Villa Eden Part 138

"Allow me to take more time," answered Eric; "I must take a longer spring."

"Proceed! proceed!" said Pranken sharply, twirling the ends of his moustache.

"The largest cathedrals," Eric began by saying, "are unfinished; quiet in the lap of earth rest thousands and tens of thousand hands which devotion once moved to dig the stone, to raise, and lay, and chisel them. Careless and thoughtless enough, undoubtedly, were the workmen, but they were set in motion by devout feeling, the feeling of those who poured out the money, and those who superintended the work, desiring to build a house of G.o.d. But listen to the cry now: You servant-man, you servant-girl, you journeyman, come here! here's a lottery ticket--only one dollar to pay--you can make so much by it, and help build a church besides! How can the holy Word be devoutly proclaimed in a building erected by an appeal to the covetousness of men? You smile. You think, perhaps, that it does no harm to the servant-man and servant-girl to lose the dollar; but I ask if it's no harm to their souls to be hoping for prizes in the lottery? And suppose a schedule of the lottery were laid in the corner-stone of the new building. Future generations would have harder work to decipher these figures, than we with the remains of the lake-dwellers. What sort of a race was this, they would say, which built a church with the profits of a lottery? Tetzel's hawking of indulgences was far less objectionable, for then they paid money for the pardon of their sins; the motive was a moral one, however much they may have been in error. But here----"

"I had thought," Sonnenkamp interrupted, "that you considered beauty, the completion of the beautiful structure, as a sufficiently moral motive, just as any pagan would."

"I thank you for this suggestion, for it brings me to the point, to state it briefly, that it is a contradiction to make use of unholy means for a holy end, and nothing incongruous is truly beautiful."

Sonnenkamp was exceedingly charmed with this exposition, but Pranken, who saw that his prophecy in regard to the way in which Eric would proceed was altogether falsified, held his moustache thoughtfully between his fingers, and contracted his brows. He was stirred up, and doubly so, when he saw that Manna looked very attentive and serious. He would have been beside himself if he could have imagined what were her thoughts.

This heretic, Eric, would not have been able to reach a single dogma of her belief, with all his philosophy, for this was no lever with which to move the solid rock; but in this a.s.sault upon an apparently incidental matter, her confidence was shaken in the perfect moral beauty of the measures of those who were the representatives of the Spirit in the world. Everything which concerned religion was in her view fixed and unalterable, and just this thing troubled Manna, this insignificant trifle, that their object was money. She despised money, she regarded it as a dangerous enemy, and "money--money!" echoed and re-echoed within her. "Is gold the temptation?"

Pranken hastily summoned up his energies to say:--

"It strikes me as inconsiderate or immodest--excuse me if I do not use just the right word--I mean, he who is an unbeliever should not attack another's belief."

"Should we not?" replied Eric. "And still we are attacked. Humility is a virtue. Very true; and it is the virtue of a state of siege. We still stammer at the word of salvation. But is the child who cannot yet speak, on that account not to make known his wishes by cries? Lofty and n.o.ble to us is the religion of love, but love cannot be commanded, love is the genius of the heart; on the other hand, kindness, regard, active help can be commanded and guided; love, never. The great command, Love thy neighbor as thyself, has become hypocrisy; it is said, I love my neighbor, but I have nothing to do for him. Our doctrine says, Help thy neighbor as thyself. Love is a sort of musical susceptibility which can be counterfeited, but help cannot be. Therefore we apply more broadly the command, and say, Help thy neighbor as thyself. And you must do it yourself; for we stand upon the fundamental principle that there is no subst.i.tution in the realm of moral activity, and here it is the primal law that every one shall do guard-duty for himself."

"You've said that once before," Pranken interposed.

"True, and I shall often repeat it. I think that we have as good a right as our opponents, who are not always uttering some new truth. The sunlight of to-day is like that of yesterday----"

Here Roland burst in breathless, crying: "Eric, you must come at once, the field-guard is here; he is like a crazy man, and he says that you only can decide, and you alone shall decide."

"What has happened?"

"Sevenpiper has drawn the grand prize, and Claus says that the money belongs to him. Come, he's like one raving mad."

Eric went down to the courtyard.

There sat Claus upon a dog-kennel, and looked dolefully up at Eric and Roland. He spoke so thick and confusedly, that they could not make out distinctly what he meant; this only was plain, that Sevenpiper had drawn the prize, and Claus a.s.serted that it belonged to him.

Sonnenkamp, Pranken, and Manna also made their appearance on the steps, and now Claus screamed out that Manna must bear testimony to having given him the money for the ticket, and he had simply forgotten to redeem it.

Eric quieted Claus, and promised to go with him to Sevenpiper. He asked permission of Sonnenkamp to have the horses harnessed. Roland was urgent to accompany him. Claus took a seat with the coachman on the box, and so they drove to the village to Sevenpiper's house.

They met the cooper in front of the house, and he told Eric that Sevenpiper had just turned him out of it. He said that he was in love with Sevenpiper's oldest daughter, and that this attachment had met the approval of the parents on both sides; but now Sevenpiper had shown him the door, saying that he could obtain a better match for his daughter, and that most a.s.suredly he would not marry her to the son of Claus, who wanted to claim his property before the world.

"Is't true, father, that the prize belonged to you?"

"Yes, indeed; and it belongs to me still."

"So! Now I understand all about it," said the cooper, taking his departure.

In the house of Sevenpiper the newcomers found everything in confusion; the oldest daughter was weeping, and the other children were running over one another.

They became quieted at last, and Sevenpiper said that he was not going to allow himself to be driven out of his wits; anyhow he would no longer be a day-laborer in the vineyard; he would just do nothing for a year, and then he would see what he would take hold of. The children screamed and shouted in all sorts of ways, and Sevenpiper tried to make them sing, but not one of them was willing; all that was past and gone forever.

Eric had induced Claus to wait outside the house; he now told them what the field-guard wanted.

As soon as he made known this desire, Sevenpiper raised the window and cried out to his former comrade standing in the road:--

"If you don't clear out from here, and if you claim a single red cent from me, I'll break every bone in your carca.s.s. Now you know what to expect! Off with you!"

No appeal was of any use; Sevenpiper insisted upon it, that he would not give Claus as much as he could put into his eye.

Roland and Eric went away exceedingly cast down. They came to the house of Claus, who was asleep on the bench. His wife lamented that he had come home very drunk, and that the cooper was half-crazed.

Neither could Eric and Roland be of any a.s.sistance here.

On the way home, Roland seized Eric's hand and said:--

"Money! money! How speedily it can ruin people!" Eric made no reply, and Roland continued:--"I never heard that there were any lotteries in America. You see, Eric, this is something that we have wholly to ourselves."

In silence, inwardly disturbed, they reached the villa. There seemed to be some ghost stalking abroad, for they could not shake off the remembrance that the demon of sudden riches had ruined two families; and immediately on waking the next morning, Roland said:--

"I should like to know how Claus and Sevenpiper will feel this morning, when they wake up."

A messenger was sent to the village, and they were gratified to hear that the two families were getting along comfortably again; but the eldest daughter of Sevenpiper had left her parents' house, and had gone to the field-guard's.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST RIDE.

Manna was extremely gracious towards everybody, and no one would have suspected that this graciousness had pride for its basis. Every one appeared to her so poor, so forlorn, so trammelled! Whenever she was spoken to, her thought of the speaker was, "You, who say this, are but a child of the world;" and whenever she took part in any pleasure excursion, there was the perpetually recurring suggestion, "You yourself are not here, you only seem to be here, you are in a wholly different world, yonder, far above."

Every one was charmed with her friendliness, her gentleness, her attentive listening, and yet only a part of herself was really taken up with all this; she was elsewhere, and occupied with other interests.

No one ventured to exert any influence over her; but the Doctor agreed with Pranken and her father, that she must again ride on horseback.

A new world seemed to be disclosed; inside the house, there was singing, dancing, playing, and outside, too, all went merry as a marriage-bell. Manna took pleasant rides on horseback with Pranken, Eric, and Roland in the country round. Sonnenkamp also, mounted on his great black horse, frequently joined the party. Their ride was full of enjoyment, and they received on all sides marks of respect, not only from those who had been the recipients of benefits through the Professorin and Fraulein Milch, but also from those who were well off and independent in their circ.u.mstances. Wherever they alighted, and wherever they reined up, there was always some fresh proof of the pride which the whole region felt in such a man as Sonnenkamp.

One day Manna, Pranken, and Roland, Eric and Sonnenkamp, were riding along the road bordered with nut-trees.

"Herr Dournay is right," exclaimed Manna, who was riding in advance with Pranken and her father.

Manna said that Eric had made the remark, that nut-trees were much more beautiful, and that it was a stupid and prosaic innovation to set out lindens and other common trees along the roads; that the nut-tree belonged to the Rhine, was beautiful and productive, and at least gave to the irrepressible boys a fine harvest time.

As she rode along she tore off a leaf of a nut-tree.

For some time her voice had been different; it was no longer as if veiled with tears. Turning to her father, she continued:--

"You can bring this about. Set out a nursery of nut-trees, and give to all the villages round as many nurslings as they can make use of."