Minna/Book 4, Chapter 3
I walked rapidly along: "A dream in the heart, on the lips the last kiss," as one of the German lyric poets sings. With delight I inhaled the fresh evening air; my stick sounded on the pavement, and my firm steps echoed in the empty street. A man whose boots creaked audibly kept pace with me on the opposite pavement. Only a couple of lamps lighted the whole street, and both of them were on my side; I glanced in vain at the stranger, who very likely had witnessed the tender little scene. Suddenly he crossed the road, cleared his throat, and lifted his hat. I was startled to recognise Stephensen.
"Excuse me, Mr. Fenger," he began; "perhaps it surprises you at this hour, it might have the appearance … well, why not be straightforward? I have been waiting for you."
"Indeed. Then you must have been wearing away the pavement for a considerable time."
"Just as long as you were later than usual in leaving your fiancée.… It shows that it was most important for me to meet you."
"You honour me too much. You wish?"
"I should like to have an interview with you, upon a subject which is of the greatest importance to both of us."
"All right."
"Suppose we drink a glass of beer in a place where I am known and where we can be alone?"
"A glass of beer by all means," I answered, with as cheerful an indifference as was possible, though I felt as if somebody had proposed to drink poison with me.
"I suppose you also appreciate a good glass of Pilsener, or Münchener beer? As far as I am concerned I cannot stand our Danish beer any longer."
"No, it tastes more or less like water with gin in it."
"Quite my opinion! And that we are proud of! Well, à la bonheur, as the German says, anyhow it has brought us some statues.[1] Suppose we go to the 'Three Ravens'—very likely you also are known there?"
"No, I have only been there a few times."
"Really! I went there nearly every evening from the very same front door out of which you have just come. Perhaps you know that I lodged there? I had, of course, my own key, and therefore had not the opportunity of being seen out in the pleasant way you were. Speaking of that, do you know the expression, 'A genius, who never has had his own door key'? I find it very applicable to our Danish talents, I came across it the other day in one of our new authors. I suppose you are up to date in our new literature, are you not? Oh, one cannot deny there is a lot of 'go' in it, otherwise I read mostly French novels. Well, here we are at the 'Three Ravens,' they have been illuminated, that's something new. After you."
He stood aside for me to go first into the lighted corridor, and then he took me to the left through a billiard-room, where five or six men were playing in shirt sleeves, to a smaller room which was empty. Before we had taken off our overcoats, a very fat and pale waiter, with leg-of-mutton-shaped whiskers, appeared, and hastened to the assistance of Stephensen.
"Welcome, Professor!" he said, and so that he might leave no doubt as to his personal knowledge of the customers, he hastily added: "Arrived from Denmark in order to paint again, I suppose?"
"That's just it. How are things going on at the 'Three Ravens,' Heinrich?"
"As usual, Professor, as well as usual, I am glad to say; only that last year we stopped drawing Bohemian beer, which the Professor sometimes drank. Well, there was also a waiter on the staff—but perhaps the Professor remembers Frants, the tall fellow with the red beard?"
"Perfectly well; is he not here?"
"Last Easter he opened a bar in Friedrichstadt. He is supposed to be doing well, but I say, 'a bird in the hand'"
"You are right. It would never do for you to leave the 'Three Ravens,' we couldn't do without you. Look here, could we be by ourselves, Heinrich?"
"Oh, dear me, yes, Professor. Shall it be Pilsener?"
"Yes, two—and"
"With a lid, of course, Professor," the waiter said, anticipating him, and bowing and flicking the napkin under his arm, after which he quickly disappeared.
I sat down on a little velvet sofa with the depressing feeling of inferiority that one gets in a public place in the society of a regular customer, who is treated half as a prince and half as a comrade by the waiter, while whatever attention is shown to outsiders is given as a favour. And what a customer! Arriving here after a couple of years' absence, and being received as if he had left last night. Stephensen, "the Professor," evidently enjoyed his triumph, while he stretched out his legs, glanced in the mirror over the sofa, and fidgeted with his fingers between his neck and stiff little collar.
"What astonishing memories these waiters have," he exclaimed. "Upon my word, he remembers that I always ordered Pilsener beer drawn in a glass with a lid—it is almost absurd! By the way, I also had a curious experience with a porter in Berlin.…"
He started to tell some anecdotes in order to pass the time until the waiter returned. I felt as if he was playing with me, like a cat with a mouse, and was almost inclined to get up and go away. From the adjoining room one heard the monotonous counting. A hoarse voice shouted—
"I am naughty,
You are naughty,
We are both naughty."
The waiter entered with the beer and disappeared immediately.
Stephensen lifted his tankard towards me, and took a long drink.
"Well," he started, "it was By the way, do you smoke?"
"Not so late in the evening," I answered, though I had a great desire to calm my nerves with tobacco; but my pouch was empty, and the thought of receiving anything from him filled me with disgust.
"Ah, you have principles," he observed, while he lighted his pipe. "Really, with principles, as with trunks when travelling, one ought not to drag about too many of them.… There are, for instance, art principles.… However, it was our concerns we were to talk about."
"Just so, I think it is time we began," I remarked irritably.… "Is there any way I can be of service to you?"
Stephensen smiled in a peculiar way.
"I dare say you can, but it is not about that I want to speak.… H'm! I said on the terrace that I had come in order to paint."
"That could not surprise me, as you are a painter."
"Quite right.… I am also going to paint, but it was not for this I came.… Two letters which I received from Minna, and in which she informed me of her engagement to you, brought me here."
"I don't understand why they should bring you to Dresden."
"Perhaps you will when you come to know what sort of association there has been between Minna and me."
"I know everything concerning this intimacy, but it only makes your presence still more mysterious."
"Indeed! It seems to me you ought to understand that the information that she was suddenly engaged to another man was bound to be a great surprise to me, and that I"
"Pardon me. A surprise? And why? I think on the contrary you should have been prepared for it, and that it ought to have been welcome news to you. You have in days gone by flirted with her, unfortunately not without success; you have assured yourself of her love in return, though you did not succeed in making her your mistress"
"Mr. Fenger, what an accusation! I must distinctly refute this insinuation"
"I am sorry, but you can hardly wonder that I believe more in Minna's assurances than in yours. As you, on the other hand, failed to have sufficient moral courage to take the responsibility which an engagement involved"
"An engagement? That would be the last straw. My good Mr. Fenger, you are young enough and very likely still sufficiently Danish to be pleased with our four, five, or six years' engagements. For my part I am not. I would do much for Minna's sake, but to bring such an absurdity on myself, to go about as a proper patent Danish fiancé—No!"
"Very well, so after all you also have your principles. Only it is a pity that as engagements are on the same lines in Germany, her German heart and understanding have perhaps not been able fully to value these motives. What, however, is still more to be regretted, is that you did not manage to impart to her your own view of the situation, but that she, on the contrary, believed that there were to be no ties between you and herself."
"In that she was quite right.… Of course I wished her to have her full liberty"
"And you yours, especially the latter."
"What do you mean by that?"
"No doubt you have taken advantage of your liberty, indeed I can mention a certain lady who was sufficiently 'well-to-do' to inspire in you a desire for marriage."
Stephensen laughed mockingly.
"I must say that Copenhagen's old reputation for being a gossip-hole does not belie itself, since the gossip has its echo right down in Saxonia. I can imagine that you have not deprived Minna of this 'tit-bit.'"
"Think what you like, it's no business of mine! But permit me to call your attention to the fact that you are not very consistent, when it surprises and annoys you that she, on her part, has at last made use of her liberty."
Stephensen was evidently very irritated at the turn the conversation had taken; but he checked the sharp outburst that was on his lips. For several minutes he remained staring silently at the ceiling with furrowed brow, breathing deeply and sighing. "What does this mean?" I thought. The voices in the billiard-room had grown more noisy; the musical member sang with sentimental tremor on the long notes: "Gute Nacht, du mein 'he-rz-iges Kind," and several voices joined in, howling the syllable "herz" in a prolonged discord. Stephensen smiled, passed his hand over his eyes, and then looked at me vacantly.
"You do not understand me," he began, and his lisping voice had again attained its gentle, rather sugary tone. "What was it you remarked? I see, that she had only used her liberty, and that it ought not to annoy me. But this is not the point! I do not feel at all wronged. And it is not the fact that she has used her liberty, as you so strikingly observed, not at all. If I had heard that she had become engaged to a young man whom she had known for a long time, with whose family she had associated, and who was in such a position that he could soon marry her, for instance the son of this Jew where she visits so often, I don't remember"
"Hertz, I suppose you mean?"
As a mocking chorus they howled in the billiard-room—"he-rz-iges Kind."
"That is it, Hertz; of course she could have married him, and why not? Not a brilliant match, but a solid one. Well, I should have been resigned, and should have silently acquiesced. Indeed, it would have been a case in which my consent would neither have been asked nor required," he added, with a rather self-sufficient irony.
"Your last remark appears to me very sound; would it not also be applicable in the present instance?"
"Not quite. Just place yourself in my position. Minna and I parted as friends, who knew that they were more than friends, not really bound in any way, but with a mutual consent not to lose sight of one another. In consequence of this we have corresponded for a year and a half continually and rather regularly, a fact of which you are probably aware. Well, I am not exactly 'given to sentiment,' and even if our friend perhaps has got a vein of it, it followed naturally that neither of us overwhelmed the other with emotional outpourings or fond assurances. Fortunately, however, the art exists which is called, 'reading between the lines,' and by means of this art I can, without boasting, assure you that the letters, which I received two or three months ago, were written by a lady who was in love with me."
The little Danish Dictionary, which had been Minna's favourite book, came into my mind, and I did not dare to contradict him.
"Then suddenly I receive her confidential announcement that she is engaged to a young man, whom she had only known for about three weeks, and who—forgive my saying so—is not in a position to marry soon and offer her the comforts and security of a home. Excuse me, I must repeat it—it is very painful for me to touch upon your financial position—I know that the thought of not being able to support a family in the near future, or anyhow not to maintain it with ample means, is humiliating in itself, and doubly so when it is alluded to by another; but I place the greatest importance on this point, because it shows that she was not thinking of a marriage of convenience.
"Just the very remark I made to Minna, namely, that you would see this point, and consequently understand that it was serious …" I said, and began to stutter, for I was annoyed by my admission that Minna and I had been talking about the possibility of his interference; and he, after a long drink, glanced lurkingly at me over the lid of his tankard, and then sucked the beer from his moustache in a very contented way, as if he was saying to himself: "Oho, my friend, you put your foot into it that time! So you have already been talking about the possibilities!"
"Serious! Oh, no doubt of that."
"It is as much as to say that—that we both—in short, that there was nothing for you to do," I brutally broke through the difficulty, and looked at him fiercely.
"It quite depends, it quite depends, sir! Your reasoning does not hold good.… At all events, I quite see what leads you astray. Of course you look upon the expression 'marriage of convenience' as something depreciatory, and forget that I do not share this particular Danish prejudice, nor even all cosmopolitan ones. On the contrary I consider, taken as a whole, that the so-called 'marriages of convenience' are those matches which have most chance of happiness, not forgetting that matrimony altogether is—I won't say a curse—but an anomaly.… In this case, however, a matrimony of interest is, as we have already agreed, out of the question; here is supposed to be, forgive me, passion, enthusiasm, love—whatever you like to call it. Please do not misunderstand me! I do not doubt that, as far as you are concerned, it exists, and I will go further: I will grant you that Minna also feels real affection for you, even—I don't mind saying—is in love with you; only, the question is, of what description is this love?"
"Is it not the most natural thing to leave it to her to decide this question?"
"What are you dreaming of! She is quite incapable of doing that. I am convinced that a certain impatience to break an intercourse, which to her was doubtful and unsatisfactory, has contributed more than a little to this new and sudden love. Besides, I have also a suspicion that the quite accidental circumstance of your being a countryman of my unworthy self has made the transference of certain feelings and impressions easier"
An intimation in her first letter to Stephensen came into my mind, and certainly confirmed this supposition. I lowered my eyes, bewildered by his inquisitive glance.
"The favourable conditions, the loneliness have done something, and then, what I do not at all doubt, many excellent and lovable qualities in yourself"
"Shall we not now leave off this rubbish!" I burst out, and got up suddenly. "I understand quite well your ideas, but what the dickens do I care about them? I do not recognise that you have any right to act as Minna's guardian."
"And what the dickens have I to do with your recognition? That is beside the question. I simply have the right to do the best I can to prevent Minna from committing one of those follies, which are not easily put right again, and as it is my own behaviour towards her which to some extent is the reason for this rash haste, it is even my duty—I don't know what you mean by your scornful laughter."
"I thought the feeling of duty belonged to those cosmopolitan prejudices which you did not share."
"On the contrary, it belongs to those which I do share. But there is one motive that very likely influences me still stronger. It is the circumstance that I love her—love her!"
He also had risen. We stood facing one another with the little table between us, staring firmly into one another's eyes. It struck me that the most natural and, after all, the most proper thing to do, would be to jump at each other and fight like a couple of tigers, instead of which we should no doubt continue to argue and perhaps even drink our beer together and politely say good-night when we parted. This consideration made me so irritated with the situation that I recovered my control. "Since we have begun, let us play the comedy to the end," I thought. Pushing the table away I freed myself from my closed-in position, in which I felt as if I was besieged, and began to walk up and down the room. Our neighbours sang with Teutonic enthusiasm "Die Wacht am Rhein."
"What the deuce, then, do you want?" I exclaimed at last. "Perhaps you think you can make me give her up?"
"Oh no, I don't ask impossibilities."
"Really not! So, after all, you grasp that it is impossible?"
"Of course, for the same reason that the Nürnberger could not hang somebody—they had first to get him."
"I know I have got Minna, just as I know she has got me."
"Those are mere sayings and even antiquated sayings. No human being can get and own another. Do you really think your engagement is going to frighten me? As if I could not long ago have been engaged to her."
"More fool you not to have been so!"
"Perhaps you are right. But I still have a chance, and she will have to choose between us."
"She has chosen."
"No, that's just what she has not done. Under the supposition that I would not marry her, she has given you a promise. Dare you say that you would have been accepted if she, the day before you proposed to her, had known for certain that I loved her and was longing to marry her?… Very well, the supposition was false, and if you are a man of honour, you will not bind her to a promise that was given under such circumstances."
"I would never, under any circumstances, look upon her promise as binding if she herself did not feel that she was bound by it."
"Oh, but that is exactly where the shoe pinches, sir. I do not doubt that Minna has most of these esteemed prejudices, which are the chief ornaments of the weaker sex. Indeed, I mean it seriously: I, for my part, would not be without these prejudices in women, though no doubt it would make life easier and more agreeable. It is an extravagant luxury, but what are we to do? Modern nature contains such contradictions.… Therefore, it is very likely that Minna is inclined to consider this engagement as a bond for time and eternity. She is not exactly what one would call a character, but she certainly is a nature—and a faithful nature; and it would consequently be easy for you, without precisely forcing your claim or appealing to her constancy, still to keep her amiable, though somewhat narrow-minded, feeling of duty alive in your favour, not stretching the tie, but still holding it firmly, so long as she herself does not untie it. What I demand of you is, that you yourself shall let it go; understand me rightly, 'not give her up,' as you say, but only not make use of the advantage which this half-legitimate position gives you. I demand it of you as a gentleman, and, understand, not for my own sake—you would, of course, willingly see me hanged! But for Minna's sake you cannot wish—I will not believe that of a man to whom Minna has given such a promise—that she should be yours by compulsion, were it even inward compulsion, while she secretly grieved over not being able to be mine. If you notice, or even suspect, that she is on the point of committing such a folly, you will know that it is your duty not to accept such a sacrifice, but, if necessary, to open her eyes and give her back her liberty which she herself has not the courage to take. It is possible that you have driven me out of her heart, in that case the matter is already settled. But it is also possible that she loves us both, each in his own way. In that case she will surely have a great struggle to go through in order to come to a conclusion; but she must fight it out alone, and we most certainly ought not to make the battle harder by forcing ourselves upon her and by dragging her in opposite directions. … Minna must choose between us; for she has not chosen, and no power on earth can relieve her from making a choice. But she must be free to choose—that is all that I demand."
"I shall not put any hindrance in the way of her liberty, either direct or indirect, and I will submit to her decision without trying to shake it. I rely upon you to do the same.… And as I suppose your object in this meeting was to obtain such a declaration from me, I presume that we can now part—as enemies."
"But, at any rate, as honest enemies, who are fighting in the open and with equal weapons."
I took my hat down from the peg, gave a stiff bow, and left the room. In the billiard-room the game had ceased; a couple of the shirt-sleeved men, who were standing with their hands on one another's shoulders, were assuring each other of their "absolute affection and unbounded esteem." The musical member, who sat on the corner of the billiard-table, sang: "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott." I guessed, with reason, from these manifestations, that the sublimest height of drunkenness had been reached, and that it was very late.
By a stroke of good fortune I succeeded in finding the fat waiter, and in paying for my own beer.
- ↑ A wealthy brewer in Copenhagen made the collecting of modern sculpture his hobby.