The Bride of Dreams
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Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams
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Falteringly, in my anxiety to be well understood, I continued:
"It is wholly unlike a passing infatuation. If you call the reverse of
this 'bad,' then it is as bad as you can possibly imagine, or worse ?"
"0 Lord!" Lucia sobbed into her handkerchief. "Who is it then? Who? ?
Do I know her?
"No! You don't know her at all."
"Not?" she pronounced this with great astonishment. "Does she live at
The Hague? Have you known her long? Is she a person of rank?"
"She does not live at The Hague, Lucia, but in a little provincial town
of Holland. I have known her only a very short time. Her rank is
housekeeper in a hotel - thus no rank."
Lucia looked up, surprise and relief on her tearful countenance.
"0 Vico! is it that? But then ?" She paused, reflected, shook her head.
And then again: "How is it possible? ? What unhappy creatures men are!
Is she young and pretty?" . . .
Drily and coolly I answered:
"I could say neither one nor the other exactly. I don't believe that
you would think her pretty, but I do think she is quite young."
"Haven't I been a good wife to you, then, Vico? Wherein did I fall
short?"
"In nothing, dear Lucia; you have been a good and excellent wife to me.
I appreciate it, and am grateful for it. I tried also to be a good
husband to you."
"That you have been too, Vico. Until now I have had nothing to reproach
you for. And we were just so happy. Vittoria was to make her début this
winter. Guido is entirely well again. Oh! that this should never fail
to happen! How alike all men are in that respect."
"Forgive me, Lucia, I realize that you have much to forgive. But I was
not happy. I feigned happiness for your sake."
"And what was it you missed? Was I not enough for you? Must a man then
have always fresh excitement? Am I growing too old?"
"No, dear Lucia, it is nothing of all that. It isn't that by any means.
But I see no possibility of making you understand it. I was spiritually
unhappy and often longed for death. I wanted something that you could
not give me."
"Poor man, but why didn't you speak sooner? Why didn't you warn me?"
"Because it would have been useless."
"Why? Tell me what you missed. Let me try to give you what you long
for. I will do what I can for you. What is it? What has this ? other
that I should not be able to give? Can I not prevent you from sinking
so deeply? Can I not save you from this sin? It is only two weeks you
say that you have known her - can it be that in so short a time you
should be so irretrievably lost? Let me help you."
Deeply pathetic was the expression of eager helplessness with which she
gazed at me beseechingly. And deeper my hopelessness of making her
understand what had happened.
"I not only have known her but a very short time, Lucia, but have even
only spoken to her twice, and never touched her - except her hand. And
yet ?"
"What!" said Lucia, with vehement and happy amazement. "Is it nothing
more? A spirit friendship?"
"A spirit love, I would rather say."
"With a hotel maid? I believe you, Vico; you do not lie. I know you as
a man of honor. Men have such phantasies. And ? and ?" with whispered
emphasis and wide, searching eyes: "will it remain so?"
"No, Lucia, I don't want to deceive you. It certainly will not remain
so."
Then she rose and walked about the room in violent emotion.
"Oh, but my God, Vico, what possesses you? You are contemplating the
greatest wrong, the deepest offence to me, the disgrace of your family,
the eternal ruin of your soul - you can easily turn back, nothing yet
is lost, and you don't want to! You don't want to! Is this woman a
witch then? An enchantress? Oh, now I know that you have no religion!
Now I see what it is to have no religion."
I did not answer, and in my mind I compared the two spirit-worlds that
here confronted one another, weighing the one against the other. And
there is none who reads this and has read the preceding chapter, not
even you, dear reader of original mind, but shall waver on this subtle
boundary line. And yet in his heart he shall have to choose and range
himself on one side or the other. For we human beings may proudly raise
ourselves above good and evil, saying that no sin may be accounted as
guilt to our frail short-sighted nature - the choice, the terrible
irrevocable choice, with every irrevocable second, is not spared us,
and must be made.
My choice was made. I no longer wavered, but I pondered on the awful
power that forces us to choose where we can yet distinguish so poorly,
that relentlessly pushes us on into the dense fog with its dimly
gleaming lights.
Lucia however interpreted my silence as irresolution, and with the
exertion of all her powers she attempted a desperate attack upon my
heart. She threw herself down on her knees before me, sobbing and
crying and kissing my hands. She begged and implored me to have pity,
if not with her then at least with the children and with myself.
Then I said:
"Dear Lucia, no more than you have the power to change day into night
for me or night into day, no more can you make me call the light that I
see darkness or deter me from following it. I can only leave you this
choice: do you wish me to deceive you, or would you have me be upright?
In the latter case you must control yourself, for the more I see you
suffer, the stronger grows the temptation not to be upright toward you."
It was even more the tone in which I uttered them than perhaps my words
that made her realize that she had nothing more to hope for.
She got up and dried her tears. Then recovering herself, she said:
"I see, Vico, that a Satanic charm has been cast upon you. Of course I
desire your uprightness. I shall endeavor to bear everything and to
make the best of it and I shall pray for you."
"Thank you, Lucia," said I, rising.
But she came and stood in front of me.
"Yes, but . . . what now?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, not entering sufficiently into her
thought-life.
"You now put me into a position which I have known only from hearsay
and never thought myself to experience. Thousands of women live in this
position, that I know. But you will surely have so much consideration
for me, that you will spare me as much as possible. That after all I
may duly claim from you."
"Of course, Lucia, I shall spare you as much as possible."
"I do not ask it for myself, but for our children. You will respect my
good name, won't you? You won't bring public disgrace upon us? You
won't drag the honor of our family, the name of our children into the
streets?"
The intuitive tactics of a woman are like those of a shrewd and careful
general, who saves his best troops until the battle seems almost lost.
I felt that now she had declared herself ready to yield in the main
point, I could refuse her no concession.
"What do you demand of me, Lucia?"
"That all this remains a secret between us. That you avoid all public
scandal. That before the world our household remains as it was."
I could not suppress a slightly disdainful smile.
"So you would withhold my uprightness, which for yourself you so
greatly desire, from the world?"
"Oh, Vico, you will promise me that. You do care for us, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
"And you are sensible of your obligations toward your family. Even the
most corrupt man is sensible of those."
"I too am sensible of them, Lucia."
"And you do recognize that you have wronged me."
"That I have, Lucia - not now, but before this."
"But then you surely want to make some amends, to somewhat mitigate the
blow - when it's so easy to do it. See I shall leave you absolutely
free. I shall not question you, not pry, not even make an allusion. But
do you then spare our family too. That is all I ask. Spare our children
this disgrace."
I was not prepared, and it is not easy when taking a critical step in
life to go just far enough and with neither half-heartedness nor
exaggeration. Therefore my answer was weak.
"Very well, dear friend," said I. "I shall as far as possible take
account of your desires."
Then we wished each other a good night, well knowing that we had
pronounced an idle wish.
XXIV
It was not a strict and definite promise I had given. But still it was
a yielding from tender-heartedness that I deplore, though without
self-reproach. He who chooses the high, unbeaten tracks should have
overcome all tender-heartedness that leads to half measures. What is
counted as virtue in the faithful member of the herd, is vice in the
seceder. But I knew, how immediately beyond the safe confederacy of the
group, skulked the wolf of fanaticism. I knew how difficult it is to
keep one's balance upon the steep, lonely paths of originality, how
easily the pathfinder, overwhelmed by the giddy sense of unbounded
freedom, falls down into gulfs of fanaticism, hysteria, bigotry and
madness.
Who shall always know how to find the exact medium between bold
consistency and reckless extravagance?
The tendency toward self-sacrifice is an instinct, like all others,
beautiful and useful when it remains in harmony with all our other
instincts, and helps along in the common battle for Christ, who has
given them to us. But this instinct can be perverted and run wild into
asceticism and a passion for self-mortification, as hunger into
gluttony and thirst into drunkenness.
I knew that heroic consistency must lead me to unite myself openly with
the being who had re-awakened in me the highest, holiest and most
blessed emotions - and this meant declaring an open feud against
society. For without doubt I should have the whole world against me, my
own children included. I should lose my position, be expelled from my
circle. I should have to brave poverty too. My mother was still living
and I myself had nothing save the high salary which I would lose. And
to live on Lucia or my mother remained absolutely beyond consideration.
I did not fear all this so much for itself, as for the danger of
fanatic self-torture I saw in it. For above all, in the arbitrary
breaking of the bonds between myself and my children there lay a
refined torture, and I also knew that Lucia's suffering would not let
me rest a day, no matter how firm my conviction might be that I had
done right. I should feel remorse just as well then as I should if I
did not do what I deemed right. Two consciences would always be at war
in me, whether I turned to the right or to the left.
And then - what would my conflict with the world signify, powerless as
I was? Should I convince anyone by my action that it is right to break
a mock union, to clear an untrue life, to assert our true sentiments
and feelings, to pursue the things eternal and the pure blessedness,
and to remain true to Christ in the face of the world?
It would merely be said: "There's another fallen into the bog," and I
should disappear like a stone in the mire.
I do not want to excuse; I only want to explain. To make it clear how
it was possible that I, after this first vigorous wrench at my fetters,
nevertheless for many years still led an irresolute double life,
apparently the same happy pater-familias and prosperous man of the
world, hiding my real, true life in the little seaport town and
restricting it to the hours that I spent together with her, who had
awakened it and who kept it alive.
When I went to get my boat and was starting the night before for
E------, my son Guido, a sport-loving youngster of fourteen, asked
whether he might accompany me. In my sense of guiltlessness I would
perhaps have raised no objection, but his mother immediately
interposed, with quick intuition guessing at the object of my journey
and by a clever pretence thwarted his plan.
Elsje was awaiting me at the station and we had a long conversation, in
which I for the first time experienced what a blessing it is to be able
to give oneself freely, to show oneself as one likes best to be, to
hold back nothing for fear of being misunderstood, even though one
expresses oneself as always, with but the same limited means, toward a
human being having the same limited comprehensive faculty as all men.
For here was the infinite love with its magic interpretive power, that
completes the defective, and from a few faltering phrases is able to
erect a lofty structure of sympathy and understanding, because the
beautiful plan in both speaker and listener has from the very beginning
been designed by a higher wisdom, and no intellectual material is made
use of and applied but must be in harmony with this fixed plan.
"I have spoken about us at home, Elsje."
"With whom?"
"With her whom the world calls my wife, the mother of my children."
"What is her name?"
"Lucia."
After I had spoken this, I have nevertheless quite frequently forgotten
myself and spoken of "my wife." But Elsje never, not a single time.
"What did you say about me?"
"May I tell you quite frankly, Elsje? And will you tell me just as
frankly whether what I said was right?"
"Yes," said Elsje, shyly and softly.
"I said that I had met a woman of whom, at first sight and after two
brief encounters, I could say that she would give me the great love
which was still wanting in my life. Was that rightly said, Elsje?"
"Yes," I heard a whisper beside me. Arm in arm we wandered through the
dark lonely streets of the little town which was going to rest. The
confidential pressure of her arm in mine was a never experienced joy.
"It was not quite understood, Elsje. It was taken for self-delusion and
the entire case treated as a common gallant adventure. That's not
surprising and it will appear that way to everyone. We must resign
ourselves to that."
"Of course!" said Elsje.
"But I had a difficult half hour, for Lucia begged me not to see you
again."
"Poor Lucia - does she care for you very much?"
"Certainly - and I told her that nothing was taken away from my
affection for her. But she wouldn't hear of that -"
"Of course!" said Elsje again. "I shouldn't accept that either. Why
should she?"
"Look, look," thought I smilingly; "even the rivals among women yet
ever conspire together."
"I thought it might be a consolation. But I seem to be mistaken in
that. I remained firm, though I told her that nothing would hold me
back from Elsje."
"Oh, if I am only worthy of it! If only I am worthy of it!"
"That is fear of responsibility, Elsje. That we both have. But it is a
weakness."
"And did Lucia yield?"
"She first asked whether it could remain a spirit friendship. I refused
to promise that." Elsie remained silent.
"Do you think that was right, Elsie?"
She nodded.
"Then she yielded, but on one condition."
"What?"
"That before the world I would remain her husband. That everything
would be secret."
"Oh!" cried Elsie vehemently with anger and surprise. "Then she never
really cared for you either. Never!" And then indignantly: "You didn't
promise that though, did you?"
There I stood, poor sinner, and hadn't a word to say. And I felt while
seeking to defend myself that by nature a man always remains a sophist.
"Dear Elsie! remember that this consideration for a proud woman like
Lucia is of much greater import than the sacrifice for us. Consider how
much I have grieved her. Consider how few women would so nobly forgive
this to their husbands. Consider that after all the past makes it my
duty to care for her and my children. Disgrace is a very dreadful thing
for them, something much more dreadful than you can probably
comprehend."
"I consider just that a disgrace," said Elsie, illogically, but to the
point, "to want to keep up a lie before the world."
"Consider then, Elsie, what it would mean for me. I should not see my
children again. They would not want to recognize me. I should bring a
terrible sorrow upon them, and I am very fond of them."
"Would none of them try to understand it, to forgive it?" asked Elsie.
"Not one of them, I fear. Even were it only on account of their mother,
whom they adore. And remember that, beside my children, I should also
lose my position. My wife ? I mean Lucia is wealthy, but I am not ?"
"Would your health suffer if you were poorer?" asked Elsie, with naive
directness and perfect sobriety, though the question almost sounded
ironical to me. In a very impolitic fashion I had again reserved my
weakest argument for the last.
"Not that! Not that! ? but perhaps I am too much spoilt ? I should have
the whole world against me ? and I don't know if all that ?"
I felt that I was going wrong, thus I would end by myself casting a
doubt upon the self-sacrificing power of my love. Elsie helped me out
of it.
"May I now speak quite frankly with you too? Yes? Then listen! I am so
dazed, so overwhelmed by the greatness of that which I receive from
you, so suddenly and so bewilderingly, that you must not expect me at
once to judge rightly. It seems ridiculous to me that I should not be
satisfied with the least that you would offer me, now that I am getting
so infinitely much more than I ever could have hoped for or expected.
Though I never saw you again after this night, yet I should be
eternally grateful to you. But forgive me if in your difficulty I judge
too much according to my own feelings. Your grief for your children -
that I can comprehend. But all the rest I don't understand; it is
strange to me, contrary to my nature. Of the world and of the money I
should not think - I don't know these things and have not experienced
their power. I only know that I should like to be with you always and
should like to confess it openly before all the world. And if I were in
Lucia's place, and really cared for you, I wouldn't want for one moment
to bind you, cost what it would to me. I shouldn't be able to bear it,
that you lived beside me and were looked upon as my husband and
secretly cared for another, I should think that much more terrible than
all the sorrows of a divorce."
"Lucia would never agree to a divorce. That is a matter of religion
with her. A Catholic marriage is indissoluble."
"And are you, yourself, also a Catholic, devoutly Catholic?"
"Lucia says that I have no religion whatever."
Elsje looked at me anxiously.
"Is that so? And I had just hoped to learn so much from you concerning
that. It occupies me all day long. Even now I have a hundred questions
ready, for you. I had put all my trust in you."
"In what faith were you brought up, Elsie?
"Brought up? I wasn't brought up. I must make another confession to you?"
I saw that she hesitated and was troubled. I began to fear some
unpleasant secret or other.
"Speak without fear, Elsie. It is safe with me. Trust me."
"That I would like to, but see, I know you are a distinguished man of
noble birth."
"That signifies nothing, Elsje - I am not so proud of that."
I was joking, but she understood me.
"No, you are not proud, but still you have assurance. That I have not.
Do you know how I got my name?"
"Well?"
"They called me Van Vianen, became I was found near Vianen. I have no
parents."
She said this deeply humiliated and ashamed. And in my heart I laughed,
because now after all she too showed herself apprehensive of the voice
of the herd, and because she felt as a disgrace, the very thing that,
as an aureole of romance, had delighted me.
"Oh, is it only that!" I cried; "that I already knew. All week I have
thought of the poor, dear little one as crying, it was laid down upon
the grass by a desperate mother. Likely it was a royal child, Elsje!"
Elsie laughed, reassured and happy.
"They let me become a Mennonite. Not Jan Baars, but his sister who took
me into her home as a child."
"Ah! Mennonite!" said I. I hadn't the slightest idea what theological,
ethical and ritual peculiarities were attached to this creed. I only
knew that it must be one of the innumerable variations or sects of
Protestantism.
"To be sure it's a good custom of the Mennonites that they don't
baptize you as a child, when you don't yet know whether you would
rather be a Roman Catholic or an Israelite, but later, when you are
confirmed and can yourself choose. But look! when I was eighteen I knew
just as little what to choose. And now I don't know yet."
"And still you let yourself be baptized?"
"Why yes, there was surely no wrong in that. But if they would have you
choose well they would first have to let you serve an apprenticeship
with the Romans, then another with the Protestants, then another with
the Jews and then with the Mohammedans?"
"Not to mention the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Shintoists," said I.
"So that you would need seven lives before you could let yourself be
baptized, isn't it so? And yet it is so necessary, so very, very
necessary that you choose the right thing, isn't it? I never can
understand how all people just live on carelessly, and all believing
something different, and never consider that they might perhaps be
wrong, and how terrible that would be. They simply assume, and only
feign assurance, and you never hear them talk of it, so they probably
do not break their hearts about it. And if you were to believe them,
then everyone who thinks differently than they is a miserable wretch.
But they all think differently, and so one or the other must be wrong,
and yet they are all equally certain and assured. How is that possible
now? Why it's absurd!"
I thought it was already a great deal for Elsie, in her solitude, to
have arrived at the realization of this absurdity. Then I threw out my
sounding-line -
"What do you think of Christ, Elsie?"
"I love best to read of Jesus; I think it wonderful to read -
especially toward Christmas time - how he came on earth as a little
child, and about the star and the shepherds. When I think of Jesus, I
always think of him as a little child with Mary his Mother. I should
like to have a picture or an image of them, but that's considered
Catholic. Do you know more of Jesus and can you tell me all about him?"
"I asked about Christ, Elsie."
"Isn't that the same?"
"They are all only names from which we can choose. I prefer to say
Christ, because I don't believe that there lived a man called Jesus who
was Christ. But I do positively know that there is something that all
men call Christ, and that lives and knows and loves us. And this Christ
they already knew long before Jesus is said to have lived. I have seen
images of the Mother with the child exactly like the one you would like
to have, and it was thousands of years older than Jesus and made by the
Egyptians, and instead of Mary and the Christ Child they spoke of Isis
and the Horus Child, and the Chinese too made such images."
"And what do they mean by it?"
"Ordinary people mean a holy mother with a holy child, a saviour. But
the few wiser ones probably mean the earth mother and the child
humanity. I at least presume it, and when men now speak of Christ, then
I believe, Elsje, that the most and the best, those who really mean
something by the word, something real that they have felt - that they
mean something that is equivalent to humanity."
"Humanity? that means nothing to me. Jesus for me is a living, beloved
and loving being, who helps and supports me, an exalted, holy being.
Humanity - that is nothing to me, an empty word."
"Right, Elsje, I readily believe it. But empty words can be filled with
knowledge. There are learned professors to whom the word Jesus or
Christ is entirely hollow or empty. But the word humanity implies for
them a real and well-known thing, the entire human race which in its
development and growth, in its expression and forms of life they have
studied minutely. These professors again would be able to fill the word
Christ with the exalted and tender feelings which it arouses in Elsje,
if they had learned to feel like Elsje. And now it is my personal
opinion with which, so far as I know, I stand quite alone in the world,
that Elsje and the professors, were they to compare one another's
observations, would come to realize that it is precisely the same real
being that fills the word Christ and the word Humanity: the religious
word Christ and the biological, scientific word Humanity."
"But humanity - that is not a being, not a personality ? that is a lot
of people. People that I don't know. How can I care about them and how
can they care about me?"
"A tree, Elsje, is a lot of roots, branches and leaves. Yet we call it
a tree. A swarm of bees are a lot of bees, and yet one swarm. You
cannot discern humanity because you cannot see all people at the same
time, and not how they are connected. But I don't believe either that
one leaf can see the whole tree or one bee the whole swarm.
"But humanity is yet a great deal more than all men together, just as
the tree is more than all the leaves. And humanity is after all
perceived by Elsje in her own heart - all humanity. That is thus much
more even than the professors can discern of it, and why should it not
be a personal, thinking, loving being? It is that, I think, that Elsje
means when she speaks of her exalted Jesus, and it is that I prefer to
call Christ, because I like that name best."
"I am such a stupid, ignorant creature, and you are so learned. Forgive
me if I still find it somewhat too difficult."
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