Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

He was sitting with downcast eyes when he heard some one in the car say, —

"There's young Sonnenkamp on horseback!"

Eric looked out, and caught one more glimpse of Roland, just as he disappeared behind a little hill.

Eric heard nothing of the lively talk, often interrupted by loud laughter, which the wine-party kept up; he had much in the past and future to think over, and he was glad when the party left the car at the next station, and he remained alone. He felt some repentance, and some doubt whether he had not acted wrongly and unwisely in not concluding an arrangement with Sonnenkamp, but he soon took courage again and cast his regret behind him.

We are rapidly rolled along by the power of steam. And in spirit? How far are we masters of our destiny?

At several stations, school-boys, with their satchels on their backs, entered Eric's car. He learned, in answer to his questions, that they lived with their parents in country-houses and distant villages, but went every day to school in the city, returning home in the evening. Eric thought long on the new race of youths which is growing up; taking their places in the noisy railway-train in the early morning, then assembling for instruction, and going home again over the railroad; these boys must and will learn to guard, in the restlessness and tumult of the new age, their own inner life, which is, indeed, quite different from ours. And then he looked farther on into a future, when the alarming growth of the great cities shall cease, and men shall again live outside of them, where the green fields, the rushing streams, and the blue sky shall be daily before their eyes, and yet it shall be granted them to make their own the elements of culture, and all which is now supplied by the union of men in large towns. Then again will country air force its way into the soul.

At the time when Eric and the doctor were setting out, the justice's wife sat with her husband and her daughter over their morning coffee. The conversation turned on the evening walk with Eric, and the lady repeated his frank apologies.

"Very good, very good," said the justice. "He is polite and clever, but it's well that he has gone; he's a dangerous man."

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I.

THE STRUGGLE IN A CHILD'S HEART

The sparrows in the alders and willows on the shore of the convent-island twittered and chattered noisily together, they had so much to say to each other about what they had experienced during the day; and who knows whether their to-day was not a much longer interval of time than ours? One puffed up by his experience – perhaps we should say her experience, for the feathers had lost their colors from age – sat quietly in the crotch of a bough, comfortably resting against the trunk; he echoed and re-echoed his delight at the splendid time he enjoyed over the river, under the closely-trimmed branches of a shady linden, in the inn-yard by the shore.

The waiter there had long delayed removing the remnants of an English breakfast, and there were cakes, the pieces, alas! too large, abundance of eggs, honey, and sugar; it was a feast without parallel. He considered that the real joy of existence had its first beginning when one wished to know nothing more of all other things, and had supreme satisfaction in eating and drinking alone. Only in mature life did one really come to that perception.

Others would listen to nothing from the swaggering fellow, and there was an irregular debate, whether lettuce-seeds or young cabbage-heads were not much better than all the cooked-up dishes of men. A young rogue, fluttering around his roguish mate, reported to her that behind the ferryman's house, there hung from the garret-window a bulging bag full of flax-seed; if one only knew how to rip open the seam a little, one could gradually eat up all the tidbits, but it must be kept a profound secret, else the others would come too; and hemp-seed, it must be acknowledged, was just the most precious good which this whole round earth could furnish. The rogue was of the opinion that her delicate bill was exactly the nice thing to pick open the seam; it was the most contemptible baseness in human beings, to hang up in the open air just the most tempting dainties all fastened and tied up.

A late-comer, flying up in breathless haste, announced that the scarecrow, standing in the field, was nothing but a stick with clothes hung upon it.

"Because the stupid men believe in scarecrows, they think that we do too," laughed he, and flapped his wings in astonishment and pity at the manifest simplicity.

There was a frantic bustle in the alders and willows, and almost as frantic in the great meadow, where the girls from the convent caught hold of each other, chattered together, tittered, teased one another, and laughed.

Apart from her noisy companions, and frequently passing under the alder-trees where there was such a merry gathering of the birds, walked a girl slender in form and graceful in movement, with black hair and brilliant eyes, accompanied by a tall and majestic woman in a nun's dress, whose bearing had an expression of quiet and decisive energy. Her lips were naturally so pressed together, that the mouth seemed only a narrow streak of red. The entire brow was covered with a white kerchief, and the face, the large eyes, the small eyebrows, the sharp nose, the closely pressed lips, and the projecting but rather handsome chin, had something commanding and immovable.

"Honored mother," began the maiden, "you have read the letter from Fräulein Perini?"

The nun – it was the superior – only turned her face a little; she seemed to be waiting for the maiden – it was Hermanna Sonnenkamp – to speak further.

As Manna, however, was silent, the superior said: —

"Herr von Pranken is then to make us a visit. He is a man of good family and good morals, he seems a wordling, but he is not one exactly. He has, indeed, the impatience of the outside world; I trust, however, that he will not press his wooing as long as you are here our child, that is to say, the child of the Lord."

She spoke in a very deliberate tone, and now stopped.

"Let us go away from here; the noise of the birds above there allows one hardly to hear herself speak."

They went by the churchyard, in the middle of the island, to the grove growings near a small rocky ledge, which the children called the Switzerland of the island; there they sat down, and the superior continued: —

"I am sure of you, my child, that you will decline hearing a word from Herr von Pranken that has any reference to protestations of love, or to the soliciting your hand in marriage."

"You know, honored mother," replied Manna, – her voice was always pathetic, and as if veiled with tears; – "you know, honored mother, that I have promised to take the veil."

"I know it, and I also do not know it, for what you now say or determine is for us like a word written in the sand, which the wind and the footsteps of man may efface. You must go out again into the world; you must have overcome the world, before you renounce it. Yes, my child! the whole world must appear to you like your dolls, which you tell me of, – forgotten, valueless, dead, – a child's toy, upon which it is scarcely conceivable that so much regard, so much love, should be lavished."

For some time all was still, nothing was to be heard but the song of the nightingale in the thicket, and above the river ravens were flying in flocks and singing – men call it croaking – and soaring to their nests in the mountain-cliffs.

"My child," began the superior, after a while, "to-day is the anniversary of my mother's death; I have to-day prayed for her soul in eternity, as I did at that time. At the time she died – men call it dying, but it is only the birth into another life – at that time, my vow forbade me to stand by her death-bed; it cost me hardly a struggle, for whether my parents are still out there in the world, or above there in heaven, it makes no difference to us. Look, the water is now tinged with the glow of evening, and people outside, on the hills and on the banks, are speaking in raptures of nature, that new idol which they have set up, for they are the children of nature; but we are to be the children of God, before whose sight all nature seems only a void, under whatever color it may appear, whether clothed in green, or white with snow."

"I believe, I comprehend that," Manna said assentingly.

"That is why I say it to you," continued the worthy mother. "It is a great thing to overcome the world, to thrust it from one's self, and never to long for it a single instant, and to receive in exchange the eternal blessedness, even while we dwell here in the body. Yes, my child," she laid both hands upon the head of Manna, and continued, "I would like to give you strength, my strength – no, not mine, that which God has lent me Thou art to struggle hard and bravely with the world, thou art to be tried and sifted, before thou comest to us forever, to the fore-court of the Kingdom of Heaven."

Manna had closed her eyes, and in her soul was the one only wish, that now the earth might open and swallow her up, or that some supernatural power would come and lift her up over all. When she opened her eyes, and saw the marvellous splendor of the sunset sky, the violet haze of the mountains, and the river glowing in the red beams of evening, she shut her eyes again, and made a repellant movement with her hand, as if she would have said, – I will have nothing of thee; thou shalt be naught to me; thou art only a doll, a lifeless thing, on which we waste our love.

With trembling voice Manna mourned over her rent and tempest-tossed spirit; a few days before, she had sung and spoken the message of the heralding angels, while dark demons were raging within her. She had spent the whole day in prayer, that she might be worthy to announce such a message, and then in the twilight a man had appeared before her, and her eye had rested on him with pleasure; it was the tempter who had approached her, and the figure had followed her into her dreams. She had risen at midnight, and wept, and prayed to God that he would not suffer her to fall into sin and ruin. But she had not conquered. She scorned and hated the vision, but it would not leave her. Now she begged that some penance might be imposed upon her, that she might be allowed to fast for three days.

The superior gently consoled her, saying that she must not blame herself so bitterly, because the self-reproach increased the excitement of fancy and feeling. At the season when the elders were in bloom and the nightingales sang, a maiden of seventeen was apt to be visited by dreams; Manna must not weep over these dreams, but just scare them away and mock at them; they were only to be driven off by ridicule.

Manna kissed the hands of the superior.

It became dark. The sparrows were silent, the noisy children returned to the house, and only the nightingale sang continually in the shrubbery. Manna turned back to the convent, the superior leading her by the hand. She went to the large dormitory, and sprinkled herself with holy water. She continued praying silently long after she had gone to bed, and fell asleep, with her hands folded.

The river swept rustling along the valley, and swept rustling by the villa where Roland slept with contemptuously curled lip; it rushed past the streets of the little town, where Eric was speculating upon this and that in the doctor's house; it rushed by the inn where Pranken, leaning against the window, stared over at the convent.

The moon shone on the river, and the nightingales sang on the shore, and in the houses thousands of people slept, forgetting joy and sorrow, until the day again dawned.

CHAPTER II.

A GREEN TWIG

Os the west side of the convent, under the lofty, wide-spreading, thickly-leaved chestnut-trees, beeches, and lindens, and far in among the firs with their fresh shoots, stationary tables and benches were arranged. Girls in blue dresses were sitting here, reading, writing, or busy with their hand-work. Sometimes there was a low humming, but not louder than the humming of the bees in the blossoming chestnut-trees; sometimes a moving this way and that, a change in one's position, but not more than the fluttering of a bird in the trees overhead.

Manna sat at the table beneath a large fir-tree, and at a little distance from her, on a low seat under a lofty beech on whose trunk many names were carved, and on which was suspended a framed picture of the Madonna, sat a little child; she looked up frequently at Manna, who nodded to her, indicating that she must study her book more diligently, and be as busy as the rest. The child was nicknamed Heimchen, because she had suffered so much from homesickness, and Heimchen had become the pet of all the girls. Manna had cured the child, to all appearance at least, for on the day after the representation of the sacred play, she had received permission from a lay-sister who presided over the gardening, to prepare for the child a separate little garden-plat; and now she seemed to be taking root in the foreign land, as did the plants which she had since watered and cared for, but she was inseparable from Manna.

Manna worked diligently; some pale blue paper was lying before her, and she was painting on it, with a fine brush, pictures of the stars in color of gold from small shells.

She prided herself especially on having the neatest writing-books, every leaf ruled very regularly with lines close together, and uniformly written upon, neither too coarse nor too fine. Manna had received, a few days since, the highest mark of honor ever conferred on a pupil, by being unanimously made the recipient of the blue ribbon, which the three classes of the children, namely, the children of Jesus, the angels of Mary, and the children of Mary, had adjudged to her. There had hardly been any election, so much a matter of course did it seem that nobody but Manna could be designated for the blue ribbon. This badge of distinction gave her a sort of right to be considered a superior.

While she was thus drawing, and frequently running her eye over the children left under her care, she had a book open by her side; it was Thomas à Kempis. While putting in the stars, which she did with that delicate and beautiful finish attainable, perhaps, only in the convent, she snatched a few sentences out of Thomas à Kempis, that her soul might be occupied with higher thoughts during this trifling occupation.

The stroke of oars sounded from the shore on that side: the girls looked up; a handsome young man was standing in the boat, who lifted his hat and waved it, as if saluting the island.

"Is he your brother? your cousin?" was whispered here and there.

No one knew the stranger.

The boat came to land. The girls were full of curiosity, but they dared not intermit their work, for everything had its allotted time. Luckily, a tall, fair-complexioned maiden had used up all her green worsted, so that she must go to the convent for more, and she nodded significantly to the others that she would find out who was the new arrival. But before the blond girl could come back, a serving-sister appeared, and informed Manna Sonnenkamp that she was to come to the convent. Manna arose, and Heimchen, who wanted to go with her, was bidden to remain; the child quietly seated herself again on her little stool under the beech-tree from which hung the picture of the Madonna. Manna broke off a little freshly-budding twig from the tree under which she had been sitting, and placed it in her book as a mark; she then followed the sister.