The Goose Man Part 66

The worst of it all was that he had nothing to do, and no brain racking could devise a position he could fill. The world went on its way, progress was made, and, strangely enough, it was made without his criticism, his adulation, his opinions, or his crepe-hanging.

Philippina was annoyed at the grudging squints cast at her by the old stay-at-home; her visits became rarer and rarer. She did not feel like opening her heart to Frau Hadebusch, for she did not appeal to her as a disinterested party. This completed her list of friends; she was obliged to restrain her impatience and excitement.

It was Christmas. On Christmas Eve they had bought a tree for Agnes, trimmed it, and lighted it with candles. Agnes's Christmas gifts were placed under the tree: a big piece of ginger-bread, a basket with apples and nuts, and a cheap doll. For Old Jordan she had bought a pair of boots which he badly needed. He had been going around on his uppers since autumn.

Jordan was sitting by the door holding his boots on his knees. Agnes looked at the doll with unhappy eyes; she did not dare touch it. After gazing for a while into the light of the fluttering candles, Jordan said: "I thank you, Philippina, I thank you. You are a real benefactress. I also thank you for remembering the child. It is a paltry makeshift you have bought there at the bazaar, but any one who gives gifts to children deserves the reward of Heaven, and in such giving we do not weigh the value or count the cost."

"Don't whine all the time so!" shrieked Philippina. She was chewing her finger nails, hardly able to conceal her embarra.s.sment. Frau Hadebusch had told her that Benjamin Dorn was coming around that evening to make a formal proposal of marriage.

"Just wait, Agnes, just wait!" continued old Jordan, "you'll soon get to see a wonder of a doll. A few short years, and the world will be astonished. You are going to be the first to see it when it is finished.

You'll be the first, little Agnes, just wait. What have we got to eat on this holy evening?" asked Jordan, turning with fear and trembling to Philippina.

"Cold hash and broiled meal-beetles," said Philippina scornfully.

"And ... and ... no letter from Daniel?" he asked in a sad voice, "nothing, nothing at all?"

Philippina shrugged her shoulders. The old man got up and tottered to his room.

A little later Philippina heard some one stumbling around in the hall, and then the bell rang. "Open the door," she said to Agnes, who did as she was told and returned with Benjamin Dorn. The Methodist wore a black suit, and in his hand he had a black felt hat that was as flat as a pancake. He bowed to Philippina, and asked if he was disturbing any one.

Philippina pushed a chair over to him. He sat down quite circ.u.mstantially, and laughed a hollow laugh. As Philippina was as silent as the tomb and looked at him so tensely, he began to speak.

First he expatiated on the general advantages of a married life, and then remarked that what he personally wished first of all was to be able to take a good, true woman into his own life as his wife. He said that he had gone through a long struggle over the matter, but G.o.d had finally shown him the light and pointed the way. He no longer hesitated, after this illumination from above, to offer Fraulein Schimmelweis his heart and his hand forever and a day, insist though he must that she give the matter due consideration, in the proper Christian spirit, before taking the all-important step.

Philippina was restless; she rocked back and forth, first on one foot and then on another-and then burst out laughing. She bent over and laughed violently. "No, you poor simpleton, what you want is my money, hey? Be honest! Out with it! You want my money, don't you?"

Her anger grew as Benjamin Dorn sat and looked on, his asinine embarra.s.sment increasing with each second of silence. "Listen! You'd like to git your fingers on it, wouldn't you? Money-it would taste good, wouldn't it? You think I'm crazy? Sc.r.a.pe a few coppers together and lose my mind and marry some poor fool, and let him loaf around and live on me. Nothing doin'! They ain't no man livin' what can catch Philippina Schimmelweis so easy as all that. She knows a thing or two about men, she does. D'ye hear me! Get out!" She sawed the air with her arms like a mad woman, and showed him the door.

Benjamin Dorn rose to his feet, stuttered something unintelligible, moved backwards toward the door, reached it, and left the place with such p.r.o.nounced speed that Philippina once again broke out in a shrill, piercing laughter. "Come here, Agnes," she said, sat down on the step in the corner, and took the child on her lap.

She was silent for a long while; the child was afraid to speak. Both looked at the lights on the Christmas tree. "Let us sing something,"

said Philippina. She began with a hoa.r.s.e, ba.s.s voice, "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," and Agnes joined in with her high, spiritless notes.

Another pause followed after they had finished singing.

"Where is my father?" asked Agnes suddenly, without looking at Philippina. It sounded as if she had waited for years for an opportunity to ask this question.

Philippina's face turned ashen pale; she gritted her teeth. "Your father, he's loafing around somewhere in the country," replied Philippina, and blew out one of the candles that had burned down and was ready to set the twig on fire. "He's done with women, it seems, but you can't tell. He strums the music box and smears good white paper full of crow-feet and pot-hooks. A person can rot, and little does he worry."

Whereat she set the child on the floor, hastened over to the window, opened it, and put her head out as if she were on the point of choking with the heat.

She leaned out over the snow-covered window sill.

"I'm getting cold," said Agnes; but Philippina never heard her.

VIII

Daniel wrote to Eberhard and Sylvia asking them if he might visit them.

He thought: "There are friends; perhaps I need friends again."

He received a note in a strange, secretarial hand informing him that the Baroness was indeed very sorry but she could not receive him at Siegmundshof: she was in child-bed. She sent her best greetings, and told him that the newest born was getting along splendidly, as well as his brother who was now three years old.

"Everywhere I turn, children are growing up," thought Daniel, and packed his trunk and started south as slowly as he could go, so slowly indeed that it seemed as if he were approaching a goal he was afraid to reach and yet had to.

He arrived in Nuremberg one evening in April. As he entered the room, Philippina struck her hands together with a loud bang, and stood as if rooted to the floor.

Agnes looked at her father shyly. She had grown slim and tall far beyond her age.

Old Jordan came down. "You don't look well, Daniel," he said, and seemed never to let go of his hand. "Let us hope that you are going to stay home now."

"I don't know," replied Daniel, staring absent-mindedly around the walls. "I don't know."

On the third day he was seized with a quite unusual sense of fear and anxiety. He felt that he had made a mistake; that he had lost his way; that something was driving him to another place. He went into the kitchen. Philippina was cooking potato noodles in lard; they smelt good.

"I am going to Eschenbach," he said, to his own astonishment, for the decision to do so had come with the a.s.sertion.

Philippina jerked the pan from the stove; the flames leaped up. "You can go to h.e.l.l, so far as I'm concerned," she said in a furious rage. With the light from the fire flaring up through the open top of the stove and reflected in her face, she looked like a veritable witch.

Daniel gazed at her questioningly. "What is the matter with Agnes?" he asked after a while. "The child seems to try to avoid me."

"You'll find out what's the matter with her," said Philippina spitefully, and placed the pan on the stove again. "She don't swallow people whole."

Daniel left the kitchen.

"He is going over to see his b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the d.a.m.ned scoundrel," murmured Philippina. She crouched down on the kitchen stool, and gazed into s.p.a.ce.

The potato noodles burned up.

IX

Daniel entered his mother's little house in Eschenbach late at night. As soon as he saw her, he knew that some misfortune had taken place.

Eva was gone. She had disappeared one evening four weeks ago. A troupe of rope dancers had given an exhibition in the city, and it was generally suspected that they had abducted the child. The people of Eschenbach were still convinced of their suspicion after the police had rounded up the dancers without finding a trace of the child.

A general alarm had been sent out, and investigations were being made even at the time of Daniel's arrival. But they were in vain; it was impossible to find the slightest clue. To the authorities, indeed to every one, the case was a hopeless riddle.

They made a thorough search of the forests; the ca.n.a.ls were drained; vagabonds were cross-questioned. It was all in vain; Eva had apparently been spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Then the Mayor received an anonymous letter that read as follows: "The child you are looking for is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained to what she now has in mind."

To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be reasonably certain was her own: "This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!"

The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced to do it by the kidnappers.

The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to France.

Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life.

She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.

Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven.