Chapter 15

Jordan was now living all alone in the two attic rooms. He had asked of his own will that he be permitted to take over the clerical work Eleanore had been doing, and her employers had agreed to this arrangement. He was consequently enabled to pay the rent and a little on his board.

Daniel and Eleanore slept in the corner room in the front. Daniel moved his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen.

Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her flowers in Daniel’s presence, or even near him; she did this in the old room up next to the roof.

Her father would sit by her, and look at her thoughtfully. She had the feeling that he knew of everything that had taken place between her and Gertrude and Daniel, but, out of infinite delicacy and modesty, and also in grief and pain, had never said a word about it. For previous to her marriage with Daniel, he had never been with her; he had never sat and looked at her so attentively; he had always passed by her in great haste, and had always shown an inclination to be alone.

She had the feeling that he knew a great deal in general about men and things, but rarely said anything because of his superior sense of gentleness and compassion.

Daniel lived about as he did before the wedding. He would sit at the table until late at night and write. It often happened that Eleanore would find him sitting there with his pen in his hand, sound asleep, when she got up early in the morning. She always smiled when this took place, and wakened him by kissing him on the forehead.

He wrote the notes direct from his memory, from his head, just as other people write letters. He no longer needed an instrument to try what he had composed or to give him an inspiration for a new theme.

Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore’s heart was heavy: she came very nearly asking, “For whom, Daniel? For what? The trunk up in the attic?”

She slowly began to perceive that it is not brooding reason that climbs and conquers the steps of perfection, but moral will. Like a flash of lightning she recognised one day the demoniacal element in this impulse, an impulse she had been accustomed to ascribe to his everlasting fidgeting, fumbling, and grumbling. She shuddered at the hitherto unsuspected distress of the man, and took pity on him: he was burying himself in darkness in order to give the world more light.

The world? What did it know about the creations of her Daniel! The big trunk was full of opus upon opus, and not a soul troubled itself about all these musical treasures resting in a single coffin.

There was something wrong here, she thought. There must be a lost or broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight.

She could think of nothing else. One day she decided to visit old Herold. At first he acted as though he would chew her to pieces, but afterwards he became more civil, at least civil enough to listen to her. Her features were remarkably brilliant and agile as she spoke. He expressed himself as follows later on: “If some one had promised me eternal blessedness on condition that I forget the picture of this pregnant woman, as she stood before me and argued the case of Daniel Nothafft vs. The Public, I would have been obliged to forego the offer, for I could never have fulfilled my part of the agreement. Forget her? Who would demand the impossible?”

Old Herold begged her to send him one of Daniel’s latest compositions, if she could. She said she would, and the next morning she took from the trunk the quartette in B minor for strings, and carried it over to the professor. He laid the score before him, and began to read. Eleanore took a seat, and patiently studied the many little painted pictures that hung on the wall.

The hour was up. The white-haired man turned the last leaf and struck his clenched fist on the paper, while around his leonine mouth there was a play partly of wrath and partly of awe. He said: “The case will be placed on the calendar, you worthiest of all Eleanores, but I am no longer the herald.”

He walked back and forth, wrung his hands, and cried: “What structure! What colourful tones! What a wealth of melody, rhythm, and originality! What discipline, sweetness, power! What a splendid fellow he is! And to think that a man like that lives right here among us, and plagues and tortures himself! A disgrace and a shame it is! Come, my dear woman, we will go to him at once. I want to press him to my bosom....”

But Eleanore, whose face burned with the feeling of good fortune, interrupted him, and said: “If you do that, you will spoil everything. It will be much better to tell me what to do. He will become more and more obstinate and bitter, if some ray of light does not soon fall on what he has thus far created.”

The old man thought for a while: “You leave the score with me; I’ll see what I can do with it; I have an idea,” he replied, after a short time had elapsed.

Eleanore went back home full of hope.

The quartette was sent to Berlin, and placed in the hands of a man of influence and discrimination. Some professional musicians soon became acquainted with it and its merits. Professor Herold received a number of enthusiastic letters, and answered them with characteristic and becoming shrewdness. A cycle of sagas was soon afloat in Berlin concerning the habits and personality of the unknown master. It was said that he was an anchorite who lived in the Franconian forests and preached renunciation of all earthly pleasures.

In Leipzig the quartette was played before an invited audience. The applause was quite different from what it ordinarily was in the case of a public that is surfeited with musical novelties.

Thereby Daniel finally learned what had been done. One day he received a letter from the man who had arranged the concert, a certain Herr Löwenberg. The letter closed as follows: “A community of admirers is anxious to come into possession of your compositions. They send you their greetings at present with cordial gratitude.”

Daniel could scarcely believe his own eyes; it was like magic. Without saying a word he handed the letter to Eleanore. She read it, and looked at him quietly.

“Yes, I am guilty,” she said, “I stole the quartette.”

“Is that so? Do you realise, Eleanore, what you have done to me?”

Eleanore’s face coloured with surprise and fear.

“You ought to know; probably in the future you will lose interest in such womanish wiles.”

He walked back and forth, and then stepped up very close to her: “You probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong. There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is no more.”

He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: “It is not because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear? provided it is a living thing.”

“Well then, Daniel,” said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.

“That is where the trouble lies,” he continued, as though he had never been interrupted, “it all depends on whether the piece has life, reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there is no divine must about it. My imperfect creations would merely serve as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he knows it, and he is the devil’s prey forever. It is an easy matter to make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering before my mind. It is possible that I flatter myself; it may be that I am being cajoled by fraud and led on by visions; but it is in me, I feel certain of it, and it must come to light. Then we shall see what sort of creature it is. Then all my previous works will have ceased to exist; then I will bestir myself in a public way; I will come out and be the man that I really am. You can depend on it.”

Daniel had never talked to Eleanore in this way before. As she looked at him, overcome almost by the passion of his words, and saw him standing there so utterly fearless, so unyielding and unpitying, her breast heaved with a sigh, and she said: “God grant that you succeed, and that you live to enjoy the fruits of your ambition.”

“It is all a matter of fate, Eleanore,” he replied.

He demanded the quartette; it was sent back to him.

From then on Eleanore suppressed even the slightest sense of discontent that arose in her heart. She felt that he needed cruelty and harshness for his small life in order to preserve love and patience for the great life.

Yes, she prayed to Heaven that she might leave him harsh and cruel.