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.