The Goose Man Part 50

With regard to Daniel's conduct, Pflaum, the apothecary, had this to say: "I should have expected more grief and sorrow from him, and not so much sullenness."

"A hard-hearted man, an exceedingly hard-hearted man," said Herr Seelenfromm in his grief.

Daniel was severely criticised for his discourteous treatment of the people from the City Theatre, every one of whom had come to the funeral.

When several of them shook hands with him, he merely nodded, and blinked his eyes behind the round gla.s.ses which he had been wearing for some time.

Judge Kleinlein said: "He should be very grateful for the Christian burial, for despite the evidence that was turned in, it was not satisfactorily proved that the woman was in her right mind."

Eleanore looked into the open grave. She thought: "Guilt is being heaped upon guilt, deep, serious guilt."

All this was over now. Daniel and Eleanore and Jordan had come back to the house.

II

They felt lonely and deserted. Jordan shut himself up in his room. It was rare now that he took his accustomed evening walks; his coat-sleeves and the ends of his trouser legs had become more and more frayed. He pined away; his hair became snow white, his walk unsteady, his eye dim.

But he was never ill, and he never complained of his fate. He never said anything at the table; he was a quiet man.

Eleanore moved back up with her father, and Daniel took his old room next to the dining room. There was all of a sudden so much s.p.a.ce; he was surprised that the going of a single person could make such a vast difference.

Eleanore spent the whole day with little Agnes until Philippina came and relieved her. She also did her work close to Agnes.

When she had finished her writing, she had to look after the house. She could not cook, and had no desire to learn how, so she had a woman come in three times a week who prepared the midday meals. Twice a week she would prepare meals for two days, and once a week she would get them ready for three days. She was a modest woman who worked for very little money. The food she cooked merely needed to be heated over, and in the evening they always had sausage and sandwiches anyhow.

It was a practical arrangement, but no one praised Eleanore for it.

At first she spent her nights in Gertrude's room with the child; she could not stand this, however, longer than three weeks. Either she could not sleep, or she had such terrible dreams.

Then she took to carrying the child up to her room with her and making a little bed for it on the sofa. But the child did not sleep so well there; Eleanore noticed that, as a result of all the excitement and hard work, she was losing strength.

Often in the night when she would take the child to quiet it-and become so tired and uneasy-she would make up her mind to have a talk with Daniel. But the next morning she would find it impossible to bring up the subject. She felt that the voice of Gertrude was admonis.h.i.+ng her from beyond the grave and telling her to be patient.

She felt, too, that the time was drawing near when she would succ.u.mb to over-exertion; it made her anxious. Just then Philippina came in to help.

III

When Jason Philip heard that Philippina was going to Jordan's daughters every day, he told her most emphatically and repeatedly that she had to quit it. Philippina paid not the slightest attention to him and did as she pleased.

"I'll kill you," cried Jason Philip at the girl.

Philippina shrugged her shoulders and laughed impudently.

Jason Philip saw that a grown person was standing before him; he was afraid of the evil look of his daughter.

It was long before he could make out what was taking her to his enemies.

Then he learned that wherever she chanced to be, at home, or with acquaintances, or with strangers, she was spreading evil reports concerning Daniel and his family. This tended to make him a bit more indulgent: he too wanted to feast his ears on scandal from that quarter.

At times he would enter into a conversation with Philippina, and when she told him the latest news he was filled with fiendish delight. "The day will come when I will get back at that music-maker, you see if I don't," he said.

Theresa was still confined to her bed. During his leisure hours Willibald had to read to her, either from the newspapers or from trashy novels. When she was alone she lay perfectly quiet and stared at the ceiling.

The time finally came when Willibald left school. He went to Furth, where he was employed as an apprentice by a manufacturer. There was no doubt in any one's mind but that he would become one of those loyal, temperate, industrious people who are the pride of their parents, and who climb the social ladder at the rate of an annual increase in salary of thirty marks.

The one-eyed Markus entered the paternal bookshop, where he soon familiarised himself with the novels of the world from Dumas and Luise Muhlbach to Ohnet and Zola, and with the popular sciences from Darwin to Mantegazza. His brain was a book catalogue, and his mouth an oracle of the tastes displayed at the last fair. But in reality he not only did not like the books, he regarded all this printed matter as a jolly fine deception practised on people who did not know what to do with their money. Zwanziger, the clerk, had married the widow of a cheese merchant, and was running a shop of his own on the Regensburg Chaussee.

"A rotten business," said Jason Philip at the end of each month. "The trouble with me," he invariably added, "is that I have been too much of an idealist. If I had worked as hard for myself as I have for other people, I would be a rich man to-day."

He went to the cafe and discussed politics. He had developed into a perpetual grumbler; he was pleased with nothing, neither the government nor the opposition. To hear him talk you would have thought that the opposing parties had been forced to narrow their platforms down to the differences between the views of Prince Bismarck and Jason Philip Schimmelweis. When Kaiser Wilhelm I died, Jason Philip acted as though his appointment to the chancellors.h.i.+p was imminent. And when in that same memorable year Kaiser Friedrich succ.u.mbed to his sufferings, Jason Philip resembled the pilot on whose isolated fearlessness the rescue of the storm-tossed s.h.i.+p of state depends.

The born hero always finds a sphere of activity, a forum from which to express his views. If public life has rejected him, he goes to the cafe, where he is sure to find a congenial element.

One day Theresa got up from the bed where she had spent fifteen unbroken months, and seemed all of a sudden completely recovered. The physician said it was the strangest case that had ever come under his observation.

But Jason Philip said: "It is the triumph of a good const.i.tution." With that he went to the cafe, drank beer, made fiery political speeches, and played skat.

But Theresa left her bed not as a woman forty-six years old-that was her age-but as a woman of seventy. She had only a few spa.r.s.ely distributed grey hairs left on her square head, her face was full of wrinkles, her eye was hard and cold. From that time on, however, she did not seem to age. She did not quarrel any more, attended to her affairs in a straightforward, self-a.s.sured way, and observed her increasing impoverishment with unexpected calm.

She lived on herring, potatoes, and coffee; it was the same diet on which Philippina and Markus lived, with the one exception that Markus, as the child nearest her heart, was allowed a piece of sugar for his coffee. Jason Philip was also put on a diet: he never dared open his mouth about it, either.

Philippina stood it for a while in silence; finally she said to her mother: "I can't stand this chicory brew forever."

"Then you'll have to lap up water, you will," replied Theresa.

"No, I won't," said Philippina. "I am going to hire out."

"Well, hire out. Who cares? It'll be one mouth less to feed." "Your daughter is going to hire out," said Theresa to her husband, when he came home that evening.

Jason Philip had been playing cards that day, and had lost. He was in a terrible humour: "She can go plumb to the Devil so far as I am concerned." That was his comment.

The next morning Philippina sneaked up to the attic, and drew out her cash from the hole in the chimney: it amounted to nine hundred and forty marks, mostly in gold, which she had exchanged in the course of years for small coins. Through the opening in the wall the June sun fell upon her face, which, never young and bearing the stamp of extended crime, looked like that of a witch.

She put the money in a woollen stocking, rolled it up in a knot, stuffed it down her corset between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, made the sign of the cross, and repeated one of her drivelling formulas. Her clothes, ribbons, and other possessions she had already packed in a basket. This she carried down the stairs, and, without saying good-bye to a soul, left the house.

Her brother Markus was standing with sprawled legs in the sun before the store, whistling. He caught sight of her with his one eye, smiled contemptuously at her, and cried: "Happy journey!"

Philippina turned to him, and said: "You branded lout! You're going to have a lousy time of it, mark what I tell you!"

In this frame of mind and body she came to Daniel, and said to him: "I want to work for you. You don't need to pay nothing if you ain't got it."

Daniel had been noticing for some time that Eleanore could not stand the exertion required of her by the extra work.

"Will you mind the baby and sleep with it?" Daniel asked. Philippina nodded and looked down.

"If you will take care of the child and act right toward it and me, I shall be awfully grateful to you," he said, breathing more easily.

Thereupon Philippina threw her hands to her face, and shuddered from head to foot. She was not exactly crying; there was something much worse, much more despairing, in what she was doing than in mere crying.

She seemed to be convulsed by some demoniac power; a ghastly dream seemed to have seized her in a moment of higher consciousness. She turned around and trotted into the room where the child was playing with a wooden horse.

She sat down on a foot-stool, and stared at the restless little creature.