Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 49

He laughed. "Is it the same in love?"

Her eyes gleamed archly.

"Yes. Hitherto, at least, a single man has never sufficed. With only one I had time to see all his faults, and since my first love, a Russian officer, I would always have preferred to keep three knives dancing in the air. But as that was impossible, I generally halved my loaf."

The mountains rang with his laughter.

"Well. I haven't lived a saint, and I can't expect my wife to bring more than I."

"You bring too much. You bring that Countess."

"My dear Helene," he said, struck serious. "I am entirely free in regard to the Countess, as she is long since as regards me. Of course she will, at the first shock, feel opposed to my marriage with a distinguished young girl on the same intellectual level as herself.

That is human, feminine, natural. But when she knows you she will adore you, and you will repay her in kind, since she is my second mother. You do not understand her. The dear Countess desires no other happiness than to see me happy."

"And therefore," said Helene cynically, "she will warn you to beware.

She will hunt up all my offences against holy German morals--"

"I don't care what she hunts up. All I ask is, be a monotheist henceforwards."

"Now you are asking _me_ to become a Jewess."

"I ask you only to become my wife."

He caught her hands pa.s.sionately. His eyes seemed to drink her in. She fluttered, enjoying her bird-like helplessness.

"Turn your eyes away, my royal eagle!"

"You are mine! you are mine!" he cried.

"I am my father's--I am Janko's," she panted.

"They are shadows. Listen to yourself. Be true to yourself."

"I have no self. It seems so selfish to have one. I am anything--a fay, a sprite, an elf." She freed her hands with a sudden twist and ran laughing up the mountain.

"To the sunrise!" she cried. "To the sunrise!"

He gave chase: "To the sunrise! To the symbol!"

X

But the next morning the symbolic sunrise they rose to see was hidden by fog and rain.

And--what was still more disappointing to La.s.salle--Mrs. Arson insisted on escaping with her charges from this depressing climate and re-descending to Wabern, the village near Berne, where they had been staying.

Not even La.s.salle's fascinations and persuasions could counteract the pertinacious plash-plash of-the rain, and the chilling mist, and perhaps the uneasy p.r.i.c.ks of her awakening chaperon-conscience. Nor could he extract a decisive "Yes" from his fluttering volatile enchantress. At Kaltbad, where they said farewell, he pressed her hands with pa.s.sion. "For a little while! Be prudent and strong! You have the goodness of a child--and a child's will. Oh, if I could pour into these blue veins"--he kissed them fiercely--"only one drop of my giant's will, of my t.i.tanic energy. Grip my hands; perhaps I can do it by magnetism. I will to join our lives. You must will too. Then there are no difficulties. Only say 'Yes'--but definitely, unambiguously, of your own free will--and I answer for the rest."

The thought of Janko resurged painfully when his giant's will was left behind on the heights. How ill she would be using him--her pretty delicate boy!

The giant's will left behind her? Never had Helene been more mistaken.

The very reverse! It went before her all day like a pillar of fire. At the first stopping-place a letter already awaited her, brought by a swift courier; lower down a telegram; as she got off her horse another letter; at her hotel two copious telegrams; as she stepped on board the lake steamer a final letter--all breathing pa.s.sion, encouragement, solicitous instructions to wrap up well.

Wrap up well! He wrapped one up in himself!

Half fascinated, half panting for free air, but wholly flattered and enamoured, she wrote at once to break off with Janko and surrender to her Satanic Ferdinand.

"Yes, friend Satan, the child _wills_! A drop of your diabolical blood has pa.s.sed into her veins. I am yours for life. But first try reasonable means. Make my parents' acquaintance, cover up your horns and tail, try and win me like a bourgeois. If that fails, there is always Egypt. But quick, quick: I cannot bear scenes and delays and comments. Once we are married, let society stare. With you to lean on I snap my fingers at the world. The obstacles are gigantic, but you are also a giant, who with G.o.d's help smashes rocks to sand, that even my breath can blow away. I must stab the beautiful dream of a n.o.ble youth, but even this--frightfully painful for me as it is--I do for you. I say nothing of the disappointment to my parents, of the pain of all I love and respect. I am writing to Holthoff, my father-confessor.

We must have him for us, with us, near us. G.o.d has destined us for each other."

A telegram replied: "Bravissimo! I am on my way to join you."

And to the Countess, fighting rheumatism at the waters of Wildbad in the Black Forest, he wrote: "The rain has pa.s.sed, the long fog has gone. The mountains stand out mighty and dazzling, peak beyond peak, like the heights of a life. What a sunset! The Eiger seemed wrapped in a vapor of burning gold. My sufferings are nearly all wiped out. I am joyous, full of life and love. And I have also finished at last with that terrible correspondence for the Union. Seventy-six pages of minute writing have I sent to Berlin yesterday and to-day, and I breathe again. In my yesterday's letter I broke Helene to you. It is extraordinarily fortunate that on the verge of forty I should be able to find a wife so beautiful, so sympathetic, who loves me so much, and who, as you and I agreed was indispensable, is entirely absorbed in my personality. In your last letter you throw cold water on my proposed journey to Hamburg; and perhaps you are right in thinking the coup I planned not so great and critical as I have been imagining. But how you misunderstand my motives when you write: 'Cannot you, till your health is re-established, find contentment for a while in science, in friends.h.i.+p, in Nature?' You think politics the breath of my nostrils.

Ah, how little you are _au fait_ with me! I desire nothing more ardently than to be quite rid of all politics, and to devote myself to science, friends.h.i.+p, and Nature. I am sick and tired of politics.

Truly I would burn as pa.s.sionately for them as any one, if there were anything serious to be done, or if I had the power or saw the means, a means worthy of me; for without supreme power nothing can be done. For child's play, however, I am too old and too great. That is why I very reluctantly undertook the Presidents.h.i.+p. I only yielded to you, and that is why it now weighs upon me terribly. If I were but rid of it, this were the moment I should choose to go to Naples with you. But how to get rid of it? For events, I fear, will develop slowly, so slowly, and my burning soul finds no interest in these children's maladies and petty progressions. Politics means actual, immediate activity.

Otherwise one can work just as well for humanity by writing. I shall still try to exercise at Hamburg a pressure upon events. But up to what point it will be effective I cannot say. Nor do I promise myself much from it. Ah, could I but get out of it!

"Helene is a wonderful creature, the only personality I could wed. She looks forward to your friends.h.i.+p. I know it. For I am a good observer of women without seeming to be. That dear _enfant du diable_, as everybody calls her at Geneva, has a deep sympathy for you, because she is, as Goethe puts it, an original nature. Only one fault--but gigantic. She has no Will. But if we became husband and wife, that would cease to be a fault. I have enough Will for two, and she would be the flute in the hands of the artist. But till then--"

The Countess showed herself a kind Ca.s.sandra. His haste, she replied, would ruin his cause. He had to deal with Philistines. The father was a man of no small self-esteem--he had been the honored tutor of Maximilian II., and was now in high favor at the Bavarian court, even controlling university and artistic appointments. A Socialist would be especially distasteful to him. Twenty years ago Varnhagen von Ense had heard him lecture on Communism--good-humoredly, wittily, shrugging shoulders at these poor, fantastic fools who didn't understand that the world was excellently arranged centuries before they were born.

Helene herself, with her weak will, would be unable to outface her family. Before approaching the parents, had he not better wait the final developments of his law-case? If he had to leave Germany temporarily to escape the imprisonment, would not that be a favorable opportunity for prosecuting his love-affairs in Switzerland? And what a pity to throw up his milk-cure! "_Enfin_, I wish you success, _mon cher enfant_, though I will only put complete trust in my own eyes. In feminine questions you have neither reason nor judgment."

La.s.salle's response was to enclose a pretty letter from Helene, pleading humbly for the Countess's affection. Together let them nurse the sick eagle. She herself was but a child, and would lend herself to any childish follies to drive the clouds from his brow. She would try to comprehend his magnificent soul, his giant mind, and in happiness or in sorrow would remain faithful and firm at his side.

The Countess knit her brow. Then La.s.salle was already with this Helena in Berne.

XI

It was a week of delicious happiness, niched amid the eternal mountains, fused with skies and waters.

With an accommodating chaperon who knew no German, the couple could do and say what they pleased. La.s.salle, throwing off the heavy burdens of prophet and politician, alternated between brilliant lover and happy-hearted boy. It was almost a honeymoon. Now they were children with all the overflowing endearments of plighted lovers. Now they were on the heights of intellect, talking poetry and philosophy, and reading La.s.salle's works; now they were discussing Balzac's _Physiologie du Mariage_. Anon La.s.salle was a large dog, gambolling before his capricious mistress. "Lie down, sir," she cried once, as he was reading a poem to her. And with peals of Homeric laughter Ferdinand declared she had found the only inoffensive way of silencing him. "If ever I displease you in future, you have only to say, 'Lie down, sir!'" And he began barking joyously.

And in the glow of this happiness his sense of political defeat evaporated. He burgeoned, expanded, flung back his head in the old, imperial way. "By G.o.d!" he said, marching up and down the room feverishly, "you have chosen no mean destiny. Have you any idea of what Ferdinand La.s.salle's wife will be? Look at me!" He stood still.

"Do I look a man to be content with the second role in the State? Do you think I give the sleep of my nights, the marrow of my bones, the strength of my lungs, to draw somebody else's chestnuts out of the fire? Do I look like a political martyr? No! I wish to act, to fight, and also to enjoy the crown of victory, to place it on your brow."

A vision of the roaring streets and floral arches of the Rhenish cities flashed past him. "Chief of the People, President of the German Republic,--there's the only true sovereignty. That was what kings were once--giants of brain and brawn. King--one who knows, one who can!

Heads.h.i.+p is for the head. What is this mock dignity that stands on the lying breaths of winking courtiers? What is this farcical, fact.i.tious glamour that will not bear the light of day? The Grace of G.o.d? Ay, give me G.o.d-like manhood, and I will bend the knee. But to ask me to wors.h.i.+p a stuffed purple robe on a worm-eaten throne! 'Tis an insult to manhood and reason. Hereditary kings.h.i.+p! When you can breed souls as you breed racehorses it will be time to consider that. Stand here by my side before this mirror. Is not that a proud, a royal couple?

Did not Nature fas.h.i.+on these two creatures in a holiday mood of joy and intoxication? _Vive la Republique_ and its Queen with the golden locks!"

"_Vive la Republique_ and its eagle King!" she cried, intoxicated, yet with more of dramatic enjoyment than of serious conviction.

"Bravo! You believe in our star! Since I met you I see it s.h.i.+ning clearer over the heights. We mount, we mount, peak beyond peak. We have enemies enough now, thick as the serpents in tropic forests.

Well, let them soil with their impure slaver the hem of our garments.

But how they will crawl fangless when Ferdinand--the Elect of the People--makes his solemn entry into Berlin. And at his side, drawn by six white horses, his blonde darling, changed into the first woman of Germany." He, too, though to him the fancy was real enough for the moment, enjoyed it with a certain artistic aloofness.

XII