Chapter 32

The father, after a moment watching from the doorway, waiting for his daughter to run as usual to greet him, speaks, not altogether displeased: "My child, you see me standing at the door, and, what is this? No embrace? No kiss? You stand in your place as if bewitched? Do I deserve, Senta, such a welcome?"--"God be with you!" she murmurs faintly, and, as he comes nearer, asks underbreath, without removing her eyes from the figure--the counterpart of the picture on the wall, "Father, speak, who is the stranger?" The father smiles: "You are eager to know? My child, give kind welcome to the stranger. A sea-man he is, like myself, and solicits our hospitality. Homeless for long years, incessantly bound on long voyages, in far-off lands he has gathered vast treasures. An exile from home, he offers rich compensation for a place at the fireside. Speak, Senta, should you be sorry that the stranger should dwell with us?" To the Hollander, while the daughter without a word's reply continues in her fixed contemplation of his face, he speaks aside: "Tell me, did I praise her too highly? Now you see her in person, does she rightly please you? Must I add more still to my overflowing praise? Confess that she is an ornament to her sex!" The Hollander answers by an expressive gesture, his eyes fast all the while upon the maiden's face. The father turns anew to the daughter, and, without further preamble: "My child, let it please you to show favour to this man. He requests a goodly gift from your heart. Reach him your hand, for he shall be your bridegroom. If you are of a like mind with your father, to-morrow he shall be your husband." She shrinks, painfully, at this bluntness and precipitancy. The father, not noticing, unpockets jewels to show her. "Look at this circlet, behold these clasps. The sum of his possessions makes these the merest trifle. How, my precious child, should you not care for them? And it will all be yours for the exchanging of rings with him. But... neither of you speaks...." He looks at them in turn. They have neither heeded nor heard, they are lost in contemplation of each other. "Am I in the way?" They do not hear that either. "I clearly am," he says to himself. "The best will be to leave them alone together." With a parting private word to the daughter: "May you win this noble man! Believe me, such good fortune is not common!" and to the Dutchman: "I leave you to yourselves, and betake myself away. Believe me, fair as she is, she is no less true than fair!" he discreetly withdraws.

The strange predestined lovers stand for long moments steadily gazing at each other, almost unconsciously, without motion to draw nearer--or further apart. Each of them voices his thoughts, not speaking to the other, but, dreamily, to himself. He murmurs: "As if out of the distance of long-past days speaks to me the semblance of this maiden. Even such as through dread eternities I dreamed her, I behold her now here before my eyes. From the black depths of my night I too have ventured to raise my longing eyes upon a woman. Satan's malice left me a living heart, alas, that I might never lose consciousness of my torment. The sullen glow which I feel burning in my breast, should I, unhappy man, call it love? Ah, no, the longing it is for redemption! Oh, might redemption be my portion through such an angel as she is!" And she speaks, to herself, half-aloud: "Have I sunk into a wonderful dream? Is this which I see an illusion? Or have I until this moment lived in a world of dream, and is this the day of awakening? He stands before me, his features stamped with sorrow. His unparalleled sufferings silently call to me. Can the voice of deepest pity deceive? As I have so often beheld him he stands before me now. This sorrow which burns within my bosom, this going out of desire toward him, what must I call it? Oh, that the salvation which he goes seeking without rest might reach the unhappy man through me!"

He moves a little nearer to her at last, and asks with the simplicity and sincerity which befit the hour so fraught with fate, "Will you not reject your father's choice? That which he promised--what? shall it hold good? Could you forever give yourself to me? You could hold out your hand to the stranger? I might, after a life of torment, find in your truth the long craved-for peace?" She answers upon the instant, singularly sure of her heart: "Whoever you may be, and whatever ruin your cruel fate reserve for you, and whatever the destiny I thereby call upon myself, my obedient duty shall ever be to my father's wish."--"What, so unconditionally? My sorrows, is it possible, have moved you to such deep compassion?"--"Sorrows how measureless!" she exclaims to herself. "Oh, might I bring you consolation for those!" And he, overhearing: "Oh, gentlest sound through the warring darkness! An angel are you! The love of an angel can still the pain even of lost souls! If I may hope for salvation, Almighty, let it be through this angel!" But in the uplift of hope reviving, a remembrance gives him pause,--remembrance of the whole condition of his deliverance; and, a strain of solemnity mingling with his grateful tenderness, he warns her: "Could you apprehend the fate which, in belonging to me, with me you must share, you would pause to consider the sacrifice you bring in vowing to be true. Your youth would flee shuddering at prospect of the fate to which you would have doomed it, if the fairest virtues of womankind, if sacred fidelity and truth, be not yours." She replies with no less assurance than before, and her air of exalted inspiration: "Well do I know the high duties of woman. Be comforted, unhappy man! Let fate do justice of those who defy her decree. In my soul is written the supreme law of truth, and unto him to whom I pledge my faith this one truth it is which I give: Truth until death!"

Like balm the words fall upon his wounded spirit. The powers of darkness, it seems, are to be defeated; the evil star, it seems, has set and the star of hope arisen. "Ye angels," he calls to them, "who had quite forsaken me, confirm her heart in its constancy!" And she, her heavenly pity prays: "Let him have reached home at last! Let his ship rest here eternally in port!"

Daland re-enters. "By your leave, my people outside can hardly wait. Upon each home-coming, you must know, we hold a merry-making. I would fain add to the cheer of the feast, and am come, with that in mind, to ask if it might not be I made into a betrothal feast?--As far as I see," he turns to the Hollander, "you have wooed to your heart's purpose?--And you, my child," to Senta, "are you ready, too?" Senta with solemn resolution reaches her hand to the Dutchman. "Here is my hand, and here, never to repent it, I plight my troth until death!" The Hollander, taking her hand, cries defiance to the mockery of Hell through this fast truth of hers. At Daland's summons thereupon, "To the feast, and let every one to-day make merry!" the three turn to go and take share--even, incredibly, the Dutchman,--in legitimate human rejoicings.

III

Close by Daland's house lies the rock-bound bay into which his ship and the Dutchman's have come to anchor. The two crafts are seen in the clear night, lying at a short distance from each other, hard by the shore. The Norwegian is brightly illuminated, the sailors are on deck making holiday. The Hollander presents a striking contrast: not a light does it show, not a sound issues from it; it looms shadowy and forbidding.

"Steersman, leave the watch!" sing the roistering Norway lads; "Furl the sails! Anchor fast! Come along, steersman! No wind is there to fear nor adverse coast, and we mean to be right jolly. Each of us has a sweetheart on shore, excellent tobacco and superior brandy-wine. Rocks and storms are far outside, we laugh at rocks and storms! Steersman, come and drink!" They dance on deck, marking time with their heavy boots.

From Daland's house comes the bevy of girls we know, laden with generous baskets of food and drink. Finding their sweethearts so merrily employed, "Just look at them!" they say; "As we live, they are dancing! The ladies do certainly seem superfluous!" With a playful feint of pique they pass without further notice the lighted, noisy ship, and go toward the Hollander, whose blood-tinted sails and black masts form but a grim silhouette against the star-sown sky. "Hi, girls,--stop! Where are you going?" the simple-minded sailors cry after them. But the girls do not abandon their small vengeance of serving the strangers first. "You have a mind to fresh wine, have you not? And is not your neighbour to have something too? Are the liquor and the feast to be solely for you?" The young mate rises to the occasion and has a fling at these suddenly-instituted rivals: "Indeed, indeed, take something, do, to the poor lads. They appear to be quite faint with thirst!" All turn their attention squarely now to the foreign ship and take account of the strangeness of its conditions. "Not a sound on board! And see, not a light! No sign of the crew!"--"Halloo, sea-folk!" the maidens shout, "Halloo! Do you need lights? Where are you? We cannot see...."--"Don't wake them," chaff the Norwegians, "they are still asleep!" The girls go close to the ship and shout again. "Halloo, sea-folk! Halloo, answer!" There is along silence. The sailor-lads have the laugh now on the girls. "Ha, ha! In very truth, they are dead. They are in no need of food and drink." But the girls will not accept their defeat. "What?" they continue calling to the invisible Dutch crew; "Are you so lazy as to have gone already to bed? Is it not holiday-time for you, too?"--"They lie fast in their lairs," jest the Norwegians; "like dragons they guard their treasure!"--"Halloo, sea-folk!" persist the girls; "Do you not wish for golden wine? Surely you are thirsty?"--"They do not care to drink, they do not care to sing," the sailor-lads tease; "there is no light burning in all their ship!"--"Say," the girls continue addressing the unresponding crew, "have you no sweethearts on land? Do you not wish to come and dance on the friendly shore?"--"They are already old, they are pale instead of ruddy," put in the sailors, "and their sweethearts, they are dead!"--"Halloo!" the girls call louder, "Seafolk, wake up! We are bringing you food and drink to heart's content!" The sailors good-humouredly unite in chorus: "They are bringing you food and drink to heart's content!" Another long pause, unbroken by the faintest sound from the Dutch ship. The girls are becoming uneasy. "It is a fact," they speak lower, struck; "They seem to be all dead. They do not need food and drink." But the boys feel jollier than ever. "You have heard of the Flying Dutchman," they cry, by way of wild joke; "His ship, big as life and true to life, you behold there!"--"Then don't wake the crew!" say the girls; "They are ghosts, we could swear!" The sailor-lads take their turn now shouting questions, humourously intended, at the sombre hull: "How many hundreds of years have you already been at sea? Storm and rocks have no terrors for you! Have you no letters, no commissions for shore? We will see that they come to our great-great-grandfathers' hands!" In the extravagance of fun, finally, raising their voices to the very loudest, "Halloo, sea-folk!" they cry; "Spread your sails! Give us a specimen of the Flying Dutchman's speed!" At the prolonged silence following, the girls shrink away, at last really frightened. "They do not hear. It makes our flesh creep. They do not want anything. Why do we continue to call?"--"That is it, you girls," the sailors heartily agree, "let the dead rest in peace! And let us who are alive be happy!" The girls hand up to them the savoury baskets. "There, take, since your neighbours disdain it."--"But what? Are you not coming on board yourselves?" inquire the sailors, when the girls do not as expected follow. It is early still; they will return a little later, they promise, Till then let the boys drink and dance, but be careful not to disturb the repose of their weary neighbours!

When the girls have returned to the house, the sailors open the hampers and lustily fall to, casting playful thanks to those dumb neighbours for this double share of victuals and wine. In the lightness of their hearts they sing, and to the verses of their rollicking "Steersman, leave the watch!" clash their goblets noisily together.

Absorbed in their carousal, they have not remarked a beginning of movement on the ship close by and in the water immediately around it. This rises and falls in a mysterious violent swell, which rocks the awakening ship, while the rest of the sea is calm. Storm-wind whistles and howls among the rigging, though the night elsewhere is still and bright. Livid fire flares up in the place of the watch-light, bringing into distinctness the black cordage and spectral crew. The latter seem to come to life in the weird illumination, and with hollow voices suddenly entone a sea-song of strange intervals and cadences, disquieting to ears of warm flesh and blood. "Yohohey! Yohohohey!--Huissa! The storm drives us to land!--Huissa! Sail in! Anchor loose!--Huissa! Run into the bay!--Black captain, go ashore! Seven years are over, sue for the hand of a golden-haired maiden. Golden-haired maiden, be true to him, be true! Cheerily, cheerily, bridegroom, today! The storm-wind howls wedding-music, the ocean dances to the tune.--Hui! Hark! His whistle sounds. Captain, are you back again?--Hui! Hoist the sail! Your bride, say, where is she?--Hui! Off, to sea! Captain, captain, you have no luck in love! Ha, ha, ha! Blow, storm-wind, howl away! No damage can you do to our sails! Satan has charmed them, they will not rend in all eternity!"

The Norwegian sailors, suspending their own clamour, have looked and listened in an increasing wonder, which gradually turns to horror. To overcome the superstitious fear they frankly own to, they start singing together with all their might, to drown their terror as well as the voices of the rival singers. The two sharply contrasting sea-songs strive one against the other for a few moments, then the Norwegians, giving up the contention, retire from deck to the last man, tremulously making the sign of the cross. As they disappear below, the Dutchmen break into a fearful yell of derision,--and instantly darkness and complete silence reinvade the ship, while perfect calm falls upon the sea. For a long interval the scene so crowded and noisy a moment before, remains empty and still.

Senta comes hurriedly from the house, followed by Erik, both in great agitation. He has learned of her betrothal to the stranger. "What have I heard?" he cries in incredulous anguish; "O God, what have I seen? Is it a delusion? Can it be truth? Can it be fact?"--"Ask not, Erik," she falters, in anguish, too; "I must not answer."--"Just God! There can be no doubt of it. It is truth! What unholy power swept you along? What force so quickly prevailed with you to make you break this devoted heart? Was it your father? Ha, he brought the bridegroom home with him. I recognised him. I forboded what is coming to pass. But you? Is it possible? You give your hand to the man who has hardly more than crossed your doorstep?"--"Oh, say no more!" pleads the girl, torn by the sight of his sorrow, and her necessity to refuse the only possible comfort, "Be silent! I must! I must!..."--"Oh, that docility, blind as your act!" he raves; "You were glad, at a beck from your father, to follow. With a blow you crush the life out of my heart!"--"No more! No more!" she tries to stop him; "I must not see you again, must not think of you. High duty commands it!"--"What high duty? Is it not a higher duty still to observe that which you once swore to me,--eternal constancy?"--"What?..." she cries, in utmost dismay; "You say that I swore eternal constancy to you?"--"Oh, Senta," he goes on, subdued by her shocked amazement, sorrowfully to explain the simple rhetoric of his misstatement, "will you deny it? Do you refuse to remember that day when you called me to you in the valley? When in order to gather the upland flowers for you I endured dangers and labours innumerable? Do you remember how from the steep rocks on the shore we watched your father departing? He sailed upon the white-winged ship, and confided you to my care. When your arm encircled my neck, did you not own once more your love for me? That which thrilled me at the pressure of your hand, tell me, was it not the assurance of your constancy?"

Unseen of the two, for the moment so absorbed in each other, the Hollander has come from the house. He has been standing near enough to overhear Erik's last sentences; the significance of these seems scarcely ambiguous, his inference is natural. It is a lovers' meeting which he has chanced upon. Whatever her reasons for accepting him, the Hollander,--it is clear that this young huntsman has a claim on the girl who declared so glibly that the law of truth was written in her soul.

The two are interrupted by a wail. "Lost! Oh, lost! To all eternity lost!" They turn and start in horror at sight of the Hollander. "Farewell, Senta," he cries, and with the precipitation of despair is making straight for the boundless deep. Senta throws herself across his path. "Stay, O unfortunate!" But the Hollander pushes past. "To sea! To sea! To sea until the end of time!--It is at an end with your truth! At an end with your truth and my salvation! Farewell, I would not bring about your ruin!" Erik, catching sight of his face, the face of a lost soul, shudders at the measureless woe in his eyes. "Stay," Senta implores, "stay, you shall never depart!" Disregarding her, the Hollander blows a shrill note on his whistle and shouts to his crew: "Hoist sail! Lift anchor! For ever and ever bid farewell to the land!"

There is struggle for a long moment among the three: hers to prevent the Hollander; Erik's to keep back her, caught, as he believes, in the claws of Satan; the Hollander's to leave. Since her faith is turned to mockery, he, forced to doubt her, has fallen to doubting God himself. There is no faith more on earth. Away, then, forever away! "Learn the fate from which I save you!" he finally turns to her, as if softened by her pleading to the point of wishing her to know that he leaves not in hate and anger, but very pity for her feminine frailty; and he states plainly the threatening fate of which we heard him give but a warning before. "Condemned am I to the most dreadful of dooms. Tenfold death would be to me yearned-for bliss. A woman alone can deliver me, a woman who shall keep her faith to me even until death. You, it is true, had sworn truth to me, but not as yet before the Almighty, and that it is which saves you. For know, unhappy woman, the fate which overtakes her who breaks her vow of eternal constancy to me: Everlasting damnation is her portion. Innumerable have been the victims already, through me, of that dread sentence. But you--you shall be saved. Farewell, then, and farewell, to all time, salvation!" Again he turns shoreward. "Indeed, indeed, I know you," Senta follows still; "Full well I know your fate. From the first moment of seeing you I knew you. The end is at hand of your torture! I am she through whose fidelity you shall find salvation!"

Erik, in terror for Senta, has called wildly toward the house, toward the ship, for help to save her. Daland, Mary, and the young girls have come hurrying from the house, the Norwegian sailors from the ship. "No, no, you know me not!" the Hollander is saying; "No suspicion have you who I am! Inquire of the seas of every zone, inquire of the seaman overscoring the main--Behold"--he points at the ship whose blood-red sails are set and whose ghastly crew show uncannily active in preparations for departure; "Behold and recognise this ship, terror of every pious soul.... The Flying Dutchman I am called!"

With lightning rapidity he has gone aboard. Instantly the weird ship is under way and amid the cavernous Yohohoes of its seamen making for the open sea.

Senta struggles to follow. Her father, Erik, her nurse, all forcibly hold her back. But she is suddenly stronger than them all. She tears herself free and rushing from them climbs a rock projecting into the deep water. With all her strength she calls after the departing Hollander, "Praise be to your angel and his decree! Here am I, faithful to you until death!" and springs into the sea.

Upon the instant, the red-sailed ship, with all its crew, sinks. A great wave heaves high and falls again eddying, burying the whole. Above the drifting wreckage, in the rosy light, fore-shine of sunrise, are seen the transfigured and glorified forms of Senta and the Hollander rising from the sea, clasped in each others' arms, and floating heavenward.

We are always touched in this old world of daily wickedness and pettiness to come upon stories which seem statements of a popular ineradicable assurance that love has power to save. It is perhaps oftenest the love of a woman, clinging pertinaciously to her affection; but there are legends, too, of men,--who do not save, however, that we remember, by long fidelity, but by ardour rather in overcoming obstacles. They kiss the fair enchanted one in the form of a hideous dragon and she is restored to beauty. One sees the simple philosophy of such folk-tales. The evil doom is usually the punishment for sin. The one who loves the person so doomed is innocent. If then she makes the fate of the sufferer her own, she suffers unjust punishment, and God, who inclines to mercy, must sooner pardon the sinner for her sake than condemn the innocent.