When Daniel told the Jordans that the money would be there the next
morning, Jordan looked at him first unbelievingly, and then wept like a
child.
Eleanore reached Daniel both her hands without saying a word. Gertrude,
who was lying on the sofa, straightened up, smiled gently, and then lay
down again. Daniel asked her what was the matter. Eleanore answered for
her, saying that she had not felt well since some time in the afternoon.
"She must go to bed, she is tired," added Eleanore.
"Well, come then," said Daniel, and helped Gertrude to get up. But her
legs were without strength; she could not walk. She looked first at
Daniel and then at Eleanore; she was plainly worried about something.
"You won't care, will you, Father, if I go home with them?" asked
Eleanore in a tone of flattery.
"No, go, child," said Jordan, "it will do me good to be alone for a few
minutes."
Daniel and Eleanore took Gertrude between them. At the second landing in
their apartment, Daniel took Gertrude in his arms, and carried her into
the bedroom. She did not want him to help her take off her clothes; she
sent him out of the room. A cup of warm milk was all she said she
wanted.
"There is no milk there," said Eleanore to Daniel, as she entered the
living room. He stopped suddenly, and looked at her as if he had
awakened from a fleeting dream: "I'll run down to Tetzel Street and get
a half a litre," said Eleanore. "I'll leave the hall door open, so that
Gertrude will not be frightened when I come in."
She had already hastened out; but all of a sudden she turned around, and
said with joyful gratitude, her blue eyes swimming in the tears of a
full soul: "You dear man."
His face took on a scowl.
There was a fearful regularity in his walking back and forth. The chains
of the hanging lamp shook. The flame sent forth a thin column of smoke;
he did not notice it. "How long will she be gone?" he thought in his
unconscious, drunken impatience. He felt terribly deserted.
He stepped out into the hall, and listened. There hovered before him in
the darkness the face of Philippina. She showed the same scornful
immobility that she showed when her father struck her in the face. He
stepped to the railing, and sat down on the top step; a fit at once of
weakness and aimless defiance came over him. He buried his face in his
hands; he could still hear Theresa saying, "All that nice money."
There were shadows everywhere; there was nothing but night and shadows.
Eleanore, light-hearted and light-footed, returned at last. When she saw
him, she stopped. He arose, and stretched out his arms as if to take the
milk bottle. That is the way she interpreted his gesture, and handed it
to him in surprise. He, however, set it down on the landing beside him.
The light from the living room shone on it and made it look sparkling
white. Then he drew Eleanore to him, threw his arms around her, and
kissed her on the mouth.
Merely a creature of man, only a woman, nothing but heart and breath,
all longing and forgetting, forgetting for just one moment, finding
herself for a moment, knowing her own self for a moment--she pressed
close up to him. But her hands were folded between her breast and his,
and thus separated their bodies.
Then she broke away from him, wrung her hands, looked up at him, pressed
close up to him again, wrung her hands again--it was all done in
absolute silence and with an almost terrible grace and loveliness.
Everything was now entirely different from what it had been, or what she
had formerly imagined it to be; there were depths to everything now. She
lost herself; she ceased to exist for a moment; darkness enveloped her
much-disciplined heart; she entered upon a second existence, an
existence that had no similarity with the first.
To this existence she was now bound; she had succumbed to it: the law of
nature had gone into effect. But the glass case had been shattered; it
was in pieces. She stood there unprotected, even exposed, so to speak,
to men, no longer immune to their glances, an accessible prey to their
touch.
She went into the kitchen, and heated the milk. Daniel returned to the
living room. His veins were burning, his heart was hammering. He had no
sense of appreciation of the time that had passed. When Eleanore came
into the room, he began to tremble.
She came up to him, and spoke to him in passionate sadness: "Have you
heard about Gertrude? Don't you know, really? She is with child--your
wife."
"I did not know it," whispered Daniel. "Did she tell you?"
"Yes, just now."