The Goose Man Part 48

Philippina drew up her shoulders, and never once breathed until he had signed the note and handed it over to her in silence. Then she looked at him imploringly, and said: "Now Daniel, you must never again treat me like you would a scurvy cat."

XV

There had been an unusual amount of talk this year about the parade on Shrove Tuesday. On the afternoon of that day the whole city was on its feet.

Daniel was on his way home; he had reached the corner of Theresa Street when he ran into the crowd. He stopped out of idle curiosity. The first division of the parade came up: it consisted of three heralds in gaudy mediaeval costumes, and back of them were three councillors on horseback.

Next in the procession was a condemned witch on a wheelbarrow. Her face had been hideously painted, and in her hand she swung a huge whiskey bottle. She was followed by a group of Chinese, each with a long pigtail, and they by a troupe of dancing Kameruns.

The procession moved on in the following order: a giant carrying twenty-seven quart beer mugs; a woman's orchestra consisting exclusively of old women; a wagon from one of the peasant districts bearing the inscription, "Adorers of Taxes"; a smoking club with the Swedish match merchant; a wagon with a replica of the Spittler Gate made of beer kegs; the so-called guard against sparks; a nurse with a grown child in diapers and Hussar boots; the seven Swabians on velocipedes; a cabriolet with a gaily dressed English family; a conveyance carrying authors.

There were two inscriptions on it: "The And So Forths" and "The Et Ceterists."

At the end of the procession was a wagon with a skilful imitation of the Goose Man. It had been made out of old boards, hoops, clay, old rags, and iron. The Goose Man himself wore an open velvet doublet and short velvet trousers, from the pockets of which protruded rolls of banknotes.

Instead of a cap he had a rusty pan on his head, and on his feet was a pair of worn patent leather shoes. Under each arm he carried a goose.

The geese had been made of dough. Their heads were not the heads of geese but of women artificially painted and with so-called taws, or marbles, for their eyes. The face at the Goose Man's left looked melancholy, the one at his right was cheerful.

This was the centre of attraction; it was surrounded by the largest crowds. Every time it came within sight of a fresh group of on-lookers there was a tremendous shouting and waving of flags. This was true even where it was plain that the people did not appreciate the significance of it. Pulchinellos brandished their wooden swords, Indian chieftains danced around it screaming their mighty war-whoops, a Mephistopheles turned somersaults, knights mounted on stilts saluted, and children with wax masks shrieked until it was impossible to hear one's own voice.

Daniel had watched the performance with relative indifference. He had regarded it merely as a display of commonplace ability to amuse the people. Then came the wagon with the imitation of the Goose Man. On it stood Schwalbe the sculptor, gloriously drunk. Beside him stood Kropotkin the painter in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was cold. A fearfully fat youth-a future school officer, so far as could be determined from his looks-had hit upon the happy idea of pasting the t.i.tle of the _Frankischer Herold_ to the Goose Man's hat. This took the initiated by storm.

Kropotkin recognised Daniel. He called to him, threw him kisses, had one of the wooden swords given him, and went through the motion of directing an orchestra. The fat boy hurled a handful of pretzels at the spot on the sidewalk where Daniel was standing; a trombone began to bray; the Englishman first stuck his head out of his cabriolet, and then got out and hopped over to Daniel, carrying a pole draped with women's clothes, including a feather hat and a veil. A new keg of beer was tapped on the Gambrinus wagon, while the people in the houses rushed to the windows and roared.

"You have forgotten the railing," cried Daniel in a loud voice to the people on the Goose Man wagon.

"What did he say?" they asked, and looked at each other in astonishment.

The on-lookers were filled with curious silence: many of them gazed at Daniel, bewildered.

"You forgot the railing," he repeated, with glistening eyes, "you have forgotten the iron railing. Without his protection the poor Goose Man is to be sure your buffoon, your zany, your clown."

He laughed quietly, and, with opened mouth and s.h.i.+ning teeth, quickly withdrew from the innumerable gapers. Having reached a deserted alley, he began to sing with a frenzied expression on his face: "Whom thou dost not desert, oh Genius, him wilt thou raise up with wings of fire. He will wander on as if with feet of flowers across Deucalion's seas of slime, killing Python, light-footed, famed Pythius Apollo."

XVI

A few weeks later a real singer came to Daniel. She sang several of the songs he had written. He had thought they were completely forgotten by everybody. Her art was not merely perfect; it was wonderful.

It was a very mysterious visit the singer paid him. One afternoon during a fearful snow storm the bell rang; and when Gertrude opened the door, she saw a woman wearing a heavy black veil standing before her, who said she wished to speak to Kapellmeister Nothafft. Gertrude took her up to Daniel's room. The stranger told Daniel she had been wis.h.i.+ng to make his acquaintance for a long time, and, now on her way to Italy, she had been detained in the city for a few days by the illness of a near friend.

This, she said, she regarded as a hint from fate itself. She had come to extend him her greetings, and particularly to thank him for his songs, a copy of which a friend had been good enough to present to her at a time when she was living under the weight of a great sorrow.

She spoke with an accent that had a Northern note in it, but easily and fluently; she gave the impression of a woman who had seen a great deal of the world and had profited by her travels. Daniel asked her with whom he had the pleasure of speaking, but she smiled, and asked permission to conceal her name for the present. She said that it really did not make much difference, and that it might be more agreeable to him later to think that an unknown woman had come to him to express her appreciation than to recall that Fraulein So-and-So had been there: she hoped that her very anonymity would make a more lasting impression on his memory than could be made by a woman of whom he knew only what everybody knows.

The mingling of the jocose and the serious, of the mind and the heart, in the words of the stranger pleased Daniel. Though his replies were curt and cool, it was plain that she was affording him much pleasure: she was reminding him of the fact that his creations had not after all sunk into an echoless abyss. In course of time, the conversation turned again to the songs; she said she would like very much to sing some of them for him. Daniel was pleased. He got the score, sat down at the piano, and the enigmatic woman began to sing. At the very first note Daniel was enraptured; he had never heard such a voice: so soft, so pure, so emotional, so unlike the conventional product of the conservatory. As soon as she had finished the first song, he looked up at her in unaffected embarra.s.sment, and murmured: "Who are you, anyhow?

Who are you?"

"No investigations or cross-questioning, please," replied the singer, and, blus.h.i.+ng at the praise Daniel was bestowing on her by his very behaviour, she laughed and said, "The next song, please, that one by Eichendorff!"

Gertrude, who had not wished to remain longer than was necessary because of the unkempt impression she knew she made, had hastened down to the kitchen. And now Eleanore came in, after having knocked at the door with all imaginable timidity. She had heard the strange voice, had rushed out into the hall, and, unable to restrain her curiosity any longer, had come in to see the singer.

Daniel nodded to her with radiant eyes, the stranger greeted her cordially though calmly, and then began to sing the next song; after this she took up the third, and so on until she had sung the complete cycle of six. Old Jordan was standing behind the door; he had his hands pressed to his face and was listening; he was much moved.

"Well, I must be going," said the strange woman, after she had finished the last song. She shook hands with Daniel, and said: "It has been a beautiful hour."

"It has been one of the most beautiful hours I have ever experienced,"

said Daniel.

"Farewell!"

"Farewell!"

The strange woman went away, leaving behind her not a trace of anything other than the memory of a joy that grew more fabulous as the storm-tossed years rolled by. Daniel never saw her again, and never heard from her again.

XVII

While the woman was singing, Gertrude had been standing down in the hall listening. She knew every note of every song; every melody in the accompaniment seemed to her like an old, familiar picture. She was also aware that an artist by the grace of G.o.d had been in the house.

But how strange it was that she should find nothing unusual in the incident. She felt that a living stream in her bosom had dried up, leaving nothing but sand and stones in its bed. This inability to feel, this being dead to all sensations, took the form of excruciating pangs of conscience.

"My G.o.d, my G.o.d, what has happened to me?" she sighed, and wrung her hands.

That evening she went to the Church of Our Lady, and prayed for a long while. Her prayer did not appease her, however; she came back home more disquieted than ever.

The door of the living room was open: Daniel and Eleanore were sitting by the lamp, reading together from a book. The baby began to move; Eleanore had left the door open so that she might be able to hear the child when it woke up. Gertrude took the child in her arms, quieted it, and returned to the door leading into the living room. Daniel and Eleanore had turned their backs to the door, and were so absorbed in their reading that they were not aware of Gertrude's presence.

A light suddenly came into Gertrude's heart: she became conscious of her guilt-the guilt she had been trying in vain to fathom now for so many cruel weeks.

She did not have enough of the power of love; therein lay her guilt. She had a.s.sumed an obligation that was quite beyond her power to fulfil: she had entered into marriage without having the requisite strength of heart.

Marriage had seemed to her like the Holy of Holies. Her union with the man she loved seemed to her to be of equal significance with the union with G.o.d. But when she saw that this bond had been broken, the world was plunged into an abyss immeasurably remote from G.o.d. And it was not her husband who seemed to her to be guilty of infidelity; nor did she look upon her sister as being the guilty one; it was she herself who had been unfaithful and guilty in their eyes. She had not stood the test; she had been tried and found wanting; her strength had not been equal to her presumptions; G.o.d had rejected her. This conviction became irrevocably rooted in her heart.

In her union with Daniel music had become something divine; and she saw, now this union had been broken, something in music that was perilous, something that was to be avoided: she understood why she was so unemotional, why her feelings had dried up and vanished.

But she wanted to make one more effort to see whether she was entirely right in the a.n.a.lysis of her soul. One morning she went to Daniel, and asked him to play a certain pa.s.sage from the "Harzreise." She said she would like to hear the close of the slow middle movement which had always made such an appeal to her. Her request was made in such an urgent, anxious tone that Daniel granted it, though he did not feel like playing. As Gertrude listened, she became paler and paler: her diagnosis was being corroborated with fearful exactness. What had once been a source of ecstasy was now the cause of intense torture. The tones and harmonies seemed to be eating into her very soul; the pain she felt was so overwhelming, that it was only with the greatest exertion that she mustered up sufficient self-control to leave the room unaided. Daniel was dismayed.

On her return to the kitchen, Gertrude heard a most peculiar noise in her bedroom. She went in only to see that little Agnes had crept into the corner of the room where the harp stood, and was striking the strings with a copper spoon, highly pleased with her actions. Gertrude was seized with a vague, nameless terror. She took the harp into the kitchen, removed the strings from the frame, rolled them up, put them in a drawer, and carried the stringless frame up to the attic.

"What can I do?" she whispered to herself, and looked around in the attic with an expression of complete helplessness. She longed for peace, and it seemed peaceful up where she was. She stayed a while, leaning up against one of the beams, her eyes closed.

"What can I do?" That was the question she put to herself day and night.

"I can no longer be of any help to my husband; to stand in his way merely because of the child is not right." Such was the trend of her argument. She saw how he was suffering, how Eleanore was suffering, how each was suffering on account of the other, and how both were suffering because of the despicable vulgarity of the human race. She thought to herself that if she were not living, everything would be right. She imagined, indeed she was certain, that all the truth he had given her had had the sole purpose of whitewas.h.i.+ng a lie, by which she was to be made to believe that her existence was a necessity to him. She was convinced that the weight of this lie was crus.h.i.+ng the very life out of him. She wished to free him from it and its consequences. But how she was to do this she did not know. She knew that if Daniel and Eleanore could belong to each other in a legal, legitimate way, they would be vindicated in the eyes of G.o.d and man. But how this was to be brought about she did not know.

She sought and sought for a way out. Her ideas were vague but persistent. She felt that she was running around in a circle, unable to do more than stare at the centre of the circle. Every morning at five o'clock she would get up and go to church. She prayed with a devotion and pa.s.sion that physically exhausted her heart.

One morning she knelt before the altar in unusually heart-rending despair. She thought she heard a small voice crying out to her and telling her to take her life.

She swooned; people rushed up to her, and wet her forehead with cold water. This enabled her to get up and go home. A peculiarly sorrowful and dreamy expression lay on her face.