Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 27

The old sceptic laughed: "A wonder thou art not subscribing to uplift the Third Temple," he cried. "So they call this new synagogue they are building in Amsterdam with such to-do."

"Indeed? I had not heard of it. If I could hope it were indeed the Third Temple," and a mystic light shone in his eyes, "I would subscribe all I had."

"Thou art the only Christian I have ever known!" said van den Ende, half mockingly, half tenderly. "And thou art a Jew."

"So was Christ."

"True, one forgets that. But the roles are becoming nicely reversed.

Thou forgivest thine enemies, and in Amsterdam 'tis the Jews who are going to the Christians to borrow money for this synagogue of theirs!"

"How is the young _juffrouw_?" asked Spinoza at last.

"Klaartje! She blooms like a Jan de Heem flowerpiece. This rude air has made a rose of my lily. Her cheeks might have convinced the imbeciles who took away their practice from poor old Dr. Harvey. One can _see_ her blood circulating. By the way, thy old crony, Dr. Ludwig Meyer, bade me give thee his love."

"Dost think she will remember me?"

"Remember thee, Benedict? Did she not send me to thee to-day? Thy name is ever on those rosy lips of hers--to lash dull pupils withal. How thou didst acquire half the tongues of Europe in less time that they master t?pt?." Spinoza allowed his standing desire to cough to find satisfaction. He turned his head aside and held his hand before his mouth. "We quarrel about thy _Tractatus_--she and I--for of course she recognized thine olden argumentations just as I recognized my tricks of style."

"She reads me then?"

"As a Lutheran his Bible. 'Twas partially her hope of thres.h.i.+ng out certain difficulties with thee that decided us on Scheveningen. I do not say that the forest which poor Paul Potter painted was not a rival attraction."

A joy beyond the bounds of Reason was swelling the philosopher's breast. Unconsciously his step quickened. He encouraged his companion to chatter more about his daughter, how van Ter Borch had made of her one of his masterpieces in white satin, how she herself dabbled daintily in all the fine arts, but the old man diverged irrevocably into politics, breathed fire and fury against the French, spoke of his near visit to Paris on a diplomatic errand, and, growing more confidential, hinted of a great scheme, an insurrection in Normandy, Admiral Tromp to swoop down on Quillebuf, a Platonic republic to be reared on the ruins of the French monarchy. Had Spinoza seen the shadow of a shameful death hovering over the spirited veteran, had he foreknown that the poor old gentleman--tool of two desperate _roues_ and a _femme galante_,--was to be executed in Paris for this very conspiracy, the words that sounded so tediously in his ear would have taken on a tragic dignity.

They approached the village, whose huts loomed solemnly between the woods and the dunes in the softening twilight. The van den Endes were lodged with the captain of a fis.h.i.+ng-smack in a long, narrow wooden house with sloping mossy tiles and small-paned windows. The old man threw open the door of the little sh.e.l.l-decorated parlor and peered in. "Klaartje!" his voice rang out. A parrot from the Brazils screamed, but Spinoza only heard the soft "Yes, father," that came sweetly from some upper region.

"Guess whom I've brought thee?"

"Benedict!" She flew down, a vision of loveliness and s.h.i.+mmering silk and white pearls. Spinoza's hand trembled in hers that gleamed snowily from the ruffled half-sleeve; the soft warmth burnt away philosophy.

They exchanged the commonplaces of the situation.

"But where is Kerkkrinck?" said the doctor.

"At his toilette." She exchanged a half-smile with Spinoza, who thrilled deliciously.

"Then I'll go make mine," cried her father. "We sup in half an hour, Benedict. Thou'lt stay, we go to-morrow. 'Tis the last supper." And, laughing as if he had achieved a blasphemy, and unconscious of the shadow of doom, the gay old freethinker disappeared.

As Klaartje spoke of his book with sparkling eyes, and discussed points in a low, musical voice, something crude and elemental flamed in the philosopher, something called to him to fuse himself with the universal life more tangibly than through the intellect. His doubts and vacillations fled: he must speak now, or the hour and the mood would never recur. If he could only drag the conversation from the philosophical. By a side door it escaped of itself into the personal; her father did not care to take her with him to Paris, spoke of possible dangers, and hinted it was time she was off his hands. There seemed a confession trembling in her laughing eye. It gave him courage to seize her fingers, to falter a request that she would come to _him_--to Heidelberg! The brightness died suddenly out of her face: it looked drawn and white.

After a palpitating silence she said, "But thou art a Jew!"

He was taken aback, he let her fingers drop. From his parched throat came the words, "But thou art--no Christian."

"I know--but nevertheless--oh, I never dreamed of anything of this with thee--'twas all of the brain, the soul."

"Soul and body are but one fact."

"Women are not philosophers. I--" She stopped. Her fingers played nervously with the pearl necklace that rose and fell on her bosom. He found himself noting its details, wondering that she had developed such extravagant tastes. Then, awaking to her distress, he said quietly, "Then there is no hope for me?"

Her face retained its look of pain.

"Not ever? You could never--?" His cough shook him.

"If there had been no other," she murmured, and her eyes drooped half-apologetically towards the necklace.

The bitterness of death was in his soul. He had a sudden ironic sense of a gap in his mathematical philosophy. He had fathomed the secret of Being, had a.n.a.lyzed and unified all things from everlasting to everlasting, yet here was an isolated force--a woman's will--that stood obstinately between him and happiness. He seemed to visualize it, behind her serious face, perversely mocking.

The handle of the door turned, and a young man came in. He was in the pink of fas.h.i.+on--a mantle of Venetian silk disposed in graceful folds about his handsome person, his neckcloth of Flanders lace, his knee-breeches of satin, his shoes gold-buckled, his dagger jewelled.

Energy flashed from his eye, vigor radiated from his every movement.

"Ah, Diedrich!" she cried, as her face lit up with more than relief.

"Here is Heer Spinoza at last. This is Heer Kerkkrinck!"

"Spinoza!" A thrill of awe was in the young man's voice, the reverence of the consciously stupid for the great brains of the earth. He did not take Spinoza's outstretched hand in his but put it to his lips.

The lonely thinker and the happy lover stood thus for an instant, envying and admiring each other. Then Spinoza said cordially, "And now that I have had the pleasure of meeting Heer Kerkkrinck I must hurry back to town ere the road grows too dark."

"But father expects thee to sup with us," murmured Klaartje.

"'Tis a moonless night, and footpads may mistake me for a Jew." He smiled. "Make my apologies to the doctor."

It was indeed a moonless night, but he did not make for the highroad.

Instinctively he turned seawards.

A slight mist brooded over the face of all things, adding to the night, blurring the village to a few gleams of fire. On the broad sandy beach he could just see the outlines of the boats and the fis.h.i.+ng-nets. He leaned against the gunwale of a _pink_, inhaling the scents of tar and brine, and watching the apparent movement seawards of some dark sailing-vessel which, despite the great red anchor at his feet, seemed to sail outwards as each wave came in.

The sea stretched away, soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black wall of cloud seemed to rise sheer from the water and join the gray sky that arched over the great flat s.p.a.ces. And in the absence of stars, the earth itself seemed to gain in vastness and mystery, its own awfulness, as it sped round, unlessened by those endless perspectives of vaster planets. And from the soundless night and sea and sky, and from those austere and solemn stretches of sand and forest, wherein forms and colors were lost in a brooding unity, there came to Spinoza a fresh uplifting sense of the infinite, timeless Substance, to love and wors.h.i.+p which was exaltation and ecstasy. The lonely thinker communed with the lonely Being.

"Though He slay me," his heart whispered, "yet will I trust in Him."

Yea, though the wheels of things had pa.s.sed over his body, it was still his to rejoice in the eternal movement that brought happiness to others.

Others! How full the world was of existences, each perfect after its kind, the laws of G.o.d's nature freely producing every conception of His infinite intellect. In man alone how many genera, species, individuals--from saints to criminals, from old philosophers to gallant young livers, all to be understood, none to be hated. And man but a fraction of the life of one little globe, that turned not on man's axis, nor moved wholly to man's ends. This sea that stretched away unheaving was not sublimely dead--even to the vulgar apprehension--but penetrated with quivering sensibility, the exquisite fresh feeling of fishes darting and gliding, tingling with life in fin and tail, chasing and chased, zestfully eating or swiftly eaten: in the air the ecstasy of flight, on the earth the happy movements of animals, the very dust palpitating pleasurably with crawling and creeping populations, the soil riddled with the sluggish voluptuousness of worms; each tiniest creature a perfect expression of the idea of its essence, individualized by its conatus, its effort to persist in existence on its own lines, though in man alone the potentiality of entering through selfless Reason into the intellectual ecstasy of the love with which G.o.d loves Himself--to be glad of the strength of the lion and the grace of the gazelle and the beauty of the woman who belongs to another. Blessings on the happy lovers, blessings on all the wonderful creation, praise, praise to the Eternal Being whose modes body forth the everlasting pageant.

Beginningless aeons before his birth It had been--the great pageant to whose essence Being belonged--endless aeons after his ephemeral pa.s.sing It would still throb and glow, still offer to the surrendered human soul the supreme uplift. He had but a moment to contemplate It, yet to understand Its essence, to know the great laws of Its workings, to see It _sub specie aeternitatis_, was to partake of Its eternity. There was no need to journey either in s.p.a.ce or time to discover Its movement, everywhere the same, as perfect in the remotest past as in the farthest future, by no means working--as the vulgar imagined--to a prospective perfection; everywhere educed from the same enduring necessities of the divine freedom. Progress! As illusory as the movement of yon little vessel that, anch.o.r.ed stably, seemed always sailing out towards the horizon.

And so in that trance of adoration, in that sacred Glory, in that rapturous consciousness that he had fought his last fight with the enslaving affects, there formed themselves in his soul--white heat at one with white light--the last sentences of his great work:--

"We see, then, what is the strength of the wise man, and by how much he surpa.s.ses the ignorant who is driven forward by l.u.s.t alone. For the ignorant man is not only agitated by eternal causes in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were, both of G.o.d and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be. On the other hand, the wise man is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but being conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of G.o.d, and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of soul. If the way which leads. .h.i.ther seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult since it is so seldom discovered: for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered without great labor, how could it be possible that it should be neglected almost by everybody? But all n.o.ble things are as difficult as they are rare."

So ran the words that were not to die.

Suddenly a halo on the upper edge of the black cloud heralded the struggling through of the moon: she shot out a crescent, reddish in the mist, then labored into her full orb, wellnigh golden as the sun.

Spinoza started from his reverie: his doublet was wet with dew, he felt the mist in his throat. He coughed: then it was as if the salt of the air had got into his mouth, and as he spat out the blood, he knew he would not remain long sundered from the Eternal Unity.

But there is nothing on which a free man will meditate less than on death. Desirous to write down what was in his mind, Spinoza turned from the sea and pursued his peaceful path homewards.