Loe raamatut: «Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine», lehekülg 84

Eric and Weidmann looked at each other. Weidmann had given expression to the same thought a few days before at Mattenheim, but in a wholly different connection.

Sonnenkamp went on.

"My five passes were still good. I went here under the name of Count Gronau: the Americans are fond of intercourse with noblemen. After a wild night, I shot a man who had insulted me on the public street. I fled, and lived for a time among the horse-thieves of Arkansas. It was a droll life, a life of craft and adventure that nowhere else has its like. Man becomes there a lurking beast of prey, and my body underwent the most monstrous experiences. I left this partnership, and became a sailor on a whaling-ship. I had shot lions and leopards in Algiers, and now I was hunting the king of the ocean. The whole world is here only to be captured and subdued. I have been through all sorts of experience. I soon gained dexterity enough to reach the position of boat-steerer, and I was appointed to this. There was one thing more; to hunt men, the merriest of all. This was adventure worth engaging in, this man-hunting: here was a new excitement, a novel attraction. We sailed for Madagascar through many perils. We caught men and bought men; boldness and cunning were called into activity, and the business pleased me. Great risk, great profits. In Louisiana, where the great sugar plantations have each three, four, and five thousand slaves, and in Charleston, South Carolina, are the chief slave-markets; for the most part, boys are carried there, and no elderly men. You will consider it contemptible; but it does appear to me a triumph of human freedom and power for one man to steal and sell another. No animal can so seize and serve his kind, always supposing, though by no means granting the fact, that negroes are men. Yes, I have been a slave-trader: they called me the sea-eagle. That bird has the sharpest scent, he flies off, and cannot be caught. It was a bold and beautiful pastime. I have even stolen the chief who was selling me his subjects. These talking black beasts are equal to their so-called fellow-men in one respect, perhaps, – I say perhaps, – they can play the hypocrite like white men. No beast can dissemble, and, if dissembling can give a title to human rights, then the blacks deserve that title. After the first burst of rage, the chief was very tractable; but one day I was pursued, with my cargo on board, by an English ship, and had to pitch the whole human dust-heap into the sea. This gave food to the sharks. Look here, this is the finger which the chief tried to bite off: you know how he has made his appearance in these days. From that time I left off going to sea, and carried on the business through others; finally I gave it up altogether. I had enough, I had large plantations, and the child of the boat-steerer, who had died in the whale-fishery, had been brought up by me, and I married her. Such a being, only half-awake, prattling like a child in every thought, or, rather, with no thought at all, was pleasing to me. I had at that time no idea that there were women with great, heroic, world-conquering souls."

Sonnenkamp spoke these last words in a very loud tone. After a short pause, he continued, —

"I was living in quiet retirement when the insane party of the North arose, whose object was to abolish slavery. And when my own countrymen entered into the front ranks as the magnanimous friends of man, I came forward in the newspapers and acknowledged myself a German, in order to say that all were not like these shriekers about humanity. I showed that it was madness to desire to free the slave. Humane men wanted to render benevolent aid; but the wretchedness of the world is not cured by benevolence, nor the poverty, nor the crime. The works of mercy, all seven together, do not help the world, they are all quack-remedies: the only real benevolence to the lower orders of men is slavery. They want to be nothing else than what they are: the best thing is for them to be taken care of by their masters – for the blacks certainly, and no less so, perhaps, for the whites. Herr Weidmann knows that his nephew has been my bitterest enemy. I was in the Southern States, and there I and my compeers were nobles. We are the privileged class. There are privileged races, and privileged persons among those races. The barons of the Southern States seemed to me the only honest men I had become acquainted with; everywhere else there was hypocrisy. I was displeased, indeed, that they wanted to get for their cause the cover of religion; but it was a rich joke that the ministers of religion volunteered their aid in this attempt.

"But I soon learned to have less regard even for this Southern chivalry. They are hypocrites, too; for they hold slaves, and yet despise him who imports the slaves. This is a remnant of the old hypocrisy of setting up a standard of virtue. Why deny the natural, open, pitiless mastership? Why not openly acknowledge that which they acknowledge in secret? Because the English worshippers of rank place slave-traders in the category of pirates? Even the freemen of the South are themselves the slaves of a vulgar notion. Now it came over me. When I had a son, a longing was awakened within me which I could not appease. I know not whether I have already told you, that, in my early days, the thought often occurred to me, had I been a noble, had I with my courage and my ability entered the military service, I should have become a steady man like the rest; I might have been for a time dissipated; but then I should have managed my estate, and been the founder of an honorable line. The fundamental cause of my adventurous, restless life always seemed to me to be the fact that I was a commoner, having every claim to a privileged station, and yet always thrust into the back-ground. I know that it is an inconsistency; I despise the world, and I strive after honor. This proceeds from a youthful impression of what was meant by the nobility. The only guaranty for the world's smile is rank and genius; without one of these you do not escape from mediocrity and sufferance. I pictured to my wife what a grand life was led at some little court in Germany, and it became a fixed idea in her mind. One can tear out the heart more easily than root out from it a thought. I see the struggle coming in the New World: courage and strength are on our side. There will be a slaughter unparalleled; but we shall be victorious. The Southern States want independence, and this is the only, the highest thing. I have labored in Europe for our cause. We lived in England, in Italy, in Switzerland. I thought, for a time, of becoming what is called a free, sober citizen of Switzerland. But I hated Switzerland: it suffers the foreigner to be free, so long as he is a foreigner; if he becomes a citizen of the State, he can no longer be a free man, but must take part in all their petty concerns. He who is not earning money, and who will not be pious – one can do both at the same time without much trouble – he who doesn't want to live frugally, will not do for Switzerland. No court, no nobility, no barracks there! – nothing but church, school, and hospital, things that are of no account to me. I didn't want to remain in Switzerland, with inaccessible heights before my eyes; it's oppressive, and for that reason, here on the Rhine it's cozy and homelike. Germany is and will be the only land for free men. Here one pays his tax, and is let alone. No one has any claim, and in his position the nobleman is liable to no interference. I returned to Germany, because I wished to acquire for myself and for my son a brilliant position in society. The regard of one's neighbors, one's fellow-men, is a fine luxury, perhaps the very finest: this, I wanted to have too. I wanted to give my son what only the German perfectly knows, dutiful service; and with this view there was perpetually ringing in my ears one melody – the only sentimentalism I can reproach myself with – a villa on the Rhine. This was the dream of my childhood, this, of my mature life, and this has been my ruin. When I looked the whole world over, and asked myself where life could be passed most happily, then I had to confess, as I said before, that it is the highest pinnacle of enjoyment to be a rich baron of some small German state. Here one may have a life fraught with enjoyment without any claim of duty, and receive all honor in a limited circle, and enjoyment besides. I have become familiar with all the different strata of existence. I have caroused and scuffled with the red-skins, and more than once have been in danger of adorning some Indian with my scalp, and I wanted now to make trial of the red-collars and their chief. I did not want to leave the world without knowing what court life was. I cherished still one idyllic dream – something of the German romance hangs by me yet – and, not without reason, I called my house Villa Eden. Here it was my purpose to live in enjoyment with my plants, and like my plants; but I have been dragged again into the world, more by the thought of my children than any thing else. Enough; you are well aware that I wanted to be ennobled. Let it be. I have now come to the end. But" —

He paused, and looked at what he had whittled out; it was an African's head, with the tongue lolling from his mouth. With one sharp cut, Sonnenkamp suddenly cut off tongue and mouth, so that they fell down into his lap; then, grinning like the figure in his hand, he went on: —

"I have placed myself and mine under the protection of civilization; I have taken refuge, not in the savage wilderness, but in the bosom of cultivated life, as it is termed. To be honest, I do not repent it. I am no milk-sop; my soul has been tempered in the fire of hell. I made no concealment of my past history, because I considered it bad. What in this world is bad? I concealed myself from folly and weakness. Thousands repent without becoming any better. Had I been a soldier in a successful war, perhaps I should have been a hero. I am a man without superstition: I haven't even the superstition of the so-called humanity. I live and die in the conviction that what is called equal rights is a fable; to free the negro will never do a particle of good, they will be exterminated, when it comes to the pass that a negro may sit in the White House at Washington. The world is full of hypocrisy, and my only pride is, that I am no hypocrite.

"But now, honorable and worthy gentlemen, is there any question you would like to ask? I am ready to answer it."

He made a pause.

No one made any response.

"Well, then," was his close, "gentlemen of honor and of virtue, I demand of you, not for my own sake, but for the sake of my children, to impose upon me some sort of reparation. If you demand that I should kill myself, I will do it; if you enjoin banishment, I will go away; if you require the half of my property, which is far more than I have ever acquired from the negroes, my fellow-men, as they are called, I will resign it. I thank you, and await your verdict on the appointed day."

He retired, and left the men by themselves.

Clodwig whispered to Eric, —

"Cain slew his brother: the Cain of today sells his brother."

CHAPTER IX.
CONSULTATION OF THE MEN, AND A WOMAN'S VERDICT

Who could describe the various changes of expression in the features of the judges during Sonnenkamp's speech!

After he had retired, they sat together in silence.

Weidmann looked bright and unmoved: his clear blue eye was calm, and he seemed surprised by nothing he had heard.

The Major was busy with an internal struggle, passing, in review before him, his neglected youth. He often struck his breast with his clenched hand, thinking to himself, —

"Yes, who knows but that you might have become just like this!"

And he was overpowered by the emotion caused by considering his own case, and that of the man who had spoken so defiantly. He wanted to keep from shedding tears, but did not succeed. He wiped off the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief, and at the same time got rid of the tears. He longed to go to the poor rich man, embrace him, and call out to him, "Brother, brother, you have been a very bad brother; but now you are going to be a good brother: you will be?" But he did not venture to give way to the impulse of his heart. He looked round, to see whether any one would begin; but no glance was directed towards him, except the kindly one of Professor Einsiedel, to whom the Major nodded, as if he would say, —

"Yes, in all your books, you have never seen any thing like this. It is horrible, that a man can think and do all this; but I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and you pity him too: I see you do."

The Doctor was the first to speak aloud, and he said to Clodwig, —

"We have been, without meaning it, the listeners to a comic performance. A simple-minded transgressor, a transgressor from the impulse of passion, can, perhaps, be converted; a cunning and hardened one, never."

"With all my detestation," replied Clodwig, "I admire this power, which can so lay bare the hypocrisy of the world. Oh," —

His mouth seemed parched; and he moved his tongue frequently, this side and that, appearing unable to say any thing further. He looked at the expressive countenance of the Banker, and, nodding to him, said, —

"I see you have a word to say. Pray say it."

The Banker, coloring very red, responded, —

"Certainly. I will not speak of the emotion this life-history has excited in me. It is – I know not what to call it; but I think it is a history of humiliation: and perhaps a Jew ought to be inclined to judge righteously, I will say mercifully, of all sins and transgressions which proceed from being slighted and contemned. Humiliation, placing the matter in a social point of view, awakens bitterness, hardness, recklessness; and it must be a peculiar nature, which becomes, under its influence, mild, even to faint-heartedness and weakness."

The Doctor respected the man's point of view; but he did not seem disposed to accede to it. He urged a decision, asking, —

"Have you any method of punishment or reparation to propose?"

"First of all," replied the Banker, "I don't know any thing else, except to take away from this man all parental power over his children; and we must devise some delicate way of doing this, in order not to inflict suffering upon them."

"We Germans," cried the Doctor briskly, "are for ever and ever schoolmasters. This hard, seared villain of a Sonnenkamp wants to teach that his villany is pure wisdom and logic; and he contemptuously garnishes his cynicism with ideas."

"Exile," began Professor Einsiedel, – "exile would be the only sentence we, like the ancients, could pronounce upon him who has desecrated and insulted all the blessings of civilization; but there is no land to which we could banish him, where, stripped of all the conquests won by civilization, he could atone for his past life."

Professor Einsiedel seemed not to take it amiss that he had an opportunity to put to a practical use the studies he had made of the history of slavery, and to show how the Greeks had no perception of its iniquity; but the Doctor laid his hand upon the professor's shoulder, as much as to say, —

"Some other time, I pray."

The Professor gave him a nod.

"Every punishment we suspend over him," said Prince Valerian, "is a punishment of his children: he is protected by an invulnerable shield."

There was now a longer pause. "And yet we shall and must find one," cried Weidmann. "I beg you to come together here, a week from to-day, at the opening of the sealed opinions; and then we will come to a decision. It is our duty to find some punishment that will make atonement without striking the guiltless."

In a faltering voice, the Major entreated the friends not to separate: they had, as yet, come to no proper decision; and he could not help himself out of the difficulty. He would have been very glad to ask that he might be allowed to take Fräulein Milch into counsel, for he was sure that she could help him; but in a jury one must make up an opinion for himself.

The heavy head of the Major swayed this side and that, and seemed to be almost too heavy for him to hold up.

Those assembled seemed to desire to be freed from the painful situation; and Weidmann exclaimed, —

"I pronounce the meeting adjourned."

They all rose as if they must escape from imprisonment, or from an infected atmosphere. They would have liked to go out into the fresh air; but it rained steadily, and there were puddles and small rills in the garden walks. They went into a spacious apartment, and Claus said, —

"How would it answer – allow me, gentlemen, to ask – how would it answer, if we sentenced Herr Sonnenkamp to go back home, and sell himself for a slave?"

As no one replied, he went on timidly, —

"I don't know whether that would be just the thing; but 'twould be something, anyhow."

Weidmann told him that no white man could be made a slave.

"This Herr Sonnenkamp," said Clodwig with quivering lips to Eric, "is nothing but a victim of the distracted condition of our age. The whole of humanity at the present time has a troubled conscience; it knows that it is not in harmony with, itself, and this creates a universal unrest. This individual man, driving hither and thither, prosecuting iniquity by night, and extremely respectable by day, this is the outbirth of our life. Ah! excuse me, I feel quite sick."

Clodwig requested the Doctor to accompany him to Wolfsgarten, as he felt very unwell; but, just as the Doctor was getting into the carriage with him, he was called to Frau Ceres.

Joseph came, in a short time, and informed Clodwig that the Doctor could not leave his patient.

The Doctor remained with Frau Ceres, who had strangled the parrot in a paroxysm of madness, and smashed every thing in the room.

He opened a vein, from which the blood flowed very dark; and she became more quiet.

Sonnenkamp did not leave his room when the account of his wife's illness was brought to him.

The doctor again sent word to Clodwig, that he had better remain here, especially as it was raining very hard, and the Rhine was beginning to rise; but Clodwig insisted on returning home.

Now the Doctor came himself, and begged the banker to drive with Clodwig to Wolfsgarten, and Clodwig himself entreated this favor of his old friend. The latter agreed at once, only saying that he would first drive speedily to the town to send a telegram, that they need not expect him at home until some further notice. He drove away.

Bella had gone to the green cottage to see Aunt Claudine, and behaved there very amiably towards her and Lina; but she could not help letting fall some severe expressions in reference to the Professorin and Manna, who had so selfishly taken themselves out of the way whilst such a terrible transaction was taking place in the house.

When a servant came and informed her that Clodwig wanted to set out immediately, she exclaimed, stamping with her foot, —

"I will not!"

And then she added: —

"Very well, let him take me up here."

The carriage drove up; and Bella seated herself by Clodwig's side without his getting out: he sat shivering in one corner.

"Why do you not ask how I am?" said he, in a feeble, trembling voice.

Bella made no reply. She was internally struggling; but suddenly she exclaimed, —

"Foh! You ought all to be ashamed of yourselves! What are the whole of you in comparison with this man? He alone is a man, he alone. Here is something grand and strong among this lint-scraping, humanitary set. You are all imbeciles, cowards! This Sonnenkamp is the only great man, a strong man, a real man. Oh! if such a man" —

"Well? If such a man" —

"Ask me no more questions. I will drive home with you, home, – you have the right to command, – what more do you want? Not another word, not a word, or I shall not mind the pouring rain, not the least: I shall jump out of the carriage, I shall go off, I don't know where; but I won't be imprisoned any longer; I won't be banished to your miserable, old, pot-digging, pretty-spoken, vaporing, freedom-vaunting, humanity-gouged, world!"

"Wife, what are you saying? Are good and evil then" —

"Pooh! Good and evil, these are the crutches on which you lean, because you have nothing to lean on in yourselves. A man must be strong, and have good grit: whether he is good or bad is a matter of indifference. Any thing but weak and sentimental; any thing but hiding behind your humanity with its blissful tears. A man who is not made of iron ought to be a woman – no, he ought to be a nun. You are nothing but a set of soft-hearted nuns. Yes, it must be so; it is so. A Jew to sit in judgment on such a man, and an atheist like this Herr Dournay! Yes, the atheists are the only consistent democrats. All are equal: there's no longer any higher being, no longer any God; then there's equality, and you are everybody's equal. Dastards, loafers! May you find goodly fellowship together! He is the only man. He has done you too much honor in wanting to belong to you, you are not worthy of him. You are all of you afraid of Jean Jacques Rousseau, of the fool of equal rights. It is still to be seen whether the world smothers itself in this mixed mass of equality, or whether there are heights for it to climb. You ought to go across the ocean; there's the last decisive battle-field; you are nothing but a nobility in a holiday uniform. The Southern States stand erect, and if they fall, there's no more aristocracy; then you'll all be clipped by the shears of equal rights. Just call the coachman in here, your brother-man! Don't let him be out there in the rain, he ought to be sitting with us in the carriage. Or shall I call him for you?"

She seized the cord, and the coachman reined in. After letting Clodwig wait in torture for a while, she cried, —

"Drive on, it's nothing."

She turned her head restlessly, this way and that. Her eyes wildly rolling, and grinding her teeth, she exclaimed in a loud tone:

"Fie upon all the cowards! Oh! if I were only a man!"

Clodwig sat in the corner, shivering. At this moment something clinked in Bella's mouth, and she put her hand up to it. What is that? Yes, she took it out – it is so. In her angry gnashing of her teeth, she had broken a front tooth, which had been tender for a long time, and required careful treatment. Bella clinched the hand in which she held the tooth, and pressed her lips together. What has happened to her? The thought rapidly shot through her, How vexatious it was that she could no longer ridicule those who wear false teeth; but yet she can, for nobody will believe that she, Bella, has a false tooth.

They met the Banker waiting for them in the town: he said that he had sent the message to his house, and was ready.

Bella got out of the carriage, and holding a handkerchief before her mouth, and speaking in muffled tones, requested the Banker to accompany her husband, and a servant to stay with her. She hurried towards the railroad. Arrived at the station, she was perplexed; and without taking the handkerchief from her mouth, she told the servant to take tickets for the Fortress. Then she sat still in a corner of the passenger-room, with two thicknesses of veil over her face. She rode to the Fortress-City. No one was to know that she wore a false tooth, no one was to see her with a gap in her teeth.

Clodwig drove homewards, and often wiped his eyes. Above all, his pride was wounded; he, Clodwig, was scorned, and by whom? By his wife. And on whose account? On account of this hollow-hearted adventurer. She has never loved me one single instant: that was a stab to his very heart, and this stab never ceased to be felt; for what he suffered bodily was transmuted into a suffering of the soul. Who is there that can measure this action and re-action of body and soul?

The rain had ceased; but a mist seemed before Clodwig's eyes, and a heavy gloom. He reached Wolfsgarten; but all the apartments seemed full of smoke, full of haze. He seated himself in his chair.

"I am lonely, lonely," he said to himself continually.

The Banker spoke to him in gentle words; but Clodwig shook his head; he knew that Bella had never loved him, that she hated him. He felt himself humiliated, scourged. Bella's words had wounded him to the heart's core, wounded him to the death.

They drew off his coat: he looked for a long time at the coat, and nodded with a sad smile.

Did he forebode that he would never put it on again?

When Bella returned home early the next morning, he looked at her with a ghostlike countenance: he perceived the coldness and hardness of her face.

"Medusa, Medusa!" shrieked Clodwig.

Without knowing he had uttered the words, he fell back on the pillows.

They restored him to consciousness. Hours of the severest pain elapsed before the Doctor came. Clodwig had also desired Eric to be sent for.

The Doctor came, and declared Clodwig to be dangerously sick; the jury trial had excited him too violently, and the drive home through the rain – "and perhaps something else," he added to Bella, who gazed at him without changing a muscle of her face.

Bella sent for her brother; but no one knew precisely where he was.

"I am lonely," said she, too.

She was terrified when she said this; for she felt that she would soon be really alone.