Eleanore was to sleep with Marian and Eva; Daniel was to have his old
room. He showed it to Eleanore; they stepped to the window and looked
out. They saw Eva down in the yard dancing back and forth barefooted on
a wooden balustrade. She kept her equilibrium by holding out her arms.
The grace of her movements was so fairy-like that Daniel and Eleanore
smiled at each other in astonishment.
After dinner Daniel went out in front of the house; Marian and Eleanore
sat for a while at the window; the light of the lamp shone behind them.
Later they came out into the street and joined Daniel. Marian, however,
was uneasy on account of the child. She said that Eva had been restless
all day and might cry for her. "Stay out just as long as you like; I
will leave the door open," she said, and went back.
Daniel and Eleanore returned to the fair. It was still early in the
evening, but the crowd had disappeared. They sauntered around among the
booths, and stopped to listen to the harangue of a mountebank or to
watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball
that danced on a jet of water. There was a sea of red and green
lanterns; sky-rockets were hissing into the air from the rampart;
musicians were playing in the cafes, while hilarious tipplers sang or
hooted as the spirit moved them.
They came to a grass plot, the sole illumination of which was the light
from a circus wagon. On the steps of the wagon sat a man in tricot
holding the head of a black poodle between his knees.
"Those were the last inhabitants of the earth," said Daniel, after they
had crossed the square. The noise died away, the gaudy lights
disappeared.
"How far are you going?" asked Eleanore, without the remotest trace of
fear in her voice.
"I am going on until I am with you," was the quick reply.
The indistinct outline of a bridge became visible; under it the water
flowed noiselessly. The path had a yellowish shimmer; there were no
stars in the heavens. Suddenly the path seemed to come to an end; at the
end of it were trees there that seemed to be moving closer and closer
together; it became darker and darker; they stopped.
"We have told each other our whole story," said Daniel. "In the way of
words we owe each other nothing. We have had enough of talk; there has
been no lack of sorrow and enough of error. We can no longer act
differently, and therefore we dare not act differently any longer."
"Be still," whispered Eleanore, "I don't like your wrangling; what you
say is so unpeaceful and fiendish. Yesterday I dreamed that you were
lying on your knees and had your folded hands uplifted. Then I loved
you--very much."
"Do you need dreams in order to love me, girl? I don't; I need you just
as you are. I will soon be thirty years old, Eleanore. A man never
really wakes up until he is thirty; it is then that he conquers the
world. You know what rests within me; you suspect it. You know too how I
need you; you feel it. You are my soul; you are created out of my music;
without you I am an empty hull, a patchwork, a violin without strings."
"Oh, Daniel, I believe you, and yet it is not all true," replied
Eleanore. He thought he could see in the darkness her mockingly ironical
smile: "Somewhere, I am almost tempted to say in God, it is not true. If
we were better, if we were beings in the image of God and acting in
God's ways, we would have to desist from our own ways. Then it would be
wonderful to live: it would be like living above the clouds, happy, at
peace, pure."
"Does that come from your heart, Eleanore?"
"My dear, dear man! My heart, like yours, has been beclouded and
bewitched. I cannot give you up. I have settled my accounts. In my soul
I am entirely conscious of my guilt. I know what I am doing and assume
full responsibility for my action. There is no use to struggle any
longer; the water is already swirling over our heads. I simply want to
say that you should not delude yourself into believing that we have
risen up above other people by what we have done, that we have deserved
the gratitude of fate. No, Daniel, what we are doing is precisely what
all those do who fall. Let me stay with you, dearest; kiss me, kiss me
to death."
V
Philippina had promised Eleanore to look after Jordan and Gertrude on
Sunday.
As she was crossing Five Points, she went into a shop, and asked for
three pfennigs' worth of court plaster. While doing some housework she
had scratched herself on a nail. The clerk gave her the plaster, and
asked her what was the news.
"Ah, you poor bloke, you want to know the very latest, don't you?" she
snarled, and then grinned with blatant self-complacency.
"The later the better," said the fellow with a lustful smirk.
Philippina bent over the counter, and whispered: "They're taking their
wedding trip to-day." She laughed in a lewd, imbecile way. The clerk
stared at her with wide-opened eyes and mouth. Two hours later the news
was in the mouth of every hussy in that section of the city.
Gertrude was in bed. The day woman who did the cooking gave Philippina a
plate with Jordan's dinner on it: Meat, vegetables, and a few sour
plums. Philippina ate two of the plums on the way up to his room, and
licked her fingers.
The whole forenoon she spent rummaging around in Eleanore's room; she
looked through the cabinets, the presses, and the pockets of Eleanore's
dresses. As it began to grow dark, Jordan suddenly entered, in hat and
great coat, and looked on in speechless and enraged amazement at the
girl's inexplicable curiosity.
Philippina took the broom from the corner, and began to sweep with all
her might. While sweeping she sang, out of tune, impudently, and
savagely:
"No fire, no coal, so warmly glows
As secret love that no one knows."
Jordan went away without saying anything. He had forgotten to lock his
room. Hardly had Philippina noticed that he had left the key in the
door, when she opened it and went in.
She spied around with cowardly, superstitious eyes. She was afraid of
the old inspector, as she would have been afraid of an invincible
magician. For such cases she had a number of formulas at her tongue's
end. She murmured: "Put earth in, close the lid, hold your thumbs, spit
on your shoe." She spat on her shoe.
She then began to examine the cabinet, for she believed that it
contained all of Jordan's secrets. But she could not open the lock, try
as she might. She then went at the writing desk; she was angry. There
she found, in plain wooden frames, the pictures of Gertrude and
Eleanore. She ran out, got a large needle, came back, and stuck it in
the picture of Eleanore right between the eyes. Then she took Gertrude's
picture, and after she had held it for a while, looking at it with her
gloomy eyes, she noticed that it was spotted with blood. The plaster had
come off her finger, and the finger had started to bleed.
"Come now, Philippina," she said to herself, "go and see how Gertrude is
making out." Entering Gertrude's room, she found her asleep. Creeping up
to her bed on her tiptoes, she took a chair, straddled it, leaned her
chin on the back, and stared fixedly at the face of the young woman, now
just barely visible in the darkness of the room.
Gertrude dreamed that a black bird was hovering over her and picking at
her breast with its pointed beak. She screamed and woke up.
Shortly after this Gertrude had to send for the midwife.
During the night, Gertrude gave birth to a girl; she had suffered
terrible pains. Philippina had seen and heard it all. She had run back
and forth, from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the
kitchen, for hours; she was like an insane person; she kept mumbling
something to herself. What she mumbled no one knew.
Gertrude had called in vain for Daniel; in vain had she waited for him
the whole day.
"Where in the world can Daniel be?" cried Philippina, "where can Daniel
be with his damned Eleanore?" She sat in the corner with her hands
folded, her hair tangled and knotted, her face distorted with the
grimaces of madness. The midwife was still busy with Gertrude; the
new-born child was crying pitifully.