The Goose Man Part 23

When the child was born, Daniel's mother would have a picture of young life to look at; it would alleviate her longing; it would appease her bitterness to see a child of Daniel's own blood.

Eleanore told the people at home that she was going on an excursion with a school friend to the Ansbach country. She studied the time-table, and wrote a postcard to Meta telling her to be at the station at eight o'clock in the morning.

Jordan approved of Eleanore's outing, though he warned her against bandits and cold drinks. Gertrude was not wholly without suspicion. She had a feeling that something was wrong, that these unspoken words referred to Daniel, for she was always thinking about him.

If she received a letter from him, which was very rare, she would let it lie on the table for a long while, imagining that it was full of the most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.

When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured soul from which they came.

She felt that Eleanore was lying, and that the lie she was telling was somehow connected with Daniel. That is why she went up to Eleanore's bed in the dead of night, and whispered into her ear: "Tell me, Eleanore, has anything happened to Daniel?"

But before Eleanore could reply, rea.s.sured by her sister's astonished behaviour, and angry at herself for having suspected Eleanore of a falsehood, she hurried back to her own bed. She had come to think more and more of her sister every day.

"How she must love him," thought Eleanore to herself, and buried her smiling face in the pillow.

VII

"Wait for me at the fountain," said Eleanore to her companion, as she crossed the market place in Eschenbach at midday: "I'll call for you as soon as everything has been discussed."

The coachman pointed out the little house of the widow Nothafft.

A woman with a stern face and unusually large eyebrows asked her what she wanted as she entered the little shop, which smelled of vinegar and cheese.

Eleanore replied that she would like to talk with her for a few minutes quite undisturbed and alone.

The profound seriousness of Marian's features, which resembled more than anything else an incurable suffering, did not disappear. She closed the shop and took Eleanore into the living room, and, without saying a word, pointed to one chair and took another herself.

Above the leather sofa hung the picture of Gottfried Nothafft. Eleanore looked at it for a long while.

"Dear mother," she finally began, laying her hand on Marian's knee. "I am bringing you something from Daniel."

Marian twitched. "Good or bad?" she asked. She had not heard from Daniel for twenty-two months. "Who are you?" she asked, "what have you to do with him?"

Eleanore saw at once that she would have to be extremely cautious if she did not wish to offend the sensitive-and offended-woman by some inconsiderate remark. With all the discrimination she could command she laid her case before Daniel's mother.

And behold-the unusual became usual, just as the natural seemed strange. Eleanore pictured Daniel's hardships and rise to fame, boasted loyally of his talents and of the enthusiasm for him of those who believed in him, referred to his future renown, and insisted that all his guilt, including that toward his mother, be forgotten and forgiven.

Marian reviewed the past; she understood a great many things now that were not clear to her years ago; she understood Daniel better; she understood virtually everything, except this girl's relation to him and the girl herself. If it was peculiar that this strange woman had to come to her to tell her who Daniel was and what he meant to the people, it was wholly inexplicable that she had brought some one with her who had been the sweetheart of the very man for whom she now showed unreserved affection.

Eleanore read Marian's face and became a trifle more deliberate. It occurred to her, too, to ask herself a few questions: What am I, any way? What is the matter with me?

She could not give a satisfactory answer to these questions. His friend?

He my friend? The words seemed to contain too much peace and calm.

Brother? Companion? Either of these words brought up pictures of intimate a.s.sociation, inner relationship. Little Brother! Yes, that is what she had called out to him once from behind the mask. Well then: Little sister behind the mask?

Yes, that was what it should be: Little sister behind the mask. She had to have a hiding place for so many things of which she had only a vague presentiment and which in truth she did not care to visualise in brighter outlines. A subdued heart, a captured heart-it glows, it cools off, you lift it up, you weigh it down just as fate decrees. To be patient, not to betray anything, that was the all-important point: Little sister behind the mask-that was the idea.

Marian said: "My child, G.o.d himself has inspired you with the idea of coming to me and telling me about Daniel. I will put fresh flowers in the window as I did some time ago, and I will leave the front door open so that the swallows can fly in and build their nests. Perhaps he will think then from time to time of his mother."

Then she asked to see Meta. Eleanore went out, and returned in a few minutes with her charge. Marian looked at the pregnant girl compa.s.sionately. Meta was ill at ease; to every question that was put to her she made an incoherent reply. She could stay with her, said Marian, but she would have to work, for there was no other way for the two to live. The girl referred to the fact that she had already worked out for four years, and that no one had ever accused her of lack of industry or willingness. Thereupon Marian told her she would have to be very quiet, that the people in the neighbourhood were very curious, and that if she ever gave them her family history she would have to leave.

This attended to, Eleanore went on her way. She refused quite emphatically to stay for dinner. Marian thought that she was in a hurry to catch the next coach, and accompanied her across the square. They promised to write to each other; before Eleanore got into the rickety old coach, Marian kissed her on the cheek.

She watched the coach until it had pa.s.sed out through the city gate. A drunken man poked her in the ribs, the blacksmith called to her as she pa.s.sed by, the doctor's wife leaned out of the window and asked her who the cityfied lady was. Marian paid not the slightest attention to any of them; she went quietly and slowly back to her house.

VIII

Thus it came about that five weeks later a daughter of Daniel Nothafft saw the light of the world under Marian's roof.

As soon as the child was born, Marian took a great liking to it, despite the fact that she had thought of it before its birth only with aversion.

It was a fine little creature: its little legs and arms were delicately formed, its head was small, there was something peculiarly human about its first cries and laughter, and it showed quite distinctly that there was something n.o.ble in its character.

The people of Eschenbach were astonished. "Where did the child come from?" they asked. "Who is its mother? Who is its father?" The records in the office of the registrar of births showed that Meta Steinhager was the mother of the illegitimate child, Eva Steinhager, and that its father was unknown.

It was to be presumed, however, that widow Nothafft knew the details.

The old women, and the young ones too, came on this account more frequently now than ever to her shop. They wanted to know how the little thing was getting along, whether its milk agreed with it, whether it had begun to teethe, whether it would speak German or some foreign tongue, and so on.

In order to quiet them, Marian told them that Meta was a poor relative and that she was bringing up the child at her own expense. It was not difficult to make this story seem plausible, for Meta had very little to do with her daughter. Shortly after her confinement, she got a job with a baker over in d.i.n.kelsbuhl, and never visited Eva more than once a month. She cared very little for the child. A young fellow in the bakery had fallen in love with Meta, and wanted to marry her and move to America.

At Christmas they were married, and left the country at once. Marian was glad of it: the child now belonged entirely to her.

Though the people soon became accustomed to the existence of their diminutive fellow-townswoman, Eva was and remained the mysterious child of Eschenbach.

IX

The opera company made its rounds through the small cities that lie between the Danube and the Main, the Saale and the Neckar-and there are many of them,-its stay in any one place depending naturally on the interest shown by the public.

"The province is the enchanted Sleeping Beauty," said the impresario Dormaul to Wurzelmann and Daniel, "the province is still asleep, and you must rouse it from its slumbers by pressing the kiss of the Muse on its forehead."

But the impresario was unwilling to open his pockets. The princes who were to release Sleeping Beauty did not have sufficient means to make a presentable appearance, while their retinue was seedy-looking indeed.

The tenor had long since pa.s.sed the zenith of his career. His ma.s.sive paunch placed deadening strictures on his credentials as the impersonator of heroes. The buffo was an inveterate toper who had often been placed behind bars by the police for his nocturnal excesses. The barytone had a big lawsuit on his hands about an estate; his lawyers were two stars of obscurity from a small village; and at times he became so vexed at the cuts of his opponents that he lost his voice. The soprano was incessantly quarrelling with her colleagues, and the alto was an intriguing vixen quite without talent. In addition to these there were a dozen or so super-numeraries and under-studies, who were bored, who played practical jokes on each other, drew starvation wages, and had never learned anything.

The musicians were also a sorry lot. It was not rare that one or the other of them had p.a.w.ned his instrument. Once a performance had to be postponed because the violinists had stayed over their time at a village dance where they were playing in order to add to their paltry income.

The inspector, who was scene-shifter, promoter, ticket seller, and publicity agent all in one, and who was not equal to any of these positions, took French leave in the second year and ran off with one of the chorus girls, taking the box-office receipts for the evening with him.

One time the costumes were sent to the wrong address, with the result that Boieldieu's "La Dame Blanche" had to be played in woollen frocks, patched velvet skirts, filthy cotton blouses, and French wadding.

Another time the mob in "Martha" consisted of a distempered woman, a waiter brought in at the last minute from a herring restaurant, and the door-keeper of an orphanage: the chorus had gone on a strike because their salaries had been held up.

In Karlstadt the final act of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" could not be played, because during the intermission Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly had got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from the singer's nose.

If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman efforts of Daniel. Wurzelmann was always mixed up in some kind of love affair, introduced in time a ruinous system of favouritism, and became lazier and lazier as the weeks pa.s.sed by.

Daniel had to pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was too weak; Daniel had to distribute the roles, tame down refractory women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce effects with lamentably inadequate material. And from morning to night he had to wage war eternal against libellous action, inattention, and inability.