Through the dividing walls Daniel and Eleanore were irresistibly drawn
to each other. They accompanied each other in their thoughts; each
divined the other's wishes and feelings. If he came home in a bad
humour, if she was anxious and restless, they both needed merely to sit
down by each other to regain their peace.
If Daniel's power of persuasion was great, Eleanore's example was
equally great. A dish would displease Daniel. Eleanore would not only
eat it, but would praise it; and Daniel would then eat it too, and like
it. Gertrude had prepared the food, and Eleanore felt it was her duty to
spare her sister as much humiliation as possible. But Gertrude did not
want to be treated indulgently. She would lay her knife and fork aside,
and say: "Daniel is right. It is not fit to eat." She would get up and
go into the kitchen and make a porridge that would take the place of the
inedible dish. That was the way she acted: she was always resigned,
diligent, and quiet; she made every possible effort to do her duty.
Daniel and Eleanore looked at each other embarrassed; but their
embarrassment was transformed in time into mutual ecstasy: they could
not keep from looking at each other.
There was nothing of the seducer in Daniel's sexual equipment. On the
other hand he was dependent to a very high degree upon his wishes and
desires; and in his passionate obstinacy he not infrequently lacked
consideration. Eleanore however possessed profound calmness, cheerful
certainty, and a goodly measure of indulgence; and she knew exactly how
to make use of these traits. The claims that were made on her patience
and moderation would have harassed a heart steeled in the actualities of
politics and flooded with worldly experiences. She however found a safe
and unerring guide in the instincts of her nature, and was never tired.
The trait in her to which he took most frequent and violent exception
was what he called her plebeian caution; she seemed determined to pay
due and conventional respect to appearances. He did not wish to lay
claim to the hours of his love as though they were a stolen possession;
he did not wish to sneak across bridges and through halls; he did not
wish to whisper; he did not wish to lie in wait for a secret tryst; he
rebelled at the thought of coming and going in fear and trembling.
There is not the slightest use to investigate all the secrecies between
Daniel and Eleanore. It will serve no useful end to infringe with
unskilled hand on the work of the evil spirit Asmodeus, who makes walls
transparent and allows his devotees to look into bed chambers. It would
be futile to act as the spy of Daniel and show how he left the attic
room in the dead of night and crept down the stairs in felt slippers. We
have no desire to hear of Eleanore's pangs of conscience and her
longings, her flights, her waiting in burning suspense; to relate how
she endeavoured to avert the inevitable to-day and succumbed to-morrow
would be to tell an idle tale. It is best to overlook all these things;
to draw a curtain of mercy before them; for they are so human and so
wholly without a trace of the miraculous.
It will be enough to touch upon a single night on which Daniel went to
Eleanore's room and said: "I have never yet seen you as a lover sees his
beloved." Eleanore was sitting on the edge of her bed, trembling. She
blew out the candle. Daniel heard the rustling of her clothes. She went
up to the stove and opened the front draft door. There was a red hot
coal fire in the stove. She stood before him with the purple glow of the
burning coals upon her body, slender, delicate, nude. Her figure,
peculiarly beautiful, was filled with the most harmonious of
inspiration; it was ensouled. And since the play of her limbs, as they
became conscious of the light, was suddenly stiffened with shame,
Eleanore bent her head over to the wall where the mask of Zingarella,
which he had given her, was hanging. She took it down, and held it with
both hands so that the purple glow from the stove fell also on it. As
she did this she smiled in a way that cut Daniel to the very heart:
something eternal came over him; he had a premonition of the end; he
feared fate.
At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as
if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared
for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall
without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back
again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the
closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore
were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head.
Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of
it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.
Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was
not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.
For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she
could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place.
In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of
the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there
was a man; they embraced each other, and sank their teeth into each
other's flesh. It was all as criminal as it was irrational; it was a
shame and an abomination to behold. Everywhere she looked she saw
reprehensible nudeness; all clothes seemed to be made of glass; she
could look neither at a man nor at a woman without turning pale. She had
only one refuge: the cradle of her child. She would rush to it and pray.
But as soon as her prayer was ended she again felt stifled in the
poisoned air about her, while the desire to acquit herself of the crime
of which she felt guilty, unable though she was to define the crime or
determine her part in it, robbed her of her sleep. She felt that a great
jagged stone was suspended over her head, that it was becoming less and
less firmly attached every day, and that its fall if not imminent was
certain.
Hour after hour passed by; Daniel finally appeared in the vestibule. He
was not a little terrified when he saw the burning lamp and Gertrude
sitting up in bed.
He went into the bedroom, closed the door, walked up to the cradle,
looked at the child, and then went over to Gertrude. She cast a glance
of infinite inquiry at him. It was a look that seemed to implore him for
a decision, a judgment. At the same time she put out her hands as if to
ward off any approach on his part. When she saw that he was astonished,
she softened the expression on her face, and said: "Give me your hand."
She took his right hand, stroked it, and whispered: "Poor hand, poor
hand."
Daniel bit his lips: "Oh woman, what ...?" That was all.
He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in
the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments
earlier. He sank down beside her, and fell asleep with his head on her
breast.
She kept on holding his hand. She looked into his pale, narrow face and
at his angular brow, the skin of which could be seen to twitch every now
and then under the loose flowing hair that hung over it. The oil in the
lamp was getting low, the wick had begun to smell. She was afraid
however to put it out lest she might waken Daniel. She looked on in
silence as the light became dimmer and dimmer and finally went out,
leaving only the red glow of the wick. This too died away in time, and
it became dark.