Part 32

“Fine. That sounds good to me. Addio, Wurzelmann, and remember me to the girls. You are coming along, aren’t you, Friedrich?”

Benda first made a few polite remarks, and then said he would accept.

“You liked it then, did you, Eleanore?” asked Daniel, as they walked along the street.

Eleanore was silent. To Daniel her silence was moving. But he soon forgot the impression it made on him; and it was a long, long while, indeed even years, before he recalled this scene.

Jordan had taken Gertrude home. He was very careful not to ask her any questions that would cause her pain. On reaching the house he lighted a lamp and helped her take off her cloak.

“How do you feel?” he asked in a kindly tone, “are you better?”

Gertrude turned to one side, and sat down on a chair.

“Well, we’ll drink a cup of hot tea,” continued the old man; “then my child will go to bed, and to-morrow morning she will be all right again. Yes?”

Gertrude got up. “Father,” she sighed, and felt around for the tea table as a means of support.

“Gertrude, what is the matter?” cried Jordan in dismay.

She moved the upper part of her body in her characteristic way—as though it were limp and she were trying to drag it along with her—and a faint smile came over her face. All of a sudden she burst out crying and ran to her room. Jordan heard her bolt the door, looked anxiously before him, waited a moment or two, and then crept up to her door on his tiptoes.

He placed his hands under his chin and listened. Gertrude was crying. It was an even and touching cry, not so much filled with grief as her sobs generally were, and seemed to be expiratory rather than the reverse.

As Jordan let the lonely, unhappy, and impenetrable life of his daughter pass by him in mental review, he became painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time in her life that she had ever heard real music. “Is it possible?” he asked. He tried to think of another time that would make him disbelieve the accuracy of his unpleasant observation.

He said to himself: Her case is simple; the hitherto unknown sweetness and power concealed in the ensemble playing of the violins, the euphony of the orchestra, and the beauty of the melody with all its fateful directness has made the same impression on her that the sunlight makes on a person from whose eyes a cataract has just been removed. Her soul has suffered from hunger; that is where the trouble lies. She has struggled too fiercely with the incomprehensible and the intangible.

His instinct of love told him that the best thing to do was to let her cry. It will do her good; it will relieve her soul. He pulled a chair up to her door, sat down, and listened. When he could no longer hear her crying, his heart grew easier.

XII

Eleanore was right. Her father was quite pleased to see Daniel and Benda. “I am proud of you,” he said to Daniel, “and for your visit to me I thank you. I feel flattered.”

“If you had stayed a half hour longer, you might feel differently about it,” replied Daniel.

Eleanore gave her father a brief account of what had taken place at the concert. Jordan listened attentively, looked at Daniel, and, with a wrinkle on his forehead, said, “Is it possible?”

“Yes, it is possible; it had to happen,” said Daniel.

“Well, if it had to happen, it is a good thing that it is over,” was the dispassionate response.

Eleanore took her father’s hand; the back of it was covered with big yellow spots; she kissed it. Then she set the table, got everything ready for the meal, went in and out of the room in a most cheerful way, and did not forget to put the water on the stove to boil. She had asked about Gertrude as soon as she came home, but for some reason or other her father seemed disinclined to say anything on the subject, from which Eleanore inferred that there was nothing seriously wrong.

Finally they sat down at the table. Eleanore was quite pleased to see the three men whom she liked so much gathered together in this way. There was a feeling of gratitude in her heart toward each one of them. But she was also hungry: she ate four sandwiches, one right after the other. When she saw that Daniel was not eating, she stepped up behind his chair, bent over him so far that the loose flowing hair from her temples tickled his face, and said: “Are you embarrassed? Or don’t you like the way the sausages have been prepared? Would you like something else?”

Daniel evaded the questions; he was out of sorts. And yet in the bottom of his heart the contact with the girl made a pleasing impression on him; it was in truth almost a saving impression. For his thoughts continually and obstinately returned to the girl who had fled, and whose presence he missed without exactly wishing that she were at the table with the others.

Benda spoke of the political changes that might, he feared, take place because of the death of Gambetta. Jordan, who always took a warm interest in the affairs of the Fatherland, made a number of true and humane remarks about the tense feeling then existing between France and Germany, whereupon the door to Gertrude’s room opened and Gertrude herself stood on the threshold.

Deep silence filled the room; they all looked at her.

Strangely enough, she was not wearing the dress she had on at the concert. She had put on the Nile green dress, the one in which Daniel saw her for the first time. Jordan and Eleanore hardly noticed the change; they were too much absorbed in the expression on the girl’s face. Daniel was also astonished; he could not look away.

Her expression had become softer, freer, brighter. The unrest in which her face had heretofore been clouded had disappeared. Even the outlines of her face seemed to have changed: the arch of her eyebrows was higher, the oval of her cheeks more delicate.