The Goose Man Part 39

n.o.body said a word. Everybody was dumb, astounded.

"Good lord, social obligations," continued Herr Carovius, "but after all you can't afford to be a backwoodsman. Music is supposed to enn.o.ble a man even externally. By the way, there is a rumour afloat that it is a symphony with chorus. How did you happen upon the idea? The laurels of the Ninth will not let you sleep? I would have thought that you didn't give a d.a.m.n about cla.s.sical models. Everybody is so taken up now with musical lullabies, _wage-la-wei-a_, that kind of stuff, you know. But then I suppose that is only a transition stage, as the fox said when he was being skinned."

He took off his nose gla.s.ses, polished them very hastily, fumbled for a while with his cord, and then put them on again. Having gained time in this way, he began to expatiate on the decadence of the arts, asked Daniel whether he had ever heard anything about a certain Hugo Wolf who was being much talked about and who was sitting in darkest Austria turning out songs like a Hottentot, made a number of derogatory remarks about a fountain that was being erected in the city, said that a company of dancers had just appeared at the Cultural Club in a repertory of grotesque pantomimes, remarked that as he was coming over he learned that there was an inst.i.tution in the city that loaned potato sacks, and that there had just been a fearful fire in Constantinople.

Thereupon he looked first at Daniel, then at M. Riviere, took the snarls of the one and the embarra.s.sment of the other to be encouraging signs for the continuation of his gossip, readjusted his gla.s.ses, and sneezed.

Then he smoothed out the already remarkably smooth hairs he had left on his head, rubbed his hands as if he were beginning to feel quite at home, and t.i.ttered when there was any sign of a stoppage in his asinine eloquence.

At times he would cast a stealthy glance at Gertrude, who would draw back somewhat as the arm of a thief who feels he is being watched.

Eleanore did not seem to be present so far as he was concerned: he did not see her. Finally she got up. She was tortured by the interruption of what she had just experienced from the music and by his flat, stale, and unprofitable remarks. Then he got up too, looked at his watch as if he were frightened, asked if he might repeat his visit at another time, took leave of Gertrude with a silly old-fashioned bow, from Daniel with a confidential handshake, and from the Frenchman with uncertain courtesy. Eleanore he again entirely overlooked.

Out in the hall he stopped, nodded several times, and said with an almost insane grin, speaking into the empty air before him: "_Auf Wiedersehen_, fair one! _Auf Wiedersehen_, fairest of all! Good-bye, my angel! Forget me not!"

In the room Eleanore whispered in a heavy, anxious tone: "What was that? What was that?"

VIII

Philippina Schimmelweis came to help Eleanore with the moving. At first Eleanore was quite surprised; then she became accustomed to having her around and found her most helpful. Jordan took no interest in anything that was going on. The last of all his hope seemed to be shattered by the fact that he was to move.

Philippina gradually fell into the habit of coming every day and working for a few hours either for Eleanore or for Gertrude, so long as the latter had anything to do in the kitchen. They became used to seeing her, and put up with her. She tried to make as little noise as possible; she had the mien of a person who is filling an important but unappreciated office.

She made a study of the house; she knew the rooms by heart. She preferred to come along toward sunset or a little later. One day she told Eleanore she had seen a mysterious-looking person out on the hall steps. Eleanore took a candle and went out, but she could not see any one. Philippina insisted nevertheless that she had seen a man in a green doublet, and that he had made a face at her.

She was particularly attracted by the rooms in the attic. She told the neighbours that there was an owl up there. As a result of this the children of that section began to fear the entire house, while the chancellor's wife, who lived on the ground floor, became so nervous that she gave up her apartment.

There was no outside door or entrance hall of any kind to Jordan's new quarters. You went direct from the stairway into the room where Eleanore worked and slept. Adjoining this was her father's room. People still called him the Inspector, although he no longer had such a position.

He sat in his narrow, cramped room the whole day. One wall was out of plumb. The windows he kept closed. When Eleanore brought him his breakfast or called him to luncheon, which she had cooked in the tiny box of a kitchen and then served in her own little room, he was invariably sitting at the table before a stack of papers, mostly old bills and letters. The arrangement of these he never changed.

Once she entered his room without knocking. He sprang up, closed a drawer as quickly as he could, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and tried to smile in an innocent way. Eleanore's heart almost stopped beating.

He never went out until it was dark, and on his return he could be seen carrying a package under his arm. This he took with him to his room.

At first Eleanore was always uneasy when she had to leave. She requested Philippina to be very careful and see to it that no stranger entered the house. Philippina had a box full of ribbons in Eleanore's cabinet. She set a chair against the door leading into Jordan's room; and when her hands were tired from rummaging around in the ribbons and her eyes weary from looking at all the flashy colours, she pressed her ear to the door to see if she could find out what the old man was doing.

At times she heard him talking. It seemed as if he were talking with some one. His voice had an exhortatory but tender tone in it. Philippina trembled with fear. Once she even pressed the latch; she wanted to open the door as quietly as possible, so that she might peep in and see what was really going on. But to her vexation, the door was bolted on the other side.

For Gertrude she did small jobs and ran little errands: she would go to the baker or the grocer for her. Gertrude became less and less active; it was exceedingly difficult for her to climb the stairs. Philippina took the place of a maid. The only kind of work she refused to do was work that would soil her clothes. Gertrude's shyness irritated her; one day she said in a snappy tone: "You are pretty proud, ain't you? You don't like me, do you?" Gertrude looked at her in amazement, and made no reply; she did not know what to say.

Whenever Philippina heard Daniel coming, she hid herself. But if he chanced to catch sight of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders at the "frame," as he contemptuously called her. It seemed to him that it would be neither wise nor safe to mistreat her. He felt that it was the better part of valour to look with favour on her inexplicable diligence, and let it go at that.

Once he even so completely overcame himself that he gave her his hand; but he drew it back immediately: he felt that he had never touched anything so slimy in his life; he thought he had taken hold of a frog.

Philippina acted as if she had not noticed what he had done. But scarcely had he gone into his room, when she turned to Gertrude with a diabolic glimmer in her eyes, and, making full use of her vulgar voice, said: "Whew! Daniel's kind, ain't he? No wonder people can't stand him!"

When she saw that Gertrude knit her brow at this exclamation, she wheeled about on the heels of her clumsy shoes, and screamed as if the devil were after her: "Oi, oi, Gertrude, Gertrude, oi, oi, the meat's burning! The meat's burning."

It was a false alarm. The meat was sizzling quite peacefully in the pan.

IX

Late in the afternoon of a stormy day in June Daniel came home from the last rehearsal of the "Harzreise," tired and out of humour. The rehearsals had been held in a small room in Weyrauth's Garden. He had quarrelled with all the musicians and with all the singers, male and female.

As he reached aegydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal possession which he had been so foolish as to trifle away.

He went up the steps, pa.s.sed by his own apartment, and climbed on up to the apartment of Inspector Jordan and his daughter Eleanore.

His eye fell on the board part.i.tion surrounding the stove and the copper cooking utensils that hung on the wall. There sat Eleanore, her arm resting on the window sill, her head on her hand: she was meditating-meditating and gaining new strength as she did so. Her face was turned toward the steep fall of a roof, the century-old frame-work, grey walls, darkened window panes and dilapidated wooden galleries, above which lay stillness and a rectangular patch of sky that was then covered with clouds.

"Good evening," said Daniel, as he stepped out of the darkness into the dimly lighted room. "What are you doing, Eleanore, what are you thinking about?"

Eleanore shuddered: "Ah, is it you, Daniel? You show yourself after a long while? And ask what I am thinking about? What curiosity! Do you want to come into my room?"

"No, no, sit perfectly still," he replied, and prevented her from getting up by touching her on the shoulder. "Is your father at home?"

She nodded. He drew a narrow bench from which he had removed the coffee mill and a strainer up to the serving table, and sat down as far as possible from Eleanore, though even so they were as close together as if they were sitting opposite each other in a cab.

"How are you making out?" she asked with embarra.s.sment, and without the remotest display of warmth.

"You know that I am beating a perforated drum, Eleanore." After a pause he added: "But whatever people may do or fail to do, between us two there must be a clear understanding: Are you going to Paris?"

She dropped her head in silence. "Well, I could go; there is nothing to prevent me," she said, softly and with hesitation. "But you see how it is. I am no longer as I used to be. Formerly I could scarcely picture the happiness I would derive from having some one there in whom I could confide and who would be interested in me. I would not have hesitated for a moment. But now? If I go, what becomes clear from my going? And if I stay here, what will be clear? I have already told you, Daniel, that I don't understand you. How terrible it is to have to say that! What do you want now? How is all this going to come out?"

"Eleanore, do you recall Benda's last letter? You yourself brought it to me, and after that I was a different person. He wrote to me in that letter just as if he had never heard of Gertrude, and said that I should not pa.s.s you by. He wrote that we two were destined for each other, and neither for any one else in the world. Of course you recall how I acted after reading the letter. And even before that: Do you remember the day of the wedding when you put the myrtle wreath on? Why, I knew then that I had lost everything, that my real treasure had vanished. And even before that: Do you recall that I found that Fraulein Sylvia von Erfft had your complexion, your figure, your hair, and your hands? And even before that: When you went walking with Benda in the woods, I walked along behind, and took so much pleasure in watching you walk, but I didn't know it. And when you came into the room there in the Long Row, and caressed the mask and sat down at the piano and leaned your head against the wood, don't you recall how indispensable you were to me, to my soul? The only trouble is, I didn't know it; I didn't know it."

"Well, there is nothing to be done about all that: that is a by-gone story," said Eleanore, holding her breath, while a blush of emotion flitted across her face only to give way to a terrible paleness.

"Do you believe that I am a person to be content with what is past?

Every one, Eleanore, owes himself his share of happiness, and he can get it if he simply makes up his mind to it. It is not until he has neglected it, abandoned it, and pa.s.sed it by, that his fate makes a slave out of him."

"That is just what I do not understand," said Eleanore, and looked into his face with a more cheerful sense of freedom. "It wounds my heart to see you waging a losing battle against self-deception and ugly defiance.

We two cannot think of committing a base deed, Daniel. It is impossible, isn't it?"

Daniel, plainly excited, bent over nearer to her: "Do you know where I am standing?" he asked, while the blue veins in his temples swelled and hammered: "Well, I'll tell you. I am standing on a marble slab above an abyss. To the right and left of this abyss are nothing but blood-thirsty wolves. There is no choice left to me except either to leap down into the abyss, or to allow myself to be torn to pieces by the wolves. When such a being as you comes gliding along through the air, a winged creature like you, that can rescue me and pull me up after it, is there any ground for doubt as to what should be done?"

Eleanore folded her arms across her bosom, and half closed her eyes: "Ah no, Daniel," she said in a kindly way, "you are exaggerating, really.

You see everything too white and too black: A winged creature, I? Where, pray, are my wings? And wolves? All these silly little people-wolves?

Oh no, Daniel. And blood-thirsty? Listen, Daniel, that is going quite too far; don't you think so yourself?"

"Don't crush my feelings, Eleanore!" cried Daniel, in a suppressed tone and with pa.s.sionate fierceness: "Don't crush my feelings, for they are all I have left. You are not capable of thinking as you have just been talking, you cannot think that low, you are not capable of such languid, ordinary feelings. The over-tone! The over-tone! Think a little! Can't you see them gritting their teeth at me? Can't you hear them howling day and night? Can you possibly say that they are kind or compa.s.sionate? Or are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is not the slime of slander thick upon their tongues? Is not your smile a thorn in their flesh? Do they not envy me the little I have and for which I have flayed myself? Don't they envy me my music, which they do not understand, and which they hate because they do not understand it?

Would it not fill them with joy if I had to make my living beating stones on the public highway or cleaning out sewers? Do they find it possible to pardon me for my life and the things that make up my life?

And yet you say there are no wolves? That they are not wolves? Tell me that you are afraid of them, that you do not wish to turn them against yourself; but don't tell me that you are committing an evil act when I call you to me, you with your wings, and you come."

His arms were stretched out toward her on the top of the kitchen table; they were trembling to the very tips of his fingers.

"The evil deed, Daniel," whispered Eleanore, "hasn't anything to do with these people; it was committed against the higher law of morals, against our feeling of right usage and established honour...."

"False," he hissed, "false! They have made you believe that. They have preached that to you for centuries and centuries; your mother, your grand-mother, your great-grand-mother, they have all been telling you that. It is false; it is a lie; it is all a lie. It is with this very lie that they support their power and protect their organisation. It is truth on the contrary that fills my heart, fills it with joy, and helps me along. What nature offers, obedience to nature, that is truth. Truth lies in your thoughts, in your feelings, girl, in your choked feelings, in your blood, in the 'yes' you speak in your dreams. Of course I know that they need their lie, for they must be organised, the wolves; they must go in packs, otherwise they are impotent. But I have only my truth, only my truth as I stand on the marble slab above the abyss."