Villa Eden
Chapter 54 : He wandered on. He had learned what it was to enjoy the kindness and bounty of poor men

He wandered on. He had learned what it was to enjoy the kindness and bounty of poor men, now that he was himself poor and helpless; that was his best experience.

The world is beautiful and men are good, even if a hostler could not resist a well-filled purse. With these cheering thoughts, he went on his way and soon reached the railway-station. Ha had carefully avoided any of the nearer stations, where he was known and might easily be traced; he wished, after making a circuit, to take the cars at a distant point.

Here Roland was accosted, like an old acquaintance, by a man in worn-out clothes, and with one boot and one old slipper on his feet.

"Good-morning, my dear Baron! good-morning!" cried this shabby-looking personage, coming close up to him.

It was doubly disagreeable in this fresh morning, after such a night, to come within the atmosphere of this man so impregnated with brandy, who was excessively confiding in his manner towards Roland. A railway official, in the most polite manner, begged the half-drunken fellow to leave the traveller in peace; he nodded knowingly to Roland from a distance, as if there were some important secret between them.

Roland learned that the man belonged to a respected family of the n.o.bility: his relations had wished to help him, and had made him an annual allowance, but it was of no use. Now he was boarding with a baggage-master, and his whole amus.e.m.e.nt was in the railroad. Every one showed him due respect, because he was a baron, and very much to be pitied.

Roland shrank from the man as if he were a ghost. The excitement of the night, and of all which he had been through, was still affecting him, yet the thought was present to him how strange it was that a half-witted, half-intoxicated man should be so respectfully treated, simply because he was a baron.

Roland succeeded in borrowing money for his journey from the restorator at the station, with whom he left his diamond ring in p.a.w.n. He bought a ticket for the university-town, and at last took his seat in the car, where he could not refrain from saying to a fellow-pa.s.senger,--

"Ah! it is good that we are off."

His neighbor stared at him; he could not know how happy it made the sorely weary boy, to be carried along towards Eric without any effort of his own.

"Where lies your way, Herr Baron?" asked the neighbor,

Roland named his destination, but looked in surprise at the man who called him Baron; had he become one in the course of the night? At a junction, where a new set of officials took charge of the train, his neighbor, who was leaving it, said to one of them,--

"Attend to the young Baron, who is sitting there."

Roland was pleased to be so called, and a peculiar feeling came over him of the satisfaction one must have in being really a baron; then one would have a lasting t.i.tle with lasting honors in the world. The thought only pa.s.sed through his mind, and quickly vanished, as he began directly to imagine Eric's pleasure at seeing him; his face glowed with impatience and longing.

Suddenly a painful thought struck him. Where had he left the dog? He had quite lost or forgotten him. But on rolled the cars through valleys, cuts, and tunnels, and it seemed to Roland a year, since he left his home.

Not far from the university, where the road again divided, some students entered the train. They soon let their fellow-pa.s.sengers understand that they had performed the great exploit of drinking a May-bowl at their fathers' expense: for anybody could drink native wine. They had also brought some provision into the car, and in their generosity or their ostentation they wanted Roland to drink with them, but he declined with as much modesty as decision.

Twilight had gathered when they reached the university-town.

Roland asked for Doctor Dournay; one of the students, a fine-looking youth who had kept aloof from the noisy party, told him to come with him, as he lived near the widow of the professor. As Roland went with him, a strange fear came upon him: what if he could not find Eric? or if Eric would have nothing more to do with him? How much might have happened since they parted!

With beating heart he ascended the steep, dark, wooden staircase. At the top, the door of a room opened, and at the door stood a woman, who asked,--

"Whom do you wish to see?"

"The Herr Captain Dournay."

"He is away from home."

CHAPTER XIV.

A NEW SON.

Roland asked to be allowed to come in and wait, and was led into the sitting-room; the servant maid told him that Eric had gone to the capital, but might possibly return that day. His mother had gone to the grave of a son, of whose death this was the anniversary. The maid went out to light the lamp, and Roland was alone in the room where the twilight shadows gathered; he sat in the corner of a sofa, weary, and his mind full of varied thoughts.

Wonderful! there are so many human dwellings in the world, one can enter them, and all at once one is seated in a strange house.

Outside, in accordance with an old custom, there sounded from the tower a choral, played by trumpets. Roland dreamed of the outer world, no longer conscious where he was, but remembering only that he had once travelled through many countries and towns, and that everywhere in the houses lived men, who led their own lives, of which other people knew nothing.

Eric's mother entered. She stopped at the door, as Roland rose, saying,--

"Good-evening, mother."

Stretching out her arms, the mother cried,--

"In Heaven's name, Hermann--thou?"

"My name is not Hermann. I am Roland."

The mother approached him trembling; just then the aunt came in with a light, and all was explained. Roland said that he had followed Eric, because he wished never to leave him. The mother kissed him, weeping and sobbing.

Steps were heard on the stairs, and Eric entered. Roland had no strength to rise from his seat as Eric exclaimed,--

"You--here!"

Roland could hardly utter the words to explain what he had done. He stared wildly at Eric, who stood before him like a stranger, without even holding out his hand. As soon as Roland had finished speaking, Eric said sternly,--

"If you were my son, I would punish you severely for your self-will, and the anxiety you have caused your family."

"You may punish me, I will not stir. No one in the world could punish me like you; you do not punish like----"

The beating of his heart prevented his finis.h.i.+ng what he was about to say, and perhaps also an aversion to complaining of his father restrained him. He had forgotten till now what had last incited him to run away, and only remembered the longing for Eric; now he looked around him, as if he saw his father's upraised hand in the air.

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 n.o.bility, 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 acc.u.mulated labor; so family standing is nothing but acc.u.mulated 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 cla.s.s 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.