The Goose Man Part 20

Finally they sat down at the table. Eleanore was quite pleased to see the three men whom she liked so much gathered together in this way.

There was a feeling of grat.i.tude in her heart toward each one of them.

But she was also hungry: she ate four sandwiches, one right after the other. When she saw that Daniel was not eating, she stepped up behind his chair, bent over him so far that the loose flowing hair from her temples tickled his face, and said: "Are you embarra.s.sed? Or don't you like the way the sausages have been prepared? Would you like something else?"

Daniel evaded the questions; he was out of sorts. And yet in the bottom of his heart the contact with the girl made a pleasing impression on him; it was in truth almost a saving impression. For his thoughts continually and obstinately returned to the girl who had fled, and whose presence he missed without exactly wishing that she were at the table with the others.

Benda spoke of the political changes that might, he feared, take place because of the death of Gambetta. Jordan, who always took a warm interest in the affairs of the Fatherland, made a number of true and humane remarks about the tense feeling then existing between France and Germany, whereupon the door to Gertrude's room opened and Gertrude herself stood on the threshold.

Deep silence filled the room; they all looked at her.

Strangely enough, she was not wearing the dress she had on at the concert. She had put on the Nile green dress, the one in which Daniel saw her for the first time. Jordan and Eleanore hardly noticed the change; they were too much absorbed in the expression on the girl's face. Daniel was also astonished; he could not look away.

Her expression had become softer, freer, brighter. The unrest in which her face had heretofore been clouded had disappeared. Even the outlines of her face seemed to have changed: the arch of her eyebrows was higher, the oval of her cheeks more delicate.

She leaned against the door; she even leaned her head against the door.

Her left hand, hanging at her side, seemed indolent, limp, indifferent.

Her right hand was pressed against her bosom. Standing in this position, she studied the faces of those who were sitting at the table, while a timid and gentle smile played about her lips.

Jordan's first suspicion was that she had lost her mind. He sprang up, and hastened over to her. But she gave him her hand, and offered no resistance at all to being led over to the table.

Suddenly she fixed her silent gaze on Daniel. He got up involuntarily, and seized the back of his chair. His colour changed; he distorted the corners of his mouth; he was nervous. But when Gertrude withdrew her hand from her father's and extended it to him, and when he took it and his eye met hers-he could not help but look at her-his solicitude vanished. For what he read in her eyes was an unreserved and irrevocable capitulation of her whole self, and Daniel was the victor. His face grew gentle, grateful, dreamy, and resplendent.

It was not merely the sensuous charm revealed in the feeling which Gertrude betrayed that moved him: it was the fact that she came as she had come, a penitent and a convert. The sublime conviction that he had been able to transform a soul and awaken it to new life touched him deeply.

This it was that drew him to Gertrude more than her countenance, her expression, and her body combined. And now he saw all three-her countenance, her expression, and her body.

Jordan had a foreboding of something. He felt that he would have to take the girl in his arms and flee with her. Pictures of future misfortune crowded upon his imagination; the hope he had cherished for Gertrude was crushed to the earth.

Benda stared at his plate in silence. Nevertheless, just as if he had other eyes than those with which he saw earthly things, he noticed that Eleanore's hands and lips were trembling, that with each succeeding second she grew paler, that she cast a distrustful glance first at her father, then at her sister, and then at Daniel, and that she finally, as if overcome with a feeling of exhaustion, slipped away from her place by the table lamp, stole into a corner, and sat down on the ha.s.sock.

But after they had all resumed their seats at the table, Gertrude sitting between Benda and her father, Eleanore came up and sat down next to Daniel. She never took her eyes off Gertrude; she looked at her in breathless surprise, Gertrude smiled as she had smiled when leaning against the door, timidly and pa.s.sionately.

From that moment on, the conversation lagged, Benda suggested to his friend that it was time for them to leave. They thanked Jordan for his hospitality and departed. Jordan accompanied them down the stairs and unlocked the front door. When he returned, Eleanore was just going to her room: "Well, Eleanore, are you not going to say good-night?" he called after her.

She turned around, nodded conventionally, and closed the door.

Gertrude was still sitting at the table. Jordan was walking up and down the room. Suddenly she sprang up, stepped in his way, forced him to stop, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She had never done that before.

She too had gone to sleep. Jordan felt terribly alone. He heard the street door open and close; he heard some one enter. It was Benno.

Jordan thought that his son would come in, for he must have seen the light through the crack of the door. But Benno evidently had no desire to see his father. He went to his room at the other end of the hall, and closed the door behind him just as if he were a servant.

"They are all three in bed," thought Jordan to himself, "and what do I know about them?"

He shook his head, removed the hanging lamp from its frame, and locked the room, holding the lamp very carefully as he did so.

XIII

Eleanore had not seen Eberhard von Auffenberg for a number of weeks. He wrote her a card, asking for the privilege of meeting her somewhere. The place in fact was always the same-the bridge at the gate to the Zoological Garden. Immediately after sunset she betook herself to that point. It was a warm March evening; there was not a breath of wind; the sky was covered with clouds.

They strolled up the castle hill, and when they had reached the parapet, Eleanore said, gently laughing: "Now listen, I have talked enough; you say something."

"It is so pleasant to be silent with you," replied Eberhard in a downcast mood.

Filled with a disagreeable premonition, Eleanore sought out one of the many hundreds of lights dimly flickering down in the city, fixed her eyes on it, and stubbornly refused to look at any other earthly object.

"If I appeal to you at this hour," the young Baron finally began, "it is to a certain extent exactly as if I were appealing to the Supreme Court.

My expectations in life have, with one single exception, been utterly and irrevocably crushed. It depends quite upon you, Eleanore, whether I am to become and remain a useless parasite of human society, or a man who has firmly decided to pay for his share of happiness by an equal amount of honest work. I offer you everything I have. It is not much, but I offer it to you without haggling and forever. You and you alone can save me. That is what I wanted to say to you."

He looked up at the clouds, leaning on his cane, which he had placed behind his back.

"I have forbidden you to speak of this," whispered Eleanore in profound dismay, "and you promised me that you would not say anything about it."

"I gave you my promise because I loved you; I break it for the same reason," replied Eberhard. "I feel that such a promise is the act of a foolish child, when the building up or the tearing down of a human life depends upon it. If you are of a different opinion, I can only beg your pardon. Probably I have been mistaken."

Eleanore shook her head; she was grieved.

"It was my plan to go to England with you, and there we would be married," continued Eberhard. "It is quite impossible for me to get married here: I loathe this city. It is impossible, because if I did my people would in all probability set up some claims to which they are no longer ent.i.tled and for which I would fight. The mere thought of doing this repels me. And it is also impossible because ..." at this he stopped and bit his lips.

Eleanore looked at him; she was filled with curiosity. His pedantic enumeration of the various hindrances as well as the romanticism of his plans amused her. When she detected the expression of downright grief in his face, she felt sorry for him. She came one step nearer to him; he took her hand, bowed, and pressed his lips to her fingers. She jerked her hand back.

"Fatal circ.u.mstances have placed me in a most humiliating situation; if I am not to succ.u.mb to them, I must shake them off at once," said Eberhard anxiously. "I was inexperienced; I have been deceived. There is a person connected with my case who hardly deserves the name of a human being; he is a monster in the garb of an honest citizen. I have not the faintest idea what I am to do next, Eleanore. I must leave at once. In a strange country I may regain my strength and mental clearness. With you I could defy the universe. Believe in me, have confidence in me!"

Eleanore let her head sink. The despair of this usually reserved man touched her heart. Her mouth twitched as she sought for words.

"I cannot get married, Eberhard," she said, "really, I cannot. I did not entice you to me; you dare not reproach me. I have tried to make my att.i.tude toward you perfectly clear from the very first time I met you.

I cannot get married; I cannot."

For five or six minutes there was a silence that was interrupted only by human voices in the distance and the sound of carriages from the streets down in the city. In the compa.s.sion that Eleanore after all felt for Eberhard she sensed the harshness of her unqualified refusal. She looked at him courageously, firmly, and said: "It is not obstinacy on my part, Eberhard; nor is it stupid anxiety, nor imagination, nor lack of respect. Truth to tell I have a very high opinion of you. But there must be something quite unnatural about me, for you see that I loathe the very idea of getting married. I detest the thought of living with a man.

I like you, but when you touch me as you did a little while ago when you kissed my hand, a shudder runs through my whole body."

Eberhard looked at her in astonishment; he was morose, too.

She continued: "It has been in me since my childhood; perhaps I was born with it, just as other people are born with a physical defect. It may be that I have been this way ever since a certain day in my life. It was an autumn evening in Pappenheim, where my aunt then lived. My sister Gertrude and I were walking in a great fruit garden; we came to a thorn hedge, and sitting by the hedge was an old woman. My father and mother were far away, and the old woman said to my sister, then about seven: Be on your guard against everything that sings and rings. To me she said: Be careful never to have a child. The next day the woman was found dead under the hedge. She was over ninety years old, and for more than fifty years she had peddled herbs in Altmuhltal. I naturally had not the vaguest idea what she meant at the time by 'having a child,' but her remark stuck in my heart like an arrow. It grew up with me; it became a part of me. And when I learned what it meant, it was a picture by the side of the picture of death. Now you must not think that I have gone through life thus far filled with a feeling of despicable fear. Not at all. I simply have no desires. The idea does not attract me. If it ever does, many questions will I ask about life and death! I will laugh at the old woman under the hedge and do what I must."

As she spoke these last words, her face took on a strangely chaste and fanciful expression. Eberhard could not take his eyes from her. "Ah, there are after all fairy creatures on this flat, stale, and unprofitable earth," he thought, "enchanted princesses, mysterious Melusinas." He smiled somewhat distrustfully-as a matter of habit. But from this moment his frank, open, wooing attachment to the girl was transformed into a consuming pa.s.sion.

He was proud, and man enough to subdue his feelings. But he yearned more than ever, and was tortured by his yearnings to know something more than the vague knowledge he had at present about that gla.s.s case, that spirit-chest in which, so near and yet so far, this lovely creature lived, impervious to the touch of mortal hands and immune to the flames of love.

"You are rejecting me, then?" he asked.

"Well, it is at least advisable that for the time being we avoid each other's presence."

"Advisable for me, you think. And for the time being? How am I to interpret that?"

"Well, let us say for five years."

"Why exactly five years? Why not twenty? Why not fifty? It would be all the same."