At the death of her mother, Gertrude Jordan was nine years old. She had
crept into the death chamber and sat by the bier for three hours.
Perhaps her seclusion from the world and association with people dated
from that hour. As she was leaving the death room, the clock on the
wall struck, and a cock crowed in the distance.
"Why do you tick, clock?" she asked in a loud voice, "why do you crow,
cock?" And again: "Who makes you tick, clock, who makes you crow, cock?"
She had grown up, and no one knew anything about her. It was even
difficult for her own father to approach her; how she was constituted,
mentally and spiritually, he did not know. She never associated with
girls of her own age. Her dark eyes glowed with wrath when she heard the
senseless, sensuous laughter of other girls.
The first time she partook of the holy communion she swooned and had to
be carried out. Jordan then took her to Pommersfelden to his sister, the
widow of the district physician Kupferschmied. At the end of one week
she returned alone, completely broken in spirit. She had seen a calf
slaughtered; the sight had made her almost insane.
From the time she was fifteen years old she had insisted on having her
own bed room. When she was sixteen she demanded that the maid be
discharged; she herself did all the cooking and kept house. As soon as
she had finished her work, she would take her seat by the quilting
frame.
Through her father, Benjamin Dorn had come into the family. Gertrude
liked him because Eleanore made fun of him. He did not seem to her like
a man; he reminded her rather of the languishing angels she embroidered.
He brought her all his religious tracts and edifying pamphlets, but she
could not grasp the language. He took her to the Methodist revivals, but
the noisy gnashing of teeth at these meetings terrified her, and after a
few times it was impossible to persuade her to go back. He also
recommended that she read the Bible, but she could find nothing in it
that brought her peace of mind. It seemed that she had a wound in her
soul that would not heal. Long after she had abandoned Benjamin Dorn and
his cheap sanctimoniousness, he imagined that she still loved him and
looked up to him. She managed, however, to come into his presence only
on the rarest occasions, and then she never spoke to him.
Divine worship in the Protestant church seemed to her like a sort of
bargain day on which the people assembled to do business with Heaven
instead of on work days. She missed the dignity; the sermons left her
cold; the ritual made not the slightest appeal to her.
She never heard from any one at any time a single sentence that really
enlightened her or remained fixed in her memory. It was the jejune
insipidity of an entire age, the stale flatness of the world that she
felt to the very depths of her soul. If she wished to make her heart
glow, if she became unusually fearful of the empty air and the empty
day, she stole secretly into the Church of Our Lady or into St.
Sebaldus, where the house of God was more solemnly decorated, where
there were more lights burning, where the prayers had a more mysterious
sound, the priests seemed to be more affected by what they were doing,
and where the worshipper could sense the awful meaning of life and
death.
All external beauty, however, was repulsive to her. She hated even
beautiful scenery and fair weather, regarding them as temptations to
mortal man intended to lead him into some sort of folly. She loved
nothing about herself, neither her face nor her voice. She was indeed
frightened at the sound of her own deep voice. She did not like her
hair, nor had she any use for her hands.
One winter evening she took from her hand the gold ring, an heirloom
from her mother, presented to her by her father, and threw it into the
creek. Then she bowed down over the ledge, and seemed to feel as if she
had relieved her soul of a great burden.
Eleanore tried time and time again to come near her sister, but each
time she was thrust back. Though Gertrude never conversed with people,
every word that was said about Eleanore reached her ears; she felt
ashamed of her sister. She could not bear the looks of Eleanore, took an
intense dislike to her, and in the end was obliged to summon all her
courage in order to return her greeting. It was impossible for her,
however, to reproach Eleanore; for that she did not have sufficient
command of language. In truth, her control of words was exceedingly
limited. Everything, grief as well as injustice, she was forced to
stifle within her own soul. She grieved about Eleanore, and became at
the same time more and more nervous and excited. It seemed that
something about her sister was tantalising her, drawing her on, worrying
her, making her lose sleep.
Her restlessness became so great that she could no longer sit at the
quilting frame; in fact, it was no longer possible for her to do any
kind of exacting work. Something drew her out of the house, and once she
was away, something forthwith drew her back home. Her heart beat
violently when she was alone, and yet, if her father or brother or
Eleanore came in, she could not stand their presence, and took refuge
in her own room. If it was hot, she closed the windows; if it was cold,
she opened them and leaned out. If it was quiet, she was filled with
fear; if it was not quiet, she longed for peace. She could not say her
prayers; she had none to say; her mind and soul were muted, muffled,
dumb. She felt the hours following each other in regular order as
something terrible; she wanted to skip over years, just as one might
skip over pages of a tiresome book. And when the worst came to the
worst, and she did not know what on earth to do, she ran to the Church
of Our Lady, threw herself prostrate before the high altar, buried her
face, and remained perfectly motionless until her soul had found greater
peace.
Something made her go to Eleanore; she did not want to do it, but she
could not help it. She was naturally vigilant, and she wished to ward
off misfortune if possible. She was obsessed with an uncanny feeling, a
gruesome curiosity. She dogged her sister's steps in secret. One time
she saw from a distance that Eleanore had started off with a man who had
been waiting for her. She could not move from the spot; Eleanore caught
sight of her.
The next day Eleanore came to her voluntarily, and told her quite
candidly of her relation to Eberhard von Auffenberg. Concerning what she
knew of Eberhard's fate she said nothing; she merely indicated that he
was extremely unhappy. She told her how she had met him the previous
winter on the Dutzendteich at the ice carnival, how he ran after her,
how glad she was to show him a little friendship, and how much he needed
friendship.
Gertrude was silent for a long while. Finally she said, with a voice so
deep that it seemed to have burst from being too full: "You two either
must get married, or you must not see each other any more. What you are
doing is a crime."
"A crime?" said Eleanore astonished, "how so?"
"Ask your conscience," was the answer, spoken with eyes riveted on the
ground.
"My conscience is quite clear."
"Then you have none," said Gertrude harshly. "You lie, and you are being
lied to. You are sunk in sin; there is no hope for you. That man's evil
looks! His ugly thoughts! And the thoughts of the other men! They are
all beyond redemption. You are spotted through and through. You don't
know it, but I do."
She got up, kicked the chair from her with her heels, and stared at
Eleanore with her mysterious black eyes: "Never mention this to me
again," she whispered with trembling lips, "never, never!" With that she
went out.
Eleanore felt something like actual loathing for her own sister. Filled
with an indescribable foreboding, she detected in Gertrude the adversary
that fate had marked out for her.