She liked the expression. At times she would stand before the mirror, and whisper: “Siren.”
When Andreas Döderlein heard of what was going on, he had an attack of mad rage. “I will put you out of the house,” he exclaimed, “I will beat you until you are a helpless, despicable cripple.” But in his eyes there was again the trace of that suppressed fear that gave the lie to his seeming berserker rage.
“An artist does not need to adapt her morals to the code of the Philistine,” remarked Dorothea, with complete imperturbability. “Those are all nice people with whom I am going. Every one of them is a gentleman.”
A gentleman: that was an argument against which it was futile to enter a caveat. In her eyes that man was a gentleman who ran risks, impressed waiters and coachmen, and wore creased trousers. “No one dares come too close to me,” she said with much pride. That was the truth; no one had thus far awakened her deepest curiosity, and she had determined to put a high price on herself. Edmund Hahn was the only one who had any influence on her; and this was true of him because he was absolutely devoid of feeling, and had a type of shamelessness that completely disarmed and terrified her.
Andreas Döderlein had to let her have her way. If he had any consolation at all, it lay in the belief on his part that a real Döderlein would never voluntarily come to grief. If Dorothea was a genuine Döderlein, she would march straight to her objective, and take by storm the good and useful things of life. If she failed, it would be proof that there was a flaw somewhere in her birth. This was his logic; and having applied it, theoretically, he enshrouded himself in the clouds of his Olympus.
Dorothea gave her uncle Carovius, however, detailed accounts of how she was making her suitors, young and old, walk the war-path. They all had to do it, the actor and the banker, the candle manufacturer and the engineer. She said she was leading the whole pack of them around by the nose. Herr Carovius’s face beamed with joy when he heard her say this. He called her his little jackanapes, and said she was the fortune of his old age. To himself he said that she was a genuine Carovius destined to great deeds.
“You don’t have to get married,” he said with the urge of a zealot of old, and rubbed his hands. “Oh, of course, if a Count comes along with a few millions and a castle in the background, why, you might think it over. But just let some greasy comedian get it into his head that he is going to steal you away from me! Or let some wabbly-hipped office-boy imagine for a minute that he is going to drag you into his circle along with his other unwashed acquaintances! If this ever happens, Dorothea, give it to ’em hot and heavy! Show the wanton satyrs what kind of blood you have in you.”
“Ah, Uncle,” said Dorothea, “I know you mean well by me.You are the only one who does. But if I were only not so poor! Look at me! Look at this dress I have on! It’s a sight!” And she put her head in her uplifted arm and sobbed.
Herr Carovius pulled at his moustaches, moved his eyebrows up and down, went to his writing desk, opened his strong box, took out a hundred-mark bill, and gave it to her with turned head, as if he were afraid of the wrath of the protecting spirit of the money chest.
This was the state of affairs when Daniel met the youthful Dorothea in Herr Carovius’s home, and went away with an unforgettable, unextinguishable picture of her in his soul.
Daniel’s approaching fortieth birthday seemed like a sombre portal leading to the realm of spent ambition. “Seize what remains to be seized,” a voice within him cried. “Grass is growing on the graves.”
His senses were at war with his intellect and his heart. He had never looked on women as he was looking on them now.
One day he went out to Siegmundshof. Eberhard was not at home. Sylvia’s face showed traces of subdued sadness. She had three children, each one more beautiful than the other, but when her eyes rested on them her heart was filled with grief. Women whose married life is unhappy have dull, lifeless features; their hands are transparent and yellow.
Daniel took leave more quickly than he had wished or intended. He felt an egoistic aversion to the joyless sons of man.
He went to see Herr Carovius. The laughing one whom he sought was not at home.
Herr Carovius looked at him at times distrustfully. The face of his former foe set him to thinking. It was furrowed like a field under cultivation and burnt like a hearthstone. It was the face of a criminal, crabbed, enervated, tense, and breathed upon, it seemed, by threatening clouds. Herr Carovius was a connoisseur of faces.
In order to avoid the discomfort of fatuous conversation, Daniel played a number of old motetts for Herr Carovius. Herr Carovius was so pleased that he ran into his pantry, and got a half dozen Boxdorf apples and put them in Daniel’s pockets. He bought these apples every autumn by the peck, and cherished them as so many priceless treasures.
“At the sound of such music it would not be difficult to become a real Christian,” he said.
“There is spring in them,” said Daniel, “they are art that is as innocent as new seed in the soil. But your piano needs tuning.”
“Symbolic, symbolic, my dear friend,” cried Herr Carovius, and puffed out his cheeks. “But you come back another time, and you will find it in the pink of condition. Come frequently, please. You will reap the reward of Heaven if you do.”
Herr Carovius begging for company; it was touching. Daniel promised to bring some of the manuscripts he had been collecting along with him. When he returned a few days later, Dorothea was there; and from then on she was always there. His visits became longer and longer. When Herr Carovius noticed that Dorothea was coming to see him more frequently now, he moved heaven and earth to persuade Daniel to come more frequently. He rained reproach and abuse on him if he failed to come; if he was late, he greeted him with a sour face and put indiscreet questions to him. When he was alone of an afternoon, time stood still. He was like a drinker tantalised by seeing his accustomed portion of brandy on the table but just beyond his reach. The company of these two people, Daniel and Dorothea, had become as indispensable to his happiness as in former years the reading of the newspapers, the brethren of the Vale of Tears, the troubles of Eberhard and the funerals were indispensable if he were to feel at ease. It is the way of the small citizen: each of his customs becomes a passion.
When Daniel played the old chorals, Dorothea listened quietly, though it could not be said that she was perfect at concealing her tedium.
One time they began talking about Dorothea’s violin playing. Herr Carovius asked her to play something. She declined without the slightest display of affectation. Daniel said nothing to encourage her; he found that this modesty was becoming to her; he believed that he detected wisdom and resignation in her behaviour; he smiled at her graciously.
“Tell us a story, Daniel,” she said, “that would be better.” It eventually came out that that was what she had wanted all along.
“I am a poor raconteur,” said Daniel. “I have a thick tongue.”
She begged him, however, with stammering words and beseeching gestures. Herr Carovius tittered. Daniel took off his glasses, polished them, and looked at the young girl with squinting eyes.It seemed as if the glasses had made it difficult for him to see Dorothea distinctly, or as if he preferred to see her indistinctly. “I really don’t know what I could tell in the way of a story,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Tell us everything, anything,” cried Dorothea, seized with a veritable fit of eagerness to hear him talk. She stretched out her hands toward him: that seemed to him to be so like a child. He had never told stories to a child; he had never in truth told stories to any one. Gertrude and Eleanore had, to be sure, forced a confession or a complaint from him at times, but that was all, and all that was necessary or appropriate.
Suddenly he was drawn on by the word in which his fate would be quietly reflected; by the fiery young eye in the brilliancy of which the complex became simple, the dark bright; by the wicked old man to whom the whole world, as seen from his mire, had become a poisonous food.
And with his brittle, staccato voice he told of the countries through which he had journeyed; of the sea and the cities by the sea; of the Alps and the Alpine lakes; of cathedrals, palaces, and marvellous monasteries; of the queer people he had met, of his work and his loneliness. It was all incoherent, arid, and loveless. Though sorely tempted, he desisted from mentioning things that came close to his soul; things that moved his heart, fired his brain. When he told of the Jewess, the Swallow, he did not even finish the sentence. He made a long pause, and then shifted to the account of his visit to Eschenbach. Here he stopped again before he was through.
But Dorothea began to ask questions. It was all too general and therefore unsatisfactory. “What was there in Eschenbach? Why did you go there?” she asked boldly.
He was in error concerning the hot desire that burned in her eyes to know about Eschenbach. Her question made him feel good; he believed that he was on the scent of warm-heartedness; he thought he had found a soul that was eager to help through knowledge. He was seized with the desire of the mature man to fashion an untouched soul in harmony with the picture of his dreams. “My mother used to live there,” he replied hesitatingly, “she has died.”
“Yes—and?” breathed Dorothea. She saw that that was not all.
He felt that this uncompromising reticence was not right; he felt a sense of guilt. With still greater hesitation—and immediate repentance—he added: “A child of mine also lived there; she waseleven years old. She has disappeared; no one knows where she is.”
Dorothea folded her hands, “A child? And disappeared? Simply vanished?” she whispered excitedly.
Herr Carovius looked like a man sitting on a hot iron. “Eleven years old?” he asked, hungry for sensation, “why—that was, then—before the time ...”
“Yes, it was before the time,” said Daniel gloomily and by way of confirmation. He had betrayed himself, and was angry at himself for having done so. He became silent; it was impossible to get him to say another word.
Herr Carovius noticed how Dorothea hung on Daniel’s eyes. A tormenting suspicion arose in him. “Yesterday out on St. Joseph’s Place, I was talking with one of your admirers, the fellow who shatters the wings of the stage with his ranting,” he began with malice aforethought. “The blade had the nerve to say to me: ‘You’d better hurry up and get Dorothea Döderlein a husband, or people will talk their tongues loose in their throats.’”
“That is not true,” cried Dorothea indignantly, blushing to the roots of her hair. “He didn’t say that.”
Herr Carovius laughed malevolently. “Well, if it is not true, it is pretty well put together,” he said with his usual bleat.
When Daniel left, Dorothea accompanied him to the outside door.
“It’s a pity,” murmured Daniel, “a pity!”
“Why a pity? I am free. There isn’t a soul in the world who has any claim on me.” She looked at him with the courage of a real woman.
“There are remarks that are just like grease spots,” he replied.
“Well, who can keep from the dirt these days?” she asked, almost wild with excitement.
Daniel let his eyes rest on her as though she were some material object. He said slowly and seriously: “Keep your hands and your eyes off of me, Dorothea. I will bring you no happiness.”
Her lips opened, thirsty. “I should like to take a walk with you some time,” she whispered, and her features trembled with an ecstasy which he was dupe enough to believe was meant for him; in reality Dorothea was thinking of the adventurer and the disclosure of the secret.
“Many years ago,” said Daniel, “you will scarcely recall it, I protected you here in this very same gateway from a big dog. Do you remember?”
“No! Or do I? Wait a minute! Yes, I remember, that is, quite indistinctly. You did that?” Dorothea seized his hands with gratitude.
“Fine! Then we will go walking to-morrow morning. Where? Oh, it doesn’t make much difference,” said Daniel.
“But you must tell me everything, you hear? everything.” Dorothea was as insistent as she had been in the room a short while ago; and she was more impetuous and impatient.
They agreed upon the place where they would meet.
At first they took short walks in remote parts of the city; then they took longer ones. On Mid-Summer Day they strolled out to Kraftshof and the grove of the Pegnitz shepherds. Daniel made unconscious effort to avoid the places where he had once walked with Eleanore.
There came moments when Dorothea’s exuberance made him pensive and sad; he felt the weight of his forty years; they were inclined to make him hypochondriacal. Was it the vengeance of fate that made him slow up when they came to a hill, while Dorothea ran on ahead and waited for him, laughing?
She did not see the flowers, the trees, the animals, or the clouds. But when she saw people a change came over her: she would become more active; or she would mobilise her resources; or she seemed to strike up a spiritual liaison with them. It might be only a peasant boy on an errand or a vagabond going nowhere; she would shake her hips and laugh one note higher.
“Her youth has gone to her head, like wine,” Daniel thought to himself.
Once she took a box of chocolate bon-bons along. Having had enough of them herself and seeing that Daniel did not care for them, she threw what was left away. Daniel reproached her for her wastefulness. “Why drag it along?” she asked with perfect lack of embarrassment, “when you have enough of a thing you throw it away.” She showed her white teeth, and took in one deep breath of fresh air after another.
Daniel studied her. “She is invulnerable,” he said to himself; “her power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete.” He felt that she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionallya touch of the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt it was advisable.
“When are you going to begin to tell me the stories?” she asked: “I must, I must know all about you,” she added with much warmth of expression. “There are days and nights when I cannot rest. Tell me! Tell me!”
That was the truth. In order to penetrate his life history, which she pictured to herself as full of passionate, checkered events, she had done everything that he had demanded of her.
Daniel refused; he was silent; he was afraid he would darken the girl’s pure mind, jeopardise her unsuspecting innocence. He was afraid to conjure up the shadows.
One day she was talking along in her easy way, and while so doing she tripped herself up. She had begun to tell him about the men she had been going with; and before she knew what she was doing, she had fallen into the tone she used when she talked with her Uncle Carovius. Becoming suddenly aware of her indiscretion, she stopped, embarrassed. Daniel’s serious questions caused her to make some confessions she would otherwise never have thought of making. She told a goodly number of rather murky and ugly stories, and it was very hard for her to act as though she were innocent or the victim of circumstances. At last, unable longer to escape from the net she had woven, she made a clean breast of her whole life, painted it all in the gaudiest colours, and then waited in breathless—but agreeable—suspense to see what effect it would have on Daniel.
Daniel was silent for a while; then he made a motion with his outstretched hand as if he were cutting something in two: “Away from them, Dorothea, or away from me!”
Dorothea bowed her head, and then looked at him timidly from head to foot. The decisiveness with which he spoke was something new to her, though it was by no means offensive. A voluptuous shudder ran through her limbs. “Yes,” she whispered girlishly, “I am going to put an end to it. I never realised what it all meant. But don’t be angry, will you? No, you won’t, will you?”
She came closer to him; her eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t be angry at me,” she said again, “poor Dorothea can’t help it. She is not responsible for it.”
“But how did you come to do it?” asked Daniel. “I can’t see how it was possible. Weren’t you disgusted to the very bottom of your soul? How could you go about under God’s free heavenswith such hyenas? Why, girl, the very thought of it fills me with scepticism about everything.”
“What should I have done, Daniel?” she said, calling him by his baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture of submissiveness and boldness that touched and at the same time enchanted him. “What should I have done? They come and talk to you, and spin their nets about you; and at home it is so dreary and lonely, and your heart is so empty and Father is so mean, you haven’t got anybody else in the world to talk to.” Such was her defence, effective even if more voluble than coherent.
They walked on. They were passing through a valley in the forest. On either side were tall pine trees, the crowns of which were lighted by the evening sun.
“You can’t play with Fate, Dorothea,” said Daniel. “It does not permit smudging or muddling, if we are to stand the test. It keeps a faultless ledger; the entries it makes on both sides are the embodiment of accuracy. Debts that we contract must always be paid, somehow, somewhere.”
Dorothea felt that he was getting started; that the great, good story was about to come. She stopped, spread her shawl on the ground, and took a graceful position on it, all eyes and ears. Daniel threw himself on the moss beside her.
And he told his story—into the moss where little insects were creeping around. He never raised either his eye or his voice. At times Dorothea had to bend over to hear him.
He told about Gertrude, her torpor, her awakening, her love, her resignation. He told about Eleanore; told how he had loved her without knowing it. He told how Eleanore, out of an excess of passion and suffering, became his, how Gertrude wandered about dazed, unhappy, lost, until she finally took her life: “Then we went up to the attic, and found it on fire and her lifeless body hanging from the rafter.”
He told how Gertrude had lived on as a shadow by the side of Eleanore, and how Eleanore became a flower girl, and how Philippina the inexplicable, and still inexplicable, had come into his family, and how Gertrude’s child lived there like an unfed foundling, and how the other child, the child he had had by the maid, had found such a warm spot in his heart.
He told of his meeting the two sisters, their speaking and their remaining silent, his seeing them in secret trysts, the moving about from house to house and room to room, the singing of songs, his experiences with the Dörmaul opera company, the light thrownon his drab life by a mask, his friend and the help he had received from him, his separation from him, the brush-maker’s house on St. James’s Place, the three queer old maids in the Long Row, the days he spent at Castle Erfft, the old father of the two sisters and his strange doings—all of this he described in the tone of a man awakening from a deep sleep. There was a confidence in what he said and the way he said it that mayhap terrified the hovering spirits of the evening, though it did not fill Dorothea’s eyes, then glistening like polished metal, with a more intimate or cordial light.
When he looked up he felt he saw two sombre figures standing on the edge of the forest; he felt he saw the two sisters, and that they were casting mournful, reproachful glances at him.
He got up. “And all that,” he concluded, “all that has been drunk up, like rain by the parched earth, by a work on which I have been labouring for the past seven years. For seven years. Two more years, and I will give it to the world, provided this unsteady globe has not fallen into the sun by that time.”
Dorothea had a confused, haphazard idea as to the type of man that was standing before her. She was seized with a prickling desire for him such as she had thus far never experienced. She began to love him, in her way. Something impelled her to seek shelter by him, near him, somewhat as a bird flies under the crown of a tree at the approach of a storm. Daniel interpreted the timidity with which she put her arm in his as a sign of gratitude.
And in this mood he took her back to the city.
It was in this pulsing, urging, joyful mood that Daniel worked at and completed the fifth movement of his symphony, ascherzoof grand proportions, beginning with a clarinet figure that symbolised laughingsans-souci. All the possibilities of joy developed from this simple motif. Nor was retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes, mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three themes flowed along together, gaining strength apparently through their union, rose to a wonderful fugue, and seemed to be just on the point of gaining the victory when the whole orchestra, above the chord in D sevenths, was seized by the waltz melody, those melancholy sister-strainswere taken up by the violins, and fled, dirge-like, to their unknown abodes. Just before the jubilant crescendo of the finale, a bassoon solo held one of them fast on its distant, grief-stricken heights.
Daniel sketched the sixth movement in the following fourteen nights.
He was fully aware of the fact that he had never been able to work this way before. When a man accomplishes the extraordinary, he knows it. It seizes him like a disease, and fills him like a profound dream.
At times he felt as though he must tell some one about it, even if it were only Herr Carovius. But once the flame had died down, he could not help but laugh at the temptation to which he had felt himself subjected. “Patience,” he thought, feeling more assured than ever, “patience, patience!”
Since his work on the manuscripts was completed and his connection with the firm of Philander and Sons dissolved, he began to look around for another position. He had saved in the course of the last few years four thousand marks, but he wished to keep this sum intact.
He learned that the position of organist at the Church of St. Ægydius was vacant; he went to the pastor, who recommended him to his superiors. It was decided that he should play something before the church consistory. This he did one morning in October. The trial proved eminently successful to his exacting auditors.
He was appointed organist at St. Ægydius’s at a salary of twelve hundred marks a year. When he played on Sundays and holidays, the people came into the church just to hear him.
Among the suitors for the hand of Dorothea on whom Andreas Döderlein looked with special favour was the mill owner, a man by the name of Weisskopf. Herr Weisskopf was passionately fond of music. He had greatly admired Dorothea when she gave her concert, and had sent her a laurel wreath.
One day Herr Weisskopf came in and took dinner with the Döderleins. When he left, Döderlein said to his daughter: “My dear Dorothea, from this day on you may consider yourself betrothed. This admirable man desires to have you as his lawfully wedded wife. It is a great good fortune; the man is as rich as Crœsus.”
Instead of making a reply, Dorothea laughed heartily. But she knew that the time had come when something had to be done. Her mobile face twitched with scorn, fear, and desire.
“Think it over; sleep on it. I have promised Herr Weisskopf to let him know to-morrow,” said Döderlein, black-browed.
A week before this, Andreas Döderlein, confidently expecting that Herr Weisskopf would ask for the hand of his daughter, had borrowed a thousand marks from him. The miller had loaned him the money believing that he was thereby securing a promissory note on Dorothea. Döderlein had placed himself under obligations, and was consequently determined to carry out his plans with regard to the marriage of his daughter.
But Dorothea’s behaviour made it safe to predict that objections would be raised on her part. Döderlein was in trouble; he sought distraction. Sixteen years ago he had begun anopusentitled “All Souls: a Symphonic Picture.” Five pages of the score had been written, and since then he had never undertaken creative work. He rummaged around in his desk, found the score, went to the piano, and tried to take up the thread where he had lost it sixteen years ago. He tried to imagine the intervening time merely as a pause, an afternoon siesta.
It would not go. He sighed. He sat before the instrument, and stared at the paper like a schoolboy who has a problem to solve but has forgotten the rule. He seemed to lament the loss of his artistic ability. He felt so hollow. The notes grinned at him; they mocked him. His thoughts turned involuntarily to the miller. He improvised for a while. Dorothea stuck her head in the door and sang: “Rhinegold, Rhinegold, pu-re gold.”
He was enraged; he got up, slammed the lid of the piano, took his hat and top coat, left the house, and went out to see his friend in the suburbs.
When he returned that night, he saw Dorothea standing in the door with a man. It was the actor, Edmund Hahn. They were carrying on a heated conversation in whispers. The man was holding Dorothea by the arm, but when Döderlein became visible from the unlighted street, he uttered an ugly oath and quickly disappeared.
Dorothea looked her father straight, and impudently, in the face, and followed him into the dark house.
When they were upstairs and had lighted the lamp, Döderlein turned to her, and asked her threateningly: “What do you mean by these immodest associations? Tell me! I want an answer!”
“I don’t want to marry your flour sack. That’s my answer,” said Dorothea, with a defiant toss of her head.
“Well, we’ll see,” said Döderlein, pale with rage and ploughing through his hair with his fingers, “we’ll see. Get out of here! I have no desire to lose my well-earned sleep on account of such an ungrateful hussy. We’ll take up the subject again to-morrow morning.”
The next morning Dorothea hastened to Herr Carovius. “Uncle,” she stammered, “he wants to marry me to that flour sack.”
“Yes? Well, I suppose I’ll have to visit that second-rate musician in his studio again and give him a piece of my mind. In the meantime be calm, my child, be calm,” said he, stroking her brown hair, “Old Carovius is still alive.”
Dorothea nestled up to him, and smiled: “What would you say, Uncle,” she began with a knavish and at the same time unusually attentive expression in her face, “if I were to marry Daniel Nothafft? You like him,” she continued in a flattering tone, and held him fast by the shoulder when he started back, “you like him, I know you do. I must marry somebody; for I do not wish to be an old maid, and I can’t stand Father any longer.”
Herr Carovius tore himself loose from her. “To the insane asylum with you!” he cried. “I would rather see you go to bed with that meal sack. Is the Devil in you, you prostitute? If your skin itches, scratch it, so far as I am concerned, but take a stable boy to do it, as Empress Katherine of blessed memory did. Buy fine dresses, bedizen yourself with tom-foolery of all shades and colours, go to dances and lap up champagne, make music or throw your damn fiddle on the dung heap, do anything you want to do, I’ll pay for it; but that green-eyed phantast, that lunk-headed rat-catcher, that woman-eater and music-box bird, no, no! Never! Send him humping down the stairs and out the front door! For God’s sake and the sake of all the saints, don’t marry him! Don’t, I say. If you do, it’s all off between you and me.”
There was such a look of hate and fear in Herr Carovius’s face that Dorothea was almost frightened. His hair was as towsled as the twigs of an abandoned bird’s nest; water was dripping from the corners of his mouth; his eyes were inflamed; his glasses were on the tip of his nose.
Nothing could have made Dorothea more pleased with the story Daniel had told her than Herr Carovius’s ravings. Her eyes were opened wide, her mouth was thirsty. If she had hesitated at times before, she did so no more. She loved money; greed was a partof her make-up from the hour she was born. But if Herr Carovius had laid the whole of his treasures at her feet, and said to her, “You may have them if you will renounce Daniel Nothafft,” she would have replied, “Your money, my Daniel.”
Something terribly strange and strong drew her to the man she had just heard so volubly cursed. That sensual prickling was of a more dangerous violence and warmth in his presence than in that of any other man she had ever known; and she had known a number. To her he was a riddle and a mystery; she wanted to solve the one and clear up the other. He had possessed so many women, indubitably more than he had confessed to her; and she wished now to possess him. He was so quiet, so clever, so resolute: she wanted his quietness, his cleverness, his resoluteness. She wanted everything he had, his charm, his magic, his power over men, all that he displayed and all that he concealed.
She thought of him constantly; she thought in truth of no one else, and nothing else. Her thoughts fluttered about his picture, shyly, greedily, and as playfully as a kitten. He had managed to bring will power and unity into her senses. She wanted to have him.
The rain beat against the window. Terrified at Dorothea’s thoughtfulness, Herr Carovius pressed his hands to his cheeks. “I see, I see, you want to leave me all alone,” he said in a tone that sounded like the howling of a dog in the middle of the night. “You want to deceive me, to surrender me to the enemy, to leave me nothing, nothing but the privilege of sitting here and staring at my four walls. I see, I see.”
“Be still, Uncle, nothing is going to happen. It is all a huge joke,” said Dorothea with feigned good humour and kind intentions. She walked to the door slowly, looking back every now and then with a smile on her face.
It was early in the morning when Dorothea rang Daniel’s bell. Philippina opened the door, but she did not wish to let Dorothea in. She forced an entrance, however, and, standing in the door, she inspected Philippina with the eye of arrogance, always a clear-sighted organ.
“Look out, Philippin’, there’s something rotten here,” murmured Philippina to herself.
Daniel was at work. He got up and looked at Dorothea, who carefully closed the door.
“Here I am, Daniel,” she said, and breathed a sigh of relief, like a swimmer who has just reached the land.
“What is it all about?” asked Daniel, seemingly ill inclined to become excited.
“I have done what you wanted me to do, Daniel: I have broken away from them. I cannot tolerate Father a minute longer. Where should I go if not to you?”
Daniel went up to her, and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Girl, girl!” he said as if to warn her. He felt uneasy.
They looked into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity. Daniel was apparently trying to peer into the innermost recesses of her soul. Dorothea’s eyes sparkled with daring; she did not lower her lids. Suddenly, as if moved from within, Daniel bent over and kissed her on the forehead.
“You know who I am,” he said, and walked back and forth in the room. “You know how I have lived and how I am living at present. I am a guilty man, and a lonely man. My nature craves tenderness, but is unable to give tenderness in return. My lot is a hard one, and whoever decides to share it with me must be able to bear her part of this hardness. I am frequently my own enemy and the enemy of those who mean well by me. I am not a humourist, and make a poor impression in society. I can be gruff, offensive, spiteful, irreconcilable, and revengeful. I am ugly, poor, and no longer young. Are you not afraid of your twenty-three years, Dorothea?”
Dorothea shook her head vigorously.
“Test yourself, Dorothea, examine yourself,” he continued urgently, “don’t be too inexact, too careless with me, nor with yourself. Study the situation from all sides, so that we may make no false calculations. Fate, you know, is fate. Love can get control of me more than I can get control of myself, and when this takes place I will do everything in my power. But I must have confidence, unlimited confidence. If I were to lose confidence, I should be like a mortal proscribed to Hell, an outcast, an evil spirit. Examine yourself, Dorothea. You must know what you are doing; it is your affair, and it is a sacred one.”
“I cannot do otherwise, Daniel!” cried Dorothea, and threw herself on his bosom.
“Then God be merciful to us,” said Daniel.
Daniel took Dorothea over to Sylvia von Erfft’s at Siegmundshof. He had written to her, given her all the details, explained the entire situation, and begged her to take Dorothea in and entertain her until the day of the wedding. Sylvia had shown herself most obliging in the matter; she met his requests with unaffected cordiality.
Dorothea had spent two nights at home, during which she had succeeded in evading all explanations with her father. She did this by having him agree to give her three days to think it over. On the morning of the third day, after her father had gone to the conservatory, she packed up her belongings and left the house.
Andreas Döderlein found the following letter from her: “Dear Father: Abandon all your hopes with regard to my marrying Herr Weisskopf. I am of age and can marry whomsoever I wish. I have already made my choice. The man who is going to lead me to the altar is called Daniel Nothafft. He loves me perhaps even more than I deserve, and I will make him a good wife. This is my unalterable decision, and you yourself will certainly come to see that it is nobler to obey the impulses of one’s own heart than to allow one’s self to be led on and blinded by material considerations. Your loving daughter, Dorothea.”
Andreas Döderlein had a sinking spell. The letter slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. Trembling in his whole body, he walked up to the covered table, took a glass and hurled it against the wall. The glass broke into a thousand pieces. “I will choke you, you impious toad!” he panted, shook his clenched fist, went to Dorothea’s room, and, seized with boundless wrath, upset the chairs and the little dressing table.
The maid, terrified, ran into the living room. She saw Dorothea’s letter lying on the floor, picked it up, and read it. When she heard her mad master returning, she ran down stairs to the ground floor, rang Herr Carovius’s bell, and showed him the letter. His face turned yellow as he read it. The maid uttered a shrill, piercing cry, snatched the letter from Herr Carovius’s hands, and ran out into the court, for she heard Andreas Döderlein stumbling down the steps. He wanted to call the police and have them lock up the abductor of his daughter. Catching sight of Herr Carovius in the hall, he stopped and fixed his eyes on him. In them there was a sea of anger; and yet it was obvious that Andreas Döderlein was eager to ask a question or two. It seemed indeedthat just one conciliatory statement, even a single gesture on the part of the man whom he had scrupulously avoided for years, would make bye-gones be bye-gones and convert two implacable foes into friends, colleagues indeed in the business of revenge and punishment.
But Herr Carovius was done with the world. His face was distorted; grimaces of unrelieved meanness furrowed his brow; his contempt knew no bounds. He turned about and slammed the door leading into his apartment with a bang that showed his intention of shutting himself up in his own stronghold.
Andreas Döderlein got as far as the entrance to the Town Hall. There he was suddenly seized with grave doubts. He stared at the pavement for a while, sad and sinister, and then started back home. His steps were not half so impetuous as they had been on the way over; they gave evidence of weakened will and fading energy.
Hardly had he reached home when Daniel was announced. “You have the boldness, Sir,” he cried out to Daniel on his entering. “You have the boldness to appear in my sight? By the gods above, you are going far!”
“I will accept any challenge you make,” said Daniel, with the chilly dignity that was characteristic of him in such circumstances and that never failed to have a sobering effect on his potential antagonist. “I have nothing to fear. I should like to live in peace with the father of my wife, and for this reason I have come to you.”
“Do you know what you are doing to me? You have stolen my daughter, man!” cried Döderlein with pathos. “But just wait. I will checkmate your plans. I will make you feel the full measure of my power.”
Daniel smiled contemptuously. “I am certain of that,” he replied. “I will feel your power as long as I live; I have always felt it. But I have never submitted to it, and up to the present I have always been able to break it. Think it over! Recall my past history! And devote a few of your meditative moments to your child. Adieu!” With that Daniel left.
Andreas Döderlein was ill at ease. The man’s smile followed him wherever he went. What could the desperado be planning? A bad conscience paralyses evil determinations. For more than a week, Döderlein waged perpetual war with his pride. And then? Daniel did not allow himself to be seen; he received no news of any kind from Dorothea; and, climax of it all, Herr Weisskopfnotified him that his note for one thousand marks, with interest, was due. Döderlein saw that there was nothing to be done about it all except to recognise the dénouement as a fact and not as a stage scene. And one day he hobbled up the steps of the house on Ægydius Place.
“I am glad to see you,” said Daniel as he reached out his hand to his visitor.
Andreas Döderlein spoke of a father’s bleeding heart, of the crushing of proud hopes, of the impiety of youth, and the lonesomeness of old age. And then, rather disconnectedly, beating a tattoo with the fingers of his big hand on the top of the table, he spoke of the constraint in which he found himself with reference to the opulent owner of the mill. He told Daniel he had gone on a man’s note, had been suddenly obliged to redeem the note, and not having so much ready money at his disposal, had accepted a loan from the rich aspirant for Dorothea’s hand.
Daniel was forced to admit that his troubles were humiliating and that the money would have to be raised. Döderlein said it amounted to fifteen hundred marks. He was surprised himself when he mentioned the sum which assured him a clear gain of fifty per cent. It had been a clever idea, serving as it did to put the generosity of his future son-in-law to test. At the bottom of his heart he felt that his action was dishonourable, and was consequently touched when Daniel, giving this inroad on his savings but a moment’s thought, promised to send him the money the following day.
“You make me feel ashamed of myself, Daniel, really you do. Let us bury the hatchet! We are after all colleagues in Apollo. Or aren’t we? Call me Father, and I will call you Son! Address me withDu, and I will follow your example.”
Daniel gave him his hand without saying a word.
Döderlein asked about Dorothea; and when Daniel told him where she was, he seemed quite contented. “Tell her my house and my arms are open to her; tell her of the change in the constellation,” he said softly. “We have both done each other injustice and have both repented.”
Daniel replied quite conventionally that he thought it better to leave Dorothea with Sylvia von Auffenberg.
“As you wish, my son,” said Andreas Döderlein, “I bow to the claims of your young happiness. Now we should have a bottle of Malvoisie or Moselle, so that I can drink to the health of my dear, unruly daughter. Or don’t you care to?”
Daniel went to send Philippina to the Golden Posthorn. But Philippina had gone out with Agnes. He saw one of the maids from one of the other apartments standing on the steps, and got her to run the errand. It was a long while before she returned, and when the wine was finally poured out, Döderlein had not time to drink: he was scheduled to give a lecture in the conservatory at seven. He drank about half of his glass, and then took hasty leave of Daniel, shaking his hand with unwonted fervour.
Daniel sat for a while thinking it all over. There was a knock at the door, and old Jordan came in. “May I?” he asked.
Daniel nodded. Jordan took a seat on the chair Döderlein had been sitting on. He looked into Daniel’s face quizzically. “Is it true, Daniel, that you are going to get married again? That you are going to marry the Döderlein girl?”
“Yes, Father, it is true,” replied Daniel. He got a fresh glass, filled it, and pushed it over to the old man. “Drink, Father!” he said.
The old man sipped the wine with an air of adoration. “It must be nine or ten years since I have had any wine,” he said more or less to himself.
“You have not had a happy life,” replied Daniel.
“I will not complain, Daniel. I bear it because I have to. And who knows? Perhaps there is still a measure of joy in store for me. Perhaps; who knows?”
The two men sat in silence and drank. It was so still that you could hear the fluttering of the light in the lamp.
“Where can Philippina be?” asked Daniel.
“Yes, Philippina. I had forgot to tell you,” began old Jordan sorrowfully. “She came to me this afternoon, and told me she was going over to Frau Hadebusch’s with Agnes and was going to stay there until after the wedding. But she spoke in such a confused way that I couldn’t make out just what she planned to do. It sounded in fact as though she were thinking of leaving the house for good and all. I wonder whether the girl isn’t a little off in her head? Day before yesterday I heard an awful racket in the kitchen; and when I went down, I saw at least six plates lying on the floor all smashed to pieces. And as if this was not enough, she threatened to throw the dishwater on me. She was swearing like a trooper. Now tell me: how is this? Can she go over to Frau Hadebusch’s, and take Agnes with her without getting any one’s consent?”
Daniel made no reply. The thought of Philippina filled himwith anguish; he feared some misfortune. He felt that he would have to let her have her way.
In the night Daniel became very much excited. He left the house, and, despite the darkness and the snow storm, wandered out to the country quite unmindful of the cold and snow and the wind.
He listened to the whisperings of his soul; he took council with himself. He looked up at the great black vaulted arch of heaven as though he were beseeching the powers above to send him the light he felt he needed. The morning of the approaching day seemed bleaker, blacker to him than the night that was passing. He was lost in anxiety: he went over to his graves.
He did not stop to think until well on his way that the gate to the cemetery would be closed; but he kept on going. He looked around for a place in the wall where he might climb over. Finally he found one, climbed up, scratched his hands painfully, leaped down into some snow-covered hedges, and then wandered around with his burden of grief over the stormy, desolate field of the dead. As he stood before Gertrude’s grave he was overwhelmed with the feeling of the hour: there were voices in the storm; he felt that the horror and the memory of it all would hurl him to the ground. But when he stood by the grave of Eleanore, he felt his peace return. The clouds suddenly opened on the distant horizon, and a moonbeam danced about him.
It was almost morning when he reached home.
A week later he went over to Siegmundshof and got Dorothea.
Sylvia and Dorothea came down through a snow-covered alley to meet him. They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea’s easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him. Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she became a child herself.
Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, unassured glances at them—at Daniel and at Dorothea.
Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.
Forthe past fortnight, Philippina and Agnes had been living at Frau Hadebusch’s. A message came from Daniel telling Philippina that she and Agnes should return, or, if she preferred to stay with Frau Hadebusch, she should send Agnes home at once.
“There you have it,” said Frau Hadebusch, “the master speaks.”
“Ah, him—he’s been speakin’ to me for a long while. Much good it does him,” said Philippina. “The child stays with me, and I’m not going back. That settles it! What, Agnes? Yes?”
Agnes was sitting on the bench by the stove with Henry the idiot, reading the greasy pages of a cheap novel. When Philippina spoke to her, she looked up in a distracted way and smiled. The twelve-year-old child had a perfectly expressionless face; and as she never got out of the house for any length of time, her skin was almost yellow.
“It ain’t no use to try to buck him,” continued Frau Hadebusch, who looked as old as the mountains and resembled generally a crippled witch, “he c’n demand the kid, and if he does he’ll git her. If you ain’t careful, I’ll get mixed up in the mess before long.”
“Well, how do you feel about it, Agnes? Do you want to go back to your daddy?” said Philippina, turning to the girl, and looking at Frau Hadebusch in a knowing way.
Agnes’s face clouded up. She hated her father. This was the point to which Philippina had brought matters by her incessant whisperings and ugly remarks behind Daniel’s back. Agnes was convinced that she was a burden to her father, and his marriage had merely confirmed what she already felt she knew. Deep in her silent soul she carried the picture of her prematurely deceased mother, as if it were that of a woman who had been murdered, sacrificed. Philippina had told her how her mother had committed suicide; it was a fearful tale in her language. It had been the topic of conversation between her and her charge on many a cold, dark winter evening. Agnes always said that when she was big and could talk, she would take vengeance on her father.
When she could talk! That was her most ardent wish. Forshe was silent-born. Her soul pined in a prison that was much harsher and harder than that in which her mother’s soul had been housed and harassed. Gertrude had some bright moments; Agnes never. She was incapable of enthusiasm; she could not look up. For her heart, her soul was not merely asleep, torpid, lethargic; it was hopelessly dried up, withered. Life was not in it.
“I am not going to those Döderleins,” she said, crying.
But in the evening Daniel came over. He took Philippina to one side, and had a serious talk with her. He explained the reasons for his getting married a third time as well as he could without going too deeply into the subject. “I needed a wife; I needed a woman to keep house for me; I needed a companion. Philippina, I am very grateful to you for what you have done, but there must also be a woman in my home who can cheer me up, turn my thoughts to higher things. I have a heavy calling; that you cannot appreciate. So don’t get stubborn, Philippina. Pack up your things, and come back home. How can we get along without you?”
For the first time in his life he spoke to her as though she were a woman and a human being. Philippina stared at him. Then she burst out into a loud, boisterous laugh, and began to show her whole supply of scorn. “Jesus, Daniel, how you c’n flatter a person! Who’d a thought it! You’ve always been such a sour dough. Very well. Say: ‘Dear Philippina!’ Say it real slow: ‘D-e-a-r Philippina,’ and then I’ll come.”
Daniel looked into the face of the girl, who never did seem young and who had aged fearfully in the last few months. “Nonsense!” he cried, and turned away.
Philippina stamped the floor with her foot. Henry, the idiot, came out into the hall, holding a lamp above his head.
“Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?” asked Daniel, looking up at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rushing over him.
“Thank God, no!” snarled Philippina. “He’d be the last straw. I feel sick at the stomach when I see a man.”
Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked face. He was accustomed to question everything, eyes and bodies, about their existence in terms of tones, or their transformation into tones. Here he suddenly felt the toneless; he had the feeling one might have on looking at a deep-sea fish: it is lifeless, toneless. He thought of his Eva; he longed for his Eva. Just then Agnes came out of the door to look for Philippina.
He laid his hand on Agnes’s hair, and said good-naturedly, looking at Philippina: “Well, then—d-e-a-r Philippina, come back home!”
Agnes jerked herself away from him; he looked at the child amazed; he was angry, too. Philippina folded her hands, bowed her head, and murmured with much humility: “Very well, Daniel, we’ll be back to-morrow.”
Philippina arrived at the front door at ten o’clock in the morning. In one hand she carried her bundle; by the other she led Agnes, then studying hermilieuwith uneasy eyes.
Dorothea opened the door. She was neatly and tastefully dressed: she wore a blue gingham dress and a white apron with a lace border. Around her neck was a gold chain, and suspended from the chain a medallion.
“Oh, the children!” she cried cheerfully, “Philippina and Agnes. What do you think of that! God bless you, children. You are home at last.” She wanted to hug Agnes, but the child pulled away from her as timidly as she had pulled away from her father yesterday. In either case, she pulled away!
Philippina screwed her mouth into a knot on hearing a woman ten years her junior call her a child; she looked at Dorothea from head to foot.
Dorothea scarcely noticed her. “Just imagine, Philippin’, the cook didn’t come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand,” said Dorothea with glib gravity, “but I don’t know, the soup meat is still as hard as a rock. Won’t you come and see what’s the matter?” She took Philippina into the kitchen.
“Ah, you’ve got to have a lid on the pot, and what’s more, that ain’t a regular fire,” remarked Philippina superciliously.
Dorothea had already turned to something else. She had found a glass of preserved fruit, had opened it, taken a long-handled spoon, dived into it, put the spoon to her mouth, and was licking away for dear life. “Tastes good,” she said, “tastes like lemon. Try it, Philippin’.” She held the spoon to Philippina’s lips so that she could try it. Philippina thrust the spoon rudely to one side.
“No, no, you have got to try it. I insist. Taste it!” continued Dorothea, and poked the spoon tightly against Philippina’s lips. “I insist, I insist,” she repeated, half beseechingly, half in the tone of a command, so that Philippina, who somehow or othercould not find her veteran power of resistance, and in order to have peace, let the spoon be shoved into her mouth.
Just then old Jordan came out into the hall, and with him the chimney-sweeper who wished to clean the chimney.
“Herr Inspector, Herr Inspector,” cried Dorothea, laughing; and when the old man followed her call, she gave him a spoonful, too. The chimney-sweep likewise; he had to have his. And last but not least came Agnes.
They all laughed; a faint smile even ventured across Agnes’s pale face, while Daniel, frightened from his room by the hubbub, came out and stood in the kitchen door and laughed with the rest.
“Do you see, Daniel, do you see? They all eat out of my hand,” said Dorothea contentedly. “They all eat out of my hand. That’s the way I like to have things. To your health, folks!”
One afternoon Dorothea, with an open letter in her hand, came rushing into Daniel’s room, where he was working.
“Listen, Daniel, Frau Feistelmann invites me over to a party at her house to-morrow. May I go?”
“You are disturbing me, my dear. Can’t you see you are upsetting me?” asked Daniel reproachfully.
“Oh, I see,” breathed Dorothea, and looked helplessly at the stack of scores that lay on the top of the table. “I am to take my violin along and play a piece or two for the people.”
Daniel gazed into space without being able to comprehend her remarks. He was composing.
Dorothea lost her patience. She stepped up to the place on the wall where the mask of Zingarella had been hanging since his return home. “Daniel, I have been wanting for some time to ask you what that thing is. Why do you keep it there? What’s it for? It annoys me with its everlasting grin.”
Daniel woke up. “That is what you call a grin?” he asked, shaking his head; “Is it possible? That smile from the world beyond appeals to you as a grin?”
“Yes,” replied Dorothea defiantly, “the thing is grinning. And I don’t like it; I can’t stand that silly face; I don’t like it simply because you do like it so much. In fact, you seem to like it better than you do me.”
“No childishness, Dorothea!” said Daniel quietly. “You must get your mind on higher things; and you must respect my spirits.”
Dorothea became silent. She did not understand him. She looked at him with a touch of distrust. She thought the mask was a picture of one of his old sweethearts. She made a mouth.
“You said something about playing at the party, Dorothea,” continued Daniel. “Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a long while; not once since we have been living together. And yet you wish to play in public? That is strange, Dorothea. Be so good as to get your violin and play a piece for me, won’t you?”
Dorothea went into the next room, got her violin case, came out, took the violin, and began to rub the bow with rosin. As she was tuning the A string, she lifted her eyebrows and said: “Do you really want me to play?”
She bit her lips and played anétudeby Fiorillo. Having finished it but not having drawn a word of comment from Daniel, she again took up the violin and played a rather lamentable selection by Wieniawski.
Daniel maintained his silence for a long while. “Pretty good, Dorothea,” he said at last. “You have, other things being equal, a very pleasant pastime there.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dorothea with noticeable rapidity, a heavy blush colouring her cheeks.
“Is it anything more than that, Dorothea?”
“What do you mean?” she repeated, embarrassed and indignant. “I should think that my violin is more than a pastime.”
Daniel got up, walked over to her, took the bow gently from her hands, seized it by both ends, and broke it in two.
Dorothea screamed, and looked at him in hopeless consternation.
With great earnestness Daniel replied: “If the music I hear is not of unique superiority, it sounds in my ears like something that has been hashed over a thousand times. My wife must consider herself quite above a reasonably melodious dilettantism.”
Tears rushed to Dorothea’s eyes. Again she was unable to grasp the meaning of it all. She even imagined that Daniel was making a conscious effort to be cruel to her.
For her violin playing had been a means of pleasing—pleasing herself, the world. It had been a means of rising in the world, of compelling admiration in others and blinding others. This was the only consideration that made her submit to the stern disciplineher father imposed upon her. She possessed ambition, but she sold herself to praise without regard for the praiser. And whatever an agreement of unknown origin demanded in the way of feeling, she fancied she could satisfy it by keeping her mind on her own wishes, pleasures, and delights while playing.
Daniel put his arms around her and kissed her. She broke away from him in petulance, and went over to the window. “You might have told me that I do not play well enough for you,” she exclaimed angrily and sobbed; “there was no need for you to break my bow. I never play. It never occurred to me to bother you by playing.” She wept like a spoiled child.
It cost Daniel a good deal of persuasion to pacify her. Finally he saw that there was no use to talk to her; he sighed and said nothing more. After a while he took her pocket handkerchief, and dried the tears from her eyes, laughing as he did so. “What was really in my mind was that party at Frau Feistelmann’s. I did not want you to go. For I do not put much faith in that kind of entertainment. They do not enrich you, though they do incite all kinds of desires. But because I have treated you harshly, you may go. Possibly it will make you forget your troubles, you little fool.”
“Oh, I thank you for your offer; but I don’t want to go,” replied Dorothea snappishly, and left the room.
Yet Dorothea said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her much effort to come to her decision.
“Certainly, go!” said Daniel. “I have already advised you to do it myself.”
She had had a dark blue velvet dress made, and she wanted to wear it for the first time on this occasion.
Toward five o’clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.
“What is the matter with her?” thought Daniel, on noticing her complete lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflectionof herself in the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in the mirror.
“Dorothea!” said Daniel gently.
She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.
Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.
“I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiarDu,” said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel’s wife agreed.
Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say: “Well, what did you dream?”
“I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came along and carried me off,” said Dorothea on one occasion.
“Station means an unexpected visit; war means discord with various personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with some flippant people.” All this Philippina rattled off in the High German of her secret code.
Philippina was also an adept in geomancy. Dorothea would often sit by her side, and ask her whether this fellow or that fellow were in love with her, whether this girl loved that fellow and the other girl another, and so on through the whole table of local infatuations. Philippina would make a number of dots on a sheet of paper, fill in the numbers, hold the list up to the light, and divulge the answer of the oracle.
In a very short while the two were one heart, one soul. Dorothea could always count on Philippina’s laughter of approval when she fell into one of her moods of excessive friskiness. And if Agnes failed to show the proper amount of interest, Philippina would poke her in the ribs and exclaim: “You little rascallion, has the cat got your tongue?”
Agnes would then sneak off in mournful silence to her school books, and sit for hours over the simplest kind of a problem in the whole arithmetic. Dorothea would occasionally bring her a piece of taffy. She would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction.
Herr Seelenfromm stopped Philippina on the street, and said to her: “Well, how are you getting along? How is the young wife making out?”
“Oi, oi, we’re living on the fat of the land, I say,” Philippina replied, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “Chicken every day, cake too, wine always on hand, and one guest merely opens the door on another.”
“Nothafft must have made a pile of money,” remarked Herr Seelenfromm in amazement.
“Yes, he must. Nobody works at our house. The wife’s pocket-book at least is always crammed.”
The sky was blue, the sun was bright, spring had come.