The Goose Man Part 43

PHILIPPINA STARTS A FIRE

I

Daniel and Eleanore had reached a stage of mutual silence; it was not the first time, however, and it was as disagreeable now as it had been then. They would meet on the steps, and pa.s.s each other with a mere nod.

If Eleanore came in to see Gertrude, Daniel withdrew.

Once Eleanore called when Gertrude was not at home. Daniel was stubborn; nor could Eleanore manage to make a single rational remark. He did not like her looks; he suspected her paleness and outward, enforced cheerfulness. "It is an undignified state of affairs, Eleanore," he exclaimed, "we must make an end of it."

Make an end of it? Yes-but how? This was the thought that came at once to Eleanore's mind. Every day the chain that bound her to him became stronger.

Daniel was also tortured by the sight of Gertrude. He felt that she was watching him and that she was worried about him. More than that, the event was approaching that surrounded her with an atmosphere of suffering and made forbearance obligatory. Her features, though haggard and distorted, bore nevertheless an expression of mysterious transfiguration.

After Gertrude had noticed for some time that Daniel was being estranged from his work and that he had lost interest in everything, she decided to have a talk with Eleanore. She did it without preparation or tenderness.

"Can't you see that you are ruining him?" she cried.

"You want me to be ruined, do you?" asked Eleanore, in surprised dismay.

She had appreciated at once and without difficulty the complete range of Gertrude's renunciation.

"What difference does it make about you?" replied Gertrude harshly; "what are you getting excited about?"

This question made Eleanore's ideas of order and duty quake and totter.

She looked at her sister with incredulous eyes and in perfect silence.

It was not the happy, gentle Gertrude that had spoken, but the Gertrude of months ago, the lonely, loveless Gertrude.

What difference does it make about you? Why are you getting excited?

That was equivalent to saying: Make short work of your life, and don't draw out the episode in his life any longer than you have to.

Eleanore took courage to carry out the plan she had had in mind for a long while and in which she placed her last hope.

One evening she went to Daniel and said: "I should like to go with you to Eschenbach, Daniel, and visit your mother."

"Why do you wish to do that?" he asked in amazement. He and his mother did not write to each other: that was due first of all to their natures, and secondly to the condition in which each was now living. But he knew that Eleanore received an occasional letter from Eschenbach which she answered without consulting him. This had never seemed strange to him until now.

A few days later she repeated her wish; Daniel granted it. They decided upon the following Sunday for the excursion.

II

A warm, languid October sun shone over the land; the forests presented a gorgeous array of autumnal foliage; the fields lay stretched in barren rows; along the hills of Franconia floated clouds that looked like down driven by the wind.

They had taken the train as far as Triesdorf; from there they went on to Merckendorf by stage coach. The rest of the distance they walked. Daniel pointed to a flock of geese that were trotting around on the sh.o.r.e of an abandoned pond, and said: "That is our national bird; his cackle is our music. But it doesn't sound so bad."

A peasant woman pa.s.sed by, and made the sign of the cross before the picture of a saint: "It is strange that everything has suddenly become Catholic," said Eleanore.

Daniel nodded, and replied that when his father moved to Eschenbach a few other Protestant families were living there, all of whom joined in Protestant worship. Later, he said, most of them emigrated, leaving his mother as the only Protestant, so far as he knew, in the neighbourhood.

But, Daniel remarked in the course of conversation, his mother had never had any unpleasant experience on this account, and he himself had frequently gone to church, primarily of course to hear the organ, though no one had ever taken offence at this. "There is a totally different type of people here," he added, "people who lay greater stress on externals than we do, and yet are more secretive."

Eleanore looked at the church tower whose Spanish-green roof rose from the valley. After a long silence she said: "I wonder whether it will be a boy or a girl, Gertrude's baby? Oh, a girl, of course. Some day it will be in the world, and will look at me with eyes, with real eyes. How strange that a child of yours should look at me!"

"What is there strange about that? Many children are born, many look at some one."

"What are you going to call it?" asked Eleanore.

"If it is blond and has blue eyes like yours, I am going to call it Eva."

"Eva!" cried Eleanore, "no, that won't do." She herself had chosen the name of Eva for the child of the maid at the Rudigers'. That he should now want to call Gertrude's child by the same name seemed so strange to her.

"Why not Eva?" he asked. "There is something back of this objection on your part. Women always have something up their sleeve. Out with it! Why do you object to Eva?"

Eleanore smiled, and shook her head. She would have liked to make a clean confession to him, but she was not certain how he would take it: she was afraid he would turn back, enraged at her cunning. Once the child had been born and lay there before him, it would captivate him, and she knew it.

They had stopped and were looking out over the sunlit plains. "How alone we are!" said Daniel.

"Everything is easier here," said Eleanore thoughtfully. "If one could only forget where one comes from, it would be easy to be happy."

III

"I have been away for seven years," said Daniel as they pa.s.sed through the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small-the Town Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and better kept. As he pa.s.sed over the three steps at the front gate, each one of which was bulging out like a huge oyster sh.e.l.l, and entered the shop with its smell of spices, the past dwindled to nothing. Marian was so happy she could not speak. She reached one of her hands to Daniel, the other to Eleanore. Her first question was about Gertrude.

In the room sat a four-year-old child with blond hair and marvellous blue eyes. Its little face was of the most delicate beauty, its body was delicately formed.

"Who is the child? To whom does it belong?" asked Daniel.

"It is your own child, Daniel," said his mother.

"My own child! Yes, for heaven's sakes-!" He blushed, turned pale, looked first at his mother, and then at Eleanore.

"It is your own flesh and blood. Don't you ever think of Meta any more?"

"Of Meta.... Oh, I see. And you, you adopted the child? And you, Eleanore, knew all about this? And you, Mother, took the child?" He sat down at the table, and covered his face with his hands. "That was what Eleanore had in mind?" he murmured timidly to himself. "And I presume that to make the story complete the child's name is Eva ...?"

"Yes, Eva," whispered Eleanore, touched by the situation. "Go to your father, Eva, and shake hands with him."

The child did as it had been told. Then Marian related to her son how Eleanore had brought the child to Eschenbach, and how Meta had married and gone to America with her husband.

Every look, every movement on the part of Marian showed how great her love for the child was: she guarded it as the apple of her eye.

The circle of wonderful events closed in around Daniel's heart. Where responsibility lay and where guilt, where will power ended and fate began, Daniel could not say. To express grat.i.tude would be vulgar; to conceal his emotions was difficult. He was ashamed of himself in the presence of both of the women. But when he looked at the living creature, his shame lost all meaning. And how exalted Eleanore appeared in his eyes just then! She seemed to him equally amiable and worthy of respect, whether he regarded her as an active or as a sentient, feeling woman. He almost shuddered at the thought that she was so near him; that what she had done had been done for him filled him with humility.

The strangest of all, however, was little Eva herself. He could not see enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human being of the n.o.blest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of music; and in her walk and gestures in general there was a rhythm which promised much for her future poise and winsomeness.

Daniel took Eleanore through the village and out to the old town gate.

It was the time of the annual fair; Eschenbach was crowded. They returned on this account to the more quiet streets, and finally entered the church. The s.e.xton came up and admitted Daniel to the choir. Daniel sat down at the organ; the s.e.xton pumped the bellows; Eleanore took a seat on one of the little benches near the side wall.

Daniel's eyes became fixed; his fingers touched the keys with supernatural power; he began to improvise. There were two motifs following each other in close succession; both were in fifths; they were united into one; they ran from the low to the high registers, from h.e.l.l through the World to Heaven. A hymn crowned the improvised composition.