The Bride of Dreams Part 28

One usually attaches little value to a loving woman's judgment upon the man she loves. But the perfect faith of a pure spirit is not alone a wondrous comfort and consolation, but also a mighty creative power for the good. And it is not confusing and blinding, but calming and beneficial to see oneself reflected in a clear gla.s.s, in a favorable light.

x.x.x

I shall never admit that the plan of my campaign was unpracticable or ill contrived. I remain firmly convinced that the main idea was correct and will be of service to future combatants. But it had one fault which I could not be aware of and which could only reveal itself in the practice. It is not impossible to inoculate men like Elkinson with an original and to them new idea, and even to impress it. On them in such a manner that they come to conceive of it as their own idea and are driven to action by it.

But then this operation must be performed as skilfully and carefully as a botanical or surgical grafting, so that the idea becomes one with their own nature, and continues to grow, nourished by their own life.

Now in my case the grafting did not succeed - just as the first botanical graftings did not succeed - because I was not sufficiently experienced and practised in it and had not yet found the right method.

Still this does not prove the impossibility of the principle.

One can never remind oneself too often that no one, not even the most sagacious, broadest mind, is led to a.s.sume different fundamental ideas solely by reasonable arguments. The element of faith is always indispensable, even in purely scientific questions.

What I said to Judge Elkinson would have been entirely sufficient to convince him and to stir his powers into action, had it been told him in the same words but under more favorable circ.u.mstances; or if he had heard it oftener, from different persons and in different words.

The unfavorable, hampering circ.u.mstance was that because of my poverty and my illegitimate marriage I now stood outside the circle of Elkinson's social intercourse. I had foreseen this to be sure, but thought nevertheless that he would confer with me in secret and private interviews often enough to afford me the opportunity of keeping in contact with him and in the end convincing him. I did indeed see him now and then too, once also he came to me and evinced as much interest, kindliness and broad mindedness as could be expected of a man in his position. But illogical as it may seem, the influence of my words was much slighter because we no longer stood on an equal footing. Had he, as formerly, met me everywhere in the distinguished circles, had he there, in club or salon, parried on the same conversations with me, and above all, had he not gained the impression that I spoke intentionally and with the purpose of rousing him to action, he would then, I am sure, have a.s.similated these same ideas and seemingly on his own initiative would have commenced to act upon them.

But the arguments that upon the lips of a man of position and distinction are convincing lose their persuasive power when spoken by an erratic or eccentric, even though they may be exactly as logical, because the element of faith and of trust are wanting.

Thus the release from social convention, which liberated my spirit and gave me the courage to honestly a.s.sert and maintain myself, at the same time had a crippling effect upon my powers. When the knight had buckled his coat of mail he could no longer move his arms.

I did not stop at this first attempt, but continued working restlessly, trying to provide a living for us and seeking a fertile ground for the seed of my thoughts. I tried to find pupils to take lessons in languages and strove to gain admission to the editors of magazines and newspapers. I composed short articles in which I endeavored to make ideas of great importance and value interesting and readable. Urged by necessity I even attempted to write short stories, which were complete failures however, and caused me miserable hours of struggle and inward shame. For purposely manufactured art is just as insipid, unworthy and humiliating as true art is sacred and exalting. The last is divine wors.h.i.+p, the first waste of time.

I also tried to engage the interest of other influential persons besides Judge Elkinson. But I had rightly selected him as the most available, and with all the others met with less success. I had used up my best powder at the first onslaught. Now I ran great danger of being looked upon as one of the many harmless, but troublesome and tiresome fools, who are called "cranks" over there, and who seem to flourish in America. People who go about everywhere and pursue everyone with an infallible system, an ingenious invention, a gigantic scheme. They have calculated everything and only want a millionaire or an influential person to realize their idea - to reform the world and make it happy or to ama.s.s fabulous riches.

Once counted in that category and my chance was lost, that I knew.

People would warn one another against me and no one in this hastily-living world would have even one minute to spare to listen to me.

Every day of the campaign on which I had so bravely entered, I saw more distinctly the fatal difficulty I was facing. In order to be able to carry out anything I should have to "make a name," as it is called. And making a name, the forming of a centre of suggestive influence working, not through essential worth but through idle sound, - this is in conflict with a contemplative nature and a lover of reality as I am.

The man of action will make a name, he will work for it unashamed, he finds unadulterated pleasure in being honored and celebrated and renowned. For in his capacity the power of a name, a personality, is indispensable. Wisely he has been equipped with the suitable instincts for this.

But I myself had an insurmountable horror of anything that would tend to bring my own personality, my most transitory, spectral unimportant being into the limelight. To see my name printed or to hear it discussed was quite indifferent to me, even very disagreeable. I should be willing to bear it for Christ's sake, if I realized that I could only thus serve him and that he demanded it of me. But it was impossible for me to exert myself to that end. It is harder for the Original than for anyone else to act contrary to his natural disposition. To uphold the important truths whereof I knew myself to be the sole and responsible supporter, I was always ready to make any sacrifice. But to fight for my person, my career, my name, did not attract me in the least and thus also rarely met with success.

So for days, weeks, and months I worked without the slightest result. A pupil, sent to me by Elkinson, stayed away after a few weeks without paying me - perhaps because he may have heard something about my illegitimate marriage. Some journalists who had known me in former days received me with superficial friendliness and promised to do something for me. But they did nothing - speedily absorbed again in their own interests. Of Elkinson, I heard that he had been brought into consideration for the presidential candidacy; sufficient reason for him to forget hundreds of conversations with a Muralto, s.h.i.+pwrecked through his own folly.

Just as prosperity again begets prosperity, so also does misery grow like a s...o...b..ll rolling down hill. The great, tremendous, busy world about me rushed restlessly onward in the fog - striving, seeking, building up and demolis.h.i.+ng, urged on by uncomprehended impulses - and considered we no more than any of the thousand lost creatures that are crushed under its blind and heavy tread, cruel as the machine that catches the careless worker in its wheels. And yet I knew that this tremendous structure was the obedient tool of the same power that had entrusted me with its most precious gifts, that had urged me on my way, that was responsible for my strength and for my weakness.

And in proportion as the want that reigned in my little house grew more and more real and the struggle for existence more and more anxious, in the same proportion this humble home also began to grow dearer to me. I was approaching the age when a man, even though not yet tired and worn out, still, more than ever before, longs for a resting place, a small intimate sphere of quiet and rest, of cheris.h.i.+ng love and peace, a home. What had formerly been my home had always remained inwardly strange to me. It afforded me every comfort and physical ease, but my heart found no happiness there. And now I had more than I had ever expected to find. I found the true domestic happiness more beautiful, more sublime and holy than I had imagined - but its beauty was touched with anguish and its joy with anxious sorrow because it was so transitory.

We needed so little - a couple of tidy rooms with few ugly things and one or two objects of beauty, a small garden plot with flowers, some sunlight by day, some lamplight cheer at night, enough to eat, and quiet and serenity for study - and all the hours spent together were completely satisfying in their measure of glory and every minute of separation became endurable through the prospect of finding each other again.

Elsje had the child-like power of enjoyment, that in a trifle - an opening flower, a new piece of furniture, an ornament or decoration, a song, a few fine lines of poetry - can find gratification and delight for hours and days. She had the pure taste that, above all, fears overloading and over-excitement, and takes pleasure only in what is simple and what is truly enjoyed.

How little I would have needed to make her life a constant joy. But even that little I was not able to give. The poverty from which I had wished to teach men to escape, the poverty falsely, proclaimed as Jesus' friend and the bride of the devout, - in truth Christ's fiercest enemy and a horror and terror to every truly devout man - this poverty slunk into my house and with a grim laugh of scorn revenged herself upon me who had dared a.s.sail her sacredness and sublimity. And she struck the most beautiful and the dearest that life had offered me, she menaced my greatest treasure, won but so shortly and at such great sacrifice.

It seemed as though Elsje's dauntless efforts to prepare a comforting home for me, her unfailing patience and brave cheerfulness consumed her physical being all the more. I saw the battle that she was waging, and it tortured me with a thousand variations of pain. Her keeping up when she was well-nigh powerless with exhaustion. Her increased tenderness when she saw me yield under the heavy pressure of care, whereby I noticed that she felt herself responsible for my suffering, as it was for her sake that I had given up my life of prosperity.

Then at the time of our greatest troubles, came that which Elsje had expected and longed for as the highest blessing - maternity.

I too had desired the child and had longed for it with fervent tenderness, picturing to myself how I could now bestow all the interest and fatherly devotion without self-constraint, from natural instinct, from overpowering love. How I should love this child and delight in the sight of its development day by day. Recalling with bitter sorrow how vaguely and distantly the lovely blossoming of Lucia's children had pa.s.sed by me, because I had not partic.i.p.ated with my entire being in their growth and their development, I now hoped after all to be father in the full sense of the word, and with clear perception and unabating interest to delight in this lovely miracle. Surely no child before it had yet breathed the air, has ever been an fervently loved, as tenderly discussed, as devoutly looked forward to as this.

But a dark foreboding dwelt in me with relentless certainty. I knew that calamity threatened, my dreams betokened it and it became daily clearer what form this calamity would take. The glad promise had a diabolically mocking sound, the subtle perceptive faculty of my insensible being felt the falseness of the sweet announcement. Toward Elsje as she tranquilly sat by my side sewing at tiny garments and absorbed in the sweet prospect of her child, toward Elsje I could feign hopefulness and enter into her sweet phantasies - but myself I could not deceive. I knew that a picture of happiness was teasingly held out to me that my eyes would never behold. I knew that the genuineness of my conviction, the strength of my faith, would be submitted to the severest test, to the keenest torture.

Then too, through Elsje's peculiar condition, which makes certain spiritual longings speak so loudly, it became clear to me what she had so carefully hidden from me.

She always questioned me about my dreams what and whom I had seen, where I had been. And once the words escaped her:

"Oh, I wish that I could dream like you!"

"Why, Elsje? What would you do?"

"I should try to go to Holland," she said softly.

Then I understood her. It was homesickness that had taken hold upon her.

"Do you long to be back in Holland?"

She nodded mutely, but immediately added in a livelier tone:

"But I don't want you to mind that, my dear husband, as long as you consider your work here is not yet accomplished. I am patient and can very well wait a while. But there is a possibility after all, isn't there, - when our child is a little bigger - that we go back to live in Holland?"

"If my endeavors meet with no better success than they have so far, Elsje, we can just as well live in Holland."

Then no longer restraining herself, she said:

"I should have thought it so lovely if my baby had been born in Holland, amid the green pastures in a bright pretty little Dutch house, under the lovely Dutch clouds, near our sea. And then I could already early have shown him all the beautiful things that we have only in Holland - our quaint little town, and the paintings in the museum, and the peasant houses, and the dunes. Here everything is so big, so hard, and so ugly -"

I promised to remain here no longer than I considered strictly necessary. But I knew that her wish could not be fulfilled. Even had I had the money, she would not have had the strength at the time to take the trip. But her mind was constantly occupied with Holland and her child in Dutch environment. And her growing aversion to the food in the strange country, her desire for the diet of the land where she had been brought up, wrought fatally upon her system.

One day when I had again returned home discouraged after a useless attempt to induce a learned society to apply and test its sociological and biological knowledge in a practical direction, she said:

"Dearest husband, is it stupid of me to think that Jesus who has drawn and led you hither, could now so easily also move others to listen to you, and to translate your thoughts into deeds?"

"No, Elsje. For if I a.s.sume that Christ has influenced me in particular, for his purpose, then I can also think that he influences others for that purpose. But yet such a thought seems like superst.i.tion. That is to say like the regarding of things divine in a human way. Yes, if Christ went to work as a man, then we might be surprised that he did not act as we should.

"But though he is a thinking, feeling being, that loves us, still he acts toward us individuals with the exalted greatness and seeming ruthlessness of a natural force, of a divine power. He can love us and know us, better than we know the cells of our own body, and yet take no account of our little worries, because he knows how insignificant they are. And he always acts through great, universal things, instincts and impulses, that must serve for all, but under which the individual must often suffer. His laws are good, good for us all, but not perfect, any more than human laws. Cannot all impulses degenerate? Are not all our tendencies full of danger? Is not our body full of defects? Must we not help and improve continuously? And nevertheless is not everything again compiled with an ingenuity incomprehensible to us? Think what it means to heal a slight wound or, a thousand times more wonderful still, to give birth to a new human being!"

"But new plants and animals are born too, and the construction of a plant or an animal is just as ingenious. Is that all the work of Jesus?

Let me say Jesus instead of Christ, I love that name better."

"Yes, there is perhaps something more intimate in this name. When in my dream I asked my father about Christ, he pointed out to me the beautiful markings on the wings of a b.u.t.terfly. And with this in mind I began to suspect what Jesus is. It is really so simple, so perfectly obvious. One or the other: either this b.u.t.terfly decoration originated accidentally, or it was made with intention, feeling and thoughtful consideration. For centuries G.o.d, the Supreme Omnipotence, has been held responsible for it. And when the scholars finally could no longer believe in so many contradictions and so many imperfections in an almighty, perfect Being, then they tried their best to prove that the beautiful markings of the b.u.t.terfly had originated quite accidentally; which is even more foolish than to think that an etching by Rembrandt or a statue by Phidias is an accidental formation. And absolutely to prove the contrary is impossible. One can merely speak of extreme improbability. But I know nothing more improbable than this - that a b.u.t.terfly, a flower or a human being should be the accidental product of blind forces, supposing that one may speak of blind or unconscious forces. That the sun and the stars revolve around the earth, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics are accidental scratches on the granite - all this is even a great deal less improbable. But then they must also be living, thinking, feeling and reasoning beings that have created b.u.t.terfly, flower and man and are still constantly creating and changing them, with infinite skill, with incomprehensible ingenuity, but nevertheless with ever-recurring imperfection. And probably beings who are by no means always in harmony with one another, that fight and struggle among them, supplanting and replacing one another, whose desires, endeavors, joys and sorrows are far beyond the comprehension of insignificant individuals as we - but whose expressions of life we nevertheless clearly discern as separate ent.i.ties, as races and species struggling side by side, sometimes with, sometimes sharply opposite to one another. The being that has created us, whose spirit, mind, will and sensibility binds us together, as does our body its cells, into one great unity, outwardly imperceptible, but perfectly evident to our inner sensibility, is the Spirit of Humanity, the Primal Reason, the Genitive Soul of Mankind - Christ."

"Thus every species of animal and plant then must have its Jesus?"

"Certainly, every species must have its genitive Soul, - and every cell in every individual has its own. How these ent.i.ties are connected and how they are separated from one another - that the biologists will learn gradually. They are scarcely at the beginning of their knowledge."

"But G.o.d the Supreme Omnipotence nevertheless just calmly tolerates all this struggle, this suffering and this imperfection."

"Certainly - for it is."

"Why? Wherefore? Isn't that just as unsatisfactory?"