The
tutor, Mr. Bigum, was a candidate for orders and was at the threshold of the
forties. He was rather small, but with a stocky strength like that of a
work-horse, broad-chested, high-shouldered, and slightly stooping. He walked
with a heavy, slow, deliberate tread, and moved his arms in a vague,
expressionless way that seemed to require a great deal of room. His high, wide
forehead was flat as a wall, with two perpendicular lines between the eyebrows;
the nose was short and blunt, the mouth large with thick, fresh lips. His eyes
were his best feature, light in color, mild, and clear. The movements of his
eyeballs showed that he was slightly deaf. Nevertheless, he loved music and
played his violin with passionate devotion; for the notes, he said, were not
heard only with the ears, but with the whole body, eyes, fingers, and feet; if
the ear failed sometimes, the hand would find the right note without its aid,
by a strange, intuitive genius of its own. Besides, the audible tones were,
after all, false, but he who possessed the divine gift of music carried within
him an invisible instrument compared to which the most wonderful Cremona was
like the stringed calabash of the savage. On this instrument the soul played;
its strings gave forth ideal notes, and upon it the great tone poets had
composed their immortal works.
The
external music, which was borne on the air of reality and heard with the ears,
was nothing but a wretched simulation, a stammering attempt to say the
unutterable. It resembled the music of the soul as the statue modeled by hands,
carved with a chisel, and meted with a measure resembled the wondrous marble
dream of the sculptor which no eye ever beheld and no lip ever praised.
Music,
however, was by no means Mr. Bigum's chief interest. He was first of all a philosopher,
but not one of the productive philosophers who find new laws and build new
systems. He laughed at their systems, the snail-shells in which they dragged
themselves across the illimitable field of thought, fondly imagining that the
field was within the snail-shell! And these laws--laws of thought, laws of
nature! Why, the discovery of a law meant nothing but the fixing of your own
limitations: I can see so far and no farther--as if there were not another
horizon beyond the first, and another and yet another, horizon beyond horizon,
law beyond law, in an unending vista! No, he was not that kind of philosopher.
He did not think he was vain, or that he overvalued himself, but he could not close
his eyes to the fact that his intellect had a wider span than that of other
mortals. When he meditated upon the works of the great thinkers, it seemed to
him that he strode forward through a region peopled by slumbering
thought-giants, who awoke, bathed in the light of his spirit, to consciousness
of their own strength. And so it was always; every thought, mood, or sentiment
of another person which was vouchsafed the privilege of awakening within him
rose up with his sign on its forehead, ennobled, purified, with wings
strengthened, endowed with a power and a might that its creator had never
dreamed of.
How
often had he gazed with an almost humble amazement on the marvelous wealth of
his soul and the divine assurance of his spirit! For it would often happen that
different days would find him judging the world and the things of the world
from entirely divergent points of view, looking at them through hypotheses that
were as far apart as night and morning; yet these points of view and
hypotheses, which he chose to make his own, never even for one second made him
theirs, any more than the god who had taken on the semblance of a bull or a swan
becomes a bull or a swan and ceases to be a god.
And
no one suspected what dwelt within him--all passed him by unseeing. But he
rejoiced in their blindness and felt his contempt for humanity growing. A day
would come when the light of his eye would go out, and the magnificent
structure of his mind would crumble to its foundations and become as that which
had never been, but no work from his hand, no, not a line, would he leave to
tell the tale of what had been lost in him. His genius should not be crowned
with thorns by the world's mis-judgment, neither should it wear the defiling
purple cloak of the world's admiration. He exulted at the thought that generation
after generation would be born and die, and the greatest men of all ages would
spend years of their life in the attempt to gain what he could have given them
if he had chosen to open his hand.
The
fact that he lived in such a humble fashion gave him a curious pleasure, simply
because there was such a magnificent extravagance in using his mind to teach
children, such a wild incongruity in paying for his time with mere daily bread,
and such a colossal absurdity in allowing him to earn this bread upon the
recommendation of poor, ordinary mortals, who had vouched for him that he knew
enough to take upon himself the miserable task of a tutor. And they had given
him non in his examination for a degree!
Oh,
there was rapture in feeling the brutal stupidity of an existence that cast him
aside as poor chaff and valued as golden grain the empty husks, while he knew
in his own mind that his lightest thoughts was worth a world!
Yet
there were other times when the solitude of his greatness weighed upon him and depressed
him.
Ah,
how often, when he had communed with himself in sacred silence, hour after
hour, and then returned again to consciousness of the audible, visible life
round about him, had he not felt himself a stranger to its paltriness and
corruptibility. Then he had often been like the monk who listened in the
monastery woods to a single trill of the paradise bird and, when he came back,
found that a century had died. Ah, if the monk was lonely with the generation
that lived among the groves he knew, how much more lonely was the man whose
contemporaries had not yet been born.
In
such desolate moments he would sometimes be seized with a cowardly longing to
sink down to the level of the common herd, to share their lowborn happiness, to
become a native of their great earth and a citizen of their little heaven. But
soon he would be himself again.
The
other newcomer was Edele Lyhne, Lyhne's twenty-six-year-old sister. She had
lived many years in Copenhagen, first with her mother, who had moved to the
city when she became a widow, and, after her mother's death, in the home of a
wealthy uncle, Councillor of State Neergaard. The Neergaards entertained on a
large scale and went out a great deal, so Edele lived in a whirl of balls and
festivities.
She
was admired wherever she went, and envy, the faithful shadow of admiration,
also followed her. She was talked about as much as one can be without having
done anything scandalous, and whenever men discussed the three reigning
beauties of the town there were always many voices in favor of striking out one
name and substituting that of Edele Lyhne, but they could never agree on which
of two others should yield to her--as for the third, it was out of the
question.
Yet
very young men did not admire her. They were abashed in her presence, and felt
twice as stupid as usual when she listened to them with her look of mild
toleration--a maliciously emphasized toleration which crushed them with a sense
that she had heard it all before and knew it by heart. They made efforts to
shine in her eyes and their own by assuming blase airs, by inventing wild paradoxes,
or, when their desperation reached a climax, by making bold declarations; but
all these attempts, jostling and crowding one upon the other in the abrupt
transitions of youth, were met with the faint shadow of a smile, a deadly smile
of boredom, which made the victim redden and feel that he was the one hundred
and eleventh fly in the same merciless spider's web………
No
matter in how exalted a place a human being may set his throne, no matter how
firmly he may press the tiara of the exceptional, that is genius, upon his
brow, he can never be sure that he may not, like Nebuchadnezzar, be seized with
a sudden desire to go on all-fours and eat grass and herd with the common
beasts of the field.
That was what happened to Mr. Bigum when he
quite simply fell in love with Miss Edele, and it availed him nothing that he
distorted history to find an excuse for his love by calling Edele Beatrice or
Laura or Vittoria Colonna, for all the artificial halos with which he tried to
crown his love were blown out as fast as he could light them by the stubborn
fact that it was Edele's beauty he was in love with; nor was it the graces of
her mind and heart that had captivated him, but her elegance, her air of
fashion, her easy assurance, even her graceful insolence. It was a kind of love
that might well fill him with shamed surprise at the inconsistency of the
children of men.
And what did it all matter! Those eternal
truths and makeshift lies that were woven ring in ring to form the heavy armor
he called his principles, what were they against his love? If they really were
the strength and marrow and kernel of life, then let them show their strength;
if they were weaker, let them break; if stronger--. But they were already
broken, plucked to pieces like the mesh of rotten threads they were. What did
she care about eternal truths? And the mighty visions, how did they help him?
Thoughts that plumbed the unfathomable, could they win her? All that he
possessed was worthless. Even though his soul shone with the radiance of a
hundred suns, what did it avail, when his light was hidden under the ugly
fustian of a Diogenes' mantle? Oh, for beauty! Take my soul and give me my
thirty pieces of silver--Alcibiades' body, Don Juan's mantle, and a court
chamberlain's rank!
But, alas, he had none of these graces, and
Edele was by no means attracted to his heavy, philosophic nature. His habit of
seeing life in barbarously naked abstractions gave him a noisy dogmaticism, an
unpleasant positiveness that jarred her like a misplaced drum in a concert of
soft music. The strained quality of his mind, which always seemed to knit its
muscles and strike an attitude before every little question like a strong man
about to play with iron balls, seemed to her ridiculous. He irritated her by his
censorious morality, which pounced on every lightly sketched feeling,
indiscreetly tearing away its incognito, rudely calling it by name, just as it
was about to flit past him in the course of conversation.
Bigum knew very well what an unfavorable
impression he made and how hopeless his love was, but he knew it as we know a
thing when we hope with all the strength of our soul that our knowledge is
false. There is always the miracle left; and though miracles do not happen,
they might happen. Who knows? Perhaps our intelligence, our instinct, our
senses, in spite of their daylight clearness, are leading us astray. Perhaps
the one thing needful is just that unreasoning courage which follows hope's
will-o'-the-wisp as it burns over seething passions pregnant with desire! It is
only when we have heard the door of destiny slam shut that we begin to feel the
iron-cold talons of certainty digging into our breast, gathering slowly, slowly
around our heart, and fastening their clutches upon the fine thread of hope on
which our world of happiness hangs: then the thread is severed; then all that
it held falls and is shattered; then the shriek of despair sounds through the
emptiness.
In doubt, no one despairs.
On a sunny afternoon in September, Edele was
sitting on the landing of the half-dozen broad, old-fashioned steps that led
down from the summer parlor into the garden. Behind her, the French windows
were wide open, flung back against the motley wall-covering of bright red and
green vines. She leaned her head against a chair piled high with large black
portfolios, and held an etching up before her with both hands. Color prints of
Byzantine mosaics in blue and gold were scattered on the pale green rush
matting that covered the boards of the landing, on the threshold, and on the
oak-brown parquet floor of the summer parlor. At the foot of the steps lay a
white shade hat; for Edele's hair was uncovered, with no ornament but a flower
of gold filigree in a pattern to match the gold bracelet she wore high on her
arm. Her white dress was of semi-transparent stuff with narrow silky stripes;
it had an edging of twisted orange and black chenille and tiny rosettes in the
same two colors. Light silk mitts covered her hands and reached to the elbow.
They were pearl gray like her shoes.
The yellow sunlight was filtered through the
drooping branches of an ancient ash. It pierced the cool dimness, forming
distinct lines of light, powdering the air with gold dust, and painting the
steps, the wall, and the doors with spots of light, spot of sun upon spot of
sun, like a perforated shade. Through the tracery of shadow, each color rose to
meet the light: white from Edele's dress, blood-red from crimson lips, amber from
yellow-blonde hair, and a hundred other tints round about, blue and gold,
oak-brown, glitter of glass, red and green.
Edele dropped the etching and looked up
despondently, her eyes expressing the silent plaint she was too weary to give
vent to in a sigh. Then she settled down as if to shut out her surroundings and
withdraw within herself.
Just then Mr. Bigum appeared.
Edele looked at him with a drowsy blinking like
that of a child who is too sleepy and comfortable to stir, but too curious to
shut its eyes.
Mr. Bigum wore his new beaver hat. He was
absorbed in his own thoughts, and gesticulated with his tombac watch in his
hand, until the thin silver chain threatened to snap. With a sudden, almost
vicious movement, he thrust the watch deep down into his pocket, threw back his
head impatiently, caught the lapel of his coat in a peevish grasp, and would
have gone on with an angry jerk of his whole body, his face darkened by all the
hopeless rage that boils in a man when he is running away from his own
torturing thoughts, and knows that he runs in vain.
Edele's hat, lying at the foot of the steps and
shining white against the black earth of the walk, stopped him in his flight.
He picked it up with both hands, then caught sight of Edele, and as he stood
trying to think of something to say, he held it instead of giving it to her.
Not an idea could he find in his brain; not a word would be born on his tongue,
and he looked straight ahead with a stupid expression of arrested profundity.
"It is a hat, Mr. Bigum," said Edele
carelessly, to break the embarrassed silence.
"Yes," said the tutor eagerly,
delighted to hear her confirm a likeness that had struck him also; but the next
moment he blushed at his clumsy answer.
"It was lying here," he added
hurriedly, "here on the ground like this--just like this," and he bent
down to show where it had lain with an inconsequential minuteness born of his
confusion. He felt almost happy in his relief at having given some sign of
life, however futile. He was still standing with the hat in his hand.
"Do you intend to keep it?" asked
Edele.
Bigum had no answer to that.
"I mean will you give it to me?" she
explained.
Bigum came a few steps nearer and handed her
the hat. "Miss Lyhne," she said, "you think--you must not
think--I beg you to let me speak; that is--I am not saying anything, but be
patient with me!--I love you, Miss Lyhne, unutterably, unutterably, beyond all
words I love you. Oh, if language held a word that combined the cringing
admiration of the slave, the ecstatic smile of the martyr, and the gnawing
homesickness of the exile, with that word I could tell you my love. Oh, listen
to me, do not thrust me away yet! Do not think that I am insulting you with an
insane hope! I know how insignificant I seem in your eyes, how clumsy and
repulsive, yes, repulsive. I am not forgetting that I am poor,--you must know
it,--so poor that I have to let my mother live in a charitable institution, and
I can't help it, can't help it. I am so miserably poor. Yes, Miss Lyhne, I am
only a poor servant in your brother's house, and yet there is a world where I
am ruler, powerful, proud, rich, with the crown of victory, noble by virtue of
the passion that drove Prometheus to steal the fire from the heaven of the
gods. There I am brother to all the great in spirit, whom the earth has borne,
and who bear the earth. I understand them as none but equals understand one
another; no flight that they have flown is too high for the strength of my
wings. Do you understand me? Do you believe me? Oh, don't believe me! It isn't
true, I am nothing but the Kobold figure you see before you. It is all past;
for this terrible madness of love has paralyzed my wings, the eyes of my spirit
have lost their sight, my heart is dried up, my soul is drained to bloodless
poltroonery. Oh, save me from myself, Miss Lyhne, don't turn away in scorn!
Weep over me, weep, it is Rome burning!"
He had fallen to his knees on the steps,
wringing his hands. His face was blanched and distorted, his teeth were
clinched in agony, his eyes drowned in tears; his whole body shook under the
suppressed sobs that were heard only as a gasping for breath.
"Control yourself, Mr. Bigum," she
said in a slightly too compassionate tone. "Control yourself, don't give
way so, be a man! Please get up and go down into the garden a little while and
try to pull yourself together."
"And you can't love me at all!"
groaned Mr, Bigum almost inaudibly. "Oh, it's terrible! There is not a
thing in my soul that I wouldn't murder and degrade if I could win you thereby.
No, no, even if any one offered me madness and I could possess you in my
hallucinations, possess you, then I would say: Take my brain,
tear down its wonderful structure with rude hands, break all the fine threads
that bind my spirit to the resplendent triumphal chariot of the human mind, and
let me sink in the mire of the physical, under the wheels of the chariot, and
let others follow the shining paths that lead to the light! Do you understand
me? Can you comprehend that even if your love came to me robbed of its glory,
debased, befouled, as a caricature of love, as a diseased phantom, I would
receive it kneeling as if it were the Sacred Host? But the best in me is
useless, the worst in me is useless, too. I cry to the sun, but it does not
shine; to the statue, but it does not answer--answer! . . . What is there to
answer except that I suffer? No, these unutterable torments that rend my whole
being down to its deepest roots, this anguish is nothing to you but an
impertinence. You feel nothing but a little cold offence; in your heart you
laugh scornfully at the poor tutor and his impossible passion."
"You do me an injustice, Mr. Bigum,"
said Edele, rising, while Mr. Bigum rose too. "I am not laughing. You ask
me if there is no hope, and I answer: No, there is no hope. That is surely
nothing to laugh at. But there is one thing I want to say to you. From the
first moment you began to think of me, you must have known what my answer would
be, and you did know it, did you not? You knew it all the time, and yet you
have been lashing all your thoughts and desires on toward the goal which you
knew you could not reach. I am not offended by your love, Mr. Bigum, but I
condemn it. You have done what so many people do: they close their eyes to the
realities and stop their ears when life cries 'No' to their wishes. They want
to forget the deep chasm fate has placed between them and the object of their
ardent longing. They want their dream to be fulfilled. But life takes no
account of dreams. There isn't a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the
world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which
hasn't changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we
have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very
highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with
longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we
had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are
unhappy."
She paused almost as if she woke from a trance.
Her voice had been quiet, groping, as if she were speaking to herself, but now
it hardened into a cold aloofness.
"I cannot help you, Mr. Bigum. You are
nothing to me of what you wish to be. If that makes you unhappy, you must be
unhappy; if you suffer, you must suffer-there are always some who have to
suffer. If you make a human being your god and the ruler of your fate, you must
bow to the will of divinity, but it is never wise to make yourself gods, or to
give your soul over to another; for there are gods who will not step down from
their pedestals. Be sensible, Mr. Bigum! Your god is so small and so little
worth your worship; turn from it and be happy with one of the daughters of the land."
With a faint little smile, she went in through
the summer parlor, while Mr. Bigum looked after her, crestfallen. For another
fifteen minutes he walked up and down before the steps. All the words that had
been spoken seemed to be still vibrating through the air; she had so lately
gone, it seemed that her shadow must still linger there; it seemed that she
could not yet be out of reach of his prayers, and everything could not be
inexorably ended. But after a while the chambermaid came out and gathered up the
engravings, carried in the chair, the portfolios, the rush matting--everything.
Then he could go too.
In the open gable window up above, Niels sat
gazing after him. He had heard the whole conversation from beginning to end.
His face had a frightened look and a nervous trembling passed through his body.
For the first time he was afraid of life. For the first time his mind grasped
the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a
fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured,
and there is no marvelous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad
dream.
He felt it as a foreboding which struck him
with terror.
Read the book here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300751h.html
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