The Goose Man Part 59

The proofs of dishonourable conduct on the part of his son could now be brought forward. The debts he had contracted, either through flippancy or downright deception, in the name of his father were sufficient to condemn him forever. And if not, then let them fight it out after he was dead and gone; let his last will and testament be a ghost, a spectre that would strike terror into their hearts and embitter such pleasure as they might otherwise derive from life.

His will had been drawn up seven years ago; all that was needed was the signature of the notary public.

But why did the Baron hesitate? Why did he pace back and forth in his room with pinched lips? Why did he ring for the butler with the idea of sending this functionary for the notary, and then suddenly change his mind and give the butler something else to do?

_"Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.

III

In the course of three days the Baroness had five talks with her husband. Each time he rejected her pet.i.tion to have the affairs of their son straightened out; and when she became insistent and seemed minded to keep up her fight, he became silent, speechless.

It was during her last attempt that the servants heard her speaking with extraordinary pa.s.sion and violence. When she left the Baron's room her whole body was quivering with emotion and excitement. She came out, and ordered the house servants to pack her trunk and her coachman to be ready to leave in a few minutes.

An hour later she was on her way to the estate at Siegmundshof, about ten miles from the baronial residence. Her maid accompanied her. But she was utterly unable to find peace there. During the day she would pace back and forth through the rooms, crying and wringing her hands; at night she would lie down, but not to sleep. On the fourth day she returned to the city, had the carriage driven to the residence of Count Urlich, and sent her coachman in to get the Countess. Emilia came down, terrified, to know what her mother wanted. The Baroness told her that she wished her to accompany her to Herr Carovius, whose address she had found in the city directory.

Herr Carovius had waited in vain for the news the Baroness had promised him. His anger got the best of him: he decided to make an example of the Auffenberg family, and, with this end in view, entered their house as the personal embodiment of punitive justice. When he was told that he could not be admitted, he began once more to start trouble; he raged and stormed like a madman. The servants came running out from all quarters; finally a policeman appeared on the scene and questioned him. The porter then dragged him from the house and out through the big gate at the entrance to the grounds, where he stood surrounded by a crowd of curious but not entirely disinterested people, bare-headed, waving his arms and striking an imaginary adversary with his fists-a picture, all told, of anger intensified to the point of insanity.

His backers at once got wind of his fruitless attempts to collect. They became uneasy, gave Herr Carovius himself a deal of trouble, and finally appointed a lawyer to take charge of the case. In the meantime Herr Carovius had learned through a spy that it had come to a complete break between the Baron and the Baroness, that the latter had left within two days with bag and baggage, and that great consternation prevailed among the servants and friends of the family.

A voluptuous light crept across Herr Carovius's face: here was defeat and despair, weeping and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth; what more could he wish? He felt that he was personally the annihilator of the collective aristocracy. And if it is possible to take a fiendish delight in witnessing the destruction of what one after all despises, how much greater may this joy be when the thing destroyed is something one loves and admires!

It was while in this mood that the Baroness and her daughter came to see him. The sight of the two women left him momentarily speechless. He forgot to say good-day to them; to ask them in never once occurred to him.

The Baroness wanted to know where Eberhard was: she was determined to see him. When Herr Carovius stuttered out the astounding information to her that he was living hardly more than three hundred paces from where she was then standing, she began to tremble and leaned against the wall.

She was not prepared for this: she had always imagined that he was staying at some mysterious place in some mysterious distance.

Herr Carovius at once insisted that he accompany the ladies to the Baron's diminutive residence. But the Baroness felt that she was not capable of this: she feared it would mean her death. "Take me home with you, Emilia," she said to her daughter, "and you go over and have a talk with Eberhard first."

But Emilia had not seen Eberhard once during the nine years of her married life, and was even less inclined than her mother to meet him now. Nor was it possible to take the Baroness to her home. The old lady had evidently forgotten that she had told Count Urlich never to show his face in her presence again. The occasion of this inexorable request was the time she learned that the governess of his child was in a family way and that he was responsible for her disgrace.

Since the Baroness stoutly refused to return either to her town residence or to Siegmundshof, there was nothing for Emilia to do but to take her to a hotel. Herr Carovius, who had accompanied the two women on the street and had enjoyed to the full their pitiable distress, suggested that they go to the Bavarian Court. He climbed up on the seat by the coachman, told him how to get there, and looked down in regal triumph on the pedestrians.

Countess Emilia, quite at her wits' end, sent a telegram to her Aunt Agatha. The next Wednesday Frau von Erfft with her daughter Sylvia arrived. "Clotilda acts as if she had lost her mind," she said to Emilia after having spent an hour in the room with her sister. "I am going to see your father. I must have a long talk with Siegmund."

The Baron received his sister-in-law with marked coolness, though he had always had a great deal of respect for her.

Frau von Erfft was quite careful to avoid any reference to the family affairs. She talked about Sylvia, remarking that she was now twenty-seven years old, and that she had rejected all her suitors, a fact which was causing her parents a measure of concern. "She simply will not be contented," said Frau Agatha. "She is bent on securing a special mission in her marriage, and fears nothing so much as the loss of her personal liberty. That is the way our children are, dear Siegmund; and if we had brought them into the world differently, they would be different. In our day the ideal was obedience; but now children have discovered the duty they owe themselves."

"Then they should look out for themselves," replied the Baron gloomily.

He had fully appreciated what his sister-in-law was driving at.

From the confused and incoherent remarks of her sister, Agatha had learned what had taken place between the Baron and the Baroness. She was familiar with the painful past; and when she looked into the old Baron's eyes, she saw what was necessary. She made up her mind then and there to have Eberhard meet his mother.

She wished above everything else to quiet Clotilda and persuade her to return home. The task, owing to the weakness and instability of the Baroness, was not difficult. Sylvia remained with her aunt, and her quiet, resolute disposition had a wholesome effect upon her. In the meantime Agatha had got Eberhard's address. After some search she found the house: Eberhard was at home.

IV

The first talk she had with him pa.s.sed off without results of any kind.

He evaded her courageous remarks, and failed to hear what he did not care to hear. He was stiff, polite, and annoyingly listless. Agatha, full of vexation, told her daughter of her disappointment. Sylvia said she would like to go with her mother the next time she visited Eberhard.

Agatha shook her head, though she was in no way minded to abandon her purpose.

There was no change at the Baron's house. Baroness Clotilda was in a perpetual state of nervous excitement that was anything but rea.s.suring either to herself or those about her. The Baron was a disquieting riddle to the entire household: he never left his room; he paced up and down hours at a time, with his hands folded across his back.

Agatha called on her nephew a second, a third, a fourth time. Even though Eberhard's Arctic impenetrability seemed made for all time, though yielding seemed to be no part of his nature, she finally succeeded in jolting him loose from his bearings. And when Sylvia accompanied her mother-Sylvia generally won her point with her mother-he shook off his armour with unexpected suddenness; you could see the struggles that were going on in his soul.

Falteringly, and in the affected and finical tone he not infrequently adopted, he told the story of his youth, commenting on the everlasting discord between his father and his mother and the disagreeable quarrels that used to take place at home. He said that just as soon as his mother would ask that something be done, his father would demand the opposite.

The children soon saw that father was going his way and mother hers; they were not unaware of the fact that their parents cordially distrusted each other and even went so far as to lay traps for each other. He insisted that his mother, with all her amiability and gentleness, was obsessed with the idea of teasing, annoying, and wounding his father on that very point where she had already and so often teased, annoyed, and wounded him before; and that this lack of reason and consideration on her part, coupled with the absence of kindness and candour on his, had made the paternal home a h.e.l.l, torn at the hearts of the growing children, and in time so hardened them that they suspected every friendly face they saw, and withdrew, as if so from something vile, from every hand that was reached out to them. He related further that in this loveless wilderness brother and sister had been drawn to each other, that in Emilia's heart, and his own as well, this mutual friends.h.i.+p was cherished as a sacred, inviolable possession, so sacred that it impelled them in time to establish a league against all the rest of the world. How did they conduct themselves once this league had been founded? If they read a book it was in common; they kept no secrets from each other, advised each other, and shared their happiness and sorrow equally, until one fine day Emilia's father appeared before her, and informed her that Count Urlich had asked for her hand and that he had promised that he should have it.

At this point in the story, Eberhard became silent; he bit his lips; his ashen face, that had never before reminded Agatha so much of the old Baron, betrayed an incurable grief.

Agatha was familiar with this incident, in rough outline; but as Eberhard related it, it stirred her soul to the very depths. "One must try to forget," she said.

"Forget? No, that I cannot do; never have been able to do. Be it a matter of virtue or of vice, I cannot forget. Emilia, then still half child and only half woman, was made flexible in time. But that my mother did not do everything in her power to prevent this gruesome deed, and that it caused her to sink deeper and deeper into the coils of domestic anguish by reason of her innate and gnawing weakness-that was the bitterest experience of my entire life."

"But she is your mother, Eberhard. Never in the history of the human family has a son had the right to condemn his mother."

"That is news to me," replied Eberhard coldly. "Mothers are human beings like any one else. Even mothers can commit a sin by filling their children with the poison of distrust and disgust with life. Father and mother, parents: they are a symbol, a glorious one when they hover above us and around us, worthy of respect and calling for filial veneration.

But if I am bound to them only by the ties of duty, they are not symbols; they are mere phantoms, conceptions of human speech. There is no duty but the duty of love."

Sylvia had sat in perfect silence. Unconsciously she had followed the most beautiful law of harmonious souls: to wield an influence, to have power, not through the use of words and the elaboration of reasons, but by a pure life, an unquestioned existence. Agreement and disagreement lay like a play of light and shadow on her brow.

In this way she reminded Eberhard more and more of Eleanore.

Perhaps it was the power of this memory that moved him to promise that he would go with Agatha on the following day to his mother. The sole condition he imposed was that he be a.s.sured that he would not meet his father.

Seeing that he was relentless in this request, Frau von Erfft conceded it, though she had a rea.s.suring premonition that the events and the hour would be stronger than will and purpose.

V

On entering his mother's boudoir, Eberhard's eyes fell at once on the alabaster clock, the face of which was supported by three figures representing the daughters of time. In his childhood days the clock had always had a highly poetic meaning to him: it seemed to symbolise the fulfilment of his most ardent wishes.

The Baroness had been prepared for his coming by her sister. While Eberhard and Sylvia had been standing in the corner room waiting, a few of the servants had gathered at the door, where they whispered to each other timidly.

Eberhard went up to his mother and kissed her hand. The Baroness's face was the colour of lead; her eyes were opened as wide as possible, and yet she seemed hardly conscious. Emilia stood at one side; her hands were pressed to her bosom, her fingers were twitching convulsively.

Frau Agatha endeavoured to relieve the situation of its solemnity and unnaturalness by making a few humorous remarks about Eberhard's hiding place on the hill by the Castle. Baroness Clotilda looked at her son in anxious and uneasy suspense: "I scarcely recognise him," she said with a hoa.r.s.e voice, "he has changed so."

"You have changed, too, Mother," said Eberhard, as his chin sought refuge between the lapels of his coat. He was as stiff as a poker.

Agatha looked at him full of vexation and annoyance. He acted as though he were being bored by the meeting.

But it was only a mask. As he looked at the old, indistinct, tired, bullied face, he became conscious of his mistake: he felt that he was wrong in saying that "Mothers are also human beings." He saw at once that amends had to be made, that action was necessary; he felt that his next step would lead to inevitable self-contempt if he neglected the moral deed of repentance.

As he struggled with himself and stared, as if paralysed, into the rebellion of his own soul, a certain pair of eyes had forced their way behind the seeming apathy. A sudden blush came to Sylvia's cheeks: she went up to her cousin, and took him by the hand. He quivered; he saw at once that she had divined what was going on in his soul, and now she was determined to bring his fight to a close, a final, definite close. She took him out of the room; he followed her; she led him through the dining room, the reception room, the smoking room, the library, and on to his father's room. Agatha, Emilia, and the Baroness looked at each other in amazement. They went to the door of the room, and listened in breathless suspense.

Sylvia opened the door rather boldly. The old Baron was sitting on the leather chair before the stove. His legs were wrapped in a blanket; the expression on his face was of stony coldness.