Villa Eden Part 169

"We were comrades, never friends."

They were silent again; there were so many things to be spoken of, crowding upon both of them, that they did not seem to know where to begin.

The evening bell tolled, and Manna saw that Eric did not remove his hat. She trembled. Every thing stood as an obstacle between them; even the Church separated them from each other.

Manna wore around her waist, beneath her clothes, a small hempen cord that a nun had given her as a perpetual reminder of her promise to a.s.sume in public the hempen girdle. It seemed to her now as if the hidden cord were suddenly tightened, and then it appeared to have become loosened. With her left hand she grasped tightly a tree by the road-side, and breathed heavily.

"What is the matter?" asked Eric.

"Oh, nothing, and every thing. I thank you for remaining with us. Look there--there above--high over the castle-tower, two falcons are flying.

Ah, if one could thus mount aloft, and leave behind and forget all that is beneath! What was life to me? A labor, a labor upon our shroud. I wanted to live above the world and do penance, to implore heaven's grace in another's behalf--in behalf of another! Ah, I can do it no longer--no longer."

She pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead, and what she said she knew not.

She continued walking, and yet she felt as if she would like to remain in the same spot.

A woman, who was mowing the third crop of gra.s.s in the meadow, called out to Manna, saying that her father had got well, and would help take in the hay to-morrow.

"I wish I was yonder mower," Manna exclaimed.

"Forgive me," answered Eric, "if I cannot help expressing my surprise at your uttering a wish like that."

"I, like that? Why should I not?"

"You have to-day shown such clearness of thought, that I cannot comprehend your giving utterance to an expression so common on the lips of thousands. What does it mean, when one says, 'I would like to be somebody else'? If you were some one else, you would still not be a different person; and if you retain the consciousness you had before, you would not be some one else. To speak in this way is not only unreasonable, but, as I view it, irreligious."

Manna stopped, and Eric continued,--

"We are what we are, not through our own instrumentality, but through an eternal ordination for which we have no other name but G.o.d. We must try to reconcile ourselves to what we are, and to be happy in our condition, whether poorer rich, beautiful or ugly."

"Well, I will never again indulge or utter so irrational a thought,"

replied Manna, extending her hand to Eric. She trembled.

They walked along in silence. It began to be dusk in the shaded paths; neither of them spoke.

"I see my mother yonder," said Manna, sighing deeply as she stopped.

Did she not want to meet her mother while walking with Eric? She had often walked with him, and he seemed like a brother; there was no harm in being alone with him.

"I bid you farewell here," Manna added in a low tone. "What a day this has been! Has it been only a day?"

"And as this sun now going down," interposed Eric, "will again return, and be the same in good days and in evil days, so you have a true friend in me, one whose eye watches over you, and will watch over you until it shall be closed by death."

"I know it! I know it!" cried Manna. "O G.o.d, I'm sure of it!"

She trembled violently.

"I entreat you, go now," she added.

Eric turned away, but looking back, he saw that Manna was kneeling at the foot of a large fir-tree, while the descending sun shone upon her countenance, as she stretched her folded hands up towards heaven. Then she rose up; he hastened to meet her as she came towards him, and they were enfolded in each other's arms.

"Heaven and earth, do what ye will!" she cried. "Now come what will!"

They held each other in a close embrace, as if they had but one breath, and were eternally joined in one kiss.

"You are mine! mine! my father, my hope, my world! Oh, Eric, leave me not again,--never again!"

"I leave you?"

"No, you cannot. Heaven will forgive,--no, will bless. See, Eric!

Everything is on fire, the trees, the gra.s.s, the Rhine, the mountains, the sky, everything is on fire! Ah, Eric, if the whole earth were in flames, I would hold thee in my arms, and in thine arms would I gladly die. Take me, kill me, do with me what you will, I can't do otherwise."

"Come, look up. Is it indeed you?" replied Eric. "You know not how I have struggled. Now you are here, now you are mine! You are, mine, you call me thine. Oh, call me so once more."

In trembling accents, now beginning and now breaking off again, they related to each other their struggles with themselves and with the world around them, and they recognized each other's purity and truthfulness of soul; and in proportion as Manna had hitherto closed her heart to Eric, the whole fountain of her love now welled up and overflowed.

As they stood with hands clasped, Eric said,--

"O Manna, how I wish you could be so happy as to see your own look."

"And you yours. Everyone who sees and knows you must love you. How then can I help it, who see and know you as n.o.body else can?"

They kissed each other with closed eyes, and over them the trees rustled in the gentle breeze of evening.

On that bench where he had once sat with Bella, Eric now sat by Manna's side, and a thrill pa.s.sed through him as he thought of that time. He shrank from the recollection. With love's penetrating glance Manna noticed the pa.s.sing emotion, and asked:--

"Have you too had to wrestle and struggle so sorely, before you saw and acknowledged that it must be?"

"Ah, let us not recall it; care and trouble, conflict and struggle, will be sure to come. Now is the marriage of our spirits; there must be no other thought, no discordant tone. We are blessed, twice blessed. I know that you are mine as I am yours. It must be so."

They embraced; and as she cried, "O, Eric, I. could bear you in my arms over all the mountains!" He saw subdued in her a wild, lawless, pa.s.sionate strength of nature, such as a daughter of Sonnenkamp must inherit.

No one who had seen the modest, humble, gentle child of the morning could have believed that she could become so impa.s.sioned. Eric felt himself taken possession of by a stronger power.

"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, as if she read his soul. "You think I am a pa.s.sionate child, do you not? You've no idea how untamed I am; but you shall never see it again, never, rely upon that." She sat by his side, stroking his hand, and with an arch glance she said:--

"Ah, dear Eric, you don't know what a foolish child I am, and you are so learned and wise. Now tell me truly without any reserve--you can tell me what you please, for I am yours now--tell me truly, do you honestly believe that I am worthy of you? I am so ignorant and insignificant compared with you!"

"Ignorant and insignificant? You can freely, fearlessly, and without any qualification, match yourself with any one else in sincere aspiration, in pure self-devotion, and in disinterested affection. No one can surpa.s.s you here; everything else is of no account. Knowledge, beauty, wealthy--these do not bring love."

"And I will learn a great deal from you," said Manna, gently caressing and kissing his hands. "Ah, keep on talking; say what you will; it is music to me, you cannot think how like music it is to hear you. And do you know that I have heard you sing too? Twice. Once in the great festival, and once here on the Rhine."

"And do you know," he replied, "that I saw you in the twilight at the convent?"

"Yes. You looked at me in this way." She tried to imitate his look.

"And at that time, when we returned from the festival, a dozen of the pupils were in love with you; but I was afraid of you, and yet I cannot now imagine it. What will they say in the convent? They will look upon me as a hypocrite in regard to you, and--oh, Eric, how much I renounce, but I renounce it willingly. And oh, how rejoiced Roland will be!"

"But your parents?"