The Goose Man Part 60

Hardly had he noticed the two when he sprang to his feet as if the lightning had struck close by him. He shook; he faltered; he groped about for a physical support; and from his throat there came a stifled gurgle. That was all.

Eberhard walked over to him, and reached out his hand.

For a moment it seemed as if the old man would collapse. A last flash of hatred and revenge shot from his blue eyes; then he too reached out his hand. His arm trembled; thick knots of quivering muscles formed on his cheeks. Sylvia had gently closed the door and vanished.

Anxious minutes pa.s.sed by and nothing happened, except that each held the hand of the other and each looked into the eyes of the other. The silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire in the stove.

"Just at the right time," murmured the old Baron, without looking up and as if lost in meditation, "just at the right time."

Eberhard made no reply. He stood as still, as motionless, as silent, and with his heels as close together as if he were a young officer facing his superior in command.

After a while he wheeled about and slowly left the room.

Sylvia was waiting in the library. In the twilight it was possible to see only the vague outline of her body.

Eberhard took hold of her and whispered: "I really believe that I no longer have a father."

VI

That same night the old Baron had left. He got up in the middle of the night; at four o'clock his valet accompanied him to the station.

The next morning two letters were found lying on his writing desk: one was addressed to Eberhard, the other to the Baroness. The latter contained nothing more than a few words of farewell. The former was more detailed. It expressed the Baron's satisfaction at the fact that Eberhard, whom he welcomed as the head of the house, had returned, and plainly indicated that all the necessary legal steps would be taken in a very short while to give him complete authority as his heir and successor. The letter closed with this surprising sentence: "So far as I am personally concerned, I am planning to enter the Catholic Church, in order to spend the remainder of my misapplied life at Viterbo in the Dominican Convent of Della Guercia."

There was no explanation, no unusual display of feeling, no confession, nothing but the naked fact.

The Baroness was neither surprised nor shocked. She fell into a mute, melancholy brooding, and then said: "He never was happy, never in his whole life. I never heard him laugh a really whole-souled laugh; and living with him has made me forget how to laugh myself. His heart has been from time immemorial a sort of convent, an abode of darkness, a place of sternness. He has found his way home at last, and is probably tired from the long journey on the way to his soul."

"Nonsense, Clotilda!" cried Frau von Erfft. "What you say about his laughing may be true, and a man who cannot laugh is half animal. But do you mean to tell me that an intelligent man must resort to such means to find peace with himself and his G.o.d? A man who is under obligations to set an example for others? Is there not enough darkness in men's heads already? Is it necessary to put out the torches of those who stand guard? My sense of pardon is not so elaborate. I prefer to be a child of the world and a.s.sociate with those who are regarded as heathens, and who have given us works of light and illumination."

At these words Eberhard entered. As she looked into his face, Frau von Erfft thought: "There is another who can't laugh."

The Baron's change of religious views caused the greatest excitement throughout the entire country. The liberal newspapers published fulminatory articles; flaming protests were made in the clubs against the surrept.i.tious propaganda of Rome. The ultramontane party leaders rejoiced and made capital out of the marvellous return of such a sceptic to the bosom of the Church which alone can save the souls of men: they used the case as a bait for fresh recruits and as a means to fill the old regulars with greater fire and enthusiasm. Through the homes blew a breath of a tyrannical priesthood and spiritual gagging.

Eberhard adapted himself to his changed condition quickly and with but little apparent effort: the chaos of opinions left him virtually unmoved. To become the master of so much and so many people, and to do it so suddenly, necessitated dignity, a clear eye, and a firm hand. His being was in no danger from an excess of zeal or up-start conceit, suffer though he might from too great seriousness and his preference for a place in the shadow. Strangely enough, the abundance of his responsibilities made him more cheerful. And where he was unable to take his part in the world of outward unrest, Sylvia's influence interceded and made it possible for him to do what was expected of him.

In May he accompanied her and her mother to Erfft. There they took long walks together every day, and talked a great deal about Eleanore. At first he spoke with noticeable reserve. But when he felt that he had gained the confidence of his auditor, and she his, he spoke quite candidly, so candidly in truth that Sylvia came to look upon his action as one of inner liberation.

When he told of Eleanore's marriage to Daniel Nothafft, Sylvia interrupted him, and asked a number of questions concerning Daniel. "Oh, yes, he was our guest once; he is the Kapellmeister," she said. And then she told him all about Daniel's visit at Erfft, and did it with a smile in which there were both indulgence and re-awakened astonishment.

Her smile made the same appeal to Eberhard that Eleanore's had. And yet, when he was in Sylvia's company, he seemed to recognise more distinctly than ever what had drawn him with such irresistible power to Eleanore, possibly because Sylvia was of a less ardent and forceful nature. He could not exactly express it in words; he merely felt that it was the unknown realm of tones, the unknown melting of melodies, the ringing order of the music transformed into soul.

At the beginning of June, Sylvia went back to Nuremberg with Eberhard and her parents. A few days later the betrothal took place in the baronial residence.

VII

Herr Carovius had been paid. The consortium of silent backers had been dissolved.

Never in the history of finance had there been a satisfied creditor who was so unhappy as Herr Carovius. He was without a goal, and the sign posts had been destroyed. He had received his money; so far so good. His share of the profit was something over sixty thousand marks.

But what was this in comparison with the great noise? What comparison was there between living in ease and the gorgeous sight of falling stars? What attraction could the world offer him after this hopeful affair, which had begun as a tragedy, and had increased in interest and suspense until one was justified in believing that all the contradictory forces in human nature were going to collide with one mighty bang, when, in reality, the whole incident flattened out into an ordinary drama of emotion, with the curtain going down on reconciliation all around?

But this was not the sole reason why Herr Carovius, up until this time a most elastic figure, one of those imperturbable bachelors for whom no hurdle was too high, suddenly felt that he was growing old. His soul was filled with unrest; he was seeing bad omens; he feared there was going to be a change in the weather.

He felt an inner hunger, and yet he somehow lacked appet.i.te for his kind of things. "Down and out, lost and no good," he sighed within. But those who had got rich at his expense could not possibly succeed. This much he knew.

He began to lose his hair; he became rheumatic. As soon as the thermometer began to fall he shivered; if it rained he stayed at home.

He began to study medicine, all by himself. He took up the various remedies of our remote ancestors. He read the works of Paracelsus, and declared that all those who had written on medicine since Paracelsus were quacks and poison-mixers.

His ideas with regard to music became also more and more strange and bizarre. He had discovered an old Nuremberg composer by the name of Staden. His opera ent.i.tled "Seelewig"-the first of all German operas, by the way-he insisted was the very zenith of musical art, eminently superior to Mozart and Bach. He played arias and melodies from "Seelewig" to Dorothea.

"Now, when you can get that," he exclaimed, "when you come to the point where I can see from your playing what is in it and at the bottom of it, Heaven and h.e.l.l in one stroke of the bow, then, you little jackanapes, I'm going to make you my heiress."

That was precisely what Dorothea had been longing to hear; it confirmed her calculations and crowned her dreams. To hear these words roll from her uncle's tongue had been her ambition; and she had spared no pains to arrive at her goal.

Herr Carovius was not spoiled. Since the days his sister had kept house for him, no woman had ever concerned herself about him in the least. But at that time he was young; and he had wheedled himself into believing that the women were merely waiting for him, that all he had to do was to beckon to them with his finger and they would come rushing up to him in battalions. But because he had dreaded the idea of making an unhappy selection, and by reason of the expense of the enterprise, he had neglected to give the necessary signal, and hence had been so generous as to leave them in complete possession of their freedom.

He never knew until now that the soft, little hand of a woman could bring out effects as if they had come from the touch of a magic wand.

"What a pleasant little phiz Doderlein's offspring has," he thought. And if Dorothea, who had made him believe that she was visiting him on the sly, though her father had given his consent long ago, chanced to remain away for a few days, he would become wild with rage, and go into the kitchen and chop wood merely to enjoy the sensation of destroying something.

Moreover, the music lessons Dorothea was taking at Herr Carovius's expense gave the girl a new conception of her art, and awakened in her a measure of wholesome ambition. Satisfied as he was with her docility and her progress, Herr Carovius referred to her at times as the coming female Paganini, and pictured himself in the role of a demoniacal impresario.

But the thing about Dorothea that struck him most forcibly and filled him with such astonishment was her relation to mirrors.

A mirror exercised a tremendous influence on her. If she pa.s.sed by one, her face became coloured with a charming blush of desire; if she stood before one and saw her picture reflected in it, she was filled, first with s.e.xual unrest, and then with retreating uncertainty. In the brightness of her eyes there was always a longing for the mirror. Her gait and her gestures seemed to have duties imposed on them by the mirror; it seemed to be their task to prepare surprises. Her whole body seemed to live in common with a spectral mirror sister, and to catch sight of this beloved sister was her first wish, fulfilment of which she effected as often as possible.

VIII

Dorothea had succeeded in making it clear to her father that it would be highly advantageous to her, as the nearest relative, to show Herr Carovius every conceivable favour. Andreas Doderlein baulked at first; but he could not refuse recognition to the far-seeing penetration of his daughter.

When she told him of her appearance in the baronial residence, and mentioned the enormous sum Herr Carovius had collected with the mien of an undaunted victor, Doderlein became serious; he stared into s.p.a.ce and did some hard thinking. Recalling the now superannuated feud, he preserved the appearance of inapproachability, and said: "We will not debase ourselves for the sake of Mammon."

A few days later, however, he said, quite of his own free will, sighing like a man who has gone through some great moral struggle and come out of it victorious, "Well, do as you think best, my child, but don't let me know anything about it."

His argument, had he expressed it in so many words, would have been something like the following: We are poor; we are living from hand to mouth. The negligible dowry Herr Carovius gave his sister has been used up. Marguerite would have been perfectly justified in putting in her claim for thirty thousand marks, but Herr Carovius settled with her for only twelve thousand, and there was no possibility of redress. For Herr Carovius had wheedled his sister into giving him a written statement that she was satisfied with the sum of twelve thousand: the remaining eighteen thousand was the price he demanded in return for her consent to have his sister, who was slavishly submissive to him, marry the man of her choice.

"I have been duped," said Andreas Doderlein, and bore up under his grudge with becoming dignity.

The director of the conservatory died, and Andreas Doderlein, who, by virtue of his achievements and his personality, had the first right to the vacant position, was appointed to it. His former colleagues were stout in their contention that the appointment cost him many a bitter visit to the powers that be. Doderlein read envy in their eyes and smiled to himself.

But it was a hard life. "Art cannot live without bread," said Doderlein, with a heroic glance into the future. "But oh, what works I could bring out if I only had time! Give me time, time, and," swinging his hands cloudward, "the eagles above would greet me!"

IX

Herr Carovius and death were intimate friends. Whenever death had an errand to run, it always knocked on Herr Carovius's door, as if to find a person who approved of its deeds and who had a just appreciation of them, for there were so many of the other kind.

But when Herr Carovius heard that Eleanore Nothafft had died, he felt that his old friend had gone a bit too far. He was touched. He was seized with griping pains in the abdominal region, and locked himself up for the period of one whole day in his court room. There he was taken down with catalepsy; his face went through a horrible transformation: it came to look as if all the wickedness, hopelessness, and despair of the man who had never become reconciled to life through love had been concentrated in it and petrified.