The Goose Man Part 47

But as soon as her prayer was ended she again felt stifled in the poisoned air about her, while the desire to acquit herself of the crime of which she felt guilty, unable though she was to define the crime or determine her part in it, robbed her of her sleep. She felt that a great jagged stone was suspended over her head, that it was becoming less and less firmly attached every day, and that its fall if not imminent was certain.

Hour after hour pa.s.sed by; Daniel finally appeared in the vestibule. He was not a little terrified when he saw the burning lamp and Gertrude sitting up in bed.

He went into the bedroom, closed the door, walked up to the cradle, looked at the child, and then went over to Gertrude. She cast a glance of infinite inquiry at him. It was a look that seemed to implore him for a decision, a judgment. At the same time she put out her hands as if to ward off any approach on his part. When she saw that he was astonished, she softened the expression on her face, and said: "Give me your hand."

She took his right hand, stroked it, and whispered: "Poor hand, poor hand."

Daniel bit his lips: "Oh woman, what ...?" That was all.

He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments earlier. He sank down beside her, and fell asleep with his head on her breast.

She kept on holding his hand. She looked into his pale, narrow face and at his angular brow, the skin of which could be seen to twitch every now and then under the loose flowing hair that hung over it. The oil in the lamp was getting low, the wick had begun to smell. She was afraid however to put it out lest she might waken Daniel. She looked on in silence as the light became dimmer and dimmer and finally went out, leaving only the red glow of the wick. This too died away in time, and it became dark.

XII

For some time Eleanore had noticed that the baker's boy, instead of carefully putting the rolls in the sack each morning as had always been his custom, threw them through the lattice on to the ground.

The newspaper boy stopped speaking to her; the postman smiled scornfully; and even the beggar, at least she thought so, asked for his alms in a tone of impudence.

One day she was pa.s.sing through Schmausen Street; a woman was leaning out of the window. Seeing Eleanore coming, she called back into the room, whereupon a young man and three half-grown girls rushed to the window, began making remarks to each other, and gaped at her with looks that made her turn deathly pale.

Another time Daniel brought her a free ticket to a concert. She went, and as soon as she reached the hall she was struck by the discourteous and indecent manner in which the bystanders looked at her. A well-dressed woman moved away from her. Some men kept walking around her, grinning at her. She found it intolerable, and went home.

Exercise in the open had often driven away the cares that chanced to be weighing upon her: she went skating. As soon as the people saw her, they began to whisper among themselves. She did not bother about them or their remarks; she cut her beautiful figures on the ice as if she were quite alone. A group of young girls pointed at her with their fingers.

She went up to them with pride glistening in her eyes, and they all ran away. Those who had formerly paid homage to her avoided her now. Her soul rebelled within her; meeting with so much unexpected and cowardly vulgarity enflamed her sensibilities and enn.o.bled her self-respect.

One day in December she crossed the Wine Market, and started to pa.s.s through a narrow street that led to the Halle Gate. Standing at the entrance to the alley were a number of men engaged in conversation. She recognised Alfons Diruf among them. She thought they would step to one side and let her pa.s.s, but not one of them moved. They gaped at her in unmitigated shamelessness. She could have turned about and taken another street, but that defiance on the part of those men made her insist upon her rights to go the way she had originally decided upon. Impressed, apparently, by the flaming blue of her eyes, the scoundrels at last condescended to shift their lazy frames to one side. They formed an espalier through which she had to walk. But worse than this were the lewd looks that she knew were following her, and the laughter that greeted her ears. It was the type of laughter ordinarily heard at night when one pa.s.ses a low dive, in which the sc.u.m of human society has gathered to amuse itself by the telling of salacious stories.

She often had the feeling, particularly after dark, that some one was following her. Once she looked around, and a man was behind her. He wore a havelock; he turned quickly into a gate. A few days later she had a similar experience, but this time she was frightened worse than ever, for she thought it was Herr Carovius.

One evening as she was leaving the house she saw the same figure standing by the church on the other side of the street. As she hesitated and wondered whether she should go on, another person joined the first.

She thought it was Philippina. The two began to talk, but Eleanore could not make out who they were; it was snowing, and there was no street lamp nearby.

She could not tell why, but she was suddenly seized with anxiety for Daniel; for him and for no one else. She felt that unless she went back something dreadful would happen to him. She rushed up the steps to the attic room, and knocked at his door; there was not a sound. She opened the door and went in, but everything was dark. In the darkness, however, standing out against the white background from the light of the snow, she saw his body. He was sitting at the piano; he had his arms on the lid, his head between his hands. Eleanore hastened up to him, and, with a tone of sweet sadness in what she said, threw her arms around his neck.

Daniel took her on his lap, pressed her head to his bosom, and laughed with open month and shining teeth but without making a sound. He often laughed that way now.

XIII

He laughed that way at the intrigues that were being forged against him by his bitterest enemy, Fraulein Varini, and which resulted in his meeting with distrust and opposition in everything he undertook at the City Theatre.

He laughed that way at the anonymous letters, filled with insulting remarks, which were being sent him by his fellow citizens, and which he read with nave curiosity merely to see how far human nastiness and b.e.s.t.i.a.l hate could go.

He laughed that way when he received the letter from Baroness von Auffenberg informing him that she was forced to discontinue her lessons and recitals. She said that her const.i.tution had been weakened, and that she was going to close her town house and spend the winter at her country place at Hersbruck. Daniel heard however that she spent a great deal of her time in town, and that she had arranged for an elaborate cycle of _musicales_, a thing she had never dared to do under his administration. Andreas Doderlein had been engaged as her musical adviser: now she could rave and go into ecstasies and hypnotise her impotent soul in the mephitic air of artificial aroma just as much as she pleased.

And he laughed that way at the weekly attacks upon him and his art that appeared in the _Frankischer Herold_, copies of which were delivered at his front door with the regularity of the sun. The attacks consisted of sly, caustic sneers, secrets that had been ferreted out with dog-like keenness, gigantic broadsides based on hearsay evidence, and perfidious suspicions lodged against Daniel Nothafft, the artist, and Daniel Nothafft, the man.

The articles never failed to mention the Goose Man. Daniel asked to have the allusion explained. The Goose Man was elevated to the rank and dignity of an original humourist. "What is the latest concerning the Goose Man?" became a standing head-line. Or the reader's eye would fall on the following notice: "The Goose Man is again attracting the attention of all friends of music. He has had the ingenious audacity to make the opera 'Stradella' more enjoyable by the interpolation of a funeral march of his own make. The ever-submissive domestic birds which he carries under his arms have rewarded him for his efforts in this connection by the cackling of their abundant and affectionate grat.i.tude."

The birthplace of these inimitable achievements in the field of journalistic wit was the reserved table at the Crocodile. If ever in the history of the world men have laughed real honest tears it was at the writing of such news bearing on the life and conduct of the Goose Man.

The editor-in-chief, Weibezahl, was the recording secretary at these intellectual Olympiads, and Herr Carovius was the protagonist. He had access to reliable sources, as newspaper men say, and every evening he surprised the round table with new delicacies for Weibezahl's columns.

Daniel was ignorant of what was going on. But the Goose Man, the expression as well as the figure, became interwoven with his thoughts, and acquired, somehow and somewhere in the course of time, a transfigured meaning.

XIV

One day Frau Kirschner wrote to Daniel telling him that she did not wish to have anything more to do with him; she demanded in the same letter that he pay back the money she had advanced him. He could not raise it: the City Theatre had already made him a loan, he had no friends, and M.

Riviere, the only person on earth who might have been able to come to his rescue, had gone back to France.

Matters took their usual course: A lawyer notified Daniel, giving him so many days grace; when these had elapsed and no payment had been made, a summons was served on him; the sheriff came in, and in default of any other object of value he p.a.w.ned the piano.

Daniel's objections were quite ineffectual: a few days more and the piano would be put up at auction.

One gloomy morning in January Philippina entered his room.

"Say, Daniel," she began, "would you like to have some money from me?"

Daniel turned his head slowly and looked at her in amazement.

"I have lots of it," she continued with her hoa.r.s.e voice, her gla.s.sy eyes glittering underneath her bangs. "I have been saving it a pfennig at a time ever since I was a child. I can give you the money you owe the Councillor's wife. Sling it at her, the old hag! Say to me: 'Please Philippina, give me the money,' and you'll find it on the table."

"Are you crazy?" asked Daniel, "get out of here just as quickly as your feet can carry you!" He felt distinctly creepy in her presence.

Philippina, beside herself with rage, seized his hand. Before he could do a thing she bit him just below the little finger. The wound was quite deep. He groaned, shook her off, and pushed her back. She looked at him triumphantly, but her face had turned yellow.

"Listen, Daniel," she said in a begging, beseeching tone, "don't be so ugly! Don't be so mean toward me! Don't be so jealous!"

The wench's infamous smile, her hair hanging down over her eyes, her big red hands, the snow-flakes on her short cloak, the border on her fiery red dress below her cloak, and the poison green ribbon on her hat-this ensemble of ugliness filled Daniel with the loathing he might have experienced had he stood face to face with the most detestable picture he had ever seen from the world of human beings. But as he turned his head, a feeling of sympathy came over him; he suspected that the girl was bound to him by bonds that did not reach him until after they had taken their course through the dark channels of some subterranean labyrinth. What she had done filled him with dismay; but as a revelation of character it surprised him and set him to thinking.

He went over to the washing table to put his bleeding hand in the water.

Philippina took a fresh handkerchief from the cabinet, and handed it to him as a bandage. He looked at her with piercing eyes, and said: "What kind of a person are you? What sort of a devil is in you, anyway? Be careful, Jason Philip's daughter, be careful!"

Since there was a tone of kindness in these words, the muscles of Philippina's face moved in a mysterious way. Her features were distorted as if by a grin, and yet she was not grinning. She drew a leather purse from her cloak pocket, opened it, and took out two one-hundred-mark notes and a gold coin. They had been wrapped in paper. She unfolded the paper and the notes, laid them, together with the coin, on the table, and handed Daniel a written statement.

He read it: "I, the undersigned, Daniel Nothafft, promise to pay to Philippina Schimmelweis two hundred and twenty marks at five per cent interest, for value received."

"With that you c'n pay the sheriff and git yourself out of this mess,"

said Philippina, in a most urgent tone. "You can't give piano lessons on a rolling pin, and that music box of yours is after all the tool you make your living by. Sign that, and you will be in peace."

"Where did you get the money?" asked Daniel. "How did you ever come by so much money? Tell me the truth." All of a sudden he remembered Theresa's words: "All that nice money, all that nice money!"

Philippina began to chew her finger nails. "That's none of your business," she said gruffly, "it ain't been stolen. Moreover, I c'n tell you," she said, as she felt that his distrust was taking on a threatening aspect, "mother give it to me on the sly. She didn't want me to be without a penny if anything happened. For my father-he would like to see me strung up. She give it to me, I say, on the side, and she made me swear before the cross that I would never let any one know about it."

This tale of horror made Daniel shake his head; he had his doubts. He felt she was lying, and yet there was a mysterious force back of her statement and in her eyes. He was undecided; he thought it over. His livelihood was at stake. Weeks, months might pa.s.s by before he could get another piano. Philippina's readiness to help him was a riddle to him, everything she said was repulsive and ba.n.a.l; but after all she was willing to help in a most substantial way, and he was in such difficulties that voices of admonition simply had to be drowned out.

"It is nothing but money," he thought contemptuously, and sat down to put his name to the note.