CHAPTER XII.
ORESTES AND IPHIGENIA.
Two steamers, one bound for the valley, the other for the mountains, were standing in the stream at a little distance from the island. In the one bound for the valley was Roland. In answer to his impatient question why they did not land, the captain silently pointed to the island, where a procession of priests and nuns were following a bier covered with flowers, and borne by girls dressed in white. The voices of children, as they sang, rose on the clear Spring air. Roland's heart trembled; what if his sister-—-?
"It must be a little child," said an elderly man standing near him; "the bier is so small; those young girls could not carry it otherwise."
Roland breathed more freely; he knew his sister must be among the mourners.
He had landed, and was standing on the bank beside the boatman, who was to row him over to the island. The man shook his head and said softly:—
"Not yet, not yet; but perhaps you are a relation of the child?"
"What child?"
"A little child has died in the convent; oh, such a beautiful child! it made one happy only to look at her. The Lord God will have to make but little change to turn her into an angel."
"How old was she?"
"Seven, or eight at the most. Hark, there they come!"
The bells rang out into the Spring air, the smoke of the incense ascended, as the procession moved along the shore.
The boatman took off his hat, and prayed with folded hands. Roland, too, stood with uncovered head, and with a sudden shock he thought: Thus might I have been borne to the grave. Such a weakness came over him that he was obliged to sit down; he kept his eyes fixed upon the island; the procession went on, then disappeared, and all was still.
Now they were sinking the young body in the ground; the birds sang, no breath of air stirred, a steamboat came towards the mountain; all was like the figures in a dream.
The procession came in sight again, singing, and vanished through the open doors of the convent.
"So," said the boatman, putting on his hat, "now I will row you across."
But Roland, unwilling to surprise his sister before she had had time to rest and compose herself, asked to be allowed to remain a while longer on the shore. It was well he did, for no one in the convent so felt a part of her very self taken from her, as Manna. Dear little Heimchen had held out for a whole year, seeming to grow more cheerful, and making good progress in her studies, but in the Spring she faded, like a tenderly nurtured flower too early exposed to the cold.
Devotedly, day and night. Manna nursed the child, who with her was always happy. A foretaste of heaven seemed granted little Heimchen; she looked forward to it as to a Christmas holiday, and often said to Manna that she should tell God, and all the angels in heaven, about her. The next moment she would beg Manna to tell her about Roland.
"I saw him running with his bow and arrows, and oh, he was so beautiful!"
Then Manna told about Roland, and could always make Heimchen laugh by describing how his little pups tumbled one another over and over. The physician, and the hospital nun, who was almost a doctor herself, urged Manna to take more rest, but she was strong, and never left her post. In Manna's arms the child died, and her last words were:—
"Good-morning, Manna, it is no longer night now."
Manna's experience had been manifold. She had seen a novice assume the dress of the order, and had seen a fellow pupil enter her novitiate; yet was it all only a strong, free, joyful self-sacrifice. Now she had witnessed the death of a child, a little human being, dropping softly and silently from the tree of life, as a blossom falls from the stem.
It was Manna who, at the lower end of the bier, had helped to bear the child to the grave, and thrown three handfuls of earth upon the coffin. She did not shed a tear until the priest described how the child had been called from the earth, as a father might summon his child from a play-ground where it was in danger, and keep it safe in his home; then she wept bitterly.
On leaving the cemetery, she went once more to Heimchen's empty bed, and there prayed God that she might enter into eternity as pure as that little child. Then she grew composed, feeling the time could not be far distant when, after a short return to the excitement of the world, the great Father of all would summon her away from this play-ground into his sheltering mansions. She seemed already to hear voices from the noisy world without, calling her once more to return to it. She must obey them, but made a firm resolve faithfully to return into this, her one, only home.
She descended to the island, and took her seat under the pine-tree where she had so often worked. There was the little bench on which Heimchen had sat close by her side, almost at her feet. Manna sat here long, trying to imagine the distractions which life could bring to her in this one year, but she did not succeed. Her thoughts would return to Heimchen, and she found herself trying to follow the young soul into the eternity of Heaven.
Suddenly she heard steps, and looking up saw before her a youth who was like Roland, only much taller, and more manly. She could not stir from her seat.
"Manna, Manna, come to me!" cried the boy.
She rose, and with a loud cry, brother and sister fell into one another's arms.
"Sit down by me," said Manna at last. They sat together upon the bench beneath the pine-tree, and Manna, pointing to the smaller bench, told of Heimchen, and of her often wanting to hear stories about Roland, and when she came to tell how the child had died of homesickness, she suddenly exclaimed:—
"Our whole life, Roland, is nothing but homesickness for our heavenly home; of that we die, and happy is he who dies of it."
Roland perceived that his sister was in a state of overwrought excitement, amounting almost to ecstasy; and speaking in a tone of quiet and manly decision, he told her that she must first come back to her earthly home. He told her of his having acted in a play, and having been photographed in his page's silk dress; of the order his father had received; and, finally, of a secret his father had confided to him, and which he could not tell.
"Our father told you a secret?" asked Manna, her face growing rigid.
"Yes, and a beautiful, noble one; you will rejoice with me when you hear it."
Manna's features relaxed.
Roland told her how he had fancied himself with her all through his delirium, and that she ought to feel only happy at his being still alive.
"Yes, you are still alive," cried Manna, "you shall live. All is yours."
He reminded her that to-morrow was his birthday, and that his own wish was that she would let him take her to their parents on that day.
"Yes, I will go with you," cried Manna, "and it is better we should go directly."
Hand in hand, the brother and sister went to the convent, where Manna told the Superior of her intention to go home with Roland. In a state of feverish excitement, she then hurried to bid good-bye to all her fellow pupils, and all the nuns, went into the church and prayed, and finally made Roland go with her to Heimchen's grave.
Roland observed a long, straight row of gravestones without inscriptions, and, on asking Manna about them, was told they marked the graves of the nuns.
"That is hard," said Roland, "to have to be nameless after death."
"It is but natural," returned Manna; "whoever takes the veil lays aside her family name and assumes a sacred one, which is hers until her death, and then another bears it."
"I understand." said Roland. "That is giving up a great deal. The name of the nun cannot be written on the gravestone, nor the family name either; yet there must be a great many of noble family buried here."
"Yes, indeed; almost all were noble."
"What should you say if we should be noble too?"
"Roland, what do you mean?" cried Manna, seizing him violently by the arm. "Can you speak of such a thing here and now? Come away; such thoughts are a desecration to the graves."
She led him out of the little burial-place and as far as the gravel path, when, suddenly leaving him, she turned once more to the cemetery and knelt down by the grave; then she rejoined her brother.
Lootz was standing with the luggage ready; Manna stepped into the boat with Roland, and the brother and sister were borne up the stream toward their home. All in the boat gazed with a pleased curiosity at the pair, who, however, sat quietly hand in hand, looking out upon the broad landscape.
"Tell me," urged Roland, "why you said, when you were going to that convent, that you, too, were an Iphigenia?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Oh yes, you can; I know all about her. I have read the Iphigenia of Euripides, and of Goethe, too, by myself and with Eric, and you are like neither of them."
"It was only-—- ah, let us forget all about it."
"Do you know," cried Roland, "that Iphigenia became the wife of the great hero Achilles and lived with him, on the island of Leuce, in eternal blessedness?"
Manna confessed her ignorance, and Roland described the copy of the Pompeian fresco that Eric's mother had showed him, where Calchas, the priest, is holding the knife, Diomedes and Odysseus are bearing Iphigenia to the altar, and, her father, Agamennon, hides his face, while, at the command of Artemis, one of the nymphs leads in the stag that is to be sacrificed in Iphigenia's place.
"How many things you have learned," smiled Manna.
"And Eric told me," continued Roland, "that the sacrifice of Iphigenia was just like that of Isaac, and all the other sacrifices we read about."
Manna's face darkened; that was the foundation of a fatal heresy.
"Stop, now I have it," cried Roland. "Ah, that is good! There are still oracles in the world. Orestes had to fetch his sister from the temple of Tauris, where she was priestess. That is it! You divined it! That will delight Eric; ah! how it will delight him! But stay! When Iphigenia and her brother were on board ship I am sure he must have played off all sorts of silly tricks to amuse her, and I am sure she laughed. Have you quite forgotten how to laugh? You used to laugh so merrily, just like a wood-pigeon. Do laugh just once."
He laughed with his whole heart, but Manna remained unmoved, and, during the way, sat buried in her own thoughts. Only once, when the boat came to a sudden stop in the middle of the stream, she asked:—
"What is that?"
"That is the very question I asked Eric when we were going up the river together, and he showed me up there a heavily-laden freight vessel, which would be overturned and sunk by the commotion of the water, if our steamer did not moderate its speed. Oh, there is nothing he does not know, and then he said: Remember. Roland, that we should do the same thing in life; we must not rush on our own way, but must think of the heavily-laden voyagers on the stream of life with us, and take care that the waves we raise do not overwhelm them."
Manna stared at her brother. She could trace the influence of a man who used the actual as a symbol of the ideal, and she became herself, in a measure, conscious of that power which in every outward aspect of life seeks and finds the underlying thought. She shook her head, and opening her breviary, began diligently to read it.
"See the sunlight on the glass cupola," cried Roland, as it grew late in the afternoon. "That is home. Perhaps they have guessed at home that you are coming back with me."
"Home, home," breathed Manna softly to herself; the word sounded strange to her on her own lips, as it had done from Roland's. She closed her eyes, as if dazzled by the reflection on the glass cupola.