Daniel found the members of the orchestra only too glad to take the excursion over to Herr von Erfft’s. They were put up in a hotel; Daniel himself lived in the castle. The rehearsals were held with zeal and seriousness. Though the name of the Chancellor was still darkened by the clouds of political life, by the enmity of his opponents, by pettiness and misunderstanding, all these young people felt the power of the great Immortal, and were delighted with the idea of meaning something to him, even in the guise of an imaginary world and for only a fleeting hour or two. Agatha von Erfft, the wife of Herr von Erfft, was indefatigable in preparing the costumes, surmounting technical difficulties, and entertaining her guests. The twenty-four-year-old Sylvia had inherited neither the strength of her mother nor the amiability of her father: she was delicate and reserved. Nevertheless, she managed to put a great deal of winsomeness and roguishness into the rôle of the cherub. Even her parents were surprised at the unexpected wealth of her natural ability. Moreover, her voice was velvety and well trained. Accustomed as he had been for years to the mediocre accomplishments of sore throats, Daniel nodded approval when she sang.
The other members of the improvised company he handled with no greater indulgence than he had shown the singers of the Dörmaul troupe. They had to put up with his gruffness and snappishness, and to do it without a murmur. Herr von Erfft attended the rehearsals regularly, observing Daniel at all times with quiet admiration. If Daniel spoke to any one with such seeming harshness that the case was taken up with Herr von Erfft, the latter said: “Let the man have his way; he knows his business; there are not many like him.”
Sylvia was the only one he treated with consideration. As soon as Herr von Erfft mentioned her name, Daniel listened; and as soon as he had seen her, he knew that he had seen her before. Itwas the time he was on his journey; he was standing out at the entrance to the park; some one called to her. It seemed strange to him that he should remember this. Now he was with her, and yet he was just as much of a stranger to her as ever.
But the thing that drew him to the beautiful girl had nothing to do with this chance incident; nor was there the slightest trace of sensuousness in his feelings. It was all a sort of dream-like sympathy, similar to the quest of memory in search of a forgotten happiness. It was a vaguer and more plaguing sensation than the one that bound him so inviolably to Gertrude; it was more sorrow than joy, more unrest than consciousness.
This forgotten happiness slumbered deep down in his soul; it had been washed away by the waves of life. It was not Sylvia herself; it was perhaps a movement of her hand: where had he known this same movement before? It was the way she tossed her head back; it was her proud look, the blue of her eyes—but where had he seen all this before?
Forgotten, forgotten....
Just as everything was in full swing, just as they had decorated the buildings and arranged the Herrenhaus, the news came of the death of King Ludwig of Bavaria. The newspapers bore a broad black margin, and were crowded with details concerning the tragedy at the Starnbergersee. The entire country, including the family of Herr von Erfft, mourned the loss of the art-loving monarch genuinely and for a long while.
Of an operatic performance there could be no thought. The Chancellor cancelled his engagement, and the young men who had assembled for the rehearsals went quietly home. Herr von Erfft gave Daniel a considerable purse with which he might recompense his musicians for their trouble, and, not wishing to treat Daniel himself as though he were an ordinary mechanic, he invited him to spend a few more days on his estate.
Daniel did not decline; he had not in truth given one minute’s thought to where he would go when he left.
After he distributed the present from Herr von Erfft among the musicians and discharged them, he took a long walk in the woods. He ate a frugal meal in a village restaurant, and then sauntered around until evening. When he returned, he found his hosts sitting at the table. He neglected to beg their pardon; FrauAgatha looked at her husband and smiled, and told the maids to bring in something for the Herr Kapellmeister. Sylvia had a book in her hand and was reading.
Daniel was a trifle ill at ease; he merely took a bite here and there. When Frau von Erfft left the table, walked over to the window, and looked out into the cloudy sky, Daniel got up, went into the adjoining room, and sat down at the piano.
He began to play Schubert’s “Song to Sylvia.” Having finished the impetuous, heart-felt song, he struck up a variation, then a second, a third, and a fourth. The first was melancholy, the second triumphant, the third meditative, the fourth dreamy. Each was a hymn to forgotten joy.
Herr von Erfft and Agatha were standing in the open door. Sylvia had sat down close beside him on a tabourette; there was a pleasing, far-away look in her eyes, riveted though they were to the floor.
He suddenly stopped, as if to avoid both thanks and applause. Sylvester von Erfft took a seat opposite him, and asked him in a most kindly tone whether he had any definite plans for the immediate future.
“I am going back to Nuremberg and get married,” said Daniel. “My fiancée has been waiting for me for a long time.”
Herr von Erfft asked him whether he was not afraid of premature marriage bonds. Daniel replied rather curtly that he needed some one to stand between him and the world.
“You need some one to act as a sort of buffer,” said Frau Agatha sarcastically. Daniel looked at her angrily.
“Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from rebuffs,” said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had spoken the first time.
“Why do you wish to settle down and live in Nuremberg, a city of such one-sided commercial interests?” continued Herr von Erfft, with an almost solicitous caution. “Would you not have a much better opportunity as a composer in one of the great cities?”
“It is impossible to separate the daughter from her father,” replied Daniel with unusual candour. “It is impossible. Nor is it possible to get the old man to tear himself away from his former associations. He was born and reared there. And I do not wish to live alone any longer. Everybody needs a companion; even the miner digs with a better heart, when he knows that up on the earth above his wife is preparing the soup. I must say, however, that I am not so much taken up with the soup phase of marriedlife: it is the dear little soul that will belong to me that interests me.”
He turned around, and struck a minor chord.
“And even if everything were different, your great cities would not attract me,” he began again, wrinkling his face in a most bizarre way. “What would I get out of them? Companions? I have had enough of them. Music I can study at home. I can summon the masters of all ages to my study. Fame and riches will find their way to me, if they wish to. The dawn is missed only by those who are too indolent to get up, and real music is heard by all except the deaf. God attends to everything else; man has nothing to do with it.”
He struck another chord, this time in a major key.
Herr von Erfft and his wife looked at him with evident joy and sympathy. Sylvia whispered something to her mother, who then said to Daniel: “I have a sister living in Nuremberg, Baroness Clotilde von Auffenberg. From the time she was a mere child she was an ardent lover of good music. If I give you a letter of introduction to her, I am quite sure she will welcome you with open arms. She is unfortunately not in the best of health, and a heavy fate is just now hanging over her; but she has a warm heart, and her affections are trustworthy.”
Daniel looked down at the floor. He thought of Gertrude and his future life with her, and murmured a few words of gratitude. Frau von Erfft went at once to her desk, and wrote a detailed letter to her sister. When she had finished it, she gave it to Daniel with a good-natured smile.
The next morning he left the castle with the feeling of regret that one experiences on leaving the dwelling place of peace and separating from noble friends.
The streets of Nuremberg were hung with black banners. It was raining. Daniel took a cheap room in The Bear.
It had already grown dark when he started to Jordan’s. He met Benno at the front door. He did not recognise the foppishly-dressed young man, and was on the point of passing by without speaking to him; but Benno stopped, and laughed out loud.
“Whew, the Herr Kapellmeister!” he cried, and his pale face, already showing the signs of dissipation, took on a scornful expression. “Be careful, my friend, or Gertrude will swoon.”
Daniel asked if they were all well. Benno replied that there was no lack of good health, though some of the family were a little short of change. Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on a visit with Frau Rübsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay there for a few weeks. “Well, I’ll have to be hurrying along,” said Benno, “my fraternity brothers are waiting for me.”
“Good gracious! Do you have fraternity brothers too?”
“Of course! They are the spice of my life! We have a holiday to-day: The King’s funeral. Well, God bless you, Herr Kapellmeister, I must be going.”
Daniel went up and rang the bell; Gertrude came to the door. It was dark; each could see only the outline of the other.
“Oh, it’s you, Daniel!” she whispered, happy as happy could be. She came up to him, and laid her face on his shoulder.
Daniel was surprised at the regularity of his pulse. Yesterday the mere thought of this meeting took his breath. Now he held Gertrude in his arms, and was amazed to find that he was perfectly calm and composed.
In the room he led her over to the lamp, and looked at her for a long while, fixedly and seriously. She grew pale at the sight of him: he was so strange and so terrible.
Then he took her by the hand, led her over to the sofa, sat down beside her, and told her of his plans. Her wishes and his tallied exactly. He wanted to get married within four weeks. Very well; she would get married.
He found her the same unqualifiedly submissive girl. In her eyes there was an expression of fatal docility; it terrified him. There was no cowardly doubt in her soul; her cool hand lay in his and did not twitch. With her hand her whole soul, her whole life, lay in his hand. He wanted to raise some doubt in her mind: he spoke in a down-hearted tone of his future prospects; he said that there was very little hope of his ever winning recognition from the world for his compositions.
“What is the good of recognition?” she asked. “They can take nothing from you, and what they give you is clear gain.”
He became silent. The feeling of her worth to him swept like a fiery meteor through the heaven of his existence.
The statement that they were going to remain in Nuremberg made her happy, particularly because of her father. She said there was a small apartment for rent on Ægydius Place, three rooms, a very quiet neighbourhood. They went over to the window; Gertrude showed him the house. It was close to the church, right where the Place makes a turn.
Jordan came in, and welcomed Daniel with a long handshake. His hair had become greyer, he walked with more of a stoop, and his clothes showed traces of neglect.
When he heard what Daniel and Gertrude were planning to do, he shook his head: “It is a bad year, children. Why are you in such a hurry? Both of you are still young.”
“If we were older, we would have less courage,” replied Daniel.
Jordan took a seat, and buried his face in his hands. In course of time he looked up, and said that three years ago he had only eight thousand marks in the bank; that hard times had forced him to draw on this sum to keep the house going; and that to-day there was hardly a third of it left. Two thousand marks was all he could give Gertrude as a dowry; with that they would have to be satisfied, and get along as well as they could.
“We don’t need any more,” said Daniel; “as a matter of fact I did not expect that much. Now I haven’t a care in the world; I am ready for anything.”
A bat flew in at the open window, and then quietly flew out again. It had stopped raining. You could still hear the water trickling and splashing down the leaders and in the pipes. There was something heavy, portentous, in the air of this June evening.
At first Daniel had received small bits of news from England about Benda, but for a year and a half he had not heard a word. When Eleanore returned from Pommersfelden in July, she told him that she had received a letter from Benda in April, and that she had sent him this letter when he was at Naumburg. Daniel, however, had never received it, and the investigations which he made proved fruitless.
Benda’s mother was not in the city; she was living with relatives in Worms, but had kept her apartment at Herr Carovius’s.
Frau von Auffenberg was at Bad Ems, and did not plan to return until September. Daniel looked up old friends, and rebound the ties of former days. He also succeeded in getting anumber of students to tutor, an occupation that netted him a little spending money.
He had to attend to a great deal of business for which he was quite unfit. He had imagined that he could get married just as he might go to a shop and buy something: he would not make any noise, nor would it take much time. He had a hundred moods, a hundred objections, a hundred grimaces. The apartment on Ægydius Place was already rented. It embittered him to think that in order to live with a person you loved, you had to have tables, beds, chairs, cupboards, lamps, glasses, plates, garbage cans, water pails, window cushions, and a thousand and one other foolish objects.
There was a great deal of talk in the city about the marriage. The people said they did not know what Jordan could be thinking of. They were convinced that he was in desperate financial straits if he would marry his daughter to an impecunious musician.
Daniel found everything hard: every day was his Day of Judgment. A melody was gnawing at his heart, trying to take on a pure and finished form. Freedom sounded in his ears with voices from above; his quiet fiancée begged for comradeship. The task to which he had dedicated himself demanded loneliness; then his blood carried him along and away, and he became like wax, but wild.
He would rush to Jordan’s house, enter the living room, his hair all dishevelled, sit down where the two sisters were working on Gertrude’s trousseau, and never utter a syllable until Gertrude would come up to him and lay her hand on his forehead. He thrust her back, but she smiled gently. At times, though none too frequently, he would take her by the arms and pull her down to him. When he did this, Eleanore would smile with marked demureness, as if it were not right for her to see two people in love.
There was a second-hand baby grand piano in Jordan’s living room. Daniel played on it in the evening, and the sisters listened. Gertrude was like a woman wrapt in peaceful slumber, her every wish having been fulfilled, with kindly spirits watching over her. Eleanore, however, was wide awake; she was awake and meditating.
The day of the wedding arrived. At half past nine in the morning, Daniel appeared in Jordan’s house. He wore an afternoonsuit and a high hat! He was vexed, and villanous to behold, a picture of misery.
Benno, the man of the world, was forced to leave the room. No sooner was he outside than he laughed so heartily that he fell into a clothes basket. He did not approve of this marriage; he was ashamed to tell his friends about it.
Gertrude wore a plain street dress and a little virgin bonnet, then prescribed by fashion. She sat by the table, and gazed into space with wide-opened eyes.
Eleanore came into the room with a wreath of myrtle. “You must put this on, Gertrude,” she said, “just to please us; just to make us feel that you are a real bride. Otherwise you look too sober, too much as though you two were going to the recorder’s office on profane business.”
“Where did you get that wreath?” asked Jordan.
“I found it in an old chest; it is mother’s bridal wreath.”
“Really? Mother’s bridal wreath?” murmured Jordan, as he looked at the faded myrtle.
“Put it on, Gertrude,” Eleanore again requested, but Gertrude looked first at Daniel, and then laid it to one side.
Eleanore went up to the mirror, and put it on her own head.
“Don’t do that, child,” said Jordan with a melancholy smile. “Superstitious people say that you will remain an old maid forever, if you wear the wreath of another.”
“Then I will remain an old maid, and gladly so,” said Eleanore.
She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Daniel half unconscious of what she was doing. The blond of her eyelashes had turned almost grey, the red of her lips had been dotted with little spots from her smiling, and her neck was like something liquid and disembodied.
Daniel saw all this. He looked at the Undine-like figure of the girl. It seemed to him that he had not seen her since the day of his return, that he had not noticed that she had become more mature, more beautiful, and more lovely. All of a sudden he felt as if he were going to swoon. It went through him like a flash: Here, here was what he had forgotten; here was the countenance, the eye, the figure, the movement that had stood before him, and he, fool, unspeakable fool, had been struck by blindness.
Gertrude had a fearful suspicion of the experience he was going through. She arose, and looked at Daniel in horror. He hastened up to her as if he were fleeing, and seized her hands. Eleanore,believing she had aroused Daniel’s displeasure by some word or gesture, snatched the myrtle wreath from her hair.
Jordan had paid no attention to these incidents. Bringing at last his restless pacing back and forth to an end, he took out his watch, looked at it, and said it was time they were going. Eleanore, who had displayed a most curious disposition the whole morning, asked them to wait a minute. Before they could find out why she wished them to wait, the door bell rang, and she ran out.
She returned with a radiant expression on her face; Marian Nothafft followed her. Marian composed herself only with extreme difficulty. Her eyes roamed about over the circle of people before her, partly as if she were frightened, partly as if she were looking for some one.
Mother and son stood face to face in absolute silence. That was the work of Eleanore.
Marian said she was living with her sister Theresa; that she had arrived the day before; and that she wished to return this evening.
“I am glad, Mother, that you could come,” said Daniel with a stifled voice.
Marian laid her hand on his head; she then went up to Gertrude, and did the same.
After the wedding, Jordan gave a luncheon for his children. In the afternoon they all started off in two hired coaches. Daniel had never seen his mother so cheerful; but it was useless to ask her to prolong her visit. While this was being discussed, she and Eleanore exchanged knowing glances.
As evening drew on, Daniel and Gertrude betook themselves to their home.
It is night. The antiquated old square is deserted. The bell in the church tower has struck eleven; the lights in the windows die out, slowly, one by one.
The figure of a woman is seen coming up the alley. She is spying anxiously about, before her and behind her. Finally she stops before the little house in which Daniel and Gertrude live. Is it a living creature? Is it not rather an uncanny gnome? The garments hang loose about the unshapely body; a crumpled straw hat covers the mad-looking face; the shoulders are raised; the fists are clenched; the eyes are glassy.
Suddenly there is a scream. The woman hastens over toward the church, falls on her knees, and sinks her teeth with frenzied madness into the wooden pickets of the fence. After some time she rises, stares up once more at the windows with distorted lips, and then moves away with slow, dragging steps.
It was Philippina Schimmelweis. She kept going about the streets in this fashion until break of day.
TheReichstag had voted to extend the period during which the Socialist law would be in effect; the passing of a new army bill was also to be expected. These two measures had provoked tumultuous discord in many parts of the country.
The Social Democrats were planning a parade through the main streets of the city in October, but the police had already forbidden their demonstration. The evening the edict was issued the regiments stood at alert in the barracks; feeling ran high throughout the entire city. In Wöhrd and Plobenhof there had been a number of riots; in the narrow streets of the central zone thousands of workmen had stormed the Rathaus.
Every now and then there would come a long, shrill whistle from the silent mass, followed at once by the heavy rolling of drums at the guard house.
Among those who came down from the direction of Koenig Street was the workman Wachsmuth. In the vicinity of the Schimmelweis shop he delivered an excited harangue against the former member of the party; his words fell on fruitful soil. A locksmith’s apprentice who had lost some money through the Prudentia violently defamed the character of the bookseller.
The mob gathered before the lighted shop window. Wachsmuth stood by the door, and demanded that the traitor be suspended from a lamp post before this day’s sun had set. A stone flew through the air over their heads, and crashed through the window; pieces of glass flew in all directions. Thereupon a dozen fellows rushed into the shop, exclaiming, “Where is the dirty dog? Let us get at the blood-sucker!” They wanted to teach him a lesson he would never forget.
Before Theresa could open her mouth, scraps of books and newspapers were flying in every direction, and pamphlets were being trampled under foot. A forest of arms were reaching out for the shelves, and bundles of books were falling to the floor, like stacks of cards piled up by a child and blown over by thewind. Zwanziger had taken refuge at the top of the ladder; he was howling. Theresa stood by the till looking like the ghost of ages. Philippina came in through the back door, and eyed what was going on without one visible trace of surprise or discomfort; she merely smiled. Just then the policeman’s whistle blew; in less time than it takes to draw one breath, the rebellious insurgents were beating a hasty retreat.
When Theresa regained consciousness, the shop was empty; and the street in front of the shop was as deserted as it ordinarily is at midnight. After some time, the chief of police came up; he was followed by a crowd of curious people, who stood around and gaped at the scene of devastation.
Jason Philip, seeing what was coming, had left the shop betimes and hidden in his house. He had even locked the front door and was sunk down on a chair, his teeth clappering with vigour and regularity.
He returned at last to the shop, and with heart-rending dignity faced the dispenser of justice, who by this time had put in his appearance. He said: “And this is what I get from people for whom I have sacrificed my money and my blood.”
In giving his testimony as an eyewitness, Zwanziger displayed boastful hardiness in his narration of details. Philippina looked at him with venomous contempt from under the imbecile locks that hung down over her forehead, and murmured: “You disgusting coward!”
When Jason Philip came back from the inn, he said: “To believe that people can be ruled without the knout is a fatal delusion.” With that he stepped into his embroidered slippers—“For tired Father—Consolation.” The slippers had aged, and so had Jason Philip. His beard was streaked with grey.
Theresa took an invoice of the damage the mob had done: she felt that Jason Philip was a ruined man.
As he lay stretched out in bed, Jason Philip said: “The first thing I want to do is to have a serious, heart-to-heart talk with Baron Auffenberg. The Liberal Party is going to take direct action against the impudence of the lower classes, or it is going to lose a constituent.”
“How many quarts of beer did you drink?” asked Theresa from the depths of the pillows.
“Two.”
“You are a liar.”
“Well, possibly I drank three,” replied Jason Philip with ayawn. “But to accuse a man of my standing of lying on such small grounds is an act of perfidy such as only an uncultured woman like yourself could be brought to commit.”
Theresa blew out the candle.
Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg had returned from Munich, where he had had an interview with the Minister.
He had also seen a great many other people in the presence of whom he was condescending, jovial, and witty. His amiability was proverbial.
Now he was sitting with a gloomy face by the chimney. Not a one of those many people who had so recently been charmed by his conversational gifts would have recognised him.
The stillness and loneliness pained him. An irresistible force drew him to his wife. He had not seen her for seven weeks, though they had lived in the same house.
He was drawn to her, because he wanted to know whether she had heard anything from that person whose name he did not like to mention, from his son, his enemy, his heir. Not that he wanted to ask his wife any questions: he merely wished to read her face. Since no one in the vicinity had dared say a word to him about his son, he was forced to rely on suppositions and the subtle cunning of his senses at ferreting out information on this kind of subjects. He did not dare betray the curiosity with which he waited for some one to inform him that his hated offspring had at last come to mortal grief.
Six years had elapsed, and still he could hear the insolent voice in which the monstrous remarks were made that had torn him from the twilight of his self-complacency; remarks that distressed him more than any other grief he may have felt in the secrecy of his bed chamber and which completely and forever robbed him of all the joys of human existence.
“Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon,” screeched the parrot.
The Baron arose, and went to his wife’s room. She was terrified when she saw him enter. She was lying on a sofa, her head propped up by cushions, a thick Indian blanket spread out over her legs.
She had a broad, bloated face, thick lips, and unusually big black eyes, in which there was a sickly glare. She had been regarded as a beauty in her young days, though none of this beautywas left, unless it was the freshness of her complexion or the dignified bearing of the born lady of the world.
She sent her maid out of the room, and looked at her husband in silence. She studied the friendly, Jesuitic wrinkles in his face, by virtue of which he managed to conceal his real thoughts. Her anxiety was increased.
“You have not played the piano any to-day,” he began in a sweet voice. “It makes the house seem as though something were missing. I am told that you have acquired perfect technique, and that you have engaged a new teacher. Emilia told me this.”
Emilia was their daughter. She was married to Count Urlich, captain of cavalry.
In the Baroness’s eyes there was an expression such as is found in the eyes of some leashed beast when the butcher approaches, axe in hand. She was tortured by the smoothness of the man from whom she had never once in the last quarter of a century received anything but brutality and scorn, and from whom she had suffered the grossest of humiliations—when no one was listening.
“What do you want, Siegmund?” she asked, with painful effort.
The Baron stepped close up to her, bit his lips, and looked at her for ten or twelve seconds with a fearful expression on his face.
She then seized him by the left arm: “What is the matter with Eberhard?” she cried; “tell me, tell me everything! There is something wrong.”
The Baron, with a gesture of stinging aversion, thrust her hands from him, and turned to go. There was unfathomable coldness in his conduct.
Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him, for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned within her heart. And she did: “Oh, you monster! Why did Fate bring you into my life? Where is there another woman in the world whose lot has been like mine? Where is the woman who has lived without joy or love or esteem or freedom or peace, a burden to others and to herself? Show me another woman who goes about in silk and satin longing for death. Name me another woman who people think is happy, because the devil, who tortures her without ceasing, deceives them all. Where is there another woman who has been so shamelessly robbed of her children? For is not my daughter the captive and concubine of an insane tuft-hunter? Has not my son been taken from me through the baseness that has been practised against his sister, and the lamentable spectacle afforded him by my own powerlessness?Where, I ask high Heaven, is there another woman so cursed as I have been?”
She threw herself down on her bosom, and burrowed her face into the cushion.
The Baron was surprised at the feverish eloquence of his wife; he had accustomed himself to her mute resignation, as he might have accustomed himself to the regular, monotonous ticking of a hall clock. He was anxious to see what she would do next, how she would develop her excitement; she was a novel phenomenon in his eyes: therefore he remained standing in the door.
But as he stood there in chilly expectancy, his haggard face casting off expressions of scorn and surprise, he suddenly sensed a feeling of weary disgust at himself. It was the disgust of a man whose wishes had always been fulfilled, whose lusts had been satisfied; of a man who has never known other men except as greedy and practical supplicants; of a man who has always been the lord of his friends, the tyrant of his servants, and the centre of all social gatherings; of a man before whom all others yielded, to whom all others bowed; of a man who had never renounced anything but the feeling of renunciation.
“I am not unaware,” he began slowly, just as if he were making a campaign speech to his electors, “I am not unaware that our marriage has not been the source of wholesome blessings. To be convinced of this, your declamation was unnecessary. We married because the circumstances were favourable. We had cause to regret the decision. Is it worth while to investigate the cause now? I am quite devoid of sentimental needs. This is true of me to such an extent that any display of sympathy or exuberance or lack of harshness in other people fills me with mortal antipathy. Unfortunately, my political career obliged me to assume a favourable attitude toward this general tendency of the masses. I played the hypocrite with complete consciousness of what I was doing, and made so much the greater effort to conceal all feeling in my private life.”
“It is easy to conceal something you do not have,” replied the Baroness in a tone of intense bitterness.
“Possibly; but it is a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face; and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute, provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novelcould rob you completely of your spiritual equanimity. You were always thrilled, always in ecstasy, it made not the slightest difference whether the cause of your ecstasy was the first spring violet or a thunder storm, a burnt roast, a sore throat, or a poem. You were always raving, and I became tired of your raving. You did not seem to notice that my distrust toward the expression of these so-called feelings was transformed into coldness, impatience, and hatred. And then came the music. What was at first a diversion for you, of which one might approve or disapprove, became in time the indemnity for an active life and all the defects of your character. You gave yourself up to music somewhat as a prostitute gives herself up to her first loyal lover”—the Baroness twitched as if some one had struck her across the back with a horsewhip—“yes, like a prostitute,” he repeated, turning paler and paler, his eyes glistening. “Then it was that your whole character came to light; one saw how spoiled you were, how helpless, how undisciplined. You clung like a worm to uncertain and undetermined conditions. If I have become a devil in your eyes, it is your music that has made me so. Now you know it.”
“So that is it,” whispered the Baroness with faltering breath. “Did you leave me anything but my music? Have you not raged like a tiger? But it is not true,” she exclaimed, “you are not so vicious, otherwise I myself would be a lie in the presence of the Eternal Judge, and that I had borne children by you would be contrary to nature. Leave me, go away, so that I may believe that it is not true!”
The Baron did not move.
In indescribable excitement, and as quickly as her obese body would permit, the Baroness leaped to her feet: “I know you better,” she said with trembling lips, “I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And do you know why he was in a position to wound you? Because you loved him. Look me in the eye, and tell me that I lie. You loved him—your son—you idolised him. The fact that he has repudiated your love, that he found it of no value to him, the lovethat blossomed on the ruined lives of his mother and sister, this is the cause of your sorrow. It is written across your brow. And that you are suffering, and suffering for this reason, constitutes my revenge.”
The Baron did not say a word; his lower jaw wagged from left to right as though he were chewing something; his face seemed to have dried up; he looked as though he had suddenly become older by years. The Baroness, driven from her reserve, stood before him like an enraged sibyl. He turned in silence, and left the room.
“My suffering is her revenge,” he murmured on leaving the room. Once alone, he stood for a while perfectly absent-minded. “Am I really suffering?” he said to himself.
He turned off a gas jet that was burning above the book case. “Yes, I am suffering,” he confessed reluctantly; “I am suffering.” He walked along the wall with dragging feet, and entered a room in which a light was burning. He felt the same satiety and disgust at himself that he had experienced a few moments earlier. This time it was caused by the sight of the hand-carved furniture, the painted porcelain, the precious tapestries, and the oil paintings in their gold frames.
He longed for simpler things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long been tired of Protestantism. He regarded the Roman Church as the more wholesome and merciful.
But the transformation of his religious views was his own carefully guarded secret. And secret it had to remain until he, the undisciplined son of his mother, could atone for his past misdeeds. He decided to wait until this atonement had been effected. Just as a hypnotist gains control of his medium by inner composure, so he thought he could hasten the coming of this event by conceding it absolute supremacy over his mind.
When Eberhard von Auffenberg left the paternal home to strike out for himself, he was as helpless as a child that has lost the hand of its adult companion in a crowd.
He put the question to himself: What am I going to do? He had never worked. He had studied at various universities as somany other young men have studied, that is, he had managed to pass a few examinations by the skin of his teeth.
He had had so little to do in life, and was so utterly devoid of ambition, that he looked upon a really ambitious individual as being insane. Anything that was at all practical was filled with insurmountable obstacles. His freedom, in other words, placed him in a distressing state of mind and body.
It would not have been difficult for him to find people who would have been willing to advance him money on his name. But he did not wish to incur debts of which his father might hear. If he did, his solemn solution of an unbearable relation would have amounted to nothing.
He could, of course, count on his share of the estate; and he did count on it, notwithstanding the fact that to do so was to speculate on the death of his own father. He stood in urgent need of a confidential friend; and this friend he thought he had found in Herr Carovius.
“Ah, two people such as you and I will not insist upon unnecessary formalities,” said Herr Carovius. “All that I need is your face, and your signature to a piece of paper. We will deduct ten per cent at the very outset, so that my expenses may be covered, for money is dear at present. I will give you real estate bonds; they are selling to-day at eighty-five, unfortunately. The Exchange is a trifle spotty, but a little loss like that won’t mean anything to you.”
For the ten thousand marks that he owed, Eberhard received seven thousand, six hundred and fifty, cash. In less than a year he was again in need of money, and asked Herr Carovius for twenty thousand. Herr Carovius said he did not have that much ready money, and that he would have to approach a lender.
Eberhard replied sulkily that he could do about that as he saw fit, but he must not mention his name to a third party. A few days later Herr Carovius told a tale, of hair-splitting negotiations: there was a middleman who demanded immodest guarantees, including certified notes. He swore that he knew nothing about that kind of business, and that he had undertaken to supply the needed loan only because of his excessive affection for his young friend.
Eberhard was unmoved. The eel-like mobility of the man with the squeaking voice did not please him; not at all; as a matter of fact he began to dread him; and this dread increased in intensity and fearfulness in proportion to the degree in which he felt he was becoming more and more entangled in his net.
The twenty thousand marks were procured at an interest of thirty-five per cent. At first Eberhard refused to sign the note. He would not touch it until Herr Carovius had assured him that it was not to be converted into currency, that it could be redeemed with new loans at any time, and that it would lie in his strong-box as peacefully as the bones of the Auffenberg ancestors rested in their vaults. Eberhard, tired of this flood of words, yielded.
Every time he signed his name he had a feeling that the danger into which he was walking was becoming greater. But he was too lazy to defend himself; he was too aristocratic to interest himself in petty explanations; and he was simply not capable of living on a small income.
The endorsed notes were presented as a matter of warning; new loans settled them; new loans made new notes necessary; these were extended; the extensions were costly; an uncanny individual shielded in anonymity was taken into confidence. He bought up mortgages, paid for them in diamonds instead of money, and sold depreciated stocks. The debts having reached a certain height, Herr Carovius demanded that Eberhard have his life insured. Eberhard had to do it; the premium was very high. In the course of three years Eberhard had lost all perspective; he could no longer survey his obligations. The money he received he spent in the usual fashion, never bothered himself about the terms on which he had secured it, and had no idea where all this was leading to and where it was going to end. He turned in disgust from Herr Carovius’s clumsy approaches, malicious gibes, and occasional threats.
What an insipid smile he had! How fatuous, and then again how profound, his conversation could be! He took upon himself the impudent liberty of running in and out at Eberhard’s whenever he felt like it. He bored him with his discussion of philosophic systems, or with miserable gossip about his neighbours. He watched him day and night.
He followed him on the street. He would come up to him and cry out, “Herr Baron, Herr Baron!” and wave his hat. His solicitude for Eberhard’s health resembled that of a gaoler. One evening Eberhard went to bed with a fever. Herr Carovius ran to the physician, and then spent the whole night by the bedside of the patient, despite his entreaties to be left alone. “Would it not be well for me to write to your mother?” he asked, with much show of affection on the next morning when he noticed that the fever had not fallen. Eberhard sprang from his bed with anexclamation of rage, and Herr Carovius left immediately and unceremoniously.
Herr Carovius loved to complain. He ran around the table, exclaiming that he was ruined. He brought out his cheque book, added up the figures, and cried: “Two more years of this business, dear Baron, and I will be ready for the poor house.” He demanded security and still more securities; he asked for renewed promises. He submitted an account of the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest, commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his zeal on behalf of the young Baron for all it was worth.
“What is this I hear about you and the women?” asked Herr Carovius one day. “What about a little adventure?” He had noticed that the Baron had a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the bottom of this amorous mystery.
He made this discovery one day as Eberhard was packing his trunk. “Where are you going, my dear friend?” he crowed in exclamatory dismay. Eberhard replied that he was going to Switzerland. “To Switzerland? What are you going to do there? I am not going to let you go,” said Herr Carovius. Eberhard gave him one cold stare. Herr Carovius tried beseeching, begging, pleading. It was in vain; Eberhard left for Switzerland. He wanted to be alone; he became tired of being alone, and returned; he went off again; he came back again, and had the conversation with Eleanore that robbed him of his last hope. Then he went to Munich, and took up with the spiritists.
Spiritual and mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle of everyday life. Benumbed as his critical judgment now was, he went prospecting for the fountain of life in a zone where dreams flourish and superficial enchantment predominates.
Herr Carovius hired a spy who never allowed Eberhard to get out of his sight. He reported regularly to his employer on the movements of the unique scion of the Auffenberg line. If Eberhard needed money, he was forced to go to Carovius, who would stand on the platform for an hour waiting for the Baron’s train to come in; and once Eberhard had got out of his carriage, HerrCarovius excited the laughter of the railroad officials by his affectionate care for his protégé. Delighted to see him again, he would talk the sheerest nonsense, and trip around about his young friend in groundless glee.
It seemed after all this that Herr Carovius really loved the Baron; and he did.
He loved him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably pleased at his aristocratic offishness.
He loved him with hatred, with the joy of annihilation. This hate-love became in time the centre of his thoughts and feelings. In it was expressed everything that separated him from other men and at the same time drew him to them. It controlled him unconditionally, until a second, equally fearful and ridiculous passion became affiliated with it.
Daniel had hesitated for a long while about making use of the letter of introduction from Frau von Erfft. Gertrude then took to begging him to go to the Baroness. “If I go merely to please you, my action will avenge itself on you,” he said.
“If I understood why you hesitate, I would not ask you,” she replied in a tone of evident discomfort.
“I found so much there in Erfft,” said he, “so much human kindness that was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?” She nodded.
“But must is stronger than may,” he concluded, and went.
The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him; but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate, she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that shehad come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.
Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Dörmaul, Daniel’s engagement for the coming spring was agreed upon.
In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the right method of interpreting them.
It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.
Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut the piano with a bang, and said: “Adieu, Baroness.” He did not return until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.
“Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time,” he thought, though he did not fail to appreciate the Baroness’s human dignity. The eight hours a month were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.
A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.
Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of Schumann’s “Carneval” for her, a piece of music of which she was passionately fond.
Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be alone. He bent the rim of hishat down so that it covered his forehead. His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.
At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: “Tell me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?”
This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so old. This is the light in which we must see him.
The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.
With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible. Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.
In Daniel’s study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.
Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a servant. In the years of Daniel’s absence, however, she had learned to copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Rübsam, and she had become acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled “Feenzauber,” and was a gavotte.
When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him intoxicated with joy. “I will help you,” she said, and copied his notes for him.
When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A melody floated by her which she had never before been able to understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.
Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the composition: a procession of mourning figures between clouds and stars; wild animals spurred on by the huntsmen who were riding them; maidens throwing flowers from the windows of a palace; men and women plunging into an abyss in one mass of despairing humanity; weeping men and laughing women, wrestlers and ball players, dancing couples and grape pickers. The pause appealed to her as a man who climbs naked from a deep subterranean shaft, carrying a burning torch in his hand; the trill seemed like a bird that anxiously flutters about its nest.
All of Daniel’s compositions came close to her heart; all his pictures were highly coloured; his figures seemed to be full of blood. If they remained dead and distant, her sympathy vanished; her face became tired and empty. Without having spoken a word with each other, Daniel would know that he was on the wrong track. But all this bound him to the young woman with hoops of steel; he came to regard her as the creature given him of God to act as his living conscience and infallible if mute judge.
He hated her when her feelings remained unmoved. If he at last came to see, after much introspection, that she was right, then he would have liked to fall down and worship the unknown power that was so inexorable in pointing him the way.
Spindler had a beautiful harp which he had bequeathed to Daniel in his will. It had remained in Ansbach in the possession of the old lady who kept house for him. Daniel had forgotten all about the harp. After his marriage he had it sent to him.
He kept it in the living room; Gertrude was fond of looking at it. It enticed her. One day she sat down and tried to draw tones from its strings. She touched the strings very gently, andwas charmed with the melody that came from them. Gradually she learned the secret; she discovered the law. An innate talent made the instrument submissive to her; she was able to express on it all the longings and emotions she had experienced in her dark and lonely hours.
She generally played very softly; she never tried intricate melodies, for the harp was adapted to the expression of simple, dream-like harmonies. The tones were wafted out into the hall and up the stairs; they greeted Daniel as he entered the old house.
When he came into the room, Gertrude was sitting in a corner by the stove, the harp between her knees. She smiled mysteriously to herself; her hands, like strange beings loosed from her body, sought chords and melodies that were his, and which she was trying to translate to her own world of dreams.
Her command of language was more defective now than ever. She was seized with painful astonishment when she noticed that in matters of daily intercourse Daniel’s mind was not able to penetrate the veil behind which she lived.
He said to himself: she is too heavy. He was dumbfounded at her conduct, and displeased with it.
“The gloomy house oppresses you,” he said in a tone of ill humour, when she smiled in her helpless way.
“Let us run a race,” he said to her one day as they were taking a walk through the country. An old tree in the distance that had been struck by lightning was to be their objective.
They ran as fast as their feet could carry them. At a distance of about ten metres from the tree, Gertrude collapsed. He carried her over to the meadow.
“How heavy you are,” he said.
“Too heavy for you?” she asked with wide-opened eyes. He shrugged his shoulders.
Then she slipped out of his embrace, sprang to her feet, and ran with remarkable swiftness a distance that was twice as long as the one he had staked off; she did not fall; she did not want to fall; she dared not.
Breathing heavily and pale as a corpse, she waited until he came up. But he had no tenderness for her now; he merely scolded. Arm in arm they walked on. Gertrude felt for his hand; he gave it to her, and she pressed it to her bosom.
Daniel was terrified as he looked into her face, and saw her thoughts written there as if in letters of fire: We belong to each other for time and eternity.
That was her confession of faith.
She lay wide awake until late at night. She heard him go into the kitchen and get a drink of water and then return to his room. He had forbidden her to come to the door and ask whether he was not going to bed soon: she was not to do this, it made no difference how late it was.
Then he lay beside her, his head on his arm, and looked at her with eyes that had lost their earthly, temporal glow. Man, where are your eyes anyway, she would have liked to exclaim. And yet she knew where they were; she knew, too, that it is dangerous to disturb a somnambulist by calling to him.
One night he had found it impossible to do his work. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared into the light of the lamp for an hour or so, hating himself. Gertrude saw how he raged at himself; how he really fed, nourished his lack of confidence in himself. But she could not say anything.
A publisher had returned one of his manuscripts with a courteous but depressing conventional rejection slip. Daniel spoke disparagingly of his talents; he had lost hope in his future; he was bitter at the world; he felt that he was condemned to a life of unceasing obscurity.
The only thing she could do was look at him; merely look at him.
He became tired of having her look at him; a fresh, vigorous remark would have served his purpose much better, he thought.
She measured her work and his not in terms of reward; she did not seek for connection of any kind between privation and hope; nor did she measure Daniel’s love in terms of tender expressions and embraces. She waited for him with much patience. In time her patience irritated him. “A little bit more activity and insistence would not hurt you,” he said one day, and thrust her timid, beseeching hands from him.
He saw himself cared for: He had a home, a person who prepared his meals, washed his clothes, and faithfully attended to his other household needs. He should have been grateful. He was, too, but he could not show it. He was grateful when he wasalone, but in Gertrude’s presence his gratitude turned to defiance. If he was away from home, he thought with pleasure of his return; he pictured Gertrude’s joy at seeing him again. But when he was with her, he indulged in silent criticism, and wanted to have everything about her different.
The judge’s wife on the first floor complained that Gertrude did not speak to her. “Be kind to your neighbours,” he remarked with the air of a professional scold. The next Sunday they took a walk, on which they met the judge’s wife. Gertrude spoke to her: “Well, you don’t need to fall on her neck,” he mumbled. She thought for a long while of how she might speak to people without offending them and without annoying Daniel. She was embarrassed; she was afraid of Daniel’s criticism.
On such days she would put too much salt in the soup, everything went wrong, and in her diligent attempt to be punctual she lost much time. She was fearfully worried when he got up from the table and went to his room without saying a word. She would sit perfectly still and listen; she was frightened when he went to the piano to try a motif. When he again entered her room, she looked into his face with the tenseness of a soul in utter anguish. Then it suddenly came about that he would sit down by her side and caress her. He told her all about his life, his home, his father, his mother. If she could only have heard each of his words twice! If she could only have drunk in the expression in his eyes! They were filled with peace; his nervous hands lay in quiet on his knees when he spoke to her in this way on these subjects. His twitching, angular face, weather-beaten by the storms of life, took on an expression of sorrow that was most becoming to it.
When she had a headache or was tired, he expressed his anxiety for her in touching tones. He would go about the house on tiptoes, and close the doors with infinite care. If a dog barked on the street, he rushed to the window and looked out, enraged at the beast. When she retired, he would help her undress, and bring her whatever she needed.
It was also strange that he disliked the idea of leaving her alone. There was something child-like in his restlessness when he was at home and she was out. He pictured her surrounded by grievous dangers; he would have liked to lock her up and hold her a captive, so as to be sure that she was quite safe. This made her all the weaker and more dependent upon him, while he was like a man who presses what he has to his heart, plagued with the thoughtthat by some mischance it might escape, and yet clings to it also lest he be disturbed by the thought of another more precious possession he loved long since and lost a while.
Once he came to Gertrude while she was playing the harp, threw his arms about her, looked into her face with a wild, gloomy expression, and stammered: “I love you, I love you, I do.” It was the first time he had spoken these eternal words. She grew pale, first from joy and then from fear; for there was more of hatred than of love in his voice.
He felt that association with congenial men would help him over many a dark hour. But when he set out to look for these men, the city became a desert and a waste place.
Herr Seelenfromm came to his house now and then. Daniel could not endure the timid man who admired him so profoundly, and who, in the bottom of his heart, had an equal amount of respect for Gertrude. The young architect who had been employed at the St. Sebaldus Church while it was being renovated, and who loved music, had won Daniel’s esteem. But he had a repulsive habit of smacking his tongue when he talked. Daniel and he discussed the habit, and parted the worst of enemies. His association with a certain Frenchman by the name of Rivière was of longer duration. Rivière was spending some time in the city, looking up material for a life of Caspar Hauser. He had made his acquaintance at the Baroness von Auffenberg’s, and taken a liking to him because he reminded him of Friedrich Benda.
M. Rivière loved to hear Daniel improvise on the piano. He knew so little German that he merely smiled at Daniel’s caustic remarks; and if he became violently enraged, M. Rivière merely stared at his mouth. He had a wart on his cheek, and wore a straw hat summer and winter. He cooked his own meals, for it was an obsession of his that people wanted to poison him because he was writing a life of Caspar Hauser.
When Herr Seelenfromm and M. Rivière came in of a Sunday evening, Daniel would reach for a volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann or Clemens Brentano, and read from them until he was hoarse. He tried in this way to find peace in a strange world; for he did not wish to weep at the sight of human beings who seemed perfectly at ease.
Gertrude looked at him, and put this question to herself: Howis it that a man to whom music is life and the paradise of his heart can allow himself to be so enveloped in sorrow, so beclouded by gloom? She understood the smarting pains in which he composed; she had a vague idea of the labyrinthine complications of his inner fate; these she grasped. But her own soul was filled with joyless compassion; she wished with all her power to plant greater faith and more happiness in his heart.
She meditated on the best means of carrying on her spiritual campaign. It occurred to her that he had had more of both faith and happiness at the time he was going with Eleanore. She saw Eleanore now in a quite different light. She recalled that Eleanore was not merely her sister but the creator of her happiness. Nor was she unmindful of the fact that through the transformation of her being, love and enlightenment had arisen to take the place of her former suspicion and ignorance.
She ascribed to Eleanore all those powers in which she had formerly been lacking: general superiority and stimulating vigour; an ability to play that lent charm to drudgery and made the hard things of life easy; brightness in conversation and delicacy of touch. In her lonely broodings she came to the conclusion that Eleanore was the only one who could help her. She went straightway to her father’s house to find out why Eleanore so rarely came to see her.
“I don’t like to come; Daniel is so unkind to me,” said Eleanore.
Gertrude replied that he was unkind to everybody, including her herself, and that she must not pay any attention to this; for she knew full well that Daniel liked her—and perhaps he himself was offended because she never called.
Eleanore thought it all over, and from then on visited her sister more frequently. But if it did not look as though Daniel did everything in his power to avoid her, this much was certain: he never said a word to her more than human decency required, and was an expert at finding reasons why he had to leave the room when she was there. Eleanore was gainfully conscious of this; it hurt her.