The Goose Man Part 12

She said: "I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about love."

He gazed into s.p.a.ce in order to allow her voice time to die away. There was a violin tone in her speech, the charm of which he could not escape.

When he fully realised what she had said, he laughed a short laugh, and remarked that her att.i.tude was one of affected coyness. She shook her head. Then he teased her about going with young Auffenberg, and asked her whether real love affairs were just as disagreeable to her as those related in novels.

The flaming blue of her eyes compelled him to look down. It was not pleasant for him to admit, by action, that the expression in her face was stronger than his own. She left, and did not allow herself to be seen for a few days.

When she returned, he was nave enough to renew his banter. She took her seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we really intend to remain friends, Daniel?" she asked.

He cast a side glance of amazement at her, not because he was particularly struck by her charming suavity and marked winsomeness, but rather because the violin tone in her throat resounded more strongly and clearly than ever. But it was quite impossible for him to give an affirmative reply to her question without puckering up his lips and putting his hands in his trouser pockets.

She said she had no desire to seem important in his estimation, that she merely wanted him to regard her as different from other girls. She insisted that he concede her one privilege if they were to remain friends: he was not to talk to her about love, either seriously or in jest. She remarked that for months the very word love had called up ghost-like recollections. Why this was so, she said she could not tell him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid, and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story, however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her feelings on this point.

Her face took on a serious expression; it resembled an old picture.

There was something dream-like in her words.

"Well, if that is all you have on your mind, Eleanore, I am sure that it will be easy for me to respect your wish," said Daniel. There was a manifest lack of feeling in the kindness he displayed. It seemed indeed that the secret to which she was attaching so much importance was far removed from his egotistically encircled world. The little fountain in the garden was rustling. He listened to see if he could not catch the dominating tone in the continual splas.h.i.+ng.

Eleanore turned to him now with renewed if not novel candour. She was closer to him in every way-her eyes, her hands, and her words.

VIII

Daniel had just completed an orchestral work which he had ent.i.tled "Vineta." He wished to have Benda hear it. One evening about six Benda came in. Everything was ready. Daniel sat down at the piano. His face was pale, his smooth upper lip was trembling.

"Now think of the sea; think of a storm; think of a boat with people in it. Picture to yourself a wonderful _aurora borealis_ and a sunken city rising from the sea. Imagine a sea that had suddenly become calm, and in the light a strange phenomenon. Conjure up such a scene before your mind's eye, or conjure up something totally different, for this is a false way of getting at the meaning of music. It is plain prost.i.tution to think anything of the kind. Ice-flat."

He was just about to begin, when some one knocked at the door. Eleanore entered. She whisked across the room, and took her seat on the sofa.

The piece opened with a quiet rhythmical, mournful movement, which suddenly changed to a raging presto. The melodic figure was shattered like a bouquet of flowers in a waterfall almost before it had had time to take shape and display real composure. The dissipated elements, scattered to the four corners of the earth, then returned, hesitatingly and with evident contrition, to be reunited in a single chain. It seemed that the mad whirlwind had left them richer, purer and more spiritual.

They pealed forth now, one after the other, in a slow-moving decrescendo, until they const.i.tuted a solemn chorus played in moderato, melting at last into the lovely and serious main theme, which in the finale streamed away and beyond into infinity, dying out on an arpeggiated chord.

Where the piano failed to produce the full effect, Daniel helped out with his crow-like voice. It was the uncanny energy of expression that prevented his singing from having a comic effect.

Benda's eyes were so strained in the effort to listen intelligently and appreciatively that they became dazed, glazed. Had he been asked he could not have said whether the work was a success or a failure. The feature of the performance that convinced him was the man and the magnetism that radiated from the man. The work itself he could neither fathom nor evaluate. It took hold of him nevertheless because of its inseparable a.s.sociation with the human phenomenon.

Daniel got up, stumbled over to the sofa, buried his face in his hands, and sighed: "Do you feel it? Do you really feel it?" He then rose, lunged at the piano, seized the score, and hurled it to the floor: "Ah, it's no account; it is nothing; it is an abominable botch."

He threw himself on the sofa a second time. Eleanore, sitting perfectly motionless in the other corner, looked at him with the eyes of an astonished child.

Benda had gone to the window, and was looking out into the trees and the grey clouds of the sky. Then he turned around. "That something must be done for you and your cause is clear," he said.

Eleanore stretched out her arms toward Benda as though she wished to thank him. Her lips began to move. But when she saw Daniel she did not dare to say a word, until she suddenly exclaimed: "Heavens, there are two b.u.t.tons on his vest which are hanging by a thread." She ran out of the room. In a few moments she returned with needle and thread, which she had had Meta give her, sat down at Daniel's side, and sewed the b.u.t.tons on.

Benda had to laugh. But what she did had a tranquilising effect; she seemed to enable life to win the victory over the insidious pranks of apparitions.

IX

In years gone by, Benda had known the theatrical manager and impresario Dormaul. He went to Dormaul now, and took Daniel's new work along with him; for the versatile parvenu, who always had a number of irons in the fire, also published music.

A few weeks elapsed before Benda heard from Dormaul: "Incomprehensible stuff! Crazy attempt to be original! You couldn't coax a dog away from the stove with it." Such was Dormaul's opinion.

A young man with fiery red hair followed Benda to the door and spoke to him. He said his name was Wurzelmann and that he was a musician himself; that he had attended the Vienna Conservatory, where his teacher had given him a letter of recommendation to Alexander Dormaul. He also told Benda that Dormaul was planning to form an opera company that would visit the smaller cities of the provinces, and that he was to be the Kapellmeister.

He spoke in the detestable idiom of the Oriental Jew. Benda was politely cold.

The main point was still to come: "Vineta" had aroused Wurzelmann's profound admiration; he had read the score on the side: "A great talent, Doctor, a talent such as we have not had for a long, long while," said Wurzelmann.

"Yes, but what am I to say about Herr Dormaul's opinion?" asked Benda.

He found it difficult to trust the man before him, and was using the judgment of the man behind him as a foil.

"Don't you know Dormaul? I thought you did. Whenever he has no authority to fear he becomes very bold. Lay the Ninth Symphony before him without Beethoven's name to it, and he will tell you at once that it is rubbish.

Do you want to bet?"

"Honestly?" asked Benda, somewhat concerned.

"Give me the score, and I'll promise you to arouse the least sensitive from their lethargy with it. With a work of that kind you have got to blow the trumpet."

Benda thought it over. He had no use for trumpet-blowing, and no confidence in those who did the blowing. And yet he consented, for he did not feel justified in arbitrarily depriving Daniel of a chance.

It turned out that Wurzelmann had told the truth. A fortnight later Daniel was informed that the Orchestral Union had decided to perform his work in February. In order to provide its hearers with a more elaborate picture of his creative ability, the Union asked him for a second work.

His compositions were perfect; others needed revision.

Wurzelmann boasted of having won his way to the seats of the mighty. He had the cordial approval of such professors of music as Wackerbarth and Herold. His masterpiece of diplomacy lay in the fact that he had secured Andreas Doderlein as director of the orchestra.

His store of suggestions was inexhaustible, his plans without number. He mentioned the fact that when the company was on the road they would have to have a second Kapellmeister, since he himself would have to function at times as subst.i.tute director: "Leave it all to me, dear Nothafft," he said, "Alexander Dormaul has got to dance to my tune, and my tune is this: It is Nothafft or n.o.body for Kapellmeister."

If he began with humility, he concluded with familiarity. Daniel hated red-headed people, particularly when they had inflamed eyes and s...o...b..red when they spoke.

"He is an unappetising fellow, your Wurzelmann," he said to Benda, "and it is embarra.s.sing to me to be indebted to him. He imagines he flatters me when he speaks contemptibly of himself. What he deserves is a kick or two."

Benda was silent. Touched by Wurzelmann's devoted efforts, he had called him _servule_, or the "little slave." It was pleasant to think that there was some one to remove the stumbling blocks from the road, so that the feet of him who had risen from obscurity might find a place to walk.

But the little slave was filled with the admiration of the Jew, born in poverty and oppression, for the genius of the other race.

Benda knew this. He was uneasy at the thought of it; for other and no less disingenuous fanatics regarded Wurzelmann's behaviour merely as a racial peculiarity.

X

Summer with its hot August days had come. The two friends took frequent walks out to the suburbs, strolling through the forests of Feucht and Fischbach, or climbing the high hills about the city.

Eleanore joined them on one of these excursions. It was a joy to see her drink in the fragrance of the flowers and the fir trees or study the various cloud formations and the alternating scenes of the landscape.

When she did this she was like a bird gliding along on noiseless wing in the upper regions, far removed from the grime of the earth, bathing in the undefiled air of the clouds.

She listened to the conversation of the friends with intelligent attention. A piercing glance or a wrinkle of the brow showed that she was taking sides, and accepting or rejecting in her own mind the views that were being set forth. If she was moved to express an opinion of her own, she generally hit the nail on the head.

As they were returning home, night set in. The sky was clear; the stars were s.h.i.+ning. There were a great number of falling stars. Eleanore remarked that she really did not have as many wishes as she could express under these circ.u.mstances. The erudite Benda replied with a smile that in these August nights there were frequently so many groups of asteroids that the whole firmament seemed to be in motion, and that one could easily grow tired of so many wishes.