The Goose Man Part 53

With that Eberhard stepped up very calmly to the unleashed demon in pajamas, seized him by the throat, and held him with such a fierce and unrelenting grip that Herr Carovius sank to his knees, while his face became as blue as a boiled carp. After this he was remarkably quiet; he crept away. At times he t.i.ttered like a simpleton; at times a venomous glance shot forth from under his eyelids. But that was all.

Eberhard poured some water in a basin, dipped his hands in it, dried them, and went away.

The picture of the whining man with the puffed and swollen eyes and the blue face was indelibly stamped on Eberhard's memory. He had felt a greedy, voluptuous desire to commit murder. He felt he was not merely punishing and pa.s.sing final judgment on his own tormentor and persecutor, but on the hidden enemy of humanity, the arch-criminal of the age, the destroyer of all n.o.ble seed.

And yet the exalted outburst of Herr Carovius had precisely the effect that Eberhard had least expected. His confidence in Eleanore's innocence had been shaken. There may have been in Herr Carovius's voice, despite the slanderous wrath with which his cowardly tongue was coated, something that sounded truer than the wretch himself suspected. Eberhard saw just then, for the first time in his life, the adored figure of the girl as a human being like all other human beings; and as if through a distant vision he experienced in his heart what had taken place.

His illusions were destroyed.

In his soul he had gone through the trials of renunciation long ago. His pa.s.sionate wishes of former times had gone through a process of weakening from loss of blood. He had learned to bow to the inevitable; he had made a special effort to acquire this bit of earthly wisdom. When he surveyed the life he had lived in the past five years, it resembled, despite its flux and the incessant change from city to city and country to country, a sojourn in a room with closed doors and drawn shades.

When he had returned to the city, which he loved simply because Eleanore lived in it, he had had no intention of reminding Eleanore of the expiration of the time mutually agreed upon. He felt that it would be a ba.n.a.l display of poor taste to appear before her once again as an awkward, jilted suitor, and try to reconnect the thread where it had been so ruthlessly broken five years ago. He had intended not to disturb her or worry her in any way. But to go to her and speak with her, that had been the one bright ray of hope in all these empty years.

After the scene with Herr Carovius he decided quite firmly to keep away from Eleanore.

His ready cash had shrunk to a few hundred marks. He discharged his servants, disposed of some of his jewelry, and rented one of those little houses that are stuck on the rocks up by the castle like so many wasp nests. The house he took had been occupied before him by the Pfragners, and with its three rooms was not much larger than a fair-sized cage in a menagerie. But he had taken it into his head to live there, and that was all there was to it. He bought some old furniture, and adorned the slanting walls of the dilapidated barracks with such pictures as he had.

One evening there was a knock at the green door of the cottage. Eberhard opened, and saw Herr Carovius standing before him.

Herr Carovius entered the Baron's doll house, looked around in astonishment, and, pale as a sheet, said: "So help me G.o.d, it seems to me you are trying to play the role of a hermit. This won't do; this is no place for a Baron; I will not stand for it."

Eberhard reached for the book he had been reading, a volume of Carl du Prel, and read on without replying to Herr Carovius or even taking notice of the fact that he was present.

Herr Carovius tripped from one foot to the other. "Perhaps the Baron will be so good as to take a look at his account," he said in a beseeching tone. "I am in a tight place. My capital is gone, and my debts in the shape of interest have been swelling like the Pegnitz in the spring of the year. Would you like to know what I have been living on for the last three months? I have been living on turnips, potato peelings, and brick cheese; that has been my daily diet; and I have submitted to it for the sake of my Baron."

"I am not a bit interested in what you have been eating," said the Baron arrogantly, and kept on reading.

Herr Carovius continued with an imbecile sulk: "When you left me recently because of that little quarrel we had about the Goose Man, it never occurred to me that you were going to take the matter so seriously. Lovers like to be teased, I thought. He'll come back, I thought, he'll come back just as sure as laughter follows tickling.

Well, I was mistaken. I thought you were of a more gentle disposition, and that you would be more indulgent with an old friend. Yes, we make mistakes sometimes."

Eberhard remained silent.

Herr Carovius sighed, and sat down timidly on the narrow edge of the sofa that stood next to the whitewashed wall. He sat there for almost an hour in perfect silence. Eberhard appreciated neither the ridiculous nor the fantastic element in the conduct of his guest. He read on.

And then, all of a sudden, Herr Carovius sprang to his feet, took his wallet from his pocket, drew out a thousand-mark note, and laid it, together with a blank receipt, across the page Eberhard was reading.

Before the Baron could recover from his amazement he had already disappeared, closing the door behind him. The sound of his footsteps on the street could be heard in the room; but he was gone.

What rare living creatures there are, O World, and what rare dead ones, too! This is the thought that pa.s.sed through Eberhard's mind.

IX

That two men as radically different by nature as Eberhard and Daniel chanced to meet and be drawn together at the very period of their lives when both had voluntarily renounced human society was due to one of those decrees of Providence that contain in them either a law of crystallisation or the attraction of polar forces, however much they may seem to be matters of pure chance.

Their coming together took place on the day after Daniel had gone to Eschenbach. At the break of day, Daniel had decided to return by way of Schwabach, both for the sake of variety and because this was the shorter route. The sun was hotter than on the day before; and when it had reached the height of its ability to dry up the land and scorch a human being, Daniel lay down in the forests. Late in the afternoon, just as he was approaching Schwabach, great black clouds began to gather in the West; a fearful storm was evidently to be expected. Heavy streaks of lightning flashed across the sky; and although Daniel tried to hasten his steps, the storm overtook him. Before he could reach the shelter of a house, he was wet to the skin from head to foot.

The rain came down in torrents. He waited a long while, and then had to start out in it again, arriving finally at the station shivering with cold. As he went to buy his ticket he noticed a lean, haggard, unusual looking individual standing at the ticket window. It is quite probable that, vexed by his uncomfortable condition, Daniel treated him none too courteously; he pushed up against him, whereupon the man turned around, and Daniel recognised the young Baron, Eberhard von Auffenberg. Eberhard in turn recognised Daniel. It is unlikely that there was at that time another face in the world which could belong so completely to just one person as that of Daniel.

The Baron had been attracted to Schwabach by his affection for a certain person there, an affection he had preserved from the days of his childhood. There lived in Schwabach at the time a woman who had been his nurse. Her undivided and resigned love for him was touching. She was as proud of him as she might have been had she been able to say that in him she had been responsible for the childhood training of the n.o.blest specimen of manhood known to human history. And he was fond of her; the stories she told him he could still recall, and he did recall them frequently and with pleasure. She had married the foreman of a tin mill, and had sons and daughters of her own. Eberhard had been planning for years to visit her. This visit had now been paid. But Eberhard could not say that he had derived extraordinary pleasure from it: it had taken an inner figure from his soul. And, on the other hand, whether the nurse felt, on seeing the tall, lank, stiff, and ill-humoured foster son, that enraptured charm she so much liked to conjure up before her imagination, is a question that had better remain unanswered.

When Eberhard became aware of the condition in which Daniel then found himself, his feelings of chivalry were moved. With the dauntless courage of which he was capable, he subdued the apathy he had cherished toward Daniel ever since he first came to know him, and to which actual detestation and disquieting jealousy had been added a few weeks ago.

"You have been out in the rain," said Eberhard courteously, but with a reserve that was rigid if not quite forbidding or impenetrable.

"I look like it, don't I?" said Daniel with a scowl.

"You will catch cold if you are not careful. May I offer you my top coat?" continued Eberhard more courteously. He felt as if he could see the figure of Eleanore rising up behind Daniel, that she was quite surrounded by flowers, and that she was smiling at him in joy and grat.i.tude. He bit his lips and blushed.

Daniel shook his head: "I am accustomed to all kinds of weather. Thank you."

"Well, then, at least wrap this around your neck; the water is running down your back." Thereupon Eberhard reached him a white silk kerchief he drew from the pocket of his coat. Daniel make a wry face, but took the kerchief, threw it about his neck, and tied it in a knot under his chin.

"You are right," he admitted, and drew his head down between his shoulders: "It all reminds me of a good warm bed."

Eberhard stared at the locomotive of the in-coming train. "Plebeian," he thought, with inner contempt.

Nevertheless he joined this same plebeian in the third-cla.s.s carriage, though he had bought a ticket for first cla.s.s. Was it the white silk kerchief that so suddenly attracted him to the plebeian? What else could it have been? For during the entire journey they sat opposite each other in absolute silence. It was a remarkable pair: the one in a shabby, wet suit with a hat that looked partly as though it belonged to a cheap sign painter, and partly as though it were the sole head gear of a gypsy bard, and with a big pair of spectacles from which the eyes flashed green and unsteady; the other looking as though he had just stepped out of a bandbox, not a particle of dust on his clothing, in patent leather slippers, English straw hat, and with an American cigarette in his mouth.

Next to them sat a peasant woman with a chicken basket on her lap, a red-headed girl who held the hind part of pig on her knees, and a workman whose face was bandaged.

At times they looked at each other. If they chanced to catch each other's eye, the Baron would at once look down, and Daniel, bored as he was, would gaze out of the window at the rain. But there must have been something unusually communicative and mutually intelligent in the few glances with which they involuntarily honoured each other during the journey; for when the train pulled into the station, they left together, and walked along the street quite peacefully, side by side, just as if it were to be taken as a matter of fact that they would remain in each other's company.

Man is a gregarious animal; given the right conditions, one man will seek out the company of another. Neither defiance nor reserve is of the slightest avail; there is something that conquers the strongest man when he finds another who will yield. Then it is that what was formerly regarded as contentment with loneliness is unmasked and shown to be nothing more than ordinary self-deception.

"I presume you wish to go home and change your clothes," said Eberhard, standing on the street corner.

"I am already dry," said Daniel, "and I really have no desire to go home. Over there on Schutt Island is a little inn called the Peter Vischer. I like it because it is frequented only by old people who talk about old times, and because it is situated on a bridge, so that you have the feeling you are in a ship floating around on the water."

Eberhard went along. From eight o'clock till midnight they sat there opposite each other. Their conversation was limited to such remarks as, "It is really quite comfortable here."-"It seems to have stopped raining."-"Yes, it has stopped."-"That old white-bearded man over by the stove who is doing so much talking is a watchmaker from Unschlitt Place."-"So? He looks pretty husky."-"He is said to have fought in the battle of Worth."-And so their remarks ran.

When they separated, Eberhard knew that Daniel would again be at the Peter Vischer on Wednesday of the following week, and Daniel knew that he would find the Baron there.

X

Philippina was on her knees by the hearth, cleaning out the ashes; Eleanore was sitting by the kitchen table, adding up the week's expenses in a narrow note-book.

"You ought-a git married, Eleanore," said Philippina, as she blew on a hot coal, "'deed you ought; it's the right time for you."

"Ah, leave me alone," said Eleanore angrily.

Philippina crouched still lower on the hearth: "I mean well by you, I do," she said. "You're simply killing yourself here. With your white skin and sugary eyes-uhm, uhm! You bet if I had 'em like yours I'd git one. Men are all as dumb as shoats outside of a sty."

"Keep quiet," said Eleanore, and went on counting: "Seven from fifteen leaves eight...."

"An angel has made your bed," interrupted Philippina with a giggle. "I know a fellow," she went on, her face becoming rather sour, "he's just the right one. Money? whew! He's stuck on you too, believe me! If I wuz to go to him and say, Eleanore Jordan is willing, I believe the old codger would give me a bag of gold. Cross my heart, Eleanore, and he's a fine man too. He can play the piano just as good as Daniel, if not better. When he plays you can see the sparks fly."

Eleanore got up, and closed the book. "Do you want me to give you a present for finding me a man, Philippina?" she asked, with a sympathetic smile. "And you are trying to sound me? Go on, you fool."