Frederick von Kammacher had gone to Paris to rid himself of this passion; but the object of it, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Swedish teacher of stage dancing, held him in bondage against his will. His love had turned into a disease, which had reached an acute stage, probably because the gloomy events of so recent occurrence had induced in him a state in which men are peculiarly susceptible to love's poison.
It was a friend of his, a physician, who had introduced him in Berlin to the girl and her father, and who later, when sufficiently acquainted with Frederick's secret, raging love, had to take it upon himself to inform the enamoured man of every change in the couple's address.
Doctor von Kammacher's scanty luggage did not indicate careful preparation for a long trip. In a fit of desperation, or, rather, in an outburst of passion, he had made the hasty decision to catch the Roland at Southampton when he learned that the Swede and his daughter had embarked on it at Bremen on the twenty-third of January.
II
After lying in bed about an hour, Frederick arose, knocked a hole in the ice crust in the pitcher, washed himself, and in a fever of restlessness descended again to the lower rooms of the little hotel. In the reading-room sat a pretty young Englishwoman and a German Jewish merchant, not so pretty and not so young. The dreariness of waiting produced sociability. Frederick and the German entered into a conversation. The German informed Frederick that he had lived in the United States and was returning by the Roland.
The air was grey, the room cold, the young lady impatiently paced up and down in front of the fireplace, where there was no fire, and the conversation of the new acquaintances dwindled into monosyllables.
The condition of the unhappy lover, as a rule, is concealed from the persons he meets, or unintelligible to them. In either case it is ridiculous. A man in love is alternately transported and tormented by brilliant and gloomy illusions. In spite of the cold, cutting wind, the young fool of love was driven restlessly out to roam the streets and alleys of the port. He thought of what an embarrassing position he had been in when the Jewish merchant had insinuatingly inquired for the purpose of his journey. In his effort not to reveal the secret motive of his ocean crossing, Frederick had stammered and stuttered and given some sort of a vague reply. He decided that from now on, in answer to intrusive questioners, he would say he was going to America to see Niagara Falls, Yellowstone Park, and visit an old collegemate of his, also a physician.
During the silent meal in the hotel, the news came that the Roland probably would reach the Needles at five o'clock, two hours earlier than was expected. Frederick took his coffee and smoked some Simon Arzt cigarettes with the German, who at the same time tried to do some business in his trade, which was ready-made clothing. The two men, carrying their luggage, then went to the tender together.
Here they had an uncomfortable hour's wait, while the low smoke-stack belched black vapours into the dirty drab mist that lay oppressively upon everything about the harbour. From time to time the sound of the shovelling of coal arose from the engine-room. One at a time five or six passengers came on board, porters carrying their luggage. The saloon was nothing more than a glass case on deck, inside of which, below the windows, a bench upholstered in red plush ran around the sides. At irregular intervals the bench was heaped with disorderly piles of luggage.
Everybody was taciturn. No one felt reposeful enough to settle in any one place for a length of time. What conversation there was, was conducted in a subdued, frightened sort of whisper. Three young ladies, one of whom was the Englishwoman of the reading-room, unwearyingly paced up and down the full length of the saloon. Their faces were unnaturally pale.
"This is the eighteenth time I have made the round trip," suddenly declared the clothing manufacturer, unsolicited.
"Do you suffer from seasickness?" somebody asked in reply.
"I scarcely set foot on the steamer when I turn into a corpse. That happens each time. I don't come back to life until shortly before we reach Hoboken or, at the other end, Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven."
Finally, after a long, apparently vain wait, something seemed to be preparing in the bowels of the tender and at the wheel. The three ladies embraced and kissed, and an abundance of tears were shed. The prettiest one, the lady of the reading-room, remained on the tender; the others returned to the pier.
Still the little boat refused to move. Finally, however, at nightfall, amid pitch-black darkness, the hawsers were loosened from the iron rings of the dock, a piercing whistle burst from the tender, and the screw began to churn the water slowly, as if merely to test itself.
At the last moment three telegrams were handed to Frederick, one from his old parents and his brother, who wished him a happy voyage, one from his banker, and one from his attorney.
Though Frederick had left neither friend nor relative nor even an acquaintance on the quay, yet, the instant he perceived the tender in motion, a storm assailed him, whether a storm of woe, misery, despair, or a storm of hope in endless happiness, he could not tell. All he felt was that something burst convulsively from his breast and throat, and seethed up, boiling hot, into his eyes.
The lives of unusual men from decade to decade, it seems, enter dangerous crises, in which one of two things takes place; either the morbid matter that has been accumulating is thrown off, or the organism succumbs to it in actual material death, or in spiritual death. One of the most important and, to the observer, most remarkable of these crises occurs in the early thirties or forties, rarely before thirty; in fact, more frequently not until thirty-five and later. It is the great trial balance of life, which one would rather defer as long as is expedient than make prematurely.
It was in such a crisis that Goethe went on his Italian journey, that Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, that Ignatius Loyola hung his weapons in front of an image of the Virgin, never to take them down again, and that Jesus was nailed to the cross. As for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was neither a Goethe nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not only in culture, but also in many a trait of genius.
It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole previous existence passed in review before Frederick's mental vision as the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton, carrying him away from Europe and his home. He seemed to be parting with a whole continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot again. It was a farewell forever. No wonder if in that moment his whole being was shaken and could not regain its balance.
Loyola had not been a good soldier. Else, how could he have discarded his arms? Luther had not been a good Dominican. Else, how could he have discarded his monk's robes? Goethe had not been a good barrister or bureaucrat. A mighty, irresistible wave had swept over those three men and also, for all the disparity between them, over Frederick von Kammacher, washing the uniform away from their souls.
Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously. He had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him that he reflected upon its nature. Sometimes he was of the opinion that it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real maturity. It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other people's hands, according to other people's will, guided rather than guiding. His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an operating with transmitted ideas. He put it to himself that he had been standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and made its way into the open.
"Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my own thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will."
In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner's "The Individual and his Own."
Man living in society is never wholly independent. There is no intellect that does not look about for other intellects, if for no other object than to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance,