Part 116

“No childishness, Dorothea!” said Daniel quietly. “You must get your mind on higher things; and you must respect my spirits.”

Dorothea became silent. She did not understand him. She looked at him with a touch of distrust. She thought the mask was a picture of one of his old sweethearts. She made a mouth.

“You said something about playing at the party, Dorothea,” continued Daniel. “Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a long while; not once since we have been living together. And yet you wish to play in public? That is strange, Dorothea. Be so good as to get your violin and play a piece for me, won’t you?”

Dorothea went into the next room, got her violin case, came out, took the violin, and began to rub the bow with rosin. As she was tuning the A string, she lifted her eyebrows and said: “Do you really want me to play?”

She bit her lips and played an étude by Fiorillo. Having finished it but not having drawn a word of comment from Daniel, she again took up the violin and played a rather lamentable selection by Wieniawski.

Daniel maintained his silence for a long while. “Pretty good, Dorothea,” he said at last. “You have, other things being equal, a very pleasant pastime there.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dorothea with noticeable rapidity, a heavy blush colouring her cheeks.

“Is it anything more than that, Dorothea?”

“What do you mean?” she repeated, embarrassed and indignant. “I should think that my violin is more than a pastime.”

Daniel got up, walked over to her, took the bow gently from her hands, seized it by both ends, and broke it in two.

Dorothea screamed, and looked at him in hopeless consternation.

With great earnestness Daniel replied: “If the music I hear is not of unique superiority, it sounds in my ears like something that has been hashed over a thousand times. My wife must consider herself quite above a reasonably melodious dilettantism.”

Tears rushed to Dorothea’s eyes. Again she was unable to grasp the meaning of it all. She even imagined that Daniel was making a conscious effort to be cruel to her.

For her violin playing had been a means of pleasing—pleasing herself, the world. It had been a means of rising in the world, of compelling admiration in others and blinding others. This was the only consideration that made her submit to the stern discipline her father imposed upon her. She possessed ambition, but she sold herself to praise without regard for the praiser. And whatever an agreement of unknown origin demanded in the way of feeling, she fancied she could satisfy it by keeping her mind on her own wishes, pleasures, and delights while playing.

Daniel put his arms around her and kissed her. She broke away from him in petulance, and went over to the window. “You might have told me that I do not play well enough for you,” she exclaimed angrily and sobbed; “there was no need for you to break my bow. I never play. It never occurred to me to bother you by playing.” She wept like a spoiled child.

It cost Daniel a good deal of persuasion to pacify her. Finally he saw that there was no use to talk to her; he sighed and said nothing more. After a while he took her pocket handkerchief, and dried the tears from her eyes, laughing as he did so. “What was really in my mind was that party at Frau Feistelmann’s. I did not want you to go. For I do not put much faith in that kind of entertainment. They do not enrich you, though they do incite all kinds of desires. But because I have treated you harshly, you may go. Possibly it will make you forget your troubles, you little fool.”

“Oh, I thank you for your offer; but I don’t want to go,” replied Dorothea snappishly, and left the room.

Yet Dorothea said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her much effort to come to her decision.

“Certainly, go!” said Daniel. “I have already advised you to do it myself.”

She had had a dark blue velvet dress made, and she wanted to wear it for the first time on this occasion.

Toward five o’clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.

“What is the matter with her?” thought Daniel, on noticing her complete lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflection of herself in the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in the mirror.

“Dorothea!” said Daniel gently.

She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.

Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.

“I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiar Du,” said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel’s wife agreed.

Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say: “Well, what did you dream?”

“I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came along and carried me off,” said Dorothea on one occasion.