Das landhaus am Rhein. English

by Berthold Auerbach

  CHAPTER VI.

  A TROUBLED BUT HOPEFUL MOTHER.

  The ladies withdrew to dress for dinner. Frau Dournay had let down herlong gray hair, and sat some time speechless in her dressing-room, withher hands folded in her lap. It seemed to her as if her brain hadreceived a heavy blow from what she had become convinced of byunmistakable indications. Her heart contracted, and her tears forcedthemselves into her eyes, though they would not fall. Was it for thisthat a child was cherished, guarded, and nurtured by all that was best,that he might end thus? No, not end,--begin an endless entanglementwhich must lead to utter ruin. Was it for this that a mind was endowedwith all the treasures of knowledge, that they might be turned intotoys, and masks, and cloaks of baseness?

  "O my God, my God!" she moaned, and covered her face with her hands.

  Before her mind's eye everything seemed laid waste,--the pure, free,upright, noble nature of Eric, and her own as well. She could feel nomore joy in the glance, the words, the learning, of her son; he hadused them all for falsehood and treachery.

  Now the tears fell from her eyes, as she thought what her husband wouldhave said to this. How often had he lamented that every one said: "Theworld is bad and totally corrupt; why should I alone separate myselfand deny myself its pleasures? And so every one became an upholderof the empire of sin." But how the ruin embraces everything! Thisnoble-hearted Clodwig, with his unexampled friendship--they must meethim, greet him, talk with him, and yet wish him dead. Shame! And hegoes on teaching the boy, teaching him to rule himself, and to workwith noble aim for others, while he himself--oh horrible! And thispassionate woman who could not endure to devote herself to the best ofmen, what was to become of her? And this Sonnenkamp, and his wife, andFraeulein Perini, and the Priest? "Look," they would all cry, "Look!these are the liberal souls! These are the people who are alwaystalking about humanity, and beneficently work for it; and meanwhilethey cherish the lowest passions: they shrink from no treachery, nolies, no hypocrisy!"

  Oh, these unhappy wives, these wives who call themselves unhappy! Thereruns through our time a great lie concerning the unhappy wife. The factis this: girls want a husband of wealth and standing, and a young andbrilliant lover besides. Why will they not marry poor men? Because theycan give them no fine establishment. And these men, who offerthemselves as lovers,--

  "Lovers!" she exclaimed aloud. Frau Dournay sprang quickly up and rangthe bell violently, for she heard the carriage drive into the court.She told the servant to ask her son to come to her directly.

  Eric came, looking much excited; he gazed in astonishment at hismother, whom he had never seen looking as she did now, with her longhair hanging loose, and her face looking gray like her hair.

  "Sit down," she said.

  Eric seated himself. His mother pressed her hand to her brow. Could shewarn her son plainly? What can a mother, what can parents do, if achild, grown up and free from control, wanders from the right path?And if he has already wandered, can he still be honest? He _must_ lie;it would be double baseness if he did not shield himself withlies,--himself and her!

  "My dear son," she began, in a constrained tone, "bear with me if Ifeel lost in this restless life, which has broken in upon my lonelinessand quiet. I wonder at your calm strength--But no, I won't speak ofthat now. What was I going to say to you? Ah, yes, the CountessWolfsgarten, the wife of our friend,"--she laid a quiet but markedemphasis on this word, and paused a moment, then continued, "wishes tohave Aunt Claudine go and remain with her."

  "That is good! that's excellent!"

  "Indeed! and why? Do you forget that it will leave me quite alone in astrange house?"

  "But you are never alone, dear mother. And Aunt Claudine can find anoble vocation at Wolfsgarten; Countess Bella is full of unrest, inspite of all the beauty which encompasses her life; a strong, truenature like Aunt Claudine's, steadfast, and bringing peace to others,will soften and compose her as nothing else in the world could do. Iacknowledge the sacrifice that you must make, but a good work will beaccomplished by it."

  His mother's eyes grew loss troubled; her face quivered as from anelectric shock, as she said smiling:--

  "At last we have all found our mission, we are all to be teachers. Letme ask you how Countess Bella, our friend's wife, appears to you."

  A two-edged sword went through Eric's heart; he saw how he was bringinga weight upon his mother's spirit. And perhaps Bella had betrayed bysome passionate word a feeling which must not exist, and he appeared asa sinner and a traitor! There was a short pause; then his mother asked,with a sudden change of expression,--

  "Why do you not answer me?"

  "Ah, mother, I am still much more inexperienced than I thought myself;I cannot put absolute trust in my judgment of people. I have noknowledge of human nature, though my father used to say that psychologywas my _forte_. It may be so. I can follow a given trait of characterback to its remote causes, and forward to its consequences, but I haveno true knowledge of human nature."

  The Mother listened quietly, with downcast eyes, to this long preamble,in which Eric was trying to gain mastery of himself, but when hestopped, she said:--

  "You can at least say something, even if it is not very clear-sighted."

  "Well, then, I think that in this highly-gifted woman a struggle isgoing on between worldliness and renunciation of the world; between thedesire to _appear_ and the longing really to _be_. It seems to me as ifsomething had been repressed, checked, in the development of her life,and as if she were not yet quite ripe for the beautiful work of makinglife's evening full and perfect to so noble a man as Clodwig."

  "Yes, he is a noble man, and to wrong him would be like the desecrationof a temple," said his mother significantly.

  The words came out sharply, and she went on: "You have judged rightly,the Prankens are a presumptuous and daring race. It was believed thatBella would marry her music-master, with whom she played a great deal;indeed she played with him in a double sense. But that's not to thepurpose. An apparently insignificant event brought about in Bella aderangement--I don't know what to call it--a sort of overturn inher character. In her youth, while she might still be consideredyoung,--she was twenty-two or twenty-three--she had to see her youngersister married before her; she bore it with the greatest composure, butI think that, from that time, a change came over her difficult to bedescribed; she had suddenly grown old, older than she would confess toherself; there was something of the matron about her. This wasaffected, but a bitter tone was real. Her sister died after a fewyears, leaving no children. All these circumstances brought outsomething discordant in Bella; she really hated her sister, and yetbehaved as if she were pining for her. She had no mother, or rather,she had one whose highest triumph was to hear people say, 'Yourdaughter is handsome, but not nearly so handsome as you were when youwere a girl.' To be handsome is the chief pride of the Prankens. Bellais unfortunately a development of that unhappy class of society, inwhich people go to the theatre only to satirize and ridicule theperformance, to church only to make a formal reverence to the mercy ofGod; in which women are held in low esteem unless they are handsome,and know how, as age comes on, to intrigue, and to affect piety. Such abeing can say to herself: I have in the course of my life adorned withflowers eight or ten hundred yards of canvas, for perfectly uselesssofa-cushions. Is that a life worth living? Now she has no children, nonatural fixed duties--"

  "And just for these reasons," interrupted Eric, "Aunt Claudine, withoutknowing it, will have a softening and tranquillizing influence; hercalm nature, which never has to renounce, because it never longs forany change, seems just chosen for the work. However highly I value FrauBella, our friend's wife, for herself, we must think first of all thatwe are fulfilling a duty to the noble Clodwig; it will establish anewand increase the purity and beauty of his life."

  "Well, Aunt Claudine is going to Wolfsgarten; and now leave me, my dearson,--but no, I must tell you something, though it may seem childish.When I
saw you running so fast through the garden to-day, I thought ofyour father's pleasure when he had been on a mountain excursion withyou; and once, when you were just eleven, when you had been inSwitzerland with him, he said on coming home, that his chief delighthad been in seeing you run up and down the mountains without onceslipping; and you never did get a fall, though your younger brother wasnever without some bump or bruise."

  It was with a glance of double meaning that she looked at Eric, as shepassed her hand over his face.

  "But we have talked enough; now go. I must dress for dinner."

  She kissed his forehead, and he left her; but outside the door, hestopped and said, with folded hands:--

  "I thank you. Eternal Powers, that you have left me my mother: she willsave us all."