The Goose Man Part 46

IX

As soon as Gertrude could get up and go about, Eleanore accepted an invitation from Martha Rubsam to visit her aunt, Frau Seelenfromm, in Altdorf. The visit was to last two weeks. Eleanore looked upon it as a test that would determine whether she could do anything on her own account now: whether she could get along without Daniel.

But she saw that she could no longer live without him. In the lonely house she came to the conclusion that her love was great enough to enable her to bear the monstrous burden fate had been trying to impose upon her. She saw that neither flight nor concealment nor anything else could save her, could save Daniel, could give back to Gertrude what she had lost, what had been taken from her.

There were times, to be sure, when she asked herself whether it was all true and real; whether it could be possible. She walked in darkness surrounded by demons. Her being was plunged into the deepest and strangest bewilderment; confusion enveloped her; there was sorrow in the effort she made to avert the inexorable.

But in one of her sleepless nights she thought she was covering Daniel's mind with a flame of fire; she thought she heard his voice calling out to her with a power she had never known before.

No one she had ever seen was so vivacious, so alive as he. Her slumbering fancy had awakened at the sound of his voice and the feel of his warm breath. She felt that people owed him a great deal; and since they did not seem inclined to pay their debts, it was her duty to make rest.i.tution to Daniel for their neglect.

She could not survey the ways of his art: the musician in him made neither a strange nor a special appeal to her. She grasped and felt only him himself; to her he was Daniel. She grasped and felt only the man who was born to do lofty, the loftiest, deeds and who pa.s.sed by the base and evil in men in silence; who knew that he had been chosen but was obliged to renounce the privilege of ruling; who was always in full armour, ready to defend a threatened sanctuary.

Of such a man, of such a knight and warrior, she had dreamt even when a child. For although she looked at things and circ.u.mstances with the eyes of truth, her soul had always been full of secret dreams and visions.

Back of her unceasing and unfading activity the genii of romanticism had been spinning their bright-coloured threads; it was they that had formed the gla.s.s case in which she had lived for so long, impervious to the touch of mortal hand, immune to the flames of love.

The morning following that night she explained to her friend that she was going home. Martha tried in vain to get her to stay: she was almost ill with longing.

Martha let her go; she had the very saddest of thoughts concerning Eleanore's future; for the unhappy incidents of that unhappy home had reached Martha's sensitive ears. She did not worry because of moral principles; she was not that kind of a woman. She worried over Eleanore out of genuine affection: it pained her to know that she could no longer admire Eleanore.

X

In the meanwhile Daniel had told his wife that a child of his was living with his mother in Eschenbach, and that he had known nothing about it until Eleanore took him over there. He told her the child's name and how old it was and who its mother was, and gave her a detailed description of that celebrated New Year's Night on which he had embraced the maid.

He told her how he had stood out in front of her house that night and longed for her with all his senses, and how he felt, when he looked at little Eva, as if Providence had only seemed to use the body of a strange woman, and that Eva was in reality Gertrude's own child.

To this Gertrude replied: "I never want to see that child."

"You will be ashamed of having made this remark once you do see the child," replied Daniel. "You should not be envious of a creature whom G.o.d brought into the world so that the world may be more beautiful."

"Don't speak of G.o.d!" said Gertrude quickly and with uplifted hand.

Then, after a pause, during which Daniel looked at her angrily, she added with a painful smile: "The very idea: I, jealous, envious! O no, Daniel."

The way she pressed her hands to her bosom convinced Daniel, and quite emphatically too, that she did not know the feeling of envy or jealousy.

He said nothing, but remained in her room for an unusually long while.

When she was cutting bread, she let the knife fall. He sprang and picked it up for her. He had never done this before. Gertrude looked at him as he bent over. Her eyes became dim, flared up, and then became dim again.

"Don't speak of G.o.d!" Somehow Daniel could not get these words out of his mind.

When Eleanore returned she was terrified at the expression on Daniel's face. He seemed dazed; his eyes were inflamed as though he too had not been able to sleep; he could hardly talk. Finally he demanded that she swear to him never to go away again.

She hesitated to take an oath of this kind, but he became more and more insistent, and she took it. He threw his arms about her with pa.s.sionate impetuosity; just then the door opened, and Gertrude stood on the threshold. Daniel hastened to her, and wanted to take her by the hand; but she stepped back and back until she reached her bedroom.

It was evening; covers were laid for four: Jordan was to take dinner with them that evening. He came down promptly; Eleanore brought in the food; but Gertrude was nowhere to be found. Eleanore went in to her. She was sitting by the cradle, combing her hair with slow deliberation.

"Won't you eat with us, Gertrude?" asked Eleanore.

Gertrude did not seem to hear her. In a few minutes she got up, walked over to the mirror on the wall, pressed her hair with the palms of her hands to her two cheeks, and looked in the mirror with wide-opened eyes.

"Come, Gertrude," said Eleanore, rather timidly, "Daniel is waiting."

"That they are in there again," murmured Gertrude, "it seems like a sin." She turned around, and beckoned to Eleanore.

Eleanore went over to her in perfect obedience. Gertrude threw her arms around her neck until her left temple touched Eleanore's right one with only her hair hanging between them like a curtain. Gertrude again looked in the mirror; her eyes became rigid; she said: "Oh yes, you are more beautiful, much more beautiful, a hundred times more beautiful."

Just then the child began to stir, and since Gertrude was still standing immovable before the mirror, Eleanore went to the cradle. Hardly had Gertrude noticed what she had done, when she rushed out and cried with terrifying rudeness: "Don't touch that child! Don't touch it, I say!"

She then went up, s.n.a.t.c.hed the child from the cradle, and went back to her bed with it, saying gently and yet threateningly: "It belongs to me, to me and to no one else."

Since this incident, Eleanore knew that a fearful change had come over her sister. She did not know whether other people noticed it; she did not even know whether Daniel was aware of it. But she knew it, and it frightened her.

One afternoon, about sunset, Eleanore came in and found Gertrude on her knees in the hall scrubbing the floor. "You shouldn't do that, Gertrude," said Eleanore, "you are not strong enough for that kind of work yet."

Gertrude made no reply; she kept on scrubbing.

"Why don't you dress better?" continued Eleanore; "Daniel does not like to see you going about in that ugly old brown skirt. Believe me, it makes him angry."

Gertrude straightened up on her knees, and said with disconcerting humility: "You dress up; it is not well for two to look so nice. What shall I do?" she asked, and let her head sink. "You wear your gold chain and the corals in your ears. That pleases me; that is the way it should be. But I have no gold chain; I have no corals. If I had them, I wouldn't wear them; and if I wore them, it would not be right."

"Ah, Gertrude, what are you talking about?" asked Eleanore.

The ringing of the church bells could be heard in the hall. Gertrude folded her hands in prayer. There was a stern solemnity in her action.

In her kneeling position she looked as though she were petrified.

Eleanore went into the room with a heavy heart.

XI

Through the dividing walls Daniel and Eleanore were irresistibly drawn to each other. They accompanied each other in their thoughts; each divined the other's wishes and feelings. If he came home in a bad humour, if she was anxious and restless, they both needed merely to sit down by each other to regain their peace.

If Daniel's power of persuasion was great, Eleanore's example was equally great. A dish would displease Daniel. Eleanore would not only eat it, but would praise it; and Daniel would then eat it too, and like it. Gertrude had prepared the food, and Eleanore felt it was her duty to spare her sister as much humiliation as possible. But Gertrude did not want to be treated indulgently. She would lay her knife and fork aside, and say: "Daniel is right. It is not fit to eat." She would get up and go into the kitchen and make a porridge that would take the place of the inedible dish. That was the way she acted: she was always resigned, diligent, and quiet; she made every possible effort to do her duty.

Daniel and Eleanore looked at each other embarra.s.sed; but their embarra.s.sment was transformed in time into mutual ecstasy: they could not keep from looking at each other.

There was nothing of the seducer in Daniel's s.e.xual equipment. On the other hand he was dependent to a very high degree upon his wishes and desires; and in his pa.s.sionate obstinacy he not infrequently lacked consideration. Eleanore however possessed profound calmness, cheerful certainty, and a goodly measure of indulgence; and she knew exactly how to make use of these traits. The claims that were made on her patience and moderation would have hara.s.sed a heart steeled in the actualities of politics and flooded with worldly experiences. She however found a safe and unerring guide in the instincts of her nature, and was never tired.

The trait in her to which he took most frequent and violent exception was what he called her plebeian caution; she seemed determined to pay due and conventional respect to appearances. He did not wish to lay claim to the hours of his love as though they were a stolen possession; he did not wish to sneak across bridges and through halls; he did not wish to whisper; he did not wish to lie in wait for a secret tryst; he rebelled at the thought of coming and going in fear and trembling.

There is not the slightest use to investigate all the secrecies between Daniel and Eleanore. It will serve no useful end to infringe with unskilled hand on the work of the evil spirit Asmodeus, who makes walls transparent and allows his devotees to look into bed chambers. It would be futile to act as the spy of Daniel and show how he left the attic room in the dead of night and crept down the stairs in felt slippers. We have no desire to hear of Eleanore's pangs of conscience and her longings, her flights, her waiting in burning suspense; to relate how she endeavoured to avert the inevitable to-day and succ.u.mbed to-morrow would be to tell an idle tale. It is best to overlook all these things; to draw a curtain of mercy before them; for they are so human and so wholly without a trace of the miraculous.

It will be enough to touch upon a single night on which Daniel went to Eleanore's room and said: "I have never yet seen you as a lover sees his beloved." Eleanore was sitting on the edge of her bed, trembling. She blew out the candle. Daniel heard the rustling of her clothes. She went up to the stove and opened the front draft door. There was a red hot coal fire in the stove. She stood before him with the purple glow of the burning coals upon her body, slender, delicate, nude. Her figure, peculiarly beautiful, was filled with the most harmonious of inspiration; it was ensouled. And since the play of her limbs, as they became conscious of the light, was suddenly stiffened with shame, Eleanore bent her head over to the wall where the mask of Zingarella, which he had given her, was hanging. She took it down, and held it with both hands so that the purple glow from the stove fell also on it. As she did this she smiled in a way that cut Daniel to the very heart: something eternal came over him; he had a premonition of the end; he feared fate.

At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head.

Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.

Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.

For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place.

In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there was a man; they embraced each other, and sank their teeth into each other's flesh. It was all as criminal as it was irrational; it was a shame and an abomination to behold. Everywhere she looked she saw reprehensible nudeness; all clothes seemed to be made of gla.s.s; she could look neither at a man nor at a woman without turning pale. She had only one refuge: the cradle of her child. She would rush to it and pray.