CHAPTER XIVDREAMS OF LOVE
“Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie, toi qui vis sans amour?”
“Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie, toi qui vis sans amour?”
“Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie, toi qui vis sans amour?”
“Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie, toi qui vis sans amour?”
The text of this song haunted Franka’s memory. She was reclining on the couch in her little salon, her arms crossed behind her head, her eyes closed.
The red silk shades at the windows were drawn and a ruddy twilight permeated the room. All the salons in the suites put at the disposal of Mr. Toker’s guests had red hangings and white walls. The chairs and sofas were rose-colored. The carpets showed red roses on a white ground. The sleeping-rooms were also upholstered in these two colors, and the bathrooms attached to each apartment were fitted with rose-marble. Toker did not want his guests to be for a single minute free from the spell of roses. Even the water, as it flowed through the faucets at the washstands, was perfumed with roses, and rose-scented soap was provided. The chandeliers were of pale-rose glass and a rose-colored shade protected every electric lamp.
Frau Eleonore was sitting at the writing-table of the little salon and was writing picture-postcards for the whole circle of her acquaintance. Now and then she interrupted this occupation and glanced over at Franka.
“There, you have been lying for almost an hour perfectly motionless, my dear; were you asleep?”
“No, only thinking.”
“Were you meditating on your coming address?”
“No, I am thinking—for a wonder—of myself. I am putting Franka Garlett timid questions and she is answering them hesitatingly.”
“Might one know what the subject of this interesting inquisition is?”
“It is too vague to be expressed in words.”
“Yet I think I can imagine: the first question put by the inquisitor to the victim runs: ‘Confess! how did yesterday’s prince please you?’”
“You think so, do you?” She shook her head, laughing; “you are on the wrong track.”
“Indeed! Then, perhaps....”
“Please do notyoutake upon yourself the office of investigator.... Instead, please go on writing your ‘cordial greetings from Lucerne’ and let me think for a while longer.”
“Very well; I must post a dozen or more cards before the mail is collected.”
Franka again took up the thread of her thoughts as before.... “Toi qui vis sans amour.” ... Now for the first time, called up by Frau Eleonore’s jesting words, arose Victor Adolph’s picture before her. She had certainly not been thinking of him before. Only of love in general: not even of that—rather of the sense of troublous unsatisfying yearning which occasionally took possession of her and caused her pain—a feeling of emptiness, of melancholy ... and as if to give some explanation for it, she had been repeating to herself the words of that French song.
Was it possible that her life’s failure consisted in thefact that it was without love? She had given herself with zeal and enthusiasm to a great idea, to a great object, and had relentlessly waved aside everything else. She had accomplished her lofty task and her success had brought her great satisfaction. She had made known perfectly new theories regarding the rights and duties of women and had been able to impose them on others. So successful had her work been that she had won a reputation confirmed by her enrollment in the Order of the Knights of the Roses, and yet ... and yet ... there was this yearning.... What for? If it were for love, how came it that no one of those who had come into her vicinity had awakened that passion in her heart? Not one had attracted her, or even for a moment put her senses into a tumult. Though often, whether in a dream or in a book she was reading, the glamour of artistic impressions or of mild spring nights, a sudden glow swept through her veins, oppressing her, it was never associated with the image of any special man. And if an impulse swelled her heart toward tenderness,—not toward passionate bliss, but toward a sincere, gentle tenderness,—then she had no idea whom she should bless with it.
No, she had not been thinking of the prince; she was trying to formulate another recollection of the evening before: that moment, when in her terror at a vision in the firmament, she had rested her hand on Helmer’s arm ... and the feeling of calmness, of refuge, of sweet security, which had come over her. Once again, now that the interruption caused by Frau Eleonore was past, she closed her eyes andtried to recall her former sensation: she succeeded in doing so: the sense of refuge and security was there once more, and sweetly rang the words: “A warm house and a loving heart in it”....
“Dear heart,” she murmured.
Frau Eleonore stood up: “What did you say? Do you wish anything?”
At the same instant a groom entered and brought a great gilded basket filled with Parma violets. A visiting-card lay in it: Prince Victor Adolph von X——.
When Helmer took his departure, Bruning also bade good-bye to the little luncheon coterie with the intention of accompanying his friend.
“You still owe me a call,” said he; “won’t you come up to my room for a little while? No? Then let me go a part of the way with you. How did you like the two ladies? Shall I tell you something about them?”
“I’d rather hear about the Italian Minister—the man interests me.”
“I can believe it. There is no one in all Europe more interesting at the present time. He is of the clay from which the Cavours, the Talleyrands, the Bismarcks, and the Chamberlains are made. One who can talk fluently of future events, of fermentations and collisions, because he himself is one who causes events to come, who ferments and collides.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“You swear by that school which does not believein the power of individuals to influence the history of nations? It is your idea, that the nameless masses, that all-powerful Necessity, and the like, condition the course of history....”
“There you are again with your ‘history.’ If you mean by it the changes that result from universal conditions, then, certainly, the laws of nature and the nameless masses, unconsciously obeying them, form the motive power; but if it concerns the events that are brought about by the intrigues of diplomats and despots and the newspapers that are subservient to them, then I grant that this kind of history is made by ambitious and unscrupulous individuals.”
“Well, then, if that is understood, my Romeo Rinotti is just a history-maker. ‘Unscrupulousness’ is his fetish ... in fact, itisthe reasonable basis of all real politics. Rinotti is not as yet at the helm, else a portentous chapter in the history of our century would have been written long ago; but he will yet come to the helm, and then ... well, he makes no secret of the lofty aims which he has conceived for the grandeur and glory of his country. Whether he will attain them is, indeed, another question; I havemydoubts; for fortunately we in Austria, we also have resolute men in leading positions ... a fine, proud imperialism has flowered since Aehrenthal’s great stroke of genius; and our military strength, as well as that of our allies, is to be reckoned with.... Our fleet of airships also makes a good showing. So Rinotti’s bold plans will scarcely be fulfilled, in spite of all Slavic assistance ... but whatever the consequencesmay be, the impulse will suffice, as I said, to produce a mighty chapter in history. I must say, although the man is really our enemy, he inspires me with respect, because of his powerful will: universal history needs such chaps. At the same time, he is a fascinating man.... The women are all crazy over him ... that Baltic woman, for example.... Did you notice how her eyes were riveted on him? If the Countess Solnikova has not fallen under his spell, it is only thanks to her fancy for your composer.... But here I am chattering away and you do not say a word ... apparently you are up in the clouds again, your favorite habitation, and probably have not been listening to what I said.”
“On the contrary, I have been listening with all attention. What you tell me of Rinotti interests me immensely. It proves clearly, once more, how our official world is still entangled in the ancient concepts and methods, how men cannot see what the needs of the age are. They do not suspect that the epoch of cabinet intrigues is just as obsolete, though not so far removed from us, as the Tertiary or the Miocene period. Or are we really still in the very midst of it? Am I the one who does not see the actuality, because my eyes are fixed too eagerly on the future, just as the eyes of the Rinottis and their admirers are directed toward the past? However, I am very grateful to you, for what you have told me shows how imperative the work is which must be the outcome of the Rose-Week.”
“You incorrigible visionary! Do you really imagine that Toker, Helmer, and Company are going tolift the world out of its hinges? I have permitted myself to compare the undertaking of this worthy firm to Hagenbeck; I might have said that it is a great cosmopolitan variety-show ... well, I am curious; especially for your number on the programme:—‘Mr. Chlodwig Helmer, prestidigitator on the poets’ ladder.’ But here we are at your lodgings—I will leave you. No offense, I hope....”
Helmer shrugged his shoulders: “I know you of old, and if I am inwardly annoyed at your cynicism, I don’t lay it up against you.”
“And I likewise pardon you for calling my modicum of common sense and mother wit cynicism. Such a long-established comradeship isn’t going to be broken up by such quizzing. The earth would be boresome if it contained nothing but mere practical people—a few dreamers must be allowed to practice their somnambulism.Servus, old fellow.”
Bruning said good-bye at the entrance door of the Rose-Palace; Helmer, however, did not go in, but walked off in another direction. The conversation with his boyhood friend had given a serious trend to his thoughts, and he was not inclined at the moment to meet any of Mr. Toker’s guests and converse with them. He preferred a solitary walk.
He knew a path which led from the shore of the lake to a distant grove where it was very silent and pleasant: thither he directed his steps. He had often in his life found that when he was vexed with men—either with individual men or with human society at large—he was immediately pacified by taking refuge with Nature. To him Nature, the mother of allcreatures—Nature, the generous, the life-abounding, the sublime, the unfathomable, the inexorable keeper of her own mysteries, the never disobedient servant of her own laws, the spendthrift and miser of her own treasures—to him Nature was not some thing, but some one. A some one whom he loved with awe and whose magical gifts he accepted as the token of some measure of reciprocal love.
He strolled for some distance along the shore of the lake; boats large and small were darting across its mirror-like surface. Snow-capped mountains arose in the background. Helmer appreciated the imposing beauty of the whole landscape; but what he wanted to find was a retired, circumscribed spot without a broad outlook, without the effect of theatrical decorations or panoramic views, a little place, where he might be alone with a few trees and a few wild flowers. So he turned aside into a narrow path between two wooded hills, and after a short walk entered the dark, cool corner which he was looking for. There nothing was to be seen worthy of being called “a splendid region” or of being remarked as bearing a characteristic Swiss flavor; the little assemblage of firs and birches, of oaks and beeches, of stunted bushes, of mossy stones, and tall grasses might have been duplicated in any other place in Europe. The sunlight danced in the lightly waving foliage and a delicious perfume of gum and strawberries filled the air. Blue and yellow and rose-colored flowers were blooming all about, wooed by fluttering white butterflies. Then there was a dreamily monotonous music of humming bees, chirping crickets, and murmuringbrooks, now and then interrupted by the clear call of the blackbird.
Helmer flung himself down in the grass at the foot of a leafy beech tree and—breathed. Really he did nothing else—without thoughts, without recollections, he lay there awhile and merely breathed. Long, joyous inhalations, just like all the plant brethren around him, the life of which is scornfully called “vegetating,” although it is perhaps the purest form of the joy of existence. He contemplated a tiny beetle which was climbing laboriously up a swaying blade of grass, and in doing so lost its balance. A pair of very industrious ants, laden with building-materials, hastened by. A little green worm wriggled circumspectly, and as it drew its tail up to its head it made an arch, then stretched itself out again in order to make another—a complicated method of locomotion.
Helmer followed with friendly eyes all these movements which seem so important to those who make them. Also a beautiful gift of Nature, he said to himself, this consciousness of importance which is common to the most insignificant little creature, and which confers upon it a sort of dignity. And thus he began once more to take up the thread of thought. And the things also which he wanted to escape from began once more to recur in his mind: all the scornful, stupid, harmful conversation of all those people whose judgments and behavior lay so far removed from the realm toward which his poetic activities and yearning ran. In the circle of the Knighthood of the Rose, to be sure, he had found kindred spirits,all working like himself to prepare the coming kingdom; but there were only two or three dozen of them, and the others were millions, and among them the very ones that had the most power and influence, rank and station ... they form the great public and we ... we are a number or two in a variety-show.
He shook his head. No, that is not true. We also have millions behind us—dumb, yearning millions, who are only waiting for the liberating act. The liberating act, however, must be forestalled by the liberating word ... so let us first say just what we have to say.
He passed in review the scheme of his poem. Did it express everything that in hours of inspiration swept before his mind? Alas, no! Far, far from it—there still remained much work for him to do. The problems, the subjects crowded in upon him—every day with its new experiences brought new ideas. Especially this last week, by contact with the great artists and thinkers, who surpassed him in so many ways, so many new horizons had opened before him. It was, indeed, a marvelous company. Franka must assuredly be grateful to him that she had been invited to be present, for he had suggested to her the career which she had so brilliantly followed. Franka ... his thoughts dwelt longer at this name, at the picture which it called up. How confidingly, how beseechingly, as if asking his aid, she had clung to him.... It made his heart glow. He was not thinking now of her genius, of her beauty, but rather of that helplessness ... oh, if he could only hold her in his arms to protect her and to comforther.... Pshaw, what nonsense! she needed no protection; she was a wealthy, influential lady, with everything at her command. Yesterday, after that brief minute on the terrace, she went into the salon and was instantly surrounded; that prince had paid her his homage most openly. And such a handsome, seductive man that Victor Adolph.... If she, the proud beauty, wanted to have a love-affair, what more did she need to do than make a sign in order to have her pick among the highest, the most distinguished?... “Can it be that I am jealous?... No, thank God, I am not in love with her; one does not covet the stars. I will even advise her now to think of her own happiness. It was my fault to a certain degree that she, so Joan-of-Arc-like, shut her heart up in an iron breastplate. I gave her that counsel, that terrible counsel....”