While the woman was singing, Gertrude had been standing down in the hall
listening. She knew every note of every song; every melody in the
accompaniment seemed to her like an old, familiar picture. She was also
aware that an artist by the grace of God had been in the house.
But how strange it was that she should find nothing unusual in the
incident. She felt that a living stream in her bosom had dried up,
leaving nothing but sand and stones in its bed. This inability to feel,
this being dead to all sensations, took the form of excruciating pangs
of conscience.
"My God, my God, what has happened to me?" she sighed, and wrung her
hands.
That evening she went to the Church of Our Lady, and prayed for a long
while. Her prayer did not appease her, however; she came back home more
disquieted than ever.
The door of the living room was open: Daniel and Eleanore were sitting
by the lamp, reading together from a book. The baby began to move;
Eleanore had left the door open so that she might be able to hear the
child when it woke up. Gertrude took the child in her arms, quieted it,
and returned to the door leading into the living room. Daniel and
Eleanore had turned their backs to the door, and were so absorbed in
their reading that they were not aware of Gertrude's presence.
A light suddenly came into Gertrude's heart: she became conscious of her
guilt--the guilt she had been trying in vain to fathom now for so many
cruel weeks.
She did not have enough of the power of love; therein lay her guilt. She
had assumed an obligation that was quite beyond her power to fulfil: she
had entered into marriage without having the requisite strength of
heart.
Marriage had seemed to her like the Holy of Holies. Her union with the
man she loved seemed to her to be of equal significance with the union
with God. But when she saw that this bond had been broken, the world was
plunged into an abyss immeasurably remote from God. And it was not her
husband who seemed to her to be guilty of infidelity; nor did she look
upon her sister as being the guilty one; it was she herself who had been
unfaithful and guilty in their eyes. She had not stood the test; she had
been tried and found wanting; her strength had not been equal to her
presumptions; God had rejected her. This conviction became irrevocably
rooted in her heart.
In her union with Daniel music had become something divine; and she saw,
now this union had been broken, something in music that was perilous,
something that was to be avoided: she understood why she was so
unemotional, why her feelings had dried up and vanished.
But she wanted to make one more effort to see whether she was entirely
right in the analysis of her soul. One morning she went to Daniel, and
asked him to play a certain passage from the "Harzreise." She said she
would like to hear the close of the slow middle movement which had
always made such an appeal to her. Her request was made in such an
urgent, anxious tone that Daniel granted it, though he did not feel like
playing. As Gertrude listened, she became paler and paler: her diagnosis
was being corroborated with fearful exactness. What had once been a
source of ecstasy was now the cause of intense torture. The tones and
harmonies seemed to be eating into her very soul; the pain she felt was
so overwhelming, that it was only with the greatest exertion that she
mustered up sufficient self-control to leave the room unaided. Daniel
was dismayed.
On her return to the kitchen, Gertrude heard a most peculiar noise in
her bedroom. She went in only to see that little Agnes had crept into
the corner of the room where the harp stood, and was striking the
strings with a copper spoon, highly pleased with her actions. Gertrude
was seized with a vague, nameless terror. She took the harp into the
kitchen, removed the strings from the frame, rolled them up, put them in
a drawer, and carried the stringless frame up to the attic.
"What can I do?" she whispered to herself, and looked around in the
attic with an expression of complete helplessness. She longed for peace,
and it seemed peaceful up where she was. She stayed a while, leaning up
against one of the beams, her eyes closed.
"What can I do?" That was the question she put to herself day and night.
"I can no longer be of any help to my husband; to stand in his way
merely because of the child is not right." Such was the trend of her
argument. She saw how he was suffering, how Eleanore was suffering, how
each was suffering on account of the other, and how both were suffering
because of the despicable vulgarity of the human race. She thought to
herself that if she were not living, everything would be right. She
imagined, indeed she was certain, that all the truth he had given her
had had the sole purpose of whitewashing a lie, by which she was to be
made to believe that her existence was a necessity to him. She was
convinced that the weight of this lie was crushing the very life out of
him. She wished to free him from it and its consequences. But how she
was to do this she did not know. She knew that if Daniel and Eleanore
could belong to each other in a legal, legitimate way, they would be
vindicated in the eyes of God and man. But how this was to be brought
about she did not know.
She sought and sought for a way out. Her ideas were vague but
persistent. She felt that she was running around in a circle, unable to
do more than stare at the centre of the circle. Every morning at five
o'clock she would get up and go to church. She prayed with a devotion
and passion that physically exhausted her heart.
One morning she knelt before the altar in unusually heart-rending
despair. She thought she heard a small voice crying out to her and
telling her to take her life.
She swooned; people rushed up to her, and wet her forehead with cold
water. This enabled her to get up and go home. A peculiarly sorrowful
and dreamy expression lay on her face.
She wanted to do some knitting, for she recalled that when she was a
girl she was always able to dispel care and grief by knitting. But every
stitch she made turned into the cry: "You must take your life."
She knelt down by the cradle of little Agnes, but the child said to her
only too distinctly: "Mother, you must take your life."
Eleanore came in. On her brow was the light of enjoyed happiness; her
whole body was happiness; her lips trembled and twitched with happiness.
But her eyes said. "Sister, you must take your life."
Philippina stood by the kitchen stove, and whispered to the coals:
"Gertrude, you must take your life." Her father came in, got his dinner,
expressed his thanks for it, and went out murmuring, "Daughter, you must
take your life; believe me, it will be for the best."
If she passed by the well, something drew her to the edge; voices called
to her from the depths. From every beaker she put to her lips to drink
shone forth her image as if from beyond the tomb. On Sunday she climbed
up the Vestner Tower, and let her eyes roam over the plains below as if
in the grief of departure. She leaned forward out of the little window
with a feeling of assuaging horror. The keeper, seeing what she was
doing, rushed up, seized her arms, and made her get back.
If the cock crew, it was the crow of death; if the clock ticked, it was
the tick of death; if the wind blew, it was a breath from beyond the
grave. "You must take your life"--with this thought the air, the earth,
the house, the church, the morning, the evening, and her dreams were
full.
In April Eleanore was taken down with fever. Gertrude watched by her
bedside night and day; she sacrificed herself. Daniel, worried about
Eleanore, went around in a dazed condition. When he came to her bed he
never noticed Gertrude. After Eleanore had begun to recover, Gertrude
lay down; for she was very tired. But she could not sleep; she got up
again.
She went into the kitchen in her bare feet, though she did not know why
she went. It was the consuming restlessness of her heart that drove her
from her bed. Her legs were heavy with exhaustion, but she did not like
to stay in any one place for any length of time. Later Daniel came back
from the city, and brought her a silver buckle which he fastened to her
bracelet. Then he pressed his lips to her forehead, and said: "I thank
you for having been so good to Eleanore."
Gertrude stood as if rooted to the floor. Something seemed to cry
incessantly within her; she felt that a mortally wounded beast was in
her bosom wallowing in its blood. Long after Daniel had gone to his room
she could still be seen standing in the middle of the floor. Wrapped in
gloomy meditation, she removed the buckle from her bracelet: she thought
she saw an ugly mark where the metal had touched her skin. She went into
her room, opened the cabinet, and hid the buckle under a pile of linen.
She had only one wish: she wanted to sleep. But as soon as she would
close her eyes her heart would begin to beat with doubled, trebled
rapidity. She had to get up and walk back and forth in the room; she was
struggling for breath.