CHAPTER IX.
ANTHONY.
The schoolmaster of the village was stiff and formal in manner; he received the Captain very humbly. The three were soon seated together at the inn, and the village teacher related the history of his life.
He was sixty-four years old, but seemed still very vigorous. He had the same reason for complaining which all public teachers have, and related with a mingled pride and bitterness that his son, twenty-one years of age, was receiving more than twice the pay in a cement-factory of the young Herr Weidmann, than his father was receiving after a service of two and thirty years. He had four sons, but not one should become a schoolmaster. Another son was a merchant, and the oldest a building-contractor in America.
"Yes," cried he, "we schoolmasters are no better off than any common day-laborer."
"Would you remain a schoolmaster," asked Eric, "if you had a competency?"
"No."
"And you would never have become one?"
"I think not."
"This is the deplorable part of it," cried Knopf, "that riches always say, and say rightly, I ought not to remove all need, for through this the beautiful and noble build themselves up; need calls into being the ideal, the virtuous. See here, Herr Captain Colleague, Herr Sonnenkamp, who is a good deal of a man, of wide observation, says,—
"'I must not trouble myself concerning the people about me, neither must Roland, for if he did, he would lose all comfort of his life; he would never be able to ride out, without thinking of the misery and suffering he witnessed in this place and in that.' See, here is our riddle. How can one at the same time be a person of elevated thought, and be rich? We teachers are the guardians of the ideal. Look at the villages all around; there is in them all a visible and an invisible tower, and the invisible is the ideality of the schoolmaster sitting there with his children. I honor you, because you also have become a schoolmaster."
Eric looked up in a sort of surprise, for his vanity was inwardly wounded at being reckoned a schoolmaster, but he quickly overcame it, and was happy in the thought. He prevailed upon the village schoolmaster to go on with the history of his life. He was a good mathematician, had been employed in the land-registry and in the custom-house; he lost his situation when the Zollverein was established; for two years he looked round for something to do, almost in a starving condition, and then became a schoolmaster. He had married well, that is, into a wealthy family, so that he was able to give his sons a good education.
Evening had come on. Eric promised the village schoolmaster to give him something to do with the instruction of Roland.
Knopf accompanied Eric for some distance, and then requested him to mount his horse.
Knopf stood looking after Eric for a long time, until he was hidden by a bend of the mountain, and his puffed lips addressed words in a low tone to him, after he had disappeared.
On the way home, Eric was surprised that he thought less about Roland, than he did about Manna, who was to arrive this evening.
Laughable old stories, how the tutor fell in love with the daughter of the house, and was expelled by the hard-hearted, rich father, and here he stands before the house all lighted up, he hears music; above, the lovely one celebrates her marriage with a very noble coxcomb, and a pistol-shot—no; it would be more practical to find some better situation.
Eric had humor enough to dismiss every such fancy; he would remain distant, composed, and respectful towards the daughter of the house.
When he rode up to the villa, the carriages had already arrived, and Eric received from Herr Sonnenkamp a reproof for his want of friendliness in not remaining at home, or taking note of the hour of their arrival.
After the conversation that he had had with Knopf, the feeling of being in service seemed to him now very strange; or was this reception intended to give him a hint of how he was to conduct himself towards Manna?
Eric made no reply to the reprimand, for such it was. He came to Roland, who warmly embraced him and cried,—
"Ah! with you only is it well, all the rest are—"
"Say nothing about the rest," interrupted Eric.
But he could not restrain Roland from relating the disappointment of all, that Manna did not return with them.
Eric breathed more freely.
Roland mixed up in his relation an account of Bella's getting out at the water-cure establishment on their return, because a message from Count Clodwig had informed her that he would meet her there. Finally he said,—
"What does all the rest amount to? You are there in the convent, and I have told Manna that you look just like the Saint Anthony in the church of the convent. Yes, laugh, if you please! If he should laugh, he would laugh just like you; he looked just as you look now. Manna told me the story. The saint has been praying to heaven, and the Christ-child has laid himself there in his arms, when he was all alone, and he looks at him so lovingly, so devoutly."
Eric was thrilled; a pure living being has also been given into his hands. Is he worthy to receive it, and can his look rest purely upon it?
They sat together without speaking, and Roland, at last, cried,—
"We will not leave each other again, ever. To-day when I sat there upon the deck, all alone, it seemed to me—I was not asleep, I was wide awake—it seemed that you came, and took me in your arms and held me."
Roland's face glowed; he was feverishly excited, and Eric had great difficulty in calming him down. But what he could not easily do was easy for the dogs; Roland became the self-forgetting child again, when he was with the dogs, who had grown so astonishingly in a few days.
Pranken also came in a very friendly way to Eric, and said that he admired his stimulating power, for Roland had exhibited during their absence a susceptibility of mind and a sensitiveness of feeling, which no one would have supposed him capable of.
Now say what you please, candid reader! Yesterday, an hour ago, you held in little esteem some man's judgment, you saw distinctly his limitations, and now he shows that he recognizes your worth, he praises you, he extols you, and suddenly, without being aware of it, your opinion is changed concerning him whom you before regarded as one-sided and contracted, especially if you are a person struggling with yourself, withdrawn into yourself, and often self-doubting.
This was the case with Eric. Pranken seemed to him a man of very good judgment, very amiable indeed; and he even expressed openly his satisfaction, that the friends of the family stood by him and cheered him in his difficult work of education.
Pranken was content; Eric manifestly acknowledged his position; he showed this by not accompanying them on the journey, and not thrusting himself into the family; perhaps also there was a certain touch of pride in not wanting to appear as a part of the retinue; at any rate, Eric did not seem destitute of tact.
Pranken understood how to make this patronizing protection appear as a sort of friendly confidence.