CHAPTER VI.
When Jansen received this letter he was at work in his studio making a bust of his child. Julie sat at his side looking on; little Frances crouched in a high chair and asked a great many droll, sage questions; and in spite of the gray autumn sky it was cozier in the large room than in the old days, when the summer air came wafted in through the wide-opened windows. Even now a sparrow flew in, now and then, through the only open pane, and a great nosegay of autumn flowers stood on the window-sill. A small fire flickered in the stove, and Julie's beautiful face and the child's wise eyes gave out a warmth which had once been sadly wanting here. Yet, notwithstanding this, Jansen's brow still remained clouded; and he left it to his friend to answer the questions of the child, while he worked on in silence.
For weeks she had been aware of this shade upon his spirits without having been able to discover its cause, and to cheer him up she had begged him for a bust of the child. Heretofore she had never come to his studio unless accompanied by Angelica. Now she came every day with the child, who was passionately fond of her, staid the whole forenoon, and then took little Frances home with her to dinner, which was always a fresh treat to the little one. Yet delighted as her friend was at this arrangement and at this confidential intercourse with his beloved, the shadow that rested on his spirits did not depart. At last she asked him directly what it was that oppressed him. She earnestly besought him to tell her, claiming it as her just right; for unless he did so she would be compelled to think that she herself was the cause of his sadness. The fresh outburst of passion with which he greeted this speech, and which she herself was continually obliged to keep within bounds, ought to have satisfied her on this point. But his strange depression was still left unexplained. She must have patience with him--he had entreated of her time and time again. Things would get better and come out all right in the end. He loved her far too well to embitter her life with all the wretched troubles he had to deal with. If she could help him in any way he would not spare her or be ashamed to call upon her for aid.
And now when he had finished reading Felix's letter, he handed it, in silence, to his sweetheart, and stepped to the window while she read. For a time it was perfectly still in the great room; little Frances had clambered down from her high chair, and was busily engaged in dressing and undressing a doll that Julie had given her only that morning. No sound could be heard but the singing of the fire in the iron stove and the hopping of the birds on the shelf above, where the plaster casts stood.
Even after Julie had read the letter to the end, she did not at once break the silence. Not until some time had elapsed did she send the child up to Aunt Angelica with her love, and the question whether she might be allowed to stay up there for a quarter of an hour. Then she stepped up to the window where Jansen stood in silence, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said:
"Now if I should guess what it is that secretly troubles you, my dearest friend, would you confess it to me then?"
He turned, and passionately folded her in his arms. "Julie!" he said--"what good would that do? There are some difficulties that are insurmountable. I can only feel sure you have not vanished from the world when I hold you to my heart, press my lips to yours, feel my hand in yours--"
"Be still!" she said, smiling, and gently disengaging herself from him. "I didn't send Frances away for you to forget all that you have so solemnly promised me. Let us be sensible, my dear friend--indeed we must be. Sit down over there, and try, for once, to listen to me, instead of looking at me. Do you know, I consider it positively discourteous of you to pay no attention to my wisest words, merely because, after such a long acquaintance, your eyes still find something about me to 'study?'"
"O Julie!" he said, and a sad smile passed over his face. "If words could only help--if the sense and understanding and all the strength of soul of a noble woman could but avail against the treachery and unreasonableness of gods and men! But speak, and I will close my eyes and listen."
"Do you know, you and your young friend are sick of one and the same illness?" she now said, for he had covered his eyes with his hand and taken a seat on the sofa, while she stood leaning upon the window-sill.
"I and Felix? I don't understand you."
"You have both come into the world too late, you are both wandering anachronisms, as he says of himself alone in his letter. His energy and your artistic nature to-day no longer find the soil and air that are good for them, and that they deserve. When I look about me, dearest, I say to myself: 'Where are now the people, the prince, the century to appreciate this power, to lay commissions, reward, honor, and admiration at the feet of this creative spirit? to post sonnets on the door of his workshop, to make a passage for him when he strides among the multitude, as we read that the ancients did, and the great men, under the rule of the famous popes and the pomp-loving princes?'--Oh! my dearest friend, I could weep tears of blood when I think how, instead of all this, you live here, appreciated only by a circle of good friends and enthusiastic disciples, and are made the butt of stupid malice or blind ignorance in all the newspapers! And then, when a demand arises for the production of some work to adorn a square or a building, wretched quacks, who are not worthy to unloose the latchet of your shoes, come running up by all sorts of back-stairs and secret ways, and steal the prize away from you, and you remain hidden in the dark! Now, don't shake your head! I know how you think about the applause of the masses, and how little you begrudge it to the poor wretches who hear no divine voice within them. But be honest now--if this monument"--she mentioned the name of a man to whom a statue had just been erected, on which occasion Jansen's application had, as usual, been rejected--"if this commission had fallen to you--and then another had followed close upon that--how differently you would stand in your own esteem when you had become a central figure of your time! To say nothing of the fact that then you would be able to close the factory, as you call it, next door, and would have no need to strike a blow of the mallet that did not come straight from the heart!"
She had talked herself into a state of great excitement; and now, when he looked up at her, the shining brightness of her look and the soft glow of her cheeks enraptured him. But he controlled himself and remained seated.
"What you say is all very wise and true," he said. "But for all that you don't quite hit the sore spot. I have known all this ever since my eyes were first opened to what went on around me, to what some people produce and other people admire. Yet in spite of that I have become what I am, and what I could no more have helped becoming than I could have helped coming into the world. Remember, too, how much better off I am than our friend Felix. As far as the outside world goes, we are both hampered and confined. The age has as little appreciation of high art as of the great personal activity toward which all his powers and wishes urge him. But I can at least put before myself and a half dozen true friends what there is in me, even if it has no fuller life than this; while our friend's special strengths can only reveal themselves in putting him at odds with everybody.
"And, when I look about me here, will not all these dumb creatures of mine continue to be my companions through life? I sometimes seem to myself like a father who has a number of daughters, all of them well brought up and each dear to his heart; and yet, loath as he is to lose any one of them out of his sight, it seems harder and harder to him, as the years go by, that no one of them finds a husband, and they all remain under his roof unprovided for. However, that is fate, and one learns to accept whatsoever the irresponsible powers bestow upon us. But that which comes from mortals--"
He suddenly sprang up, ran his hand through his hair, and stepped so close to his sweetheart, that Julie, little as she feared him even in his anger, involuntarily retreated a step.
"Felix was right," he said, in a hollow voice. "There is only one way of escape. These chains or others--we can never be free except on the other side of the ocean. Julie, if you could only make up your mind, if you feel as terribly in earnest as I do for our happiness--"
"My friend," she interrupted him, "I know what you would say. But the more earnestly I long for your--our happiness--the more must I insist upon our striving to attain it in a perfectly prosaic and sober way. Your friend is a born adventurer, a circumnavigator--a world conqueror. Your world and mine is this studio. Can we take it with us in the ship? And do you think a finer sense of art is to be found among the Yankees or the red-skins than among our countrymen? No, my dearest Jansen, I think that with courage and good sense we shall be able to free ourselves even on this side of the water. You men are masters in despairing, we women in hoping. And, besides, the end of our year of probation is still far enough off."
"Hope!" he cried, gnashing his teeth. "If a tigress had me in her claws, you might, with far more show of reason, call out to me only to give up hope with life! But this woman! Do you know a more terrible enemy of human happiness than this lie--this cold, rouged, heartless, unnatural lie? If she only hated me as immeasurably as she pretends to love me, truly, I myself should think it too soon to despair. A mortal can become satiated even with hate; and malice, too, is something of which one can get tired. But what is to be hoped when it is all merely a game, and the innermost nature of one's enemy is the nature of a comedian? Every spark of conscience has been extinguished in this wretched woman since her girlhood; her life is to her nothing but a rôle; her love and hate have become merely a question of costumes--applause and money are her highest and holiest conceptions. And she fears for both, if she lets me go free. It is flattering to her--one success more--to be able to pose before herself and the world as an injured innocent, a robbed wife, a mother whose child has been taken from her--and for that reason she refuses all my entreaties and offers with indignation, for she knows well that I would rather give up any happiness in life than let her have the child. If you had read the letters I have wasted upon her in these last few weeks! Letters which, I can truly say, were written with my heart's blood--they would have made a tigress human; and this woman---read what she answers me! I have carried on this wretched correspondence behind your back, in the hope of taking upon myself all that was bitter and humiliating--for what words have I not stooped to use!--I have borne all the agony of these last weeks, in order that I might at last lay nothing but the happy results at your feet. Now read what sort of echo came to me from that stony heart, and then say whether a man need necessarily be a master in despairing, to give up all hope here!"
He went to the large closet, unlocked a drawer, and took out several dainty-looking letters, that diffused a sweet perfume through the room. Julie read one after the other, while he threw himself down on the sofa again and stared at the ceiling. The letters were written in a regular, delicate, clear hand, and in a style which might be taken as a model of diplomatic art. There were no traces of mere declamation, of complaining or accusing. The writer had resigned herself to accept an unhappy fate, for she felt herself too weak and not cold-hearted enough to take up the battle with him: a battle in which the man to whom she had given all stood opposed to her. This she could prevail upon herself to do, for it was only her own happiness that she was sacrificing. But she could never be brought to give up her claim to her child. The day might come when the longing for a mother's love might awaken in the poor child's heart. Then no one should have it in his power to say to her: "Your mother has no heart for you; she has given you over to strangers." Upon passages like this, which were repeated in each letter, especial care had been bestowed, reminding one, here and there, of the stage, and the last rhetorical flourish just before the curtain falls. The last sheet, which had been received only a few days before, concluded as follows:
"I know all, all that you would so carefully conceal from me. It is not only your wish to have done with the past once and forever, and to give me back my freedom--for, according to your idea of my character, it would cost me no effort whatsoever to live as if all were at an end between us, especially as I do not bear your name on the stage. No, I know what it is that not only makes you wish for a complete separation from me, but that makes every delay unbearable. You have fallen into the net of a dangerous beauty. If my old love for you were not stronger than my self-love, there would be nothing I should more earnestly wish for, or would more eagerly aid by all the means in my power, than your marriage with this girl. She would justify me, would raise me to honor again in your eyes, and would force from you the confession that you had cast away your only true friend in order to nurse a serpent in your bosom. But I am nobler than it is for my advantage to be: not, I admit, altogether for your sake. The hope of seeing you return to me is too tempting for me not to be willing to help you to have this experience. But to relinquish our child to this stranger--who is said to be as clever as she is beautiful, and as beautiful as she is heartless--to give my blessed angel, who hovers near me in my dreams, to this serpent--"
Julie had involuntarily read the last few lines aloud, as if she scorned to soften down any accusation that was directed against herself. Her disgust and indignation would not permit her to finish the sentence--the letter fell from her hand.
"My dear friend," she said, "let us read no further. I must confess you are quite right; this is hopeless. Kindness is thrown away upon such an unnatural character as you so rightly called it, and force--where is the force that we could use? But as for surrendering--hopelessly, and without striking a blow--no matter how much talent I might have for despairing, if I were opposed to this woman, I would either conquer or die!"
He sprang up and seized her hand. "Julie!" he cried, "you put new life into me. Never shall she enjoy such a triumph--rather let us flee to the ends of the earth beyond the reach of her hand--rather let us go to the Yankees and the red-skins, but with you at my heart and our child in our arms--"
She shook her head earnestly. "No, no, no!" she said. "No self-imposed banishments! It is a good thing I have my thirty-one years behind me. Else this youthful enthusiast might succeed in the end in carrying me off with him, and we should make a great mistake that would soon make both him and me very unhappy. The land across the ocean is no place for you, my beloved master. You have never cared to take part in the modern, sentimental nonsense in our Old World; what sort of a figure would you cut in the midst of all the humbug of the New? And as for your giving up your art, and living only for your wife and child--how long do you suppose you could bear that? How long would it take for the woman for whose sake you had done this to become a burden to you? And even if you could rest content with such a life, do you think I would be satisfied with it? True, I have confessed that I love this man--this violent, wicked, good, precious Hans Jansen--but I want to see him as great, as famous, as proud, and as happy as it is possible for any one to be in this wretched world; to love in him not only the husband and father, but also the great master, who compels the whole world to join with me in love and admiration. Oblige me, my dearest friend, by throwing that correspondence there into the stove, and promise me not to write any more. In return I promise you that I will ponder day and night upon the best way for us to free ourselves. And if our year of probation should pass away without our having succeeded before God and man--here is my hand upon it! I will be yours--if not in the eyes of men, certainly in the sight of God; and I believe I am old enough to know what an honorable woman ought to do and to answer for."