Part 50

“Oh, forget it, think about something else, don’t mention the subject any more,” said Daniel, in a rough, rude voice. But the glance she fixed on him was so stern and unpitying, so testing and so un-girl-like, so strong and so bold, that he felt his heart grow softer. “Let us take a little walk,” he said.

For a long time they paced back and forth in perfect silence. Then she asked him what he was working on now. He made cautious, non-committal replies, and then suddenly he was overwhelmed with a flood of words. He remarked that he felt at times as if he were struggling with goblins in the dark. What gushed forth from the deepest depths of his soul, he said, was somehow or other too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had no success with anything unless it was something disembodied, incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage, after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be as it drifted in the chaos of the everyday world. He remarked that heaven was in his dreams, hell in his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for they lived more innocent lives than he, and they were more useful.

“But you have some one to hold to,” said Eleanore, realising that she was skating on thin ice, “you have Gertrude.”

To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at him as if in a last attempt to get him to tell her what was the matter. Then all peace of mind vanished from her soul—and her face. Every time they passed a street lamp she turned her head to one side.

“She is after all in the presence of God your wife,” said Eleanore gently and with remarkable solemnity.

Daniel looked up and listened as if greatly abashed. Speaking out into the wind he said: “The over-tone, Eleanore; a bird twittering in the bush. In the presence of God my wife! But in the roots the bass is howling; it is an infernal tremolo; do you hear it?”

He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.

He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: “The letter, Eleanore, the letter ...!”

“Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?”

“I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever.”

Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a fool to her in her life.

“Listen,” he said, putting his arm in hers, “I have composed a song; here is the way it goes.” He sang a melody he had written for one of Eichendorff’s poems. In it there was a tender sadness. “While everything is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and rests like a ship in the harbour.”

They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and forth for two hours.

He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.

Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell on Gertrude’s face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful expression.

“In the presence of God my wife,” murmured Daniel. He did not waken Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the two went off in darkness to their bed room.

THE GLASS CASE BREAKS

Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a time he knew she would be there.

He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.

She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the ice.

The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of her being.

They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good friends again.

One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: “Child, don’t have anything to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality.”

“Don’t talk in that way,” replied Eleanore. “I dislike it. The tone of your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a woman of worldly habits.”

They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.

Eleanore’s greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of reality over there.

The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider’s nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them. For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy, never tired.

There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left, half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of her if he wished to.