"No, you are not proud, but still you have a.s.surance. That I have not.
Do you know how I got my name?"
"Well?"
"They called me Van Vianen, became I was found near Vianen. I have no parents."
She said this deeply humiliated and ashamed. And in my heart I laughed, because now after all she too showed herself apprehensive of the voice of the herd, and because she felt as a disgrace, the very thing that, as an aureole of romance, had delighted me.
"Oh, is it only that!" I cried; "that I already knew. All week I have thought of the poor, dear little one as crying, it was laid down upon the gra.s.s by a desperate mother. Likely it was a royal child, Elsje!"
Elsie laughed, rea.s.sured and happy.
"They let me become a Mennonite. Not Jan Baars, but his sister who took me into her home as a child."
"Ah! Mennonite!" said I. I hadn"t the slightest idea what theological, ethical and ritual peculiarities were attached to this creed. I only knew that it must be one of the innumerable variations or sects of Protestantism.
"To be sure it"s a good custom of the Mennonites that they don"t baptize you as a child, when you don"t yet know whether you would rather be a Roman Catholic or an Israelite, but later, when you are confirmed and can yourself choose. But look! when I was eighteen I knew just as little what to choose. And now I don"t know yet."
"And still you let yourself be baptized?"
"Why yes, there was surely no wrong in that. But if they would have you choose well they would first have to let you serve an apprenticeship with the Romans, then another with the Protestants, then another with the Jews and then with the Mohammedans?"
"Not to mention the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Shintoists," said I.
"So that you would need seven lives before you could let yourself be baptized, isn"t it so? And yet it is so necessary, so very, very necessary that you choose the right thing, isn"t it? I never can understand how all people just live on carelessly, and all believing something different, and never consider that they might perhaps be wrong, and how terrible that would be. They simply a.s.sume, and only feign a.s.surance, and you never hear them talk of it, so they probably do not break their hearts about it. And if you were to believe them, then everyone who thinks differently than they is a miserable wretch.
But they all think differently, and so one or the other must be wrong, and yet they are all equally certain and a.s.sured. How is that possible now? Why it"s absurd!"
I thought it was already a great deal for Elsie, in her solitude, to have arrived at the realization of this absurdity. Then I threw out my sounding-line -
"What do you think of Christ, Elsie?"
"I love best to read of Jesus; I think it wonderful to read - especially toward Christmas time - how he came on earth as a little child, and about the star and the shepherds. When I think of Jesus, I always think of him as a little child with Mary his Mother. I should like to have a picture or an image of them, but that"s considered Catholic. Do you know more of Jesus and can you tell me all about him?"
"I asked about Christ, Elsie."
"Isn"t that the same?"
"They are all only names from which we can choose. I prefer to say Christ, because I don"t believe that there lived a man called Jesus who was Christ. But I do positively know that there is something that all men call Christ, and that lives and knows and loves us. And this Christ they already knew long before Jesus is said to have lived. I have seen images of the Mother with the child exactly like the one you would like to have, and it was thousands of years older than Jesus and made by the Egyptians, and instead of Mary and the Christ Child they spoke of Isis and the Horus Child, and the Chinese too made such images."
"And what do they mean by it?"
"Ordinary people mean a holy mother with a holy child, a saviour. But the few wiser ones probably mean the earth mother and the child humanity. I at least presume it, and when men now speak of Christ, then I believe, Elsje, that the most and the best, those who really mean something by the word, something real that they have felt - that they mean something that is equivalent to humanity."
"Humanity? that means nothing to me. Jesus for me is a living, beloved and loving being, who helps and supports me, an exalted, holy being.
Humanity - that is nothing to me, an empty word."
"Right, Elsje, I readily believe it. But empty words can be filled with knowledge. There are learned professors to whom the word Jesus or Christ is entirely hollow or empty. But the word humanity implies for them a real and well-known thing, the entire human race which in its development and growth, in its expression and forms of life they have studied minutely. These professors again would be able to fill the word Christ with the exalted and tender feelings which it arouses in Elsje, if they had learned to feel like Elsje. And now it is my personal opinion with which, so far as I know, I stand quite alone in the world, that Elsje and the professors, were they to compare one another"s observations, would come to realize that it is precisely the same real being that fills the word Christ and the word Humanity: the religious word Christ and the biological, scientific word Humanity."
"But humanity - that is not a being, not a personality ? that is a lot of people. People that I don"t know. How can I care about them and how can they care about me?"
"A tree, Elsje, is a lot of roots, branches and leaves. Yet we call it a tree. A swarm of bees are a lot of bees, and yet one swarm. You cannot discern humanity because you cannot see all people at the same time, and not how they are connected. But I don"t believe either that one leaf can see the whole tree or one bee the whole swarm.
"But humanity is yet a great deal more than all men together, just as the tree is more than all the leaves. And humanity is after all perceived by Elsje in her own heart - all humanity. That is thus much more even than the professors can discern of it, and why should it not be a personal, thinking, loving being? It is that, I think, that Elsje means when she speaks of her exalted Jesus, and it is that I prefer to call Christ, because I like that name best."
"I am such a stupid, ignorant creature, and you are so learned. Forgive me if I still find it somewhat too difficult."
"Of course, dear Elsje, you find it difficult, because you do not know what the professors have observed concerning man and the human race.
But really, the professors would find what I said equally difficult and incomprehensible, because they don"t know - at least most of them do not - what Elsje has observed concerning Christ. Only they would not be as modest as you are; they would not recognize that it is their ignorance. And I am no professor and no Elsje, but I stand sort of between the two and know something of the observations of both, and I know quite positively and see quite plainly that they both mean the same thing and that they require each other"s knowledge."
"So you do know my Jesus, my Christ too, thank G.o.d!"
"Yes, though perhaps not as well as Elsje, yet better than the professors. And I believe that it was this Christ who brought me to Elsje so that I should learn to know him better, - and perhaps should better testify of him. And through him too I gained courage and steadfastness to remain true to Elsje, and not to give up, though the whole world stand against me."
Here the woman found good opportunity for bringing the man from his world of speculation back to practical life.
"But does not Jesus, or Christ, want you to do it openly, before all the world?"
"I don"t know ? I don"t know, Elsje. His promptings and suggestions as they proceed clearly from out the original fount are by no means always equally positive and distinct. But I a.s.sure you - I would swear it to you, had I not vowed once for all never to swear again - that I shall stop at nothing and spare nothing as soon as his light shall shine clearly and unmistakably for me."
"We Mennonites may never swear either," said Elsje, with pretty pride in her creed, confessed with so little conviction.
"That is good, that is indeed one of the best things the Bible Jesus is said to have taught. Therefore it is surely followed least of all. I not only swear no more - I even dare not promise you anything, for I know myself too little to foretell my future actions."
"You do not promise to be true to me?" asked Elsje with mild disappointment.
"I do better, I a.s.sure you of profound love. So profound that I do surely believe it will be true. But what would my faithfulness be to you if love grew weaker? It would become a lie, a feint, wouldn"t it?"
"I shall be thankful for all that I get," said Elsje, "and never ask for more than you wish to give me."
I had to laugh when I thought what my acquaintances from the diplomatic world - friends I do not call them, I never had a friend among them - what they would say of a gallant adventure with so much theology at the third meeting.
But you, dear reader, will probably long have comprehended that I draw from the same reservoir, what others keep separated in water and air-tight compartments, and that theology, science, poetry and love to me are not only brothers and sisters, but often merely names and masks for one and the same inward reality. So that you will no doubt allow me to tell yet a few more things that in my amorous theologizing with Elsje, I learned and taught.
You will also probably understand without my remarking it that I did not speak in quite as fluent and succinct Dutch as I have here written down. But I could make myself understood just as well as if it had been thus spoken, because Love served as our interpreter.
XXV
I will not yet decide whether it was prudent discreation or rather, fearful and narrow-minded timidity, that deterred me from the great resolve of abandoning my family and my sphere of activity, to alone remain true to Elsje. It was for many years a hard and fearful struggle. It was indeed the hardest period of my life, albeit not the darkest. The gloom and dejection this most feared evil, marked by the relaxing of the highest vital spirits, dread warning of the powers that guide and rule us - this evil had vanished. I struggled and suffered, but was no longer miserable and wretched. Only I did not see my way clearly and vainly sought for help and guidance.
The wicked charms and temptations also were dispelled. I desired one woman - without faltering, without shame. I knew what my desire signified, and all my soul p.r.o.nounced it right. To be sure the demons still carried on their nocturnal sport, but I minded them no more than barking terriers, and the wild pa.s.sions were now tamed because the hand of the master had grown firm and he knew what he wanted.
My dreams attained their former sublime splendor, and for the first time in my life I had some one to whom I could confide them. I still saw Emmy in my dreams occasionally, but not so often, and it will surprise no one to hear that it did not excite Elsje"s jealousy, and that she begged me to tell her of her. Elsje also asked me whether I would call herself once more. And I did it and saw her, and Elsje hoped devoutly that she would be in some way sensible of it.
But greatly as I should have desired it, and much more impressive and more convincing as it would have been for her and for you, dear reader, the truth is that she never noticed anything of it, or rather, to be exact, that she never remembered anything about it.
I for my part did not require such evidence. I have obtained stronger evidence through strangers, who let me know without my ever having told them anything about my dreams, that my summons had been heard - but all this belongs to the science of the supernatural, which awaits more general investigation and for which, dear reader, I refer you to some of my other writings.
I now lived separated from Lucia, although before the world our relations remained the same. And a most remarkable and peculiar fact is that Lucia a.s.sured me that her dreams were much more tranquil, since I no longer shared her room. The wild horses that lately had troubled her in her dreams more than ever, now stayed away. I consider this remarkable, because it seems to show how corporal proximity also affects supernatural influences.