Chapter 17

When he came home Eleanore was suffering from premature birth pains. Philippina greeted him with the words: “There is going to be an increase in the family, Daniel.” Whereat she burst out in a coarse laugh.

“Shut up, you beast,” cried Daniel: “How long has she been suffering? Why didn’t you get the nurse?”

“Can I leave the child here alone? Don’t growl so!” replied Philippina angrily. She went out for the nurse. In a half an hour she came back with her: it was Frau Hadebusch.

Daniel had a disagreeable feeling. He wanted to raise some questions and make some objections, but Frau Hadebusch’s nimble tongue anticipated him. She grinned, curtsied, rolled her eyes, and went through the entire category of acquired mannerisms on the part of a woman of her type, and then unloaded her life history: Her duly wedded husband had said farewell to this vale of tears three years ago, and since then she had been supporting, as well as she could, herself and her poor Henry, the idiot, by hiring out as a midwife. She seemed already to have come to an understanding with Eleanore, for when she entered the room, Eleanore greeted her as though she were an old acquaintance.

While Daniel was alone with Eleanore for a few minutes, he asked her in an indignant tone: “How did you ever come to get that vicious woman?”

Eleanore replied in a gentle and unsuspecting tone: “She came to me one day, and asked to be called in when the child was born. She said she was awfully fond of you, and that you had once lived in her house. Well, I thought, what difference does it make who comes, so I engaged her, and there she is.”

It was only with the greatest difficulty that she finished saying what was on her mind. Her face, white as a sheet, was pinched with an expression of terrific pain. She reached for Daniel’s hand, and held it so tightly that he became rigid with anxiety.

When she began to groan, Daniel turned away and pressed his fists together. Frau Hadebusch came in with a tub of hot water: “This is no place for men,” she exclaimed with a kindly twisting of her face, took Daniel by the shoulder, and pushed him out the door.

Little Agnes was standing in the hall. “Father,” she said.

“Put that child to bed!” said Daniel, turning to Philippina.

Jordan came out of the kitchen. He held an earthen bowl of soup in his hand. It had been saved for him, and all he had to do was to hold it over the fire and heat it up. He went up to Daniel, and said, as his chin quivered: “May God protect her, and be merciful to her!”

“Quit that kind of talk, Father,” said Daniel impatiently. “God rules with reservations that make me insane.”

“Won’t you say good-night to little Agnes?” asked Philippina in a rude, rough tone from the other room.

He went in; the child looked at him timidly. The more it grew, the greater his own shyness became in its presence. And the constant association of Eleanore with the child had always been a source of worry to him. There was one thing of which he was mortally certain: he could not see Eleanore in bodily form and precisely as she was, when Agnes, with her Gertrude eyes and her arched Eleanore mouth, was present in the room with Eleanore. He felt that Eleanore had been transformed into the sister of Agnes, that she was still only a sister. And this he felt was something fatal.

Both of the sisters looked at him out of Agnes’s big childish eyes; in her they were both melted and moulded into a single being. A presageful horror crept over him. Sisters! The word had a solemn sound in his ears; it seemed full of mysterious meaning; it took on mythical greatness.

“Sleep, baby, sleep, outside are two sheep, a black one and a white one ...” sang Philippina in her imbecile way. It was astonishing the amount of malevolence there was in her sing-song.

Daniel could not stand it in the house; he went out on the street, and wandered around until midnight. If he made up his mind to go home, the thought occurred to him at once that Frau Hadebusch would prevent him from going into Eleanore’s room. He felt like lying down on the pavement and waiting until some one came and told him how Eleanore was getting along.