Chapter 11

Through the dividing walls Daniel and Eleanore were irresistibly drawn to each other. They accompanied each other in their thoughts; each divined the other’s wishes and feelings. If he came home in a bad humour, if she was anxious and restless, they both needed merely to sit down by each other to regain their peace.

If Daniel’s power of persuasion was great, Eleanore’s example was equally great. A dish would displease Daniel. Eleanore would not only eat it, but would praise it; and Daniel would then eat it too, and like it. Gertrude had prepared the food, and Eleanore felt it was her duty to spare her sister as much humiliation as possible. But Gertrude did not want to be treated indulgently. She would lay her knife and fork aside, and say: “Daniel is right. It is not fit to eat.” She would get up and go into the kitchen and make a porridge that would take the place of the inedible dish. That was the way she acted: she was always resigned, diligent, and quiet; she made every possible effort to do her duty. Daniel and Eleanore looked at each other embarrassed; but their embarrassment was transformed in time into mutual ecstasy: they could not keep from looking at each other.

There was nothing of the seducer in Daniel’s sexual equipment. On the other hand he was dependent to a very high degree upon his wishes and desires; and in his passionate obstinacy he not infrequently lacked consideration. Eleanore however possessed profound calmness, cheerful certainty, and a goodly measure of indulgence; and she knew exactly how to make use of these traits. The claims that were made on her patience and moderation would have harassed a heart steeled in the actualities of politics and flooded with worldly experiences. She however found a safe and unerring guide in the instincts of her nature, and was never tired.

The trait in her to which he took most frequent and violent exception was what he called her plebeian caution; she seemed determined to pay due and conventional respect to appearances. He did not wish to lay claim to the hours of his love as though they were a stolen possession; he did not wish to sneak across bridges and through halls; he did not wish to whisper; he did not wish to lie in wait for a secret tryst; he rebelled at the thought of coming and going in fear and trembling.

There is not the slightest use to investigate all the secrecies between Daniel and Eleanore. It will serve no useful end to infringe with unskilled hand on the work of the evil spirit Asmodeus, who makes walls transparent and allows his devotees to look into bed chambers. It would be futile to act as the spy of Daniel and show how he left the attic room in the dead of night and crept down the stairs in felt slippers. We have no desire to hear of Eleanore’s pangs of conscience and her longings, her flights, her waiting in burning suspense; to relate how she endeavoured to avert the inevitable to-day and succumbed to-morrow would be to tell an idle tale. It is best to overlook all these things; to draw a curtain of mercy before them; for they are so human and so wholly without a trace of the miraculous.

It will be enough to touch upon a single night on which Daniel went to Eleanore’s room and said: “I have never yet seen you as a lover sees his beloved.” Eleanore was sitting on the edge of her bed, trembling. She blew out the candle. Daniel heard the rustling of her clothes. She went up to the stove and opened the front draft door. There was a red hot coal fire in the stove. She stood before him with the purple glow of the burning coals upon her body, slender, delicate, nude. Her figure, peculiarly beautiful, was filled with the most harmonious of inspiration; it was ensouled. And since the play of her limbs, as they became conscious of the light, was suddenly stiffened with shame, Eleanore bent her head over to the wall where the mask of Zingarella, which he had given her, was hanging. She took it down, and held it with both hands so that the purple glow from the stove fell also on it. As she did this she smiled in a way that cut Daniel to the very heart: something eternal came over him; he had a premonition of the end; he feared fate.

At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head. Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.

Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.

For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place. In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there was a man; they embraced each other, and sank their teeth into each other’s flesh. It was all as criminal as it was irrational; it was a shame and an abomination to behold. Everywhere she looked she saw reprehensible nudeness; all clothes seemed to be made of glass; she could look neither at a man nor at a woman without turning pale. She had only one refuge: the cradle of her child. She would rush to it and pray. But as soon as her prayer was ended she again felt stifled in the poisoned air about her, while the desire to acquit herself of the crime of which she felt guilty, unable though she was to define the crime or determine her part in it, robbed her of her sleep. She felt that a great jagged stone was suspended over her head, that it was becoming less and less firmly attached every day, and that its fall if not imminent was certain.

Hour after hour passed by; Daniel finally appeared in the vestibule. He was not a little terrified when he saw the burning lamp and Gertrude sitting up in bed.

He went into the bedroom, closed the door, walked up to the cradle, looked at the child, and then went over to Gertrude. She cast a glance of infinite inquiry at him. It was a look that seemed to implore him for a decision, a judgment. At the same time she put out her hands as if to ward off any approach on his part. When she saw that he was astonished, she softened the expression on her face, and said: “Give me your hand.”

She took his right hand, stroked it, and whispered: “Poor hand, poor hand.”

Daniel bit his lips: “Oh woman, what ...?” That was all.

He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments earlier. He sank down beside her, and fell asleep with his head on her breast.

She kept on holding his hand. She looked into his pale, narrow face and at his angular brow, the skin of which could be seen to twitch every now and then under the loose flowing hair that hung over it. The oil in the lamp was getting low, the wick had begun to smell. She was afraid however to put it out lest she might waken Daniel. She looked on in silence as the light became dimmer and dimmer and finally went out, leaving only the red glow of the wick. This too died away in time, and it became dark.