Chapter 2

Frau Benda opened the door, closed it without saying a word, and went into her room. She had had a violent quarrel with her son, who had just informed her that he had accepted the invitation of a learned society to come to England and settle down. He was to start at the end of spring. Frau Benda was tired of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present themselves to him at home.

She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the practical experience.

But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to each other.

Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. “She looks to me as though she will give old Döderlein a good deal to think about in the days to come,” said Daniel.

“You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Döderlein,” replied Benda. “The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and down for hours right under my bedroom.”

“You feel sorry for him, do you?”

“If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon.”

“Do you really mean it?” exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel continued: “To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I’ll get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime gulped down the whole earth.”

Benda smiled a gracious smile. “Yes, you die at each fall, and at each come-back you appear a new-made man,” he said. “That is fine. But a Döderlein cannot come back, once his contemporaries have thrown him over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him.”

“Y-e-s,” mumbled Daniel, “and yet, what good is he?”

“The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness,” replied Benda in a tone of serious reflection. “He lives, and that is about all you can say. So far as I am concerned, I have not the slightest reason to defend a Döderlein in your presence.” He was silent for a moment and took a deep breath. “I cannot speak more distinctly; somehow or other I cannot quite find the right words,” he continued in a disconcerted way, “but the point is, the man has committed a crime against a woman, a crime so malicious, subtle, and naïve, that he deserves every stigma with which it is possible to brand him, and even then he would not be adequately punished.”

“You see,” exclaimed Daniel, “he is not only a miserable musician. And that is the way it always is. They are all like that. Oh, these bitter-sweet, grinning, pajama-bred, match-making, ninnying, super-smart manikins—it makes your blood curdle to look at one of them. And yet a real man has got to run the gauntlet before them his whole life long, and down through their narrow little alleys at that!”

“Rather,” said Benda with bowed head. “It is a tough, clammy poison pap. If you stir it with your finger, you will stick fast, and it will suck the very marrow out of your bones. But you are speaking for the time being without precise knowledge of all the pertinent material, as we say in science. During my study of the cells of plants and animals, I came to see that a so-called fundamental procreation was out of the question. I gave expression to this view in a circle of professional colleagues. They laughed at me. To-day it is no longer possible to oppose the theory I then advanced. One of my former friends succeeded in making certain combinations of acetic acid, crystallised by artificial means. When he made his great discovery known, one of the assembled gentlemen cried out: ‘Be careful, doctorette, or your amido atoms will get out of their cage.’ That is a sample of the base and treacherous fashion in which we are treated by the very people who we might think were our warmest friends, for they are apparently trying to reach the same goal that we are. But you! The world may reject you, and you still have what no one can take from you. I have to wait in patience until a judge hands down a decision either condemning me or redeeming me. You? Between you and me there is the same difference that exists between the seed which, sunk into the earth, shoots up whether it rains or shines, and some kind of a utensil which rusts in the store because no one buys it.”

He got up and said: “You are the more fortunate of us two, it behooves me therefore to be the more merciful.”

Daniel could make no reply that would console him.

As he went home, he thought of the fidelity and the constant but unassuming help he had received from Benda. He thought of the refined and delicate consideration of his friend. He thought especially of that extraordinary courtesy which was so marked in him, that, for example, while laughing at a good joke, Benda would stop with open mouth if some one resumed the conversation: he did not wish to lose anything another might wish to say to him.

He stopped. It seemed to him that he had neglected the opportunity to put an especially reassuring, cordial, and unforgettable force into his final handshake. He would have liked to turn back. But it is not the custom to turn back; no one in truth can do it.