Chapter 9

Late in the afternoon of a stormy day in June Daniel came home from the last rehearsal of the “Harzreise,” tired and out of humour. The rehearsals had been held in a small room in Weyrauth’s Garden. He had quarrelled with all the musicians and with all the singers, male and female.

As he reached Ægydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal possession which he had been so foolish as to trifle away.

He went up the steps, passed by his own apartment, and climbed on up to the apartment of Inspector Jordan and his daughter Eleanore.

His eye fell on the board partition surrounding the stove and the copper cooking utensils that hung on the wall. There sat Eleanore, her arm resting on the window sill, her head on her hand: she was meditating—meditating and gaining new strength as she did so. Her face was turned toward the steep fall of a roof, the century-old frame-work, grey walls, darkened window panes and dilapidated wooden galleries, above which lay stillness and a rectangular patch of sky that was then covered with clouds.

“Good evening,” said Daniel, as he stepped out of the darkness into the dimly lighted room. “What are you doing, Eleanore, what are you thinking about?”

Eleanore shuddered: “Ah, is it you, Daniel? You show yourself after a long while? And ask what I am thinking about? What curiosity! Do you want to come into my room?”

“No, no, sit perfectly still,” he replied, and prevented her from getting up by touching her on the shoulder. “Is your father at home?”

She nodded. He drew a narrow bench from which he had removed the coffee mill and a strainer up to the serving table, and sat down as far as possible from Eleanore, though even so they were as close together as if they were sitting opposite each other in a cab.

“How are you making out?” she asked with embarrassment, and without the remotest display of warmth.

“You know that I am beating a perforated drum, Eleanore.” After a pause he added: “But whatever people may do or fail to do, between us two there must be a clear understanding: Are you going to Paris?”

She dropped her head in silence. “Well, I could go; there is nothing to prevent me,” she said, softly and with hesitation. “But you see how it is. I am no longer as I used to be. Formerly I could scarcely picture the happiness I would derive from having some one there in whom I could confide and who would be interested in me. I would not have hesitated for a moment. But now? If I go, what becomes clear from my going? And if I stay here, what will be clear? I have already told you, Daniel, that I don’t understand you. How terrible it is to have to say that! What do you want now? How is all this going to come out?”

“Eleanore, do you recall Benda’s last letter? You yourself brought it to me, and after that I was a different person. He wrote to me in that letter just as if he had never heard of Gertrude, and said that I should not pass you by. He wrote that we two were destined for each other, and neither for any one else in the world. Of course you recall how I acted after reading the letter. And even before that: Do you remember the day of the wedding when you put the myrtle wreath on? Why, I knew then that I had lost everything, that my real treasure had vanished. And even before that: Do you recall that I found that Fräulein Sylvia von Erfft had your complexion, your figure, your hair, and your hands? And even before that: When you went walking with Benda in the woods, I walked along behind, and took so much pleasure in watching you walk, but I didn’t know it. And when you came into the room there in the Long Row, and caressed the mask and sat down at the piano and leaned your head against the wood, don’t you recall how indispensable you were to me, to my soul? The only trouble is, I didn’t know it; I didn’t know it.”

“Well, there is nothing to be done about all that: that is a by-gone story,” said Eleanore, holding her breath, while a blush of emotion flitted across her face only to give way to a terrible paleness.

“Do you believe that I am a person to be content with what is past? Every one, Eleanore, owes himself his share of happiness, and he can get it if he simply makes up his mind to it. It is not until he has neglected it, abandoned it, and passed it by, that his fate makes a slave out of him.”

“That is just what I do not understand,” said Eleanore, and looked into his face with a more cheerful sense of freedom. “It wounds my heart to see you waging a losing battle against self-deception and ugly defiance. We two cannot think of committing a base deed, Daniel. It is impossible, isn’t it?”

Daniel, plainly excited, bent over nearer to her: “Do you know where I am standing?” he asked, while the blue veins in his temples swelled and hammered: “Well, I’ll tell you. I am standing on a marble slab above an abyss. To the right and left of this abyss are nothing but blood-thirsty wolves. There is no choice left to me except either to leap down into the abyss, or to allow myself to be torn to pieces by the wolves. When such a being as you comes gliding along through the air, a winged creature like you, that can rescue me and pull me up after it, is there any ground for doubt as to what should be done?”

Eleanore folded her arms across her bosom, and half closed her eyes: “Ah no, Daniel,” she said in a kindly way, “you are exaggerating, really. You see everything too white and too black: A winged creature, I? Where, pray, are my wings? And wolves? All these silly little people—wolves? Oh no, Daniel. And blood-thirsty? Listen, Daniel, that is going quite too far; don’t you think so yourself?”

“Don’t crush my feelings, Eleanore!” cried Daniel, in a suppressed tone and with passionate fierceness: “Don’t crush my feelings, for they are all I have left. You are not capable of thinking as you have just been talking, you cannot think that low, you are not capable of such languid, ordinary feelings. The over-tone! The over-tone! Think a little! Can’t you see them gritting their teeth at me? Can’t you hear them howling day and night? Can you possibly say that they are kind or compassionate? Or are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is not the slime of slander thick upon their tongues? Is not your smile a thorn in their flesh? Do they not envy me the little I have and for which I have flayed myself? Don’t they envy me my music, which they do not understand, and which they hate because they do not understand it? Would it not fill them with joy if I had to make my living beating stones on the public highway or cleaning out sewers? Do they find it possible to pardon me for my life and the things that make up my life? And yet you say there are no wolves? That they are not wolves? Tell me that you are afraid of them, that you do not wish to turn them against yourself; but don’t tell me that you are committing an evil act when I call you to me, you with your wings, and you come.”

His arms were stretched out toward her on the top of the kitchen table; they were trembling to the very tips of his fingers.

“The evil deed, Daniel,” whispered Eleanore, “hasn’t anything to do with these people; it was committed against the higher law of morals, against our feeling of right usage and established honour....”

“False,” he hissed, “false! They have made you believe that. They have preached that to you for centuries and centuries; your mother, your grand-mother, your great-grand-mother, they have all been telling you that. It is false; it is a lie; it is all a lie. It is with this very lie that they support their power and protect their organisation. It is truth on the contrary that fills my heart, fills it with joy, and helps me along. What nature offers, obedience to nature, that is truth. Truth lies in your thoughts, in your feelings, girl, in your choked feelings, in your blood, in the ‘yes’ you speak in your dreams. Of course I know that they need their lie, for they must be organised, the wolves; they must go in packs, otherwise they are impotent. But I have only my truth, only my truth as I stand on the marble slab above the abyss.”

“Your truth, Daniel,” said Eleanore, “your truth. But your truth is not my truth.”

“No, Eleanore? No? Not yours? What then is the use of my talking with you? And even if everything else were falsehood and error, I am as convinced as I can be that my truth is also your truth.”

“You can’t stand out against the whole world,” said Eleanore in anguish, “you are after all in the world yourself.”

“Yes, I will take my stand against the whole world,” he said, “that is precisely what I have made up my mind to do. I will pay them back in their own coin. Just as they have all stood against me, just so will I stand against them. I am no compromiser, no treaty-maker, no haggler, no beggar. I live according to my own law. I must, where other people merely should or may, or may not. Whoever does not comprehend that has nothing in common, one way or the other, with me.”

She was terrified at the presumptuousness of his words; and yet there was a feeling in her of joy and pride: she felt a desire to be for him, to be with him. If he was fighting against the very power that would in the end overcome him, he was doing it for her sake. She did not feel, therefore, that she had the right to withdraw from him. The thing about it all that gave her a wonderful feeling of relief, and at the same time made her morally flabby and carried her away, was the passion of his will and the undaunted assurance of his feelings.

But their eyes chanced to meet; and in the eyes of each there was the name of Gertrude.

Gertrude stood between them in living form. Everything they had said had proceeded from her and returned to her. That Daniel was not thinking of annulling his marriage, that he could not think of it, Eleanore knew. A child was expected; who could reject the mother under these circumstances? How would it be possible, poor as they were, to expose both mother and child to the inevitable misery that would follow annulment of the marriage? Daniel could not do this, and Eleanore knew it.

But she also knew, for she knew her sister, that separation from Daniel would mean her death. She knew too that Daniel considered his marriage to Gertrude as indissoluble, not only because of his knowledge of her character, but because there was in his life with Gertrude something that is quite independent of passions, views, and decisions, something that binds even in hate and binds even more firmly in despair.

Eleanore knew all this. She knew that Daniel knew it. And if she drew the only conclusion that could be drawn from his argument and his state of mind, she knew what he demanded of her.

He was demanding that she give herself up to him. Of this there could be not a shred of doubt.

But how? Secretly? Could that produce happiness? With the understanding of Gertrude? Could Gertrude endure such a thought, even if she were as magnanimous as a saint? Where was the way that could be followed? Where was there an angle from which embarrassment, anxiety, and ruin were not ready to leap forth without warning?

She bowed her head, and covered it with her hands. She sat in this position for a long while. Darkness settled down over the roofs of the houses.

Suddenly she got up, reached him her hand, smiled with tears in her eyes, and said with a last attempt to escape the horrible consequences, “Brüderlein....” She spoke the word in a tone of longing fervour and half-humorous appealing.

He shook his head sadly, but took her hand and held it tenderly between his.

Her face became clouded; it was like a landscape at the coming of night. Her eyes, turned to one side, saw the trees of a great garden, an ugly old woman sitting by a hedge, and two little girls who looked into the setting sun with fear in their hearts.

There was a noise; she and Daniel were startled. In the doorway stood Philippina Schimmelweis. Her eyes glistened like the skin of a reptile that has just crept up from out of the bog.

Daniel went down to his apartment.