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CHAPTER VIII.
STEEL-TRAPS IN THE POETS' GARDEN

Sonnenkamp prided himself in growing the best wines; but the traditional account of the joyous celebration of the harvest-home is a mere fable. In the morning the mists were hanging far and wide over the valleys, and in the early evening they shut out the whole landscape. The leaves had fallen from the trees, and the hoar frost glistened on the bare twigs, when at last the grapes were gathered and pressed.

The Major would not allow it to be thought of for a moment, that they should omit firing their salute; he took extreme satisfaction in his two comrades, Eric and Roland, who fired at his word of command, so that the three reports sounded as one. But this was the whole celebration of the merry harvest-home.

Fires had been already made at the villa, and Sonnenkamp's pride in each stove having its own chimney was shown to be well founded. But it was a truly festive occasion when the Professorin had a fire kindled for the first time in her sitting-room. She had invited Eric and Roland to be present, and Fräulein Milch happened to be there. And as they sat together before the open fire-place, in serene and homelike content, it would be hard to say precisely what it was that made them so cheery and peaceful.

The Mother exhorted Eric to resume his habit of reading aloud, in the cosy winter evenings, some great poems, and he promised to do so. He felt that he must make some extra effort to dispel the coldness produced by his refusal to receive as a pupil the son of the Cabinetsräthin.

Sonnenkamp, who had an extensive hunting-park, sent out cards inviting some persons of the best society to a hunting-party. Invitations also came from the neighbors, and Eric was able to be present with Roland at a great hunting-party as often as once a week.

Roland was proud of his father's skill in the chase; he was regarded by all as the leader, and the whole company listened with pleasure to his accounts of grand hunts in America. He had even made a short excursion to Algiers, and there shot a lion, whose skin was now under his writing-table; it was meant for a sleigh-robe, but here in the country, a merry sleigh-ride was a rare thing.

The supper after the chase, in a large apartment fitted up for the purpose, was always of the merriest sort. The Major was here in his element, and officiated as lord of the castle; he spoke of the evenings which Eric enlivened at Villa Eden by reading the ancient and modern dramas; he never knew before that there were so many fine things in the world, and that one individual man could make everything so plain merely by his voice.

Eric had read aloud almost without exception one evening every week. The impression made upon the hearers was various. The Major always sat with his hands devoutly folded; Frau Ceres reclined in her easy-chair, occasionally opening her eyes, to show that she was not asleep; Fräulein Perini was employed with some hand-work, which she prosecuted steadily, exhibiting no emotion; the Mother and the Aunt sat there quietly; Sonnenkamp had a standing request that they would excuse his rudeness. Turning to Roland, he said good-humoredly, —

"Don't get this bad habit – don't get in the way of having a stick in your hand to whittle."

And so he sat and whittled away, occasionally looking up with a fixed stare, holding the knife in his right hand and the piece of wood in his left; then he would resume his whittling.

Roland always seated himself opposite the reader, so that Eric must look him in the face. Often, until it was very late, Roland would talk with Eric about the wonderful things he had been listening to.

Eric had been reading Macbeth, and he was glad to hear Roland say, —

"This Lady Macbeth could easily be transformed into a witch, like one of those who came in at the beginning."

Another time, when Eric had been reading Hamlet, he was not a little surprised at hearing Roland say to him in the evening, before going to bed, —

"Strange! Hamlet, in that soliloquy, speaks of no one returning from the other world, when, only a short time before, the spirit of his father had appeared, and he appears again afterwards."

One evening, after Eric had read Goethe's Iphigenia, Roland said, —

"I can't make out at all why Manna said once that she was Iphigenia. If she were Iphigenia, I should be Orestes. I, Orestes? I? Why was it? Do you understand Manna's meaning?"

Eric said no.

One evening when the Physician and the Priest were present, Sonnenkamp requested Eric to read aloud Shakespeare's Othello. Eric looked at Roland. Will not Roland be stirred up to fresh questioning concerning the negroes? He had no reason he could assign for declining, and he could contrive no excuse for sending Roland away.

Eric commenced reading. The fulness and flexibility of his voice gave the requisite expression to each character, and he preserved the proper distinction between reading and theatrical presentation. He brought out no strong colors; it was an artistic embodiment that allowed the outlines of form to appear, but gave no coloring; it was not an imitation of life, but a simple outline drawing of the general features, softened but sufficiently defined.

The Doctor nodded to the Mother, as much as to say that Eric's interpretation was very pleasant.

For the first time, Frau Ceres listened with eager attention, without leaning back once during the whole evening; she continued bent forward, and her countenance wore an unusual expression.

Eric read on continuously, and when he was giving the close of Othello's sorrowful confession of guilt, in a voice struggling with tears, like one resisting the inclination to weep, great tears ran down over the pale face of Frau Ceres.

The piece was ended.

Frau Ceres rose quickly, and requested the Mother to accompany her to her chamber.

Fräulein Perini and the rest of the ladies went away at the same time. The men were standing up, and only Roland remained sitting, as if spell-bound to the chair.

Glancing towards the Doctor, the Major said, —

"Isn't this a really wonderful man?"

The Doctor nodded.

The Priest had his hands folded together; Sonnenkamp surveyed his whittlings, placing them in a little pile together, just as if they had been gold-shavings, and even bending down to pick up some that had fallen upon the floor. Now he straightened himself up and asked Eric, —

"What do you think of Desdemona's guilt?"

"Guilt and innocence," replied Eric, "are not positive natural conceptions; they are the result of the social and moral laws of humanity. Nature deals only with the free play of forces, and Shakespeare's plays exhibit to us only this free play of natural impulses in men and women."

"That's true," interrupted the priest. "In this work there's nothing said about religion, for religion would necessarily soften, ameliorate, and rule over the savage natures, conducting themselves just like natural forces, or rather would bring them into subjection to the higher revealed laws."

"Fine, very fine," said Sonnenkamp, who was quite pale; "but permit me to ask the Captain to give me an answer to my question."

"I can answer your first question," Eric rejoined, "only in the words of our greatest writer on æsthetics: The poet would characterize a lion, and, in order to do it, he must represent him as tearing in pieces a lamb. The guilt of the lamb does not come into question at all. The lion must act in accordance with his nature. But I think that the deep tragedy of this drama lies hidden."

"And what do you think it is?"

"This maiden, Desdemona, without mother, brother, or sister, grown up from childhood among men, might love a hero, whose lyric, childlike nature, craving love and clinging fast to her, would make him crouch like a tamed lion at her feet. This submissive strength, renouncing no element of its wild energy, but, as it were, purified and exalted, opens the well-spring of that love which covers everything else with oblivion, overcomes the difference of race, and washes clean out the black color of the skin.

"When Othello kissed her for the first time, she closed her eyes, and he kissed her on the eyes; and her eyes are closed not for one instant merely, but for a long period. But an unparallelled horror, a wild insanity, would be the result of this shutting of the eyes when Desdemona should hold in her arms a child, who should appear, in its whole exterior, strange, abhorrent to her, like some creature that did not belong to the human race. Out from her heart, crushed and trampled under foot, there must have come a shriek of agony. A child upon her breast, a creature so unlike herself! That look, which Hegel describes as the highest of all that the eye can express, the first look of the mother upon the child, that first mother's look must have killed Desdemona, or made her raving mad."

Sonnenkamp, who had all the time been rapidly shifting the whittlings about with his fingers, now threw them all upon the floor in a heap, and went up to Eric, holding both hands stretched out at length. His huge frame trembled with emotion, as he cried out: —

"You are a free man, a freethinker; you are not to be humbugged. You are the first one that ever gave me a reasonable explanation of this antipathy. Yes, it's so. The instinct of the poet is wonderfully prophetic. 'Against all rules of nature!' This is the expression of Desdemona's father, and this is the whole solution of the problem. On this expression the whole turns, and every part is in harmony with it. The result must be, as it is, a product of nature. It's against nature!"

The men who were present had never before heard Sonnenkamp speak in this way, and Roland, who had been staring fixedly before him, looked up as if he must convince himself that it was really his father who was speaking. In an exultant tone, for he observed the effect produced upon them all, he continued: —

"Marriage – marriage! The Romans understood what was meant by that. Where marriage is in violation of nature's laws, there can be no talk of rights of humanity, equality of rights. Apes, with all their boasted reason, nothing but apes, are these silly preachers of humanity, who build up their theories and universal crotchets, without looking at the facts, and know really nothing of these brutes endowed with speech, who are not human beings, but everlastingly apish and malicious! Ho, ho! thou noble friend of humanity!" he exclaimed, striding up and down the room, "Marry thy daughter to a nigger, do that! do that! Be in terror, every moment, that he will tear her limb from joint. Hug a black grandchild! do that, noble friend of humanity! then come to me and harangue about the equality of the black and the white race!"

Sonnenkamp had clenched his fists, as if he were clutching an antagonist by the throat; his eyes flashed, his lips opened, and his jaws snapped together like a tiger leaping upon his prey. He now suddenly placed his hand upon his breast, as if making a powerful effort to hold himself in control.

"You, Herr Captain, and the poet, have taken me somewhat by surprise," he said, with a constrained smile; and then he again repeated that Eric had gone to the root of the matter. That a white girl could not become the wife of a nigger was no prejudice, but a law of nature.

"I thank you," he said in conclusion, turning once more towards Eric; "you have given me a great deal to think about."

The men looked at each other in astonishment, and the Doctor added, in a timid way very foreign from his usual manner, that he must give his assent to this on physiological grounds, for it was a well-known fact that mixed races, in the third generation, became sterile. A separation of the races, however, does not exclude human rights, any more than it excluded human duties; and religion laid them upon all alike.

While saying this he turned towards the Priest, who felt himself called upon to state that the negroes were susceptible of religious conviction, and capable of receiving religious instruction, and that this secured to them the full rights of men.

"Indeed!" exclaimed Sonnenkamp. "Is that the fact? Why then did not the Church ordain the removal of slavery?"

"Because the Church," replied the Priest quietly, "has nothing to do with ordaining anything of the kind. The Church directs itself to the human soul, and prepares it for the heavenly kingdom. In what social condition the body of man, the outside covering of this soul, may be, we have nothing to do with ordaining or determining. Neither slavery nor freedom is a hindrance to the divine life. Our Lord and Master called the souls of the Jews to enter into the kingdom of heaven whilst they were Roman citizens, and under subjection. He called all nations through his apostles, and did not stop to ask about their political condition and constitution. Our kingdom is the kingdom of souls, which are one and the same, whether they live in a republic or under a tyranny, whether their bodies are white or black. We are glad to have the body free, but it is not our work to make it so."

"Theodore Parker takes a different view," Roland suddenly exclaimed.

As if a bullet bad whistled close to his ears, Sonnenkamp cried, —

"What? Where did you find out about that man? Who told you about him? How's this?"

Roland trembled all over, for his father seized him by his shoulders and shook him.

"Father!" he cried out in a manly voice, "I have a free soul too! I am your son, but my soul is free!"

All were amazed. Nothing more would be said about his voice changing.

Sonnenkamp let go his hold, his breast heaving up and down as he panted violently for breath. Suddenly he exclaimed, —

"I am very glad, my son; that's noble, that's grand. You are real young America It's right! fine! splendid!"

They were struck with fresh amazement. This sudden change of mood in Sonnenkamp took all present by surprise. But he went on in a mild tone, —

"I am glad that you were not to be frightened. You have good pluck – it's all right. Now tell me where you found out about Parker?"

Roland gave a true account of matters, except that he said nothing about Parker's name having been mentioned by the Professorin when they were making their calls in the town.

"Why didn't you speak of it to me?" asked his father.

"I can keep a secret," replied Roland. "You've tested me yourself on that score."

"That's true, my son; you have justified my confidence."

"We ought to have gone home a long time ago," said the Major, and this was the signal for the company to break up.

The Major had never felt his heart beat so violently, never when stationed on some exposed outpost, never even in battle, as during the reading; and yet it beat worse, after the conversation had taken so threatening a turn.

He kept shaking his big head, and stretching out with his hands in the air deprecatingly and beseechingly, as if he would say, —

"For heaven's sake, drop this talk! It's not good, 'twill only do harm!"

Then he took another look at Sonnenkamp, shrugging up his shoulders. "What does the man mean," he thought, "by talking to us in this style! We wouldn't put a hair in his path; what's the use of stirring us up in this matter! Oh, Fräulein Milch had the right of it, when she urged him to stay at home to-day.

"How comfortable it would be to be sitting in the arm-chair, in which Laadi is now lying! And one might have been asleep two hours ago, and now it will be midnight before one gets home! And there's Fräulein Milch sitting up, and sitting up, till he comes in. It was like being saved, when he took out his watch, and could say how late it was."

The Professorin came back at this moment, and told Roland that his mother wished to see him. Roland went to her.

Eric accompanied his mother and the rest, as they set out for home through the snowy night.

CHAPTER IX.
THE BIRD OF NIGHT IS SHOT

Eric walked in silence with the ladies. The Mother spoke first, saying, —

"I am glad that here, again, I have words of your father's to support me. Nothing is more weakening and more to be avoided than repentance," he often said; "the acknowledgment that we have made a mistake must come, quick and sharp, but then we must reconcile ourselves to circumstances. I have deeply repented no matter how much good I may do, that I have bound myself to this family so firmly that any drawing back or loosening of the ties is extremely difficult. But now that it is done, we must endeavor to make everything turn out for the best."

The Aunt, who spoke but little, added how painful it was that people over whose lives hung some dark crime were banished, as it were, from the kingdom of the spirit; and must meet everywhere with terrible reminders.

They went on again for a while in silence. High above, from the mountain crest, they heard the screech-owl, the harbinger of extreme cold, uttering his dreadful cry; which rose and died away with a mingled tone of lamentation and of triumph. The party stood still.

"Ah," said Eric, "what trouble Herr Sonnenkamp has taken to destroy all the owls in the neighborhood; but he cannot do it."

They walked on once more without speaking. Everything seems a sign and a portent to an excited mood. Hardly breathing the words aloud, the mother said that Frau Ceres' emotion was incomprehensible. She had thrown herself on her neck, sobbing and weeping.

"I do not know how to explain it," she continued; "there is some deep mystery here, and it troubles me."

Eric told them of what had passed among the men, and how Roland, to his alarm, had spoken of Parker. It was plain that Sonnenkamp wished to erect into a moral system the existing relations of slavery.

"Nothing more natural," answered the Mother. "Whoever stands in such relations all his life long, must make something for himself which he calls moral principle. I cannot help thinking of your father again; he has shown me a thousand times how people cannot bear to confess to themselves that their life and actions are bad; they feel obliged to prop them up with good principles. Yet, as I said, we must be quiet, we have one good young spirit to be led to noble ends; that is our part. Whence it sprang, or through what past life it may have come to us, is not for us to determine. The past is our fate, the present, our duty. There's another saying of your father's; and now good-night."

With a more composed mind, Eric returned to the villa. The owl had flown from the mountain, and was now perched on the top of a tree in the park, boldly sending forth its cry into the air. Eric heard it, and Sonnenkamp heard it in the ante-room of his wife's chamber. There must he, the father and husband, wait till his son came out, admittance having been refused him while his wife spoke to Roland. At last the boy came out, and his father asked him what his mother had said: he had never done so before, but now he felt obliged to do it.

Roland answered that she had really said almost nothing; she had only kissed him, and cried, and then asked him to hold her hand till she went to sleep, and now she was sleeping quietly.

"Give me Parker's book," said Sonnenkamp.

"I haven't got it now; the Professorin took it away from me, and blamed me very much for having read it secretly, and before I was old enough."

"Give my regards to Herr Eric; you have a better teacher than I thought," said the father.

Roland went to Eric's room, but he had not yet returned.

The owl's cry was heard again from the tree-top in the park. Roland put out the light, opened the window, took his rifle from the wall, fired, and the owl fell from the tree. Roland ran down stairs, met Eric, and told him that he had hit the bird; he then hurried into the park and brought the creature in.

The whole house was in alarm. Frau Ceres was awakened, and her first cry was:

"Has he killed himself?"

Sonnenkamp and Roland had to go to her room again, to show that they were alive. Roland took the dead owl with him, but his mother would not look at it, and only complained of having been deprived of her sleep.

The father and the son withdrew, and Sonnenkamp praised Roland for having brought down the bird so promptly and boldly.

Eric went back to his mother, who must also have been awakened by the shot, and he found her still awake; she too had feared that it had been some suicidal shot.

The whole house was in a commotion, and it was some time before it could be restored to quiet.

In his pride at having shot the owl, Roland forgot everything else, and went contentedly to bed and to sleep.

But above in the castle, and below in Sonnenkamp's work-room, lights burned late. Eric sat gazing at the flame, and strange forms moved confusedly through his mind. There was Shakespeare's play, there were all the people who had listened to it; but more than all he tried to enter into Roland's mind; and it seemed a fortunate thing to him, that the boy's love of sport had driven away all wondering speculation from his mind. Action, action alone makes free. Where is it, the great all-liberating power? It does not show itself. Independent of our will, and of reflection, there is a great power in the Past and in the view of God working in it, which alone can bring forth the deed. The deed is not ours, but to be armed and ready is in our power.

At last Eric found rest.

Sonnenkamp paced up and down his great room like a prisoner. The lion's skin with the stuffed head lay upon the floor, and the eyes stared at him, till he covered the head with a part of the skin. He asked himself again and again what he ought to do. This Herr Eric was teaching his son to oppose him, and the Mother, who was always regaling them with sayings of her husband, preserved in spirit, forever calling up, as Pranken says, her husband's wandering ghost, the departed Professor Hamlet – no, she was a noble woman.

But why had he taken upon his shoulders this beggarly family, so puffed up with their own ideas? He could not shake them off, without attracting attention. No, he would make use of them, and then throw them away.

At last, a happy resolution quieted him. We must have new surroundings, new diversions; and then, straight to the goal! The day after to-morrow will be New Year's day. On New Year's day we will go to the capital. With this thought Sonnenkamp also found rest at last.