Part 37

The three sisters received this statement with despair; they wrung their hands. They would rather die, they said, than meet this voluptuary face to face again; they would endure all manner of martyrdom before they would have him come in. All three spoke at once; they threatened Eleanore; they implored her. Jasmina told with bated breath how Meta had come to them and confessed the whole business. Albertina swore that there was not another living soul on earth who could help them out of this shameless situation. Saloma said that there was nothing for them to do but to send the wicked creature back to the streets where she belonged.

Eleanore was silent. She had fixed her eyes on the “Medea,” and was doing some hard thinking. Finally she came to a conclusion: she asked whether she might speak to Meta. Filled at once with anxiety and hope, Saloma asked her what she wanted with Meta. She replied that she would tell them later what her purpose was. Fräulein Jasmina showed her the way to Meta’s room.

When Meta caught sight of Eleanore, her features became at once beclouded in sombre amazement.

She was sitting at the open window of her attic room knitting. She got up and looked into the face of the beautiful girl without saying a word. Eleanore was moved on seeing the tall, youthful figure, and yet it was quite impossible for her to subdue a feeling of horror.

At Eleanore’s very first words, Meta began to sob. Eleanore comforted her; she asked her where she was planning to go during her confinement.

“Why, there are institutions,” she murmured, holding her apron before her face, “I can go to one of them.”

Eleanore sat down on the side of the bed. She unrolled her plans to the girl with a delicacy and consideration just as if she were speaking to a pampered lady. She spoke with a silver-clear vivacity just as if she were discussing some hardy prank. Meta looked at her at first with the air of one oppressed; later she assumed the attitude of a grateful listener.

Pained by the ethereal and inhuman primness of her three employers, angry at the man who had abandoned her to her present fate, and fighting against the reproaches of her own conscience, Meta became as wax in Eleanore’s hands, submissive, obedient, and appreciative.

The Rüdiger sisters, all but bursting with curiosity to know what Eleanore had in mind, could draw nothing from her other than that she was going to take Meta away and that Meta was agreed.

It was Eleanore’s intention to take the pregnant girl to Daniel’s mother at Eschenbach.

She knew of the dissension between Daniel and his mother. She knew that the two avoided each other’s presence; that Daniel in his defiance felt it his duty to avenge himself for the lack of love on the part of his mother. Back of the picture of the unloving and impatient son she saw that of an old woman worrying her life away in silent care.

She had often given way to a painful feeling of sympathy when she thought of the unknown mother of her friend. It seemed to her now as if she could play the rôle of an emissary of reconciliation; as if it were her duty to take the deserted woman here to the deserted woman there; as if she were called to take the mother-to-be to the mother who had just reasons for regretting that she had ever been a mother.

It seemed to her as if she must create a bond which could not even be sundered by crime, to say nothing of misunderstanding or caprice; it seemed to her that Daniel had to effect a reconciliation in the home of the Rüdigers as well as in that of his mother; and that, conscious as she was of doing what was right, she would meet with no opposition, would have no settling of accounts to fear.

She also took the practical side of the matter into careful consideration: Meta would have no trouble in making her living in Eschenbach; she could help Daniel’s mother, or she could do day work among the peasants.

When the child was born, Daniel’s mother would have a picture of young life to look at; it would alleviate her longing; it would appease her bitterness to see a child of Daniel’s own blood.

Eleanore told the people at home that she was going on an excursion with a school friend to the Ansbach country. She studied the time-table, and wrote a postcard to Meta telling her to be at the station at eight o’clock in the morning.

Jordan approved of Eleanore’s outing, though he warned her against bandits and cold drinks. Gertrude was not wholly without suspicion. She had a feeling that something was wrong, that these unspoken words referred to Daniel, for she was always thinking about him.

If she received a letter from him, which was very rare, she would let it lie on the table for a long while, imagining that it was full of the most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.

When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured soul from which they came.

She felt that Eleanore was lying, and that the lie she was telling was somehow connected with Daniel. That is why she went up to Eleanore’s bed in the dead of night, and whispered into her ear: “Tell me, Eleanore, has anything happened to Daniel?”

But before Eleanore could reply, reassured by her sister’s astonished behaviour, and angry at herself for having suspected Eleanore of a falsehood, she hurried back to her own bed. She had come to think more and more of her sister every day.

“How she must love him,” thought Eleanore to herself, and buried her smiling face in the pillow.

VII

“Wait for me at the fountain,” said Eleanore to her companion, as she crossed the market place in Eschenbach at midday: “I’ll call for you as soon as everything has been discussed.”

The coachman pointed out the little house of the widow Nothafft.

A woman with a stern face and unusually large eyebrows asked her what she wanted as she entered the little shop, which smelled of vinegar and cheese.

Eleanore replied that she would like to talk with her for a few minutes quite undisturbed and alone.

The profound seriousness of Marian’s features, which resembled more than anything else an incurable suffering, did not disappear. She closed the shop and took Eleanore into the living room, and, without saying a word, pointed to one chair and took another herself.