[1]“Little brother.”
[1]“Little brother.”
He shook his head sadly, but took her hand and held it tenderly between his.
Her face became clouded; it was like a landscape at the coming of night. Her eyes, turned to one side, saw the trees of a great garden, an ugly old woman sitting by a hedge, and two little girls who looked into the setting sun with fear in their hearts.
There was a noise; she and Daniel were startled. In the doorway stood Philippina Schimmelweis. Her eyes glistened like the skin of a reptile that has just crept up from out of the bog.
Daniel went down to his apartment.
For nine years the rococo hall in the Auffenberg home had been closed to festive celebrations of every kind. It took a long, tedious exchange of letters between the secretary of the Baron living in Rome and the secretary of the Baroness to get the permission of the former to use the hall.
The indignation at Nothafft’s work was general. The members of the social set could hardly contain themselves, while the amateurs and specially invited guests were likewise but little edified. The chief diversion of the evening, in fact, was to see the composer himself conduct. At the sight of the jumping and sprawling fellow, Herr Zöllner, councillor of the consistory, almost burst with laughter.
Old Count Schlemm-Nottheim, who not only had a liking for pornographic literature but was also known to drink a quarter of a litre of Dr. Rosa’s balsam of life every afternoon, declared that the ensemble playing of all the instruments represented by the show-booths at the annual fair was an actual musical revelation in comparison with this Dutch concert of rogues’ marches. Judge Braun of the Supreme Court gave it as his candid opinion that there was evidently a conspiracy against good taste.
Remarks of this kind were, of course, made behind screens andin the corners. In order not to offend the Baroness, there was a goodly measure of seemingly cordial applause. The guests and artists then assembled around a huge table arranged in the shape of a horseshoe.
Count Schlemm-Nottheim was the table companion of the Baroness; he had her tell him who the various personages from the world of art were. He asked who was the woman of such interesting melancholy sitting next to Major Bellmann. He was told that that was the wife of the composer. His wife? She is not at all bad; life with her would be rather worth while. And who was the woman between old Herold and the Frenchman? A charming little creature: she had eyes like the Lake of Liguria and hands like a princess. That was the sister of the composer’s wife. Sister? You don’t tell me! A jolly fine family; worth the support of any man.
Toasts were drunk. Herr Ehrenreich, the wholesale merchant, drank to the health of the creator of the “Harzreise”; the Count to the ladies present.
Herr Carovius created a sensation. He sat with the members of the “Liedertafel”; they had sung in the chorus; and they were ashamed of him, for he conducted himself in a most unseemly fashion.
He had somehow managed to get hold of a glove Eleanore had lost, and possibly it was this that made him so convivial. He picked up an almond shell from the serving tray, and threw it at Fräulein Varini. He let his leery, lascivious eyes roam about over the cut glass and the decorations of the hall, and never once grew tired of praising the wealth and splendour of the house. He acted as though he were quite at home. He raised his wine glass, and declared that he was charmed by the flavour and colour of the costly, precious juice from the grape: he tried to give the impression that he knew the Auffenberg wine cellar from years of intimate association with it.
Then it happened that through a hasty, awkward movement, he upset his plate; a rivulet of rich brown gravy ran down over his white vest. He became silent; he retired within himself. He dipped his napkin in the water, and rubbed and rubbed. The waiters tittered. He buttoned up his coat, and looked like a show window in the dead of night.
The eyes of the waiters were also given the privilege of feasting on another rare social phenomenon. They noticed that Kapellmeister Nothafft was sitting at the table in his stocking feet. Hispatent leather shoes had hurt him so much that he made short work of it and took them off during the dinner. There they stood without master or servant, one at the right, the other at the left of his disencumbered feet. Whenever the waiters passed by, they would cast one furtive but profitable glance under the table, and bite their lips to keep from bursting out in laughter.
This rude offence to social dignity was not unknown to the other dinner guests. They whispered, smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and shook their heads. Daniel made no effort to conceal his bootlessness when the guests rose to leave the table; without giving the astonishment of his companions a single thought, he once more drew the patent leather torturers on to his extremities. But he had made a mistake: he had gambled and lost.
The news of the extraordinary event was fully exploited on the following day. It was carried from house to house, accumulated momentous charm in its course, passed from the regions of the high to those of the less high and quite low, and provoked storms of laughter everywhere. No one had anything to say about the symphony; everybody was fully informed concerning the patent leather episode.
On the way home Daniel walked with Eleanore. Gertrude followed at some distance with M. Rivière; she could not walk rapidly.
“How did you find it, Eleanore? Didn’t you have the feeling that you were at a feast of corpses?”
“Dear,” she murmured; they walked on.
After they had gone along for some time in perfect silence, they came to a narrow gateway. Eleanore suddenly felt that she could no longer endure Daniel’s mute questioning. She pulled her silk veil closer to her cheeks, and said: “Give me time! Don’t hurry me! Please give me time!”
“If I hadn’t given you time, my dear girl, I should not have deserved this moment,” he replied.
“I cannot, I cannot,” she said, with a sigh of despair. She had only one hope, one ray of hope left, and her whole soul was fixed on that. But she was obliged to act in silence.
Standing in the living room with Gertrude, Daniel’s eye fell on the mask of Zingarella; it had been decorated with rose twigs. Under the green young leaves fresh buds shone forth; they hungaround the white stucco of the mask like so many little red lanterns. “Who did that?” he asked.
“Eleanore was here in the afternoon; she did it,” replied Gertrude.
His burning eyes were riveted on the mask, when Gertrude stepped up to him, threw her arms around him, and in the fulness of her feelings exclaimed: “Daniel, your work was wonderful, wonderful!”
“So? Did you like it? I am glad to hear it,” he said, in a tone of dry conventionality.
“The people don’t grasp it,” she said gently, and then added with a blush: “But I understand it; I understand it, for it belongs to me.”
The following day he laid the score of the “Harzreise” together with the words in a big old chest, and locked it. It was like a funeral.
In the dark, winding alleys behind the city wall stand little houses with large numbers and coloured lanterns. They are filled with a sweetish, foul odour, and have been laboriously built up out of dilapidated lumber-rooms. From the cracks in the closed blinds come forth, night after night, the sounds of shrill laughter. Those who enter are received by half-nude monsters, and are made to sit down on monstrous chairs and sofas covered with red plush.
The citizen calls these places dens of vice. Between Friday and Sunday he thinks with lustful horror of the inhabitants with their bloated or emaciated bodies and the sad or intoxicated stare of their eyes.
Herr Carovius wended his way to this quarter of the city. Because it was only a shadow which he embraced in hours when his inflamed imagination, vitiated by all the poisons of the earth, conjured up a human body, he was angry; now he went there, and bought himself a real human body.
After he had been in a half a dozen of these houses, had been jubilantly greeted, and then thrown out to the accompaniment of bawdy abuse, he at last found what he had been looking for: a creature whose cunning had not entirely been lost, who still had the features of a daughter of man, and whose figure and character still had the power to call up a memory, provided one were firmlydecided to see what one wished to see and to forget what one wished to forget.
Her name was Lena, charming reminder of a desired reality! He went with her as she left the circle of her companions, and followed her into the wretched hole between winding stairs and attic rooms. He rattled the coins in his pocket, and gave his orders. The nymph had to put on a street dress, set a modest hat on her head, and draw a veil over her rouged face. Thereupon he went up to her, spoke to her courteously, and kissed her hand. He had never in his life acted in so polite and chivalric a fashion in the presence of a woman.
The prostitute was frightened; she ran away. She had to be given instructions; these were given her by the madame of the house; for Herr Carovius was rattling the coins in his pocket. “You will have to be patient and indulgent; we are not prepared for such refined guests here.”
He returned. Lena had been told what to do. She soon fell into her rôle.
“To be frank,” he said to Lena, “I am inexperienced in the arts of love. I am too proud to kowtow to the berobed and bodiced idol. A woman is a woman, and a man is a man. They delude themselves and each other, or try to, into believing that each woman is a special person, and each man a man to himself. Idiocy!”
The prostitute grinned.
He walked back and forth; the room was just large enough to allow him to take three steps. He recalled the expression on Eleanore’s face during the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all the while. He became enraged: “You don’t imagine that progress can be made by such amateurish efforts?” he said with a roar. “It is all hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in art, any more than there is progress in the course of the stars. Listen!”
He bellowed forth the first motif from the “Sonata quasi una fantasia” of Mozart: “Listen to this: Da—dada—da—daddaa! Is it possible to progress beyond that? Don’t let them make a fool of you, my angel. Be honest with yourself. He has hypnotised you. He has turned your unsuspecting heart upside down. Look at me! Are you afraid of me? I will do all in my power for you. Give me your hand. Speak to me!”
The prostitute was obliged to stretch out her arms. He sat down beside her with a solemn ceremoniousness. Then he removedthe pin from her hat, and laid the hat tenderly to one side. She had to lean her head on his shoulder.
With that he fell into a dreamy meditation.
Philippina came up to Gertrude in the living room. Daniel was not at home. Philippina was humming the latest street song, the refrain of which ran as follows:
Drah’ di, Madel, drah’ di,Morgen kommt der Mahdi.
Drah’ di, Madel, drah’ di,Morgen kommt der Mahdi.
“There it is,” said Philippina, and threw a ball of yarn on the table.
Gertrude had yielded to the girl’s importunities, and was addressing her now with the familiar “thou” and allowing Philippina to do the same in speaking to her. “We are after all relatives, you know, Gertrude,” said Philippina.
Gertrude was afraid of Philippina; but she had thus far found no means of defending herself against her exaggerated eagerness to help her with the housework. And she felt in Philippina’s presence what she felt in the presence of no one else—a sense of shame at her own condition.
Philippina, in fact, saw something indecent in Gertrude’s pregnancy; when she talked to her she always held her head up and looked into space; her action was quite conspicuous.
“Oh, but ain’t people impudent,” Philippina began, after she had taken a loutish position on a chair. “The clerk over in the store asked me whether there wasn’t something up between Daniel and Eleanore. What d’ye think of that? Fresh, yes? You bet I give him all that was coming to him!”
The needle in Gertrude’s fingers stopped moving. It was not the first time that Philippina had made such insinuating remarks. To-day she would come up to Gertrude, and whisper to her that Daniel was upstairs with Eleanore; yesterday she had said in a tone of affected sympathy that Eleanore looked so run down. Then she gave a detailed report of what this person and that person had said; then she turned into a champion of good morals and gentle manners, and remarked that you ought not offend people.
Her every third word was “people.” She said she knew what a faultless character Eleanore had and how Daniel loved his wife,but people! And after all you couldn’t scratch everybody’s eyes out who annoyed you with dubious questions; if you did, there would soon be very few eyes left.
Philippina’s bangs had acquired an unusual length; they covered her whole forehead down to her eyelashes. The glances she cast at Gertrude had on this account something especially malevolent about them. “She is not so certain of herself and her family after all,” thought Philippina, and made a lewd gesture with her legs as she sprawled on the chair.
“You know, I think Daniel ought to be more cautious,” she said with her rasping voice. “This being together all alone for hours at a time ain’t going to do no good; no good at all, I say. And the two are always running after each other; if it’s not her, it’s him. If you happen to take ’em by surprise, they jump like criminals. It’s been going on this way for six weeks, day after day. Do you think that’s right? You don’t need to put up with it, Gertrude,” she said in conclusion, making a sad attempt to look coquettish. Then she cast her eyes to the floor, and looked as innocent as a child.
Gertrude’s heart grew cold. Her confidence in Daniel was unfaltering, but the venomous remarks made to her left her without peace of mind or body; she could not think clearly. The very fact that such things were being said about Daniel and Eleanore, and that words failed her to stop them because from the very beginning she had borne it all with the self-assurance that naturally springs from contempt for gossip, only tended to make her grief all the more bitter.
How hollow any objection on her part would have sounded! How fatuous and ineffective a rebuke from her would have been! Could she muzzle these wicked, slanderous tongues by referring to the peculiarities of Daniel’s nature? Could he be expected to go to Philippina and give an account of himself? A contemptuous smile came to her face when she pondered on such possibilities.
And yet, why was she heart-sore? Was it because she was at last beginning to realise that she was unloved?
Involuntarily her eyes fell on the mask; it was still covered with the withered rose twigs. She got up and removed them. Her hand trembled as if she were committing some evil act.
“Go home, Philippina, I don’t need you any more,” she said.
“Oi, it is late, ain’t it? I must be going,” cried Philippina. “Don’t worry, Gertrude,” she said by way of consolation. “And don’t complain of me to your husband; he’ll git ugly if you do.If you say anything bad about me, there’s going to be trouble here, I say. I am a perfect fool; people git out of my way, they do. I’ve got a wicked mouth, I have; there’s no stopping it. Well, good night.”
She rubbed her hands down over her skirt, as if she were trying to smooth out the wrinkles; there was an element of comic caution in what she did.
Out on the street she began to hum again:
Drah’ di, Madel, drah’ di,Morgen kommt der Mahdi.
Drah’ di, Madel, drah’ di,Morgen kommt der Mahdi.
When Daniel came home, it was late; but he sat down by the lamp in his room and began to read Jean Paul’s “Titan.” In the course of time his thoughts liberated themselves from the book and went their own way. He got up, walked over to the piano, raised the lid, and struck a chord; he listened with closed eyes: it seemed that some one was calling him. It was a sultry night; the stillness was painful.
Again he struck the chord: bells from the lower world. They rang up through the green, grey mists, each distinct and delicate. Each tone sent forth its accompanying group like sparks from a skyrocket. Those related by the ties of harmony joined; those that were alien fell back and down. And up in the distant, inaccessible heights there rang out with deceiving clarity, like the last vision of earthly perfection, the melody of love, the melody of Eleanore.
Yet, some one was calling him; but from where? His wife? The distant, gloomy, waiting one? He closed the piano; the echo of the noise made thereby rebounded from the church wall through his window.
He put out the lamp, went into his bedroom, and undressed by the light of the moon. The border of the curtain was embroidered with heavy Vitruvian scrolls, the shadows of which were reflected on the floor; they made jagged, goalless paths. All these lines consisted after all of only one line.
As he lay in bed his heart began to hammer. Suddenly he knew, without looking, that Gertrude was not asleep; that she was lying there staring at the ceiling just as he was. “Gertrude!” he called.
From the slight rustling of the pillow he concluded that she turned her face to him.
“Don’t you hear me?”
“Yes, Daniel.”
“You must give me some advice; you must help me: help me and your sister, otherwise I cannot say what may happen.”
He stopped and listened, but there was not a stir: the stillness was absolute.
“It is at times possible to remain silent out of consideration for others,” he continued, “but if the silence is maintained too long, deception follows, and falsehood does not fail. But of what use is candour if it thrusts a knife into the heart of another merely in order to prepare an unblocked path for him who is candid? What good does it do to confess if the other does not understand? Two are already bleeding to death; shall the third meet with the same fate merely in order to say that the matter was talked over? The truth is, too many words have already been spoken, gruesome, shameless words, at the sound of which the innocent night of the senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society—? Are you listening, Gertrude?”
A “yes” that sounded like a note from a bird on a distant hill greeted his ears: it was the answer to his question.
“I have reached the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had begun soon enough. But who can ever tell what the future may bring? And passion? There are many varieties of passion. It is the term that every swain, washed and unwashed, uses in referring to his lusts. I had never felt a passion for which a woman was guilty. But now one has seized me with hide and hair. I had imagined that I could get out of it and not bring you into it; impossible! I am burning up with this passion, Gertrude, my whole being has been changed by it; and if help is not given me, I will be ruined.”
For a time there was a death-like stillness in the room; then he continued.
“But where is help to come from? It is strange; never untilthis thing happened did I know what holds us two together, you and me. Threads are being spun back and forth between us which no hand may touch without withering, as it is written in the Bible. There is a secret, a sacred secret, and if I offended it I would feel as though I had strangled the unborn child in your womb; and not only the child in your womb, but all the unborn children in my own breast. There is in the life of each man a woman in whom his own mother becomes young again, and to whom he is bound by an unseen, indestructible, umbilical cord. Face to face with this woman, his love, great or small, even his hate, his indifference, becomes a phantom, just as everything that we give out becomes a phantom compared with what is given to us. And there is another woman who is my own creation, the fruit of my dreams; she is my picture; I have created her from my own blood; she lay in me just as the seed lay in the bud. And she must be mine once she has been unveiled and made known to me, or I will perish of loneliness and maddened longing.”
The extravagant man pressed his face to the pillow and groaned: “She must be mine, or I will never get up from this bed. But if my way to her passes over you, Gertrude, I would have to cry out with Faust: ‘Oh, had I never been born!’”
Gertrude never uttered a sound. Minute after minute passed by. Daniel, growing calmer, listened to see if he could not hear some sound in the room. He heard nothing. The silence of his wife began to fill him with anxiety; he rose up in bed. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark. He felt around for some matches, and lighted a candle. Holding it in his hand, he bent over Gertrude. She was as pale as death; she was looking at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes.
“Put the candle out, Daniel,” she whispered, “I have something to say to you.”
He put the candle out, and set it away.
“Give me your hand, Daniel.”
He felt for her hand; he took hold of it. It was ice cold; he laid it on his breast.
“May I stay with you, Daniel? Will you tolerate me in your home?”
“Tolerate? Gertrude, tolerate?” he asked, in a lifeless, toneless voice. “You are my wife, in the presence of God my wife,” he added, in deadened memory of the words of another.
“I will become your mother made young again, as you wish.”
“Yes, Gertrude, but how?”
“I will help you, you and Eleanore. The hearts of you two shall not bleed to death because of me. Let me stay; that is all I ask.”
“That is more easily said than done, Gertrude.” He pressed close up to her, took her in his arms, and sobbed with unexpected violence.
“It is hard; yes, it is hard. But your heart must not be allowed to bleed on my account.”
His head lay on her breast; he was seized with convulsions of grief that would not let him go until break of day.
Then all of a sudden the words came like a scream from Gertrude’s lips: “I too am a creature.”
He embraced her with warmth; and she murmured: “It is hard, Daniel, but be of good cheer, be of good cheer.”
Pflaum, the apothecary, had begun to feel cramped in his house near the Church of the Holy Ghost. He had looked at several houses in the last week or two, and had finally decided on the Schimmelweis property, which was now for sale. The apothecary shop was to remain for the time being at its present location, and Jason Philip was likewise to keep his store and his residence. Herr Pflaum, being the landlord, intended to occupy the first and second floors; he had a large family.
One beautiful August afternoon, the two men—the apothecary and the bookseller—left the office of Judge Rübsam, where they had gone to sign the papers transferring the mortgage on the Schimmelweis property. A cloudless sky, already tinted with the blue of the descending sun, shone over the city.
Herr Pflaum looked the picture of happiness: his troubles seemed all to be behind him; he was manifestly facing the future without fear and without care. Jason Philip Schimmelweis, on the contrary, was plainly worried. He looked like a man who was on the down grade. There was a great grease spot on his coat. This spot told the story of domestic troubles; it revealed the fact that Jason Philip had a wife who had been ill in bed for months, and no physician in the city could diagnose her case; none knew what she was suffering from. Jason Philip was angry at his wife, at her illness, at the whole medical profession, and at the growing confusion and disorder in his affairs.
As they crossed Ægydius Place he cast a glance of unboundedhatred at the house in which Daniel and Gertrude lived. But he did not say anything; he merely pinched his lips and hung his head. In so doing he noticed the grease spot on his coat, and emitted a vexed growl. “I will go along with you, Herr Apothecary, and get a bottle of benzine,” he said, turning to his companion. In his voice there was a noticeable trace of that reluctant and unwilling humility which the poor display in the presence of the rich.
“Good, good,” he said, “come right along.” He blew the air before him; for he was warm. “Greetings, greetings,” he exclaimed, and waved his hand, “what are you doing here?”
It was Herr Carovius to whom he spoke. Herr Carovius was just then standing by the fountain of the Goose Man, rapt in the sort of reflection that was peculiar to him.
“At your service, gentlemen,” he said.
“I see there are natives who study our native art,” remarked the apothecary with an ironical smile, and stopped. Jason Philip likewise stopped, and looked in a dazed, distraught way at the bronze man with the two geese. Some boys were playing ball close by the fountain. When they saw the three men looking at it, they quit playing, came up, and looked at the fountain and the men and grinned as if there were something new to be seen.
“We have no idea what riches we possess,” said Herr Carovius.
“Quite right, quite right,” nodded the apothecary.
“I have just been trying to think what meaning this group may have,” continued Herr Carovius, “there is undeniably a musical motif in it.”
“A musical motif?” murmured Jason Philip, to whom the very term music conveyed the idea of something unpleasant.
“Yes, but you have got to understand it,” said Herr Carovius rather jauntily. With that he seized the ear of a small boy who had ventured right up to his trousers’ legs; the boy screamed.
After casting an angry look at the monument, Jason Philip broke out in sudden and hearty laughter. “Now I understand,” he stammered as he coughed, “you are a fox, a sly old dodger.”
“What do you mean, gentlemen?” asked the apothecary, who had become somewhat anxious, for he feared that this outburst of hilarity was directed at him.
“Why, don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” panted Jason Philip with a scarlet red face, “the two geese—? The musical motif and the two geese—? Isn’t it clear yet?”
It was clear to Herr Carovius. He stuck the index finger ofhis right hand in the air, and broke out in a neighing sort of laughter. Then he took the apothecary by the arm, and in the pauses between salvos of laughter he bleated: “Magnificent!—Under each arm a goose!—Priceless! Say, Herr Schimmelweis, that was good. We will allow you one on that.”
The connection was now clear to the apothecary. He slapped himself on his hips and cried: “As sure as there is a devil, that’s the best joke I ever heard in my life.”
Jason Philip Schimmelweis again got control of himself. He pressed his hands to his stomach and said breathlessly: “Who would have thought that the Goose Man moves about among us in bodily form?”
“Yes, who would have thought it?” said Herr Carovius as if conceding a point. “It is a capital shot, a real discovery. We come to the simple conclusion: Goose Man! And we are capable of drawing a conclusion, for there are three of us. According to an old proverb,Tres faciunt collegium.”
“And they,” stuttered Jason Philip, pointing to the group, as tears of laughter trickled down over his pudgy cheeks, “they are three, too. See, there are three of them!”
“Right,” screamed Herr Carovius, “there are three of them, too. It is all clear.”
“Have a chew, gentlemen?” said the apothecary, taking his tobacco pouch from his pocket.
“No,” replied Jason Philip, “that joke deserves a cigar.” The remark was made between gulps of laughter.
“I suggest that we christen the story with a flask of Salvator,” said Herr Carovius.
The other two agreed to the proposal. Thecollegiummarched across the square, stopped every now and then, broke out in fits of insuppressible laughter, and then continued on their way to the inn with parched throats.
It may have been only an evening shadow, or it may have been a rare inspiration that created the impression. But the Goose Man, standing there in all his pride behind the iron railing, seemed to follow them with his eyes, in which there were traces of sorrow and astonishment. The boys playing ball had soon forgotten the delectable episode.
Danieland Eleanore had reached a stage of mutual silence; it was not the first time, however, and it was as disagreeable now as it had been then. They would meet on the steps, and pass each other with a mere nod. If Eleanore came in to see Gertrude, Daniel withdrew.
Once Eleanore called when Gertrude was not at home. Daniel was stubborn; nor could Eleanore manage to make a single rational remark. He did not like her looks; he suspected her paleness and outward, enforced cheerfulness. “It is an undignified state of affairs, Eleanore,” he exclaimed, “we must make an end of it.”
Make an end of it? Yes—but how? This was the thought that came at once to Eleanore’s mind. Every day the chain that bound her to him became stronger.
Daniel was also tortured by the sight of Gertrude. He felt that she was watching him and that she was worried about him. More than that, the event was approaching that surrounded her with an atmosphere of suffering and made forbearance obligatory. Her features, though haggard and distorted, bore nevertheless an expression of mysterious transfiguration.
After Gertrude had noticed for some time that Daniel was being estranged from his work and that he had lost interest in everything, she decided to have a talk with Eleanore. She did it without preparation or tenderness.
“Can’t you see that you are ruining him?” she cried.
“You want me to be ruined, do you?” asked Eleanore, in surprised dismay. She had appreciated at once and without difficulty the complete range of Gertrude’s renunciation.
“What difference does it make about you?” replied Gertrude harshly; “what are you getting excited about?”
This question made Eleanore’s ideas of order and duty quake and totter. She looked at her sister with incredulous eyes and in perfect silence. It was not the happy, gentle Gertrude that had spoken, but the Gertrude of months ago, the lonely, loveless Gertrude.
What difference does it make about you? Why are you gettingexcited? That was equivalent to saying: Make short work of your life, and don’t draw out the episode in his life any longer than you have to.
Eleanore took courage to carry out the plan she had had in mind for a long while and in which she placed her last hope.
One evening she went to Daniel and said: “I should like to go with you to Eschenbach, Daniel, and visit your mother.”
“Why do you wish to do that?” he asked in amazement. He and his mother did not write to each other: that was due first of all to their natures, and secondly to the condition in which each was now living. But he knew that Eleanore received an occasional letter from Eschenbach which she answered without consulting him. This had never seemed strange to him until now.
A few days later she repeated her wish; Daniel granted it. They decided upon the following Sunday for the excursion.
A warm, languid October sun shone over the land; the forests presented a gorgeous array of autumnal foliage; the fields lay stretched in barren rows; along the hills of Franconia floated clouds that looked like down driven by the wind.
They had taken the train as far as Triesdorf; from there they went on to Merckendorf by stage coach. The rest of the distance they walked. Daniel pointed to a flock of geese that were trotting around on the shore of an abandoned pond, and said: “That is our national bird; his cackle is our music. But it doesn’t sound so bad.”
A peasant woman passed by, and made the sign of the cross before the picture of a saint: “It is strange that everything has suddenly become Catholic,” said Eleanore.
Daniel nodded, and replied that when his father moved to Eschenbach a few other Protestant families were living there, all of whom joined in Protestant worship. Later, he said, most of them emigrated, leaving his mother as the only Protestant, so far as he knew, in the neighbourhood. But, Daniel remarked in the course of conversation, his mother had never had any unpleasant experience on this account, and he himself had frequently gone to church, primarily of course to hear the organ, though no one had ever taken offence at this. “There is a totally different type of people here,” he added, “people who lay greater stress on externals than we do, and yet are more secretive.”
Eleanore looked at the church tower whose Spanish-green roof rose from the valley. After a long silence she said: “I wonder whether it will be a boy or a girl, Gertrude’s baby? Oh, a girl, of course. Some day it will be in the world, and will look at me with eyes, with real eyes. How strange that a child of yours should look at me!”
“What is there strange about that? Many children are born, many look at some one.”
“What are you going to call it?” asked Eleanore.
“If it is blond and has blue eyes like yours, I am going to call it Eva.”
“Eva!” cried Eleanore, “no, that won’t do.” She herself had chosen the name of Eva for the child of the maid at the Rüdigers’. That he should now want to call Gertrude’s child by the same name seemed so strange to her.
“Why not Eva?” he asked. “There is something back of this objection on your part. Women always have something up their sleeve. Out with it! Why do you object to Eva?”
Eleanore smiled, and shook her head. She would have liked to make a clean confession to him, but she was not certain how he would take it: she was afraid he would turn back, enraged at her cunning. Once the child had been born and lay there before him, it would captivate him, and she knew it.
They had stopped and were looking out over the sunlit plains. “How alone we are!” said Daniel.
“Everything is easier here,” said Eleanore thoughtfully. “If one could only forget where one comes from, it would be easy to be happy.”
“I have been away for seven years,” said Daniel as they passed through the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small—the Town Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and better kept. As he passed over the three steps at the front gate, each one of which was bulging out like a huge oyster shell, and entered the shop with its smell of spices, the past dwindled to nothing. Marian was so happy she could not speak. She reached one of her hands to Daniel, the other to Eleanore. Her first question was about Gertrude.
In the room sat a four-year-old child with blond hair andmarvellous blue eyes. Its little face was of the most delicate beauty, its body was delicately formed.
“Who is the child? To whom does it belong?” asked Daniel.
“It is your own child, Daniel,” said his mother.
“My own child! Yes, for heaven’s sakes—!” He blushed, turned pale, looked first at his mother, and then at Eleanore.
“It is your own flesh and blood. Don’t you ever think of Meta any more?”
“Of Meta.... Oh, I see. And you, you adopted the child? And you, Eleanore, knew all about this? And you, Mother, took the child?” He sat down at the table, and covered his face with his hands. “That was what Eleanore had in mind?” he murmured timidly to himself. “And I presume that to make the story complete the child’s name is Eva ...?”
“Yes, Eva,” whispered Eleanore, touched by the situation. “Go to your father, Eva, and shake hands with him.”
The child did as it had been told. Then Marian related to her son how Eleanore had brought the child to Eschenbach, and how Meta had married and gone to America with her husband.
Every look, every movement on the part of Marian showed how great her love for the child was: she guarded it as the apple of her eye.
The circle of wonderful events closed in around Daniel’s heart. Where responsibility lay and where guilt, where will power ended and fate began, Daniel could not say. To express gratitude would be vulgar; to conceal his emotions was difficult. He was ashamed of himself in the presence of both of the women. But when he looked at the living creature, his shame lost all meaning. And how exalted Eleanore appeared in his eyes just then! She seemed to him equally amiable and worthy of respect, whether he regarded her as an active or as a sentient, feeling woman. He almost shuddered at the thought that she was so near him; that what she had done had been done for him filled him with humility.
The strangest of all, however, was little Eva herself. He could not see enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human being of the noblest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of music; and in herwalk and gestures in general there was a rhythm which promised much for her future poise and winsomeness.
Daniel took Eleanore through the village and out to the old town gate. It was the time of the annual fair; Eschenbach was crowded. They returned on this account to the more quiet streets, and finally entered the church. The sexton came up and admitted Daniel to the choir. Daniel sat down at the organ; the sexton pumped the bellows; Eleanore took a seat on one of the little benches near the side wall.
Daniel’s eyes became fixed; his fingers touched the keys with supernatural power; he began to improvise. There were two motifs following each other in close succession; both were in fifths; they were united into one; they ran from the low to the high registers, from Hell through the World to Heaven. A hymn crowned the improvised composition.
He stood with Eleanore for a long while in the stillness. The songs echoed from the lofty arches. It seemed to both of them that the blood of the one was flowing into the body of the other. Incidents of the past faded from their memory; they seemed to have completed a long journey; there was no voice to remind them of their return; they were completely liberated from duties and made immune from care.
Eleanore was to sleep with Marian and Eva; Daniel was to have his old room. He showed it to Eleanore; they stepped to the window and looked out. They saw Eva down in the yard dancing back and forth barefooted on a wooden balustrade. She kept her equilibrium by holding out her arms. The grace of her movements was so fairy-like that Daniel and Eleanore smiled at each other in astonishment.
After dinner Daniel went out in front of the house; Marian and Eleanore sat for a while at the window; the light of the lamp shone behind them. Later they came out into the street and joined Daniel. Marian, however, was uneasy on account of the child. She said that Eva had been restless all day and might cry for her. “Stay out just as long as you like; I will leave the door open,” she said, and went back.
Daniel and Eleanore returned to the fair. It was still early in the evening, but the crowd had disappeared. They sauntered around among the booths, and stopped to listen to the harangueof a mountebank or to watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball that danced on a jet of water. There was a sea of red and green lanterns; sky-rockets were hissing into the air from the rampart; musicians were playing in the cafés, while hilarious tipplers sang or hooted as the spirit moved them.
They came to a grass plot, the sole illumination of which was the light from a circus wagon. On the steps of the wagon sat a man in tricot holding the head of a black poodle between his knees.
“Those were the last inhabitants of the earth,” said Daniel, after they had crossed the square. The noise died away, the gaudy lights disappeared.
“How far are you going?” asked Eleanore, without the remotest trace of fear in her voice.
“I am going on until I am with you,” was the quick reply.
The indistinct outline of a bridge became visible; under it the water flowed noiselessly. The path had a yellowish shimmer; there were no stars in the heavens. Suddenly the path seemed to come to an end; at the end of it were trees there that seemed to be moving closer and closer together; it became darker and darker; they stopped.
“We have told each other our whole story,” said Daniel. “In the way of words we owe each other nothing. We have had enough of talk; there has been no lack of sorrow and enough of error. We can no longer act differently, and therefore we dare not act differently any longer.”
“Be still,” whispered Eleanore, “I don’t like your wrangling; what you say is so unpeaceful and fiendish. Yesterday I dreamed that you were lying on your knees and had your folded hands uplifted. Then I loved you—very much.”
“Do you need dreams in order to love me, girl? I don’t; I need you just as you are. I will soon be thirty years old, Eleanore. A man never really wakes up until he is thirty; it is then that he conquers the world. You know what rests within me; you suspect it. You know too how I need you; you feel it. You are my soul; you are created out of my music; without you I am an empty hull, a patchwork, a violin without strings.”
“Oh, Daniel, I believe you, and yet it is not all true,” replied Eleanore. He thought he could see in the darkness her mockingly ironical smile: “Somewhere, I am almost tempted to say in God, it is not true. If we were better, if we were beings in the image of God and acting in God’s ways, we would have to desist fromour own ways. Then it would be wonderful to live: it would be like living above the clouds, happy, at peace, pure.”
“Does that come from your heart, Eleanore?”
“My dear, dear man! My heart, like yours, has been beclouded and bewitched. I cannot give you up. I have settled my accounts. In my soul I am entirely conscious of my guilt. I know what I am doing and assume full responsibility for my action. There is no use to struggle any longer; the water is already swirling over our heads. I simply want to say that you should not delude yourself into believing that we have risen up above other people by what we have done, that we have deserved the gratitude of fate. No, Daniel, what we are doing is precisely what all those do who fall. Let me stay with you, dearest; kiss me, kiss me to death.”
Philippina had promised Eleanore to look after Jordan and Gertrude on Sunday.
As she was crossing Five Points, she went into a shop, and asked for three pfennigs’ worth of court plaster. While doing some housework she had scratched herself on a nail. The clerk gave her the plaster, and asked her what was the news.
“Ah, you poor bloke, you want to know the very latest, don’t you?” she snarled, and then grinned with blatant self-complacency.
“The later the better,” said the fellow with a lustful smirk.
Philippina bent over the counter, and whispered: “They’re taking their wedding trip to-day.” She laughed in a lewd, imbecile way. The clerk stared at her with wide-opened eyes and mouth. Two hours later the news was in the mouth of every hussy in that section of the city.
Gertrude was in bed. The day woman who did the cooking gave Philippina a plate with Jordan’s dinner on it: Meat, vegetables, and a few sour plums. Philippina ate two of the plums on the way up to his room, and licked her fingers.
The whole forenoon she spent rummaging around in Eleanore’s room; she looked through the cabinets, the presses, and the pockets of Eleanore’s dresses. As it began to grow dark, Jordan suddenly entered, in hat and great coat, and looked on in speechless and enraged amazement at the girl’s inexplicable curiosity.
Philippina took the broom from the corner, and began to sweep with all her might. While sweeping she sang, out of tune, impudently, and savagely: