The Goose Man Part 58

Daniel looked at them quite indifferently. Gradually he began to collect his thoughts, to compose himself, to come to himself.

His guests were Eberhard von Auffenberg and his cousin, Sylvia von Erfft. They were betrothed.

Taken up as he had latterly been with the marked changes and transformations in his life, Eberhard had not heard of the death of Eleanore until a few hours ago.

It was a rare visit. None of the three said a word. Daniel lay wrapped in his blanket; he never moved. Finally, when his friends were about to leave, Sylvia got up, and turning to Daniel, said: "I did not know Eleanore, but I feel as if I had lost one of my own dear friends."

Eberhard tossed his chin in the air, turned pale, and was as silent as the tomb.

They repeated their visit on the following day, and then on the next day, and so on. The presence of the two people came in time to have a beneficent effect on Daniel.

THE ROOM WITH THE WITHERED FLOWERS

I

A few days later, Herr Carovius carried out the scheme he had decided upon at the time his heart became so embittered at Eleanore's marriage.

It was the end of March. Herr Carovius had learned that the old Baron had just returned from Berlin. He went around to his house, and sent in his card. The butler came out, and told him that the Baron could receive no one, that he should state his business in writing.

Herr Carovius, however, wanted to see his debtor face to face: this was the heart of his dream. When he came back a second time and was again told that he could not see the Baron, he began to storm and bl.u.s.ter, and insisted that they should at least let him talk with the Baroness.

The Baroness was just then taking her music lesson. The fifteen-year-old Dorothea Doderlein, who gave promise of developing into a remarkable virtuoso on the violin, was playing some sonatas with the Baroness.

Andreas Doderlein had recognised her talents when she was a mere child.

Since her tenth year, she had been obliged to practise six hours every day. She had had a great number of different teachers, all of whom had been brought to the point of despair by her intractability. In the presence of her father, however, she was meek: to him she bowed.

Andreas Doderlein had recommended his daughter to the Baroness in words replete with objective recognition. The Baroness declared her willingness to play with Dorothea. Andreas Doderlein had said to her: "Now you have a chance to rise in the world through powerful influence; don't neglect it! The Baroness loves the emotional; be emotional. At times she will demand the demoniac; be obedient. Like all rich people, she is pampering some grief _de luxe_; don't disturb her!"

Dorothea was docile.

They were playing Beethoven's spring sonatas, when the altercation began out in the vestibule. The maid came in and whispered something to her mistress. The Baroness arose and went to the door. Dorothea laid her violin in her lap, and looked around in affected astonishment, as though she were coming out of a dream.

At a sign from the Baroness the old servant gave Herr Carovius a free path. He went in: his face was red; he made a quite ridiculous bow. His eyes drank in the velvet portieres, the cut gla.s.s mirrors, the crystal vases, and the bronze statuettes. In the meantime, and without fail, he had placed his right hand against his hip, giving the fine effect of right akimbo, and set one foot very elegantly a trifle more to the fore than the other: he looked like a provincial dancing-master.

He complained of the presumptuousness of the servants, and a.s.sured the Baroness that she was in complete enjoyment of his deference. He spoke of his good intentions and the pressure of circ.u.mstances. When the impatient bearing of his sole but distinguished auditor at last obliged him to come to the real purpose of his visit, the Baroness twitched; for from his flood of words there emerged, as she heard them, nothing but the name of her son.

With panting sounds she came up to Herr Carovius, and took him by the coat-sleeve. Her dim, black eyes became as round as little bullets; the supplicating expression in them was so much balm to the soul of her visitor.

Herr Carovius was enchanted; he was having the time of a scurvy life; he became impudent; he wanted to take vengeance on the mother against the son. He saw that the Baroness did not correspond to the picture he had made of a creature who belonged to the aristocracy. In his imagination she had lived as a domineering, imperious, inaccessible phenomenon: and now there stood before him an old, obese, worried woman. On this account he gave his voice a shriller tone, his face a more scurrilous expression than was his wont. Then he launched forth on a graphic narration of the unhappy plight in which he now found himself as a result of his a.s.sociation with Baron von Eberhard, Jr.

He claimed that it was nothing but his own good nature that had got him into this trouble. And yet, what was he to do? The Baron would have starved to death, or become morally depraved, if he had not come to his spiritual and pecuniary rescue, for the young man was sadly wanting in the powers of moral resistance. And what had he gained by all this altruism? Ingrat.i.tude, bitter ingrat.i.tude!

"He plundered me; he took my last cent, and then acted as if it were my d.a.m.ned duty to go through fire for his baronical excellency," screamed Herr Carovius. "Before I came to know him I was a well-to-do man; I could enjoy myself; I could reap the higher pleasures of human existence. To-day I am ruined. My money is wasted, my house is burdened with mortgages, my peace of mind has gone plumb to the Devil. Two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks is what the young man owes me and my business friends. Yes-two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks, including interest and interest on the interest, all neatly noted down and signed up by the duly authorised parties. Am I to let him slam the door in my face because of his indebtedness to me? I think you will see yourself that that cannot be expected of me. He at least owes me a little respect for what I have done for him."

The Baroness had listened to all this with folded hands and unfixed eyes. But the close of the story was too much for her: she threw herself on a great divan, overcome-for the time being-with worry and maternal weakness. A grin strayed across Herr Carovius's face. He twirled his Calabrian headpiece in his hands, and let his leery eyes wander about the walls. Then it was that he caught sight of Dorothea, whom he had thus far failed to see in his intoxication of wrath and rapture.

When Herr Carovius entered, Dorothea, out of discretion rather than with serious intent, had made herself as small as possible in the most remote corner of the room. Trembling with curious excitement, she had wished to evade the eye of her uncle Carovius, for in very truth she was ashamed of him.

She regarded him as a sort of comic freak, who, though he had enough to live on, could not be said to be in the best of circ.u.mstances. When he rolled the sum the Auffenberg family owed him from his tongue, she was filled with astonishment and delight, and from then on she took a totally different view of him.

During the last few years Herr Carovius had seen very little of Dorothea. Whenever he had met her, she had pa.s.sed by him in great haste.

He knew that she was taking violin lessons: he had often heard her screechy fiddling on the stairs and out in the hall.

He fixed his eyes on her, and exclaimed: "Well I'm a son-of-a-gun if there isn't Doderlein's daughter! How did you get here? Aha, you are going about and showing the people what you can do! I should think you and your creator would have had enough of music by this time."

The Baroness, recalling that the young girl was present, raised her eyes and looked at Dorothea reproachfully. For the first time in her life she felt that the resources she had managed to extract from a life of neglect were about exhausted; for the first time in her life she felt a shudder at the thought of her musical stupefactions.

She asked Herr Carovius to have patience, adding that he would hear from her in a few days-as soon as she had talked the matter over with her husband. She nipped in the bud a zealous reply he was about to make, and nodded a momentary farewell to Dorothea, who put her violin in the case, took the case in her hand, curtsied, and followed her uncle out of the room.

She remained at his side; they went along the street together. Herr Carovius turned to her from time to time, and made some rancorous remark. She smiled modestly.

With that began the strange relation that existed between the two from then on.

II

It had looked for some time as though the Baron von Auffenberg had retired from the political stage. In circles in which he had formerly been held in unqualified esteem he was now regarded as a fallen hero.

His friends traced the cause of his failure to the incessant friction from which the party had suffered; to the widespread change that was taking place in the public mind; to the ever-increasing pressure from above and the never-ceasing fermentation from below; to the feverish restlessness that had come over the body politic, changing its form, its ideals, and its convictions; and to the more scrupulous and sometimes reactionary stand that was being taken on all matters of national culture.

But this could not explain the hard trace of repulsion and aversion which the Baron's countenance had never before revealed when in the presence of men; it threw no light, or at most an inadequate light, on the stony glare, gloomy impatience, and reticence which he practised now even in those circles and under those circ.u.mstances in which he had formerly been noted for his diverting talents as a conversationalist and companion.

In his heart of hearts he had, as a matter of fact, always despised his political const.i.tuents, their speeches, their action, their enthusiasm, and their indignation. But he had never kicked over the traces, for during the course of a rather eventful life he had made the discovery that contempt and an icy disposition are invaluable adjuncts to any one who wishes to control men.

Even though he had fought at the beginning of his career with all the eloquence and buoyancy at his command for freedom and tolerance, it remained a fact that he regarded liberalism as nothing more than a newspaper term, a means of keeping men busy who were too indolent to think for themselves, and a source of obstructive annoyance to the openly hated but secretly admired Bismarck.

He had wielded a power in full consciousness of the lie he was acting, and had done it solely by gestures, calculations, and political adroitness. This will do for a while, but in time it eats into the marrow of one's life.

In his eyes nothing was of value except the law, unwritten to be sure, but of immemorial duration, that subjects the little to the big, the weak to the strong, the immature to the experienced, the poor to the rich. In accordance with this law humanity for him was divided into two camps: those who submitted to the law, and the undesirable citizens who rebelled against the law.

And of these undesirable citizens his son Eberhard was the most undesirable.

With this stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the figure of his son a picture of evil incarnate.

He visualised him in dissipation and depravity of every kind and degree; he saw him sinking lower and lower, a traitor to his family name; as if in a dream that appeases the sense of obscene horror, he saw him in league with the abandoned and proscribed, a.s.sociating with thieves, street bandits, high-flying swindlers, counterfeiters, anarchists, prost.i.tutes, and literati. He saw him in dirty dives, a fugitive from justice wandering along the highway, drunk in a gambling den, a beggar at a fair, and a prisoner at the bar.

His determination to wait until the degenerate representative of the human family had been stigmatised by all the world he finally abandoned.

His impatience to find peace, to throw off the mask, to rid himself completely of all entanglements, dissimulation, and the life of luxury to which he had been accustomed became so great, that he looked forward to the day that would eventually mark his release as the day of a new birth.

But why did he hesitate? Was there still an element of doubt in his breast? Was there still slumbering, deep down in the regions of his heart that were inaccessible to bitterness and revenge, another picture of his son? Why did he hesitate from week to week, from month to month?

In the meantime he had donated great fortunes to poor houses, hospitals, foundations, and similar causes. He wanted to give away other millions, at least so much that his heirs would receive only the gleanings of what had once been a field of riches. Emilia was to be given the income from the breweries and the country estates.

To this extent he had firmly made up his mind. Now that his wife had told him of the actual condition in which Eberhard found himself, he felt justified in going ahead and carrying out his pre-determined plans.