The Bride of Dreams

by Frederik van Eeden

I had enough of Old Testament sentiments left in me not to be indifferent to such an imprecation!

I started, but tried my very utmost to see in him only the raving, irresponsible maniac. At the same time the thought flashed across my mind that he himself must also have been infected by Jewish ideas, that he should clutch at these weapons, more sounding than wounding. But I said nothing, walked up to him and from behind his hand attempted to grasp the tiller. "About!" I cried.

"Very well! about!" my father cried fiercely, and with that be wrenched the tiller out of my hand and pulled it violently toward himself, so that instead of sailing before the wind it struck us directly on the beam with mainsail closely hauled and sheet fixed.

Even had I desired death as eagerly as he did at the time, yet now I would instinctively have resisted. Seamanship teaches scorn of death but still greater scorn for bad man?uvring. "Blockhead!" I cried out, hastily cutting the taut rope so that the sail fluttered out into the wind like a half-escaped bird. But the boat had shipped so much water that I could not right her again and in a moment she was entirely swamped. I climbed to the high side stretching out my hand to my father. But he gave me one look of bitter scorn, shook his head and let himself sink, freeing his hand with a wild jerk from a loop in the rigging.

After this, I drifted about four hours. We had been missed and the life-boat had been sent out after us, but for a long time was unable to find me, as the dusk had begun to fall. Finally I was picked up by a fisherman who signalled for the life-boat to come and get me. I had lost consciousness and when I awoke it was night and I found myself in bed hearkening to the soft voices of two women in the room. I thought I was in Italy with my mother and my nurse in our house at Milan, so eloquent of the past were the old familiar sharp sss and rr sounds of these soft Italian whisperings. But soon I recognized the Dutch hotel furnishings, Lucia, and beneath the black lace veil the silvery hair of my venerable mother.

X

When for four hours, wet and benumbed upon a wave-swept piece of wood, with nothing round about but the sea and falling night, one has fought for the maintenance of a thing, one begins to consider that thing important after all, even though before it was ever so indifferent to us.

I had never valued my life so highly; but after I had once been incited to a stubborn, desperate but successful resistance against the attempt of robbing me of it, it had become dearer to me. Now I was determined to know everything there is to be known concerning the value of this hard-won treasure.

Why did I make this tremendous effort? What do I gain by it? And all these others, none of whom, forsooth, praise life as so glorious and desirable a joy, what induces them to cling to it so frantically at the cost of so much pain and trouble?

My father had taught me, and no one, not even my mother and the priests denied it, that we are reasonable beings who ought to act reasonably. To exert oneself for something undesirable, I consider, and everyone with me considers, unreasonable. If it is a Jewish idea to do or to give naught for naught - well, you may label me Jew then. That was also my idea of justice. And then I felt myself more of a Jew than the Jew, Spinoza, who says that one should love God without expecting love in return. My inborn passion for sober truth was stirred to opposition by these words. I did not believe that this feeling could be true, not even in Spinoza. He must merely have imagined it because he wished to be different from the grasping Jews and Hollanders of his age. Right remains right. Love demands love in return, - and life must be good for something if we are willing to suffer and struggle for it. I could be as liberal and generous as the best of Italians, but the highest striving in all nature is for balance, and he who lets himself be pushed off his chair disturbs the balance instead of preserving it, and he who throws his own cabbages to his neighbor's hogs fosters laziness and injustice.