CHAPTER X.
THE GUARDIAN AND HELPER.
Early in the morning, a carriage from Wolfsgarten came for Aunt Claudine and the parrot.
For the thirty years since her marriage with the Professor, Frau Dournay had not passed a day without her sister-in-law; now, for the first time, she was letting her go from her. It seemed to both of them hardly conceivable that they could live apart from each other, but it had been decided upon, and must be.
Sonnenkamp was most politely attentive; he charged the Aunt to consider his house her home, and not to remain more than a few days as a guest at Wolfsgarten. He gave a basket full of carefully-covered grapes and bananas into the coachman's charge; the parrot's cage was on the seat near Aunt Claudine.
The parrot screamed and scolded as they drove off, and kept it up all the way, not liking, apparently, to leave Villa Sonnenkamp.
Herr Sonnenkamp proposed a drive to the Professorin, to help her forget the parting, but she answered, that not by diversion but by quiet reflection, can we compose and reconcile ourselves to the inevitable. Roland looked at her in surprise; these wore Eric's thoughts, almost his very words.
Several days passed quietly at the villa, which was hardly quitted even for visits to the vine-covered cottage. Bella's visit had brought a disquiet to the house, which still hung over them all, and they realized it afresh as they constantly missed the Aunt; Bella had taken something which seemed an essential part of their life. And besides, the house was again without any sound of music.
Eric and Roland were more industrious than ever, for the Mother had asked if she might not be with them in the study-hours, saying that she had never heard any of Eric's teaching. Eric knew that she wished to help him to keep a strict guard over himself; for though not a word had been said, she felt that something must have passed between him and Bella. And she not only wanted to watch over her son at every hour, but to inspire him by her presence to keep true to his duty to Roland.
So she sat with them from early morning through much of the day, breathing low, and not even allowing herself any needlework; and Eric and Roland felt a peculiar of a calm mind, of deep insight, and wide incitement in the presence of a third person, views. At first Roland often looked up at her, but she always shook her head, to remind him that he must give his whole mind to what he was about, and take no notice of her. Eric was completely free from the first hour, when he had caught himself giving such a turn to the lesson that his mother might learn something new, and had met her gaze, which said,—That's not the thing to be considered. He returned to his simple plan, without regard to his mother's presence. She was pleased with the methodical way in which Eric gave his instruction, and knew how to keep his pupil's attention. She listened with pleasure, one day, when he said that Indolence liked to say:—Nothing depends on me, a single individual; but, a nation and humanity consist of individuals; a scholar learns through single hours and days; a fruit ripens by single sunbeams; everything is individual, but the collected individuals make up the great whole. Eric had prepared himself, and read apposite passages from Cicero, and from Xenophon's Memorabilia. Roland must feel that he had the fellowship of the noblest spirits. But when they were alone, his mother said,—"I think that in illustrating everything and trying to give your pupil knowledge, you weaken and loosen his firm hold on fundamental principles."
Eric felt a shock of disappointment; he had hoped that his mother would express entire pleasure, and she was finding fault instead; but he controlled himself, and she continued, smiling:—
"I cannot help laughing, because my two points of criticism are really one and the same, looked at on two sides. The one view is this, that it seems to me dangerous to give your pupil, as you do, just what he desires: you follow the devious path of a young discursive mind, and just there lies the danger of private instruction. I mean, in this way it pampers the youthful mind by giving it only what it wishes for, not what it ought to have. The discipline of a definite course of study lies in the necessity of taking up and carrying forward what the connected plan requires, and not what may suit the fancy; this fits one for life too, for life does not always bring what we long for, but what we need and must have."
"And what is your second point?" asked Eric, as his mother paused.
"My second point is only a repetition of the first. I remember your father's saying once, that the first and only true support, or rather the very foundation of education, must be:—'Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; straight forward without comment, without explanation, without illustration.' Now ask yourself whether you are not weakening his character. When our Roland is brought into a conflict, I don't know whether knowledge will help him, rather than the ancient command: 'Thou shalt and thou shalt not.' I only say this to you that you may think it over; others may praise you, I must warn you. I can say, though, that you have attained one important point; the boy has a holy reverence for the spirit of the Past."
Eric grasped his mother's hand, and walked on sometime in silence. Then he explained to her how he wished to give Roland not only knowledge, but a firm foundation of self-reliance, on which his life might rest.
"My son," replied his mother, "you have set yourself a difficult task; you want to accomplish a three-fold work at once; that is not possible. Listen to me patiently. You want to complete and perfect a neglected education; you want to lead to higher aims, gaining at the same time a moral foothold and moral elevation, without using the means handed down to you; and, finally, you want to train a youth, who knows his own wealth, to be a useful, unselfish, even self-sacrificing man. Now why do you laugh, pray? I will stop, though I might add, that you want to make a boy without a family affectionate, and a boy without a country patriotic. Now tell me why you laugh."
"Forgive me, mother; there's reason in your being called Professorin; you have discoursed like a Professor from his desk. But let me tell you that the two-fold or the five-fold task is only a simple one in the end. I confess I have often said to myself that I might make it easier, but then I would ask myself whether this was not an attempt to excuse my own desire of comfort. I must make the experiment of placing a youth upon the platform of acting freely from-—-"
"Reason?" responded the mother. "Reason may give composure, but not happiness nor blessedness; reason may not be the nourishment which suits the young spirit. Remember, my son, that meat is good food, but we do not feed a new-born child on meat instead of milk. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yes; you mean that religion is the mother's milk of the spirit."
"Exactly," said the Mother, in triumph. "Your father always said that no man had ever produced any great work, or accomplished any great deed, who did not believe in God; God is the highest object of imaginative thought. So long as philosophy cannot show a moral law which can be written, concisely and with perfect clearness, upon two tables of stone, education must make its progress through religion."
"Mother," answered Eric, "we believe in God more truly than those who would confine him within the limits of a book, of a church, or of a special form of worship."
"Ah," said his mother, "let us drop the subject. Do you see that butterfly, flitting in great circles against the window pane? The butterfly takes the glass, from its transparency, to be the open air, and thinks that he can pass through it, but dashes his head at last against the glass wall that seemed to be nothing but air. But enough, I am not strong enough for you. If your father still lived, he could help you as no one else can."
The conversation, now turning on the father's death, wandered away from the previous subject.