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."