The Goose Man Part 38

The thing was signed with a big, isolated "W." Wurzelmann, the little slave, had shot from his ambush.

Other musical journals copied this review. A half dozen people bought the songs; then they were forgotten.

It was no use to hope. The trouble was, he needed bread, just bread.

V

It was often difficult for him to find the peace and quiet necessary for effective work. May brought cold weather; they had to make a fire; the stove smoked; the potter came in and removed the tiles; the room looked like an inferno.

Gertrude was pounding sugar: "Don't be angry at me, Daniel; I must pound the sugar to-day." And she pounded away until the hammer penetrated the paralysed brain of the listener by force of circ.u.mstances.

The hinges of the door screeched. "You ought to oil them, Gertrude."

Gertrude looked high and low for the oil can, and when she finally found it, she had no feather to use in smearing the oil on. She went over to the chancellor's, and borrowed one from her maid. While she was gone, the milk boiled over and filled the house with a disagreeable stench.

The door bell rang. It was the cobbler; he had come to get the money for the patent leather shoes. The wives of Herr Kirschner and Herr Rubsam had both said that Daniel must not think of appearing at the coming recital at the Baroness's without patent leather shoes.

"I haven't the money, Gertrude; have you got that much?"

Gertrude went through her chests, and sc.r.a.ped up five marks which she gave the cobbler as a first instalment. The man went away growling; Daniel hid from him.

Gertrude was sitting in the living room making clothes for her baby-to-come. There was a happy expression on her face. Daniel knew that it was a display of maternal joy and expectation, but since he could not share this joy, since indeed he felt a sense of fear at the appearance of the child, her happiness embittered him.

Between the fuchsias in the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room: "Come out," it chirped, "come out." And Daniel went.

He had an engagement with M. Riviere at the cafe by the market place.

Since he no longer saw anything of Eleanore, he wanted to find out how her plans for going to Paris were getting along.

The Frenchman told of the progress he was making in his Caspar Hauser research. In his broken German he told of the murder of body and soul that had been committed in the case of the foundling: "He was a mortal man _comme une etoile_," he said. "The bourgeoisie crushed him. The bourgeoisie is the _racine_ of all evil."

Daniel never mentioned Eleanore's name. He tried to satisfy himself by the fact that she kept out of his sight. He bit his lips together, and said: I will. But a stronger power in him said, No, you won't. And this stronger power became a beggar. It went around saying, Give me, please, give me!

The billiard b.a.l.l.s rattled. A gentleman in a red velvet vest had a quarrel with a shabby looking fellow who had been reading _Fliegende Blatter_ for the last two hours; he would begin over and over again at the very beginning, and break out into convulsions of laughter every time he came to his favourite jokes.

Daniel was silent; he insisted somehow on remaining silent. M. Riviere wished, for this reason, to hear something about the "Harzreise." By way of starting a discussion he remarked quite timidly that _sans musique la vie est insupportable_, "There is something about music that reminds one of insanity," he remarked. He said there were nights when he would open a volume of Schubert's or Brahms's songs, leaf through them, read the notes, and hum the melodies simply in order to escape the despair which the conduct of the people about him was emptying into his heart. "_Moi_, I ought to be, how do you say? stoic; _mais_ I am not. In me there is _trop de musique, et c'est le contraire_."

Daniel looked at him in astonishment. "Come with me," he said suddenly, got up, and took him by the arm.

They met Eleanore in the hall. She had been up in the new flat with the whitewasher. Her father was to move in the following day.

"Why was all this done so quickly?" asked Daniel, full of a vague happiness that drew special nourishment from the fact that Eleanore was plainly excited.

"Mere chance," she said, and carefully avoided looking at him. "A captain who is being transferred here from Ratisbon is moving in our place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a minute or two?"

"Yes, go right up," said Daniel stiffly; "you can stay and listen if you wish to. I am going to play the Harzreise."

"If I wish to? I almost have a right to; you promised me this long ago."

"She thinks after all that I want to catch her," he thought to himself.

"It will be better for me to drop the whole business than to let the idea creep into her stupid skull that my composition is going to make propaganda for our private affairs." With bowed head he ascended the stairs, M. Riviere and Eleanore following along behind. His ears were p.r.i.c.ked to hear anything they might say about Paris; they talked about the weather.

As they entered the room Gertrude had the harp between her knees; but she was not playing. Her hands lay on the strings, her head was resting on the frame. "Why haven't you lighted a lamp?" asked Daniel angrily.

She was terrified; she looked at him anxiously. The expression on her face made him conscious of many things that he had kept in the background of his thoughts during his everyday life: her unconditional surrender to him; the magnanimity and n.o.bility of her heart, which was as dependent on his as the mercury in the thermometer is dependent on the atmosphere; her speechless resignation regarding a thousand little things in her life! her wellnigh supernatural ability to enter into the spirit and enjoyment of what he was doing, however much his mind might presume to write _De profundis_ across his creations.

It was on this account that he recognised in her face a serious, far-away warning. At once cowardly and reverential, conscious of his guilt and yet feeling innocent, he went up to her and kissed her on the hair. She leaned her head on his breast, thus causing him to feel, though quite unaware of it herself, the whole weight of the burden she was placing on him.

He told her he was going to play. He said: "I have lost my picture again; I want to try to find it in others."

Gertrude begged him, with a pale face, to be permitted to stay in the living room. She closed the door only partly.

VI

In Goethe's verses ent.i.tled "Harzreise im Winter," thoughts lie scattered about like erratic strata in the world of geology, and feelings that are as big and terrible as the flames from burning planets. In Daniel's work the whole of Goethe's prodigious sorrow and solemnity seemed to have been transformed automatically into music.

When, in the second half, the motif of human voices was taken over, when these voices pealed forth first singly, one by one, from the surging sea of tones, and then gathered with ever-increasing avidity, longing, and candour into the great chorus, one had the feeling that without this liberation they would have been stifled in the darkness.

The effect of the pianissimo moaning of the ba.s.ses before the soprano set in was overwhelming: it was like the vulture which, resting with easy wing on the dark morning cloud, spies around for booty. So was the song meant to be. The trombone solo was a shout of victory: it imparted new life to the sunken orchestra.

Daniel had infinite trouble in making all this wealth of symbolic art clear through song, word, and gesture at the same time that his music was being played.

The work abounded in blends and half tones which stamped it as a child of its age, and still more of ages to come, despite the compact rigidity of its architecture. There was no bared sweetness in it; it was as rough as the bark of a tree; it was as rough as anything that is created with the a.s.surance of inner durability.

Its rhythm was uniform, regular; it provided only for crescendos. There was nothing of the seductive, nothing of the waltz-fever in it. It was in no way cheap; it did not flatter slothful ears. It had no languis.h.i.+ng motifs; it was all substance and exterior. The melody was concealed like a hard kernel in a thick sh.e.l.l; and not merely concealed: it was divided, and then the divisions were themselves divided. It was condensed, compressed, bound, and at the same time subterranean. It was created to rise from its depths, rejoice, and overwhelm: "But clothe the lonely one in thy clouds of gold! Enshroud with ivy until the roses bloom again, oh Love, the dampened hair of thy poet!"

The work was written a quarter of a century before its time. It was out of touch with the nerves of its contemporary environment. It could not hope to count upon a prophet or an interpreter. It could not be carried further by the benevolence of congenial champions. It bore the marks of mortal neglect. It was like a bird from the tropics left to die on the icy coasts of Greenland.

But for those who are near in heart there is a fluid in the air that intercedes for the higher truth. M. Riviere and Eleanore scarcely breathed during the recital. Eleanore's big eyes were still: they opened and closed slowly. When Daniel finished, he dried his hot brow with his handkerchief, and then his arms fell limp at his sides. He felt as if the brilliancy of Eleanore's eyes had reached the tips of his hair and had electrified it.

"Enshroud with ivy, until the roses bloom again, oh Love, the dampened hair of thy poet!"

"It is impossible to get an idea of it," murmured Daniel; "the piano is like an instrument of torture."

They were struck by peculiar sounds coming from the living room. They went in, and found Gertrude pale as death, her hands folded across her bosom, sitting on the sofa. She was talking to herself, partly as if in a dream, partly as if she were praying. It was impossible to understand what she was saying. She seemed distant, estranged.

Eleanore hastened to her; Daniel looked at her with a scowl. Just then the bell rang, and M. Riviere went out. There was the sound of a man's voice; it was disagreeable. The door was opened and-Herr Carovius entered.

VII

Herr Carovius bowed in all directions. He wore tan shoes with bra.s.s buckles, black trousers, a s.h.i.+ny green coat, and a white cravat that could no longer be called clean. He laid his slouch hat on a chair, and said he would like to beg their pardon if he had called at an inopportune hour. He had come, he said, to thank his dear young master for the aforementioned invitation.

"It seems-yes, it seems," he added, with a droll blinking of his eyes, "that I have in all innocence interrupted the performance of a most interesting production. There is a crowd of people gathered out in front of the house, and I could not forego the pleasure of listening. I hope you will not stop playing the sacrificial festival on my account. What was it, _maestro_? It wasn't the symphony, was it?"

"Yes, it was the symphony," replied Daniel, who was so amazed at the appearance and conduct of the man that he was really courteous.

"It cost me money to be sure-believe it or not. I had to get an afternoon coat that would do for a Count-latest cut, velvet collar, tails that reached down to my calves. Aristocratic, very!" He stared over Gertrude's head into the corner, and t.i.ttered for at least a half a minute.