Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

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, —

"Ah, good evening, Brindy! Do you feel proud because you've taken the prize? Shall you tell your neighbors of it? Will you enjoy yourself now at home, or don't you know anything about your honors?"

The heifer was led to the barn, and the child, turning to Roland, cried, —

"Wouldn't you like to know whether the heifer has any notion of what has happened to her?"

As Roland was still silent, the child continued, very seriously, —

"Don't you want to be a husbandman, and have my uncle teach you? Then you can have my room. It's beautiful there!"

The maiden found words sooner than Roland, who still did not open his lips.

She continued, —

"Why haven't you been to see us before?"

"I did not know where you lived, nor who you were."

"Ah! That was why!"

And now they talked of their first meeting, how Lilian was carried away by her uncle, and how Roland wandered on to find Eric. Then it was spring, and now it is autumn.

"Just think! In your lilies there were some pretty little flies, which went along with us in the carriage, and didn't stir."

"Have you kept the flowers?"

"No. I don't like withered flowers, Give me something – give me something, that doesn't wither."

"I have nothing," replied Roland. "But I will send you my photograph, taken as a page – no. That's not fit for you. Oh, if I only had my rings now! I should like to give a ring, but Herr Eric has taken them all off my fingers."

"I don't want any ring. Well, give me that – give me the pebble that's now under your foot."

Roland stooped down, and giving her the pebble, begged she would also give him one.

She did so, saying, —

"Yes, this is dearer to me. I'd rather have that than anything else. Now I shall take a part of Germany with me over the ocean. Oh, Herr Knopf is right; it is all one whether you have a pebble or a diamond, if you only hold it dear; and it's very stupid for people to wear pearls and think that it's something very fine, because they must be got away down deep in the sea. Herr Knopf is right; it doesn't make a thing beautiful or good to cost a great deal."

Roland was silent; his heart beat fast.

"You are the Roland then, of whom the good Herr Knopf is always talking? You can't think how much he loves you."

"Probably he loves you as much?"

"Yes, he loves me too, and he has promised to come to America to see us."

"I am from America, too."

"Ah, yes! Welcome, my dear countryman; come with me into the garden, and help me get a nosegay to take away with me to-morrow."

"But where are you going to-morrow?"

"Very early we start for home."

The children were confronted, as it were, by a riddle. These children of the New World met each other to welcome the arrival in the Old World, and now to bid each other farewell.

"We see one another only to say a welcome and a good-bye," said Roland.

"Come into the garden with me," replied Lilian.

CHAPTER III.

AN HOUR IN PARADISE

The children walked about the garden and gathered flowers, and they seemed to be in fairy land. They went first into the vegetable garden, where dwarf pear-trees were set out at regular intervals, and Lilian, thinking that she must explain everything to the visitor, in a matronly manner, said: —

"Yes, yes, there's no rose-bush, no little tree, which my aunt has not budded, and she hates all vermin. Now just think what aunt reckons as vermin! But you musn't laugh at her for it."

"What? Tell me."

"She considers the birds vermin, too. Oh, you laugh exactly like my brother Hermann. Laugh once more! Yes, he laughs exactly so. But my brother has been in business for three years. Come, we'll look for some flowers now."

They went into the flower garden and gathered many different kinds of flowers, but Lilian threw a large bunch of them into the brook, and pleased herself with thinking how the flowers would float down to the Rhine, and from the Rhine to the sea, and who knows but they would go straight to New York, even before she got there herself!

"I shall come to America, too, to see you," Roland all at once exclaimed.

"Give me your hand that you will."

For the first time, the children took each other by the hand.

A shot was heard behind them. Roland trembled.

"Just be quiet. Are you really frightened?" Lilian said, soothingly. "It's aunt; she's only frightening away the sparrows; she fires every time she comes into the orchard. A pistol is always lying upon the table yonder."

Roland now saw Frau Weidmann putting the discharged pistol down on the table.

"We'll be perfectly quiet, so that she won't hear us," he said to Lilian.

They sat down on the margin of the brook, and Lilian whispered: —

"The mignonettes I'll keep, they smell so sweet, even after they're wilted."

"Yes," Roland rejoined, "give me a mignonette too, and as often as we smell them, we will think of each other. The field-guard Claus, told me once – he's a real bee-father – that the mignonette yields the most honey."

Of all his knowledge, nothing else now occurred to him.

"You are very clever!" exclaimed the child. "Now tell me, do you think, too, that the bees smell the flowers as we do, and that the flowers put on such pretty colors so that the bees and the insects may come to them and be friendly with them? Just think! Herr Knopf says so. Oh, what a tiny little nose a bee must have! And I've often seen that the humble-bee isn't very smart; it flies up to a flower twice, three times, and it might know that there was no honey there. The humble-bee's stupid, but the honey-bees, they are the prettiest creatures in the world. Don't you love them more than anything else?"

"No, I love horses and hounds more."

"And only think," Lilian went on, "that the bees never hurt me nor uncle, but aunt has to take care. Have you ever caught a swarm?"

"No."

"If you're ever a great, rich gentleman, you must get some bees too. But the bees do well only in a family where there's peace; Herr Knopf told me so. And when we start to-morrow, my father's going to take a bee-hive with him. Ah, if we can only take it safe to the New World; 'twould be frightful if all the good bees had to die on the way. But 'twill be very nice when they wake up in America, and fly away, and see wholly different trees there."

"Is it really true that you're going away to-morrow?"

"Yes, my father has said so, and when he's said it, there's nothing can hinder; you may be just as sure of it as that the sun will rise. My father, uncle, and Herr Knopf have talked about you a great deal."

"About me?"

"Yes, they've wondered ever so much what you're going to do. Are you really worth so many hundred millions?"

"Yes, Lilian, all the money in the whole world is mine."

"Ah, what do you say! you must think I'm a goose; I'm not so simple as all that. But what do you mean to be?"

"A soldier."

"Oh, that's nice; then you'll come over to us, and help kill all the people dead who keep slaves. My father and uncle say 'twill be done soon. Ah, if 'twere only now as 'twas in the old times, then we'd go away together into the great forest, far off into the world, and then we'd come to a castle where there were only wee-bit, tiny dwarfs, and there'd be one hermit, a good man with a snow-white beard, whom all the animals in the wood loved – and Herr Knopf might be just such a hermit – yes he's to be our hermit, and he'll be named Emil Martin. Come, we'll call him after this brother Martin."

Thus the children amused each other, and Roland again asked, —

"Why must you go away so soon as to-morrow?"

"And why must you stay here any longer?" answered Lilian.

"I must stay with my parents."

"And I with mine. Ah, you've a beard already," cried the child, pulling suddenly the down on his lip.

"That hurts; you've pulled out a couple of hairs, and I'm proud of them."

"You're proud of them then?" And she tenderly stroked his face, pronouncing at the same time a so-called healing-spell, which she had learned of Knopf for the healing of a wound.

"Have you the dog still?" asked Lilian.

"Yes, he must have gone with Eric. Where is he, I wonder?"

He whistled, and Griffin came up. Lilian caressed the dog, and kissed him, and said all kinds of loving words to him.

"I'll give the dog to you," said Roland.

"See," cried the child, "he's looking at you; he knows he's to be handed over to another master, just as a slave is. But, Roland, I can't take the dog with me. I mustn't say anything to father about it. Only think how much trouble we should have before we reached New York; you'd better keep him."

Roland had been lost in thought; now he asked abruptly, —

"Have you ever seen any slaves?"

"No, when they come to us they aren't slaves any longer. But I've seen many who've been slaves – one is a friend of father's, and father goes through the streets with him, arm in arm."

"Come here, Griffin," she said breaking off, "here's something for you."

She gave the dog a piece of sweet biscuit she had in her pocket, which he ate, licking his lips as he stood calmly gazing at the distant landscape.

For some time the children were silent, and then Lilian again asked, —

"Well, what are you going to do with the ever so many millions, when you're a man?"

"What makes you ask me that?"

"Oh, uncle and Herr Knopf have often talked about what you were going to do with them – and do you know what they said?"

"No. What would you do, if you had so much money?"

"I? I'd buy ever so many pretty clothes, real gold and silver clothes, and then – well then – then I'd build a splendid church, and everybody would have to be beautifully dressed, and when they came home, they'd have nice things to eat. And you'll do all this, won't you? or you'll tell me what you mean to do."

"I don't know."

"But you are to be something great. Ah, to be rich, pooh! Uncle says that's nothing."

"Have you ever seen a million?" asked the child again. "I'd like to see a million for once. The whole room, clear up to the top, would be full of rolls of gold – no, I shouldn't like that. Tell me now, have you a little sister?"

"No, she's a year older than I."

"And is she beautiful too?"

Lilian did not wait for the answer; she beckoned to Roland to keep quiet, for just then a lady-bug ran over her hand. She placed the little creature on its back, saying, —

"Look, now it's kicking, it can't help itself – there, now, its little wings are under its back, and with them it has got up again, all by itself. Hi! it's off. 'Twill have a long story to tell when it gets home. Ah, it will say. There was a great animal that had five legs on its hand – my fingers must appear to it like legs, and when it eats supper to-night it eats with-"

"Tell me, aren't you hungry too? I'm hungry."

"What are you doing there?" suddenly called out a woman's loud voice. "Come into the house."

Lilian's aunt had made her appearance behind the children, and they had to go with her to the house.

Lilian saw Roland's frightened expression, and with the idea that he must certainly be thinking of the wicked woman in the story, who eats the children up in the wood, she said in a low tone, —

"Aunt won't do us any harm; instead, we'll get something very nice to-night, great pancakes and leeks. Don't you see a leek in her hand, which she has just cut? That's for the pancakes."

Roland and Lilian accompanied Frau Weidmann into the house.

CHAPTER IV.

VOCATION AND FATHER-LAND

While the children had been dreaming and chattering together in the garden, the men had gone into the house. They stepped into the large wainscoted entrance-hall, where a great many withered wreaths were suspended. Weidmann pointed out to Eric that forty-two of these belonged to him, for that was the number of harvests he had worked in here.

The single wreath hanging by itself was the fiftieth one of his father-in-law, which had been placed upon his grave. Weidmann nodded as Eric said: —

"This is a decoration which cannot be purchased, which one can acquire only for himself."

Eric was glad to point this out to Roland.

They entered the sitting-room on the ground-floor. It was spacious and comfortable, with pleasant seats in the window-recesses, and chairs and tables scattered about here and there.

"We live on the ground-floor in the summer," said Weidmann to Eric; "every thing can be overlooked here better: After the leaves have fallen, we remove to the upper story for the winter."

The great sitting-room opened into another apartment, where the heavy damask curtain had just been drawn back. The Banker, whom Eric had become acquainted with at Carlsbad, came out of it, holding in his hand a bundle of papers, and gave him a friendly greeting, expressing his pleasure in meeting again here the man who was as intimate a friend of Clodwig's as he was himself.

A new subject was at once introduced. The Banker said that he had looked over the papers thoroughly; the public domain did not seem to be valued at too high a figure, and Weidmann must understand how it was purposed to divide it; but he believed that it would be hardly possible to extend to this new undertaking the plan of insurance which Weidmann had adopted for his laborers; that it was very questionable whether the income, for years, would be such that the life-insurance premium could be saved.

Eric learned that Weidmann paid the life-insurance premium of all his employees after they had been with him four years.

Weidmann gave a statement, in general outline, of the manner in which the so-called social question struck him as being the same as among the ancient Romans; the point of consideration was to make free and independent cultivators of their own lands. And he laid particular stress upon the remark that this social question, however, was not to be solved as if it were merely a problem in arithmetic; that there must be a moral and social enthusiasm, and he must confess, although many would shrug their shoulders at it, that he himself was of opinion that the humane principle of Freemasonry, which had too much lost its real meaning, was to look for, and to find here, a new inspiration and application.

It was soon evident that the Banker was a brother of the order.

Eric's heart swelled as he felt obliged to say to himself, while his thoughts were carried away to the grand movements of the world: —

"Everywhere, in our day, there is an active endeavor, a care for the neighbor, for those in adverse circumstances. This is our religion, which has no temples and no established days of festive celebration, but which, everywhere and at all times, struggles for the good."

He entirely forgot where he came from, and why he came, and lived wholly in the present.

Weidmann postponed, however, the subject to another time, and asked what Roland was going to do. But before Eric could reply, a man came in with Dr. Fritz, to whom Eric gave a cordial reception. It was Weidmann's son-in-law, an infantry officer of high rank. The two men requested that the conversation might not be interrupted, and Weidmann repeated his question about Roland.

Eric informed them that his pupil wanted to become a soldier; he expressed his own opposition to the plan, and his desire that Roland would devote himself to science or agriculture.

Weidmann answered, smiling, that Eric was a little too hard on this mode of life, from having been a soldier; that he himself was convinced it was of essential advantage to a man to have had a soldier's training. A man became ready, resolute and self-reliant, and at the same time he was one member of a large body. Nowhere can one be taught punctuality better, or learn better what it is to command, and what to obey, than in the military service. Roland must be made to realize, however, that this soldierly life was only transitional with him, nothing that was to occupy and fill out his whole existence.

"Then he will be no true soldier," interposed Weidmann's son-in-law. "Whoever undertakes anything which he does not consider as an active employment, requiring the full energies of his life, and whoever is continually looking to some future vocation, does not plant himself firmly in the present."

"Here you agree with my old teacher, Professor Einsiedel," Eric went on. "He used to say that the worst ruler is the provisional one. It would be, therefore, important for Roland to adopt some permanent calling, and not one merely temporary. With his peculiar characteristics, it is very hard for another to determine for him; but you, Herr Weidmann, you, with the powerful impression which you and your active usefulness have made upon Roland, you would be exceedingly well adapted to give to him the decisive impulse in one particular direction which I could not do, because I have not seen clearly what is best.

"Let us take counsel together," agreed Weidmann. "We here have had a great deal of experience."

"Do you think," Eric broke in, "that a better result would come from a consultation of many, than from the quiet meditation of a single person?"

"Aha! doubt in the efficacy of parliamentarianism," said Weidmann smiling. "I can imagine it possible. I answer your question with a simple yes. What the deliberation of many settles upon is suitable for many, and a person rich like him has in himself the power of many and for many. Let us consult together."

They sat down, and the Banker began, —

"I believe it is Jean Paul who said, – If you come into a new dwelling-place, and it does not seem homelike to you, then go to work and you will begin to feel at home. I should like to extend this further. One feels at home in the world only through labor; he who does not work is homeless."

The conversation was again interrupted by the entrance of the Russian prince, Weidmann's son, and Knopf. The subject was again stated.

"We have a good council of deliberation," said Weidmann, sitting back in his chair. "You have all seen the noble-looking youth, Herr Sonnenkamp's son, and Captain Dournay has trained him so that now, we might say, he is fitted to enter upon whatever calling he may adopt. What now shall the boy do?"

"Allow me one preliminary question," interposed Knopf. "Must a rich man produce, accomplish anything himself? Is it not his task to further the production, the doing of others, whether art, science, industry, or labor, and to make himself so far familiar with it as to give such aid?"

"You wanted to answer something." Weidmann pointed to the Banker, whose features were very expressive, and who seemed to have a remark on his lips.

"Not exactly answer," responded the Banker. "I wanted, first of all, to distinguish between vocation and business. There are active pursuits which are only a business, and again there are positions which are only a vocation. This is the chief difficulty, that a person so excessively rich must have only a vocation; there is no necessity of his pursuing any business. Rich people's children degenerate, because there is no such necessity."

"What do you understand by vocation?" asked Weidmann.

"I can't at once define it."

"Then allow me to help you," said Eric. "Vocation is a natural gift, or a necessity, which we turn into a law that acts freely. The brute has no vocation, because he follows natural instinct alone."

"Very true," nodded the Banker gratefully. "One question more," he said, turning to Eric. "Hasn't your pupil, as I am sorry to say most rich men's sons have, the desire to be a cavalier, a young nobleman?"

As Eric made no answer, he continued, —

"Our misfortune is, that the sons of the rich are satisfied with being heirs, and do not want to find a means of active development for themselves."

"As we have heard already," began Weidmann's son-in-law, "the young man wishes to become a soldier, and I believe that he ought to be encouraged in that purpose. I hope that it won't be attributed to prejudice in favor of my own calling, but I must repeat our father's view, that the military profession, more than any other, gives a certain decision of character. To have to stand ready every day with bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage, this makes one prompt and decided; this standing army becomes a fact, as it were, in each individual soldier."

"Granted," rejoined Weidmann. "But is it not to be feared that a man, who has been a soldier for the best years of his life, will be able to take up with great difficulty any other employment? He always regards himself as on furlough; and the great misfortune – I might call it the leading tendency of our time – manifests itself especially in the rich, who look upon themselves as on furlough, always on vacation."

"The best thing about it is, Roland will run through his money, and then it is scattered among the people," jokingly observed Weidmann's son, showing those impertinently white teeth that Pranken objected to so strongly.

"I would like to say one word," the Russian remarked to Knopf, who cried, —

"The Prince requests to have the floor."

Weidmann bowed to him pleasantly.

"I think that we can furnish an example in Russia. Our wealthy men are obliged to become agriculturists, whether the inheritance consists in money or goods. Why should not the young man be simply an agriculturist?"

"Agriculture has five branches," replied Weidmann, "and they ought to have their roots in five corresponding inclinations. Agriculture consists of physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, and zoology, and one of these, that is, the inclination to one of these sciences, and the activity growing out of it, must have its foundation in the natural bent or genius, otherwise there is no happiness in one's calling. And do you know," he turned toward the Prince, smiling, "do you know what is the first requisite for an agriculturist?"

"Money."

"No, that's the second. The first is a sound human understanding. There are far more intellectual men than there are men of genuine common sense."

The Prince nodded to Knopf, and he gave a merry nod in return.

Weidmann opposed, with a warmth that was very different from his usually composed manner, the view generally entertained of agriculture as a sort of universal refuge, to which every one could have recourse; and yet the conclusion was finally arrived at, that it would be the most suitable thing for Roland to devote himself to agriculture, in connection with other branches of industry carried out on a large scale.