Part 19

He laid his hand on Gertrude’s hair. She interpreted the gesture as a visible sign that his promise had been fulfilled; that this work belonged to her; that he had created it for her, had taken it from her heart, and was returning it to the heart from whence it came.

X

Zierfuss, the music dealer, had sent out invitations to a concert. Daniel did not feel like going. Gertrude asked Eleanore if she would not go with her. Daniel called for them after the concert.

Eleanore told him on the way home that she had received a letter for him that afternoon bearing a London stamp.

“From Benda?” asked Daniel quickly.

“It is Benda’s handwriting,” replied Eleanore. “I was going to bring it to you when Gertrude called for me. Wait out in the front of the house, and I’ll go in and get it.”

“Take dinner with us this evening, Eleanore,” said Gertrude, looking rather uncertainly at Daniel.

“If it is agreeable to Daniel....”

“No nonsense, Eleanore, of course it is agreeable to me,” said Daniel.

A quarter of an hour later Daniel was sitting by the lamp reading Benda’s letter.

The first thing his friend told him was that he was to join a scientific expedition to the Congo, and that his party would follow almost exactly the same route that had been taken by the Stanley Expedition when it set out to look for Emin Pascha.

Benda wrote: “This letter then, my dear friend, is written to say good-bye for a number of years, perhaps forever. I feel as if I had been born anew. I have eyes again; and the ideas that fill my brain are no longer condemned to be stifled in the morass of imprisoned colleagues, loyal and inimical. To labour in nature’s laboratory will make me forget the wrongs I have suffered, the injustice that has been done me. Hunger and thirst, disease and danger will of course have to be endured; they are the effects of those crimes of civilisation that spare the body while they poison the mind and soul.”

Further on Benda wrote: “I am bound to my home by only two people, my mother and you. When I think of you, a feeling of pride comes over me; every hour we spent together is indelibly stamped on my heart. But there is one delicate point: it is a point of conscience. Call it, so far as I am concerned, a chip; call it anything you please. The fact is I have had a Don Quixotic run in, and I have got to defend myself.”

Daniel shook his head and read on. Benda knew nothing of his marriage. He did not even seem to know that Daniel and Gertrude had been engaged. Or if he had known it he had forgotten it. Daniel could hardly believe his own eyes when he came to the following passage: “My greatest anxiety always lay in the fear that you would pass Eleanore by. I was too cowardly to tell you how I felt on this point, and I have reproached myself ever since for my cowardice. Now that I am leaving I tell you how I feel about this matter, though not exactly with the sensation of performing a belated task.”

For Heaven’s sake, thought Daniel, what is he trying to do to me?

“I have often thought about it in quiet hours; it gave me the same feeling of satisfaction that I have in a chemical experiment, when the reactions of the various elements take place as they should: what Eleanore says is your word; what you feel is Eleanore’s law.”

He is seeing ghosts, cried Daniel, he is tangling up the threads of my life. What does he mean? Why does he do it?

“Don’t neglect what I am telling you! Don’t crush that wonderful flower! The girl is a rare specimen; the rarest I know. You need your whole heart with all its powers of love and kindness to appreciate her. But if my words reach you too late, please tear this letter into shreds, and get the whole idea out of your mind as soon and completely as possible.”

“Come, let’s eat,” said Gertrude, as she entered the room with a dish of pickled herring.

Eleanore was sitting on the sofa looking at Daniel quizzically. He was lost in thought.

Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from each other: they were the two poles of his world.

XI

“What has Benda got to say?” asked Gertrude hesitatingly.

“Just think, he is going to Africa,” replied Daniel, with a voice as if he were lying. “Curious, isn’t it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this time.”

With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared to them.

“Why don’t you read on?” asked Eleanore, when he paused.

She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up and liberated her.

Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet; she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.

“Don’t you know that that is not polite?” he asked. “We have some secrets, probably, Benda and I.”

“I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings,” replied Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.

Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up.

“It is late, and father is already waiting,” said Eleanore, after they had eaten in great haste.

“I will take you home,” declared Daniel. Surprised by such unusual gallantry, Eleanore looked at him with amazement. He at once became moody; she was still more surprised. “I can go home alone, Daniel,” she said in a tone of noticeable seriousness, “you do not need to put yourself out for me.”

“Put myself out? What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can’t keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment runs short?”

Eleanore had nothing to say.

“Put your great coat on, Daniel,” said Gertrude in the hall, “it is cold and windy out.”

She wanted to help him on with it, but he threw it in the clothes press; he was irritated.

He walked along at Eleanore’s side through the deserted streets.

She had already put the key in the front door, when she turned around, looked up in a most unhappy way, and said: “Daniel, what in the world is the matter with you? When I look at you, a feeling of anguish and distress comes over me. What have I done that you should act so disagreeably toward me?”

“Oh, forget it, think about something else, don’t mention the subject any more,” said Daniel, in a rough, rude voice. But the glance she fixed on him was so stern and unpitying, so testing and so un-girl-like, so strong and so bold, that he felt his heart grow softer. “Let us take a little walk,” he said.

For a long time they paced back and forth in perfect silence. Then she asked him what he was working on now. He made cautious, non-committal replies, and then suddenly he was overwhelmed with a flood of words. He remarked that he felt at times as if he were struggling with goblins in the dark. What gushed forth from the deepest depths of his soul, he said, was somehow or other too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had no success with anything unless it was something disembodied, incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage, after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be as it drifted in the chaos of the everyday world. He remarked that heaven was in his dreams, hell in his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for they lived more innocent lives than he, and they were more useful.

“But you have some one to hold to,” said Eleanore, realising that she was skating on thin ice, “you have Gertrude.”

To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at him as if in a last attempt to get him to tell her what was the matter. Then all peace of mind vanished from her soul—and her face. Every time they passed a street lamp she turned her head to one side.

“She is after all in the presence of God your wife,” said Eleanore gently and with remarkable solemnity.

Daniel looked up and listened as if greatly abashed. Speaking out into the wind he said: “The over-tone, Eleanore; a bird twittering in the bush. In the presence of God my wife! But in the roots the bass is howling; it is an infernal tremolo; do you hear it?”

He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.

He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: “The letter, Eleanore, the letter ...!”

“Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?”

“I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever.”

Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a fool to her in her life.

“Listen,” he said, putting his arm in hers, “I have composed a song; here is the way it goes.” He sang a melody he had written for one of Eichendorff’s poems. In it there was a tender sadness. “While everything is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and rests like a ship in the harbour.”

They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and forth for two hours.

He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.

Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell on Gertrude’s face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful expression.

“In the presence of God my wife,” murmured Daniel. He did not waken Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the two went off in darkness to their bed room.

THE GLASS CASE BREAKS

I

Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a time he knew she would be there.

He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.

She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the ice.

The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of her being.

II

They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good friends again.

One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: “Child, don’t have anything to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality.”

“Don’t talk in that way,” replied Eleanore. “I dislike it. The tone of your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a woman of worldly habits.”

They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.

Eleanore’s greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of reality over there.

The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider’s nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them. For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy, never tired.

There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left, half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of her if he wished to.

He struggled against the enticement that lay in this peculiarity.

Her presence ennobled his ambition and dispelled his whims. She gave him the beautifully formed cloud, the tree covered with young foliage, the moon that rises up over the roofs of the houses—she gave him the whole earth over which he was hastening, a stranger to peace, unfamiliar with contentment.

He cherished no suspicion; he had no foreshadowing of his fate. And Eleanore was not afraid of him; she, too, was without a sense of danger.

III

One Sunday afternoon in April they took a walk out into the country. Gertrude had been suffering for weeks from lassitude and could not go with them.

Eleanore was a superb walker. It gave Daniel extreme pleasure to walk along with her, keeping step, moving hastily. The quick movement increased his susceptibility to the charm of the changing landscapes. It was quite different when he walked with Gertrude. She was slow, given to introspection, thoughtful, and not very strong.

In the course of an hour clouds gathered in the sky, the sun disappeared, big drops began to fall. Eleanore had taken neither umbrella nor rain coat along; she began to walk more rapidly. If they tried, they could reach the inn beyond the forest, and find shelter from the storm.

Just as they slipped through the crowd that had hurried up the road to the same refuge and entered the inn, the sluices of heaven seemed to open, and a cloud-burst followed. They were standing in the hall. Eleanore was warm, and did not wish to remain in the draught. They went into the restaurant; it was so full that they had considerable trouble to find seats. A working man, his wife, and four sickly-looking children squeezed up more closely together; the two youngest boys gave them their chairs and went to look for others.

The clouds hung low, causing premature darkness. Lamps were lighted, and their odour mingled freely with the other odours of this overcrowded room. A few village musicians played some unknown piece; the eyes of the workingman’s children shone with delight. Because they sat there so quietly—and because they looked so pale—Eleanore gave each of the children a sandwich. The mother was very grateful, and said so. The father, who said he was the foreman in a mirror factory, began to talk with Daniel about the troubles of the present era.

All of a sudden Daniel caught sight of a familiar face at a nearby table. As it turned to one side, he saw in the dim, smelly light another face he knew, and then a third and a fourth. It was all so ghost-like in the room that it was some time before he knew just where to place them. Then it occurred to him where they came from.

Herr Hadebusch and Frau Hadebusch, Herr Francke and Benjamin Dorn were having a little Sunday outing. The brush-maker’s wife was radiant with joy on seeing her old lodger. She nodded, she blinked, she folded her hands as if touched at the sight, and Herr Hadebusch raised his beer glass, eager to drink a toast to Daniel’s health.

They could not quite make out who Eleanore was; they took her for Daniel’s wife. This misunderstanding, it seemed, was then cleared up by the Methodist after he had craned his neck and called his powers of recognition into play. The demoniac woman nodded, to be sure, and kept on blinking, but in her face there was an expression of rustic disapproval. Her mouth was opened, and the tusks of her upper jaw shone forth uncannily from the black abyss.

The swan neck of the Methodist was screwed up so hardily and picturesquely above the heads of the others that Eleanore could not help but notice his physical and spiritual peculiarities. She wrinkled her brow, and looked at Daniel questioningly.

She looked around, and saw a great many people from the city whom she knew either by name or from having met them so frequently. There was a saleswoman from Ludwig Street; a clerk with a pock-marked face from a produce store; the dignified preceptress of a Kindergarten; an official of the savings bank; the hat-maker from the corner of the Market Place with his grown daughter; and the sergeant who invariably saluted when he passed by her.

All these people were in their Sunday clothes and seemed care-free and good natured. But as soon as they saw Eleanore a mean expression came over them. The fluttering of the lights made their faces look ghastly, while partial intoxication made it easy to read their filthy, lazy thoughts. Full of anxiety, Eleanore looked up at Daniel, as if she felt she would have to rely on his wealth of experience and greater superiority in general.

He was sorry for her and sorry for himself. He knew what was in store for him and her. When he looked over this Hogarthian gathering, and saw, despite its festive, convivial mood, hidden lusts of every description, crippled passions, secreted envy, and mysterious vindictiveness spread about like the stench of foul blood, he felt it was quite futile to cherish delusions of any kind as to what was before him. To spare Eleanore and to defend her, to leave her rather than be guilty of causing the child-like smile on her lips to die out and disappear forever—this he believed in the bottom of his heart he could promise both her and himself.

The working man and his family had left; and as it was no longer raining, most of the other guests had also gone. Up in the room above people were dancing. The lamps were shaking, and it was easy to hear the low sounds of the bass violin. Daniel took out his pencil, and began writing notes on the table. Eleanore bent over, looking at him, and, like him, fell to dreamy thinking.

Neither wished to know what the other was thinking; they entertained themselves in silence; inwardly they were drawn closer and closer together, as if by some mysterious and irresistible power. They had not noticed that it was evening, that the room was empty, that the waiters had taken the glasses away, and that the dance music in the room above had stopped.

They sat there in the half-lighted corner side by side, as if in some dark, deserted cavern. When they finally came out of their deep silence and looked at each other, they were first surprised and then dismayed.

“What are we going to do?” asked Eleanore half in a whisper, “it is late; we must be going home.”

The sky was clouded, a warm wind swept across the plains, the road was full of puddles. Here and there a light flashed from the darkness, and a dog barked every now and then in the distant villages. When the road turned into the forest, Daniel gave Eleanore his arm. She took it, but soon let go. Daniel stopped, and said almost angrily: “Are we bewitched, both of us? Speak, Eleanore, speak!”

“What is there for me to say?” she asked gently. “I am frightened; it is so dark.”

“You are frightened, Eleanore, you? You do not know the night. It has never yet been night in your soul; nor night in the world about you. Now you appreciate perhaps how a being of the night feels.”

She made no reply.

“Give me your hand,” he said, “I will lead you.”