Part 90

Daniel had never talked to Eleanore in this way before. As she looked at him, overcome almost by the passion of his words, and saw him standing there so utterly fearless, so unyielding and unpitying, her breast heaved with a sigh, and she said: “God grant that you succeed, and that you live to enjoy the fruits of your ambition.”

“It is all a matter of fate, Eleanore,” he replied.

He demanded the quartette; it was sent back to him.

From then on Eleanore suppressed even the slightest sense of discontent that arose in her heart. She felt that he needed cruelty and harshness for his small life in order to preserve love and patience for the great life.

Yes, she prayed to Heaven that she might leave him harsh and cruel.

XVI

“Eleanore is my wife,” said Daniel every now and then; he would even stop in the middle of the street in order to enjoy to the full, and preserve if possible, the blessed realisation of this fact.

He always knew it. Yet when he was with Eleanore he frequently forgot her presence. There were days when he would pass by her as though she were some chance acquaintance.

Then there were other days when his happiness made him sceptical; he would say: “Is it then really happiness? Am I happy? If so, why is it that I do not feel my happiness more fervently, terribly?”

He would frequently study her form, her hands, her walk, and wish that he had new eyes, so that he might see her anew. He went away merely in order that he might see her better. In the night he would take a candle, and go up to her bed: a gentle anguish seemed to disappear from her features, his own pulse beat more rapidly. This was caused by the flame-blue of her eyes.

There is a point where the most demure and chaste woman differs in no wise from a prostitute. This is the source of infinite grief to the man who loves. No woman suspects or can understand it.

It was one day while he was brooding and musing and quarrelling without definite reason, in the arms of his beloved, that the profound, melancholy motif in the first movement of his symphony in D minor came to him. This symphony gradually grew into the great vision of his life, and, many years later, one of his women admirers gave it the modifying title of Promethean. The first time the theme sounded in his ears he roared like a wild beast, but with joy. It seemed to him that music was really born at that moment.

He pressed Eleanore so tightly to his bosom that she could not breathe, and murmured between his teeth: “There is no choice left: we have got to remain lifeless and irresponsive to each other’s presence or wound one another with love.”

“The mask, the mask,” whispered Eleanore anxiously, and pointed over to the corner from which the mask of Zingarella, with the dim light falling on it, shone forth like the weirdly beautiful face of a spectre.

Philippina stood before the door, and listened to what they were saying. She had caught a rat, killed it, and laid the cadaver in the door. The next morning, as Eleanore was going into the kitchen, she saw the dead rat, screamed, and went back to her room trembling with fright.

Daniel stroked her hair, and said: “Don’t worry, Eleanore. Rats belong to married life just as truly as salty soup, broken dishes, and holes in the stockings.”

“Now listen, Daniel, is that meant as a reproach?” she asked.

“No, my dear, it is not a reproach; it is merely a picture of the world. You have the soul of a princess; you know nothing about rats. Look at those black, staring, pearly eyes: they remind me of Jason Philip Schimmelweis and Alfons Diruf and Alexander Dörmaul; they remind me of the reserved table, the Kaffeeklatsch, smelly feet, evenings at the club, and everything else that is unappetising, vulgar, and base. Don’t look at me in such astonishment, Eleanore, I have just had an ugly dream; that is all. I dreamt that a miserable-looking wretch came up to me and kept asking me what your name is, and I couldn’t tell him. Just think of it: I could not recall your name. It was terribly annoying. Farewell, farewell.”

He had put on his hat and left. He ran out in the direction of Feucht, and stayed the entire day in the open fields without taking a single bit of nourishment except a piece of black bread and a glass of milk. But when he returned in the evening his pockets were bulging with notes he had jotted down while out there by himself.

He came back by way of the Castle, and knocked at Eberhard’s door. Since there was no one at home, he sauntered around for a while along the old rampart, and then returned about nine o’clock. But the windows were still dark.

He had not seen Eberhard for two months. He could still recall the Baron’s depression and worry the last time he had talked with him—it was toward the end of March: he had spoken very little at that time and had gazed into space with remarkably lifeless eyes. He gave the impression of a man who is on the point of doing something quite out of the ordinary if not distinctly terrible.

Daniel did not become aware of this until now; the Baron’s troubles, whatever they were, had not occurred to him during the past weeks; he was sorry for having neglected him so.

XVII

When he came home Eleanore was suffering from premature birth pains. Philippina greeted him with the words: “There is going to be an increase in the family, Daniel.” Whereat she burst out in a coarse laugh.

“Shut up, you beast,” cried Daniel: “How long has she been suffering? Why didn’t you get the nurse?”

“Can I leave the child here alone? Don’t growl so!” replied Philippina angrily. She went out for the nurse. In a half an hour she came back with her: it was Frau Hadebusch.

Daniel had a disagreeable feeling. He wanted to raise some questions and make some objections, but Frau Hadebusch’s nimble tongue anticipated him. She grinned, curtsied, rolled her eyes, and went through the entire category of acquired mannerisms on the part of a woman of her type, and then unloaded her life history: Her duly wedded husband had said farewell to this vale of tears three years ago, and since then she had been supporting, as well as she could, herself and her poor Henry, the idiot, by hiring out as a midwife. She seemed already to have come to an understanding with Eleanore, for when she entered the room, Eleanore greeted her as though she were an old acquaintance.

While Daniel was alone with Eleanore for a few minutes, he asked her in an indignant tone: “How did you ever come to get that vicious woman?”