They went on again for a while in silence. High above, from the mountain crest, they heard the screech-owl, the harbinger of extreme cold, uttering his dreadful cry; which rose and died away with a mingled tone of lamentation and of triumph. The party stood still.
"Ah," said Eric, "what trouble Herr Sonnenkamp has taken to destroy all the owls in the neighborhood; but he cannot do it."
They walked on once more without speaking. Everything seems a sign and a portent to an excited mood. Hardly breathing the words aloud, the mother said that Frau Ceres' emotion was incomprehensible. She had thrown herself on her neck, sobbing and weeping.
"I do not know how to explain it," she continued; "there is some deep mystery here, and it troubles me."
Eric told them of what had passed among the men, and how Roland, to his alarm, had spoken of Parker. It was plain that Sonnenkamp wished to erect into a moral system the existing relations of slavery.
"Nothing more natural," answered the Mother. "Whoever stands in such relations all his life long, must make something for himself which he calls moral principle. I cannot help thinking of your father again; he has shown me a thousand times how people cannot bear to confess to themselves that their life and actions are bad; they feel obliged to prop them up with good principles. Yet, as I said, we must be quiet, we have one good young spirit to be led to noble ends; that is our part. Whence it sprang, or through what past life it may have come to us, is not for us to determine. The past is our fate, the present, our duty. There's another saying of your father's; and now good-night."
With a more composed mind, Eric returned to the villa. The owl had flown from the mountain, and was now perched on the top of a tree in the park, boldly sending forth its cry into the air. Eric heard it, and Sonnenkamp heard it in the ante-room of his wife's chamber. There must he, the father and husband, wait till his son came out, admittance having been refused him while his wife spoke to Roland. At last the boy came out, and his father asked him what his mother had said: he had never done so before, but now he felt obliged to do it.
Roland answered that she had really said almost nothing; she had only kissed him, and cried, and then asked him to hold her hand till she went to sleep, and now she was sleeping quietly.
"Give me Parker's book," said Sonnenkamp.
"I haven't got it now; the Professorin took it away from me, and blamed me very much for having read it secretly, and before I was old enough."