Villa Eden Part 154

"Miracles still take place! Miracles still take place!" he kept exclaiming, flouris.h.i.+ng at the same time his flute. "But now, children, follow me; do not speak--not a single word. Roland can dance, and you can dance too, Lilian. I beg you would be quiet!" he cried aloud to the a.s.sembly. "Our children are going to dance--our children are going to dance by themselves."

He stationed himself again on the platform, and played a waltz on his flute; the children danced, and all eyes were fixed upon them, as if it were a fairy spectacle.

Roland and Lilian had not yet spoken a word, and they had so much to say to each other; but they were dancing together. Who knows how long Knopf would have kept on playing, had not Dr. Fritz called out:--

"That'll do for the present, Herr Candidate!" Knopf flinched; the word candidate, in the midst of this fairy tale, seemed to annoy him, it sounded so horribly prosaic.

Roland and Lilian took their seat with the others at the table. Knopf exhorted Lilian to give her partner something to drink, but Frau Weidmann insisted upon the children's waiting awhile before they drank.

They sat quietly, looking at each other without speaking.

Eric begged that his coming should make no interruption in their plans, but Weidmann declared that he wanted to leave, at any rate; he had already been obliged to answer hundreds of questions. Frau Weidmann regretted that the best rooms in the house were already occupied, and that Eric and Roland would have to put up with such poor accommodations.

"Don't be uneasy," interposed Weidmann; "all women, even the best, make apologies for their housekeeping, however good it may be."

The whole company adjourned from the table to the courtyard. Dr. Fritz leading his little daughter by the hand; and now it was learned that he and his child were going to start the next day for America.

Knopf took Roland's arm, and Eric walked between Weidmann and his wife; the Russian had gone out into the fields with a son of Weidmann, while the second accompanied Dr. Fritz. Frau Weidmann could not forbear letting Eric know why her husband was so taciturn; that he devoted himself too much to other people, and then he came home all f.a.gged out.

Who knows whether he would not have taken his violin and played for the people, if Eric had not come?

Weidmann declared that he had done this, and was not at all ashamed of it.

Eric replied that it was exceedingly painful to see how often it was that one was almost ashamed of manifesting any good feeling in the world, because so many merely pretended to possess it, and only used it as a means of acquiring popularity.

Weidmann made mention of Eric's office in the House of Correction, adding that the man who played the key-bugle had been a convict formerly, and had conducted himself well for years.

Frau Weidmann, who was of the opinion that talking was too much of an exertion for her husband at present, now resumed the thread of conversation, and asked Eric whether it was a settled matter that Pranken was to marry the rich Sonnenkamp's daughter.

Eric could not keep saying yes, and Frau Weidmann was exceedingly vexed.

"It always puts me out," she said, "when a healthy and wealthy girl of the middle cla.s.s marries a n.o.bleman; our good, solid, industrial acquisitions are alienated. I do not wish to say that the n.o.ble is not our friend; but he does not belong to us, he considers himself something different from us, and the fruit of our toil goes to him. A girl of the middle cla.s.s, who buys a t.i.tle by marriage, betrays her ancestors, and betrays us in her posterity."

Frau Weidmann spoke so excitedly and angrily, that her husband tried in vain to pacify her; he took, however, the wrong means, informing her that Herr Sonnenkamp himself wanted to receive a t.i.tle.

Eric was startled to hear this matter, which had been regarded as a great secret, here spoken of so openly.

Frau Weidmann had a special dislike towards Pranken; she disliked him because he induced so many people to place good breeding, as it was termed, above plain uprightness. You could hear hundreds of persons, women as well as men, speak well of him in spite of his vicious life, because he was so well bred, as they called it.

"Suppose Manna had come here?" thought Eric to himself.

Weidmann turned to Eric with the explanation that his wife was pretty severe against Pranken, as two years ago, about the time that Eric had taken the position at Sonnenkamp's, Pranken had spent a few days at Mattenheim, and in that short time had introduced a disorderly state of things at the farm, which was not without its effects even at the present time.

CHAPTER II.

A PEBBLE ANSWERS FOR A JEWEL.

Knopf, meanwhile, talked much with Roland, and congratulated him in having a man like Eric for a teacher. Roland was as inattentive as ever, asking at last only this question,--

"What is the maiden's name?"

"Lilian. And this is the miraculous part of it! You gave her in the wood a Mayflower, and the Mayflower is also called Lily of the Valley."

"What's her father?"

"A famous lawyer, a leading opponent of slavery."

Knopf would rather have given himself a slap on the mouth, than to have uttered what he did. But it couldn't be unsaid. He turned suddenly and looked sharply at Roland, and, to his satisfaction, he became convinced that no effect had been produced upon the youth.

During the whole distance they seemed to be hearing the music of the waltz, and now, as they approached the farm, that ceased, for there struck upon their ears the rus.h.i.+ng and roaring of a mill-stream and the clattering of a mill. The stream flowed underneath a large part of the house, and turned the mill constructed there.

"You will not sleep well to-night," said Knopf to Roland.

"Why not?"

"Because you must first get used to the noise of the mill; if one is accustomed to it, he sleeps the more soundly for it. It was so with my little pupil."

Not far from the farm buildings, the different individuals, meeting again, were standing near the palings of an inclosure, where Roland was delighted with the handsome colts that were frisking about within, and which all came up to the fence when they sniffed Herr Weidmann's proximity.

He informed them that this was his "little children's school;" he had established a "coltgarten" for colts, to which all the breeders of horses in the district sent the foals. There was good pasture-land, where they could perform their gymnastic exercises, be well-sheltered and safely cared for. This helped the whole surrounding country in the rearing of horses.

Roland was highly pleased with this information, and Eric took fresh satisfaction in the thought of having brought him here. A man like Weidmann would exert an influence over Roland such as no other person could.

"Have you studied chemistry?" Weidmann asked, turning to Roland.

He said no.

Weidmann looked down, then up, and asked,--

"Have you determined yet what you mean to do?"

For the first time, Roland hesitated to give a direct answer.

Weidmann urged the matter no further. Eric could not conceive what made Roland so timid; but he saw clearly what a great influence this man had acquired over his pupil. Perhaps also what Roland had heard caused him to waver, and he was reluctant to speak, before a man of such active usefulness, of a vocation in which outward show and glory were the ends in view.

But there was another reason. The child with golden hair let go her father's hand, went up to Knopf and whispered to him, that now he must be convinced all was true she had told him; that he had never believed she had met any one in the wood, but now the witness was before his eyes.

Roland whispered to Knopf, that Eric had never been disposed to believe that such a thing had really happened to him.

Knopf, who saw himself placed in the midst of wonder-land, moved his hand repeatedly over his breast, while his eyes gleamed behind his spectacles. Yes, in the very midst of chemistry, scientific feeding, locomotive whistles, and dividend calculations--in the midst of all this there was still romance left in the world. True, this happens only to children born on Sunday, and Lilian was a Sunday-child.

He only wished that he could do something towards deepening and making lasting this gleaming romance of their wonderful meeting.

But that's just it! One can't do anything in this sphere of the romantic, it always comes of its own accord, unexpected and surprising; it won't be regulated and reasonably built up. All one can do is, to keep still and hold his breath, and make no sound; otherwise the charm is broken. He had to do something to further it, and he did the very best thing; he went off and left the children by themselves.

They looked at each other, but neither spoke. A handsome red heifer, with a bell on her neck and a garland over her horns, was led into the farm-yard. The maiden went up to her, and stroking her, said,--