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CHAPTER V.
A DOUBLE GAME

Like a bit of a home in a foreign land comes a meeting with friends among new surroundings, and the visit of Bella and Clodwig was a true pleasure to Frau Dournay; Bella embraced her rather impetuously, while Clodwig took her hand in both of his.

"But where is Eric?" asked Bella very soon, holding the Aunt's hand fast, as if she must cling to something.

With an uneasy glance first at Clodwig, then at Bella, the Mother answered that it was a rule not to allow the study-hours to be interrupted even by so pleasant a family occurrence as their welcome visit; she emphasized the word family, and Sonnenkamp, acknowledging it with a bow, said that an exception might be made to-day, but Clodwig himself begged that this should not be. Bella dropped the Aunt's hand, and stood with downcast eyes, while the Professor's widow watched her closely.

Bella looked fresh and animated; she was in full dress, and wore a large cape of sky-blue silk, under which her bare arm was seen in all its roundness.

They went into the garden, and Sonnenkamp was pleased to hear Frau Dournay explaining his system of horticulture, but he left them in order to announce their visit to his wife, wishing to use every effort to prevent her declaring herself ill.

Bella walked with the Mother, and Clodwig with Aunt Claudine, with whom he was soon in animated conversation. The Aunt, who was an accomplished piano player, was herself something like a piano, upon which children or artists can play, but which, if no one wished to do so, remains quietly in the background.

Bella asked Frau Dournay many questions as to the impression which all the family made upon her, but she received only indirect answers: she talked much herself; her checks glowed, she let her cape fall a little, and her beautiful full shoulders were seen.

"It's a pity that Clodwig didn't know your sister-in-law earlier," she suddenly said.

"He did know her well, and, unfortunately for herself, she was, as you know, a much-admired belle at court; but that was long before your time."

Bella was silent; Frau Dournay threw a quick searching glance at her. What was passing within her? what did this restless fluttering from one subject to another mean?

Eric and Roland came; Bella quickly drew her cape over her shoulders again, and folded her arms tightly under it, hardly giving Eric the tips of her fingers.

Roland was extremely lively, but Eric seemed very serious; whenever he looked at Bella, he turned away his eyes again directly. She congratulated him on his mother's arrival, and said, —

"I think if a stranger met you, even in travelling, he would feel that you are still happy enough to have a mother; and what a mother she is! A man seems to lose a nameless fragrance when his mother is lost to him."

Bella said this with a tone of feeling, and yet her mouth wore a peculiar smile, and her eyes seemed to seek applause for these ideas.

Sonnenkamp joined them, and, stroking his chin with an air of satisfaction, asked the ladies to come to his wife, who felt quite revived by a visit from such guests. He proposed that the gentlemen should drive with him to the castle, to take a view of the progress of the building, and of the place where the Roman antiquities had been found. Bella merrily upbraided Sonnenkamp for robbing her of her pleasant guests, then she went with the ladies to the garden-parlor, while the gentlemen proceeded to the castle. Frau Ceres was soon ready to go with them to the music-room, where the Aunt readily consented to play to them; Bella sat between Frau Dournay and Frau Ceres, while Fräulein Perini stood near the piano.

When the first piece came to an end, Bella asked: —

"Fräulein Dournay, do you ever play accompaniments for your nephew?"

The Aunt answered in the negative. Again the Mother threw a quick look at Bella, who seemed to be thinking constantly of Eric, and not to be able, nor indeed to wish, to conceal it. While Fräulein Dournay was playing again, Bella said to the mother: —

"You must give me something of yourself; let me have your sister-in-law at Wolfsgarten."

"I have no right to dispose of my sister. But, pardon me, a word spoken while she is playing annoys her, though she makes no claim for herself in any other respect."

Bella was silent, and Frau Dournay also; but while listening to a refreshing bit of Mozart's music, their thoughts took very different paths. What Bella's were could hardly be defined; her whole being was thrilling with joy and pain, renunciation and defiance. The Professorin owned that her instinctive perceptions were confirmed, though she felt as if they left a stain upon herself.

When the piece was finished, Bella said:

"Ah, Mozart is a happy being; hard as his life may have been, he was happy always, and he still makes others happy whenever they listen to him; even his sorrow and mourning have a certain harmonious serenity. Did your husband love music too?"

"Oh, yes; he often said that men in modern times express in music that imaginative romance of the human heart which the ancients wove into their myths. Music transports us into a world far removed from all palpable and visible existence, and transports us waking into the land of dreams."

They went out upon the balcony, and played with the parrots; Bella told one of them a marvellous story of a cousin at Wolfsgarten, which lived in a wonderful cage, sometimes flying off into the woods; but it was too gentlemanly to get its own living there, and always came back to its golden cage.

Bella's cheeks burned hotter and hotter; her lips trembled, and all at once it occurred to her that she must settle the matter then. She spoke to Mother and Aunt so earnestly, and yet with such childlike entreaties, that they at last agreed that the Aunt should go to her, within a few days, and remain as her guest.

"You will see," she said, in low but half triumphant tone to the mother, "Fräulein Dournay will be Clodwig's best friend; they are exactly made for each other."

Frau Dournay looked fixedly at her. Has it come to this, that the wife wishes to give a compensation to her husband!

CHAPTER VI.
A TROUBLED BUT HOPEFUL MOTHER

The ladies withdrew to dress for dinner. Frau Dournay had let down her long gray hair, and sat some time speechless in her dressing-room, with her hands folded in her lap. It seemed to her as if her brain had received a heavy blow from what she had become convinced of by unmistakable indications. Her heart contracted, and her tears forced themselves into her eyes, though they would not fall. Was it for this that a child was cherished, guarded, and nurtured by all that was best, that he might end thus? No, not end, – begin an endless entanglement which must lead to utter ruin. Was it for this that a mind was endowed with all the treasures of knowledge, that they might be turned into toys, 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 no more joy in the glance, the words, the learning, of her son; he had used them all for falsehood and treachery.

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

Oh, these unhappy wives, these wives who call themselves unhappy! There runs through our time a great lie concerning the unhappy wife. The fact is this: girls want a husband of wealth and standing, and a young and brilliant lover besides. Why will they not marry poor men? Because they can give them no fine establishment. And these men, who offer themselves as lovers, —

"Lovers!" she exclaimed aloud. Frau Dournay sprang quickly up and rang the 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 his mother, whom he had never seen looking as she did now, with her long hair 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 she warn her son plainly? What can a mother, what can parents do, if a child, 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 with lies, – himself and her!

"My dear son," she began, in a constrained tone, "bear with me if I feel lost in this restless life, which has broken in upon my loneliness and quiet. I wonder at your calm strength – But no, I won't speak of that now. What was I going to say to you? Ah, yes, the Countess Wolfsgarten, the wife of our friend," – she laid a quiet but marked emphasis on this word, and paused a moment, then continued, "wishes to have 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 a strange house?"

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

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

"At last we have all found our mission, we are all to be teachers. Let me 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 bringing a weight upon his mother's spirit. And perhaps Bella had betrayed by some passionate word a feeling which must not exist, and he appeared as a 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 no knowledge of human nature, though my father used to say that psychology was my forte. It may be so. I can follow a given trait of character back to its remote causes, and forward to its consequences, but I have no 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 he stopped, 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 is going on between worldliness and renunciation of the world; between the desire to appear and the longing really to be. It seems to me as if something had been repressed, checked, in the development of her life, and as if she were not yet quite ripe for the beautiful work of making life'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 desecration of 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 that Bella 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 the purpose. An apparently insignificant event brought about in Bella a derangement – I don't know what to call it – a sort of overturn in her character. In her youth, while she might still be considered young, – she was twenty-two or twenty-three – she had to see her younger sister married before her; she bore it with the greatest composure, but I think that, from that time, a change came over her difficult to be described; she had suddenly grown old, older than she would confess to herself; there was something of the matron about her. This was affected, but a bitter tone was real. Her sister died after a few years, leaving no children. All these circumstances brought out something discordant in Bella; she really hated her sister, and yet behaved as if she were pining for her. She had no mother, or rather, she had one whose highest triumph was to hear people say, 'Your daughter is handsome, but not nearly so handsome as you were when you were a girl.' To be handsome is the chief pride of the Prankens. Bella is unfortunately a development of that unhappy class of society, in which people go to the theatre only to satirize and ridicule the performance, to church only to make a formal reverence to the mercy of God; 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 a being can say to herself: I have in the course of my life adorned with flowers eight or ten hundred yards of canvas, for perfectly useless sofa-cushions. Is that a life worth living? Now she has no children, no natural fixed duties – "

"And just for these reasons," interrupted Eric, "Aunt Claudine, without knowing it, will have a softening and tranquillizing influence; her calm nature, which never has to renounce, because it never longs for any change, seems just chosen for the work. However highly I value Frau Bella, our friend's wife, for herself, we must think first of all that we are fulfilling a duty to the noble Clodwig; it will establish anew and increase the purity and beauty of his life."

"Well, Aunt Claudine is going to Wolfsgarten; and now leave me, my dear son, – 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 of your father's pleasure when he had been on a mountain excursion with you; and once, when you were just eleven, when you had been in Switzerland with him, he said on coming home, that his chief delight had been in seeing you run up and down the mountains without once slipping; and you never did get a fall, though your younger brother was never without some bump or bruise."

It was with a glance of double meaning that she looked at Eric, as she passed 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, he stopped and said, with folded hands: —

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

CHAPTER VII.
STATISTICS OF LOVE

When they assembled again at the villa, the Doctor chanced to be there. Or was it not mere chance? Did he desire to note accurately, once for all, the relation between Eric and Bella?

He saluted the Professorin with great respect; she said she must confess that her husband, who made a point of mentioning frequently his distant friends, had never uttered, to the best of her recollection, the name of Doctor Richard.

"And yet I was a friend of his," cried the Doctor in a loud tone.

After a while, he said in a low voice: "I must be honest with you, and tell you that I was only a little acquainted with your husband; but your father-in-law was my teacher. I introduced myself, however, to your son as the friend of your husband, because this seemed to me the readiest way to be of service to him, exposed as he is here, in the house and in its connections, to a variety of perils."

The Professorin warmly expressed her obligation to him, but her heart contracted again. This man had evidently alluded to Bella.

The Artist who had painted the portrait of the Wine-count's daughter was there; and soon the Priest came too, and regret was expressed that the Major could not be present, having gone to celebrate St. John's day in the neighborhood; he considered everything appertaining to the Masonic order in the nature of a military duty.

The company in general were in a genial mood. The Doctor asked the painter how he got along with his picture of Potiphar's wife.

The Artist invited the company to visit shortly the studio, which Herr von Endlich had fitted up for him for the summer months.

"Strange!" cried the Doctor. "We always speak of Potiphar's wife, and we don't know what her own name was; she takes the name of her husband, and you artists don't refrain from painting nude beauties with more or less fidelity. The chaste Joseph presents always an extremely contemptible figure, and perhaps because the world thinks that the chaste Joseph is always a more or less contemptible figure. Æneas and Dido are just such another constellation, but Æneas is not looked upon in so contemptuous a way as the Egyptian Joseph."

It was painful to hear the Doctor talk in this style.

The Priest said: —

"This narrative in the Old Testament is the correlative to that of the adulteress in the New; and after a thousand years, the harmony is rendered complete. The Old Testament strikes the discordant note; the New Testament brings it to the accordant pitch."

Clodwig was exceedingly delighted with this exposition; there was something of the student-nature in him, and he was always enlivened and made happy by any new view, and any enlargement of his knowledge.

"Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin," cried the Doctor, who was to-day more talkative than ever, "with your great experience of life, you two could render a great service to a friend of mine."

"I?" the priest asked.

"And I?" asked the Professorin.

"Yes, you. Our century has entered upon a wholly new investigation of the laws of the world; and things, circumstances, sentiments, which one would not believe could ever be caught, are now bagged in the statistical net, and must be shown to be conformable to laws. Nothing has been esteemed freer and more incalculable, even incomprehensible, than love and matrimony, and yet there are now exact statistical tables of these; there is an iron law, by which the number of divorces in a year is determined. My friend now goes a step farther, and from facts of his own observation has deduced the conclusion, that marriages in which the man is considerably older than the wife, present a greater average of happy unions than so-called love-matches; now, Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin, think over the list of persons you are acquainted with, and ask yourselves whether you find any confirmation of this law."

The Professorin was silent, but the Priest said that religion alone consecrated marriage; religion alone gave humility, which was the only sure basis of all beautiful intercourse between men themselves, and also between man and God.

The Priest succeeded, continuing the conversation, in diverting it entirely from the subject so flippantly introduced.

Sonnenkamp stated that the Major wished to have a grand masonic celebration in the spacious knight's hall of the castle, when it was completed; he asked in what relation the reigning Prince stood towards Masonry.

Clodwig replied that he himself had formerly belonged to the order, and that the Prince was at present a protector of the brotherhood, without being a member.

The conversation was carried on in groups, and they left the table in a cheerful mood. The Doctor took leave.

It was now settled that the Aunt should go to Wolfsgarten; and, in order to give her time to make preparation for leaving, Clodwig and Bella were to remain over night and take her in the carriage with them on the morrow.

Bella was in very good spirits, and, on Sonnenkamp's offering to present her with a parrot, requested that it might be the wildest one, which she promised to tame.

In the evening Roland urged them to take a sail with him on the Rhine. The Aunt and Bella went together; Fräulein Perini withdrew with Frau Ceres; the Professorin remained with Clodwig, and Sonnenkamp excused himself to forward some unfinished letters.

On the boat there were laughter and merriment, in which Bella joined, dipping her hand into the water and playing with her wedding-ring, which she moved up and down on the finger, repeatedly immersing her hand in the Rhine.

"Do you understand what the Doctor was aiming at?" she asked Eric.

"If I had been willing to understand, I should have been obliged to feel offended," he replied.

"Now we are speaking of the Doctor," resumed Bella, "there is one thing I must tell you that I have forgotten to mention before. The Doctor is doughty, unadulterated virtue; but this rough virtue once wanted to pay court to me, and I showed him how ridiculous he made himself. It may very well be, that the man doesn't speak well of me. You ought to know the reason."

Eric was moved in his inmost soul. What does this mean? May this be a wily move to neutralize the physician's opinion? He could not determine.

After a while, Bella asked, —

"Can you tell me why I am now so often low-spirited?"

"The more highly-endowed natures, Aristotle says, are always melancholy," replied Eric.

Bella caught her breath; that was altogether too pedantic an answer to suit her.

They did not succeed in keeping up any continued conversation, but Bella said at one time abruptly to Eric, —

"The visit here of your mother vexes me."

"What! vexes you?"

"Yes, it wounds me that this man with his gold should be able to change the position of people, as he does."

Eric had abundant matter of thought in this casual remark.

"You have the happiness to be greatly beloved," said Bella suddenly. Eric looked up alarmed, glancing towards Roland, and Bella continued aloud, —

"Your mother loves you deeply." After a time, she said in a low tone to herself, but Eric heard it, —

"Me no one loves; I know why, – no, I don't know why."

Eric looked her full in the face, then seized an oar and made the water fly with his rowing.

Meanwhile, the mother and Clodwig sat together, and the former expressed her joy that Eric had been thrown into the society of men of such well-tried experience; in former times, a man could have completed his culture by intercourse with women; but now, that end could be attained only by intercourse with noble men.

They soon passed into those mutual unfoldings of views which are like a perpetual greeting, when two persons have pursued the same spiritual ends apart from each other, in wholly different relations of life, and yet with the same essential tendencies.

The Professorin had known Clodwig's first wife, and recalled her to remembrance in affectionate words. Clodwig looked round to see if Bella was near, for he had never spoken before her of his former wife. It was pure calumny, when it was said that he had promised Bella never to speak of the deceased, for Clodwig was not so weak, nor Bella so hard, as this; it was only out of consideration for her, that he never did it.

In low, half-whispered tones, the conversation flowed on; and finding in each other the same fundamental trait, they agreed that it was happy for human beings here below to pass lightly over what was untoward in their lot, and retain in lively remembrance only what was felicitous.

"Yes," said the Professorin in confirmation, "my husband used often to say, that a Lethe stream flows through the soul buoyant with life, so that the past is forgotten."

It was a season of purest, interchange of thought, and of true spiritual communion, for Clodwig and the mother. They were like two beings in the spirit-world, surveying calmly and clearly what had passed in this state of existence. There was nothing painful in the mutual awakening of their recollections, but rather an internal perception of the inexhaustible fulness of life; on this elevated height the sound of desire and plaint was no longer heard, and the individual life with all its personal relations was dissolved into the one element of universal being.

But now there was a diversion, and Clodwig expressed regret at having lived so much a mere spectator, and that he had without throwing himself into the great current of influence, waited passively in the confident expectation that the idea which was stirring in the world would accomplish, of itself, its own grand fulfilment. He expressed his satisfaction that the young men of to-day were of a different stamp, and that Eric was to him an inspiring representative of youth as thoughtful as it was bold, as moderate as it was active.

Bella entered just as they happened to refer again to the statistics of love. She was pale, but Clodwig did not perceive it; sitting down near them in silence, she requested them to continue their conversation; but neither the Professorin nor Clodwig resumed the interrupted theme.

Clodwig spoke of Aunt Claudine, asked after her favorite pursuits, and was glad to own a fine telescope, which she could use at Wolfsgarten.

After a brief rest, Bella left them and went into the park.