven under it; he gazed around the ball with an almost satisfied bearing, as if he felt flattered that so many people concerned themselves about him. The groom, whose hair had been very nicely dressed, regarded the crowd with a contemptuous glance.