Part 87

She did not wait for his answer, but went into her room, got the table lamp, and followed Daniel to the living room. Daniel closed the window, and shook as if he were cold; for it was a cool night, and there was no fire in the stove.

“What is this I smell?” he asked. “Have you so many flowers up in your room?”

“Yes, I have some flowers,” replied Eleanore, and blushed.

He looked at her rather sharply, but was disinclined to make any further inquiry, or he was not interested in knowing what this all meant. He walked around the room with his hands in his pockets.

Eleanore had sat down on a chair; she never once took her eyes off Daniel.

“Listen, Daniel,” she said suddenly, and the violin tone of her voice lifted him from his mute and heavy meditations, “I know now what Father is doing.”

“Well, what is the old man doing?” asked Daniel distractedly.

“He is working at a doll, Daniel.”

“At a doll? Are you trying to poke fun at me?”

Eleanore, whose cheeks had turned pale, began to tell her story: “Yesterday afternoon, Father took advantage of the beautiful weather, and went on a walk for the first time in a long while. During his absence, I went to his room to straighten it up a little. I noticed that the door to the large cabinet was not closed as usual, but was standing ajar. He probably forgot to lock it. I did not suspect anything, and knew that there was no harm in what I was going to do, so I opened the door, and what did I see? A big doll, about the size of a four-year-old child, a wax figure with big eyes and long, yellow hair. But there were no clothes on it: the lower part of the back and the front from the neck to the legs had been removed. Inside, there where a person’s heart and entrails are, was a network of wheels and screws and little tubes and wires, all made of real metal.”

“That is strange, really strange. Well?”

“He is making something,” continued Eleanore, “that much is clear. But if I could tell you how I felt when I saw the thing! I never felt so sad in my life. I have shown him so little love, just as Fate has been so unlovely to him. And everything—the air and the light and the people and how one feels towards the people and how they feel towards you, all seemed to me to be so hopelessly without love that I could not help it: I just sat down before that doll and cried. The poor man! The poor old man!”

“Strange, really strange,” repeated Daniel.

After a while, as if conscious of his guilt, he took a seat by the table. Eleanore however got up, went to the window, and leaned her forehead against the glass.

“Come here to me, Eleanore,” said Daniel in a changed tone of voice.

She came. He took her hand and looked into her face. “How in the world have you been keeping the house going all this time?” he asked, viewing the situation in the light of his guilty conscience.

Eleanore let her eyes fall to the floor. “I have done my writing, and I have had considerable success with the flowers. I have even been able to save a little money. Don’t look at me like that, Daniel. It was nothing wonderful I did; you have no reason to feel especially grateful to me.”

He drew her down on his knees, and threw his arms around her shoulders. “You probably think I have forgotten you,” he said sorrowfully, and looked up, “that I have forgotten my Eleanore. Forget my Eleanore? My spirit sister? No, no, dear heart, you have known for a long while that we have begun our common pilgrimage—for life, for death.”

Eleanore lay in his arms; her face was perfectly white; her body was rigid; her eyes were closed.

Daniel kissed her eyes: “You must hold me, keep me, even when it seems that I have left you,” he murmured.

Then he carried her in his arms through the door into his room.

“I have so longed, I have been so full of longing,” she said, pressing her lips to his neck.

XIII

Before one could realise it, winter had come, and the Place with the Church was covered with snow.

Eleanore had gone skating; when she returned she sat down in the living room to wait for Daniel. There she sat with her fur cap on her head, holding her skates in her hand by the cord: she was tired—and she was thinking.

Daniel entered the room and greeted her; she looked up, and said with a gentle voice: “I am with child, Daniel; I found it out to-day.”

He fell on his knees, and kissed the tips of her fingers. Eleanore drew a deep breath; a smile of dream-like cheerfulness spread over her face.

The following day Daniel went to the Town Hall, and made arrangements to have the banns posted.