"What has Benda got to say?" asked Gertrude hesitatingly.
"Just think, he is going to Africa," replied Daniel, with a voice as if
he were lying. "Curious, isn't it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this
time."
With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he
was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the
letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared
to them.
"Why don't you read on?" asked Eleanore, when he paused.
She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the
whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became
entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up
and liberated her.
Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore
threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet;
she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It
gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.
"Don't you know that that is not polite?" he asked. "We have some
secrets, probably, Benda and I."
"I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings," replied
Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.
Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until
it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up.
"It is late, and father is already waiting," said Eleanore, after they
had eaten in great haste.
"I will take you home," declared Daniel. Surprised by such unusual
gallantry, Eleanore looked at him with amazement. He at once became
moody; she was still more surprised. "I can go home alone, Daniel," she
said in a tone of noticeable seriousness, "you do not need to put
yourself out for me."
"Put myself out? What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can't
keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment runs short?"
Eleanore had nothing to say.
"Put your great coat on, Daniel," said Gertrude in the hall, "it is cold
and windy out."
She wanted to help him on with it, but he threw it in the clothes press;
he was irritated.
He walked along at Eleanore's side through the deserted streets.
She had already put the key in the front door, when she turned around,
looked up in a most unhappy way, and said: "Daniel, what in the world is
the matter with you? When I look at you, a feeling of anguish and
distress comes over me. What have I done that you should act so
disagreeably toward me?"
"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.