The Goose Man Part 2

And turning now once more to Jason Philip's face, he thought he perceived in it the restlessness of an evil conscience. It seemed to him that this man was not acting from conviction but from an antecedent determination. It seemed to him further that he was faced, not merely by this one man and his rage and its accidental causes, but by a whole world in arms that was pledged to enmity against him. He had no inclination now to await the end of Jason Philip's oratorical efforts, and left the room.

Jason Philip grew pale. "Don't let us deceive ourselves, Marian," he said. "You have nursed a viper on your bosom."

Daniel stood by the Wolfram fountain in the square, and let the purple of the setting sun shine upon him. Round about him the stones and the beams of the ancient houses glowed, and the maids who came with pails to fetch water at the fountain gazed with astonishment into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g radiance of the sky. At this hour his native town grew very dear to Daniel. When Jason Philip entered the square, at the corner of which the stage-coach was waiting, he did his best not to be seen by Daniel and avoided him in a wide semi-circle. But Daniel turned around and fastened his eyes on the man, who strode rapidly and gazed stubbornly aside.

This thing too has happened before and will happen again. Nor is it amazing that the fugitive should turn and inspire terror in his pursuer.

IX

Daniel saw that he could not stay to be a burden to his mother with her small resources. She was poor and dependent on the judgment of a tyrannical kinsman. Mastering his pa.s.sionate impulses, he forced himself to cool reflection and made a plan. He would have to work and earn so much money that after a year or more he would be able to go to Andreas Doderlein and remind him of his magnanimous offer. So he studied the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the papers and wrote letters of application. A printer in Mannheim wanted an a.s.sistant correspondent. Since he agreed to take the small wage offered, he was summoned to that city. Marian gave him his railway fare.

He endured the torment for three months. Then it grew unbearable. For seven months he slaved for an architect in Stuttgart, next four months for the munic.i.p.al bath in Baden-Baden, finally for six weeks in a cigarette factory in Kaiserslautern.

He lived like a dog. In terror of having to spend money, he avoided all human intercourse. He was unspeakably lonely. Hunger and self-denial made him as lean as a rope. His cheeks grew hollow, his limbs trembled in their sockets. He patched his own clothes, and to save his shoes hammered curved bits of iron to the heels and toes. His aim sustained him; Andreas Doderlein beckoned in the distance.

Every night he counted the sum he had saved so far. And when at last, after sixteen months of self-denial, he had a fortune of two hundred marks, he thought he could risk the fateful step. As he reckoned and according to his present standard of life, he thought that this money would last him five months. Within that period new sources might open.

He had come to know many people and had experienced many circ.u.mstances, but in reality he had known no one and experienced nothing, for he had stood in the world like a lantern with a covered light. With an enormous expenditure of energy he had restrained his mind from its native activity. He had throttled it for the sake of its future. Hence his whole soul had now the temperature of a blast furnace.

On his trip his fare was the accustomed one of dry bread and cheese. He had made a package of his few books and his music, and had despatched it in care of the railway station in Nuremberg. It was early spring. In fair weather he slept in the open. When it rained he took refuge in barns. A little bundle was his pillow and his ragged top-coat shielded him from frost. Not rarely farmers received him in kindly fashion and gave him a meal. Now and then a tramping apprentice joined him. But his silence did not invite companionship.

Once in the neighbourhood of Kitzingen he came upon a high fenced park.

Under a maple tree in the park sat a young girl in a white dress reading a book. A voice called: "Sylvia!" Thereupon the girl arose, and with unforgettable grace of movement walked deeper into the garden.

And Daniel thought: Sylvia! A sound as though from a better world. He shuddered. Was it to be his lot to stand without a gate of life that gave everything to the eyes and nothing to the hands?

X

He sought out Andreas Doderlein at once. He was told that the professor was not in town. Two weeks later he stood once more before the old house. He was told that the professor could not be seen to-day. He was discouraged. But out of loyalty to his cause he returned at the end of three days and was received.

He entered an overheated room. The professor was sitting in an arm chair. On his knees was his little, eight-year-old daughter; in his right arm he held a large doll. The white tiles of the stove were adorned with pictured scenes from the Nibelungen legend; table and chairs were littered with music scores; the windows had leaded panes; in one corner there was a ma.s.s of artfully grouped objects-peac.o.c.ks'

feathers, gay-coloured silks, Chinese fans. This combination was known as a Makart bouquet, and represented the taste of the period.

Doderlein put the little girl down and gave her her doll. Then he drew himself up to the fulness of his gigantic stature, a process that gave him obvious pleasure. His neck was so fat that his chin seemed to rest on a gelatinous ma.s.s.

He seemed not to recall Daniel. Cues had to be given him to distinguish this among his crowded memories. He snapped his fingers. It was a sign that his mind had reached the desired place. "Ah, yes, yes, yes! To be sure, to be sure, my dear young man! But what do you suppose? Just now when all available s.p.a.ce is as crowded as a street strewn with crumbs is crowded with sparrows. We might take the matter up again in autumn. Yes, in autumn something might be done."

A pause, during which the great man gave inarticulate sounds of profound regret. And was the young man, after all, so sure of a genuine talent?

Had he considered that art was becoming more and more an idling place for the immature and the shipwrecked? It was so difficult to tell the sheep from the goats. And finally, granting talent, how was the young man equipped in the matter of moral energy? There, indisputably, the core of the problem was to be sought. Or didn't he, perhaps, think so?

As through a fog Daniel observed that the little girl had approached him and looked him over with a curiously cold and testing glance. Almost he was impelled to stretch out his hand and cover the eyes of the child, whose manner was uncanny to him through some ghostly presentiment.

"I'm truly sorry that I can't give you a more encouraging outlook."

Andreas Doderlein's voice was oily, and showed a conscious delight in its own sound. "But as I said, there's nothing to be done until autumn.

Suppose you leave me your address. Put it down on this slip. No? Well, quite as you wish. Good-bye, young man, good-bye."

Doderlein accompanied him to the door. Then he returned to his daughter, took her on his knee, picked up the doll, and said: "Human beings, my dear Dorothea, are a wretched set. If I were to compare them to sparrows on the road, I should be doing the sparrows but little honour. Heavens and earth! Wouldn't even write his name on a slip of paper. Felt hurt!

Well, well, well. What funny creatures men are. Wouldn't leave his name.

Well, well."

He hummed the Walhalla motif, and Dorothea, bending over her doll, coquettishly kissed the waxen face.

Daniel, standing in front of the house, bit his lips like a man in a fever who does not want his teeth to rattle. Why, the depth of his soul asked him, why did you sit in their counting-houses and waste their time? Why did you crucify your body and bind my wings? Why were you deaf to me and desirous of gathering fruits where there are only stones? Why did you, like a coward, flee from your fate to their offices and ware-houses and iron safes and all their doleful business? For the sake of this hour? Poor fool!

And he answered: "Never again, my soul, never again."

XI

In the beginning Marian had received a letter from Daniel every now and then. These letters became rarer. During the second year he wrote only once-a few lines at Christmas.

At the time when he was leaving his last place of employment he wrote her on a postcard that he was changing his residence again. But he did not tell her that he was going to Nuremberg. So spring pa.s.sed and summer. Then her soul, which was wavering between fear and hope, was rudely jolted out of its dim state by a letter from Jason Philip.

He wrote that Daniel was loafing about in Nuremberg. Quite by accident he had met him a few days before near the fair booths on Schutt Island.

His appearance was indescribable. He had tried to question him, but Daniel had disappeared. What had brought him to the city he, Jason Philip, could not see. But he was willing to wager that at the bottom of it was some shady trick, for the fellow had not looked like one who earns an honest living. So he proposed to Marian that she should come to Nuremberg and help in a raid on the vagabond, in order to prevent the unblemished name he bore from being permanently disgraced before it was too late. As a contribution to her travelling expenses he enclosed five marks in stamps.

Marian had received the letter at noon. She had at once locked up her house and shop. At two o'clock she had reached the station at Ansbach; at four she arrived in Nuremberg. Carrying her hand-bag, she asked her way to Plobenhof Street at every corner.

Theresa sat at the cashier's desk. Her brown hair on her square peasant's skull was smoothly combed. Zwanziger, the freckled shop-a.s.sistant, was busy unpacking books. Theresa greeted her sister with apparent friendliness, but she did not leave her place. She stretched out her hand across the ink-stand, and observed Marian's shabby appearance-the worn shawl, the old-fashioned little cloth bonnet with its black velvet ribbands meeting in a bow under the chin.

"Go upstairs for a bit," she said, "and let the children entertain you.

Rieke will bring up your bag."

"Where is your husband?" asked Marian.

"At an electors' meeting," Theresa answered morosely. "They couldn't meet properly, according to him, if he isn't there."

At that moment a man in a workingman's blouse entered the shop and began to talk to Theresa urgently in a soft but excited voice. "I bought the set of books and they're my property," said the man. "Suppose I did skip a payment. That's no reason to lose my property. I call that sharp practice, Frau Schimmelweis, that's what I call it."

"What did Herr Wachs.m.u.th buy of us?" Theresa turned to the shop-a.s.sistant.

"Schlosser's 'History of the World,'" was the prompt answer.

"Then you'd better read your contract," Theresa said to the workingman.

"The terms are all fixed there."

"That's sharp practice, Frau Schimmelweis, sharp practice," the man repeated, as though this phrase summed up all he could express in the way of withering condemnation. "A fellow like me wants to get on and wants to learn something. All right. So I think I'll buy me a book and get a step ahead in knowledge. So where do I go? To a party member, to Comrade Schimmelweis, thinking natural-like I'm safe in his hands. I pay sixty marks-hard earned money-for a history of the world, and manage to squeeze the payments out o' my wages, and then, all of a sudden, when half the price is paid, I'm to have my property taken from me without so much as a by your leave just because I'm two payments in arrears."

"Read your contract," said Theresa. "Every point is stipulated."

"No wonder people get rich," the man went on. His voice grew louder and louder, and he glanced angrily at Jason Philip, who at that moment rushed into the shop with his hat crushed and his trousers sprinkled with mud. "No wonder that people can buy houses and speculate in real estate. Yes, Schimmelweis, I call such things sharp practice, and I don't give a d.a.m.n for your contract. Everybody knows by this time what kind of business is done here-more like a man-trap-and that these here instalments are just a scheme to squeeze the workingman dry. First you talk to him about education, and then you suck his blood. It's h.e.l.l!"

"Pull yourself together, Wachs.m.u.th!" Jason Philip cried sternly.

Wachs.m.u.th picked up his cap, and slammed the shopdoor behind him.

Marian Nothafft's eyes pa.s.sed mechanically over the t.i.tles of a row of fiercely red pamphlets spread out on a table. She read: "The Battle that Decides," "Modern Slaveholders," "The Rights of the Poor," "Christianity and Capitalism," "The Crimes of the Bourgeoisie." Although these catch-words meant nothing to her, she felt in her heart once more her old, long forgotten hatred against machines.