The very next day he took up his abode in his lonely refuge on Lake Hanover, which he alternately dubbed his Diogenes tub, his Uncle Tom's Cabin, and his retort. It was no Diogenes tub, because the two friends brought wood and anthracite coal for a little American stove in the bedroom, which gave quite a good deal of heat and made a cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the kitchen and pantry contained everything that is necessary for life, and a little more. Frederick refused to have anybody share his quarters with him or help with the housework. As he said, he wanted to settle his accounts and take his trial balance, and the presence of another person might be disturbing to that process.
After Peter Schmidt disappeared in the distance and the sound of the sleigh-bells had died away and Frederick felt he was quite alone in that wide American landscape wrapped in the night's darkness, it was a supreme moment for him. He returned into the house, closed the door and listened. He heard the crackling of the wood in the small kitchen stove. Taking the candle that had been left standing on one of the lower steps in the hall, he went up-stairs, where the warmth and the dusky glow of his little American stove rejoiced him. He lit a lamp, and after arranging his toilet articles on an unusually long, bare dresser, he settled himself beside the lamp in a comfortable bamboo chair. He was filled with a mysterious sense of rich, deep delight.
He was alone. Outside, lay the clear, silent winter's night, the same that he had known in the home of his childhood. The things he had hitherto experienced were no more, or as if they never had been. His home, his parents, his wife, his children, the girl that had drawn him across the ocean, everything that had happened to him on his trip were nothing more in his soul than magic lantern pictures.
"Is life," Frederick asked himself, "meant to be nothing more than material for dreams? So much is certain, my present condition is the sort that leaves an everlasting effect. We should not be unsociable, but we have still less right to leave this state uncultivated, which is the basic state of man's personality, in which he is most natural and undisturbed and stands face to face with the mystery of life as though it were a dream."
During the past months, he had led a life full of incidents of the extremest contrasts. He had been alarmed, excited, menaced. His own anguish had been submerged in the anguish of others, and their pangs had only increased his own. From the ashes of a dead love, the flames of another passionate illusion had flared up. Frederick had been driven, pursued, lured on, led about in the world, without a will of his own, like a puppy on a strap—without a will of his own and with his senses departed. Now at last his senses had returned. And the senses return when the life that has been lived in an unconscious state becomes material for dreams to the mind in a conscious state.
Frederick took a sheet of paper, dipped a new American pen in a new inkwell of fresh ink, and wrote: "Life: Material for Dreams."
He rose and again went about arranging his Robinson Crusoe household to suit his fancy. He piled up books that he had got in New York, little Reclams and other volumes, among them a copy of Schleiermacher's translation of Plato, which he had borrowed from Peter Schmidt. In front of an old Dutch sofa covered in leather, which Lamping, the druggist, had brought over from Leyden, his birthplace, stood a large, round table. Frederick covered the table with a green cloth and arranged the long-stemmed roses that the artists had given him in plain glass vases, placing Miss Burns's roses by themselves. Before Peter Schmidt had left, he and Frederick had taken a cup of coffee together. Frederick now washed and cleared away the utensils, loaded a revolver that Schmidt had lent him, and placed it beside the inkstand on his writing table. Next he took from his trunk a more peaceable instrument, a Zeiss microscope, examined all its parts, and set it up. It was the microscope that he had selected years ago in Jena for his friend, Peter, when he was leaving for America. Here was a remarkable meeting with the old instrument.
There were more things that Frederick had to do. He had to take apart a seaman's clock, put it together again and hang it on the wall. It was an antique that he had come across that very day and secured at a low price along with some furniture. To his joy the old grandfather began to tick away at a proper, dignified pace on the wall at the foot of the bed. There it was to remain in its brown case about three feet long until, as Frederick inwardly vowed, he would return it to its home in Europe, Schleswig-Holstein, for which it was pining. When Frederick lay on his bed, he could see the yellow brass pendulum gleam back and forth behind a small glass door. The dial was a curiosity. It was painted in garish colors in a primitive style and represented a chubby-cheeked sun wearing the Island of Heligoland as a crown. Below the face, little metal sailing vessels connected with the clockwork swayed back and forth in the same sober rhythm as the pendulum. This was designed to make the tempest-tossed seafarer doubly sensible of the comforts of a solid hearth.
"When was it," Frederick pondered, "that I listened to Mr. Garry's cutting remarks, Mr. Samuelson's unsuccessful attack, and Lilienfeld's wild sally against Puritan intolerance—a low, hypocritical battle ostensibly fought for the salvation of a soul; in reality nothing more than the clapperclawing of crows over a helpless hare. When was it? It must have been years ago. But no, it was only last night that Ingigerd appeared in public for the first time. So it cannot have been longer ago than day before yesterday."
He had already received her first letter. He had laughed over it heartily, and yet it had moved him. She was furious and complained bitterly of his breach of faith. In one and the same breath, she said she had been dreadfully deceived in him and had seen through him the very moment she laid eyes on him when he came up to speak to her after her dance in Berlin. In one sentence she tore his character to shreds, in the next sentence urged him to return.
"I celebrated a tremendous triumph to-day. The audience lost their heads. After the performance Lord —— came up to congratulate me. He is a handsome young Englishman, who is living over here because he had a falling out with his father. But when the old man dies, he will inherit the title of duke and millions."
"This story," Frederick thought, "is either a true story or a concoction. If a concoction, then I have reason to assume that the little girl wants to make me jealous and so has not lost interest in me. But the story need not be an invention, either wholly or in part. For if an invention, it will undoubtedly become a fact within three or four days, or, at the utmost, within a week. Some rich rascal will come along and buy her."
Frederick shrugged his shoulders. He no longer felt the slightest impulse to be the girl's protector, knight and saviour, or the faintest solicitude for her probable fate.
The next morning he awoke in a shiver, though the stove had retained some heat and the sun was shining into the room brightly. He took his gold watch from his pocket—a possession that had escaped drowning with him—and ascertained that his pulse was beating more than a hundred times a minute, which is too much for a healthy man. But he paid no attention to his condition, got up, washed all over in cold water, dressed, and prepared his breakfast, by no means feeling like an invalid. Nevertheless he was aware he ought to be cautious, knowing that now, when the tension and excitement had relaxed, his body might have to confess to its consumption of capital and file a petition in bankruptcy. Sometimes, without a warning to one's strength, the body overcomes the severest hardships as if the thing were mere child's play; and all goes well so long as the stimulated body is in motion. It works on its surplus energy, and as soon as the will and the tension relax, it collapses.