416
PARTISAN REVIEW
side. The wind was bJowing furiously up Riverside Drive and New
York was depressing. I had not been in the Hoffmann apartment for
almost a week and I was ·more than a little anxious to learn how
things were going there. Both the father and daughter seemed in low
spirits when I entered and I could guess that Elsa was being more
silent than usual and that her father was again desperate about her.
He kept looking at her as if he were pleading for some unspecified
favor.
"How is Mrs. Hoffmann?" I asked, thinking of her good luck
in being away from the wind and the cold.
"Oh, she gets along as well as could be expected," the Doctor
answered solemnly. "She writes that it is very cold in Germany and
that she didn't get the last package I sent her. She has always been
delicate and I don't see how she can survive the winter. Poor soul!
It's so hard on the very old and the very young." He rubbed his hand
over his forehead and sighed.
"I'm sorry to hear about your mother, but I was really asking
after your wife," I said. Immediately I recognized my error.
Dr. Hoffmann, with that fatal foolishness that was also his
strength and nobility, had spoken in good faith and was unprepared
for the ferocity with which his daughter turned upon him. Elsa grunt–
ed with pleasure at my remark and it must have offered her the
final proof on this tormenting subject. I couldn't really dislike her for
what followed. She wasn't mean or petty; she was caught in the fury
of her own emotions and in her wretchedness must have believed she
was defending her mother, though in actuality I felt her purpose was
to commit an act of aggression against her father, to punish him for
his innocence. "Perhaps the first Mrs. Hoffmann is more important
in this house!" she said, forcing herself with all the grim self-righteous–
ness in her nature to look at her father as she spoke. "You are always
talking about her. You don't seem to worry about how we'll save the
money to keep Mother in Arizona. You have never worried about her.
Not even when I was born!" Her nice, adolescent voice had become
very shrill and she was starting to cry.
"What are you talking about? When you were born?" her father
asked, utterly bewildered by her tone and accusation. He had turned
quite pale, but, as always, was very patient with his daughter.
"I know that you were at your own mother's bedside when I
was born. She has always come first. You don't love us half as much!"
Elsa had become very childish, and was sobbing wildly. Her father did
not seem to recognize her childishness any more than he noticed the
