Part 29 (2/2)
”It is good after all now,” she said when she felt the certainty of what was about to take place, ”that our darling baby did not live. For it would have been so hard for you, poor, dear man, to care for the child alone and at the same time continue with your work.”
Eagerly she questioned me every morning about my dreams and it pleased her exceedingly when I could honestly say that despite my anxieties my dreams had been of a serene, refres.h.i.+ng splendor. And she always wanted to know more of this wonderful state, that must be so like what we shall experience after this body's decay and is so difficult to describe and to comprehend.
”I think the worst,” she said, ”is that perhaps we shall never be certain, when we see each other again, whether it is not a delusive image, a product of our own imagination, instead of the other's actual being. For then we no longer, as now, have our senses and thus nothing to convince us that what we perceive is the same as what we perceived in life.”
”I can't say much in answer to that, dearest, except this - that even in the brief moments of perception during sleep, I have felt a.s.surance.
Self-deception may indeed be possible, but there is also infinite, quiet time for consideration, observation, recollection, which in my sleep is always wanting. And there must also be amalgamation, dissolution of personality, perception through the medium of still living beings - a mult.i.tude of conditions and faculties now still wholly incomprehensible to us.”
”That sounds sad to me: dissolution of the personality. For it will be for you, for you as you are now, for your own personal nature, your dear voice, your gentle eyes that I shall long for ever and ever, and for that above everything.”
”I only know, Elsje, that nothing has been lost or can be lost of all our impressions, of all the most beautiful and precious things we have experienced. Nothing perishes, and surely least of all that which is the const.i.tuent element of all that is: feeling. All feeling is eternal, and the least that we experience is lastingly recorded in the memory of the Almighty. I can say nothing more nor be more explicit about it, we must comfort ourselves with this main thought.”
”If you are comforted and brave, dearest husband, I am too.”
”I am, for even if I must live on ten or twenty solitary years after our separation, I have my work and my study, and I also have my nights in which I shall call you. And you'll surely want to come when I call you?
”Oh, dearest, whether I will want to? If I know that it can comfort you! Whether I will want to?”
And her dim eyes smiled at the extreme superfluence of my question.
”And when you have your gloomy moments again, dear, will you forgive me then that I induced you to cause and to experience so much sorrow? - I know of course that you never think bitterly of me, and that you forgive me everything in your joyous, vigorous times, when your real, true nature dominates. But there are periods of dejection too. Will you not think bitterly of me then?”
”Rather ask me, Elsje, whether I will forgive Christ that he induced me to cause you so much suffering, that he did not point out my way to me sooner and more distinctly, and left you to pine and wait so long.
Christ is the Mighty, the Strong, the Wise, who governs us and who bears the greatest responsibility. We two are poor, blind, little toilers who have helped one another to the best of our abilities. For each other we have only grat.i.tude!”
”Yes!” said Elsje, contented; ”for each other only grat.i.tude.”
And to the last moments of her life she was absorbed and comforted in the thought that I would still have the nights, in which I would call her and find strength and encouragement for the lonely day.
”To forgive Jesus,” she said another time, ”is really absurd, isn't it?
For I would love him at least just as much as you, if only I might think of him as human.”
”Everything we say, Elsje, is absurd. But what we feel is not absurd.
When we have returned to the Source of Life, to the Genitive-soul of humanity, only then I think shall we realize how absurd were our words, but how true our feeling.”
The last words I heard from her, in her anxious care for me, were a whispered: ”Will you call me!” and once more when her voice had grown toneless her lips formed the word: ”Call!”
Then the blossom withered, and fell. But the mighty stem had grown richer through the beautiful bloom of her love-breathing life.
x.x.xII
After Elsje's death I had no more peace in the new country. It seemed as though her homesickness had pa.s.sed on to me. My dreams spoke night after night of Holland, only Holland, and of the place where I had found my wife. Her supernatural being seemed to drive me toward the land of her longing.
A long time I resisted this desire, unwilling to give up the work that I had begun with go much sacrifice and carried through with so much anguish.
Then I received a strange communication. I heard through a business agent of my family in Italy, with whom I had remained in touch, that my mother had died and had left her fortune to my children; and that my daughter Emilia, having attained her majority, was determined not to accept the money but to give it to me. My children were all married or independent, and the whole family was scattered. Lucia was an abbess in a religious inst.i.tution.
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