CHAPTER VI.
A DAY WITHOUT PEN OR TYPE.
Eric stood on the shore gazing after the boat, from which Roland was waving at a distance his white handkerchief. To see a person so attached to us flitting away from us in a vessel, seems as if one should love a bird which soars freely up into the air where it cannot be reached; and yet it is different. Human love connects by invisible ties, and this signalizing from afar is a sign of a thought in common, of communication of feeling and participation of interest, notwithstanding all separation by space.
When the boat had disappeared, and only a light streak of vapor floated along the vine-covered slopes, Eric remained standing upon the hill, and as the faint mists hovered in the air, so hovered in his soul the last words of Roland's farewell,—"You and the house do not move from your place."
What a commotion, what an upheaving and swelling, there is in the soul of youth, until it comes to some expression, like an opening blossom!
But that which is closed and wrapped up in the bud has an equal beauty and depth of sentiment, but it is not manifest to us, and does not breathe upon us with such a fragrant and charming loveliness.
So thought Eric as he looked at an acacia-tree, whose buds were yet unopened, and which had put forth not even a green leaf.
Eric was now alone at the villa. He inhaled the quiet, the peace, and the stillness in full draughts, as if, after long days and nights of travel upon the noisy steam-cars, he should suddenly come into the silent woods; yes, as if he were lying deep down at the bottom of the river, and over him were gently rippling the cooling waves. He did not read, he did not write, he enjoyed only an unfathomable rest.
He did not mean to comply with Clodwig's invitation to visit him, until the next day. Eric was certainly removed from all selfishness, but the freedom of living for a whole day without being called upon to talk, and of being entirely by himself, had a charm for him as if he had now, for the first time, escaped out of the captivity of servitude, and acquired the disposal of himself. The thought came over him at one time, that Clodwig was expecting him but he said almost aloud,—
"I cannot!—I must not!" He wished to pass a single day without speaking or being spoken to, to be by himself, alone, speechless, solitary, referring to no one, and no one referring to him.
He thought, for one moment, of writing to his mother, but he dismissed the idea. No one was to have anything of him, he would have all of himself. This perpetual obligation to think for others, this striving for them and love to them, seemed to him a painful and keen suffering; there was now, in the depths of his soul, a call for solitude. For a single day only would he be an egoist, live in absolute rest, and let no book, no relation of life, no longing, no endeavor, deprive him of aught of this entire loneliness.
This villa was called Eden, and he would, for one day, be the first man alone in Eden. He looked at a tree and nodded to it. Fixed thus, abiding in himself, like this tree, would he live for just a single day.
He lay down in the park under a spreading beech-tree, and dreamed away the day. There is a low, gladsome rippling of being and of feeling, without definite thought or volition, which is the inmost desire of those harassed with restless thought and anxious care. Eric lay thus, happy in himself, contemplating and breathing alone, so that the step of a gardener upon the grating gravel aroused him as from a dream. The gardener began to rake the path; it was a strangely harsh sound. Eric would have liked to bid him keep still, but he forbore, and said to himself, smiling,—
"Thou art just such a raker of the paths."
He looked into the branches of the trees, and as the gentle breeze moved them to and fro, so he allowed his thoughts to be swayed hither and thither, with no desire, no conscious endeavor,—simply living. All was peaceful and silent within him. How long, ever since its first shooting forth, has such a leaf been moved by the wind the whole summer long, until it drops, and then—well, then?
A smile passed over his countenance. We are no longer alone, because there is a second self, and one is conscious of his own unconsciousness. And the thought proceeded farther. Yes, solitude, this is the rest upon the mother-earth, this is the story of Antæus, who is inspired with fresh strength from the ever-present energies of mother-earth, as soon as he touches her. We are raised from the ground by our constant thinking, and so are rendered powerless. And farther yet went his dreaming and meditation. This is one trouble of wealth, this is its curse, that it does not enter into the heavens, cannot again be immersed in the primitive might of earthly being, for wealth possesses everything except this, a deliverance from the world, a being alone with one's self. Ballast! ballast! too much ballast!
The doctor's word came into his mind, and the word ballast again and again recurred to his thoughts, just as the finch in the tree over his head continually repeated the same notes.
In the midst of this dreaming and unlimited contemplation, he fell asleep, and when he waked up, he was invigorated and full of a fresh life; for the first time, since a long period, he felt at home within himself. He smiled, for a new thought occurred to him, and, as it were, shone through him. Adam slept in Paradise, and when he waked, he saw his wife by his side; a world is his, and also another who is to become one with him.
It was one of those days and hours in which all the past and the present, all that humanity has ever dreamed and ever obtained for itself by toil, bright with a reflected glory, and gleaming in its own splendor, stands before the eyes. All riddles seem solved. All is peaceful, harmonious, and divine.
So must it be to the thoughtful man when he awakens from the sleep of death, and the eternal life opens to his view.
But the struggle must be entered upon anew, in order to maintain the battle of life.
Eric went into the park and around the house, and took in all with newly opened eyes; he had forgotten how all looked, it had been put far away, and now he surveyed everything like a man newly awakened and endowed with fresh strength.
It is well that the world abides, and is always ready in its place when we return to it again from the sphere of unconscious forgetfulness.
A whole day passed, in which Eric read nothing and wrote nothing.
The next morning, ordering his horse to be saddled, he mounted and rode towards Clodwig's house.
He had scarcely been riding fifteen minutes, when a boy called to him, and brought him a letter. He read it, nodded, and rode in good spirits to the village.