The Goose Man Part 5

In the dust of one of the drawers she found, sure enough, a bundle of papers, and among them the receipt which Gottfried Nothafft had sent back to Jason Philip ten years before. She read in the indistinct light the confidential words of the deceased. She saw that Jason Philip had received three thousand taler.

After she had read this, she crumpled up the paper. Then she put it into her ap.r.o.n pocket and screamed out: "Be gone, Gottfried, be gone!"

She went down stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her behaviour that she made the sign of the cross.

VI

When the midday meal was over, the children left the table and prepared to go to school. Jason Philip lighted a cigar, and took the newspaper from his pocket.

"Did you find anything for the second-hand furniture man?" he asked, as he puffed away.

"I found something for him and something for myself," she said.

"What do you mean? You found something for yourself?"

"What do I mean? I mean just what I said. I have always known that there was something crooked about that money."

"What money are you talking about? Listen, don't speak to me in riddles!

When you have anything to say to me, say it. Do you understand?"

"I mean Gottfried Nothafft's money, Jason Philip," said Theresa, almost in a whisper.

Jason Philip bent over the table. "Then you have at last found the old receipt, have you?" he asked with wide-opened eyes. "Ahem! You have found the receipt that I've been looking for for years ...?"

Theresa nodded. She took out a hairpin, and stuck it in a crust of bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows protruding, planted himself before Theresa.

"I suppose you think I am going to let you browbeat me," he began.

"Well, my dear woman, you're mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence?

Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money at the county fair, or had squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is, Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That's what he did; that's the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit who would waste it in debauchery and worse if possible."

"Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper," said Theresa, without looking up.

"Things may go along all right for ten years, and that seems like a long time, but the vengeance of Heaven comes in the eleventh, as it has already come in the case of little Marcus."

"Theresa-you're talking like a mad woman," said Jason Philip at the top of his voice. With that he picked up a chair, and threw it on the floor so violently that every cup, spoon, and plate in the room shook.

Theresa turned her peasant face toward him without the shadow of a trace of fear. He was a trifle alarmed: "You'll have to be responsible, if you can, for any misfortune that visits us in the future." She spoke these words with a deep voice.

"Do you think I am a bandit?" said Jason Philip. "Do you think I want to pocket the money? Don't you think that I am capable of anything better or higher than that? Or is ambition of any sort quite beyond your powers of comprehension?"

"Well, what ambitions do you have?" asked Theresa in a tone of sullenness, her eyes in the meantime blinking.

"Listen," Jason Philip continued, as he sat down on the chair he had so violently abused a minute before, and a.s.sumed the air of a teacher: "The culprit has got to submit, and that with good grace. He has got to fall on his knees before me. And he'll come to it. I have made some inquiries; I am on his tracks; and I know that he has just about reached the end of his rope. He'll come, depend upon it he'll come around, and when he does he will whine. Then I am going to take him into the business. In this way we will see whether it is humanly possible to make a useful man out of him. If I can, and if he sticks, I'll call him into the office, tell him the whole story, make everything as clear as day to him, and then offer to take him in as a partner in the firm. You have got to admit that he will be a made man if he becomes my partner. He will have sense enough himself to see this, and as sure as you are living, he will first kiss my hand and then eat out of it for the kindness I have shown him. And once this has all been put through, I will bind him to us more firmly than ever by having him marry Philippina."

A wry smile disfigured Theresa's face. "I see, so, so," she said in a sing-song tone. "You will have him marry Philippina. I take it that you feel that she will be hard to marry, and that the man who does marry her will have his hands full. Well, that's not a bad idea."

"In this way," continued Jason Philip, without detecting the scorn in Theresa's words, "the account between the culprit and myself will be settled. He will become a decent member of society, the money will remain in the family, and Philippina will be cared for."

"And suppose he does not come; suppose he does not fall on his knees; suppose you have made a miscalculation. What then?" Whether Jason Philip himself believed what he had said Theresa could not determine. Nor had she the slightest desire to enlighten herself on this point. She did not look him in the face, but contented herself with letting her eyes rest on his hands.

"Well-there will be time then to change my plans," said Jason Philip, in a tone of peeved vexation. "Leave it to me. I have turned the whole situation over in my mind; I have omitted not the slightest detail. I know men, and I have never made a mistake in judging them. _Mahlzeit!_"

With that he went out.

Theresa remained seated for a while, her arms folded across her breast.

Then she got up, and walked over to the door that opened on to the court. Suddenly she stopped as if rooted to the sill: she caught sight of Philippina, who was then sitting by the window mending a pair of socks. On her face there was an expression of navete that may be harmless in itself, but it was enough to arouse suspicion.

"What's the matter with you, why didn't you go to school?" asked Theresa uneasily.

"I couldn't; I had a headache," said Philippina curtly, and broke the thread as she gave a hasty jerk at the needle. Her dishevelled hair hung down over her forehead and quite concealed her face.

Theresa was silent. Her gloom-laden eyes rested on the diligent fingers of Philippina. It was easy to suspect that the girl had heard everything Jason Philip had said, for he had such a loud voice. She could have done this without going to the trouble of listening at the door. Theresa was minded to give the girl a talking-to; but she controlled herself, and quietly withdrew.

Philippina looked straight through her as she left. But she did not interrupt her work, and in a short while she could be heard humming a tune to herself. There was a challenge in her voice.

VII

Daniel's money was about at an end. The new sources on which he had hoped to be able to draw were nowhere to be discovered. He defiantly closed the doors against care; and when fear showed its gloomy face, he shut up shop, and went out to drown his sorrows with the brethren of the Vale of Tears.

Schwalbe, the sculptor, had made the acquaintance of Zingarella, then engaged in singing lascivious couplets at the Academy, and invited the fellows to join him.

The Academy was a theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a dark, dank cavern.

With an indifference that seemed to argue that Zingarella made no distinction between chairs and people, she took her seat between the sculptor and the writer. She laughed, and yet it was not laughter; she spoke, and her words were empty; she stretched out her hands, and the gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one side, and thereby stagger even the most hardened frequenter of this sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath the skin there was something that glimmered like water under thin ice.

The former winsomeness of her lips was still traceable in the sorrowed curves of her now ravaged mouth.

At times her restless eyes, seeking whom they might entangle, were fixed on Daniel, then sitting quite alone at the lower end of the table. In order to avoid the unpleasant sensation a.s.sociated with the thought of going up to such a distinguished-looking person and making herself known to him, she would have been grateful had some one picked her up and thrown her bodily at his feet. There was an element of strangeness about him. Zingarella saw that he had had nothing to do with women of her kind. This tortured her; she gnashed her teeth.

Daniel did not sense her hatred. As he looked into her face, marked with a life of transgression and already claimed by fate, he built up in his own soul a picture of inimitable chast.i.ty. He tried to see the playmate of a G.o.d. The curtain decorated with the distorted face of a harlequin, the acrobat and the dog trainer at the adjacent table, who were quarrelling over their money, the four half-grown gamblers directly behind him, the big fat woman who was lying stretched out on a bench with a red handkerchief over her face and trying to sleep, the writer who slandered other writers, the inventor who discoursed so volubly and incessantly on perpetual motion-to all of this he paid not the slightest bit of attention. For him it could just as well have been in the bottom of the sea. He got up and left.

But as he saw the snow-covered streets before him and was unable to decide whether he should go home or not, Zingarella stepped up to him.

"Come, be quick, before they see that we are together," she whispered.

And thus they walked along like two fugitives, whose information concerning each other stops short with the certainty that both are poor and wretched and are making their way through a snow storm.

"What is your name?" asked Daniel.

"My name is Anna Siebert."

The clock in the St. Lorenz Church struck three. The one up in the tower of St. Sebaldus corroborated this reckoning by also striking three and in much deeper tones.

They came to an old house, and after floundering through a long, dark, ill-smelling pa.s.sage way, entered a room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Anna Siebert lighted a lamp that had a red chimney. Gaudy garments of the soubrette hung on the wall. A big, grey cat lay on the table cover and purred.

Anna Siebert took the cat in her arms and caressed it. Its name was Zephyr. It accompanied her wherever she went.

Daniel threw himself on a chair and looked at the lamp. Zingarella, standing before the mirror, stroked the cat. Gazing distractedly into s.p.a.ce, she remarked that the manager had discharged her because the public was no longer satisfied with her work.

"Is this what you call the public?" asked Daniel, who never once took his eyes from the lamp, just as Anna Siebert kept hers rigidly fixed on the desolate distances of the mirror. "These fathers of families who side-step every now and then, these counter-jumpers, the mere looks of whom is enough to s.n.a.t.c.h your clothing from your body, this human filth at the sight of which G.o.d must conceal His face in shame-this is what you call the public?"