This letter also made my grief vent itself in tears; they were not
tears of remorse, however, but of an unavoidable mournfulness. At such
moments Elsje respected my feelings with a sacred veneration for which
I was unutterably grateful to her. She felt that in this she could not
heal or comfort.
The first stormy days in the European waters were the wont. Then I was
painfully sensible of my poverty because it compelled me to let Elsje
live in the midst of these often unclean and unmannerly people, in the
close steamer atmosphere surrounded by sick people, in the sleeping
quarters separated only by curtains, with the primitive washing
accommodations and the lack of everything that I would so gladly have
given her - beauty, cleanliness, comfort. But Elsje did not complain
and adapted herself to the circumstances with bright inventiveness and
good humor.
At last came the warm, dark, transparent, deep violet-blue waters of
the Gulf Stream and the sun began to shine refreshingly and the
light-hearted folk made music and danced on the deck. Then for us too
it became more endurable and we sat for hours hand in hand gazing at
the glorious play of colors on the waves, blue-black, seething
light-blue, and foaming snowy-white. From time to time we spoke of the
great things that always occupied our thoughts. For we felt that in
these great things alone could lie our justification and our peace of
mind.
"Dear man, you have taught me much that is comforting and true," said
Elsje; "but yet it sometimes seems as though you had made God very
distant and inaccessible for me. This beautiful, wicked, awful sea - a
thinking, feeling being is already terrifying in its profound
incomprehensiveness. And then, moreover - the sun and the stars!"
"Still it is good, Elsje, not to wish to hide the truth, even though it
is oppressing. Inwardly God remains just as near. There is no further
or nearer there. And Christ I have really brought nearer to you,
haven't I?"
"Yes, but also robbed him of his perfection."
"True, and therefore made him dearer, more intimate and real. When we
are children we consider our father and mother perfect. Thereby we
wrong them. Later we see that they do indeed stand above us, but that
they have faults too. And then when we can love them, faults and all,
then they are most truly our beloved and trusted confidants. It is a
stupid, childish tendency always to expect and to demand perfection in
all that is above us. The Bible-Jesus spoke truly when he said that
there was but one perfect Goodness. I will add that there is but one I
and one Memory. And only then will man be able to follow Christ to the
pure blessedness, when he learns to feel that there may be
incomprehensible sublimity, loftiness and superiority without
perfection: that there may also be faults in the power that has created
him and in which he lives: that there are yet an infinite number of
higher beings, all above him, and powerful and wise and lofty far
beyond his comprehension, and yet all of them humble and faulty and
weak in the power of a Most-Sublime, who is equally near to all and
penetrates all with equal profoundness."