Chapter 12

It frequently happened that Daniel would not answer when any one asked him a question. His ear lost the words, his eye the pictures, signs, faces, gestures. He was in his own way; he was a torment to himself.

Something drew him there and then here. He would leave the house, and then be taken with a longing to return. He noticed that people were laughing at him; laughing at him behind his back. He read mockery in the eyes of his pupils; the maids in the house tittered when he passed by.

What did they know? What were they concealing? Perhaps his soul could have told what they knew and what they concealed; but he was unwilling to drag it all out into the realm of known, nameable things.

As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him, leave him in peace, his despair increased. “What have you done, Daniel!” a voice within him cried, “what have you done!” The shades of the sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.

The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed, had suddenly died away.

For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his presentient soul into peace.

The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked at him.

Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore’s room. Old Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so as not to disturb him.

One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea’s room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him, became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.

He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched constantly.

“This can’t keep up, Dorothea,” he said in a kindly tone, “you are ruining your own life and mine too. Why do you have all these people around you? Is the pleasure you derive from associating with them so great that it benumbs your conscience? I have no idea what you are doing. Tell me about it. The household affairs are in a wretched condition; everything is in disorder. And that cigar smoke out in the living room! I opened a window. And your child! It has no mother. Look at its little face, and see how pale and sickly it looks!”

“Well, I can’t help it; Philippina puts poppy in the milk so that it will sleep longer,” Dorothea answered, after the fashion of guilty women: of the various reproaches Daniel had cast at her, she seized upon the one of which she felt the least guilty. But after this, Daniel had no more to say.

“I am so tired and sleepy,” said Dorothea, and again blinked at him out of one corner of her eye with that mocking, sensual look. As he showed no inclination to leave, she yawned, and continued in an angry tone: “Why do you wake a person up in the middle of the night, if all you want is to scold them? Get out of here, you loathsome thing!”

She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled.

Daniel, who had been so cruel to noble women now become shades, saw how she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such child-like vanity.

“There is a Chinese fairy tale about a Princess,” he said, and bent down over Dorothea, “who received from her mother as a wedding present a set of jewel boxes. There was a costly present in each box, but the last, smallest, innermost one was locked, and the Princess had to promise that she would never open it. She kept her promise for a while, but curiosity at last got the better of her, she forgot her vow, and opened the last little box by force. There was a mirror in it; and when she looked into it and saw how beautiful she was, she began to abuse her husband. She tortured him so that he killed her one day.”

Dorothea looked at him terrified. Then she laughed and said: “What a stupid story! Such a tale of horror!” She laid her cheek on the pillow, and again looked in the mirror.

The following morning Daniel received an anonymous letter. It read as follows: “You will be guarding your own honour if you keep a sharp lookout on your wife. A Well-wisher.”

A cold fever came over him. For a few days he dragged his body from room to room as if poisoned. He avoided every one in the house. One night he again felt a desire to go down to Dorothea. When he reached the door to her room, he found it bolted. He knocked, but received no answer. He knocked again, this time more vigorously. He heard her turn her head on the pillow. “Let me sleep!” cried Dorothea angrily.

“Open the door, Dorothea,” he begged.

“No, I will not; I want to sleep.” These were the words that reached his ear from behind the bolted door.

He pressed three or four times on the latch, implored her three or four times to let him come in, but received no answer. He did not wish to make any more noise, looked straight ahead as if into a dark hole, and then turned and went back to his room in the attic.