The Goose Man Part 45

"No, he didn't," replied Eleanore, "but I have almost enough to pay the landlord."

It was no longer possible to depend upon Jordan. He was supported by his children, and seemed to find the arrangement neither strange nor humiliating. At times he would allude in a mysterious way to a big enterprise that was going to claim the whole of his attention and bring him a great deal of money and honour. But if you asked him about it, he would wrinkle his brow and put his finger to his lips.

"I owe the man more than the rent," said Daniel. He kissed Gertrude on the forehead, and went out.

"Put the child in the cradle, and come over here," said Gertrude to Eleanore, as soon as Daniel had closed the door behind him. Eleanore did as she had been told. The baby was asleep. She took it up, looked at its wrinkled face, and carried it to the cradle. Then she went over to Gertrude's bed.

Gertrude seized her by her hands, and drew her down to her with more strength than one would have imagined her to have just then. The eyes of the two women were drawn close together. "You must make him happy, Eleanore," she said in a hoa.r.s.e voice, and with a sickly glimmer in her eyes. "If you do not, it would be better if one of us were dead."

Despite her terror, Eleanore loosened Gertrude's hold on her with great gentleness. "It is hard to discuss that subject, Gertrude; it is hard to live and hard to think about it all." Eleanore breathed these words into Gertrude's ears.

"You must make him happy; you must make him happy! Repeat it to yourself and keep it in your mind every day, every hour, every minute. You must, you must, you must." Gertrude was almost beside herself.

"I will learn how to do it," replied Eleanore slowly and seriously. "I am ... I hardly know what I am or how I feel. But be patient with me, Gertrude, I will learn how to make him happy." She looked into Gertrude's face with anxious curiosity. Gertrude however pressed her hands against Eleanore's cheeks, drew her down to her again, and kissed her with unusual fervour. "I too must learn how," whispered Gertrude, "I must learn the whole of life from the very beginning."

Some one knocked at the door. The midwife came in to look after her patient.

VII

At that time the superst.i.tion still prevailed that the window in the room of a woman in confinement must never be opened. The air in the room was consequently heavy and ill-smelling. Eleanore could hardly stand it during the day; during the night she could not sleep. Moreover natural daylight could not enter the room, and, as if it were not already gloomy enough, the window had been hung with green curtains which were kept half drawn.

The most unpleasant feature of all, however, was the interminable round of visits from the women: custom had decreed that they should not be turned away. The wife of the director of the theatre came in; Martha Rubsam came in, and so did the wife of Councillor Kirschner, and the wives of the butcher, baker, preacher, and physician. And of course the wife of the apothecary called. No one of them failed to pour out an abundance of gratuitous advice or go into ecstasies over the beauty of the baby. Once Daniel came in just as such an a.s.semblage was in the sick room. He looked first at one, then at another, threw back his head, and left without saying a word.

Herr Seelenfromm and M. Riviere were likewise not frightened by the distance; they called. Eleanore met them in the hall, and got rid of them by the usual method. And one day even Herr Carovius came around to inquire how mother and child were doing. Philippina received him; and Philippina was having a hard time of it at present: she was not allowed to enter Gertrude's room; Gertrude would have nothing to do with her; she refused to see her.

So that she might not get too far behind with her work-for it meant her daily bread-Eleanore pushed the table up to the window, and despite the poor light, kept on writing. In the evening she would sit by the lamp and write, although she was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open.

After three days, Gertrude had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in.

Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached.

Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, her oppression. Not even Daniel noticed that there was anything wrong with her.

She had very little opportunity to talk with him. And yet there was probably not another pair of eyes in the whole world that could be so eloquent and communicative with admonition, promise, request, and cordial resignation. One evening they met each other at the kitchen door: "Eleanore, I am stifling," he whispered to her.

She laid her hands on his shoulder, and looked at him in silence.

"Come with me," he urged with a stupid air. "Come with me! Let's run off."

Eleanore smiled and thought to herself: "The demands of his soul are always a few leagues in advance of the humanly possible."

The next morning he stormed into the room. Eleanore was only half dressed. With an expression of wrath flitting across her face she reached for a towel and draped it about her shoulders. He sat down on Gertrude's bed, and let loose a torrent of words: "I am going to set Goethe's 'Wanderers Sturmlied' to music! I am planning to make it a companion piece to the 'Harzreise' and publish the two in a cycle. I have not slept the whole night. The main motif is glorious." He began to hum it over in a falsetto voice: "'Oh, mortal man, if genius does not forsake thee, neither rain nor storm can breathe upon thy heart!' How do you like that?"

Gertrude looked at him inspired.

"I should have a good drink on that idea," he continued; "I have rarely felt such a longing for a flask of old wine. It's a b.l.o.o.d.y shame that I can't afford it. But you wait till I get a little money, and you will see a _bouteille_ of Tokay on my table every day."

"My G.o.d, just listen how he raves! He's going to have the best there is," said Philippina angrily, as she entered the room in her stocking feet and heard Daniel's remarks.

Daniel told her to keep her mouth shut and leave the room at once. He paid no attention to her reply, and cried out: "Something has got to happen. If I can't drink, I at least want to dance. Dance with me, Eleanore; don't be afraid, come, dance with me!" He threw his arms around her, pressed her to his bosom, sang a waltz melody, and drew the struggling and embarra.s.sed girl across the floor.

Philippina broke out in her slimy, malicious laughter, and then shrieked at the top of her voice that Frau Kirschner was outside and wanted to see the Kapellmeister's wife. Gertrude made an imploring gesture, the full meaning of which Daniel easily grasped. The baby began to cry, Eleanore tore herself away from Daniel's embrace, arranged her hair, and hastened over to the cradle. Philippina opened the door to let the Councillor's wife in. Just then a violent discussion was started in the hall. One could hear the voice of Jordan and that of some strange man.

It was the furniture dealer who had come to collect the money for the cradle. He was boiling with the rage that cares not how it may be expressed: he said he had already been there four times, and each time he was put off. The truth is, Daniel was very hard up.

The Councillor's wife took Daniel to one side, and made him an offer of a loan of two hundred marks. Daniel was silent; he bit his lips, and looked down at the floor. She scolded him: "You are always your own worst enemy. Now be reasonable, Nothafft, I will send the money over at noon. If you have any left, you may pay it back."

Daniel went out, and gave the bl.u.s.tering furniture dealer his last ten-mark piece.

Frau Kirschner had brought a flask of Tokay wine with her for Gertrude.

Tokay was regarded at that time as a sort of elixir of life.

"You see, so quickly are wishes fulfilled," said Gertrude to Daniel in the evening, when he came into her room. She poured out a gla.s.s for him.

"Have you any bills to settle?" he asked, looking partly at Eleanore, partly at Gertrude, and striking his wallet, then bulging with notes.

"It's Court Councillor's money," he said, "real Court Councillor's money. How beautiful it looks, lousy fine, eh? And upon that stuff the salvation of my soul depends!" He threw the money on Gertrude's bed, stuck out his tongue, and turned away in disgust.

Eleanore handed him the gla.s.s of Tokay; her eyes glistened with tears.

"No, Eleanore," he said, "I have trifled it away. In my arrogance I imagined I could do something; I thought I could get somewhere. I sit down, brood over my ideas, and find that they are all wind-eggs. I have the feeling that I have taken a false oath. What good am I, Eleanore, what good am I, Gertrude?"

"Ah, take a drink, and perhaps your troubles will leave you," said Eleanore, and stroked his brow with her hand.

Gertrude called out to her: "Quit that! Put that gla.s.s away!" She spoke so harshly that Eleanore sprang back, and Daniel got up.

"Leave me alone for a while," she said. Daniel and Eleanore left the room.

Eleanore went into the living room, sat down at the table, and laid her head in her hands. "What can we do now?" she said to Daniel. The violin tone in her voice had something unusually touching about it.

Daniel set the candle he was carrying in the bay window. He bent down over the table, and took Eleanore by her small wrists. "Accept the bitter for the sake of the sweet," he murmured. "Believe in me, believe in yourself, believe in the higher law. It is not possible that I merely imagined that there is a winged creature for me. I must have something to cling to, something indestructible, ah, even superhuman."

"You must have something superhuman to cling to," Eleanore repeated after him. She could not help but think that he had already made superhuman demands of the other woman, his wife, her sister, Gertrude.

She raised her finger as if to warn him: it was a gesture of infinite timidity.

But Daniel scarcely saw what she had done. In his arrogant presumption and pa.s.sion he could have smashed the universe to pieces, and then re-created it merely in order to mould this one creature after his own desires. He would have made her of boundless pliability, and yet active in her love for him; he would have had her spurn venerable commandments in a spirit of self-glorification, and yet cherish unequivocal confidence in him, the creature of need and defiance; and she would be cheerful withal.

"I am cold," whispered Eleanore, peering into the dark shadows of the room.

VIII

To know that these eyes and their pure pa.s.sion were so close to him; to be able to touch this cool, sincere, mutely-eloquent mouth with his lips; to be able to hold these hands in which pa.s.sion resided as it does in the speechless unrest of a messenger; to be able to press this throbbing figure with all its willingness and hesitation to his bosom-it was almost too much for Daniel. It involved pain; it aroused an impatience, a thirst for more and more. His daily work was interrupted; his thoughts, plans, and arrangements were torn from their connection.

He spoke to people whom he knew as though they were total strangers; he amazed those whom he did not know by the loyal confidence he voluntarily placed in them. He forgot to put on his hat when he walked along the street; the distraction he revealed was the source of constant merriment to pa.s.sersby and on-lookers. He would not know when it was noon; he would come home at three o'clock, thinking it was twelve. Once he came nearly being run over by a team of galloping horses; another time he had his umbrella taken straight from his hands without noticing it. This took place at the Ludwig Station.

"Oh, winged creature, winged creature," he would say to himself, and smile like a somnambulist. Deep in his soul a sea of tones was surging.

He listened to them with complete a.s.surance, angry though he would become at times because of the failure of this or that. He was so absorbed in himself, so enmeshed in his own thoughts, that he scarcely saw the sky above him; houses, people, animals, and the things that are after all necessary to human existence existed only in his dreams, if at all.

Winged creature, winged creature!