The scene is next laid in the interior of Daland's house, the large
living-room, where a flock of girls sit around the fire with their
spinning-wheels. Beside the maps and pictures of nautical interest
forming the natural decoration of a sea-captain's house, there
hangs on the wall the picture of a pale black-bearded man, dressed
in the Spanish fashion of years long gone.
The girls are spinning busily, singing while they work. They are
the sweethearts of the lads on Daland's ship, and their song is of
sailors at sea who are thinking of maidens at home, and if diligent
turning of the spinning-wheel might influence the wind--oh, but
they would speedily be back in harbour!
One only of the young girls in the room is not working; Senta,
letting her wheel stand idle, leans back abstractedly in a great
armchair, with her eyes fixed upon the picture of the pale man.
Her old nurse, Mary, who spins diligently herself and keeps the
rest at their task, chides her, not very severely, for her idleness.
The girls in their song have been felicitating themselves that if
they are zealous at their spinning their lovers will give them
the golden earnings they bring home from the south. "You naughty
child," Mary says to Senta, at the end of the song, "if you do
not spin, you will receive no present from your _Schatz!_" Senta's
companions laugh at this. "There is no need for her to hurry. Her
sweetheart is not out at Sea. He brings home no gold, he brings home
game. Everyone knows in what the fortune of a huntsman consists!"
Senta does not stir; it is doubtful if she have heard. Without
removing her eyes from the picture of the pallid man, she hums
softly to herself certain fragment of old ballad. "Look at her!"
the nurse takes fuller account of her attitude and abstraction;
"Look at her! Always in front of that picture! Do you intend to
dream away your whole young life before that portrait?" Senta answers
gently, still without taking her eyes from the pale face: "Why
did you tell me who he is, and relate his story?... The unhappy
soul!" At the heavily burdened sigh upon which she utters the last
words, "God have you in His care!" exclaims Mary, vaguely troubled.
But the girls, who are in merry mood, laugh again. "Why, why, what
is that we hear? She sighs for the pale man! There you see what a
picture can do. She is in love. Please Heaven no mischief result!
Erik is somewhat hot of temper. Please God he do no damage! Say
not a word, else, aflame with wrath, he may shoot the rival from
the wall!" Their chatter finally reaching her consciousness, Senta
turns to them, annoyed. "Oh, keep still! Stop your silly laughing!
Do you wish to make me really cross?" Further to tease her, they
drown her voice with the refrain of their spinning-song: "Mutter
and hum, good little wheel, cheerily, cheerily turn! Spin, spin a
thousand threads, good little wheel, mutter and hum!"--"Do stop that
foolish song," begs Senta, "my ears are dazed with your muttering
and humming. If you wish me to attend, find something better to
do!"--"Very well," say the girls, "then sing yourself!" As a bird
to the nest, Senta returns to the subject engrossing her mind.
"Hear what I suggest: let Mary sing us the ballad." All understand
what ballad is meant. "God forbid!" cries the nurse; "It is likely
I will do it! Children, let the Flying Dutchman rest!"--"Yet how
often have I heard the ballad from you!" sighs Senta; and, as the
nurse continues obdurate, "I will sing it myself," she decides,
"and do you girls listen. Could I but bring home to your hearts
the wretchedness of the poor soul's fate, it could not fail to
move you to compassion!" The girls accept the offer with delight,
push aside their spinning-wheels and gather around the singer.
Only the old nurse, whose instinct has somehow caught alarm, and
who has conceived a curious dislike and fear of this pallid hero
of legend, refuses her countenance and testily goes on spinning
by herself in the chimney-corner.
"Have you met the ship on the seas," sings Senta, "blood-red of
sail and black of mast? Upon the high deck, the pale man, the ship's
master, keeps incessant watch.--Hui! How the wind blows! Yohohey!--Hui!
How it sings in the stays! Yohohey!--Hui! Like an arrow flies the
ship, without stop, without rest! Yet might deliverance one day
come to the pale man, could he find a woman upon earth who should
love him faithfully until death. Oh, when, pale sea-farer, when
shall you find her? Pray to Heaven that a woman soon may keep her
troth to him!
"With contrary wind, in the rage of the storm, he determined to
double a cape. He cursed and swore in mad mood: 'Not to all eternity
will I desist!'--Hui! And Satan heard it. Yohohey!--Hui! Took him
at his word. Yohohey!--Hui! And now, a lost soul, he sails the
seas, without stop, without rest. How the unhappy man, however,
might find deliverance upon earth, an angel of the Lord showed
him,--how he might earn eventual salvation. Oh, that you might,
pale sea-farer, find it! Pray to Heaven that a woman soon may keep
her troth to him!
"He casts anchor every seven years, and to woo a woman comes ashore.
But never yet has he found a faithful one.--Hui! Spread the sails!
Yohohey!--Hui! Lift the anchor! Yohohey!--Hui! False love, false
troth! Back to sea, without stop, without rest!..." Senta who has
been singing with a spirit and expressiveness full unusual as applied
to a threadbare old ballad, has at this point reached such a pitch of
emotion that her voice fails and she sinks in her chair exhausted.
The girls, whom her earnestness has impressed into a realisation of
the facts sung by her, who have for a moment had through her eyes
the vision of that lost soul's wretchedness, take up the ballad
where she drops it, and sing on in tones which confess the contagion
of her sympathy: "Ah, where tarries she, to whom God's angel might
guide you? Where shall you find her who will be your own true and
loyal love until death?" With an air of illumination, Senta starts
to her feet and finishes the song with words which rise inspired
to her lips: "Let me be that woman! My truth shall work your
deliverance! God's angel guide you to me! Through me you shall
reach salvation!" She speaks so passionately, appears so strangely,
that her companions feel a sort of puzzled alarm. The old nurse,
frightened, rushes to her side with the cry: "Heaven help us!"
and all together they try to bring her to her normal self, calling
in tones of protest, "Senta! Senta!"
Unnoticed of the rest, Erik, the huntsman, has during the last
moments been standing in the doorway. He has heard Senta's exclamation,
witnessed her strange condition, and affected by it differently
from all the others cries, heart-struck, "Senta, Senta, are you
determined to destroy me?"--"Oh, help us, Erik," the others appeal
to him; "She is out of her senses!" The nurse, who has felt her
blood unaccountably running chill, turns angrily to the picture
on the wall: "Abominable picture, out of the house you shall go
just as soon as the father comes home!"--"The father has arrived,"
Erik informs them; "From the cliff I saw his ship come in." All
minds veer promptly from the subject which had been engrossing
them, to this delightful one of the arrival. The girls are for
running to the harbour upon the instant. Mary prevents them. "Stop!
Stop! You shall remain quietly at home. The sailor-folk will be
arriving with hollow stomachs. To the kitchen and cellar! No time
to waste! Let curiosity torment you as it may, first of all go
and do your duty!" She drives them before her from the room, and
follows.
Senta is going, too, but Erik bars the way, pleading, "Stay, Senta,
stay for a moment! Release me from this torture--or, if you will,
destroy me quite!" She affects, as the simplest girl must, not to
understand. "Erik, what is it?"--"Oh, Senta, speak, say what is
to become of me! Your father is coming home. Before starting upon
a new voyage, he is sure to wish to carry out what he so often
has spoken of..."--"And what is that?"--"To give you a husband.
My heart with its unchanging love, my humble fortune, my hunter's
luck, these things being all I have to offer, will not your father
repulse me? And if my heart breaks with its misery, tell me, Senta,
who is there will speak a word for me?" He pleads warmly, young Erik;
he is at that age and point in life when not to obtain the woman he
has set his heart upon seems a calamity such as will extinguish
the sun, make the rest of life worthless; when refusal signifies
destruction, and he is not ashamed of this as a weakness, but proud
of it as a strength, and uses it as the most pertinent argument,
and feels no abjectness in confessing himself at the mercy of a
girl, a toy in her frail hands. He is the only lover of this type
in the Wagnerian assortment, and, it happens, the only one who
fails. Senta, we are permitted to divine, had not always felt as
removed from him as at this moment. It is but lately, no doubt,
with the turning perhaps of her seventeenth year, at some fuller
opening into womanhood, that her romantic dream has taken such
possession of her, and his warm-blooded urgent love become something
to withdraw from, without clearly formulated reason, by an instinct.
She tries now to silence him, to put him off with the excuse that
she must hurry to her father. But he is not to be put off. To detain
her, he reproaches. "You wish to avoid me!"--"I must go to the
harbour!"--"You shrink from me?"--"Oh, let me go!"--"You shrink
from the wound which yourself you made, the madness of love you
inspired? Oh, you shall hear me in this hour, shall hear the last
question I will ask. When my heart is breaking with anguish, will not
Senta herself speak a word for me?" She applies herself then to quiet
and comfort such evident suffering; he is after all flesh-and-blood
and close at hand, the other a dream. Her sentiments besides are
not very clear even to herself. "Do you doubt my heart?" she asks
reassuringly; "Do you doubt that it is full of kindness toward
you? What is it, tell me, makes you so unhappy? What suspicion
darkens your mind?"--"Oh, your father's heart is set upon riches.
And you, Senta, how should I count upon you? Do you ever grant
one of my requests? Do you not daily hurt and afflict my
heart?"--"Afflict your heart?..." she asks in wonder. "What am I
to think?" he goes on to show the jealous core of his unhappiness;
"That picture..."--"What picture?..."--"Will you renounce your
extravagant imaginings?"--"Can I keep from my face the compassion
I feel?"--"And that ballad... you sang it again to-day."--"I am a
child," she excuses herself, "and sing I know not what! Are you afraid
of a song, a picture?"--"You are so pale!" he replies, studying her
face dubiously; "Tell me, have I no reason to be afraid?"--"Should
I not be moved by the terrible doom of that unhappiest man?"--"But
my sufferings, Senta, do they no longer move you?"--"Oh, vaunt not
your sufferings!" she cries, almost impatiently; "What can your
sufferings be? Do you know what the fate is of that poor soul?" She
draws him before the picture, and while indicating it to him gazes
raptly at it herself; "Can you not feel the woe, the inexpressible
deep misery in the eyes which he turns upon me? Oh, the calamity
which robbed him eternally of rest, the sense of it pierces my
heart!" Veritable alarm seizes Erik at the earnestness she exhibits,
an alarm to something more vital even than his alert jealousy, a
terrible fear for her as apart from himself. "Woe's me!" he exclaims,
"I am reminded of my ill-boding dream! God have you in his care,
Satan has cast his toils about you!"--"What frightens you so?"
she asks wearily. It is as if excess of emotion had brought on an
immense fatigue; she sinks exhausted in the grand-sire's chair.
"Let me tell you of it, Senta. It is a dream, hear and be warned
by it." She leans back with closed eyes, and as he narrates it is
as if having fallen asleep she saw in dream what he describes.
"Upon the high cliff I lay dreaming. Beneath me I saw the expanse
of the sea; I could hear the surf where it breaks foaming against
the beach. I espied a foreign ship close to shore, a strange ship,
extraordinary. Two men drew toward land. One of them, I saw it,
was your father."--"And the other?" she asks, like a somnambulist,
without opening her eyes. "I recognised him well enough, with his
black doublet and pale face...."--"And his mournful glance...."
she adds, still with closed eyes. Erik points at the picture: "The
sea-man there."--"And I?..." she asks. "You came out of the house.
You ran to meet your father. But hardly had you reached the pair,
when you cast yourself at the feet of the stranger. I saw you clasp
his knees...." "He lifted me...."--"To his breast. Passionately
you clung to him, and kissed him ardently...."--"And then?" He
gazes at her with a sort of terror, as at something unnatural, in
her appearance of sleep. "I saw you fly together over the sea."
She seems to wake with a start. "He is looking for me!" she cries
in tones of extraordinary conviction, "I shall see him! My destiny
it is to perish with him!" Erik recoils: "Horrible! Ha, I see it
full plainly at last, she is gone from me! My dream boded true!" In
uncontrollable despair he flees from the house. Senta, her excitement
gradually dying, remains gazing at the picture. She is murmuring
softly to herself the burden of the ballad: "Ah, may you, pale
sea-farer, find her! Pray to Heaven that a woman soon may keep her
troth to him!"--when the door opens and Daland and the Hollander
appear at the threshold. Serita's eyes turn from the picture to
the stranger entering. A cry escapes her lips and her eyes fasten
on his face. His eyes, too, as he slowly steps into the room, bend
steadfastly upon hers. They gaze as if the same spell had fallen
upon both.
The father, after a moment watching from the doorway, waiting for
his daughter to run as usual to greet him, speaks, not altogether
displeased: "My child, you see me standing at the door, and, what is
this? No embrace? No kiss? You stand in your place as if bewitched?
Do I deserve, Senta, such a welcome?"--"God be with you!" she murmurs
faintly, and, as he comes nearer, asks underbreath, without removing
her eyes from the figure--the counterpart of the picture on the
wall, "Father, speak, who is the stranger?" The father smiles: "You
are eager to know? My child, give kind welcome to the stranger. A
sea-man he is, like myself, and solicits our hospitality. Homeless
for long years, incessantly bound on long voyages, in far-off lands
he has gathered vast treasures. An exile from home, he offers rich
compensation for a place at the fireside. Speak, Senta, should you
be sorry that the stranger should dwell with us?" To the Hollander,
while the daughter without a word's reply continues in her fixed
contemplation of his face, he speaks aside: "Tell me, did I praise
her too highly? Now you see her in person, does she rightly please
you? Must I add more still to my overflowing praise? Confess that she
is an ornament to her sex!" The Hollander answers by an expressive
gesture, his eyes fast all the while upon the maiden's face. The
father turns anew to the daughter, and, without further preamble:
"My child, let it please you to show favour to this man. He requests
a goodly gift from your heart. Reach him your hand, for he shall
be your bridegroom. If you are of a like mind with your father,
to-morrow he shall be your husband." She shrinks, painfully, at
this bluntness and precipitancy. The father, not noticing, unpockets
jewels to show her. "Look at this circlet, behold these clasps.
The sum of his possessions makes these the merest trifle. How,
my precious child, should you not care for them? And it will all
be yours for the exchanging of rings with him. But... neither of
you speaks...." He looks at them in turn. They have neither heeded
nor heard, they are lost in contemplation of each other. "Am I in
the way?" They do not hear that either. "I clearly am," he says
to himself. "The best will be to leave them alone together." With a
parting private word to the daughter: "May you win this noble man!
Believe me, such good fortune is not common!" and to the Dutchman:
"I leave you to yourselves, and betake myself away. Believe me, fair
as she is, she is no less true than fair!" he discreetly withdraws.
The strange predestined lovers stand for long moments steadily
gazing at each other, almost unconsciously, without motion to draw
nearer--or further apart. Each of them voices his thoughts, not
speaking to the other, but, dreamily, to himself. He murmurs: "As
if out of the distance of long-past days speaks to me the semblance
of this maiden. Even such as through dread eternities I dreamed
her, I behold her now here before my eyes. From the black depths
of my night I too have ventured to raise my longing eyes upon a
woman. Satan's malice left me a living heart, alas, that I might
never lose consciousness of my torment. The sullen glow which I
feel burning in my breast, should I, unhappy man, call it love?
Ah, no, the longing it is for redemption! Oh, might redemption be
my portion through such an angel as she is!" And she speaks, to
herself, half-aloud: "Have I sunk into a wonderful dream? Is this
which I see an illusion? Or have I until this moment lived in a
world of dream, and is this the day of awakening? He stands before
me, his features stamped with sorrow. His unparalleled sufferings
silently call to me. Can the voice of deepest pity deceive? As
I have so often beheld him he stands before me now. This sorrow
which burns within my bosom, this going out of desire toward him,
what must I call it? Oh, that the salvation which he goes seeking
without rest might reach the unhappy man through me!"
He moves a little nearer to her at last, and asks with the simplicity
and sincerity which befit the hour so fraught with fate, "Will you
not reject your father's choice? That which he promised--what?
shall it hold good? Could you forever give yourself to me? You
could hold out your hand to the stranger? I might, after a life of
torment, find in your truth the long craved-for peace?" She answers
upon the instant, singularly sure of her heart: "Whoever you may be,
and whatever ruin your cruel fate reserve for you, and whatever
the destiny I thereby call upon myself, my obedient duty shall ever
be to my father's wish."--"What, so unconditionally? My sorrows,
is it possible, have moved you to such deep compassion?"--"Sorrows
how measureless!" she exclaims to herself. "Oh, might I bring you
consolation for those!" And he, overhearing: "Oh, gentlest sound
through the warring darkness! An angel are you! The love of an angel
can still the pain even of lost souls! If I may hope for salvation,
Almighty, let it be through this angel!" But in the uplift of hope
reviving, a remembrance gives him pause,--remembrance of the whole
condition of his deliverance; and, a strain of solemnity mingling
with his grateful tenderness, he warns her: "Could you apprehend
the fate which, in belonging to me, with me you must share, you
would pause to consider the sacrifice you bring in vowing to be
true. Your youth would flee shuddering at prospect of the fate to
which you would have doomed it, if the fairest virtues of womankind,
if sacred fidelity and truth, be not yours." She replies with no
less assurance than before, and her air of exalted inspiration:
"Well do I know the high duties of woman. Be comforted, unhappy man!
Let fate do justice of those who defy her decree. In my soul is
written the supreme law of truth, and unto him to whom I pledge my
faith this one truth it is which I give: Truth until death!"
Like balm the words fall upon his wounded spirit. The powers of
darkness, it seems, are to be defeated; the evil star, it seems,
has set and the star of hope arisen. "Ye angels," he calls to them,
"who had quite forsaken me, confirm her heart in its constancy!"
And she, her heavenly pity prays: "Let him have reached home at
last! Let his ship rest here eternally in port!"
Daland re-enters. "By your leave, my people outside can hardly
wait. Upon each home-coming, you must know, we hold a merry-making.
I would fain add to the cheer of the feast, and am come, with that
in mind, to ask if it might not be I made into a betrothal feast?--As
far as I see," he turns to the Hollander, "you have wooed to your
heart's purpose?--And you, my child," to Senta, "are you ready,
too?" Senta with solemn resolution reaches her hand to the Dutchman.
"Here is my hand, and here, never to repent it, I plight my troth
until death!" The Hollander, taking her hand, cries defiance to
the mockery of Hell through this fast truth of hers. At Daland's
summons thereupon, "To the feast, and let every one to-day make
merry!" the three turn to go and take share--even, incredibly,
the Dutchman,--in legitimate human rejoicings.