Chapter 15

I asked directly for the hotel keeper. At my first visit he had not made his appearance. From the out-house, after a long wait, a big lazy Dutch man came shuffling on in a very slovenly and ill-fitting gray suit, a black silk cap, a soiled shirt in place of the missing collar and tie, an open vest full of cigar ashes, a cigar in a paper holder in his mouth, and worn, flowered, green slippers on his feet. When after some little conflict with myself I finally looked into his face, I saw a flushed, full-moon countenance, clean-shaven except for a drooping moustache under a small crooked nose - and in this face one sleepy eye; the other had perhaps once been there, but now was lost.

"Are you Mynheer Van Vianen?" I asked in Dutch, which at the time I still spoke with a pronounced Italian accent.

"No!" said the offensive father, without taking the cigar from his mouth.

"But you are the hotel-keeper at any rate?" I asked in a disagreeable state of uncertainty.

"Yes," came the answer just as curtly, as though he wanted to say, "Are you through soon now? Then we'll go to sleep again."

"But are you not then the father of Juffrouw Van Vianen, who lives in this house?"

"No!" said the man. "She has no father. She's a foundling."

I could have embraced the unsightly boor. His indelicate communication seemed to me the happiest compliment and the gladdest tidings that I could have expected from him. He could not know that his brutal rudeness, which he in Dutch fashion seemed to take for lusty candor, something like "I won't be bothered talking around the subject" - that this rudeness was for me a blessing. The advantage of not being descended from him he would indeed hardly be able to appreciate. I breathed more freely; it was one of the loveliest moments of this lovely day. The word "foundling" was for me like an opening blind in a dark chamber of boorishness and provincialism, suddenly revealing a vista of distant, mistily romantic perspectives. To be sure I had comforted myself with the thought that the race can, at any time and anywhere, bring forth geniuses through atavism; thus also in the family of a Dutch provincial hotel-keeper, a womanly genius of noble grace, charm and distinction; but this was after all much sweeter solace. With a foundling one could presuppose noble ancestors of any nationality. I too now found it unnecessary to talk longer around the subject.

"Then would you kindly tell Juffrouw Van Vianen that there is someone who urgently desires to speak to her?"

The cigar now fell from the gaping mouth and the solitary eye also opened perceptibly wider like that of a hippopotamus emerging from the water. I was scrutinized a while.

"Urgently?" he growled, as though such a thing were most improbable and also improper.

"Yes, urgently."

"Hm!" said the Dutchman. He stuck the paper mouth-piece with the cigar back into his mouth and shuffled back on his slippers to the out-house, the while a remarkable stirring seemed to be going on in the brains underneath the black cap.

A moment later Elsje came. This time she blushed deeply when she saw me, although there was now really less reason for it than last time. But I knew it was joy, for I also saw her eyes sparkling.

"Oh, is it you!" she said with restrained surprise. "Did you wish to speak with me?"

"If it is convenient to you, Juffrouw Van Vianen?"

"Just step into the upper room. Didn't your French friend come with you?"

"I crossed the sea alone. The other gentleman is a Hungarian, and not a particular friend of mine either."

"Oh, good!" said Elsje, leaving me in sweet doubts as to what she found good.

We went into the upper room. I can remember a red table cover, cane chairs, a crocheted cover over a tea-set, horrible steel engravings on the walls. Everything lovely and adorable - what would I not give to see it once more! But "de Toelast" has long since been rebuilt.

I felt somewhat embarrassed, yet not oppressed. I refreshed myself by gazing quietly into her soft, bright eyes. I could see only the eyes clearly. Whether the face was pretty or homely I could not judge. It was too intimate, too beloved, too much a part of me.

"Did I guess rightly that you stood watching on the pier out in the rain only on our account last Sunday?"

She nodded gravely. "Yes! I was afraid that you would be drowned. It has indeed happened quite frequently that little yachts were sunk with that wind blowing. And there was no way of saving them."

"Yes, we came off well. But how did you know that we were coming?"

"Well, I saw the people looking out from the quay and I realized that there was a boat in peril."

"But would you have done it for any other boat too?"

Then she remained silent and looked at me long. I thought I saw a mist gathering in her eyes. Her answer sounded timid, as though she dared not say it or feared to be laughed at.

"I was uneasy all morning. The night before too. I have never felt so strangely anxious. Only when I saw your face did I become tranquil."

"Then did you know my face? Had you dreamt of me?"

She shook her head. "Not that I know of. But yet I cannot say that your face is strange to me. I have surely seen it before this." Then as though to herself she whispered: "Where I do not know."

"You knew the Hungarian, didn't you? He seemed to know you."

Elsie laughed, the short clear laugh that has later so often made me happy.

"Oh, he! - yes, he has been here before. He surely hadn't much good to say of me."

"Quite the contrary!" said I. "He paid you a great compliment. He said that you were unapproachable."

Elsje laughed still louder.

"How conceited these foreigners are. Especially these dark foreigners who speak French. If you just treat them with ordinary civility they think they can allow themselves anything. I cannot be careful enough with these persons."

That was meant for me, I thought. I made a little bow and said:

"I thank you for your warning. I shall try my best not to foster any illusions and to give you no cause for exercising caution."

She became so embarrassed that I regretted my words.

"Oh, you!" she said with charming emphasis and naive candor: "I really didn't mean you! - with you I don't have to be careful - I saw that directly."

"Who knows, Juffrouw Elsie! for I am one of those dark foreigners too, and my Dutch is not yet quite irreproachable."

"You are no stranger to me," she said again, softly and earnestly.

I believe that we said nothing for a long time then, and gazed at each other without finding it in the least embarrassing or oppressing.

We both felt as though the responsibility of our situation did not rest with us, but with One who probably knew best in everything and in whose keeping we were safe.

At last she got up, saying: "You surely want your room put to rights again. It has not been used since you were here last and I saved your bed linen."

"Did you know then that I would come back?"

"I thought you would."

"Did you hope so?"

"Yes!" she said artlessly.

This was so totally different from what other women I had known would have replied, that it made me feel confused. I had no conception or experience of woman's love that can dispense with playful dissembling, and so thought that I was mistaken after all. I began to consider that I was already quite an old man and she apparently about twenty years younger. Perhaps I resembled some one she had formerly known; perhaps she took me for her unknown father or sought in me a substitute for her unengaging supporter. I prepared myself for all this, firmly determined not to disappoint her.

"Will you do me the favor of being my guide about the city this afternoon? It looks like such a pretty and attractive little town to me."

"I?" she asked with evident pleasure. "I'll be very glad to. But first you must eat something."

"Will your ... stepfather have no objections?

Elsje smiled surprised and a bit scornfully.

"Who? - Jan Baars? - Why no! that makes no difference to him. He has no authority over me either."

How thankful these proud words made me. Hastily leaving the room she said:

"I'll see that you get something to eat quickly. Then while you're eating I'll get dressed and at three o'clock I'll go out with you."

And I remained behind, blithe as an angel and full of expectancy as a child on his birthday.

When we went out she had dressed, and it was astonishing to see with what simple means she achieved an appearance of tasteful distinction. A round straw hat, a white standing collar, a well-tailored light gray suit, a lavender silk tie - and she was a lady among the boorish and bourgeois women of her town. For on the point of dress the artistic Hollanders, as soon as they discard their quaint old national costume, are probably the most tasteless people in the world, and of these the women of a North Dutch provincial town are probably even the very worst dressed.

As we walked along the hot quiet streets we saw the residents peeping at us through their wire window screens with amazed, well-nigh angry glances.

"Do you see how we are being stared at?" said Elsje. "That will give them something to talk about for a whole week again."

"And don't you mind that, Juffrouw Elsje?"

"Why, no!" said Elsje, with a pretty expression of power and personal dignity: "I have taught them that I do exactly what I myself think right. Now there isn't one left who dares accost me about it. It does them no good, anyway. And what they say to each other I do not hear, nor am I anxious to find out."

We went to the museum. It was silent, cool and deserted there. The door-keeper sat nodding in his corner. Amid the relics of that old, stout, merry people that, a few centuries ago, strove to surround their earthly life with beauty and comfort here, amid the prints and paintings of the graceful, gorgeous, flag-bedecked vessels; the portraits of magistrates, charmingly elegant and autocratic, the muskets and cuirasses and lances, the medals and placards, the rare bibelots and the fine porcelain from the East and West brought together in this little sailor's hamlet, we spent a few hours of profound intimate happiness.

Elsje knew very little, but she was quick to understand, and she listened to my explanations with such eager desire for learning, with such rapt attention, with such unlimited faith in my knowledge, that it made me feel confused and I begged her not to take me for an oracle - for though I had indeed read much and seen a good deal of the world, yet I was by no means a scholar such as is demanded in our days.

"Ah! I live in such a small narrow circle here. To me you are the great, vast world," said Elsje with a charming deference.

When the daylight faded and it grew cooler, we wandered out through the old, dark gateway up across the thickly wooded dike into the open green fields, where we watched the sun setting in flame-colored majesty. We walked to what is now my nursery, and I drew her attention to the marvellous flight of the gulls soaring motionless against the wind, to the colors of the sea and of the heavens, to the brightly-sparkling Venus glittering greenish white against the rose-colored background of the sky, and I told her all I knew.

Then I came back to our conversation of the morning.

"Have you often such forebodings as when I was approaching in peril on the sea?"

"Yes, always when something important is going to happen to me, good or bad, I know it before. It never fails."

"This time it was good, though, I hope?

"Yes, good," she said, smiling sweetly, "but alarming nevertheless. You must not sail so recklessly again. Boats like your little yacht should be in the harbor with such a wind blowing. Even all the fishing smacks were in and they can stand quite a bit more rough weather."

"I was calm and assured. I knew that I would see you. I had dreamt of you, of your face and of your name."

"Really?" said Elsje, looking straight at me with her frank, innocent eyes.

Before this look my heart melted with tenderness. I felt a desire to kneel down before her and cover her hands with tears and kisses. But I controlled myself, for I reflected that I was an Italian and that it was a Dutch girl I had to deal with, and I did not want to risk my fragile happiness by foolish extravagances. And there was a subtle relish in this sobriety and this respectful self-control. But I wanted to be honest too - my happiness must rest on a firm foundation of uprightness - I wanted to make my position clear.

"Yes, really, Elsje; and yet I had never heard of you, and no one had spoken of you to me. And now, tell me, had you never heard of me either? Do you know anything about me? Do you know my name?"

"I saw your name in the hotel register. Otherwise I knew nothing of you until I saw you."

"Really not? Also not ?"

"What?"

"That I am married and have a good wife and four children?" I burst out, almost roughly in my brave effort to spare myself nothing and to risk the worst.

Elsje without starting gazed at me long, attentively and thoughtfully. What I distinctly discerned in her glance was a questioning doubt and a tender compassion.

"A good wife and four children," she repeated softly, pensively. "I thought that you were probably married. But you are not happy after all, I know it."

"No, I am not happy, Elsje, that is true. Or rather - was not until to-day."

She asked nothing more after that, as though she thought that I would probably myself tell her what I deemed necessary for her to know. But I knew enough, and I also saw that she knew enough and we spoke no more about ourselves that day. We felt as one does in dreams - one understands and communicates without words.

I slept very little that night. With me also, well balanced in mind as I am, sleep grows more elusive with the advancing years. But it is not care, but happiness, that drives it away. I lay all night silent and happy in a bright cloud of joy, thinking of her who now lay peacefully breathing under the same roof. Then toward morning I had a short dream, which by its dark terror gave me a measure for the brightness of my joy. I dreamt that I was back in my office at The Hague and, coming home, I found a letter containing my transference to Japan. My sailing excursions, my little city, Elsje - it had all been a dream and I was again deep in my old, gloomy life, worldly and yet estranged from the world. My anguish was terrible, I cried and sobbed desperately and woke up in that way, my face and my pillow now really wet with tears. And then - the relief, the transition, the glorious realization of the reality of my newly-found happiness, my dawning memory of yesterday's beautiful day, of Elsje's winsome ways and the frank, fervent look in her eyes, her ready sympathy and tender compassion. Only then I really comprehended what had been given me. I was no longer a stranger in the world - life, the sacred human life had won me back. I would not die after all without having been entirely human.

At my solitary breakfast in the upper room, into which the sun was shining, Elsje, amid the pressure of her domestic duties, stopped a moment to greet me. I said that I had no time to sail back, but would go home by train, leaving the yacht anchored in the harbor, to call for it the following Sunday.

"That is well considered," said Elsje, with a roguish little laugh of comprehension.

And at my departure I saw my peaceful, friendly little city, with its venerable old church steeple, stretched out calm and sunny in matinal activity. In front of the ugly, bare little station I turned, and stretching out my hands I blessed the little city with all my heart, murmuring in my glowing, passionate mother tongue:

"Benedetto sia 'l giorno e 'l mese e 'l anno

E la stagione e 'l tempo e 'l ora e 'l punto

E 'l bel paese e 'l loco ov' io fu giunto

Da duo begli occhi, che legato m' hanno."

XXIII

"Dear Lucia, will you hear me a moment? I have something to tell you and would like to have it off my mind before we go to bed."

We had just come home from a court banquet and in our gala dress stood looking over the letters which had arrived that night. Lucia looked up interestedly.

"Come to my room with me then," she said, and then regarding me: "It is surely something good, isn't it? I haven't seen you in such good spirits for a long time."

I followed her silently. When we were seated quietly I realized what a vast abyss yawned between our two worlds and what a foolish undertaking was the endeavor to bridge it. I spoke slowly -

"Yes, it is something good, something very good. But I don't know whether I shall succeed in convincing you of that."

Lucia harkened attentively, and again and again I paused a moment, so as to proceed with careful precision in my endeavors to bring about an understanding.

"So you have noticed that I am in better spirits now, or rather that I am happier than I was. It is so and it proves to you that something good has happened. I was not happy because there was something lacking in my life, something that I can with difficulty explain to you. And now I have found it, and it opens up for me a glorious prospect of peace and rest, of the highest content that any human being can expect. A vast sea, a calm ocean of peace and joy.?"

Lucia waited and listened intently.

"Let me begin by saying that I am profoundly grateful to you for your faithful love, your care for me, for our children, our home. And also this - that my affection from the day of our marriage until to-day has never weakened, but constantly grown deeper. Will you believe me when I tell you this?"

Lucia nodded mutely. But I saw the shadow passing over her pretty, placid countenance and the frown contracting the white, still youthful brow.

"If you have ever loved me and believed in me, I now call upon this love and this faith. Does not love signify to desire the happiness of the loved one and faith to believe that he himself can best know and judge of this happiness??"

"Well?" said Lucia. "Where are you leading to?"

"Would it be possible for you to believe that it detracts nothing from a great affection, nothing, nothing, to have a still greater love complement it? Yes, that the power of a very great love even strengthens and unites in us all other affections. Can you feel something of the truth of:

'True love in this differs from gold and clay

That to divide is not to take away.'"

Lucia bowed her head and stared fixedly at her hands, which she clasped together convulsively. The frown was deeper and a bitter expression settled around her pretty mouth. Then she whispered hoarsely:

"Who is it?"

Now once and for all I saw the hopelessness of my endeavor. But I went on.

"First contemplate generalities, Lucia, and from those judge the particular. Do you know the truth which I indicated? Do you disagree with any one of the general facts that I cited?"

But she followed the train of her thoughts:

"Is it Countess Thorn?"

This was a well-known, mundane beauty who, it was said, had come to live at The Hague on my account.

"What motive have you, Lucia, for being anxious to know the person that gives me so much happiness? You care for me, don't you? What feelings should one cherish toward some one who makes a beloved person happy and does him good beyond measure?"

Lucia laughed, a short, scornful laugh of contempt. She glanced at me swiftly and furtively.

"Come, Vico, make an end now with these miserable sophisms. I always thought that you were better than other men. But I knew that this was hanging over my head just as it threatens every woman. That you disappoint me so now, you, that is terrible enough. But don't make it worse by foolish self-deception of this sort and by childish nonsense, as though I ought to be thankful to her who has destroyed my domestic happiness. That only makes you sink still deeper in my esteem."

Only then I really felt the absolute impossibility of what I had attempted. But I did not regret it and I resolved resolutely to persist. It was essential to the clearing of my life from falsehood at which I had so hopefully begun. I did not answer directly, and she went on.

"I appreciate it, Vico, that you immediately speak to me about it. That is what I expected of you as a gentleman. But then do speak openly and loyally too, without these wretched sophistries. Tell me what I have a right to know. Tell me who it is. Let me know what I have to hope and to fear. Tell me ? how bad it is. Say it as directly as possible, so that I may know whether it is but a passing infatuation or ... worse. That I may know what awaits us - we ... and our children."

At these last words her voice began to tremble and the tears came.

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."