CHAPTER XIV.
A NEW SON.
Roland asked to be allowed to come in and wait, and was led into the sitting-room; the servant maid told him that Eric had gone to the capital, but might possibly return that day. His mother had gone to the grave of a son, of whose death this was the anniversary. The maid went out to light the lamp, and Roland was alone in the room where the twilight shadows gathered; he sat in the corner of a sofa, weary, and his mind full of varied thoughts.
Wonderful! there are so many human dwellings in the world, one can enter them, and all at once one is seated in a strange house.
Outside, in accordance with an old custom, there sounded from the tower a choral, played by trumpets. Roland dreamed of the outer world, no longer conscious where he was, but remembering only that he had once travelled through many countries and towns, and that everywhere in the houses lived men, who led their own lives, of which other people knew nothing.
Eric's mother entered. She stopped at the door, as Roland rose, saying,—
"Good-evening, mother."
Stretching out her arms, the mother cried,—
"In Heaven's name, Hermann—thou?"
"My name is not Hermann. I am Roland."
The mother approached him trembling; just then the aunt came in with a light, and all was explained. Roland said that he had followed Eric, because he wished never to leave him. The mother kissed him, weeping and sobbing.
Steps were heard on the stairs, and Eric entered. Roland had no strength to rise from his seat as Eric exclaimed,—
"You—here!"
Roland could hardly utter the words to explain what he had done. He stared wildly at Eric, who stood before him like a stranger, without even holding out his hand. As soon as Roland had finished speaking, Eric said sternly,—
"If you were my son, I would punish you severely for your self-will, and the anxiety you have caused your family."
"You may punish me, I will not stir. No one in the world could punish me like you; you do not punish like-—-"
The beating of his heart prevented his finishing what he was about to say, and perhaps also an aversion to complaining of his father restrained him. He had forgotten till now what had last incited him to run away, and only remembered the longing for Eric; now he looked around him, as if he saw his father's upraised hand in the air.
The mother took him again into her arms, saying,—
"Your willingness to bear punishment atones for and washes out everything."
"Stay here with my mother," said Eric, sternly; "I will come back directly." He hurried out, and sent a telegram to Herr Sonnenkamp, with the inquiry whether he would come for Roland, or wished to have him brought home.
When Eric returned, he found Roland already asleep on the sofa. He was tired out, and it was with great difficulty that they could awaken him to be put to bed. Eric sat a long time with his mother, talking of the wonderful manner in which fate seemed playing with them.
His mother related how, as she came from the churchyard, the painful thought had oppressed her that even she, his own mother, could not quite recall how Hermann had looked. She could bring his face to mind, because it was preserved in the photograph which hung, in its frame of immortelles, just over her sewing-machine in the bay-window. But Hermann's motions, his gait, his way of throwing back his head with its thick brown hair, of laughing, jesting, and caressing; the sound of his voice, the low, dove-like laugh,—all these had vanished from her—his mother. So she had walked on, with downcast eyes, often stopping, as she tried hard to call up the image of the lost one. So she had come home, and here came to meet her a form like Hermann, and it had cried out to her,—"Good-evening, mother!" in his very tone. She could not tell why she had not fainted, and she spoke now of Roland with the same delight which Eric had felt when he saw him for the first time.
Eric, on his side, told her of the reasons for and against undertaking the school, and then of the Minister's offer. He would there enter a position which his father had not reached, and which would, perhaps, have saved his life. The idea of receiving an appointment by inheritance, and through favor, without any merit of his own, oppressed him somewhat.
His mother soothed both these scruples, which were really one, and quite uncalled for, as he had the right to collect the debt which was due to his father, and still more if it was over due.
Very lightly she touched upon the good fortune of the nobility, in being able to receive what had been stored up by past generations, and to hand it down to future descendants. With a slightly jesting tone she said,—
"Our professor of political economy used to say that capital was accumulated labor; so family standing is nothing but accumulated honor."
There were times, though they were rare, when the mother, from the standpoint of her inherited opinions and habits, saw in many of the sentiments and views of the burgher class an obstinate and perverse independence which she could not approve. In her husband this had rarely and slightly shown itself, but in Eric it was more active; he had that haughty self-reliance which makes a man unwilling to thank any one but himself for his position and power.
She had never repented leaving her own class to marry her husband, she had been too happy for that; but she saw in Eric's position something like a grievous consequence of her own act. Moved by these thoughts, which she never expressed, she said,—
"I can easily understand how you feel drawn to this American; there is the greatest honor in being a self-made man. Let us unite the two plans then. You can bring it about, since the boy is in your hands, that the American shall entrust him to you, and you can at the same time maintain an independent position."
Eric replied that his objection to the situation did not consist simply in his receiving it as a favor; the task of conducting foreign visitors of princely rank through the art-collections was distasteful to him; he did not think that he could conform himself to it.
Suddenly his mother remembered that a letter had come for him, and she gave it to him. It was from Clodwig. The noble man placed at Eric's disposal twice the sum that he had asked for. Eric was made happy by this news, and his mother nodded with hearty assent when he said that the gift rejoiced him, but still more did the assurance that his confidence in men had met with so glorious a confirmation.
Midnight was past, and mother and son still sat together. Eric begged his mother to go to bed and leave him to wait for Sonnenkamp's reply. He sat long alone in the night, thinking over all which had passed, till sleep overcame him.
In the spirits of men, as well as in the history of nations, thoughts and sentiments are formed which are to be brought into action from their own free will, when suddenly there comes an over-mastering fact, which converts the free choice into an inevitable necessity. Thus Eric's entrance into Sonnenkamp's household seemed to have been made an unavoidable necessity by Roland's rash step.
Eric went again, with scarcely audible steps, into the boy's room. So wholly was his spirit turned toward him that the sleeping child moaned, "Eric," but soon, turning over, slept soundly again.
Eric went back to the sitting-room, and then it first occurred to him that there was no night-watch at the telegraph office in Sonnenkamp's neighborhood; the father could not receive the news till morning. Eric also now went to bed.
Everything was late in the house of the professor's wife the next morning; Eric slept longest. When he entered the sitting-room, he found Roland already with his mother, holding a small wooden coffee-mill in his left hand and turning it with his right. This mill was an heir-loom which had belonged to Eric's grandfather, who had been a distinguished anatomist at the university. The mother had already told Roland this, and had shown him all sorts of ancient household furniture, also relics of the times of the Huguenots.
"Ah, how pleasant it is here with you!" cried Roland to Eric, as he entered.
Something of long-established family existence opened upon the young spirit, and, at this morning hour, with the friendly eyes of three people resting upon him, Roland felt very content in the simple, old-fashioned, domestic life.