A Disciple (Kinross)

by Albert Kinross

 

A Disciple

By ALBERT KINROSS

I HAD come back again to London, to the humdrum round—office and club, club and office, the same people, the same tasks, the same dinner-parties with bridge to follow, the same golf on the same Sundays. Sometimes I caught myself chuckling over those stolen weeks: I was at least ahead on them. Yes, I had seen the Alps again, an odd fancy, and Pæstum, and Girgenti. I had given myself up to fancies, to old longings, to the wistful things one dreams of, sighing "If." There had come to me a small legacy, and I had spent it. One of my diversions had been to visit Weimar. That again was a long-nursed dream. Goethe repels one, or else he holds. Me he had always fascinated. I could never see the coldness in him, the polished egotism. Hard as a stone new from the lapidary, and as smooth, is one reading. But the man was different; one has but to take the Elegies, or else Eckermann. There was warmth behind the polish, there was a heart, volcanic. And so I had ended my pilgrimage at this great shrine, to me the greatest.

I lingered, and I found a fellow-worshiper. He might have been the cause of this delay. It may be guessed that one has a curiosity and often a weakness when one finds a passion shared or the same complaint. Patients discuss their symptoms; so we discussed Goethe. He was Davidson's mania and mine. Yet here was a man, whole-souled and all-devoted, a veritable watcher by the tomb, while I—I had only taken a holiday, was suffering only a transient acuteness of the thing, and to-morrow would find me deaf to these enthusiasms. Not perhaps stone-deaf, but merely deaf. In London, at the office, at the club, who could afford to dabble openly in Goethe? In stocks, in bonds, in shares, perhaps, but not in Goethe.

And now I was home again, going the same round, my dreams fulfilled. It made something else to think of; and often I caught glimpses of the little city dreaming on, full of old-fashioned people, of pilgrims coming and going as I had come, of sleepy tradespeople and informal hotels, with a grand duke presiding over its destinies—Goethe's grand duke's lineal heir. It was something to know I had seen the poet's tomb; it was something to know I had followed his daily way, crossing the park to his cottage by the Ilm, treading the rooms of his mansion in the town, stooping over manuscript and writing-table, almost as he had stooped. One stood so very close to him, to all the ardors of that crowded life! First of all came the poet; and afterward my mind would settle on Davidson, leech-like, drawing blood from him. He was the true worshiper who had renounced all else for service, I merely the Sunday guest who passes an hour in prayer and then moves on. I sit here, pondering over him, piecing his story together, unraveling it. One moment he is tragic, another ludicrous, ivy clinging to the monument, parasitic or pitiful. He was so small, so white-faced, and so feeble; so passionate with that—the nature of a child!

We had met casually in the restaurant of a hotel. When I was done with the English paper, would I let him have it? he began; and after that we talked. I met his wife, their friends, I saw the city as it was, old-world and somnolent, with a society that moved ceremoniously through a life that was a minuet. All went to slow music here: you took tea at a house, and it was an occasion; you paid a call, and it was ritual. I remembered Heine's impatience with the life, in no way changed. Indeed, I felt it, too; but, then, I argued, it was their nature, their way, and may have been born with their fine pride and their penuriousness, for Weimar is a city of the proud and poor. Leave out its memories, its significance, and you are among a people that has not yielded, that will not budge. No one dares jostle them, or trouble them with the irreverent word; the wit and the parvenu are alike excluded from this tremulous hospitality. But what was Davidson, an Englishman, doing with them? I asked. In the months that have gone by I have found an answer. Whence I hardly know. From him, his wife, her family, from others that spoke of him, or from myself? One pieces things together, and one fails. One tries again and yet again. It may so happen that one arrives.

He was from a stubborn county, the son of a successful father, a man of business and self-made. Now, such a man requires children like himself, who will continue the line and its prosperity. Davidson was earmarked for this purpose—the selling of ironmongery and its manufacture, its distribution over continents. As a boy he was sent abroad to pick up languages. Those were the days of happiness and ease. He learned good German, ignoring its commercial aspects; he learned Italian, and discovered Dante. But Goethe was his star, and Goethe breathes no word of ironmongery and the trade that it may make, the potent cities that it has built. The boy came home, and was pronounced unfit. He quailed before the tasks demanded of him, the cold contemptuousness that accepted his failure, the tongues that first lashed and then ignored. He tried to explain that he had other ideas about himself. To his father, however, there could be but one idea. Outside successful trade was spread the wilderness. One pities the old man, defeated by such a son. He thanked Providence that he had begotten others. Then came a day when Davidson took his life in his hands and went to London.

He had fled, he had burned his boats, and even sunk his name. So Goethe would have done, he had persuaded himself. He came out of that experience untainted by the deeps of it; for, see, he had no vice. He was in the gutter, very much in the gutter, when he met Riviere, who befriended him. The two men had come together at a public auction. First editions were being sold, and autograph manuscripts, the treasures of a great collection. A remark of Riviere's was corrected by Davidson. The fellowship of such a place made light of their circumstances. They fought, they argued, and Davidson won. Naturally, for it was his subject—Goethe. Riviere possessed that microbe, too, was under the same spell, but with a difference. He could afford it; Davidson could not. That link held them bound for an hour; then it was time for luncheon. Riviere was one of those romantics who follow their impulses if need be to the bitter end. There was not much bitterness involved in asking so shabby a guest as Davidson to take luncheon, yet the act was on a level with Riviere's last impulse of all. You may remember his end. It was in a duel that seemed incredible to us at home, who have abandoned such ordeals, that summary method of testifying to our sincerity. He knew the risk he ran, and ventured. In something the same spirit he must have picked up Davidson and stood the tattered creature upon well-shod feet. I should love to furnish a description of that scene: Riviere building up Davidson from the very socks, providing him with linen, giving him food and shelter, money in his brand-new trouser-pockets, and enjoying every thrill of it. Nor was it the passing impulse of a frivolous rich man. The bond lasted. Davidson was free to describe himself as "secretary," as "librarian," which he did proudly for seven faithful years. I think Riviere, with all his wildness, must have come to a very real tenderness for the little man, something unusual, and even tinged with the heroic. There had been no asking on Davidson's part, no trickery; he had refused almost as much as he had accepted. "I did n't want to impose upon him," was how he formulated it.

They held together closely till the end came; till an old, unhealed passion of Riviere's broke out again. But the girl was married now; that made the difference. She was an Austrian, and the husband had the last word in it—a pistol-bullet that shattered Riviere's chest, leaving Davidson alone to bear the tragedy. He buried his patron and stood broken-hearted, facing an empty world, his breast shattered, too. The people of those parts had pitied him.

Riviere's death, when he looked round again, had given him his freedom. In that disordered life there had been sanity as well as folly. Davidson was left by will a sufficient sum to meet all future needs. It was securely invested, but he could not touch the capital, or mortgage this income in advance. A child might have despoiled him, and Riviere knew that and had provided against it.

When the old landmarks go, a man is driven in upon himself, and from his own resources he must create the morrow. So, in this hour of need, Davidson turned to Weimar. An instinct led him there, or a passion unassuaged: it was the one thing clear that had survived the shock, the one thing stable that had endured; and all these years he had wanted to go, had planned to go, and had come no further. He went without object, without purpose, perhaps somewhat like a wounded animal. With Lewes's "Life" in his hand and Düntzer in his trunk, he made the journey.

He knew no one in the place, was without introductions; he knew his Goethe, and that was all. There are, of course, openings for such a man, societies, institutions; but so far he had not come to these, and was most mystically alone. He haunted the shrines, he walked the woods. The fine spring weather took hold of him; he talked sometimes to children and very much to himself, unaware that he was observed, that Weimar, like all small places, was making its own legend of him.

Those first months had a filminess that was superterrestrial; the common world was lost in them, or recovered only with a start. But he was mending. The peace, the tranquil freshness, of these new surroundings were giving him vigor, and he had leisure now, and calmness, and abundant ease. Riviere's urgent career had mostly lent him none of them; he recognized the fever in that life, so early closed, whose law had been his law, whose unrest, triumphs, and terminations his. Now he took Goethe's motto, "Without haste, but without rest." He browsed upon the masterpieces, and lived within the magic circle of their light. Perhaps it is too fine an atmosphere. He had built a library of his own around him, and that and the solitudes outside were now his world.

Thus mystically engrossed, he became aware of a face. It grew from big, blue eyes that had surprised him; it achieved completion. A nose was added; then lips, and chin, and brow. That perfect image entered into his dreams. There was a woman in this city fit for kings. A glimpse of her would fill him for a day, set his heart beating to a tune, his fancy roaming. Humble, he always saw her from afar; he placed her upon thrones and knelt to her; she might not know of him,—never, oh, never, would she know of him,—but he dared venture a brief glance at her. He had become an inmate of the age of chivalry. Goethe, his books, his exercise, were all enlivened by this undertone.

One evening in a café where a band played she arrived with her father and mother, and they bore down upon him. He had a table to himself, yet there was room for others, and the gentleman of the party had perceived this. The custom of that country is to bow and ask permission. Davidson's heart was beating above these compliments, yea, above the orchestra. He removed his hat and cane from a chair and apologized. There was nothing to apologize for; it was natural, they said. During an interval the gentleman spoke to him again. Ordinary politeness mingled with curiosity as they conversed. The ladies listened attentively. They were interested. Something they all seemed to know about him; for Weimar had made its legend, the stranger had been discovered. He had heard her voice at last, and to-night he had seen her, not from afar, but disturbingly at hand. On leaving, she had bowed to him, a personal inclination. Perhaps, when they met outdoors, she might bow again.

This was the beginning. The acquaintance ripened. Within a week he and the baron had exchanged cards over a table at the Jungbrunmen a few days more and he had been presented formally at a public place, and next he received an invitation to the Bistrams' home. That was not the name; the quality is unchanged, the rest forgotten. Sometimes one wants to forget, and here is an instance. It had all come about suddenly, the unheard of, the undreamed, without a word of foreknowledge or preparation.

There was no one to warn him. He knew nothing of these people. Perhaps he might have guessed that they were poor and desperately placed, but a man in love is generous. The whole world swims in sunshine, in an optimism. For them he had nothing but gratitude; and if they had mentioned their debts and the pressure that had to be outfaced, often brazenly, well, it is not the way of such people to mention these things. Their game was, rather, to the contrary.

I do not think that they had set out deliberately to trap him, but the project, once realized, must have been inevitable. He simply asked for it. It was plain that the girl had produced an impression; it was plain that the little fellow had money; it was just as plain that the one could be had for the other, and more than that.

In such a predicament it is cruel to speak of love; yet what other word can one apply? He had come to them with a freshness, almost a virginity; there had been nothing in his life like this before. Neither at home in England, nor during the abject years from which Riviere had taken him, nor later, when he was driven and preoccupied. His youth seemed to be claiming dues, long owing, like the Bistrams' debts.

I have seen a portrait of this girl; she still stands framed upon his writing-table, within reach of eye and hand. No casual glance would spell from it her malady. She has the fineness of a stock outworn, a little too much fineness; but the indwelling rare spirit of her is unmistakable, the sweetness, too. Beauty shadowed by a cloud might partly describe her; and looking deeply into that face, one sees a mirrored fear. Life presses on such people; they lack the strength to cope with it or with themselves. Small wonder that a brain thus overborne had proved uncertain.

Davidson saw the threadbare lodging in which she lived. He was given the free run of it, and met such friends as had stayed loyal to the Bistrams in their later phase: a battered comrade of the baron's old regiment, flyblown gentlemen revolving memories of wine and play and little women. They came sometimes with their ladies. Would any of these tell him that Minna had twice been put away, shut up till the darkened mind recovered; that he was to be "landed," to be victimized? Rather they would dwell on this new source of credit. He seemed doomed to wed into a family that would prey upon him; he seemed doomed to spend the rest of his life on the abyss, gazing down into horrors.

His courtship prospered: the thing came naturally, like evening and the first white star. One moment it was day; the next they had crossed over into a solemnity. The girl, at least, was not in the conspiracy. Sex is conspirator enough, the arch-plotter, dramaturge.

She must have had her hours of fear, urgings to confession, falterings, questionings, never put plainly, never quite faced. She would not name the day; she had accepted him, but she prolonged the wooing. Often she struggled, arguing against herself: he should marry somebody stronger, richer, with more health. She had persuaded and weakened; she had fled from him and come back to him; she had postponed and been whimsical; she had fought and she had yielded, the enemy always herself. He witnessed these struggles, and was sure that he could heal them. They shot with pain the perfect days when she closed her eyes, was all his own, sorceress and queen of him.

I have spoken of friends, the loyal few. There is one who is outstanding. Linda von Essen was not too young a woman; old enough, indeed, to live in an apartment of her own with a maid. She was an orphan, she was independent, rich for Weimar. This may explain why she was free to step in where others held aloof. Hers was an intimacy dating from Minna's childhood. She knew everything, which may account for her forgiveness of her friend, and even her admiration of the victim. She had always dreamed of such a lover; of one, nobly blind, artless, and selfless, touched with this divine simplicity. Her favorite heroes had that quality. Now she encountered it, and stood her ground. She would be heroic, too. But she might watch over him; the day might come when he would need her watching. For Davidson this woman had a different interest, and yet almost as strong a one; more powerful, maybe, in its impersonality. Her face,—it is Goethe's face tuned to the feminine,—the same luminous eyes, the same serenity of brow. The poet had been a visitor at her great-grandfather's house, and it is an open secret in Weimar that the blood of the Essens is the blood of Goethe. Davidson had seen the likeness without being told. Frau von Embs, who was Linda's sister and even more like Goethe, denied it; but Linda was proud of the distinction. That, in a small and rather Puritan town like Weimar, requires courage.

The wedding-day was fixed. Davidson had bought new clothes, and the honeymoon was to be spent in the Bavarian highlands. The wedding-day arrived. At nine o'clock that morning Minna von Bistram had her third and last seizure. She ascended to the roof of the house in which her parents had a small apartment. Escaping notice, she had gone up there alone. When they found her on the stones below, she was broken beyond recovery, but still conscious. Davidson heard of it at his barber's. The man, a new-comer in Weimar, entertained him with the story. Minna recognized him before she died.

"Oh, I am happy," she said; "before now I have always been unhappy." He did not understand that; but, then, he did not understand the second part of Faust; and yet he knew it line by line and word for word. It did not much matter what she said as long as it was she who said it. For many a month afterward the little man went lifeless, broken, too, upon the stones of a far-off yard below. As with Riviere's end, he shared this other and more poignant one. It seemed his destiny to fix his heart on the inane.

Now it was Linda's turn to prove her worth. I have seen them in their home, that quiet woman following him with the eyes that are so like Goethe's, one with him in all his enterprises, his commentaries, and speculations. I know little more of them. He must have come to her and she been waiting for him. He must have come to her like a tired child, finding in her immense sanity, her perfect health, her superb tolerance, the peace which one may find in nature. In the end he married her; it is she who is now his wife. And as to the Bistrams? His simplicity, his honesty, had won even them; and to-day the baroness—the baron is dead—to-day the baroness regards him as a son. I saw the grave where Minna lies buried. I went with him one day when he put flowers upon it.

And now I am back again in London, while Davidson stays on, fixed there, anchored. You may meet him in the museum, at the archives, or in the garden-house, or strolling in the park. One has one's fancies of such a man and of the power of his devotion. Sometimes I follow his life and see the master laying hands on it at every term; and the writing of it down has only made me see more plainly. They talk such stories of the saints; why not of the heroes,—I echo the Carlylean term,—why not of Goethe? For it was he who used Riviere to bring Davidson out of the gutter and give him an independence; and after the first stroke it was to Weimar that Davidson turned and was mended. When he was about to part with what he had gained, he was saved from that; and, at the end, what Goethe could not heal with the spirit, he healed with his own flesh and blood. There are people who allow so much to obscure saints; then why not to the genius of a nation, its supreme instance, even though he lived within our day?